St. Patrick's Day Corned Beef - March 17, 2013

Inspired by Jess's home corned beef last year, I decided to try my hand at it this year. I earmarked and hoarded the brisket from our Polyface grassfed beef larder all winter, then mixed up a brine per Michael Ruhlman's directions, and stashed the whole thing in the back of the refrigerator for about a week. It was particularly nice that St. Patrick's Day fell on a weekend this year so I had plenty of time to do a slow stovetop braise.

I have never been much of a fan of cabbage, but I learned this year that it was just because I'd been cooking it the wrong way all my life! Boiled cabbage = putrid. Roasted cabbage = delicious! So delicious in fact, that I had to stop myself from eating it all (and suffering the consequences later... even roasted it still has some "magical, musical" properties). I also roasted a few carrots, since at that point I still wasn't sure I'd like the roasted cabbage and wanted to make sure I had something to eat.

Not pictured are the red potatoes I boiled for Richie, the horseradish sour cream I made from homemade yogurt and Penzey's horseradish powder, and the grain free Irish soda bread that rounded out the meal.

All together it was a delicious meal. I had vague intentions of making some kind of hash with the leftovers, but they didn't make it that long. Next year, maybe I'll order an extra brisket and make two!

Veggies Are HERE! - Jaime's Spring CSA Delivery #1

It is still very cold here in the metro DC area, but spring is truly on its way. Today we received our first CSA share for the spring season! It was actually supposed to start two weeks ago, but a harsher than expected winter delayed it.

The haul included free range eggs, goat cheese, radishes, romaine hearts, spring onions, potatoes, cress, kale, spinach, and beets. The only thing here I'm not familiar with is cress. It is apparently similar to watercress and mustard, and commonly eaten in England, France, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia. I'll be sure to try it the English way on egg salad sandwiches.

I'm pretty sure all of these yummy treats either 1) grew indoors, 2) are actually from last season, or 3) are not really local. But no matter... I'm happy to have a refrigerator stocked with fresh organic goodies from Virginia's Olin-Fox Farms again!

Bolognese Sauce over Spaghetti Squash - March 7, 2013

I need to work on my food photography skills. My problem is that I am just so anxious to start eating the yummy food, that I don't want to take time to stage the shot and get it just so!

This was our dinner tonight and I assure it tasted much better than its pathetic photo. The bolognese sauce recipe was from Pure Beef: An Essential Guide to Artisan Meats with Recipes for Every Cut. I adore this book. It is a fabulous companion to the grass-fed beef larder we got from Polyface Farms last fall and have been steadily eating down all winter.

I made just a couple changes to the recipe. First, I used the food process to very finely chop the veggies so they would essentially disappear into the sauce and leave just their flavor. Second, I forgot to thaw out my frozen beef broth (and I'm currently down to just one pint anyway, so I'd prefer to hoard it for something where it would be more crucial to the flavor) so I just substituted water for that cup of broth. Finally, to make this SCD-legal and keep it lactose free, I subbed coconut milk for the regular milk.

Then I served it over spaghetti squash and topped with aged parmesan  Delish! Richie had his over regular noodles.

This was a tasty dish on a cold winter-ish sort of night. We were supposed to be celebrating the first day of our spring CSA with a fresh meal from that bounty, but unfortunately they had to postpone the first delivery due to a colder than anticipated late winter in the mid-Atlantic.

Apple Crisp & Homemade Frozen Yogurt - February 28, 2013

These are the last of the apples we picked last fall. Our spring CSA starts next week, so I needed to make room in the refrigerator.

The apple crisp is completely grain and refined sugar free, following this paleo recipe. I made the frozen yogurt from my 24-hour lactose free yogurt and some honey. It is delicious, but super tart and not necessarily the right accompaniment to the crisp. I liked both, but not necessarily together.

