A heartening time of year in the PNW for vegetable gardeners. Our asparagus bed is coming back to life and we’ve harvested a few spears. The veggies we carefully wintered-over - spinach, kale, broccolini - are producing. Spring peas are poking through the ground, as are carrots, leeks and scallions. The fruit trees and blueberry bushes are budding, and the numerous starts in the greenhouses are well on their way to being transplanted. Last frost is behind us, and all good things fresh are coming our way.
I’m excited!! Yay!
Cooking for two adults:
FRI: Tex Mex style chicken breasts. Rick Bayless’s Mexican rice. Homemade refries and tortillas.
Saregama, it’s good to hear she has such a good prognosis. I am so sorry for the loss of your dear dad, and your mother’s accident. I hope all of you feel a bit better each day after two such devastating events. You and your family are in my thoughts, as so many other HOs have expressed.
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Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
124
Many of the greatest hits — hope it’s as delicious as it sounds! (Incidentally, Mom’s surgeon is Parsi and she was discharged on Navroz, but he came by for a visit anyway — en route to a big family new year”s lunch — to make sure she was okay and to set her mind at ease.)
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Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot eating & cooking in Northwest England)
129
That’s damn good medical care, IMO.
By the by, looking back over my restaurant notes, I see I’ve had a number of these dishes before when they’ve been “specials” but the Sunday night tasting menus are a new thing for the restaurant. The owner keeps promising that he’s going to do a “Taste of Home” menu featuring the dishes his wife cooks. Can’t wait for that! I’ve only had home style Indian food once before and that was at an “underground” supper club on the far side of the metro area, in the woman’s house. Punjabi dishes at their finest.
Thanks for all the recipe links. Looks like a delicious week ahead. Last frost here in MN is mid-May and we still have a foot of snow-cover. But the forecasted daily high temps above freezing should melt most of that this next week. I’m eagerly waiting to see first sprouts of rhubarb.
Happy Friday everyone where it is now sunny and WARM! in Ottawa, Canada. That will teach me for wearing my parka President Biden is now in Ottawa and will be until tonight. There are more police around than I remember, especially near my office since security detail doesn’t normally come to my neighbourhood. I work in an office building in the western part of the downtown core and the motorcades usually travel down streets several blocks east of here. It’s been so long since we’ve had state visits I have forgotten how clogged the traffic can get. This weekend is shaping up to be fun, foodiewise. Tomorrow morning I go to the grocery store to pick up a few things and I plan on tying in a trip to the pricey butcher nearby to pick up some meat pies for take-out dinners for the next few weekends. The butcher I go to assembles them in advance then they freeze them. When I buy their meat pies they go straight from the butcher’s freezer to mine and can be cooked from frozen. Their meat pies are so good I like buying a few of them at a time so when I feel like take-out I have a stash to pick from. In the afternoon I head off to Chinatown to pick up Asian ingredients for dinners for next week then Sunday afternoon off to a matinée movie to see “The Lost King”. On to my menu for a solo diner for this week:
Today: Hanoi bún from my favourite Vietnamese resto. It’s a vermicelli dish served with grilled pork and a fish sauce to drizzle over. A salad is served on the side made of lettuce (it looks like they used romaine), red cabbage, shredded carrot and mint. It’s like spring in a bowl. Tonight I will have the usual Friday night salad.
Saturday: Take-out. Perhaps a meat pie from the pricey butcher.
Sunday: Thai basa fillet green curry. (The recipe calls for cod but I will be using a basa fillet since that’s what I have.) I will be using up the last of the snow peas and baby corn in the fridge in this dish.
Monday: Navy beans in a tomato sauce, maybe rice on the side to make a complete protein. Veggies depend on what I pick up in Chinatown.
Tuesday: chicken curry based on this recipe. I will obviously be using chicken instead of shrimp and adding whatever veggies I get in Chinatown.
