So, say my handful of readers, faithful although I am not: where’s the food, already?
With a test run of a roasted butternut squash dip already deemed suitable for the feast that is to come, I had picked up another squash and was deciding what to do with it. Given the horrible tooth pain I’d been experiencing – I thought that it would simply be an issue of digging out the existing filling and replacing it, as it had been on the lower left (and how wrong I was about that) – and given that it’s finally feeling like fall around here, another soup.
There was no real recipe for this. I took stock of what was in the kitchen, what needed to be used in addition to the squash, which was sitting forlornly on the countertop, and started throwing things together.
But first, the onion harvest.
This is a mixture of mini reds and mini sweets that I finally pulled out of the ground completely. The onions, much to my surprise, managed to grow respectably in the poor soil conditions. And there’s nothing better than a fresh onion you’ve yanked out of the ground yourself after planting and coddling it. Especially when you combine it with a little carrot.
Add an apple, that squash, some garlic…
Everything in the pot before the broth and seasonings are added.
Simmer for a bit, then use that handy immersion blender and add a touch of cream.
Soup’s on.
I had some of this for lunch after my two hour visit with the dentist, when the novocaine was wearing off and the pain meds had to be taken. They were kind enough to work me in today and do a root canal – something I was not expecting but which both my mom and one of my employees tells me they knew would be happening. And neither of them bothered to share that guess with me.
After much discussion, calculation, and other assorted dithering around, it is finally completed.
Of course, I’m referring to a driveway. It looked like this before, and was akin to living in a perpetual construction zone.
With some grading and some dirt, it was made nice and smooth.
After looking at pavers for the drive – and the 100+ feet from the road to the drive, by about 10′ wide, plus the labor and the time that would take – we decided to go with slag: less than half the cost, can be done by one guy with a tractor and one guy with a few truckfuls of slag, and finished in one day.
Why, yes, that is our most beautiful barn in the background. I have pictures of that before and after and no no doubt will get those up at some point.
This is Wade, the quite pleasant, very nice guy with the lovely tractor.
Seriously: this is lovely.
OK, ok: the requisite other lovely shot for those of you who don’t find machinery as attractive.
Still, this is on my wish list.
Almost there, after just a few hours.
And then, like magic, ready for use.
The boy made cookies while all this was going on, and mom just had to have her buttermilk with a cookie or two.
She even gave a couple to Wade while we were between loads.
A view to the road, after, and a good image of just why we chose this over pavers for now.
That would have been a lot of damn pavers.
Now if we could just convince the UPS guy that he can, in fact, drive on the driveway without circling off into the dirt, where we will be putting down grass and landscaping.
We should count ourselves lucky here, of course. After all, we did get a Monday night game here this season, against the defending world champion Colts, no less. As someone in the stands said (on their sign), “This game is HUGE”.
The Marines were in town, and they were serious.
Very serious.
Very, very serious.
After a lot of warming up, and a badly rendered version of the anthem – why do some of these performers think the anthem needs to be imbued with their own personal touch or vocal hysterics, anyway? – it was time to kick things off here.
I will say here that the Jags started off well: harrying defense, moving the ball fairly well. But the Colts, like the Patriots, are simply playing in an alternate universe from the rest of the football world at the moment, and those moments rushed right by. I was playing a little game, myself, testing the limits of the camera I was using and trying to think like the coaches by determining what play I would call, then following that player and trying to capture an action play.
It isn’t exactly rocket science to know Manning is going to throw a few passes. The trick is catching that pass (so to speak) in the air, as in this one. You can see the ball pass right by the defender’s hand.
Picking Greg Estandia to catch a pass, though, is something else, and not something most people would expect. Pregnant Sister gives Estandia a hard time, incorrectly. I like him (and picked him to make the team when watching the preseason games), and I’m glad he got some touches in this game.
Jack Del Rio was in a suit for MNF. The jacket he was wearing rapidly made an exit.
Another play call by me: Garrard to Northcutt. My sisters kept calling me a geek for some reason.
But I don’t care all that much. It just shows that girls know a thing or two about football, too.
These sorts of pictures also give you a good idea of how the blocking is in creating lanes for passes or running backs.
Fred Taylor.
Greg Estandia.
David Garrard gets some good protection.
“What do you want for dinner?” “I don’t know, what do you want?”
Maurice Jones-Drew was open for a checkdown and had some room in front of him, but Garrard threw it down the field.
Northcutt is becoming Garrard’s favorite target.
The problem with this is that other teams know it, too. That, combined with overthrows, leads to interceptions.
The Colts started playing their game. Manning was actually under center for a change.
They were driving to the end zone…
…and Manning took it into the end zone himself on a sneak.
