Steak Sandwiches

Made from the remnants of last night's out-on-the-town ribeye. We had them on whole wheat, toasted with cheddar cheese, and lettuce, tomato, and onion. Delicious. Also with corn on the cob.

Scrambled Eggs with Tarragon

with roasted potatoes, and roasted eggplant, tomato, red pepper, and garlic.

Sockeye Salmon

with kale chips and corn. Pretty!

Summer Sweater

A cotton sweater, just in time for air-conditioning season. This one has all kinds of little details you have to be a knitter to care about, and their presence makes me giddy with happiness about how this one turned out.

Risotto

This used to be my go-to dish in gradate school, back when nights were freezing and long, quiet stretches of stirring time were in plentiful supply. I haven't made it in years, but this week found myself with a beautiful onion, leftover chicken concentrate (from the braised chicken legs a few days ago), and a sudden yen. So last night I put them together, sprinkled the result with parsley and parmesan, and accompanied it with poached field pieces and orange cherry tomatoes. It was scrumptious. The other advantage to making risotto these days: now I have a spouse who does the stirring for me, well and without complaint.

Field Peas

(aka fresh black-eyed peas) with onion, bacon, and parsley. With corn bread and sliced tomatoes. A word on cornbread: there's no carbohydrate I don't like, but when I veer into morbid obesity it will be because someone set in front of me an endless portion of hot, crunchy cornbread.

Sockeye Salmon

with whole wheat spaghetti (butter, parmesan, parsley) and a salad of lettuce, cucumber, red onion, and feta. All of which was great, except the feta: I bought non-fat by mistake. Nasty.

Happy Father's Day!

We celebrated with a day of truly legendary sloth, concluded with a dinner of baked chicken, yellow squash, quinoa, and the pictured peach-blueberry cobbler for dessert. My spouse took some video footage of me actually licking the bowl in which the cobbler had been, but I'll spare you.

Spirituous Liquors

I don't imbibe much, but when mojitos are in the offing I'm always on board. We have a beautiful pot of mint in the backyard, and this is the best use I know of for it.
Today was a mighty day of cooking: potato salad (red potatoes, eggs, red onion, tarragon, olive oil, lemon juice), tabouli (bulgur, tomato, parsley, red onion), chicken set to marinate (olive oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, tarragon, garlic) and dinner: okra, tomato salad, corn on the cob, and tabouli.
I learned the most important thing I know about tabouli a year ago. Hitherto I'd been making it by letting the bulgur soak in boiling water until fluffy and hydrated, then adding the other stuff. Terrible idea! As a result of reading somewhere that the traditional method is to let the bulgur soak up tomato juice, I converted: I put a few tomatoes in the blender, then let the bulgur sit in the resultant sludge for a few hours. Perfection. Flavorful and perfectly textured. I also learned that a food processor is the right tool for the job when it comes to dicing parsley and onion fine enough to complement the bulgur.

Braised Chicken Legs

with brown rice and the season's first okra. I made the okra as I always do: sliced it lengthwise, then sauteed it in a good bit of heat until brown. Yum.

Wahoo!

Two big pieces of it, marinated in soy sauce/sesame oil/lemon juice/garlic then broiled. We had it with brown rice and sauteed escarole.

Tales of a Sky Blue Dress

Well hey now, what's this? It's my first adult garment sewing project in about ten years. I got the cotton fabric at Mood in NYC; the pattern is Vogue 8577. I made a muslin first, which of course seemed totally tedious and unnecessary until I made the first of a series of mistakes that would have been disastrous had I been working with the real fabric the first time around. Don't get me wrong, I made plenty of egregious mistakes on the real thing as well. A partial list: markings that were supposed to wash out and didn't, many hours of labor to produce two right-side pockets, bad buttonhole placements that had to be ripped out. I could go on. Nevertheless, the muslin did indisputably save my bacon when it came to making the armholes. The directions as written result in armholes that droop inches below the braline and protrude out from the shoulder in an unflattering way. Because I had the muslin I was able to figure out a better answer (bias tape right up against the bottom of the armscye, moving inward to take off an inch and a half of the shoulder width at each side). Overall, I am pleased; it fits, the color is nice, and the mistakes really only show to me. I was amazed at how different sewing is from knitting. I have so much less experience as a sewer that it's hard to tell how different I'll eventually find them, but for now it's wonderful to have such a distinct fiber vista opening up to me.

Lamb Chops

broiled, with brown rice and super delicious green beans. Listen, I know, I'm as bored by this pictureless blog as you are. The thing is, posting pictures entails my remembering to bring my camera to work, and that, apparently, is just a leetle more than I can manage. But either I'll remember or I'll once again be blessed with home wifi, and then this long drought will be over, I promise.

Cheddar-Leek Omelette

with corn on the cob (yucky) and kale chips.

Mackerel

with brown rice and cabbage/carrot coleslaw. I swear I'll get a picture or two on this blog before too long. Wifi still nowhere in sight.

Scrambled Eggs

with chives and cilantro, roasted red potatoes, and salad.

Sockeye Salmon

which I overcooked, with quinoa, crispy kale chips, and salad. Do you know about kale chips? You tear up the fresh kale (without the stems), toss it with olive oil, then spread it on a baking sheet and stick it in a 500 degree oven for 5 minutes. Then you salt and eat every last piece because they're so good.

Lamb Chops

broiled, with green and yellow beans (steamed), and a mixture of leftover quinoa and brown rice. Something about the hot dustbowl that is my current environment has really shut down my desire to cook.

Steelhead Trout

grilled, with quinoa and salad. Steelhead is one of those things that is so good my principles crumble before it. It is farmed; I buy it anyway.

Skirt steak, mahi, eggs

rice, quinoa, potatoes, garlic, salad, cucumbers, tomatoes. And more! Oh wifi, just wait until you are once again mine.