Best Laid Plans

Well, at 9:11 this morning I planned to write for an hour and 1/2, walk the dogs then write for another hour before heading over to Mad's school to stuff envelopes.  But I logged into Blogger and started reading some of the blogs I follow, then my mom called and asked if she could bring my (very beloved) Aunt and Uncle over for a quick visit while they are in town.  I said yes, of course, bring them on over because I don't get to see them nearly enough, and what was I going to do with the time anyway -- write?  Hah.

So we had a great quick visit, and now here I am, snuggled back into the comfy couch, dogs on either side, laptop fired up, and damn if I'm not hungry.  It's hard to blog about food when you're hungry.  Must. Write. Blog.  But perhaps if I had another cup of coffee...

I'm so distractable.  

(Here's a fact: according to my computer's dictionary, there is no such word as distractable.  Ah, but the Mirriam-Webster online dictionary does acknowledge it... interesting... did you know distract likely comes from the latin distractus, past participle of distrahere, literally to draw apart, from dis- + trahere to draw?) 

For instance, every week, usually on Tuesday, I get out my favorite cookbooks and find recipes, and make a shopping list of food for the week.  Then, I dutifully go to the store and buy only those items on my list, which I have trained myself to do so I don't wind up buying whatever the store happens to be hawking that day.   The rest of the day, I walk around feeling all smug and superior because I was able to resist the spicy peach chutney and andouille sausage because they just didn't fit into this week's plan.  No matter how excellent they tasted.  No matter how many times I went back to the hawk-er, pretending I needed to try that chutney one more time so I could decide whether my husband and children might like it.  I resisted, I stuck to the plan.  

Except that on, say,  Memorial Day Monday at 5pm, my original list/menu plan long gone in the jumble, I find myself staring into the refrigerator and thinking, why did I buy all that ricotta?  The friends we've invited over on the spur of the moment are piling through the front door with their children and their bottle of wine, and I've promised food, positive I've got something in the fridge.  Nope.  I've got a ton of ricotta and a lemon.  What the heck was a I planning to do with that?  

Completely flummoxed (ORIGIN mid 19th cent: compare with dialect flummock to make untidy;confuse), my first thought is pizza?  Got flour, got yeast, got a bit of tomato sauce somewhere, ok, it's paste but I can use that -- no mozzerella.  It wasn't pizza.  I don't have time to dig around the cookbooks, and if I'm going to be completely confessional here, I'd probably already used whatever other ingredients I was planning to mix with the ricotta when I abandoned (lost)  my menu plan earlier in the week.

But, there's a  1/4 bag of frozen broccoli and a 1/4 bag of frozen peas, and I've got pasta (I always have pasta) , and olive oil, and waaaay in the back of my fridge, I've got an old rind of Parmesan, and this is what I made:

Pasta with Ricotta, Broccoli and Peas

Serves 4-6 adults if you've got some salad and some bread (I served 4 adults and 4 children, but girl-children, who happen to eat like birds)

1/2 cup ricotta 

olive oil (1/8 cup or so)

lemon

1lb pasta (I used macaroni shaped pasta for this, but whatever)

1/4 cup frozen broccoli, run under warm water in a sieve until it is less frozen)

1/4 cup peas (also run under warm water)

a grating or two of Parmesan

kosher or sea salt

a solid grinding of pepper

Scoop ricotta into a bowl and swirl in olive oil stirring until the ricotta isn't quite so thick. Zest the lemon into another bowl and set aside, then cut the lemon and squeeze 1/2 into the bowl with the ricotta and olive oil.  Stir all this vigorously with a whisk until the mixture is well incorporated.  Boil up your pasta, plonking the broccoli and peas into the boiling water for a couple of seconds right before you drain the whole thing.  Put the pasta/vegetables back in the pot and immediately throw the ricotta mixture in the pot as well.  Stir it all up.  Add a teaspoon of lemon zest.  (Put the rest in a ziplock and save it in the refrigerator for another time) Grate a tablespoon or so of Parmesan into the pot, and add a pinch of salt and a grind or two of pepper.  Taste it. Add more lemon juice, or Parmesan or salt depending on your taste.  You can eat this right away, or you can put it in a nice looking bowl and let it sit until you're ready to eat it because it's also good room temperature.