Both Taylor and Jones-Drew had some nice runs…
…but it really turned into a one-way game…
…with some nice plays, like this one by Reggie Wayne.
The Jaguars scored their only touchdown on a Jones-Drew run…
…a call that was upheld on review.
Our mascot showed up to reward a row of seats with boxes of Bubba Burgers. Given the obesity problems in this country, and in this city particularly, an alternative would probably have been in order, but I like a burger every now and again myself, so I suppose I wouldn’t have objected if they’d selected our row. They didn’t. Bummer.
Manning is an intense player.
“Mind if I copy your homework?”
All his gyrations at the line must be old hat to opposing teams by now. Who knows how much of it is really a change of play or total bullshit? Does it matter?
Because he could probably do this with his eyes closed. And sometimes he does.
Tony Dungy is one of the most laid back coaches in history.
Del Rio was sweaty and unhappy as the game started closing down.
Manning watches the play clock tick down and calls for the snap with only a couple of seconds left.
Dallas Clark – a player the Colts need to make sure they keep after this season, along with Bob Sanders – gets the final score of the game.
In the end, another loss for the Jaguars, and they didn’t really put up a huge fight – at least, not as huge as I expected, given the potential meaning of this game. And now, it’s time to go work awhile longer here. And shouldn’t you be working or sleeping or doing something other than reading blogs?
One of the best things about a job like this, working anywhere you damn well please as long as there’s internet access, is that you can make yourself very, very comfortable, grab a coffee or some tea, let one cat curl up on the desk, the other in front of the heater at your feet, have both dogs sleeping under your chair, and flick the tv into life while you try to whittle down a todo list that never seems to get much smaller.
I’m a big fan of B-grade movies, and horror movies are generally pretty good for this sort of thing, since many are low budget and not populated by actors who would rival Laurence Olivier or Katharine Hepburn for any major awards. This is why I dearly love Monster Fest, brought to us by the fine folks at AMC each year around Halloween.
The former is just plain old schlock where a bunch of psychics apparently can’t see the killer puppets coming. One by one, they’re offed by malevolent stop-motion puppets in a variety of gory ways (although the gore is not explicitly shown, as I expect having to purchase/make that much fake blood would have cut into the budget significantly). When the lead actor is Paul LeMat and the most innovative part of the movie is a camera angle at the height of the puppet, eight or nine inches off the ground, when they slice open someone’s throat or drill a human in the skull because that human forgot the cardinal rule of these movies – do NOT kneel on the floor and look under the bed, because you know damn well there are, in fact, monsters there – well, that’s all bonus for a bad movie junkie.
The latter movie is a delight for anyone who laughed at that scene in Nightmare on Elm Street where the chick is rolling around on the ceiling because she fell asleep and Freddie got her. That would be me. Julia and Larry are an unhappily married couple who move into a new house where the kitchen is filled with rotting flesh, trash, and assorted maggots. In real life, this would probably be a tip that something was wrong, but in the movies, people blithely move themselves in, not caring or knowing about the fact that Larry’s missing brother Frank – with whom Julia had an affair and with whom Julia slept on the day of their wedding – is actually rotting under the floorboards in the attic because he bought a puzzle box off some old dude in a generic desert city, tried to play with it, and got sucked into some other universe where cenobites tortured him in some weird S&M thing that isn’t ever fully explained.
Whew.
Things get interesting when Larry scratches himself on an exposed nail and, being the sissy he is, runs to Julia to have her fix it. Julia happens to be in the attic where she’s having some out of body experience with old Frank. Larry bleeds all over the floor, and Frank magically starts putting himself back together. This is a way for Frank to put some skin back on his bones and escape the cenobites, get him back with Julia, and have the two of them live happily ever after – except old Frank isn’t looking too hot, and needs Julia to bring more victims to the house so they can be killed and Frank can use their blood and skin and whatnot.
Or something. It’s a standard, really, of bad/evil thing eating/using the flesh and blood of the living.
Larry and his daughter, who don’t seem all that bright about the things going on in their very own house, finally catch on. Larry gets killed by Frank, who then pulls a Hannibal Lecter and skins himself as Larry so when Larry’s daughter runs to him to tell him there’s something really, really wrong with Uncle Frank, he can tell her he’s taken care of it. Got that? Naturally, Larry’s a pile of skinned out flesh on the floor somewhere. The daughter steals the box, opens it while she’s in the crazy person hospital, and makes a deal with the cenobites that will spare her if she gives Frank back to them. Which she does, of course, since someone has to come out of this alive. It’s in the horror film rulebook.