Tandoori Chicken with Yogurt Sauce (and Jaime's new outlook on food)

Greetings Dinner Clubbers! I'm sorry I've been quiet lately, but I have a reason. A little over a month ago I came to a big decision in regards to my health and it relates to food in a big way.

As dinner club members all know, I was diagnosed with Crohn's Disease at age 19. I then spent my 20s trying to pretend that everything was just fine, eating everything I wanted and choosing to believe that diet had nothing to do with my digestive health. More than anything, I just wanted to be normal.

Then I paid for that negligence with a series of surgeries and complications in my early 30s. I am now 37 and have post-surgical short bowel, chronic anemia, and food allergies in addition to active Crohn's Disease. Right after Christmas I finally decided that I wasn't willing to put up with that as status quo any longer and that I was ready to try some dietary changes, even if that meant radically changing my relationship with food.

On January 21, I started the day with a bagel and cream cheese, granola bars for a snack, a stuffed baked potato for lunch, for dinner a cold cut and cheese combo on a big sourdough baguette and then followed it with a huge bowl of homemade ice cream with hot fudge and caramel sauce.

On January 22, I started following the Specific Carbohydrate Diet (SCD). No grains of any kind, no starchy vegetables, no sugar, and no lactose. I won't lie... the transition was really, really, really hard but I decided to give it a month and then reassess.

I'm happy to report that the results are already positive. My digestion is vastly improved and I had a colonoscopy last week that showed major improvement in all areas. YAY!

And now that I'm 5 weeks into this new way of eating, I barely remember what it was like to eat the old way. Just writing about that day of eating makes my stomach hurt.

So what is left for me to eat? Lots of great thing like fruits, meat, nuts, most vegetables, homemade yogurt, and most cheeses. For example, tonight I made this tandoori chicken with yogurt sauce from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food. It was so delicious, I forgot to take a picture and so am using the one from the website. Richie had rice with his; I enjoyed a side of steamed green beans with mine.

Now that I've decided the diet really does work and am committing to it for the long haul, I'm looking forward to sharing more of my delicious meals!

Carrot Soup with Toasted Almonds - Dec 6, 2012

Another recipe from "Sixty-Five Years of Gourmet," this carrot soup made good use of some of our many, many CSA carrots.  Nick and I still have a whole drawer full of carrots to use up this winter, compliments of our abundant CSA share.  This soup was good, boosted in flavor by curry powder and apple cider vinegar.  In addition to the toasted almonds, I garnished this soup with sour cream and thyme leaves.

And, see that glass of dark beer in the background?  That is homemade Imperial Rye Stout, made by Nick and our brother-in-law, Jamie, earlier this year.  Those two brewed ten gallons of this in Jamie's driveway, using an all grain set-up, this fall.  It's fantastic beer, and I want Nick to fill you in on the details.  He's really been getting into this beer brewing thing, despite not being into this blog posting thing.  Perhaps with some gentle prodding, we can get him to share.  That's right, I'm going to try blog peer pressure, since my requests have fallen on deaf ears.  We want more (posts about) beer!

GG's Tea Party - Nov 23, 2012

Chicken Mandarin Orange Spread Sandwiches

This is slightly out of order, but since I'm still playing catch up from two months ago, I'm not too worried about it.  These pictures are from a birthday party for Nick's Grandma, known affectionately as GG, held the day after Thanksgiving.  GG turned 90 this year and we celebrated in style.

Cucumber-Salmon-Watercress Sandwiches

Specifically, we had an afternoon tea party where hats, of any kind, were required.  Nick and I were in charge of organizing the finger sandwiches for the party.  Nan wanted four different kinds, one of them being a pimento cheese sandwich, because it's not a Southern tea party without the pimento cheese sandwiches.

Pimento Cheese Sandwiches

Nick and I picked out three other recipes from this list.  A grocery list was compiled between Nick and me in Minnesota, and Chip and Nan in South Carolina.  Some math was required, but Nick and Chip are good guys to have on your team when that happens.  We got the numbers figured out without incident.  Nick's parents did the shopping, plus pimento cheese making, and Nick and I did the prep work (making the chicken and salmon salads, plus the compound butter for the ham sandwiches) Thursday evening, once the Thanksgiving feast had been cleared from the kitchen.

