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27 March 2006
Curiously hungry. What are you having for dinner tonight?
probably a sub from my corner deli: genoa salami, proscuitto, provolone, sweet peppers, oil&vinegar, salt & pepper. to be chased by a 6 pack of Silver Thunder malt liquor. Cause it's all cheap.
Last night I made rice and beans with a mixture of different beans and a bunch of applewood smoked bacon, too much applewood smoked bacon it turns out, my house smells like a lumberjack.
(Lest I seem inhospitable--I haven't decided yet what I'm having for dinner, but I'm going grocery shopping so the possibilities are almost endless. Probably fish will be involved--maybe steamed fish packets with ginger and lemon?)
I'm not having dinner but for lunch I had leftover cooked pasta tossed with olive oil, lemon juice, basil, crushed red pepper (lots!), parmesan, and garlic (lots!) and mushrooms sauted in butter and lemon juice.
Throw in some chickpeas, Divine_Wino, and caramelize yer onions; grind up some rosemary with yer garlic... At the end toss in diced cucumber and it's like a warm salad, multitextural and juicy.
I don't get planning meals. I eat what I want of what I have when I'm hungry. I get that MomsOrDads could have a dinner planning reflex, but I don't understand. . .how do you know what you'll want? What if you want something else? Go with the plan, or change up?
...okay so lunch wasn't as filling as I thought it would be so now I'm having some hummus--garlic and lemon and red pepper--with some Triscuit crackers, rosemary & olive oil flavor.
Rainbaby--I plan meals cause I'm fundamentally lazy. Really. If I sit down on the weekends and plan out dinner for the week, I can go shopping *once*, get everything I need, and then not need to worry about what to make when I get home.
Sometimes I change my mind or decide on something else, but I keep staples in the freezer and fridge for such occurances.
The two facts that I pretty much infinitely prefer something I make myself to just about anything I can buy at a store or restaurant, and the fact that I hatehatehate grocery shopping pretty much necessitate the planning.
rainbaby - yeah, I'm like Fuzzbean. Also I am incredibly incredibly obsessive about not wasting food, so I plan my meals for the week, and buy perishables (just enough) so our fridge is empty by Saturday morning. Seriously, I make a list and put it on the fridge of every meal for the week.
And if we don't feel like it? Bad luck, we just suck it up and eat it anyway.
i semi-plan meals so i can have the stuff needed on hand. i mainly rotate the basic eats i always make but since i mainly use fresh vegetables it helps to have a vague idea of what i might cook during the week.
Leftover spaghetti. I fear I'm consuming too many carbs, but am broke so I can't buy chicken or any other meat from the supermarket to do meat over greens sauteed in olive oil. So it's starch, carbs and more starch and carbs for me until the coming weekend, where I will buy some chicken for my favorite chicken recipe meal of all time.
Whatever Chef and the Garde Mange make for us. Usually 10-15 plates make up family meal. The most common are: flat iron steak, mussels, potato wrapped blue nose seabass, tuna tartare, roasted chicken, endive and escarole salad, fresh cracked crab over greens and grilled asparagus. Maybe some creme brulee or flourless chocolate cake, if anyone's inclined.
Hugh, totally. I am afraid I am addicted. In fact, the only thing stopping me from going over there right now to get a burger is the fact that I have to pass through a very high-traffic area of town at rush hour to do it.
Virginia Beach. They just opened a few franchises down here and they will be singlehandedly responsible for me gaining back the 20+ pounds I lost last year.
Specklet’s South American Stew With Cornmeal Dumplings
(This is kind of off the top of my head, so amounts are approximate.)
4-5 T olive oil
1½ large yellow onions
5-6 cloves minced garlic
¾ tsp cinnamon
¾ tsp cumin
¾ cup diced jalapenos
1½ lbs winter squash
1½ lbs zucchini
1½ quarts cooked, whole tomatoes
5-6 T chopped cilantro
¾ tsp salt
¾ tsp sugar
1½ cups water
1 cup white flour
¾ cup cornmeal
1 egg
1 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt
2½ T melted butter
½ cup light cream
-Heat up olive oil over med-low heat in big soup pot.
-Dice onion and sautee until clear.
-Add garlic, spices, and jalapenos and cook for a minute or two. This smells fantastic.
-Add chopped and peeled squash, diced tomatoes and their liquid, and the water.
-Simmer gently for an hour.
-Add sliced zucchini, cilantro, and sugar.
-Simmer for five minutes only. This gives you just enough time to mix up the dumpling batter.
-Mix dry ingredients.
-Beat cream and egg.
-Mix together.
-Add melted butter and stir until smoove.
-Gently drop tablespoons of batter into GENTLY simmering soup. Give ‘em some room to expand.
-Cover and GENTLY simmer for 20 mins.
-Devour.
Serves 6-8. Good leftover.
You can add chicken if you want.
cornmeal dumplings. What a great idea. I have a bad cold, if I have enough energy, I'll make pasta with peanut sauce. If not, a frozen dinner or another can of soup. In a perfect world, the Thai restaurant would deliver me some Tom Yum soup.
I ended up making fish packets (grey sole fillets, tomatoes, lemon juice, ginger, cayenne, and salt), and ting choy (baby bok choy, ginger, mustard, olive oil, pumpkin seed oil, and sesame oil). It was crazy tasty.
And then I bought more-or-less fixin's for Specklet's soup. Cause DAMN that sounds good.
I'll grin and bear it when people outside of New Mexico spell it as "chili", but the name of a recipe (and an ingredient) that's specifically New Mexican? Also, the comparison to Texas chili with beans is spurious. Our chile verde used as a sauce in various dishes is distinct. It's also eaten by itself, but only when it's good and I've only really seen it available alone in smaller hispanic northern towns.
Please don't put jalepenos in that. It's probably hard to find hot anaheim chiles outside of New Mexico, but I personally think that jalepenos are popular because Texans think that the only quality that matters in a chile is how hot it is. Jalepenos are not very tasty chiles, and they're overhot because of it. (The extremely hot habanero is a notably good and strongly flavored chile.)
This variety of chile is relatively native to this area. The reason it's called "Anaheim" has to do with modern agriculture and the specific superior strains that were developed at various agricultural colleges (but mostly at NMSU).
We put green chile on everything here, it's a staple. There are no fast food places, even in Albuquerque, even McDonald's, that you cannot get green chile for your burger. Or on your pizza. My mom and her husband in Kansas City regularly have other people, and themselves, bring an extra suitcase full of good frozen Hatch green chile. Or, in roasting season, freshly roasted chile. One of my great joys in moving back here was the ubiquity of green chile.
...and I just looked more closely at that recipe. You shouldn't chop fresh green chiles. Instead, you should roast them in your oven until the skin browns and blisters, then remove the skin and the inner stem, and then chop them. You'll "burn" you hands painfully if you skin them barehanded.
The roasting is important, both the heat and flavor of the chile is notably different, and much better.
Also, the comparison to Texas chili with beans is spurious
THANK YOU! When we moved from Texas to New Mexico when I was a lad, one of the first things I did was to order a "chili burger".
What I got was a "chile burger" and it ruined green chiles for the rest of my life. Never have been able to get a taste for them, which is sad because damn sometimes a chile relleno looks GOOD.
photo by splunge
photo by TheophileEscargot
photo by Kronos_to_Earth
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