First BBQ of the year

Saturday was the first really beautiful day in Portland of the year. It was finally not only sunny, but warm, too. There's just nothing better than a summery Portland day.

Shawn and I did some record shopping first thing in the morning in honor of Record Store Day and in a great attempt to grab as many limited-edition records as possible. After shopping, a stop at the grocery store, and yard work, we deserved a relaxing evening of BBQ and doing nothing.

The first BBQ of the year. BBQ chicken breasts, potatoes, and homemade biscuits. Since all the good grilling vegetables are still pretty much out of season still, we made frozen green beans on the side.

Happy Spring!

The sandwich...might it be the perfect food?

I've had a few small steaks sitting in my freezer since New Seasons' birthday party when everything went on a mad sale and we stocked up on pretty much every food category, a rare thing in our house. I had no idea what to do with it, until I thought to make steak sandwiches. Duh. I also had some leftover whole grain mustard pan sauce I made with steaks about a month ago in the freezer. So, I bought some ciabatta rolls and a little gorgonzola, threw it all together with caramelized onions. Here's my creation, complete with the quintessential tater tot.
I briefly considered calling this post, "Who needs Pause?" but then I realized that no matter how well I cook, I could never replace Pause.

Anyway, this brings me to the REAL title of this post...might the sandwich be the perfect food? I think so. You've got all major food groups represented. It's delicious, and versatile. Best of all, it comes in one, neat package. Perfection.

Who needs Pillsbury?

Who needs to buy canned biscuits when it takes all of 15 minutes to whip a batch of homemade? The best part is that the ingredients are simple and most people usually have them on hand. I made these delicious biscuits (Test Kitchen, of course) to go with our dinner of oven-fried chicken, mashed potatoes, and mixed vegetables.














Ah, comfort food. It was my first night back after house sitting for two weeks. It's good to be home.

Entertaining in a foreign kitchen

I have been house sitting for the past two weeks while some friends of mine are in Africa. First of all, I'm terribly jealous that they are in AFRICA! Ugh...what a dream. I would love to go there. But I digress. That's a whole other blog.

Friday night I hosted a dinner party for a few of my friends, three of whom have March birthdays. I tried out a recipe for pot au feu, care of the Oregonian's Food Day column. It was a two-part recipe. The first night you make the pot au feu (basically slow-cooked meat with vegetables), and the second day you make another beef-centered recipe; I chose the beef ragu.

I failed to take a picture of the masterpiece that was my pot au feu. The meat turned out perfectly--moist, tender, flavorful. And the vegetables were cooked to perfection. I basically did a mix of root vegetables--carrots, fennel, parsnips, and rutabaga. It was really my last chance to make such a hearty and wintry dinner.

I was amazed at making such a delicious dinner, not only because it was my first time with this recipe, but I also was cooking in someone else's kitchen. My friend's kitchen is absolutely spectacular, though--every cook's dream. Six burner gas stove, lots of counter space and area to move around in, and a beautiful refrigerator to store all your delicious leftovers! But I felt disoriented. It was hard to find what I needed and my flow was off. I guess it doesn't matter what you have, it's more of how you use it. Either way, I got the job done and had many happy, full guests by the end of the night. We topped it all off with a lovely lemon cornmeal cake with blueberry sauce I found on Epicurious.

My beef ragu the next night, though, turned out spectacularly. After my short ribs had been cooking in the liquid for 4 hours the prior night, they got another 2 hours of simmering that evening when I made the sauce. I actually remembered to take a picture of it:

Bon Appetit!

Running around eating and drinking...Or, a weekend with the family

My family came to town this weekend. It is always fun to see them and we always end up laughing a lot, fighting a little, but generally having a good time. We also end up eating and drinking a lot. I come from a foodie family apparently.

Friday night we went to the New Old Lompoc's Fifth Quadrant restaurant. New Old Lompoc was always the go-to restaurant when Shawn or I couldn't decide what we wanted to eat. Good sandwiches, beer, and sides at decent prices. What more could you want? We've gone there less since living down the street from Pause. It's hard to decide to drive even just 2 miles when there's something so good down the street. Anyway, the food was solid as always. I ordered a Gaelic Red (stands in for the Proletariat Red during the winter), but it was not good. I was surprised as I believe I've ordered it before and enjoyed it. Not sure if the beer changed or my taste buds. At least they were kind enough to bring me a replacement pale ale. Little things like that are what make a good restaurant great.