Party Ham Sandwiches

Then, bright and early Friday morning, a whole crew of family and friends gathered around the kitchen island. Uncles worked next to nephews, sisters worked next to brothers, fathers-in-law worked next to cousins, nieces worked next to girlfriends, and everybody pitched in to make hundreds of tiny tea sandwiches in record time.  We had so much help, in fact, that I had nothing to do besides answer the random question and stand back and admire the flurry of activity, as inside jokes and friendly barbs flew back and forth across the counter.  The rookies were included into the fold as though they had always been there, and the whole, wild and crazy assortment of family members became a happy, and quite efficient, team.   It was my favorite moment of the whole weekend.

Spiced Beef Corn Bread Cobbler - Dec 5, 2012

I found this recipe while flipping through our "Sixty-Five Years of Gourmet" cookbook from Chip and Nan.  The book describes this as a "sloppy Joe with a corn bread and cheddar crust."

It was better than that. 

It came together quickly and all the ingredients are pantry staples at our house.  The spices are a mix of all those warm spices I crave this time of year: cinnamon; cayenne; allspice; and ginger.  Adding the cheesy biscuits on top is genius (and I think would be nearly as good with regular biscuits if corn must be avoided).  This also meets the "my Dad would eat this" criteria.

Stuffing with Roasted Winter Squash - Nov 28, 2012

The other downside to never hosting Thanksgiving is that we never have those wonderful leftovers stocking our refrigerator.  The Thanksgiving stuffing is my favorite.  Nick's dad makes great stuffing, but my favorite is the stuffing I grew up with.  I should probably get that recipe from my Mom at some point. 

This was my attempt at recreating my childhood food memory.  I think I may have used a Mark Bittman recipe, but I'm sure that I made enough tweaks to it that he wouldn't recognize it as his.  I know I added a lot more chicken broth than the recipe called for, but my end result was still too dry. 

Yes, I must make it a priority to get Mom's recipe. 

Along with our slightly dry stuffing, I roasted a little winter squash, which Nick and I split between the two of us.  I made it in the pressure cooker, my new favorite way to cook squash (10 minutes!).  Even sub-par stuffing is delicious.

Winter Greens Gratin - Nov 27, 2012

Since Nick and I usually travel for Thanksgiving, I tend to spend the following week cooking things that I would have made for dinner, had I been cooking it.  This recipe caught my eye in the December 2012 issue of Bon Appetit (which I thought was a great issue).  I made it with a motley assortment of greens from our CSA farm and it turned out deliciously.  It was a great use for all those hearty winter greens that show up in our box, that I'm not always sure what to do with.  Thanks to this recipe, I won't have that problem anymore.  This is a rich and satisfying meatless main dish, no turkey needed!

Pumpkin Pie Hors d'Oeurvers - November 16, 2012

Nick and I never host Thanksgiving.  We usually spend that holiday with Nick's parents, who, quite frankly, can cook the pants off of Thanksgiving dinner.  The one downside is that we rarely get to prepare any of those fun Thanksgiving foods.  I'm a little embarrassed to admit that I've never cooked a turkey in my life.  Luckily, this year my sister and brother in law hosted a little pre-Thanksgiving happy hour at their new home, aptly coined "Dranksgiving."  Natalie said I could bring some appetizers to share.



I decided to make single serving pumpkin pies (and bacon-wrapped Brussels sprouts, but I didn't snap a photo of those).  After searching around a bit to find the proper method, I ended up making these in muffin tins.  I used my traditional pie crust recipe, listed below, and the pumpkin pie filling recipe from my "Better Homes and Gardens New Baking Book."  Aside from being very tedious, these were just like making a normal sized pumpkin pie.  I did have to keep a close eye on them while baking, because I wasn't sure how long they would take.  As you can see, the middles totally caved in, which may have been due to mis-calculating said baking time.  It was nothing, however, that a little home-made whipped cream couldn't hide.