If you happen to have broken down at the grocery and bought the andouille sausage that lady was pushing, then slice it up and saute it in some oil because it's good on top of this pasta (not that I did this exactly.  Oh, fine.  Ok.  I did come home with the sausage, but I froze most of it and just cooked up one link and it was heaven.)

If you have some fresh thyme in the garden (I didn't, but I will once I get to the garden center and buy some) about a tablespoon into this mixture would seriously enhance the whole thing.

Mint might be good too, actually, but I don't have that either.

And If I'd had a can of artichoke hearts I would most certainly have chopped a few of those up and thrown them in.

Have you noticed how my tenses have been slipping all over the page in this post?  Like I said, distractable.  Past, present, past perfect --  what other crazy tenses have I used all you English majors out there?

Sometimes You Just Order Pizza

We've been eating a lot of take out lately and I'm not too proud to say it.  I don't know what happened.  Well, yes, actually, I do.  It's the end of the school year and everything is going ka-blewie.  We are all insane here.  For instance, this morning I can't find the coffee press.  I've looked in all the usual places, and I've looked in all the unusual places and now I'm just caffeine deprived and mad.  This is what comes of giving angry pre-teen children jobs to do around the house.  Ask one to empty the dishwasher, but don't expect to find your coffee press ever again.  

Dear God, I may have to go to Starbucks.  

I hate end of school-year stress.  It always feels much worse to me than even the stress of September.  Sure, September brings new classrooms, different kids, school supply shopping.  In September, kids who have been going to bed late and waking up late, now have to go to bed early and wake up early.  There are new routines, plays and bands, choruses and teams to try out for, and I'm shelling out money right and left for t-shirts, and field trips, cleats and guitar lessons. 

But May is sneaky.  It is deceptively stressful.  You're all happy because the sun's finally out and the plants you thought you'd killed last fall are sprouting hopeful shoots, and the dogs can lie outside on the deck with their bellies turned toward the sun.  You feel like you're running down the home stretch because school's almost over -- which is a good thing, right?  Except that one child has a chorus concert, and a project on Rome due which is 60% of her grade, and a biography project for language arts which is 40% and for which we have to go to the actual library, in town, and look for books.  The other daughter has soccer tryouts, and an end of year band concert,  and, even though she's only in 4th grade, she's in the chorus of the 5th grade play and she has to be at rehearsals, and we need to  make 80 madeleines for the French festival (and we only have one pan).  And she's stressed because transitions stress her to the ceiling so all you have to do is say boo! and she's the Tasmanian Devil.

Oh, and because one of my 100 jobs is tutoring highschool kids in writing, I'm getting calls about their end of year projects.  Which is good, work is always good, but still... time.

Also, the end of April is my dad's birthday, then the first week in May is my husband's birthday, then it's Mother's Day, then the week after that is our wedding anniversary: all wonderful events, celebratory events, but events which take time and definitely preparation.

Sorry.  Didn't mean for this post to turn into a big whine-fest.  However, this is a long way of saying that sometimes, pizza is very very good.

Instead of a recipe, I am linking you to Poppi's pizza -- my favorite joint in this area.  They have this thin crispy, New York style crust that I cannot get enough of.  (I'm sorry, everyone else in the world, but New York crust is the best. Just like New York bagels are the best.  It's the water there, so don't feel bad.  When I was pregnant with Em I almost had Smith talked into driving me to my favorite pizza place on Greenwich and 6th -- even though we lived in Center City Philadelphia at the time.  At the last minute he made some panicked calls to a native Philadelphian who directed him to a pizza place he swore had NY style crust.  It didn't.  If Poppi's had been around back then, a very ugly chapter in our marriage would never have happened.) 

