On Christmas Day, On Christmas Day

I am exhausted.

We had a wonderful Christmas. Rose being only 2 1/2 did not get up at o-dark-early but her usual time of 7:15. Rose was thrilled that Santa ate the cookies and drank the milk set out and that the reindeer ate the carrot. And she wanted more cookies. Our modest Christmas was done by 9:00. Rose wanted pancakes for breakfast so I whipped some up. Maybe this will be a Christmas tradition?

The rest of the day I spent cooking. While the pancakes were cooking I made homemade rolls for dinner and a loaf of white bread. They came out spectacular. One of the few times I use bleached flour but I wanted that vibrant white for the rolls.

Then I started the green beans. The beans were from by garden this summer. I froze quart bags as I picked them. I always loved my Grandmother's green beans growing up. Green Beans and Shellies (canned). She always made them with an onion and a ham hock and cooked them a-l-l day. I do the same except I have to leave out the shellies since Dinah is allergic to pinto beans, much to her dismay as they are one of her favorite foods. The beans were excellent but needed more salt.

I overdid it on the mashed potatoes. Probably making up for Thanksgiving. I bet I made enough for a dozen people, we had three and a half. I went old school and boiled the spuds with the skins on. I don't really know why but that's how my Grandmother did it. Then I pressed them through a potato ricer before beating them smooth in my stand mixer. I love and prefer homemade mashed potatoes but I hate lumps. The mashed potatoes were good but could have used more butter and salt but that is easily fixed at the dinner table.



My coup de grace though was my rôti de porc au lait, pork roast with a milk sauce. It was so, so good. Maybe a tad too much thyme, maybe. Twice as much as I needed to make but we've got good leftovers. I almost pulled it off without a hitch but as my wife said, if I had, I wouldn't have had anything to write about. My thermometer let me down. I don't know why but when I started slicing the pork, it was still rare in the middle. Bummer. So I had to finish it in the microwave. Oh well, at least I didn't loose my cool. Now I have a good excuse to get that super fancy thermometer I've had my eye on!

If it wasn't so late I'd take the bike for a spin. Fifty degrees here in the mountains, no snow, but a lovely Christmas day nonetheless. Might be about time for a sweet snack.

And Iran, Iran is Far Away

Sing it out loud and you'll get it.

Tonight I made an Iranian dish, Persian if you would like to be more romantic. Yes I know it is Christmas Eve. Doesn't mean anything, it just fell in the cooking schedule that way. My apologies to my Muslim friends, I made my Khoresht-e Gheimeh Sabzi with pork not lamb. Not very Halal of me, but it is what I had on hand. Try to find lamb here at Ingles.

Here is where I get to be a little elitist. Dinah took the leftover Curry Chicken Casserole to work and her boss complained about the smell. Apparently made some Indian crack too. Ya know, there is more to like than meat and potatoes and the international flavor is broader than the aisle of pasta, tacos and soy sauce at the grocery. People who aren't willing to challenge their taste buds, eat something they can't pronounce or is just foreign really irk me. Yes, I look upon ye of bland palette with disdain. Live a little!

When I was working this month, my friend asked if I had liked the travel to Germany. I'm like, HELL YEAH, I wish it had been more often! "Yeah, well you're a foodie," he said. YES I AM. The more exotic, the more I want to try it. The whole reason we went to Montreal for vacation last year was so I could eat at Au Pied du Cochon. I did indeed plan a vacation around a restaurant and my wonderful wife allowed it.

Khoresht-e Gheimeh Sabzi (lamb and herb stew) would be extremely popular here in the South, in my opinion. It is essentially hunks of meat simmered in wilted spinach and parsley, a la greens, with cannellini beans. Unfortunately I erred on the beans tonight. I did not grow up eating beans, being a Yankee. Never had them, never cooked them. So I don't know how. The last time I made this dish I used a can of beans. This time I used dried beans. I soaked them. I didn't know I had to cook them first. They were like slivered almonds. Ah well, live and learn.

MERRY CHRISTMAS to all and to all a good night!!!

