Too Tired to Think of Dinner

Thursday night I came home from work exhausted. I feel guilty saying that. After all, I don’t do manual labor. I don’t stand on my feet all day. I don’t even interact with customers. I sit at a desk and … and … well, I write a lot, I go to meetings, I research some, I review and revise budget numbers, make the occasional phone call and I do absolutely nothing that should lead to the type of total mind and body numbing exhaustion I felt last night.

Add that to the fact that I hadn’t pre-planned dinner, and I was lost. Nothing thawed from the freezer and nothing was inspiring me.

I didn’t worry too much really. Paul usually has an idea or two of what sounds good to him.

Nope. He’d had a big lunch and wasn’t very hungry.

Now, at this point, I could have just let it go and told everyone they were on their own. But the problem with that was that I didn’t want to be on my own for dinner. I wanted a warm and comforting family meal. Oh, and quick and easy.

I poked around online a little bit to see if anything caught my fancy. My limitations included avoiding heavy tomato sauces and spice since Mom was eating with us. So no spaghetti, no Tex-Mex.

Finally I found an eggplant/tomato/cheese/pasta recipe that I thought would be usable, despite not having any eggplant. I figured I’d just substitute ground beef in and it would be fine.

But when I got the package of pasta down out of the cupboard, my eye caught sight of the recipe on the back. It was titled something like “Beef, Tomato and Basil Pasta Bake”. Exactly what I was going to wing from the other recipe!

Now, I’d love to type the recipe here for you, but I can’t. I have tried to teach my kids to put trash in the trash can and sometimes they remember to do that better than others. This was one of those times.

But believe me when I say that it was good. Here’s what I did:

I browned ground beef, onion and garlic. Added several cut-up Roma tomatoes. Added some 1/2 & 1/2, chicken broth, salt and pepper. Then I mixed in 2 big handfuls of chopped up fresh basil. Mixed in the cooked pasta and little pieces of fresh mozzarella. Dumped it in a buttered baking dish, sprinkled it with parmesan and ran it under the broiler to get hot and bubbly.

It was warm and comforting, but not heavy. And it was really done quickly. Everyone ate it, most had seconds. And I’ll add it to my “I should make this again” file.

And so should you.

Worth the Effort?

I’ve always been a little afraid of winter squash. I remember having it once as a kid and disliking it with the passion of a thousand burning suns. (We don’t say “hate”)

Then there was the time that we were low-carbing it and I made spaghetti squash instead of real spaghetti. No matter what they tell you, it’s not an equal substitution.

And last year I nuked an acorn squash and, while it was good, I wasn’t amazed at the taste.

So when Paul brought home four delicata squash from the farm, I didn’t know what to do with it. Paul looked it up online and found a recipe that pretty much treated it like mashed potatoes. He made them, and while the flavor was promising, for some reason the squash turned out rather pasty.

We had 2 squash left, and so I started looking to see if there was something else I could do with them, and I stumbled across a recipe on Epicurious, and apparently it’s originally from The Herbfarm Cookbook.

Paul had warned me about what a pain it was to peel. Well, the recipe said to just peel it with a vegetable peeler, so I figured it couldn’t be too difficult…right?

Wrong.

This thing is a pain in the patooty (we also don’t say butt). The skin it too thick for easy peeling using a potato peeler, but too thin for a knife without taking off a bunch of the edible part too.

Well, needless to say, I stuggled through with a combination of peeler and knife, and that was the hardest part of the recipe by a long shot.

Everything else was simple and straight forward, and behaved itself quite well.

And it was delicious. The herbs and cider boil down and create a wonderful glaze. The sherry vinegar and herbs keep it from being too sweet. The only thing I did differently was to use dry rubbed sage rather than fresh.

So was it worth the effort to peel? Yes.

Will I make it often on a weeknight? Probably not. It just takes too long.

Delicata Squash with Rosemary, Sage and Cider Glaze
6 servings
2 medium delicata squash, peeled & cut in 1/2″ pieces
3 T unsalted butter
1/4 c coarsely chopped sage (I used about 1 T dry rubbed sage)
1 T coarsley chopped rosemary
1 1/2 c apple cider
1 c water
2 t sherry vinegar
1 t salt
freshly ground black pepper

Melt butter in large skillet over low heat. Add sage and rosemary and cook, stirring, until the butter just begins to turn golden brown, 3 – 5 minutes. Do not brown the herbs.

Add squash to the skillet. Add the apple cider, water, vinegar, salt and pepper.

Cook, stirring occasionally over medium heat until the cider has boiled down to a glaze and the squash is tender, 20-30 minutes.

Season to taste with salt and pepper as needed.

Enjoy!

The Color of Fall

Wow. Have you ever seen such a monochrome color photo before?

We harvested the pumpkins from the garden a couple of weeks ago. Farmer Paul and I spent a weekend roasting, cubing and canning some of them. I’d never canned pumpkin before, and information on the web had made me very nervous. There are warnings everywhere about not canning pumpkin puree. Apparently it’s a very high source of homemade botulism! But pumpkin cubes are alright to can. So we did.

It takes hours to can pumpkin. The pressure canner alone takes 90 minutes, not counting the heat-up or cool-down time. Really, after it was cooked, cubed and in the jars, it was still a full 3 hours before it was finished.

So last week I decided that I needed to know how if the whole process was worth it. But I wanted to make something out-of-the-ordinary to test it. I’d made a pumpkin custard a while ago, and it really was just a crustless pumpkin pie…good, but no Wow! to it. Pumpkin bread is always good, but nothing new & exciting there.

