Family and Food

The holidays are a time for thinking about family and food, so here's a bit of each from my corner of the world. Both pictures were taken when Jordan, Jacob and I visited the Houston Alters right after Thanksgiving. The top one shows cousins Jacob, Morgan and Kegan. The Houston kids were on their way to a football game (don't ask which team but they had field passes and it was a big day) and Jordan, Jacob, and I were headed  home but Aunt Lisa kindly gave Jacob an extra football shirt so he'd "match." Below, Morgan and I were celebrating completion of the Sponge Bob floor puzzle in front of us, in spite of "help" from Jacob, who also took credit for finishing the puzzle. Note the late wearing of Halloween costumes!
The food part of this post is less about the holidays, except that I stayed up way too late last night thumbing through the cookbook John and Cindy gave me, The Silver Spoon. Probably not much I'll cook over the holidays but lots that I will fix for company during the coming year. Sometimes I have to find the right people who will eat things with me--like anchovies and carpaccio. There are great suggestions for carpaccio in the book. Wonderful lamb recipes and plenty for chicken, chapters on antipasto (one of my favorite ways to entertain), all kinds of fish, met and variety meats--tongue (I love a good smoked tongue sandwich but who else will eat that?), kidneys--I was raised eating sauteed kidneys with bacon and ketchup but last time I inquired you can't buy lamb kidneys in a quantity smaller than a case. I just wanted two to see if I still like them. But kidneys with mustard, kidneys in Bordeux--I'd love to try. Some recipes I probably will try: salmon tartare, smoked salmon terrine, roast leg of lamb in an herb crust. Roman spring lamb which looks like a stew rather than a roast, lots of the sausage recipes, hot veal in tuna sauce and cold veal in tuna sauce, chicken, anchovy and caper roulades--I could go on and on with recipes that caught my eye. There's a whole section on cooking mutton, which I thought you only cooked by mistake when you thought you were getting lamb. I notice that this cookbook always calls for whole salted anchovies--I've never used anything but canned and am wondering if Central Market has the whole ones. For canned tuna, it always specifies in oil (olive oil I presume) but I religiously use albacore in water. Hmmm, some adjusting to do.
Meantime my holiday cooking is much more mundane. Tonight I made a ham terrine for Saturday's no-tree Tree Trimming party. Got it all put together and in the fridge when I realized I'd left the butter in the microwave to soften; had to get it all out, blend in the butter, repack the terrine in the refrigerator container, and rewash the dishes. Sometimes I wish I'd keep my wits about me when I'm cooking. Tomorrow I'll make chili/cheese and bourbon hot dogs, both family favorites for years.
Speaking of food, I actually lost .7 lbs this week--but I worked at it. Until I entered the results in Weight Watchers, I thought I'd gained and said the heck with it, fixed hot dogs and a fried potato for supper. Turned out not to be bad--stayed under points for the day and had a piece of chocolate to boot.

So many recipes, so little time

Tonight I was leafing through my file of "Entrees Tried," looking for my tried-and-true directions (mostly time per lb.) for roasting a turkey. (Jean reminded me by phone that it will take a lot longer at 9500 feet in Breckenridge.) But I found lots of things that made me think, "Oh, I haven't tried that in a while." One was Welsh rarebit made with stout--delicious! Another was my wine casserole that I always called Judy's Sloppy Joe. And there were others--sometimes it makes me long for the days when I cooked for five of us and could use those recipes and many more over and over. You just don't cook things like that for one.
So what did I cook for one tonight? I kept eyeing the leftover roast chicken in the fridge, but I wasn't sure what to do with it. Besides, I keep remembering that Christian found the cat nibbling at it. But then I remembered I had mushrooms and a zucchini, so I sliced some of the zucchini, drizzled it with olive oil and Parmesan (the good grated parmegiano Reggiano) and broiled it--found when I ate it I should have added salt, so rushed back to the kitchen for a pinch of Kosher salt. I wiped the mushrooms with a wet paper towel--my mom used to douse them in salt water and she did get a lot of dirt out, but I have since been convinced by those who know more than I do that mushrooms absorb a lot of the salty water. So I wipe them. Sliced them and sauteed in a mix of butter and olive oil, sprinkled on a bit of Worcestershire and poured them over toast. Mom used to serve both sauteed mushrooms and steamed asparagus on buttered toast--I've since been told that's very British. But it was a satisfying meal for a cold evening--and cold it is, down to 23 tonight. It's been cold for days, and I'm tired of it, but I know the rest of the country is really in blizzard conditions so I won't complain too much. Besides, by Saturday it is predicted to be in the 60s Here's hoping.
The other thing that made me think I want to cook so many dishes is a cookbook. This afternoon, there was an Amazon box on my doorstep, and I opened it--I order from them all the time, so couldn't remember what I'd ordered, but it was something I hadn't ordered, a Christmas present from John and Cindy: The Silver Spoon Italian cookbook, a humongous book of 1264 pages and who knows how many categories of food. The ribbon place mark opened the book to the chapter on anchovies. Now I love anchovies--lots of people don't--but there are wonderful recipes for frying, serving au gratin, with truffles, and layered with potatoes. Fortunately I have neighbors who also love anchovies. Last Sunday I found a bit of salad dressing in a jar in the fridge and decided to use it for supper, since Jay was coming and he doesn't like Jordan's traditional blue cheese dressing. The minute I poured the dressing on I smelled anchovies and thought, "Oh, oh!" Everyone else commented at the dinner table that the dressing smelled of anchovies, and Christian said I'd have to go back to my other dressings. It was a recipe Sue had given me, but it may have gotten a bit stronger sitting in the fridge. Not much salad was eaten that night, and I threw away about a head of lettuce. Hurts my Scottish soul at the price of leaf lettuce these days!
More about the recipes I find in The Silver Spoon to come. I'm glancing now at a chapter on shad--I'm not even sure what shad is, except that it's a fish.
Some days I really wish I could run a restaurant to fix all these things but talk about a foolish pipe dream! Neither my bank account nor my feet would hold out.