Playing Catch Up

Um… hi.

Uh… sorry I haven’t written lately.  I noticed that you never call or write either though.

Whatevs.  I guess it doesn’t matter who’s to blame, let’s just catch up on what’s been going on lately.

It’s been frakking hot here lately.  It’s hard to cook when it’s 111 F outside.  It makes me want to shove the kegerator down the creepy stairs of the creepy basement, and make friends with the spiders.

Speaking of the creepy basement, I took a picture for you.

It’s scary down there, but cool.  Which makes it a good place to store my fermenting pickles and kimchi.

I can’t wait to try the kimchi.  Firstly, because kimchi is delicious.  Secondly, because I sorta made up the recipe as I went along, which could be especially distastrous.  I’ll give you the deets if things work out.  It should be ready to eat tomorrow.  (My lack of being able to follow recipe instructions is 100% of the reason I am a terrible baker.  I have switched to using a scale to weigh my dry ingredients, which has helped some.)

For dinner, we’ve had some roasted broccoflower (which I’m assuming was brocolli romanesco, but Trader Joe’s had the packaging all weird.)

Garlic, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  Cook ’til done at 450 F.  Should take about 30-40 minutes.  Those brown, seared bits are the best part.

We also made some spaghetti one night when I got home late.  Let me give you the recipe:

Marcella Hazan’s Tomato Sauce

One can of San Marzano tomotoes smooshed up with your hands (WASH YOUR HANDS FIRST)

One onion cut in half, remove the skin

5 ounces of butter

Salt to taste

Simmer 45 minutes over medium low heat; which is about as long as it takes to boil the water for the noodles.   Throw out the onion.  Toss a pound of cooked spaghetti in the sauce.

I kid you not, this sauce will blow your mind.  SO SIMPLE.  SO GOOD.  Make this as soon as possible.  And whatever you do, don’t fuck around with it and use olive oil instead of butter, or add garlic and other spices.  Make it just the way I said to.  You’ll be happy you followed instructions when you’re licking the bottom of the plate to get up every last tasty bit of buttery, oniony, savory sauce.  Also, the onion doesn’t taste very good, so don’t be tempted to chop it up and mix it into the sauce.  I’m only warming you because I have made all these mistakes myself already, and regretted every one.

Serve with with arugula salad with onions, ricotta salata, lemon juice, and good olive oil. 

There were some other meals, some were repeats and not worth mentioning, but I might save some for later.  You see, last night, while I was chopping up some toppings for another pizza I sliced straight through the top of my finger, through the nail, and I’m assuming right into the bone.  So, I have a mighty pain today, and Sean is laughing at me as I type away at my little laptop with my index finger sticking straight up in the air.

So, I may not be doing any cooking for a few days.  But, that’s not the say that Sean won’t be cooking, because we are cheap, and reclusive, and rarely eat out because it’s so much cheaper and easier to cook at home.  Also, we have beer here, and are finding it harder and harder to come up with reasons to go anywhwere but the Farmer’s Market, Trader Joe’s and the Firestone Walker for kegs.

Speaking of which, a beer might ease this pain in my throbbing, still bleeding little finger.

I’m gonna go have a beer and some pain killers.

We’ll have to talk about you next time.

exohexoh,

The Beer Bitch

Weekends

Sorry we’ve been so busy around here and I’ve been neglecting the blog! Here are my excuses:

I started my new job, and it’s great.

And…

It’s been a million fucking degrees here. (Obviously that’s an exaggeration, but it has been over 100 for a couple of days, so there hasn’t been much cooking going on in our kitchen.)

Luckily, Sean loves to grill, so we’ve made use of the BBQ.

Saturday we went to the Farmer’s Market and picked up some fresh local cod, a bunch of tomatoes and some blueberries and apricots. The fruit isn’t quite up to snuff yet, IMO, because it’s not super sweet quite yet. The tomatoes, on the other hand were amazing, and Sean made a delicious Caprese salad Saturday night, and some salsa for fish tacos for lunch on Sunday.

Last night Sean grilled some pork, corn and onions for dinner. It was delicious, but I was beat from the heat, and forgot to take pictures.

The only thing I made this weekend were pickles. I adore pickles, and have been meaning to try to make my own for some time, but never seemed to find the courage or the gumption to do so. This recipe made it seem easy, so we picked up the supplies, and made our own pickles.

I have been on a mission lately to make things from scratch, and seem to find that most recipes I try are super simple, and take almost no time to mix up, but do require some patience to wait for things to cook, or cure, or rise, or roast. It’s pretty incredible, and really satisfying to make your own bread (which I also did this weekend, and I swear I’ll get to that recipe soon,) pickles, etc. My next project: jam. After that: kimchi. I’m going to clean out our super creepy basement, home to a thousand spider ghosts, and make room for jars of STUFF. (Especially because kimchi stinks, and I don’t want it in the house.)

Anyway, the pickles take just a few days to ferment, and then they should be ready to eat. I’ll let you know how they turned out, but here’s what they look like so far.

It took about an hour to make the pickles, but most of that time was spent waiting for water to boil. The only real work was washing and slicing cucumbers, and smashing a few cloves of garlic. Easy as pie.

I can’t wait to try them!

Needless to say, there was also a lot of beer consumed this weekend, just like every other weekend at our house, but we didn’t make it to the Paso Robles Wine Festival.  It was too hot outside, I had to leave for work halfway through it, and to be honest, red wine tastes pretty naff when it’s 104 outside.  (We did open a few bottles of white and rose this weekend though, and they were cool, refreshing and just right.)

Hope you all had a good weekend!