And yes, it’s all as silly and weird and as full of crappy special effects as it sounds, up to and including both the part at the end where the box is on a fiery trash pile, some bum sticks him arm in, picks it up, turns into a dragon-looking thing, then flies off with it and the credits that run by like a squirrel on speed. Sequel City, here we come!
The head-scratching, laughter, and general amusement can all be yours, too – if you’re willing to sit through massively bad films on a regular basis.
So, my sister is expecting. We found this out last month, but she is such a worrier that she told us to keep it to ourselves until the first sonogram and ultrasound. Sissy.
But we did, and since then have been dealing with all the assorted worrying and griping that goes along with having someone around you who is by nature a little high strung having yet another thing to occupy their worry gene. Given that my sister is truly a beautiful young lady, no doubt the baby will be gorgeous. Everyone is quite excited about the little one who will be joining us sometime in March.
Our first problem is one of food: my sister has not been eating right, well, or enough. Last week, she told my mom that just opening her fridge and smelling the food was making her queasy. The result of this is that she is not eating the way she should be.
The solution to this: have someone like me make a couple of huge batches of tasty, nutritious food, and have my other sister take it over. As an added bonus, some of my other sister’s friends got to share in the bounty and received their own care packages.
Enough of the background chatter, says my Gentle Reader. Just tell us what you made and give us pictures.
First up was one large batch of chicken and rice. Generally, I make this for us and the dogs get to enjoy some as well, but Pregnant Sister is a little weirded out by “dog food”. I sent some over anyway.
The main attraction, though, was stuffed shells, one of my sister’s favorites, and another homemade batch of focaccia.
The dough has to be started first. Even though it’s a single-day dough, it still takes a few hours from start to finish. The dough at rest after the first stretch and fold.
Then it’s time to start the sauce, so it can simmer while the shells are being made.
The fam is known to stand at the stove and dip whatever is handy into the sauce and eat it.
Oh, and did I mention that I made a couple of loaves of cinnamon-raisin bread?
And some roasted butternut squash dip, destined for the Thanksgiving menu?
This is some great stuff, I must say. Very simple to make, and quite healthy, too.
I know – get back the point, already.
The mixture for the “stuffed” part of the stuffed shells.
A mixture of cheeses and spinach.
Stuffed.
Sauced and cheesed.
Mmm. Cheese.
In the meantime, the focaccia dough has been stretched and rested again, then panned for proofing. After the final proof, the toppings: one half with warm herb oil and cheese, the other half with caramelized onions, gorgonzola, and cherry tomatoes.
Are you hungry yet?
Shells are baked and ready for chowing.
And so is the focaccia.
Bread porn.
The shells and this bread were divided into portions for Pregnant Sister, her boyfriend, and my other sister’s friends.
I do believe I could make a fresh focaccia every day and people would gladly make sure there were no leftovers. What is it about bread that calls to us?
I can’t say I know the answer to that, but I can say that I do enjoy baking it. Like this biga for Italian bread that I made last night.
The final product from that starter dough is another entry…
The beauty of having a smaller smoker available to you than the gigantic, honking smoker that you generally use to smoke 40 pounds of ribs at a time for large gatherings is that…well, it’s smaller. Since the smaller smoker has electronic controls, there is also no constant temperature monitoring or feeding of the fire. All of this makes it much easier to justify experimentation, and easier to pawn off whatever comes out as “dinner” for unsuspecting family members.
And those factors really make a difference when you’ve decided that smoked turkey breast should be on the menu along with everything else. It also gives you an excuse to test a half breast of about two and a half pounds (and down the road, may even give you an excuse to smoke turkey breasts on the regular basis and pick up a home slicer to slice it about sandwich-thin, then lay a couple of slices between two pieces of homemade bread, with a nice juicy tomato, a ring or two of red onion, a nice slice of cheese, and a little mayo mixture for good measure, then turn that into a panini – but I’m getting ahead of myself).
Since the breast was a half, and didn’t weigh that much, it was brined only for about two hours so as not to have the end product become too salty. After rinsing and patting the breast dry, I rubbed it with a very simple mixture of salt, pepper, and garlic. Then, into the smoker, with some apple and oak to burn.
A few hours later, it was time to test. It looked quite nice.
Quite nice indeed.
The taste? Outstanding. Another winner, and approved for addition to the menu.
Part of the fun in cooking comes from the experimentation, really. When you have people readily available to act as guinea pigs taste testers, it makes it much easier to perfect things in time for the big holiday. And when you yourself have taste-related issues like the main character in a movie you watched (again) in the wee hours of the morning because you couldn’t sleep, it’s quite beneficial to have those people around.
