May Postmortum

So I thought having a baby would mean I cook less - but I guess that's stupid, less going out means more cooking at home.

I have made a routine of making pizza dough and pasta every week.  I guess I'm done for the most part with ridiculous techniques, and really just focus on doing things well; and that's what you need; cease-less practice.   Not sure if it matters - lately I've been either experiencing a blandness in lots of my cooking; other times I get only harsh flavors.

All of the sudden we're on a schedule - Pizza Monday, Pasta Thursday, Asian on Friday, Grill on Saturday....when did this place turn into a cafeteria?

Maybe the new routine will mean I stop keeping track of all this, I'm starting to not have the time anyway...same thing every week, seasonal ingredients; weak cooking skills....no need to mark it down.

April Postmortem

So Gretchen had the baby - and we'll see how that changes what I'm cooking.  Already I find myself using the weekends to prepare for faster weeknight dinners.  Pizza and pasta dough gets made on Sunday, bread already got made once every week or two, I'm doing a lot more cooking beans, grains and greens ahead of time; you know all of those stupid hints for busy moms....I'm using them.

Well - I'd like to think that I'm just working more like a restaurant - they have all of that stuff prepped before service too, don't they?  A lot of it is just assembly.

March Postmortem

My projects turned out okay (corned beef) and bad (all sausages), and by then end of the month my everyday cooking had become over-seasoned and repetitious.

Hopefully April is better - but I don't think I'll be doing much cooking.

Februrary Postmortum

Everything keeps getting busier and busier.  Just want to get everything down so I can make comments later.

Made dinner for friends one last time before we have the baby - went sort of Asian.  I don't think I could make traditional or authentic Asian food, but when considering how to handle the root vegetables available right now, I thought about the ingredients and flavors I really like.  Plus - Korea really has a climate close to ours, and we can get pretty good Korean ingredients in our neighbor hood so it just kind of made sense.

January Postmortum

I told myself I wasn't going to post anymore - there's enough to do around here; but I keep losing track of what I've worked on.

A lot's happened since the beginning of 2011 - our stove broke completely, turning into a fire hazard; so that lead to a week of microwave/toaster oven cooking, and an unexpected cost.

The winter CSA is always a challenge - rutabaga are only one of two vegetables I really don't enjoy, spaghetti squash being the other.  I'm not giving up on either, there's got to be a way to make them better.

I'm just going to list what I can remember cooking and fill in as I go.

Weekend Evaluations: 'All I Want to Do is Drink Beer for Breakfast'

Things at work are crazy - no time for long winded explanations; but it's bothering me that I'm not keeping track.  So here are the last two weeks in one post.

Got the first winter share, all root vegetables all the time.  The list of what's included looks short, but we always get a lot of everything.

Weekend Evaluation: Greatest of All Time (aka Stop Saying 'Low and Slow')

We went out for lunch on Saturday (Red Hook Lobster Pound....this was fine), and dinner on Sunday (Paulie Gee's - always good - my favorite crust texture).  So not a lot going on here in terms of volume. 

Finally tackled the goat shoulder in the freezer. Next up: rabbit, and another ham.

Gretchen decided goat is gross- although she pretty much eats anything else; which to me makes no sense.  First of all, I'm pretty sure she's had it when I've gotten it out - and I mean what's the difference really. 

In fact goat is the world's most consumed meat. Plus, it tastes pretty much like lamb or mutton - and she likes lamb in general.

So I had to come up with some way to break it into portions so I could handle eating it; but I still wanted to roast some of it.  It did take forever to cook; but that's my fault.

Last regular CSA of the year this week - on to all root vegetables all of the time.

Weekend Evaluation: the long weekend was not long enough

The past couple of years we've had people over for Gretchen's birthday.  I usually try to take a dish or ingredient that she's really liked over the past year and put some kind of creative spin on it.  This time I started with the short rib croquette and worked backwards, and went with a German-leaning menu again (after the Alsatian/Germanic food last year: tarte flambe/sweet potato spaetzle).

Although I wanted the food to be good, I also really want to make sure I can hang out when we have friends over.  The past couple of times we've had people over I feel like I spend too much time in the kitchen, and I think from that standpoint dinner was a success. 

The food was okay, definitely not great, but scaling to larger quantities is not something I'm used to.  So to feel like things weren't horrible and my planning was good; it went okay.


Since we had all week off, I'm including two weekends, I just didn't have time to finish the post last week.  We're also coming up on the end of the normal CSA share - the final share is this week- and then the winter share starts.  Get ready for rutabaga.

Weekend Evaluation: This Guy's Got Like...a Plan

It seemed like a pretty relaxed weekend for cooking, even though I made sausage.  

That usually becomes a big production, but it seemed to go pretty well. It's all about working in steps; I try to find time before work or after dinner to season or grind/emulsify the meat mixture; not having to do everything all at once is the key to making it not seem like so much work.

Overall, the whole thing ran pretty efficiently; dinners weren't outstanding but okay.  How's that for a compelling read....6 out of 10....boring. 