This was a fun afternoon project, but the real fun came at Dranksgiving, our kick-off to the holiday season.  I hope Nat and Jamie make it an annual event!

Double Crust Pie Pastry

2 Cups all purpose flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/3 Cup unsalted butter (cold)
1/3 Cup lard (cold)
6-7 Tbsp cold water

In the bowl of a food processor, pulse together the salt and flour.  Add butter and lard and pulse until you have pea-sized pieces.  Add one Tbsp of cold water at a time, pulsing after each addition, until the dough is just moistened (it should still be very crumbly).  Turn the dough out on a lightly floured surface and form into two equally sized balls.  Wrap tightly in plastic wrap and chill for 20-30 minutes.  Roll out as needed for your pie recipe.

For more mini-pie inspiration see here, and here

Chickpea and Tomato Stew - Nov 15, 2012

Chickpea and tomato stew, or, a very Americanized version of Chana Masala, if you will.  Nick and I like to follow up our meat-centric meals with a little vegetarian love.  It helps us feel balanced and not overly indulgent.  Our digestive systems thank us, as well.  After that Kima curry, however, I was still craving a bowl of warm, spicy, hearty something over rice.  This is what I came up with.  I searched around a bit online until I found a recipe that sounded good to me, while accommodating what we had stocked in the pantry.  Of course, two months later I can't for the life of me find the one I used.  It's one of the many hazards of delinquent posting, I guess.

It appears to be onions, my home-canned tomatoes, chickpeas, and some fresh green herb (Cilantro?  Parsley? Your guess is as good as mine.), combined with garlic, ginger, and some warm Indian spices (Curry powder? Cinnamon? Tumeric? Garam Masala? I can't rightly say.), and served over the aforementioned bowl of Jasmine rice.  For my own future reference, here are some recipes involving similar ingredients:

Chana Masala from Smitten Kitchen
Chickpea Tomato Stew with Moroccan Flavors from epicurious
Chickpea Tomato Curry from Chowhound*

*this seems closest to the one I used.

Kima Curry - Nov 14, 2012

This is another one of our treasured recipes from JJ, my sister-in-law, an amazing cook, and someone that always inspires me.  According to JJ, Kima Curry is a Kenyan ground beef curry.  According to me it is an amazingly flavorful dish to make with a pound of ground beef, a can of tomatoes, and some rice.  My Mom made countless meals with those same three mid-western kitchen staples when I was growing up.  I think they could be considered the busy mom's go-to ingredients for a quick weeknight dinner, able to be combined in a myriad of ways.  Well, this rendition is now firmly on my list.  I love that the addition of a few herbs and spices makes these familiar ingredients come together in a new and interesting way.   The recipe is from the cookbook, "Extending the Table," and can be found online here.  Nick and I both really enjoyed it, and this dinner also meets my "My Dad would eat this" criteria, meaning that I could make this for dinner on a night that he joins us and he (a notoriously picky eater) wouldn't go hungry.

What the Pho? - Nov 8, 2012

How sad that I'm posting a dinner from a full two months ago.  Oh well, I'm sure you all know how busy things get around the holidays.  Better late than never, I say.  This is the Vietnamese dish known as pho.  Nick and I make ours from the recipe in "The Splendid Table's How to Cook Supper," by Lynne Rossetto Kasper and Sally Swift.  The cookbook was a gift from my sister, Kate, a couple Christmases ago.  I utilize the recipe for the Cheaters' Asian Broth all the time, but rarely do we go all out with the whole pho recipe.  It's excellent, especially when feeling a little under the weather.  I hear it's a brutal flu season this year, so keep this one within easy reach. 

