We’re on vacation!  For the next 9 days, we will be eating our way through San Francisco like The Very Hungry Caterpillar – except that instead of one apple, two pears, and three plums, it’ll be more like one scoop of salted caramel at Bi-Rite Creamery, two Blue Bottle coffees at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market, three beers at Toronado, and so on.  We’re both so excited to get away, explore a new city, and just generally enjoy our long-delayed honeymoon.  I can’t promise that we’ll be blogging while we’re gone, but I can promise that we’ll be eating some amazing things, and that we’ll tell you all about it when we get back.

We ended up with what I think of as a typical babysitting meal – you know, the sort of thing that parents can trust the neighborhood 14 year old to prepare – macaroni and cheese from a box topped with peas from the freezer.  Not even real cheese – the powder stuff from a packet, barely enriched with 1/4 cup skim milk.  We would’ve added butter, but we’re out of that.  We dug around for other enriching options, which is how we discovered that the cream cheese needed to go.  Despite this disparaging description, it was a perfectly fine meal, especially with the last two episodes of Sherlock Holmes for dessert.

We’re leaving for vacation on Wednesday, so I harvested aggressively on Saturday to minimize the inevitable waste from a week-or-so of neglect. This resulted in nine pounds of tomatoes, six plus pounds of potatoes, a beautiful orange pepper, and a giant bag of kale, among other things that were tossed in the compost pile or left to their own devices. Jackie and Leah both enthusiastically recommended this recipe, which seemed like a great way to use up a giant amount of kale without requiring much additional grocery shopping.

Shane worked from home today, so I emailed him mid-day to ask for help with a bit of prep – pressing the tofu and making the marinade – so that we could eat right after work. Instead he surprised me by making the whole meal!  While I made myself a drink, he fried up the tofu and kale, gave the too-thin rice noodles a quick stir around in the cast-iron skillet, and plated everything with a drizzle of the dipping sauce.

I insisted on eating with chopsticks, but quickly dispensed with the idea of dipping in the dipping sauce – the noodles were too fragile, and we kept having to move the bowl back and forth between us to avoid dripping on the table.  Shane spooned sauce over his dish and seemed much happier with that solution.

With the right noodles – we only had very thin ones on hand from another recipe – this recipe might be a keeper.  Also a keeper?  My husband.  For real.

Recipe:
Pan Fried Tofu, Kale, and Stir-Fried Noodles from Vegan Yum Yum

Since I have no usable photos, I’ll have to ask you to close your eyes and imagine the scene.  Nine friends around a mid-century teak table with not one but two leaves added.  Serving dishes crowding every inch of the table not covered in mismatched linens, silverware, dinner plates, or half-empty Tom Collinses.  A pizza-like flatbread with slow roasted tomatoes, goat cheese, green onion, and shaved Parmiagiano-Reggiano.  A second flatbread with sauteed leeks, gorgonzola, and more shaved Parmiagiano.  Two grain salads: quinoa with green beans, and wheat berries with corn and green onion in a delicate dressing.  Pesto potato salad with green beans and toasted pine nuts.  Potato-quinoa croquettes with romesco dipping sauce.  A frittata with a bunch of veg.  Eggplant caviar with toasted pita (and secret roasted tomatoes added for extra oomph).

Chairs pushed back from the table.  Bottles of Sah’tea and Shane’s stout passed around for sampling.   Chocolate cake with chocolate ganache and a discussion of Mad Men.  Speculation about whether the inhalation of quick-setting concrete might result in sore lungs.  Stories about stuffed animals and grade school lunches.  A lot of laughter, and perhaps an Elton John song.

Let’s do this again, and soon.

The rest of dinner, however, was a resounding success.  We tried this recipe from Jamie at Home last winter and loved it, despite the cherry tomatoes being wildly out of season.  This time around, we have a rogue cherry tomato plant that is remarkably out-yielding nearly everything else in the garden, so we had several cups of fresh and free Sweet 100s to toss in with half a dozen pork sausages.  While you’re meant to use larger and fatter sausages in the bake, we’ve had great success with the wee breakfast links.  Tonight’s were no exception – the sausages were bursting with flavor, as were the tiny cherry tomatoes.  Everything was swimming in a delicious broth which we happily sopped up with hunks of bread.  This recipe is so simple but so rewarding – I’m looking forward to eating leftovers over pasta or polenta this week.

