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.

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: This is the Largest Freezer I Could Afford

Depressing to think about, but I saw 4 brands of pumpkin beers show up at the supermarket this week.  First of all - the pumpkin beer thing is out of control, there are only like 3 that are any good and get the balance of squash and spice right - that's beside the point. 

It's too soon, I'm not ready for summer to end.

Now I have to make stock, render fat, can tomatoes...soon you won't be able to let the ingredients do all the work; you'll have to do something to make them better

At least it's not February, that's about as horrible as it gets; I'm fearing the winter, with all of the rutabega and potatoes that come with it.  It's nice when those are an option in the late fall and early winter - but it's not funny anymore after three months of root vegetables and winter squash.

I guess it's just time to get ready for winter, while cramming as much corn, zucchini, eggplant as possible in to my feed hole.  Soon we won't have the option until next July.