Pork Chops with Apples and Shallots

I have been a terrible blog contributer lately and I have no excuse! We have been eating, of course, but am lacking inspiration and creativity these days. I need new ideas for every day meals! This is a dish I have made before and enjoy this time of year. The apples are among the last of those we picked earlier this fall in Maryland. I also made some wilted spinach and heated up the "cheesy potatoes" leftover from our Thanksgiving dinner contribution.

Four Bean and Beef Chili - Nov 3, 2012

This was good chili.  I made it in the crock pot to sustain Nick and I through a football Sunday, and I didn't really follow a recipe.  I used two cups worth of a motley assortment of dried beans that I found in the cupboard.  The mix included pinto, red kidney, black, and snow caps (an heirloom variety from Rancho Gordo).  For vegetables, in addition to the quart of home-canned tomatoes, I chopped up an onion and a carrot or two, plus some cubed sweet potato that I had leftover from another dinner.  I also added a pound of ground beef.  Once the beef and beans were cooked (I used the pressure cooker for the beans!), I tossed everything into the crock pot and seasoned with chili powder, cumin, coriander, smoked Spanish paprika, oregano, cayenne, salt and pepper.

It turned out deliciously.  We topped our bowls with sour cream, shredded sharp cheddar and some crumbled corn tortilla chips.

CSA Hash - Nov 2, 2012

Another hash made from a mish-mash of our CSA goodies and garnished with a fried egg and cheesy toast.  This version contains turnips, carrots, potatoes, onions, kale, and bacon.  Nick and I usually do this earlier in the day than dinner, but too late to really call it breakfast.  Maybe it qualifies as a late lunch?  I'm happy, however, to eat it any time of day.

Honeynut Squash with Warm Wild Rice and Kale Salad - Nov 1, 2012

Nick and I made a similar dinner last year.  This go around I used my pressure cooker to prepare the squash, so it was cooked in about ten minutes.  These Honeynut squash that we get from our CSA share are so cute I can hardly stand it.  Each is about the size of a large russet potato, and a perfect serving size.  They are also, of course, delicious.

The salad is made of wild rice (also made in the pressure cooker), roasted kale leaves, dried cranberries, and feta cheese crumbles.  I served the salad warm with dinner, but it is equally good at room temperature or even chilled.  Because of this, it makes a nice lunch for packing.

Moroccan Chicken Stew with Sweet Potatoes - Oct 25, 2012

A recipe shared and recommended by JJ, this chicken stew was a delicious use of some of our sweet potatoes.  I changed up a few things...first, I used chicken breasts rather than the thighs called for in the recipe, but only because that was what I had on hand.  I think this would be even richer with thigh meat.  Next, I served this over white jasmine rice rather than couscous, which probably makes it a little less "Moroccan."  JJ's notes stated that she uses rice, so I followed her lead here.  I think any grain would be an easy substitute. The rice was quite nice.



Nick and I really enjoyed this dinner.  In fact, it made enough so that we were able to enjoy it twice. 

Roasted Poblano "Hot Dish" - Oct 22, 2012

This is what Nick and I did with those Poblano peppers that didn't go into our roasted peppers and onions dinner.  I am having trouble remembering where I found the recipe, but I know there was a recipe.  This did not come out of my brain.  Perhaps I will need to ruminate on my source a bit more and update this when my memory starts behaving again.

What I do remember about this dish is that I roasted the Poblanos over the flames from our gas stove and then sliced them into wide, flat halves.  These were layered into a loaf pan with chopped, canned tomatoes and Cotija cheese, like a lasagna.  The last layer is crumbled corn tortilla chips.  This baked until the cheese melted, which didn't take long.  We topped our servings with sour cream and served it alongside some of the cornbread I made for another dinner.

The dish had great flavor, with a little heat from the peppers, but it was a bit soggy.  If I repeat this, I may layer in some additional tortillas to help absorb some of the liquid from the tomatoes and peppers.