So I figured I’d try a pumpkin souffle. You know, there’s not a lot of pumpkin souffle recipes around. I finally found this one at Ben Bakes a Cake and decided to give it a shot.

It ended up being a very good choice. I’ve only made souffle once before, so I wasn’t entirely sure when to pull it out of the oven. If you’re nervous about making a souffle, this might be a good one to try, It’s apparently pretty forgiving…I pulled it out of the oven, put it back in, pulled it out and put it back in again before I decided that it looked close enough to what I figured “done” should look like. And it didn’t deflate at all.

I served it with whipped cream that had been sweetened with maple liqueur. Very yummy.

The souffle could be a little sweeter, but with enough maple whipped cream, you probably won’t care!

Wings of Buffalo

I’ve mentioned before that there are some things that are better made in a restaurant than at home. The internet if full of copycat recipes that home cooks devour, hoping to recreate their restaurant favorites in their own kitchens.

My experience is that some of these are very close. Some are good, but not very close to the restaurant version. And others are waaaaaay off and don’t even taste good! Of the one’s I’ve taken a stab at, the most successful by far is the sauce for buffalo wings.

A lot of places seem to have very liberal definitions of wings. They stretch the definition to include everything from BBQ to Hotter-than-Hades. Real buffalo wings, at least in our household, are lightly breaded, fried & tossed with the magical combination of Frank’s RedHot Sauce and Butter.

Over the years that we’ve been making the wings at home, I have modified and morphed the recipe until it is now exactly the way we like it.

I’ll make 50-60 pieces at a time. Any leftovers are put in the fridge, un-sauced, and the kids heat them up for lunches and snacks over the next couple of days.

My procedure (not really a recipe) is as follows:

1. Cover the wing pieces in buttermilk. Dump in a bunch of Frank’s RedHot Sauce. Mix and let marinate for 1-3 hours.
2. Mix together a flour dredging mixture of flour and seasoned salt. Don’t know quantities, but if you were to taste a little pinch, you could taste the flavor of the seasoned salt, but it wouldn’t be very salty.
3. Heat oil (I use and electric skillet to monitor the temperature easiest) to about 350′.
4. Dredge wings in flour and put in hot oil. Fry until cooked through.
5. While wings are frying, melt 1/2 stick of butter and mix in a bunch of Frank’s RedHot Sauce. Taste it until it’s the spiciness you want.
6. Remove wings from oil & drain on paper towels. Place still-hot wings in a large bowl. Drizzle Buffalo Sauce over them, toss to coat.
7. Do your best to cook them as fast as they are eaten.
8. Any leftover sauce can be stored in the fridge for use next time.

Cruise Ship-style Dining

This past Saturday was one of those that had Farmer Paul and I out running around town all day. We started out heading into town (Snohomish) to do a couple of things. For lunch, Paul wanted to get seafood at Chuck’s on 1st Street. Chuck’s is a character restaurant. Not in the “Mickey Mouse” kind of way, but in the “sitcom” kind of way. Sitting at the bar, dunking my fish & chips in tartar (delicious!), enjoying show. Andy cooked up a storm in front of us in the open kitchen…keeping everything perfectly synchronized, the waitress was running to keep up with the busy Saturday lunch crowd and Chuck greeted everyone coming through the door, alternating between the pleasant remarks for the average customer walking in, to the familiar “gruffer” greetings for the regulars (which includes Paul). Good, enjoyable small-town comfortableness.

After lunch we wandered through some of the shops as we made our way down to where we parked the car. In one of them, an Italian import shop, the owner offered us a taste of truffle oil (I’ve always wondered what it was like…and the answer is…very good! But $17 a bottle good? not until I’m rich!) and a taste of balsamic vinegar. Of course, I’ve tasted balsamic vinegar before…there’s almost always some in the cupboard. The one he was sampling was a 10-year-old vinegar and it was very nice. As we talked a bit more, he must have decided he liked us, cause he pulled out the good stuff. It was, he said, a 20-year-old bottle of balsamic. The difference in taste was surprising. The older vinegar was candy-sweet with the tangy bite of vinegar still there. It was also $60 for a bottle. Paul and I came up with the idea of drizzling it over our Christmas morning french toast. Don’t be surprised if it ends up wrapped under our Christmas tree this year!

Well, the day went on into the evening. After haircuts, dishwasher shopping and other random errands, we found ourselves thinking of eating dinner. We were near a bar & grill we’ve enjoyed several times, so we stopped and went in. At this point, it was almost 8 and the place was full with people waiting outside. We put our names on the list to get a table in the dining area, but then went and stood near the bar tables which were seat-yourself. All available tables in the area were taken, and there was another couple ahead of us waiting also. After 15 minutes or so, a table opened up and the couple started to head over, but then the man turned around, asked if it was just the 2 of us waiting, and suggested we join them at the 4-top table rather than waste the extra 2 seats.

So we cruise-shipped it. Sat down at a dinner table with another couple that were complete strangers and had a fantastic time introducing ourselves and being socialable. Kelly’s a truck driver who went to Spring Creek Barbeque in Fort Worth a while back while visiting his sister in Dallas (oh, for some of Spring Creek’s fresh hot rolls!!!), and Margie works for an insurance company and shared some proud-mom stories of her kids who are mostly grown up and out on their own. Over the hour or so we were there, we talked about chicken farming, construction going on in Seattle and the surrounding area, and lots about classic rock.

It certainly was not the dinner experience I thought we would have when we went into the building. It was better.

Maybe next time we’ll extend the invite.