Recipe:
Sweet Cherry Tomato & Sausage Bake from Jamie at Home

You can imagine, then, that I wasn’t particularly with it today at work.  I packed a lunch, and supplemented it with leftover vanilla ice cream from yesterday’s party.  And then a little bit of chocolate ice cream in my coffee mug later.  I was supposed to go to happy hour with a bunch of library people, but I couldn’t face (har) the pollen and sinus pressure, so I came home, had leftover snacks and some mint chocolate chip ice cream, and tried to breathe deeply.  Thank goodness for antihistamines, you guys.

That’s a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache, made for us by my boss, and served with chocolate and also vanilla ice cream at a small party in our honor.  I tried to be virtuous.  I really did.  I cut myself a “one-nut piece” and spooned out some vanilla ice cream.  And then a little more of each.  And then maybe I ate one of those curly chocolate bells – just the bell, not the cake underneath it.  And then we went to Dominick’s with a few people.  And then we had a snack dinner.

When you think about it, what’s not to like?  Instead of the sweet-savoriness of marinara, you get the tangy-sweetness of the barbecue sauce.  Sure, it won’t work with all the typical pizza toppings – but that’s not the point, is it?  I suppose if you don’t go for sweet things on your pizza – ripe tomatoes, pineapple, Canadian bacon, caramelized onion – the idea of putting a richly sweet sauce under a layer of mozzarella or smoky gouda might sound gross.  But me?  I love it.  I also love pesto pizza, pizza with alfredo, pizza with black bean sauce, and crispy pizza crusts dipped in ranch dressing.  And to think that I used to not even like the marinara!  How things have changed.

They simmered and sweat away in our big stock pot until the juice rendered out, then I ran them through the food mill to remove the skins and seeds.  A few more minutes in the pot with a handful of herbs from the front bed, and I knew that I wasn’t going to be freezing this batch of sauce.

It was too good to wait.  I stirred a ladleful into my macaroni Sunday night, and it was fantastic.  Shane’s went out to dinner with a friend, so tonight I had a simple dinner of linguine, a bit of goat cheese, and a generous amount of the beautiful sauce.  There’s half a cup left, and I’m tempted to just sop it up with the rest of the no-knead bread.

Fast forward to 6:30 or so tonight.  I was using a considerably smaller bone-in pork shoulder, so I pulled it after 2 1/4 hours in the oven, only to discover that there was WAY too much cooking liquid.  WAY too much.  I removed the pork from the pot, cranked up the heat, and reduced the liquid for half an hour before serving.

A brief digression: I like to write in cookbooks.  I find it really helpful to note recipe hacks, total failures, or successful pairings for future cooking.  I also enjoy opening a cookbook and being reminded of that time in 2003 when Dan and Michele came over for dinner and trivia and we drank too much riesling while eating spaghetti with sweet cherry tomatoes.  Or the time in 2004 when I hosted Meat Night and made Lebanese Lemon Chicken and we ate around the low coffee table.  A correct interpretation of my notes could’ve saved a lot of disappointment tonight – however, I read “cover halfway” as referring to the lid and the cook time, not the amount of liquid.  *shakes fist at the sky*

Even with the half-hour of reducing, the broth was insipid, and the pork – lacking the flavor that should’ve been infused by the broth – had already attained that gamey flavor and consistency that I find so off-putting in leftovers.  While Shane adjusted the seasoning on his dish and happily finished it, I ate a few bites and then pushed my plate away.  We left the pot on the burner for another 2 1/2 hours, by which time it started to resemble the photo from the cookbook.  We’ll see if it’s any better in leftovers for dinner tomorrow.

Recipe:
Spicy pork and chilli-pepper goulash from Jamie at Home

• The recipe specifies to “pour in enough water to just cover the meat”.  Instead, add enough water to cover the meat halfway.  You’re going to be covering the pot, so this will be an adequate amount of cooking liquid for a good, tender braise.
• The recipe claims to make 4-6 portions, but we’ve halved it both times and easily still made 4-6 portions.
• You could probably use double the amount of each of the spices, though I’d suggest going easy on doubling the paprika the first time you make this recipe.  And note that it calls for smoked paprika, though I might try a spicier paprika if you have it on hand.