food

I am so, so glad that the weather has cooled off in Maryland. For the last couple of weeks, it’s been chilly enough for a coat most mornings (mid-50s, though today when I left it was 47), but walking home I usually don’t need it. (Let’s not talk about how cold it’s been inside the library, still.) Beautiful, clear weather. I seem to have gotten some of my energy back, and have been puttering around taking care of things in the apartment that had been neglected.

But most exciting of all? I can stand to turn on the oven again. I’ve made a few different things in the last two weeks or so:

• Cappucino Muffins, from The Ultimate Muffin Book
• Honey Cornmeal Muffins, from Pillsbury Healthy Baking*
• Chocolate Bundt Cake with Chocolate Glaze
• Apple Raisin Kuchen (minus the raisins), from Around the World (a Weight Watchers Special Edition that I can’t find any info on)

The muffins were all for my stash in the freezer. I’ll keep one or two of them out, but the rest get individually wrapped (in plastic wrap and then foil, to protect from freezer burn). I pull one out when I want one, and either microwave it if I want it immediately, or let it sit out (wrapped) if I won’t want it for a few hours (for example, if it’s going to work for a snack). I make a combination of regular and Texas-sized. The cappucino ones are really excellent, and will be added to the regular rotation. The honey cornmeal I am not such a fan of - the honey flavor is masked by the lemon rind, which I don’t care for all that much. I’ll be sticking with my standard blueberry corn muffins, I think.

The bundt cake and kuchen were for two recent parties, and they were both a hit. I love feeding people, and I was really glad that I was able to make something for those two gatherings. I feel like a lot of the parties I’ve been to since I’ve moved here, I haven’t had time to make something because of my work schedule. I always feel like I’m copping out if I just bring something store-bought, so this made me happy.

*The same book that the Double Chocolate Chip Cookies I make are from. You may remember those from various GSLIS gatherings and parties at my Somerville apartment. Lots of good stuff in this one.

This was a tasty little receipe, sent to me by Andrea, despite the fact that I half-assedly modified it. I don’t really use Caesar dressing, and I didn’t want to buy a whole bottle of it just for the recipe. So I subbed in a little bit of mayo and some white vinegar (I have Parmesan and completely forgot it). I also didn’t have any white wine on hand to deglaze the pan. But despite this nonsense it still turned out pretty well.

I served it over orzo (by which I mean, dumped into the side of the bowl that the orzo wasn’t on), so it would make more of a meal. I’ll definitely be making this again, properly. And with some veggies, for a more proper dinner. I bet it would also be good over salad, though. Yum.

By the way, the shrimp that I’ve been eating during pantry challenge? Bag of frozen bought at Trader Joe’s in late July. I hadn’t really gotten into them yet, and it seemed like as good a time as any.

As a side note, pantry challenge is done, though this month I am still going to try to make a fair amount of meals that are based primarily on what I already have around. My usual method is to go through my recipes, pick one or two, see what I have on hand and go get the rest. This adjustment will hopefully help me keep grocery costs down a little bit this month, and will also help me make sure I’m not leaving a ton of stuff sitting around every weekend when I go out of town.

I tend to make a big batch of something and then eat from it all week. This week, in the spirit of my pantry challenge, I came up with a couscous-based salad. I started out by working from a recipe I found online — Mediterranean Couscous and Lentil Salad.

In place of arugala, I threw in a can of (rinsed) chickpeas, and I used less feta cheese than I normally would have becuase I only had a little bit available in the fridge. Overall it was good and I’ll make it again, though if I do I think I will modify the dressing a little bit to add some additional zip. A little bit of spice or zing would have improved the dish.

The first half of September proved to be quite expensive, so I decided to do a pantry challenge and see if I could get through a week making lunches and dinners with what I already have in the house. I’m still buying things like OJ, milk, yogurt, etc. I also decided that if I needed to, I could buy one item for each meal (frequently I will eat the same thing for several days running, so this stretches farther than it sounds). That means something that’s required to make the dish — for example, I had a box of vegan sloppy joe mix (no, I am not vegan; yes, it’s pretty good) and that requires tomato paste, which I do not keep around. For $.50 and what I already had lying around, I had four dinners.

Anyway, for dinner tonight I just finished a bowl of shrimp scampi with a side of garlic ciabatta bread topped with tomatoes, mozzarella and black olives. Everything in this meal was something I already had in the house (or on the porch growing in little pots!). It wasn’t as good as I had imagined it would be — my own shrimp scampi never compares to what I get when I eat out, probably because I can’t bring myself to use an entire stick of butter — but it was still a good meal. Certainly not what you would expect when doing a pantry challenge, but that’s the great thing! I might not have hit upon even having this meal if I hadn’t been mulling over the ingredients I have on hand to see what kinds of combinations I could put together.

