Grilled Buffalo Filet

with broccoli and brown rice. The last of the marmalade gingerbread for dessert. Next up: Cuban Banana Bread.

Baked potatoes

and roasted vegetables (cauliflower, shiitakes, red peppers).

Marmalade Gingerbread

I find few things more relaxing than throwing together a quick bread, and I'm always interested in new ones. Tonight I made the Marmalade Gingerbread from Maida Heatter's Cakes, and it's as good as it sounds (if you like marmalade, that is). The recipe, with my tweaks, is as follows:

1C whole wheat flour
1C amaranth flour
1/2 t salt
1 t baking soda
1 t ground ginger
1/2 t nutmeg
zest from 2 lemons
2 t vanilla
1 C coconut oil
1 C lime-ginger marmalade (homemade by my aunt's boyfriend, thank you so much Loy)
2 eggs

I put it all together in my stand-up mixer, then baked at 350 for 50 minutes (though next time I'll try 45). I had a piece warm and, before deciding on seconds, had to let all my brain's pleasure centers calm down after it brought them screaming to life.

What do I really eat?

When I have no one but myself to please? Let's observe: last night's dinner was four mashed up sardines stirred into brown rice along with some sea vegetable kim chi, finished off with two fried eggs on top. Yum. Accompanying this I had a handful of peanuts, an orange, and a banana, and that's more or less what I'd always eat if left to my own devices.

Grilled Sheepshead

That's the fish, not actual sheeps' heads, thought the latter might certainly have made for a more lively post. In any case, we had it with baked sweet potatoes and tiny little brussels sprouts sauteed with minced country ham.

Crab Cakes

with quinoa and salad.

Jacket, At Last

I started this project in August of 2008, and here it is, not quite two years later! It is a reasonably tricky pattern, and somewhere in the middle I just lost steam and put it aside. It's hard to go back to something once you've done that, but I'm glad I did: I not only have a beautiful sweater to show for it, but I have cleared some major dust bunnies out of my subconscious closet as well. Onward and upward!

Knitting Catch-UP

Ok, First I have to get over the difference in photo quality as the images appear here and as they would appear if you were looking at them on my computer. Why does Blogger degrade them?
Never mind. Here are the fruits of the last couple of months' worth of knitting: a sweater I love and the third iteration of a scarf pattern I adore. The sweater required some advanced knitterly techniques, so not only do I like it but it makes me feel comfortingly skilled as I remember its making.

Fried Polenta

with sauteed sprouts and prosciutto.

Grilled Amber Jack

with cheesy polenta and sauteed red peppers and fennel.

Cabinet Pasta

You know when you open the fridge and the void stares back at you? That was my plight this evening. Thank heaven for things that keep forever. We had whole-wheat fettucine with a "sauce" of shredded and wilted romaine lettuce, a can of tuna, some chopped up olives, a tablespoon or so of capers, and a big spoonful of preserved lemons. I found it delicious.

Oscar Dinner

We had a wee gathering in honor of the awards ceremony held for people we don't know in movies we for the most part hadn't seen. It was fun! One guest brought a big pot of delicious red beans and rice; I made a veggie casserole. I used for my inspiration a recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook, but I erred freely, ending up with a compendium of the following:

2 onions
1 lb. mixed mushrooms
1 head cauliflower
1 bunch rappini
4 C cooked farro
2 C grated cheddar
Several large spoonfuls of Moroccan preserved lemons
1 egg

I chopped up the vegetables and sauteed them until soft, then mixed everything together and baked it for half an hour at 350. It was very tasty. I also made some brownies (the fudgy kind from the King Arthur Flour Cookie Book) with buckwheat flour.

Frittata

of mushrooms, red peppers, and prosciutto.

Corn Bread

Corn bread with cheddar cheese and scallions, actually; if I normally pig out on cornbread, I suppose what I did last night was hog out, or something. We had it with some (undistinguished) pan-grilled steak, and pan-roasted red peppers.

Crab Cakes

with farro and roasted sprouts, shiitakes, and red bell peppers. I almost didn't even tell you what vegetables we had, but the peppers made them look and taste so different in real life that I thought I'd risk boring you in this digital report.

Bean Soup

over farro for me. Just back from a trip to LA where I ate dim sum (heaven) and the best steak I've ever had in my life (NY strip, aged, with mushrooms, rappini, and spinach on the side, and bone marrow flan to start). The steak was at a super hot (in the happening sense) restaurant with giant pictures of actors on the walls and menus, and women in four and five inch heels all around. I, with my parents and wearing my Danskos, enjoyed it hugely.