However, there is quite a lot one can do with leftover pizza.  We always order a large, and sometimes two because you can put slices on a cookie sheet and freeze them, then, once they're frozen (about an hour), wrap them in parchment and stick in freezer bags.  Take a slice out and reheat it in the oven (never the microwave, which makes the crust soggy) whenver you want it.   

To make it taste yummier, take your leftover pizza and plonk a spoonful of tomatoes from a can on top, grate a bit of parmesan, stick it in the oven at 425 and in 10 min you have crispy pizza.  Really, any cheese you have is good on cold leftover pizza.  I like ricotta, goat, brie, tallegio, but not all at once.  Or, put a few pieces of pineapple on your plain, bacon or sausage pizza before warming it up. I've also put frozen slices of mango on my pizza -- surprisingly yummy, especially for breakfast.  Right now I am eating plain cold pizza while sipping hot coffee. (Found the coffee press, it was in the cereal cabinet).   Christine Lavin prefers her's with cold coke. 

Em prefers her leftover pizza delivered to her in bed by her mother as a bribe for getting up before 10am on a beautiful May Saturday in order to go do something as a family without a huge argument.  At least I'm hoping this will be the case.  Wish me luck.

2 Packs of Chicken Parts = 3 Dinners + 2 Lunches

I needed a new cell phone because the old low-tech one was dying.  Plus, I needed internet access for a variety of business related reason, and I needed to be able to text the Em because she only responds to texts.  Of course, I really really (really, really, really...infinity) wanted an iPhone.  I wanted to be able to check my icalendar from the phone.  I wanted to be able to take groovy pictures with it of my food for this blog.  Plus the apps!  Who wouldn’t want to immediately download whatever is playing at Starbucks?  But the stupid iPhone was too expensive and AT&T’s service around here is spotty.  I also had to get Mads a phone because she’s been walking home from school with friends and it made me nervous that she couldn’t get in touch with me if she needed to.  Verizon was hosting a “buy a Blackberry, get a second phone for free” sale.  Blackberry vs. iPhone.  I called the AT&T store, but they wouldn’t deal.  Verizon said they could give me an even better deal than the one advertised because I've been a customer for eons.  Sigh.  The Blackberry then.  Bought it.  Brought it home.  My first thought: it's kind of small.

Then I found Brick Breaker.  

This stupid game is so addictive that I just now had to take a break from writing to play a few times.  God. Help. Me.  What made it all worse was that Em played the game on my phone and immediately got to level 11.  (Not a Spinal Tap 11 either, -- there are 34 levels to Brick Breaker)  The ugly competitive side of me kicked in and I’ve been playing obsessively ever since.  (I can now get to level 9).  Three nights ago, as I was cooking dinner, Smith called out from the playroom,  “Kath, come see this.”

 

“Can’t”, I replied, “ I’m at a crucial moment sauteing mushrooms.”  

Truth was,  I was at a crucial moment with Brick Breaker.  

Despite the “discount” on the new phones, it was still insanely expensive, and I’ve been feeling the pinch.  Plus all these annoying bills keep showing up demanding to be paid.  So I am having to keep the food bill down more than usual this month.  Yesterday I went to the store and found "family packs" of chicken wings and drumsticks were on sale.  That got my tiny brain ticking.  I can make a lot of things from 2  large packs of chicken parts.  Even better: it takes no hands to roast chicken.  All the better to play Brick Breaker, my dear...

Dinner number 1:

Roasted Chicken Wings and Drumsticks

1 pack chicken wings

1 pack of drumsticks

kosher salt

olive oil

frozen green beans (as much as your family will eat)

couscous

chicken broth or water 

parsley or cilantro or thyme to taste

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
   
2. Haul the chicken out of the packs and rinse and pat it all dry. 
   
3. Throw it in a bowl and pour about 1/4c of olive oil over them all, then sprinkle with about 1tblsp of kosher salt.  (The amount of the salt and olive oil varies with how much chicken you have.  Just make sure everything is coated with oil and nicely sprinkled with salt.) Toss all of this around with your hands. 
   
4. Spread the chicken out on one or two large baking sheets covered with parchment. (Parchment is key - you'll thank me later when cleaning up.)
   
