Journal

2020 - Week 36 Cooking Results

Mexican Street Corn Salad

I remembered to have a gentle hand with the lime juice which can overwhelm this. also do now use the lime flavored chili powder that my aunt got for me. So I used jalapeño powder and just under the amount of lime juice. At least one person at Shannon’s work potluck thing wanted to have the recipe, so that’s a win.

Grilled Harissa Lamb Burgers

They were note really grilled, but I did cook them off in a pan. I also served them with a bit of feta. They were good, not too hard to make, and a good use of lamb.

Kimchi Chicken and Cabbage Stir-Fry Recipe

After I had to dump out the contents of my fridge, I had to restock a number of condiments, and this used most of the new jar of kimchi. It came together quickly, certainly more then the Lo Mein. It was good and I ate the leftovers. I did point out that I did need to pick up a few things (sherry) that apparently I drank all of.

Dublin Coddle

This took a bit. The baking time was noted as being 1.25 hours but at 1.25 hours The potatoes were still mostly raw. but who cooks something at325? I jacked up the heat a bit (400) and let it go for another 20 minutes, and then the potatoes were soft enough to eat.

I used my mandolin for the first time in a bit, and it was nice to flow through the potatoes real quick. I had some Lucky George bangers that I ordered from the Coop and used those.

Good, savory, and maybe not so good for you, but delicious to eat. Hunh. Apparently Irish bangers contain eggs, while English ones tend to not. I wonder if you could actually make those at a normal meat locker. Anyways, I wish I started earlier like I told my wife I would, but I got distracted as I am often am.

Stir-Fried Lo Mein Noodles With Pork and Vegetables Recipe

Lots of ingredients, and it did, eventually come together after all the prep work, it came together quite quickly and was fantastic.

2020 - Week 35 Cooking Results

Harissa Chickpeas With Fried Eggs

Many things taste good with eggs on top. Spicy chickpeas are among them.

Creamy Baked Pasta with Gruyère and Prosciutto

So it was sort of Mac and cheese? Without the roux or something resembling a normal sauce. But then you add a bit of Prosciutto Americano on top and ba bam. Good dinner.

Spicy Peanut Noodle Salad With Cucumbers, Red Peppers, and Basil

skipped, I plan to use the noodles for something else though.

Eggs & Bacon Biscuits

A little bit of the leftover bacon, some local eggs and some thawed locally made English muffins and you come up with nice simple dinner.

Pork Burgers

Took some pork, chopped up some jowl bacon, mixed it in with the pork along with a bit of salt and pepper. Cooked them off on the stove and after a bit of playing with the smoke alarm, eventually got them cooked off. Pretty good.

2020 Iowa Derecho - Personal Experience

This week got shot to shit.

I am unsure as to how to describe this. Looking back, over all, we were fairly lucky as far as the Derecho ripped across the state, for the most part, I didn’t notice. I was working, and had a power blip, started to reconnect, then lost power. I headed upstairs to see what was going on and discovered that the tree in our front yard had fallen.

First Picture, through door window, You can see the repairs already starting as a MidAmerican truck drives by

First Picture, through door window, You can see the repairs already starting as a MidAmerican truck drives by

I didn’t hear it fall, at least I think not. Shortly after that I heard the sirens come up.

As a note, the tree fell about as perfectly as a tree could. It hit no wires, any houses, other trees, or cars, just covered up about half the street, meaning you can still get in and out of the street.

This started a ~55 hour period where we were without power. During that time I reported my tree fell into the street to the city, I tried to go to work on Monday (after the outage) but gave up. We drove around on Monday evening (partially to recharge our phones), where we found a way to make it to work. We also discovered that the entry point for power, two blocks to west or so had a tree tangled up in it. With further driving about, still charging our devices, we saw a few houses that were clearly damaged by trees, we discovered another entry point for power to our house, a couple blocks east and a few blocks south, was also mangled.

We returned home, ended up in separate bedrooms (no power, no CPAP, snoring like a rhino and lack of sleep for me).