Cookies Galore!

When I was a kid I went to Catholic school. Once a Catholic always a Catholic. I'm just non-practicing now. If They make some changes regarding Their stance on women and gays, maybe I'll come back...But anyway, we used to always, always have fundraisers. I used to have to lug this cardboard suitcase door to door hustling junk. I hated it. Then there were the candy bars and the M&Ms. The walk-a-thons. I hated it all. Well I liked easting the chocolate but I doubt my Mom liked paying for it.

Nowadays kids don't work for it. They don't schlep like I used to. They give their mom and dad their order forms and mom and dad take it to work and con and guilt their co-workers into ordering buckets of cookie dough, frozen loaves of cinnamon bread, boxes of Girl Scout cookies, etc., etc.,etc., and so forth. Yeah, yeah, I know there's a safety issue, pedophiles and what not. Like they didn't exist or something when I was a kid.

But there's got to be someway that the kids can learn some responsibility and not just feel they can always dump the job on mom and dad. Fortunately I've got a few years to figure that one out.

Our friend Arwyn had fund raiser for school selling magazine subscriptions. I think I did that one too. Get this. Did she just dump this on her mom? Nono! She mailed us the subscription information and forms in a handwritten envelope and with a note she wrote herself. Sure, maybe it was her mom's idea but that's initiative. And as broke as we are we had to reward that kind of gumption. I got a subscription to Gourmet.

My first issue arrived this week and I've made it through the Letters to the Editor. One letter immediately caught my attention, directing me to their web site. Check THIS out! Fire up the printer I've got a lot of pages to go. Need to buy some ink pronto!

Eat Mor Chikin

We had chicken tonight, again. It was an accident, not by design. I don't normally like serving similar meats back to back like that. And I'm not that fond of chicken to start with.

The plan was a dish called Chicken Anaheim. Unfortunately, things didn't go as planned and I ended up with something that wasn't Chicken Anaheim.

I admit I have a temper. I like to believe that even though I can still fly into a rage, my rages are less often now and less intense. I've mellowed. Really. But it still happens. Things not going as planned sets me off and having a dinner not go right really sends me into orbit. Fortunately by the time Dinah and Rose got home, I had mostly calmed down, mostly. But the food was cold by then and I was still a little pissed.

This dish has three parts, a bed of noodles, grilled chicken and a cream sauce. I use fideo noodles to add some Mexican authenticity but broken spaghetti noodles work just fine. I remember saying out loud, "no need to buy any spaghetti since we have at least three boxes." Well we have none. I don't even like spaghetti so I don't know where it all went. I guess I used it up without realizing it. So I ended up using elbow macaroni. It worked but wasn't what I wanted. Maybe I should have busted open some packages of ramen. (The idiot kids in my class call it Roman noodles).

But what really sent me into orbit was my peppers. I froze all the peppers from my garden. They freeze well and allow me to have some nicer peppers than what I can buy in the grocery at any given time. I needed to char the skins of my Anaheim peppers and rub them off. I've learned tonight that I need to find a good way of doing this. In the past I used the side burner on my propane gas grill and it always worked perfectly. Problem now is one, that burner doesn't work any more and two, it's 19 degrees outside (yes, in Georgia)! I have tried using a bottle torch. It didn't work. Later I saw it done lickity split on TV with the same torch I have. I don't know how they did it. This time I tried the broiler in the toaster oven since I only had two peppers. I got the skins to char, mostly. I sweated them like usual. When I tried to peel the skins off, my peppers shredded. I had nothing. Dammit. I've got to find a better way.

But in the end, the meal tasted good even if it wasn't what I set out to make. These things happen, I know. And it's Monday.

PS I got paid today!!!! I might just buy my wife a Christmas present after all.

Curry Chicken Broccoli Casserole

I made this dish for dinner tonight. This was one of my favorite dishes growing up, one of the few ways my Mom could get me to eat broccoli as a kid. Hey its got meat, rice, vegetable. Its almost a complete well rounded meal!

If you try it, let me know.