Weekend Evaluation: Getting a Little Bright In Here

I retested the recipes for Gretchen's birthday, and they worked out a bit better from a construction standpoint.  I'll be doing more prep next weekend.  We went out to dinner on Sunday night, so I didn't do a lot of cooking last weekend.  I expect this coming weekend, I'll be working on a lot.

Airing of Grievences: The Myth of High Greenmarket Prices

This dude is an idiot – why would you pay $7 for some radishes? 

'I'd shop at the farmer's market, but everything is too expensive!' is the classic excuse that people use to justify going to the supermarket.

Just like anything else you need to look at your options.  I understand that the green market has some stands that rip you off (more often at Union Square and Grand Army), but there are plenty of farms that offer better than supermarket prices; and that’s supposed to be the one advantage of a supermarket.  

Here are some examples (after the break):

Weekend Evaluation: I knew it would be bad, I did not know it would be this bad

We're having people over for Gretchen's birthday in a couple weeks.  For her birthday the challenge is to frame a dish, or flavors, she likes in a new way. Last year's dinner was tarte flambee and a brown butter spaetzle dish, which was more or less a take on the farmer cheese/noodle thing she's all about. This year is still kind of coming together, but I'm starting to get ready.  

So the next few weekends will be a combination of testing and prep work.  

Weekend Evaluation: 50% More Ingredients

It was another slow weekend from a cooking standpoint.  We ate at a friend's house on Saturday, where I was pretty interested to see the recent chicken pot pie recipe from Cook's Illustrated being made.  I have to say the crumble top was really good - a smart recipe, that was well executed.

Gretchen brought cake to dinner, so she was in the kitchen a bit too. The Hazelnut cake she made has been really successful both times she's made it.  My cooking this week - a little less successful.  I've been falling into a trap of too many things on the plate; and my rut of having everything stacked lately has been another rut, that's caused bad results.

Weekend Evaluation: Waiting for the Other Hoof to Drop

It was a quiet week cooking wise.  We had a project on our hands around the house - painting the bathroom- so I didn't want to be worrying about cooking at the same time.  Plus we went out to dinner on Sunday since it was nice out, part of our attempt to get out while we can.

Weekend Evaluation: 0 for 3

Everything from Buffalo were losers this weekend - the Bills, the Sabres, my wings.  

We haven't even gotten to Knick season and I'm sick of losing; maybe I can thank the Mets for that. At least the New York City doesn't really have a signature food I can screw up - maybe a knish? pizza?  I've definitely screwed up pizza before...

Weekend Evaluation - At least the Bills weren't the only thing that got smoked this Sunday.

This weekend the Buffalo Bills reminded me of how I started trying to cook more intricate foods.  When I first moved to New York, I used to go watch Bills games at a bar, or a friends house, but as the years of unwatchable, losing football dragged on, I started questioning why I was spending Sunday afternoons going out of my way to pay attention.

I finally decided I would just listen to games while I worked on some other projects; that turned into making dinner more and more labor intensive. This week the game was on TV here - but true to form, the Bills never showed up, so by the third quarter I was doing something else.

On a side note- why are Buffalo fans so outraged by this year's team - did they do anything to make you think they'd be any better than the past 10 years?

Went to the smoker two weeks in a row, it just worked out that way. 

Weekend Evaluation: I'd Already Rather Be Bow Hunting

I've been working on prepping a lot of things for the freezer - this weekend was more sausages.  As is typical, I totally got depressed about all of the projects on Sunday night, and went into my typical bullshit routine of  'I'll never be good at anything if I can't do it that often...why do I spend 50 hours a week at work when I could be doing something I care about' - like I'm the only person to ever think that they don't care about their job.  I made my office-working bed, now I have to lie in it.  Besides everybody knows food service workers don't get paid anything.

At least the CSA is starting to pick up again in volume - and the farm gave some explanation about what happened this summer.  I guess they lost zucchini, eggplant, cucumbers, lettuce, and green bean crops to disease and drought.  Last year the rain ruined everything, now it was drought.

Weekend Evaluation: Summer's Greatest Hits

In my beer-centered calendar, once Oktoberfest starts, summer is officially over. We had Sauerbraten, choucroute garni, and speatzle for dinner, followed by beer and chocolates on Sunday night; safe to say summer is over.

It's ok - After this weekend I'm finally ready to move on - the corn is starting to look old, the eggplant are tasting a little bitter.

Weekend Evaluation: Do you know how much 15 pounds of ravoli costs?

Continued to get ready for winter - prepping tomatoes.  I gave up supermarket tomatoes after reading the article in gourmet about the near slave labor conditions in Florida; and this year I'm giving up on canned tomatoes (BPA); so I decided to freeze a bunch this year.

Weekend Wrap-Up (Sept 4-6 & Sept 11-12)

Lard Rendering and Tomatoes Dehydrating

Since it's still technically summer, we're still busy, so I'm combining two weekends into this one post.