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.

little baby quiche!

wow, i am SO behind on my posts. i started the draft of this post in june. maybe early july*. at that point, i had made them weeks ago, taken the pictures, even uploaded them to my computer, but had been toooooo busy with work to post things. and then things at work also got incredibly busy, and i never posted, and oh my god i have an incredible backlog of photos right now that i will probably start posting soon with little text. but pretty pictures!

these were made for jessie's bridal shower. i got up at 7am or so, and did some hardcore work through til about noon, then i got these suckers going, threw them in the oven, hopped in the shower, ran out of the shower in the middle of shampooing my hair to check on them, then back into the shower...yeah, it was a hectic morning. BUT i got them out of the oven with enough time to get to the shower on time. ish.



*it appears that this post has back-dated to when i initiated the draft! it has been a whole month in the works! depressing! but i like to pretend that it wasnt mid-august when i actually got around to posting this...

a delicious blueberry dish

so, i've been getting a bunch of blueberries in my farmshare. love them, but what do i do with them all? and of course, i had an actual reason to cook them! because a coworker (who is a fantastic cook herself) is in the process of remodeling her new (new to her, quite old to the world) farmhouse, and got the renovations to a point where she could have a house party. and so i needed to bring something! and needed to find a good blueberry recipe! initially, i was thinking of just doing a blueberry bread, and just adapting my bananabread recipe (which, come to think of it, i might do this week since i bought more blueberries at the market as they were on sale!)

it just so happened that this past week i came across a lovely food blog, smitten kitchen, with all kinds of lovely recipes. perhaps some day my blog will be a bit more like that, when i am creating my own recipes more than just using other recipes posted online or in books. in any event, i saw this blueberry crumb bar recipe, and they looked so incredibly delicious, i had to make them!


i was rather surprised at the way the bars are made, with the blueberries all in one layer. i would have expected it to be too juicy that way, but perhaps the cornstarch made up for that and helped to bake it into a thicker jammy layer.


i did make one slight alteration to the recipe. and that was that i waited to add the egg to the dough until after i had incorporated the butter. yes yes i know that isnt really an alteration, i am sure that is how miss smittenkitchen did it as well, because that is generally how all flaky butter-based doughs are made (dry ingredients --> butter --> wet ingredients). i think my butter might not have been cold enough, because it is so freakin hot in my apartment right now, so that probably also contributed to my dough being just a bit more wet and together. it really came together, which was nice for the bottom layer of the dough, but a bit too-together for the top - i think that it should have been more crumbly.



on the whole, they were very delicious, and nice and cakey. the lemon gave it a very nice touch, unsurprisingly, considering how well blueberries and lemons go together. and while they went pretty quick since i brought them to a party, and thus didnt have a chance to test the storing-in-the-fridge thing, i think that would make them even better. i wonder if they might be better with a more crumbly top in general though. i think that using the same topping as the bottom layer detracts a bit. i am remembering back to the blueberry muffins my mother used to make, with a sugary crumbly topping. am thinking i might try a bread more similar to that this weekend, with a sugary crumbly topping. hmmmm...

boring food

I fear i have been cooking a lot of boring food lately. sort of a "same old same old." i think that is one of the downers about the farmshare. while i am loving getting a box of random vegetables each week, and supporting local agriculture...it can be quite frustrating if I get an assortment i am not particularly interested in, OR if i get a really exciting assortment during a week that is particularly busy for me when i wont have much time to cook, so things might spoil before i have the time to do something interesting with them. like in the picture above. i was so super excited to get cabbage. maybe i could have done a slaw, OR what i wanted to do was cook it with beef and other vegetables and make little cabbage wraps - it sounded very exciting. unfortunately, i didnt have time, so boring sauteed cabbage it was. and the kale that i got! i love kale, always looking for new things to do with it. but it was starting to wilt because time gets away from me, and the potatoes were going to get bad too, so i boiled those and roasted some chickpeas to be something interesting. and then the beets, which i also love - the beet greens were still attached, and i wanted to do something exciting like risotto or pasta or something, but no time so i roasted and did a salad with feta. all of this quite tasty, but boring!!


another week, another pile of vegetables that i have no clue what to do with and need to cook mostly in one night because its the only time i have free. first up: tons of cherry tomatoes. actually, technically, i think they are grape tomatoes. yum, but i dont eat enough salads at home, so what am i to do with them? perhaps in a cold pasta salad? yum. initially, i was going to put other vegetables in the salad as well - like cucumber and maybe zucchini...but alas, they went bad too quickly. it kills me that i am wasting vegetables some weeks. also needed to use up some swiss chard (i have found that if i smother it in butter, it tastes much better) and onion, and turnips! so what did i do with the turnips? boiled, then fried up like french fries! delicious! but probably incredibly unhealthy and not worth all that oil. i need to figure out a way to get them a crisp up a bit better. man, i really wish i had a deep-fryer sometimes. though at the same time i KNOW what a bad idea that would be.