Saturday morning (well, afternoon almost) we finally made it out the door and hit Beaterville for breakfast. Another go-to restaurant. Since it was almost noon, we didn't have any trouble getting a table for 6. Gotta love Portland and its restaurants that serve breakfast all day.

Saturday evening we ordered wings from Fire on the Mountain. This was the first FOTM experience for my family, who have always been able to enjoy good wings from Wing Dome, up in Seattle. I think they were impressed. After quick naps for the boys (ah, mid-afternoon beer drunk), we enjoyed an evening of listening to records, playing darts, and drinking more beer, also known as, a typical Portland evening.

Sunday morning I cooked breakfast for 8 of us, as our friends the Rices were coming over. Nothing fancy, just bacon, eggs, breakfast potatoes and toast. Lucky for me, it was bread week at New Seasons, so all the bread was on sale.

Long weekend, but it was fun to see the family. I probably gained about 5 lbs, especially since I skipped my run yesterday. I hope to have more cooking updates this week as I started my house sitting gig up at my friends' house in the West Hills. They have the most amazing kitchen with a 6-burner gas stove and plenty of room to move around. I have at least one dinner party planned. I will be sure to take some pics!

Irish Soda Bread

Tonight is my first attempt at Irish Soda Bread. I went first to my Test Kitchen baking book, but when I discovered that I didn't have any cream of tartar (I'm in shock), I had to search Epicurious for an alternate recipe. Supposedly, we Americans have mutated the traditional Irish Soda Bread into something unrecognizable to the original. Given my limited supplies tonight, I was quite glad there is nothing to it.

There's something about dipping my hands into white flour that is so comforting. I don't know if it's just that it's soft, or that the touch pulls me back into my earliest days of baking.

But I digress. In the vein of being ill-supplied, I also did not have buttermilk. Luckily I know a quick trick to solve that. Just combine 1 cup of milk and 1 T of lemon juice or white vinegar and let sit at room temperature for 10 minutes. Does the trick. As rare as I buy buttermilk, it comes in handy.

The results are in (yes, I'm typing this REAL time)...and it's good! Well, at least it looks good.

Sunday Dinner

Back when Shawn was working Sundays through Wednesdays, I would get lonely Sunday nights and invite some friends over for dinner. It became a bit of a tradition. And while we haven't continued it consistently since his schedule changed, I do try to make a nice dinner each Sunday night. It's a slow and comforting way to finish our weekend, which has usually been hectic.

Given that tomorrow is St. Patrick's Day, cabbage was on sale at New Seasons. I've never been a fan of corned beef and cabbage, so I took the opportunity to try a cabbage dish I like and have never made: cabbage rolls. I realize there are about 5 million different versions of this simple dish, from about every country in the world. I ended up finding a recipe from Tyler Florence of the Food Network.

I was a little bit mad at myself when I realized that the America's Test Kitchen cookbook has a recipe for cabbage rolls and I forgot to look, but it's probably a good thing for me to branch out once in awhile. I DO wish I had read it at least for the method of how to remove the leaves, as this recipe tells you to remove them prior to boiling the leaves. NOT a good idea. I ruined most of them.

Despite the appearance (this is after I ate most of it and decided to take a picture), they were actually quite tasty. I would've preferred the tomato sauce to be a little more sour, as it mostly tasted like just canned crushed tomatoes (Muir Glen, which are delicious, but a little boring). I will definitely try out the Test Kitchen version next time I attempt this dish. Last night I just served it with the leftover rice from the mixture, which I quickly fried up in the leftover grease from the extra filling I sauteed. That was good, but I think the caramelized onion, green onion, and cheddar mashed red potatoes I made tonight trumped the simple rice.

On an unrelated note, I ran my first race of the year yesterday; the 2009 Shamrock Run. The Shamrock 15k last year was my first long race and I did really well then, averaging a 10:15 mile. that was much better than the 12-minute mile I was training at. I'm proud to say, yesterday I blew that out of the water, finish at 1 hour 31 minutes and 12 seconds--a 9:46 mile. I can't believe I actually finished a long race (going up Terwilliger no less!) in that time. Unfortunately, they give you ankle strap chips for this race. This was the result:
The first shot is of my poor ankle that was tortured by the velcro ankle strap chip they made me wear. The second is of me freezing my butt off 20 minutes after the race when Shawn and I were trying to find each other. At least I finished in one piece!