Journal

2023 - Week 20 Cooking Results

Sausage

We normally have this on a Tuesday, We drove home that day, after spending a lot of time with Shannon’s side of the family, due to the loss of our brother in law. When talking about dinner, Shannon wanted a sandwich, so I brought home a couple from the Cheese Shop.

Pork Burger

Salt, Pepper, and that’s it. Good stuff.

Penne with Chicken, Roasted Cherry Tomatoes, and Spinach

After starting to prepare for the lamb barbacoa, turning on the oven, being reminded that I needed to clean the oven by the smoke and the smoke alarm, I decided I should clean the oven first, then have this. I got the oven cleaned out, smoke detectors reset and am debating on removing the smoke alarm notification from HomeKit.

Later that day, I roasted the tomatoes and got everything put together to make this pasta. Between the stock, water, roasted tomatoes, and chicken, there was a nice sauce created to make everything work out really well. Not hard to do, I reduced the spinach a bit, as roasted spinach isn’t high on Shannon’s list of enjoyable things. Overall, pretty easy, pretty good, and I kind of want to re-do it when I have fresh cherry tomatoes.

Puffy Ramp Frittata

My eyes skipped over the first set of directions, and it just didn’t work out right. It tasted ok, but was dense and not fluffy, and I blame it on me, not the recipe.

Lamb Barbacoa

Occasionally I think maybe I need this that or whatever, but I have a small kitchen and there’s not much more I can stuff in there with out doing a big reorganization or setting something aside. When something calls for a dutch oven, I tend to sub out larger pots and just sort of adjust. This has been a time where I, while making it really have thought about getting a larger dutch oven. The problem here is that I hate washing stuff by hand and contrary to what these things says, is it really?

I got to work on the sauce, separated the meat from the bones, let them soak a bit while I finished the veggies for the stock, I guess consommé base. I was a bit behind in the dishes, as I should ran another load this morning, before I took my post market nap. So I was running out of a few ingredients. Like a right sized bowl.

I have several ramekins, so that was easy, I got the base setup and moved things around to even things out. Using a large pot, a plate wouldn’t work the best, so I used a curved pasta bowl that just barely fit into the pot. Luckily I was able to get it placed and get my fingers out.

I prepped the consume to bring it to a boil and got it stuck in the oven for a long cook.

After separating the lamb, and draining the consommé, I added a bit back to the lamb and broke up the pieces into smaller items to make them into tacos with some sliced radishes, onions, a bit of cheese and rather then making the tomatillo salsa, I just bought it, since I couldn’t find tomatillos.

Good meal, interesting process. I may have to try this with beef or goat.

2023 - Week 19 Cooking Results

Sausage

All Pork hot dogs from Crooked Gap.

Pasta

So I used the other half a pound of sausage, added some pancetta and then after following my normal sauce making, I added some leftover pulled chicken, that I had intended to make salads for lunch with.

Ramp and Sausage Risotto

This is always a start of ramp season dish. Simple, highlights ramps, always good.

Creamy Coconut Chicken Adobo

I enjoyed this. Unlike some other Adobo’s I’ve made, this had a lighter touch on the vinegar.

Scrambled eggs with pinto beans and Cotija Cheese

Quick dinner, pretty good.

Bangers and Mash with Guinness Onion Gravy

In a celebration of Crooked Gap adding bangers to their list of sausages, I had to make this. Nice gravy, nice mash, onions, the bangers actually banged (split a bit). Good meal, worth the effort.

2023 - Week 18 Cooking Results

The market started up again, and I got up and went and I was a bit, tired, but after I got a bit of cold brew in me, I was much happier to be there. There is a whole not of new people with a chance this year, some struggling to get things picked up. I got some ramps, some fresh salad greens, Bangers and some cheese. Certainly less than I would’ve normally done, but I was still generally happy by the end. I was reminded by my watch I had forgotten to take my medication, so I came home, took my medication and napped off and on for the next two hours.

Sausage

The rest of those Lucky George brats. Still good.

Grilled Blackened-Fish Sandwiches

I made this in the oven, there was a little smoke, but not too much. It generally worked out.

Teriyaki Chicken Burger

Normally I would make adaptations to make a larger burger, as that is what we are generally used to, however in this case I followed closer to the whole thing. It was challenging as we had someone in the house doing a bit of a repair, and they ran a bit behind. It was really nice with the sauce, cabbage and all that. Good things.

Shrimp and Red Pepper Quesadillas

I used a bit more shrimp, the spicy old bay (I could get a giant thing of old bay as they were all out of all other volumes, and was not interested in that much). This worked out pretty well, I finished up one jar of roasted red peppers and started the next one. I skipped the lime zest but added a bit more lime juice. Good things.

Baked Mac and Cheese

I few weeks ago I had started having that craving of mac and cheese and peas and tuna. I thought it might go away, but it did not. I also was thinking of using the sodium citrate that I bought a bit ago for the splendid table partnership with Sierra Nevada that caught my fancy. So there we were, using a bit of the sodium citrate. Would it have been better with a bit of milk or cream instead of the water, even so, it fixed that need. I used about a pound of peas and a bit of tuna. Should I have used the powdered cheese in a normal mac and cheese box? Maybe, but if I can use wonderful cheese, I’ll do that. We both ate leftovers for days.

2023 - Week 17 Cooking Results

Sausage

I found some Lucky George brats in the bottom of the chest freezer, we used those. Good things.

Pasta

Used 1.5# of rigatoni (half pound of lefter + 1 more pound) and mad a general sauce. Lots of leftovers. We both had them for lunch the next few days.

Chorizo and Sweet Potato Quesadillas

Pretty easy to put together. The store had satsumaimo, so I used that, the flavor profile is a bit different but together still pretty good.

Grilled Blackened-Fish Sandwiches

Delayed!

Sheet Pan Pork Chops with Jo’s Korean Marinade and Spicy Carrots

Prepped the sauce, prepped the carrots, tossed the carrots with sauce, tossed the port with sauce. I added some pickled jalapeños to mine, to short cut the vinegar and jalapeño at the end. I really liked this. I must make this again.

Bruce-O-Rama - Hoyt Sherman - 4/26/2023

Fun mix of an interactive quiz show, quiz show, and a bit of story telling and questions and answers. They also showed Armies of Darkness, and we ducked out on the movie, as we are both have seen it, and also it was pretty late. On the interactive quiz I was 134 / 787 and ranked highest in our group that went (even against Shannon).