Hi, all! Cooking for 2 in Chattanooga, where it’s warm but in a stormy way…
Breakfast: Chocolate, orange, and pistachio buns from Extra Good Things
Saturday, March 25: Thai chicken patties, cabbage, rice (sorry about recipe paywall…)
Sunday: Roast chicken with chipotle, little potatoes, asparagus, Calvados ice cream
Monday: Orecchiette with broccoli rabe from Dinner, but I might sub out some of the gnocchi in my freezer
Tuesday: Pizza and trivia (we lost badly this week, but it was fun)
Wednesday: Sun-dried tomato pasta (probably with actual pasta this time)
Thursday: Scrounge
Friday: If all goes well, we’ll be having dinner with friends in St. Louis!
Have a good week, all, and happy cooking!
Weds: … Invisalign day for DS! I’m fairly certain that he will not want to eat dinner, but he suggested baked pasta, so I’ll make the cheesy baked pasta from Dinner in One. We will have pudding on hand too, or scrambled eggs.
Thurs: turkey cutlets (optional lemon-thyme pan sauce from Rachael Ray) and baked sweet potatoes.
Actuals for Mar 20 week, cooking for 2 in MN. Where we’re getting a sunny break from weekly snowstorms, and actual melt is happening. Things are looking up - we got through a second “extra patience required with each other” half day of DIY taxes yesterday afternoon, and by the time we got them finished and filed, we just wanted a beer, at home. We enjoyed our traditional carry-out pizza celebration for lunch today. And on the pantry clear-out work-in-progress, I found 3 cans of green beans aged past their best-by dates in the cupboard (bought during pandemic when frozen beans went unavailable for a span…). One use-it-up recipe down, 2 to go. Chime in if you have a favorite main or side based on canned cut green beans.
Mon: reheat Italian beef, corn, mashed potatoes, salad, fresh fruit salad
Tues - Turkey-pesto meatballs w/ roasted cherry-tomato sauce, over angel hair pasta. Bag Caesar salad w lemon dressing. Sliced baguette
Meatballs based on this recipe, rescaled for 1 pound turkey to use ½ C pesto, ½ C breadcrumbs or panko, and added ½ C. shredded parm. .http://www.food.com/recipe/spaghetti-with-turkey-pesto-meatballs-490050
Wed: Acorn squash with white & wild rice/chicken w Greek seasoning & Gouda
Thurs: reheat Turkey-pesto meatballs w/ roasted cherry-tomato sauce, over angel hair pasta, Bag chopped salad, baguette
Fri: Halibut (a pricey splurge, even on sale, $28/pound), in lemon butter, white & wild rice, mashed acorn squash, peas. Fresh pineapple. Wine. Last nibble of turtle pie.
Sat: Beer beside Green bean, ground beef and tater tot casserole, 8x8 pan with half-recipe amounts of meat, onion, cheese. Side of sliced fresh apples and pear, mini-slices lemon meringue pie
Sun (today): Taxes are filed celebration – Carryout Pizza
President Biden is now in Ottawa and will be until tonight. There are more police around than I remember, especially near my office since security detail doesn’t normally come to my neighbourhood. I work in an office building in the western part of the downtown core and the motorcades usually travel down streets several blocks east of here. It’s been so long since we’ve had state visits I have forgotten how clogged the traffic can get. This weekend is shaping up to be fun, foodiewise. Tomorrow morning I go to the grocery store to pick up a few things and I plan on tying in a trip to the pricey butcher nearby to pick up some meat pies for take-out dinners for the next few weekends. The butcher I go to assembles them in advance then they freeze them. When I buy their meat pies they go straight from the butcher’s freezer to mine and can be cooked from frozen. Their meat pies are so good I like buying a few of them at a time so when I feel like take-out I have a stash to pick from. In the afternoon I head off to Chinatown to pick up Asian ingredients for dinners for next week then Sunday afternoon off to a matinée movie to see “The Lost King”. On to my menu for a solo diner for this week: