It was a far busier week than I expected.  Mostly because of cooking, but what can you do.  Work has begun to ramp up as expected and we're a bit away from the start of all that.  So we're getting there.  It was a nice way to end up the week with the Mattas coming up to visit, and spending a bit of time at T's swim meet.  It's good to see the successes that their children are having and to see them grow up in the leaps and bounds (from the 1-6 months or so visits with them).  I missed the last farmers' market of the season, but it was a more than fair trade off to spend time with my friends and their kids.

Pork Burgers (Crooked Gap)

Nom nom nom. 

Sloppy Sammys (Crooked Gap)

Wierder mix of spices then normal, but still turned out pretty good.  I love how quick and easy this is and I don't understand why anyone would by it in a can.

Smoked Cheese and Sausage (maybe not smoked, but I like this better than some others) 

Should say lasagna in the title.   I meant to add a bit more sauce to this, but didn't have it around, so I added a bit of half and half to get more liquid in there.  That being said, most of the no-boil noodles turned out fine, but a couple were, well, not done.  Most were, and the taste profile was good.  It was liked by both the adults and the children at the table (got compliments at the table and even the next day, which makes me happy).  I purposefully chose the Crooked Gap sausage over the Graziano sausage, because it's quite a bit less spicy (younger Matta daughter doesn't like things very spicy).  I skipped the smoked mozzarella but did add the diced prosciutto (La Quercia, what else?).  I served it with a La Mie ciabatta and Arugula (Cleverley Farms) and a champagne vinaigrette (using the last of some pretty expensive extra virgin olive oil).  Very good recipe, one to pull out a bit later, and add a bit more sauce to.

Mediterranean Chicken Wraps (RC Cook's Country October / November 2013) 

These came together, it was pretty good.  I modified it because I bought chicken thighs and decided to use them.  anyways, good stuffs.

Fishy fishy perhaps sandwich, perhaps not. 

This was quick and done after we both arrived home late from work (I beat Shannon home by 10 minutes) .  Ended up as a sandwich.

Stovetop Mac & Cheese (p 110 Food & Wine October 2013) 

delayed, we had leftover tacos.

Chile Braised Pork Shoulder Tacos  (x 3-4) (work, if I do 4, one will be without onion)

This scaled up well, and I was going to do individual pots, but the problem here was I didn't have enough pots to do individual ones.  I have 3 large pots (my beloved Chantal copper core stockpot, a relatively good pot that I use for somethings, and a cheaper version which I generally just use to boil pasta) .  So I had to balance most of the meat between two pots and the 3rd pot got the onion-free version.

So basically two of them was 1.5x the recipe and one was normal.  I used celery to replace the onions on the the one.  I replaced the Negro Modelo (couldn't bring myself to buy) with Bell's Kalamazoo Stout, which wasn't necessarily the most suitable replacement, but it worked.  I added an extra chile de arbol and a dried chipotle pepper (that I found int the cupboard) per recipe.  I bought some dried habanero, but I figured I was adjusting things a bit too much to risk adding more heat.

I was hoping that I could fit all 3 pots in the oven, but my oven wasn't having that, so I rotated them in and out about every 30-45 minutes and cooked the rotated out one on top of the stove to simmer on low and reduced the heat a bit as to not dry them out too much (the bottom of the pot for the half run was a bit dry by the time it was finished). 

So I needed more time to prepare the onions and celery, and seed the dried peppers, which put me behind the ball, then I made dinner, so I got consistently more and more behind.  I finished around 2, did a little kitchen clean up (that red paste is messy and stainy).  Put stain removal stuff on my shirt and threw it in the laundry then headed to bet.

It went over well, which I was pretty happy about.  My co-workers liked it, so did we and Joseph too, so all and all, pretty proud of my work here.

So the takeaway lesson here is how to extract more flavor from dried peppers (or peppers in general).  The paste that was made was very flavorful, because of the blending it made it consistent over all of it.  And this could be a way to reduce the dependence on a particular vendor for powders (though AllSpice will have my business for the foreseeable future).  So Chili, made with paste...that's got to be on the upcoming for a bit. 

Quick Pickled Onions (x2)  (work)

ehhh...didn't have time to do these, we'll have them with leftovers next week.