breakfast in

I don't make brunch myself very often. way too much effort than going out to a tasty little diner nearby. plus, if you try to make waffles or pancakes or something on your own, there is no single-serving recipe. you always make some batter but it ends up being enough for a BUNCH of people and then you have a ton of leftover batter or leftover waffles and it is sadness. within the last year, however, a few friends started doing a weekly brunch thing. one of us would host, alternating, and we'd make brunch for the group. sometimes potluck-style, sometimes the host doing everything. and THEN, one of the group moved to the netherlands for a year. and so we fell out of practice. and then she came back, but we were still out of practice.

well, a few weeks ago (almost a month at this point! oh my!) one of our own moved for good. Sarah headed to Ohio for grad school. gone for 5+ years. not cool, sarah. not cool. so we did one last brunch together. and i made biscuits and gravy, from a recipe that came in my tastingtable email, based on a recipe from Nate Appleman, Pulino's, New York. my first time ever making biscuits and sausage gravy. and it turned out really well! as in, crazy delicious. and fatty, i am not going to lie. though i think i might have gotten leaner sausage than i had wanted, because there wasnt much fat for the gravy, but it still worked well. and the polenta biscuits were a very nice consistency, i think i will repeat them in the future.

Pasta Summer

i dont make pasta very often. i think a few months went by, actually, during which i didnt make pasta at all. i dont really know why - maybe for some reason i think that boiling water takes too long, even though that is a bit of an absurd notion. or i'm just not in the mood. BUT a few times this summer, i had vegetables and cheese and nothing to do with them except for throw them over some delicious pasta. above is actually one of the most delicious pasta dishes i have ever made, and if i hadnt portioned it out bringing it to work, i would have eat the ENTIRE thing in 1 sitting because it was so incredibly good. what made it so good? fresh gnocchi (no, i didnt make it, i got it from wholefoods), tomatoes, mozzerella, and fresh basil pesto (now that one i DID make, with basil from my farmshare). it sounds so simple, but the combo of the gnocchi and the homemade pesto was just incredible.


pasta dish number 2? well, i had a party a few weeks back, and one of the things that i made was an eggplant dip - i roasted some eggplant (coated in a little bit of olive oil) and then chopped it up with some parsley and more olive oil into a little spread. well, i had some leftover, and so i threw it in with some pasta, more tomato, and more mozzerella. it was also quite tasty, though not as incredible as the gnocchi. ah well, not everything can be amazing.

a summer dinner party

pardon the terrible cell-phone picture. its the only one that had everything in it.

backstory: there was a weekend in july that the whole fam was going to be home, while brother and father played in a golf tournament. i decided to take advantage of the fact that they have a grill, and i dont, and so brother and i schemed to have a bbq one of the nights of the weekend. i looked through all my cooking magazines, and found some exciting recipes. so i stocked up at whole foods for everything on our list, grabbed my mandoline, and headed home for the weekend and a nice summer bbq.


first up? cilantro-lime slaw. it was actually rather good, and not as hot as i feared (or rather, as the fear instilled in me by mother, who pulled out rubber gloves for me to wear while chopping up the serrano chile that went into the recipe. i, of course, made wayyyy too much as i had a red cabbage from the farm share, and wanted green cabbage as well, but luckily the family was able to get through the leftovers easily.


next side? Israeli Couscous with Roasted Eggplant and Cinnamon-Cumin Dressing. also found in the bon appetit magazine. it was actually my first experience with israeli couscous, as i am much more familiar with...whatever normal (much smaller grain) couscous is. BUT it was a very favorable experience that i think i will need to repeat. the actual recipe...i am not as much a fan of. I think that maybe it needed some added salt, or SOMETHING else, but it was lacking the strong roasted flavor that i was hoping for (maybe too much oil cooled it off? maybe too much cilantro?) something to adjust in the future.


next side is one i didnt not actually make myself! this is a mango lime salsa that mary made! her recipe came from here. it is very tasty, and goes well with a lot of things. lots of lime. better with more ripe mangoes. as i have never used mangoes, i had no idea what goes into choosing one, so i selected one that was less than ripe :( bad jenn.


we also grilled some avocados (yummmmm), and i made 2 sauces for the pork and steak tips that we grilled. the pork itself got a nice rub. i cant remember exactly what i did this time, it was either garlic+salt+pepper, or it was paprika+cumin+garlic+salt. i think the second, but i vary my rubs all the time so. ANYWAY, the 2 sauces that i made? innnnnnncredible! first up, the Bourbon and Brown Sugar Barbecue Sauce. this required a lot of ingredients. some of which my mom actually already had (including liquid smoke, which shocked me). and it took quite some time to reduce to the correct consistency. but it was also incredible. like, so so good. and it improved upon re-heating. after using it at the bbq, i also used it the next week with some pulled pork i made in my crock pot. again, delicious. sauce #2 was a bit different, mostly because we had planned on doing some chicken on the grill as well. and so, i made a Red Curry Peanut Sauce. which was OMGSOGOOD. it went well on everything, and was so incredibly good. like, i want to make it ALL the time. i had some leftover the week after, and smothered some chicken with it, and it continued to be incedible on the leftovers-nights. highly highly recommended.

i am so lazy

wow, i really am incredibly behind on my posts. i was looking through all the pictures that i prepared and NEVER bothered to post, and i cant believe it has been so long. a fact that actually segways quite nicely into the theme for this entry. my laziness.

i once bought some bananas. and i was too lazy to actually eat them before they got very brown. in my defence, i really prefer bananas that are sort of green still, nice and firm, and have that green taste to them. so, once the bananas were no longer green, i didnt really want to eat them anymore, so naturally they then became brown shortly after without my intervention.

you would think, at this point, that i would have trashed the bananas that i was too lazy to eat. but no. i called my mother and got her banana bread recipe and made 2 loaves of banana bread. which is delicious. too lazy to eat the bananas while they were fresh, but not too lazy to make banana bread? that is how my brain works.

and so we come to july. when i made the baby quiches in the previous post, i had some leftover egg yolks. which i didnt want to waste even though work was really busy. so i tried to find some easy recipe on epicurious that would use them up, like a dessert or something. instead, i was intrigued by a recipe for ravioli. because ravioli pasta dough requires a bunch of egg yolks. and so, i went to the trouble of making pasta dough, from scratch (from this recipe), and then rolling it out because i DONT OWN A PASTA ROLLER (thanks mother, for promising that you would get me the kitchenaid attachment for christmas so that i wouldnt buy it for myself, and then NOT ACTUALLY DOING IT). i then cut it up with a biscuit cutter, because also unlike my mother, i dont have a ravioli mold.


i mixed together the cheese mixture from the recipe above, except instead of parmesan, i used gorgonzola (it was what i had on hand. either that or i purchased it intentionally at the store. i dont really remember). and, naturally, i made WAY too much filling. even though it was the amount that the recipe called for, i had like, 2 cups leftover. what does one DO with all of that leftover gorgonzola ricotta mixture? one throws it into a pyrex dish along with a bunch of cherry tomatoes, and bakes it for a bit, for an additional delicious side.


laziness can be good, see. it produces homemade ricotta gorgonzola ravioli.