Tuesday, I got up, got dressed to go into the office (the first time in other then the 6 hours to re-setup my MacBook pro (2 three hour sessions), since the pandemic was started to be taken seriously). My plan was to pick up some monger sandwiches at the cheese shop on my way home. When I started to plan my route home, I discovered the Cheese Shop was out of power, though they got some dry ice to keep their cheese refrigerated, which is good for them. We ended up getting delivery…from somewhere. This was the beginning of my exhaustion. During the day, the City, I think, came and chopped up the center of the tree to pull most of the tree out of the street. This is due to me following my father’s advice and reporting it to the city.

I had started calling around to tree companies to try to get someone to come out, I should have probably started during the storm. However I did end up getting a couple of touch backs, but as we started cleaning things up, it became apparent that we could, after the city cut up the tree, do it ourselves. I carried the large chunks to the wood pile, then between us doing it a few evenings of effort, and me swapping my morning exercise, using a hedge trimmer (after power was restored), a hand saw, and a lopper (I guess that’s what it’s called) we were able to get this accomplished and have piles of wood for the city to pick up.

Wednesday, I went to work again at the office. More tired. Unlike the first night where I got up several times, tossed and turned a lot, this night I mostly slept through the night in a black dreamless exhausting nothingness. I was worried about getting to the point where I’d have to toss all the meat, and after a discussion with my manager, I ran off to Burtek Dry Ice, who sold dry ice to the public for a bit, ended up with 50 pounds (22.6 kilos), put two ten pound bags in the upstairs freezer, and 3 in deep freeze. There was still ice in the ice maker upstairs, though it was starting to get a bit watery, but still icy. I headed back to work and did some more work as best as I could being exhausted. On my way home I stopped at a grocery store to picked up another 20 pound (~9 kilos) bag of ice on my way home.

I was very hopeful on as I started to travel home. Unlike Tuesday, where 80% of the stoplights were out, driving Wednesday 80% of them were on. I drove into the neighborhood, and it was looking good, as far as electricity was concerned, lights on here and there. I noticed the elementary school’s sign was on. I got home and was a bit despondent, because no lights were on in our house. Then I heard the neighbor’s air conditioning unit kicked on, I still didn’t see any movement in the house. I may have yelled in frustration. As I put my key in the lock, lights came on (or very close to it). As thing started to warm up and reconnect, I went and checked on the air conditioner, the internet came on and things started to feel normal.

It felt good to sleep, next to my wife, with fans and my CPAP machine. It felt nice to be able to watch the bees in my mint garden, from my workspace, though it appears as if the Painted Lady Butterflies had suffered from the derecho, or moved on (hoping for the latter).

This all being said. There are still people without power, having blocked streets and sporadic cell coverage, especially in Cedar Rapids. While the local media seems to be covering it well, the national media has completed failed at coverage, since, I suspect, the pictures aren’t dramatic enough (no storm to catch, just clean up). There’s so much going on.

2020 - Week 30 Cooking Results

Sam’s Pizza w/ Lost Lake Mozzarella and La Quercia Pepperoni

CJ gave me a taste of the La Quercia pepperoni and Lost Lake had their first mozzarella of the season, so this was meant to be. Getting back into the groove if it I started it the previous week so it would be ready on Sunday for dinner. It all worked out together. That pepperoni is quite good. I’ve had a few and this is certainly right up there.

Lamb Burgers

Ended up being mutton from Lucky George. Added a bit of salt, pepper and a bit of the Tingly Momofuku Seasoned Salt. Good Things.

Breakfast Burrito With Scrambled Egg, Chorizo, and Refried Beans

Simple, I used Crooked Gap chorizo, which is not as fatty or as thinly ground as Mexican chorizo you might buy at the store. Even so it ended up as a tasty easy dinner, though that might not have been their intent. I did end up using my blowtorch and a fork to fire roast the pepper. I will state for the record that the flame from the torch is hard to see in the bright light of day.

Hungarian Chicken and Noodles With Cabbage

Fresh Cabbage from Blue Gate. I think it was missing paprika, perhaps even smoked paprika. Even so, it was pretty good and pretty simple to make.