5. roast for about 20 min, or until chicken looks and smells done.  It should be fairly crispy on the outside, but you don't want it pulling away from the bone which means it's over done.
   
6. Meanwhile, dump your frozen greenbeans into a skillet, add a little water and a bit of olive oil, or grapeseed oil or butter. Put a lid on the beans and cook for a bit, then take the lid off and saute until they are just the other side of crunchy.
   
7. Now make your couscous -- follow the directions on the box, but at the end, when you are fluffing, add some chopped parsley, cilantro or thyme.
8. plonk it all on a plate and let people eat the chicken with their fingers.  Some warmed up pita is good here too -- then you don't even need a fork or spoon for the beans or couscous.
9. SAVE ALL BONES -- 

LUNCH:  

Unless your family really pigs out there should be quite a few wings, drumsticks and couscous left over.  Mix the couscous and beans together, add a little lettuce, or maybe some olives, some feta if you have it, and pour 1 TBLSP of store bought vinaigrette over it all. (I like Newmans Own.) Parsimoniously give your husband and/or children one or two pieces of chicken for lunch along with some the left over couscous and beans.  MAKE SURE THEY BRING HOME THE BONES.

Dinner the next night:

Chicken, Vegetables and Biscuits

Chicken Vegetable Part:

Left over chicken from previous night stripped from the bones and put in a bowl.  You won't have a lot, but don't worry about it, the vegetables will fill everything out.

2 TBLSPs Olive oil

1 TBLSP Butter

1 small onion peeled and chopped

2 large carrots (or more) peeled and chopped

2 celery stalks, peeled and chopped

1/2 cup flour

3-4 cups chicken stock (or broth from a can or box)

1 cup of frozen peas

1 cup frozen broccoli florets

(I also had 1/4 of a fennel bulb which I chopped up, optional,

and some mushrooms which I also chopped - just throw whatever vegetables you have left over in this - it'll be good)

1/4 cup milk (regular, low fat, 2% or half&half, I don't really care and you shouldn't either.)

For the Biscuit Part: 

2 Cups flour

1 TBLSP baking powder

1 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp of sugar

1 stick of cold butter chopped into small peices 

3/4 cup of milk or cream (again,whatever you have.  Buttermilk works too.  Or sour cream, or plain yogurt, although I'd add another tsp of sugar.)

1. Preheat the oven to 350 if you are using biscuits and lightly oil a lasagna pan or casserole dish, or use a skillet that can go in the oven.  
   
2. heat the olive oil in a large deep skillet or a dutch oven.  Toss in the onions carrots and celery and cook until the onions soften. 
   
3. Add the butter
   
4. Add the flour and cook it for a bit
   
5. Add any other fresh vegetables you have now
   
6. Add the Stock and let simmer until the carrots get a bit tender and the broth is thickened
   
7. Add frozen vegetables and the chicken.  Taste the sauce and add salt and pepper if needed. Let it cook down another minute or so.
   
8. pour into lasagna pan.

Meanwhile...Make the biscuits: (Don't panic here, you don't have to do this part at all, serve the chicken and vegetables over rice or on a piece of toast, or you can go to the store and buy some BisQuick and make biscuits that way or you can get some Pillsbury Pop'n'Fresh Biscuits and just pop them out of the can.  However, biscuits are really easy to make, seriously, they are, and once you make them, you'll want to serve them all the time because who doesn't love a hot biscuit? I mean this in a totally PG way. I swear.)

1. In a stand mixer, stir the flour the baking powder, salt and sugar together. (You can also use a food processor, or just even your hands -- just keep mashing butter and flour together until it's all incorporated.  Don't over think it, it will be fine.)
   
2. on a low speed stir the cold butter in and let it go until the butter and flour come together and look like small peas.  (See by hand method, above)
   
3. while the mixer is running on low, slowly add the milk. (or mix it in with a wooden spoon, then mush around with your hands again) 
   
4. Once the milk and flour mixture is all together turn the dough out onto a floured counter and roll out until they are about 1/4 inch thick.  
   