Given how easy it was for me to do this week — both lunches and dinners — I’m going to try for next week, too. Admittedly I haven’t been eating the most exciting things (unless faux oreos as the main entree counts as exciting), but that’s not so unusual. And also, lunches were easy. Three days of PB&J, with bread from last week, and the last two Lean Cuisines. Next week I will actually have to think about lunch, but that should be manageable. I’m pondering some kind of couscous and beans thing, but I could also do tuna. We’ll see how I feel on Monday.

Of course, this week I get a craving for takeout pizza. Usually I get takeout once every six months, and I wait until I really, really want something. I blame Beckett and Ellen.

Little open-faced sadwhich-type-things: Wasa Fiber Crispbreads topped with Garlic & Herb Rondele Pub Cheese, slices of tomato, vidalia onion, and a little bit of turkey from the deli. It’s quite good. The nice thing is the Wasa crackers are substantial enough that they don’t crumble when you take a bite.

If you’ve not spent a lot of time in Southeastern New England, coffee milk is possibly something that is entirely foreign to you. It’s exactly what it sounds like, though — coffee-flavored milk. As is the case with chocolate or strawberry milk, you can either buy a syrup to keep on hand and make it up yourself, or you can get it in single-serve sizes in the dairy case. It’s the official state drink of Rhode Island, and it’s very much a regional thing. There’s a short article on Wikipedia.

Having grown up in a Massachusetts town on the Rhode Island line, coffee milk is nothing new to me, and I am always surprised when I can’t find it at a Massachusetts grocery store. I hadn’t been looking, but I don’t think I’d seen it anywhere in Maryland (though it’s possible that some stores might stock the syrup.) Today I was randomly at Whole Foods, and was delighted to see that Silk is now making a coffee-flavored soymilk. I grabbed a single serve to try (they also had a quart size), and am thrilled because it’s absolutely delicious. I don’t expect to see this at my Giant anytime soon, but I’ll have to check for it at Superfresh next time I’m over there.

As a side note, this is part of a line of specialty flavors that includes chai, mocha and “spice,” whatever that is.

EKW has been posting an occasional series on what she’s been eating. I think it’s a neat idea and I am going to completely rip it off, starting now. Tonight I am in the midst of enjoying garlic ciabatta bread with a perfectly ripe tomato, basil picked off of my basil plant just before I ate, mozzarella and a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar. Oh, and the glass of Green Path Organic Chardonnay (Austrailian), which I highly recommend (and will be refilling shortly). Available at Wine Source for the Hampdenites, but the Interwebs tell me that Whole Foods is behind this, so it should be available all over.

This is one of my absolutely favorite summer meals. It has been stymied once or twice this summer by the lack of good bread at Giant at the end of the day, and my unwillingness to walk the few exra blocks up to SuperFresh when this happens.

I had a basil plant last summer, and I really enjoyed being able to pull off a few leaves whenever I wanted some fresh basil. I knew I wanted to do that again this year, and I also got some cilantro (which took two tries, but seems to be doing OK now). I’ve also added 5 cherry tomato plants from Paul — they were growing wild after an incident last summer which involved his planting way, way too many tomatoes to eat (or so I’m told).

The cherry tomatoes I finally repotted on Tuesday, after having returned from my weekend in Philadelphia to find them much larger than I expected. I had pulled the plants inside while I was gone, in hopes that they’d dry out more slowly, and that seemed to work pretty well. Except for the part where it didn’t deter the tomatoes’ growth. I had figured I’d repot them this weekend, but when I wound up leaving work at 3:30 I decided I’d try to take care of it then. I struck out on finding pots at Falkenhan’s (though I did discover that they sell city recycling bins!), but a woman at Village Flower Mart was kind enough to rummage around in the attic and find a couple of suitable plastic pots for me. I was so happy with my interaction with them, because she didn’t try to upsell me or anything — as soon as she understood what I was going to do with them, she said “oh, so you don’t want anything decorative, just the cheap plastic ones, right?” Right!

Now I’m thinking about what else I might add to my little garden. not that I have a whole lot of room left. I can do a couple more pots before I will a) have difficulty getting the bike out and b) run out of room for myself to sit out there. At some point I’ll get a thai pepper (scroll down to the tiny one) from one of my coworkers.  Of course, at this time of year I might just want to keep an eye out at the farmer’s market to see if anyone is still bringing seedlings, and pick from what’s already started. I should probably start a list for next year — it’d be neat to do beans if I’m somewhere that would work. And I seem to recall reading somewhere that garlic will grow pretty much anywhere, so I might look into that.

Container gardening books seem to focus on herbs and then uber-large pots (like, the kind you put out in your yard, fill & plant in them, and never move because they’re way too heavy), so if anyone has suggestions, I’d love to hear ‘em.

I hope you’ve all had a tasty and relaxing day. We did! (Not pictured: Boston Cream Pie.)

Yum.

You might want to click through for additonal photos of delicious food - restaurant week is this week and last, and I have been out twice for delicious meals at restaurants I would have never been to otherwise. Go look.