Today: crabcakes and baked corn. Both very simple dishes, really. The crabcakes should be more crab than cake, and the corn should be bubbly and creamy when it comes out of the oven. It would be a spectacular bonus to be able to do the latter dish with silver queen corn, but you can’t get that fresh in what technically is fall down here, and it’s hard to find it frozen.
My goal when making the menu was to make sure that everything was as healthy as it could be, without sacrificing the taste. Who wants a Thanksgiving full of nasty, dry, tasteless (or bad tasting) food? Making everything from scratch also allows us to avoid the preservative-laden stuff that comes out of a can or box. And it just tastes better.
The prep for the corn:
The prep for the crabcakes:
The corn dish is simple, and turned out well – but did not turn out the way I wanted. This particular recipe is a scratch, and I’m working on adjusting it. Still, what isn’t made better by the addition of bacon? Mmmm….bacon.
The crabcakes, on the other hand, turned out very well indeed. My mom declared them a bit too “crabby” for her, which means that most everyone else will be fine with them.
The pre-crab ingredients:
After mixing those ingredients and then gently folding in the crab meat, the cakes were laid out on a parchment-lined sheet pan. These were a bit larger than the size I’ll make for Thanksgiving.
A sprinkle of paprika on top, and they’re ready for their baking.
Baking, of course, is followed by eating – preferably with a side aioli prepared with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and some Old Bay.
Quite good, and I don’t think any changes are necessary for this one.
“What do you think about Thanksgiving?” my mom asked me the other day.
What do I think about it? I love Thanksgiving. It’s absolutely my favorite holiday: fall, food, family, friends, and football. Everything is wrapped up into one tidy package for our enjoyment and amusement.
“The reason is that Angie [my aunt] has decided that she’s not going to have Thanksgiving at her place this year, ” she continued.
“Well then, ” I said, “we can have it here, can’t we?”
Of course we can. And since I am continuing to slowly but surely return to health, how about a menu devised and prepared by yours truly with an assist from my sous chefs here? And how about making just about everything from scratch and telling people to bring no food, only ice and whatever they might want to drink beyond the normal things we generally have?
A fine idea.
So, for those of you joining us for Thanksgiving this year, here is your menu. If you have any special requests or dietary restrictions that aren’t covered (the latter is unlikely, looking over things), let us know so we can make arrangements for those needs.
Appetizers:
Mushroom turnovers
Four cheese phyllo puffs
Shrimp cocktail, traditional
Onion confit and brie crostini
Roasted butternut squash dip
Miscellaneous chips and dip
Cheese plate
Roasted vegetable dip
Pita triangles
Soups:
Roasted red pepper and sweet potato soup
Mains:
Roasted turkey, traditional
Apple-oak smoked turkey breasts
Glazed ham, traditional
Crabcakes (with 2-3 aiolis)
Shrimp, three ways (traditional cocktail, tequila-lime, asian saute)
Sides:
Roasted garlic and buttermilk mashed potatoes
Apricot-glazed carrots
Stuffing, traditional, two ways (with and without pork)
Creamy baked corn
Sweet potato casserole
Green peas with pearl onions
Broccoli gratin
Brussels sprouts
Chestnut-fig stuffing
Brown sugar glazed sweet potato wedges
Cranberry-apple compote
Gravy
Every so often, I look at this blog and wonder if it’s worth the bother. I think my life must be terribly uninteresting and the failures here at the homestead have far outnumbered the successes in the gardening realm. Still, on the rare occasions that someone does come by, as my aunt and uncle did this weekend, and looks at the place with their eyes instead of mine, it reminds me that being too close to something can give you tunnel vision sometimes.
So here’s what’s been going on around here of late, beyond the workaday crap that made August a hellish month, stress-wise – a month in which I managed to lose eight pounds, dropping me to 100 even. I’m working on keeping the needle there and climbing, and thus far, the “keeping the needle there” part is working out better than the “climbing” part.
I had worked my ass off to prep a bed of corn, which started out well.
Very well.
And then, there was zero rain. None. Zilch. Nada. So I was trying to water. Then I had some kind of animal run through this back side of the plot – probably the damn dog next door, who is forever running all over our property. And then these critters showed up, along with the corn earworms.
I don’t think I could have done enough to turn that plot into arable soil that would sustain growth to maturity. Between all of those factors, the corn withered, and eventually had to be cut down. A total loss of the time and effort spent.
I’d put in a line of limas, which I hate, for other people to eat. Out of eight seedlings, two survived. Neither has put out any beans as of yet, although they both have flowers.
I had also set up several cucumber plants, of two varieties: picklers and lemon cukes. One of each survived, and this lone pickler, along with one lone lemon cuke, are the output so far.
