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.

Weekend Wrap-Up (May 22-23)

Pig Trotter Terrine

This weekend was a quiet food-weekend in our house. It was almost disastrous on a major level- our oven stopped working on Sunday. Tom was braising a pig foot in the oven, when it suddenly shut off and the digital display went black. I expected a melt-down of epic proportions, but Tom shocked me and didn't seem to mind too much. The burners on the stove still worked, so maybe that helped ease the situation. Tom had been planning to bake bread, but instead had to turn the dough into English muffins, since they're cooked on a griddle. I guess when life hands you a broken oven, you turn it into English muffins.

(Note: we were able to get the oven working several hours later. All we had to do was unplug it and plug it back in, and it worked! It's amazing how many things can be fixed by unplugging it, pulling a battery, or just whacking it really hard.)

Welcome to my blog!

My husband, Tom, is kind of obsessed with food and cooking. He reads books and magazines about food, is online for hours reading blogs and websites devoted to food, watches tv shows about food, and has recently taken a few cooking classes. He talks about food, thinks about food, and even wakes up in the middle of the night after dreaming of food. The dude likes food.

I like food, too (who doesn't?), but it doesn't control my life like it does Tom's. We plan our weekends around his 'food projects.' If I want to use the oven to bake cookies, I have to clear it with him to make sure he's not planning to smoke meat that day. After I've made the cookies, I just eat them and enjoy them. That is not the case with Tom, who tends to discuss (obsess over?) a meal for hours- sometimes days- after it's been eaten.

Tom's interest in cooking started when he realized it was just as easy (and tastier) to make his own food instead of making something frozen or out of a box. Why use a pancake mix when you've already got flour, salt and baking powder in the cupboard?

We live in New York City, which has some of the greatest restaurants in the world, a perk we try to take advantage of. Eating some of the most amazing food on the planet at these restaurants has also inspired him.

This interest in cooking, and Tom's skills, have blossomed over the years. He started out simple, making dishes like roasted chicken with pan sauce, but lately he's been getting into making 'fancier' stuff like terrines, sausages, duck confits, and even rendering fat to make lard. I've had all sorts of gross things in my refrigerator- jars of animal intestines (for sausage casings- they are still in there), pig hearts, chicken feet, pork cheeks, lamb necks, and a hunk of pig skin with hair and the USDA stamp right there in your face.

Everytime he orders meat from our CSA vendor I worry what we'll end up getting. A whole bone-in ham to put in our already stuffed freezer? A cow heart? More chicken feet? They're all coming soon.