Outpost 505

First, I am officially throwing in the towel on no-knead bread.  If the last attempt was a mess, the loaf I made tonight was an all-out disaster.  The dough stuck to the mixing bowl.  It stuck to the floured silpat mat and did its best to ooze off all sides of the mat, resulting in [...]

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I brought home another five pounds of tomatoes from the garden on Sunday.  The Romas were set aside for roasting and for last night’s goulash, but the rest went into a small but fantastic batch of pasta sauce:

They simmered and sweat away in our big stock pot until the juice rendered out, then I ran [...]

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We had planned to have grilled chicken with another batch of that delicious cilantro pesto – but Shane and Aaron’s moped work ran long, and I ate solo instead.
I’ve never been intimidated by eating solo.  I’m not sure why this is.  I’ve always relished the experience of going to a restaurant, ordering whatever I want, [...]

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This is such a beautiful and simple meal – it just takes a little time.  It was also a really good excuse to break out our new butter-yellow enameled cast iron pot that we received as a wedding gift.  Into the pot went two chicken legs, a handful of cherry tomatoes from the garden and [...]

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Photo by zordor
Without actually realizing it, I think I’ve been making pisto manchego all summer. A Spanish take on ratatouille, it is peasant food at its finest – putting together a bit of whatever’s available to make a filling and nutritious meal.  This recipe did an effective job of clearing out the crisper, using [...]

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What can I say?  I spent my morning setting up the kitchen – including the all-important wind tunnel formed by the stand fan in the living room and the air exchange fan in the kitchen window – then the afternoon washing jars, boiling water, peeling tomatoes, boiling jars, wiping jars, coring tomatoes, changing ice water, [...]

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When we lived in Champaign,  Shane used to love to get a BLRP sandwich from Persimmon and take it, wrapped in white butcher paper, over to the Blind Pig, where he would get a good beer and sit outside enjoying what could only be a described as a fantastic lunch.  Persimmon, the [...]

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“I don’t like fish, but I’m trying really hard.”
This statement should tell you everything you need to know about my relationship to seafood.  I love shellfish.  We’re addicted to fancy tinned tuna.  I hate salmon, even the remarkable smoked salmon from Tracklements that the fishmonger at Zingerman’s convinced me to try.  The rest of the [...]

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I’m taking advantage of the fact that Shane’s out of town to make a couple of things he definitely would not ever eat.  While I have to give him credit for trying new things and getting over several food hates in the last couple of years, certain members of the nightshade family remain outside the [...]

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I’m not sure what I had in mind tonight. Our planned meals got all switched around this week by my moods and our lack of interest in things that seemed fantastic a few days previously. To some extent, this worked out in our favor tonight, as we had a bit of a lot [...]

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