Happy New Year!

We celebrated with a party for our newly-minted three year olds. Can't tell them apart in the picture? Neither can I.

Broiled Flank Steak

The meat came from a local producer who brought it to the farmer's market. I made it the way my mother always did: doused it with soy sauce, let it stand for a few hours, then broiled it for a few minutes on each side. Holy heck was it delicious. We had it with brown rice and shredded kohlrabi (dressed with pomegranate molasses, rice vinegar, soy sauce, and olive oil).

Grilled Steak

with sweet potatoes and roasted brussels sprouts. For dessert Greek Christmas cookies made by my neighbor; I could eat them and never stop.

Merry Bug-Eyed Christmas!

The purple mitts are part of my holiday mitt-making binge.

Holiday Cheeseballs and Cheer

We had a little holiday party last night; very much fun with food and drink. True, the roaming, unsupervised pack of children left a fine coating of Goldfish crumbs over everything, but what's a little cleanup during the holidays. If you have people over I recommend the following appetizer, straight from the suburban sixties: olive cheeseballs. Grate one block of sharp cheddar, add one cup of flour, and pour in enough melted butter to make a crumbly dough (about a stick will do it, but proportions aren't that crucial). Squish said dough into complete casings for small green olives, one at a time, and bake at 350 for about half an hour. Your kitchen will smell wonderful, your guests' mouths will water, and all will be eaten.

Antalya

I made this hat as a little recess from a bigger project I'm working on. Knitters will appreciate the cleverness of its technique: knit sideways, flat, shaped by short rows. Non-knitters will perhaps appreciate the cheerful color, and I will appreciate its cozy head-snugging fit.

Scrambled Eggs

with roasted cauliflower and mushrooms, and corn on the cob. The thing about good eggs is that all you have to do is cook them with salt and butter, and they have the most complex flavor.

Citron

This little shawlette is called Citron; people are knitting it by the thousands. And no wonder! It's super-simple and totally pretty. This one is about to become a wedding present for a friend, but for now, it's an elephant swaddle.

Grilled Fish

I don't remember what kind! Halibut? Mahi? I think Mahi. We had it with brown rice and roasted-beet-and-green-apple salad.

Grilled Salmon

with sauteed savoy cabbage and baked sweet potatoes.

Kale Soup

kind of: with potatoes and Italian sausage and enough broth to make sort of a stew. Very delicious.

Grilled Steak

Two steaks from a local producer, now selling at the farmer's market, absolutely perfectly grilled by my spouse. We had them with baked sweet potatoes, and roasted cauliflower, carrots and red peppers. It was a grand meal, totally out of scale to how we usually eat on a weekend night.

Tagine Leftovers

Wow; it turns out the way to correct a less than perfect tagine meal is simply to throw it in the fridge and re-heat a couple of days later. Yum!

Leftover Duck

with cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, and sauteed mei quing. As usual, the sweet potatoes were the stars.

Butternut Squash Tagine

I would like to understand my tagine, so I need to use it more. Last night I made in it onion, peppers, squash, carrots, olives, dried cherries, preserved lemons, and pine nuts. A lot was wrong (soupy where it should have been syrupy, unassertive spicing) but, served over brown rice with roasted cauliflower, a lot was right, too.

Grilled Steak

ribeye, with corn, broccoli, and fried potatoes.

Nitrous Oxide

Not a whole lot of dinner happening around here lately. There would have been one yesterday had I not gone in for a root canal. Nasty procedure, I assume, though I was too high on nitrous at the time to be able to say for sure. I had many drug-induced insights, but here's the one that stays with me: the four-chord sequence that underlies "Billie Jean" is the same one that structures "Moondance!" How did I never hear that before?