Chicken Parmesan Pasta Bake

This was not a Parmesan bake. Reading the comments on the recipe, they replied to the complaint about the lack of Parmesan, and they said it ended up better that way. This seems like a load of poppycock. I would think at least a combination of mozzarella and Parmesan would be a compromise to getting what you wanted as opposed to titling it with the word Parmesan and not actually having Parmesan in it. This was disappointing in what I would’ve expected. They could’ve called it a Chicken Pasta Bake and I would’ve been happy (ish). Under-spiced, no Parmesan. Still ok, but really disappointed. Used the Lost Lake Mozzarella.

2020 - Week 28 Cooking Results

Baked Ziti with Ricotta

I waited for later in the week to do this (waiting on the Cheese Shop to pull mozzarella). As it was getting hotter in the week, maybe making it this week was a mistake.

Boiling water for the pasta
Reducing sauce in another pan
The oven going.

It was quite warm in the kitchen.

That being said, it turned out pretty good. After visiting the Cheese Shop, I tried a new pepperoni they had brought in and on that thought, I said this would be nice with the green onion sausage mixed in and I could add the pepperoni to the pizza. But alas, not this time.

West Indian Rice and Beans

I followed (ish) the recipe and came up with something. Bean forward, but still nice. I added this over flat bread and sprinkled a bit of cheese over the top. I ate the leftovers the next couple of days the same way, except a dash or two of hot sauce. Filling, taste and a nice vegetarian option.

Eggs And Bacon

Opened a package of bacon from the freezer, working on using the bacon. Ended up with scrambled eggs and bacon with a side of buttermilk biscuits.


Sam’s Pizza (retry, now with bread flour and yeast)

Checked mid-week and the dough has already risen, so I’m doing better there. Already doing better than last time.

The dough was quite a bit more springy, and I had an issue getting it stretched out to the entire pan. I kept working at it.

I started to put the pizza layers together, then remembered I hadn’t cooked up the sausage yet. So with he sauce on the dough, I cooked up the sausage and continued.

I added 2 more minutes to my own time. It didn’t look done enough. At 14 minutes, and ok at 16. I’m curious if my old oven and new oven’s 500ºF is a bit different. So I’m going to have to experiment a bit with the placement of the rack, maybe putting it on the lowest setting to crisp up the crust a bit.. but then you don’t want the the toppings to undercook, nor the crust to over cook…

Anyways, way more successful than last time. Better crust, rise and the expected chew.

Hamburgers

Salt, Devon beef from Lucky George, and a pan. Good things.

Day Trip - Summer 2020 - Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge

In the need to do something, we decided to spend a bit of time, hopefully without a lot of people, at the Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge. We arrived around 9:00 AM, and when more people started showing up closer to noon, we decided to call it a day. Unfortunately, for us, but you know Bison gotta bison, the Bison decided to hang out far away from the road through their area. I didn’t even try to take a photo. We saw and heard birds, various bugs and other animals while we were there. it was nice to walk around in the prairie, in the oak area, and drive through the buffalo prairie a few times.

2020 - Week 26 Cooking Results

Brats with Mexican Street Corn Salad

So I started with the corn salad with high hopes, I like the process. Then I made it to tart by adding way to much lime juice at the end. At first I wasn’t sure what my wife was talking about, then I taste her’s and it was way more tart then I think it should have been. In thinking on what I did, I added all the juice from a lime, way more then a tablespoon, and then also added a spice mix my aunt got me that includes dried lime in it as the “chili powder” which turns out to have been way too much.

My bad. It made for a nice topping to the taco salad mix, when I add it with leftover tortillas.

Pork Burgers and Black Bean Salad With Corn, Cilantro, and Chili-Lime Vinaigrette

I could not find pork in my freezer, either of them, well ground pork. So I ended up using lamb. I did not think the salad would go with lamb, so I had Shannon bring one home.

Pizza, the one I make, specifically requested.

I forgot to add yeast…I’m not even sure I have yeast.

Chicken on Salad

This ended up with chicken in a sandwich. I ended up using olive oil and covering them in the Momofuku savory salt and baking the chicken thighs. Made for a good dinner.

Taco Salad

Good as always.

I finished up the Elderflower Syrup, giving it an extra day and a half of steeping (~3.5 total). I’m currently using 5/6 of the plastic lids I bought to go around the mason jars. I want to finish the last of the Elderflower vodka from last year and start up a mint vodka, where I will pass mint leaves over and over through it (transferring from bottle to bottle).