5. Use a cookie cutter or a round juice glass to cut out biscuits.  
   
6. Place the biscuits on top of the chicken and vegetables and put into the oven.
   
7. bake for 20-30 minutes or until the biscuits are brown and everything else is bubbly and hot.
   
8. take it out of the oven and let it sit for 5 to 10 minutes before dishing it out to the ravenous mongrels your family will have become.

Lunch # 2: 

This makes a lot of food for 4 people -- there are usually leftovers of stew and biscuits for lunch, at least there were when I made it.  (Then again, I have 2 girls, one of whom licks at her food gingerly like a house cat)  I can't always fit the all the biscuits that this recipe makes onto the stew, so I save the dough in the fridge and bake the rest up for breakfast or lunch the next day.  They are great with peanut butter and jelly.  If everyone has snarfed up the biscuits but there's leftover stew, just eat that cold from the fridge (if you're Nigella Lawson, you'd do this in the middle of the night, which, frankly grosses me out a bit, but whatever).

The third dinner I made was noodle soup: 

See the chicken stock entry 2/24/09 and make stock from the leftover bones you've snatched from everyone's plates and lunch boxes.  Cook up 1 cup of orzo pasta or some small macaroni (or use some leftover pasta from another dinner.  In another pan, saute 1/2 an onion in a swirl of olive oil.  Once the onions are translucent add a pinch of thyme and 1 minced garlic clove and cook until fragrant.  Now you can add whatever is in your fridge that you want to get rid of -- a diced potato, an old carrot too floppy to eat raw but not so floppy it's gross, a few halved cherry tomatoes, some spinach leaves, even torn lettuce is delicious.  Cook for a minute then add about 4-6 cups of chicken stock (depending on how many people you need to feed). Let it all come to a simmer.  

Now this is good as it is, or you can whisk an egg, and add it to the hot soup, or squeeze a lemon into it, and this is good but not entirely necessary.

Get out your soup bowls and scoop the pasta into the bottom of each bowl, then ladle the soup on top.  You can top the whole thing off with a bit of grated parmesan.  Serve this with bread, or biscuits, or grilled cheeses, or nothing at all, just soup.  Then eat a bowl of ice cream or a large piece of pie so you don't get too hungry later on.

An Update on Yesterday's Post

Yesterday I thought I'd roast the eggplant and make hummus and bread but that was before I moved around the empty bottles of salad dressing in my refrigerator and discovered I had a bottle of capers.  Capers are capable of making anything taste good.  Then I saw, standing there, shining,  from the top shelf of the fridge, like Glen Close in the Natural, a half bottle of Rao's Marinara Sauce.  Not even moldy!  And as if that weren't enough, I also found a very small can of Muir Glen Fire Roasted Tomatoes (which are the best canned tomatoes in the world) hiding behind the chickpeas.  And then, because the pantry gods were clearly smiling down on me from their lofty home in Bedford NY, I realized I had a box of couscous.

Well, the eggplant was already roasted, so I just scraped all the good eggplant-y stuff out from the skin (which no one in my family likes because the skin can be a bit bitter) threw it in a hot pan with olive oil, crushed garlic and a couple of tablespoons of capers, the chickpeas, the Rao's and the can of  tomatoes.  Let it simmer for about 15 min.  OH -- yeah, I also spilled some of Shiraz I was drinking into the whole thing because it looked dry.  Then I let it simmer for 15 minutes.  Served it all over the couscous.  (Well, Smith's and my portions, anyway.  Even though I'm not in the habit of doing this, I cooked up more tortellini for Mads and Em because they asked me nicely)

It was delicious, although my daughters picked the chickpeas out of theirs and fed them to the dogs.

I Have No Idea What I'm Making for Dinner Tonight...

It had to come to this eventually.  I'm hoping that by spending a little time with my blog here, I'll come up with something.  

