PreBirthday Lunch

Um yeah so I plan on eating ALL the bacon on my actual day of birth.....

Which means eating healthy-ish until Sunday.

But I can't make any promises.

Blizzard beans

Last winter - no snow.

This winter - no snow. Until February when BA-BAM we got all the snow. All the snow at once.

Did I go out in it? Hell no. I used to love winter weather, but I got used to no snow. Think of it this way - if you ease yourself into it, you CAN go swimming off the coast on Maine in June. But if you plunge in, you are going to jump right out because it's too much all at once. If you don't immediately die of a heart attack from the shock, that is.

If we'd had a little snow all season, it'd be easier to cope with the mountain of snow that is at present parked  right outside my front door.

Ugh. Wah wah wah. Call the wahhhmbulance.

So rather think about that, I thought about lunch and about how it ought to have bacon in it.

I had some nice bacon that I chopped up and cooked with some onion and garlic.  Then I added some black beans and slow cooked the whole thing for a few hours.

Frankly, I could have just eaten it without the beans...

But then I wouldn't have had THIS for lunch. 

And it was delicious. 

Ah le weekend est arrivee!

Man do I LOVE Friday. It holds so much promise, a lovely two day blank slate. Providing you don't think too much about the laundry, dishes, bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, basement, that need cleaning and all that other crap. 

On the list of things I want to do this weekend, aside from the fantasy where I totally finish every unfinished project around the house, is to take the MiniET to the latest iteration of Flour Bakery + Cafe on Clarendon. 

Not only is there a tot-lot across the street from it, but I love Joanne Chang. And frankly, who doesn't? No one. I worked for her about a million years ago and didn't appreciate it at the time because, well, for lots of reasons and none of which speak well of my own character at the time. 

Let's just say it took me a very long time to grow out of the center of my own universe. 

Nowadays when I churn out a meal in my wee kitchen, I think about my brief stint at Flour and how I was trained to work in a small space with a minimum of utensils. Even today it's faster for me to whip cream by hand rather than lug out the stand mixer, and I make a great lemon curd. So yeah, I will always be a fan. 

And I am gonna make the MiniET (aka the niece) a fan too. But that won't be too hard - a brioche and the playground, it's a toddlers dream come true. 

So here is to the weekend, I hope you have a good one.

After school snack

My after school snacks used to involve tater tots or ramen noodles.


But now I am a grown-up and I get to have Nutella & peanut butter sandwiches.

Two things: one is that I am fairly confident that a Nutella & peanut butter sandwich is marginally better than a Nutella & Nutella sandwich. Plus it's on wheat bread which makes it already better. Right?

And two, this sandwich would have been AWESOME toasted.

Ugh.

The day I finish this tub o' chocolatey deliciousness is going to suck for sure.

This is why I need to wire my jaw shut....

Went to lunch yesterday at Via Matta and stuffed myself stupid.

Basically it was a joyfully excessive carbohydrate overdose that left me in a drowsy food coma for the rest of the afternoon. I went straight home after work and I am pretty sure I was in bed at 7pm.

The pizza on the right is lamb sausage and sweet potato and it is really good. As is the spaghetti aglio e olio con pomodoro up there in the top of the photo. The crispy duck pizza on the left was good, but it turns out that I am not really in love with duck, and anyway anything with sweet potato will win me over every time - unfair advantage to tubers, story of my life.

(I should mention that I work for this restaurant organization in accounting and so get a discount, hooray!)

So today I am repenting with yogurt, fruit, and soup. And a haircut later to get some of this weight offa me.

Thankfully January is over today and I can forget all about my New Year's resolution to adhere to a more austere diet. No wonder Fat Tuesday comes the first week of February!

Old Man Winter

You wanna know why it's called Old Man Winter? It's because by January you are shuffling like an old fart in tatty slippers with a runny nose and the ambition of a limpet.

It's cold out, it snows, it sleets, it accidentally hits 60 degrees for one hot minute then minus 7 degrees the next, snot flows freely from every nose, and it is totally fine to go to bed when the sun goes down at 4:57pm.

I am tired and sun-deprived and all I want to do is eat toast with strawberries and Nutella until summer rolls around...

Nutellaaahhhh

The child in me is like "ooh eat it, eeeeeeeeat it all!!!"  However my adult pancreas is like "B*TCH, PLEASE!"

So I compromised. Kind of.

I hacked a cauliflower into bits and sauteed it together with a can of chickpeas, some garlic, salt, pepper, and a bit of parsley.

I didn't even bother to pre-cook the cauliflower. Nope. Just rinsed the chickpeas. And added a little water while cooking just to prevent any scorching.

The whole thing came together in like 15 minutes. And it is SO good. 

Perfect thing to eat while cozying up in a cardigan, sweats, and slippers, after Nutella that is.

Macaroon, macaron, cookie, cooky, yeah, I'll eat it.

Unless of course it is a macaroon made with coconut. That's not right.

I love macaroons (macaron si vous êtes en France) but I love the almond ones that are just the cookie, not the fan-saaaay kind with the smooth tops, crinkly bases, and creamy fillings.

No, I just love the plain old almond macaroon in all its chewy deliciousness. When my great-aunt passed, they ordered trays of almond macaroons from "The Club" for the reception afterwards. My grandpa and I filled our pockets up and made a slow getaway then ate them in the car and said nice things about Aunt Ruth.

Man, that is how you want to be remembered, right?

Anyway, I stopped by Baccos Wine & Cheese Shop on New Year's Eve for some thing savory and guess what they sell?

Saint Emilion Macaroons. Handmade in Eastie. In a tub.

O crap.

Yeah, I bought a tub. Yep, you can totally feel free to judge me.

Me and my pancreas will just be lying over here in a coma. A delicious, delicious coma.

Happy New Year!

T'was the season to eat everything in sight...

Gawd I love to eat.

The best thing about Christmas is that everyone is feeling jolly and hungry and thirsty and sociable. AND it's cold out so you can cover up the jiggly bits with a thick sweater and make like you are just, y'know, big-boned.

My Auntie Bets sent us cookies. Holy crap. SO delicious.

How do I know? Well, because I promptly ate them all up. That's how.

Cute, huh!

Extra tasty heads....

Chomp.

Gone

Seriously, I cannot be trusted around food at the holidays. I know that in the spirit of the season, I will be forgiven for my devouring ways. And anyway, January was invented by Weight Watchers, so it's cool.

Liquor is delicious. So is liquor.

Sunday afternoon cooking is awesome up until 4:45pm, when the lovely long rays of afternoon sunshine that filter through the yellowing maple leaves suddenly switches to midnight blue and you still have a massive amount of washing up to do. 

Sigh. 

Today I am starting to prep the Thanksgiving meal. Usually I make the stuffing base early because I like all the flavors to meld together into mushroomy-buttery-garlicky- sagey deliciousness which I will combine with bread, turkey sausage, and broth on the Big Day. 

And today I got to thinking about mushroom liquor. Did you know that oysters and clams also produce their own liquor? I knew it, but I never thought it out before. Recipes for both oyster stew and for clam chowder often instruct the cook to "reserve the liquor" and now I am thinking, other than mushrooms, what other veg produces a "liquor"?

And for the record, mushroom liquor is DELICIOUS.