2020 - Week 24 Cooking Results

Western Omelette With Bell Pepper, Onion, Ham, and Cheese

I had tossed my ten inch non-stick skillet since it was, well, sticky, I needed a ten inch pan though. I did my best, but I kinda sort of mess this up. Yes it was still the ingredients and it tasted good, but it was not really an omelette.

Brats and Pasta Salad with Peas and Pesto

I walked outside, let my feet feel the grass, and then harvested out of my growing mint garden. I got well over a cup of fresh mint and made mint pesto. I’ve ben ignoring the plot for the most part for a number of years. It has not grown like this. I think it has had just about the right weather fo the year. So it is time to use the mint.

I have homemade creme de menthe started already, and am looking at another mint alcohol thing.

The brats turned out good, as they always do, and it was nice to make a salad that goes with it, without buying it from, less than ideal recipes and sources.

Peruvian-Style Grilled-Chicken Sandwiches With Spicy Green Sauce

I set the chicken in the brine Friday, as part of the things I did on a day without work. I pulled the chicken out about 30 minutes before I started. It wanted to be grilled, but, I don’t have a thing that does that. So I put them in the oven at 350 for a bit. I got all the other things ready and when put together in a sandwich. I used some of the leftover peas and pesto pasta salad as a side dish. It was a good meal.

Sausage, Egg, on an English muffin

Good things. I’m going to have to get more sausage.

Tuna Melt

It ended up not being a melt. I didn’t feel like turning on the stove that evening. So I ended up just making a tuna salad. It was a nice combination of flavors, even though I didn’t use that good of tuna. On a bit of sourdough, with some Prairie Breeze. Good things.

2020 - Week 23 Cooking Results

Taco Salad

I made the mistake of forgetting to buy guacamole. Besides, that, it was pretty good.

Brats

Garlic, skinless brats, good things.

Vegetarian Citrus Pasta With Swiss Chard

This was on my list of things to do, when I was told to decrease my potassium intake, a bit. I hadn’t seen the numbers quite yet, but This seemed to be a bit contrary to those drives. But a plan is a plan. I believe this was my first time using sumac as a spice. I liked it’s having that citrus flavor without tall the actual juice. I’m going to look into a bit more. I used rainbow chard, instead, since that was what I had. I’m not a fan of whole wheat pasta, generally (behavior, etc) but this actually worked out pretty well.

Stir-Fried Lo Mein Noodles With Pork and Vegetables

This took a bit. Using some Napa cabbage from Grade A Gardens, pork chops from Crooked gap, and various other ingredients from other places, I prepped everything as directed. and then executed. I really liked the sauce that was on everything, it was really quite good, but took a bit. That night we also had Blue Gate Strawberries and some whipped cream.

Garlic Scape Pesto Recipe

Simple, and quick. I want to say a bit too much garlic? Thought that’s not quite fair as it is what it says it is. I thought I had pine nuts, but I did not. But I did have some back walnuts from Grade A Gardens, as I made a pesto with it earlier, it seemed like a good alternative. It was quick, but a bit dramatic in flavor. Still a nice simple dinner.

2020 - Week 21 Cooking Results

Smoked Chicken (in the brine today, smoking tomorrow)

For a first attempt it was pretty good. I think it could’ve gone a bit longer, perhaps, but overall pretty good. I used the chicken with some dinner rolls and some of the bbq sauces / other sauces that we’ve had as leftovers from the cheese bar meals. It worked out as a good memorial day dinner.

Salad with Chicken

I baked the chicken with oil and savory seasoned salt. Then Yep.

All Pork Hot Dogs

Yay! I specifically asked for these and got them.

Fish of some sort

Cancelled. Two of my work days this week just took over pretty much everything that day, so one day I had Shannon get something on her way home, the other we had Fong’s on Forest deliver.

Chicken and Kale Casserole

I used the smoked chicken to add to the flavor. That being said, this was, maybe a good decision? So the casserole was far more lemony then I thought it might be, and because of that it was creamy, lemony and a bit smoky. I also added the savory seasoned salt from momofuku. So..an interesting flavor.

I finished the Rhubarb Bitters, I’m letting them settle a bit before giving them a try.