In my fridge: some dried out strawberries, 1/4 of a pineapple, an eggplant, milk, cream cheese and farmer's cheese.  In the freezer is the massive Ham my husband's brother sent us for Christmas (would take too long to defrost --  as in days probably) and some peas.  I do have some tortellini in there, but we ate that last night with half a bag of peas thrown into the water before draining it.  There are some popsicles and a wee bit of Carmel Delight ice cream.  A teeny weenie bit of chicken left over from Monday night.  Not enough, really, to make the old pasta/chicken/ roasted veggie standby the girls love.  I also have some whole wheat flour.

No onions.  No bacon.  My few cloves of garlic have little green shoots coming out of them.  I've got about 10 red new potatoes.  No dried pasta even.

Sigh.

Let's talk about the carrot soup I made Tuesday night, shall we?  That was the night I used my last onion.  It was a lovely, sweet onion, no green shoots, no mold, still firm.  How I miss that onion.  Anyway, I had recently made some bread and decided that I'd make the soup and use up the last bit of cheddar I'd bought from the farmer's market ages ago by grilling some cheddar and mango chutney sandwiches.  So I sauteed up the onion, added a couple of cloves of garlic, chopped about 10 carrots into fairly uniform slices and threw it all into a heavy bottomed pot with a swirl of olive oil and just a little bit of butter.  After this cooked a bit I threw in some curry powder (thinking it would taste good with the chutney), and poured in the vegetable stock I'd made on Monday night.  Then I got out the Panini Press Smith gave me for Mother's Day last year and started to make the sandwiches.  Sliced the bread, sliced the cheddar, opened the cabinet for the chutney: no mango chutney.  Check the other cabinet.  Nope.  How can there be no mango chutney?  I distinctly remembered going to Whole Foods and tasting this awesome mango chutney on a cracker that was thrust upon me by a WF "associate" in the manner of a perfume sales person at a department store.  I also distinctly remember greedily grabbing the last jar of the chutney and running to the check out counter with the rest of my purchases.  Then I remembered that the moment my first item was scanned, the lights went out and the registers went down.  There was a collective gasp from everyone in the store and a woman, with a voice like Lisa Simpson's, started walking around telling people to remain calm, which everyone was doing anyway.  I waited a while for the generator to kick in, but I had to leave before it did because I had to pick Emma up from school and she hates it when I'm late. As I walked out, empty handed except for the sushi the manager gave to me for free (I do love the people at my Whole Foods despite their taste in music) three fire engines and one ambulance raced down Lancaster toward Wynnewood Ave.

Car accident?  Explosion?  Terrorist?  I never learned because I took a right out of the Whole Foods parking lot to avoid the potential scene.

So no mango chutney.  But the curry was really nice with the carrot soup in which we dipped the corners of our plain cheddar sandwiches happily.

As for tonight: I could roast the eggplant and make hummus with it, the garlic and the lone can of chickpeas I just found in the cabinet.  Nigella Lawson whirs cream cheese up in her hummus -- I can do that because I have that bit of cream cheese in the fridge (I just have to dig the toast crumbs out of it).  I don't have any pita, but I do have time to bake a basic loaf of bread.  Do I have olive oil?  Yes.  Things are looking up...

Carrot Soup

1 TBLSP olive oil

1 TBLSP butter (can omit, add more oil)

1 medium onion (a leek, shallot or red onion would be good too)

10 carrots (or as many as you have. Try adding a parsnip or 2)

2 cloves of garlic chopped or pressed

2 tsp curry powder

1 bay leaf

3 cups of vegetable stock

a bit of milk or cream (optional, but I like the silkiness it adds)

1. Heat a heavy bottomed stock pot over medium heat, add oil and butter.
   
2. When the butter bubbles add the onion and stir until softened
   
3. Then add the carrots and the garlic and the bay leaf.  Let cook a few minutes
   
4. Add the curry.  Let cook a few minutes more.
   
5. Add the vegetable stock.  
   
6. Let cook about 15 minutes until the carrots get soft.
   
7. Fish the bay leaf out,
8. Blend in batches in blender, or if you have one, use a handheld blender and blend until soup is fairly smooth.
   
9. At the last minute swirl in a bit or milk or cream.