Category Archives: baking

June Dinner Party Recipes!

For those who have asked, and for those who might be interested, here are the links to the recipes I used for this month’s dinner party.

  • Sicilian Eggplant-Pine Nut Caponata
    • Quite delicious, though a bit sweeter than I would have expected. Also, next time I’ll try to remember the extra green pepper that I accidentally put the gazpacho instead!
  • Pretzel Bites
    • The recipe calls for pretzel rods but we cut them up into bite-size pieces. They came out more chewy than crisp – clearly we need to work on technique.
  • Grilled Gazpacho
    • This was a really great recipe. The grilling is a bit of a pain, but really adds to the flavor. Also, if you double the recipe it will take three rounds of processing the a large blender.
  • Baked Eggs
    • I made the recipe as stated, but also made a filling with potato, bacon, and thyme. Make sure to watch these closely and pull them out on the early side because it’s easy to cook the eggs to a hard-set yolk.
  • Fancy Salad
    • Simply delicious. I would absolutely make this again!
  • Asian Crispy Caramel Skewers
    • Yum. Just yum.
  • Grilled Curry Chicken Kebabs
    • Ditto!
  • Chicken Skewers with Penzey’s Ozark Chicken Seasoning
  • Chocolate Chip Cookies with PB2 Powdered Peanut Butter
    • Dan modified this recipe to use a little less chocolate chips, substituting in some additional PB2 chocolate-peanut butter powder.

As I noted earlier, while I wish we could throw the big blow-out parties we used to, smaller recurring dinner parties are much more manageable and will go a long way in allowing us to welcome our friends into our home without stressing me out too much. If we missed you this month, we’ll be doing may more dinners like these, for sure!

This is a low-activity weekend? I’m not doing it right.

I needed a laid-back weekend, and that’s exactly what I got! Both Saturday and Sunday I was able to just relax each morning, read the news, listen to some nice music, and enjoy my coffee. It was lovely! I even slept in a bit, which is unusual for me. Definitely it was something I needed to reset myself a bit after dragging horribly all last week.

On Saturday takaza and I checked out the site for the MFF Summer Picnic (on June 20 in Prairie Spring Park, Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin). Nice fields, and the shelter is a bit cozy, but I think it will work. We also stopped to watch a neat Jet-Ski freestyle competition, part of the Great Lakes Watercross Tour.

As we were checking out the park, I got a text from fordshepherd. He, baja_hyena, and friends were doing a Wine Country tour and were right up in the area where we had toured last year. After hearing about their experiences at somewhat lackluster wineries, I suggested they check out Peju Winery, which was one of our favorites. Score! It sounds like that wound up being one of the best places they stopped at. Baja was also kind enough to send what sounds like a very tasty white port home with Ford for me, something that was very sweet and unexpected. Thanks again, Baja! 🙂

We capped off the day with a trip with linnaeus and Tom J. to the McHenry Outdoor Theatre to see Up. Wow, what a great movie! I really enjoyed it, and it was an amazing night to be out watching a movie – crisp, a steady breeze fending off the bugs, and a lovely wine and cheese spread to start the evening. Just a great evening. (Also, to paraphrase Nathan Fillion: How to test if your date is a robot. Take them to see Up. If they don’t cry, robot!)

Sunday, we met up with Paul, roho, and genet at BW3’s for lunch. R&G had just arrived from gypsypet and Charlie’s wedding in Charleston, SC. Lydia was on her thirtieth or so hour of being awake and was amusingly loopy 🙂 It was a fun lunch, and a nice spontaneous break in a very mellow day. We did a little shopping afterwards and picked up the new Boom Blox game (whee!). Later in the evening I made a batch of bagels for the week.

Then there’s this morning. Dan left for work at 5:45 AM as usual, but not long after I got a call: his car had died on the way to work. After I showered I drove down and kept him company while waiting for the AAA-summoned tow truck to show up. The truck didn’t show up until 9 AM, but that’s fine – it was nice to have the time with Dan. The car went to the Honda dealer in Gurnee, I dropped Dan off at home, since he can work from home, and came in to work. No diagnosis on the problem yet, but given that it sounded like it the engine was missing and losing power at 2,500 rpm+, I’m thinking it might be a computer issue, or maybe spark plugs, fuel injectors, or something else entirely. On the bright side, Dan’s car needed service anyway, including a fix to a sticky driver’s side door lock. I could have conceivably fixed that myself but taking apart the door looks like a bit of a nightmare.

So that’s about it right now. The rest of the week should be pretty boring, at least it will be once we get Dan’s car back. Fortunately he can commute by train if need be, so that makes the lack of a car somewhat less critical. Hope everyone has a great week!

EDIT: Sounds like the problem is the VTEC oil pressure switch, something that is apparently a common problem in 2003 Elements. It’s about a $250 fix, which isn’t too bad considering that (routine maintenance notwithstanding) Dan’s car hasn’t required any major work in years.

You Don’t Have a WHAT?

So I was thinking this morning about a recipe I’m going to be working on tonight and I was reminded that one of the steps calls for microwaving something. Well, that’s a problem. See, we don’t own a microwave. We haven’t owned one since, um, I lived in Joliet, I think. The main reason is that I’ve never really had much need of one. I used it primarily to melt butter (which takes only a hair longer on the stove) and to boil water (which takes about as long as the electric kettle we have). I’m vastly amused because our lack of this appliance seems to boggle many of our friends.

A secondary reason is that, for me personally, having a microwave encourages lazy cooking. Call it a remnant from my chemist father (“I work with chemicals all day long, I don’t want to eat them, too!”) – I tend to avoid processed food whenever possible, which means steering clear of frozen dinners, meals in can or boxes, and that sort of thing. Sure, it took me an hour and a half to make chicken and dumplings last night when I could have just picked up a package of Swanson Frozen Chicken and Dumplings and microwaved it in five minutes or less. The big difference to me is that first, there is a sense of pride of having Made Something, and second, my dinner was actually (for me) edible.

Please don’t take this as a condemnation of how others eat and cook, though – this is what works for me. I know that I’m lucky to have the time and knowledge to cook like this. One of the big influences on my tastes is the couple of years my parents spent living in France, where their refrigerator was the size of a tall dorm fridge and it was the norm to go grocery shopping every day for the freshest meat and produce. I certainly don’t have the inclination to shop every day, but I do only tend to shop for three or four days at a time.

Anyway, enough of that little digression. Oh, the recipe that I’m working on tonight? Dulce de Leche Cake (from Cook’s Country magazine). Basically, you make a sturdier-than-usual sponge cake (using whole eggs instead of just whites), poke holes into it and pour a Dulce de Leche mixture over it and let it soak for 3-24 hours, then frost with a whipped cream frosting. The recipe calls for the Dulce de Leche mixture (a combination of sweetened condensed milk, evaporated milk, heavy cream, and vanilla) to be microwaved for several minutes to cook it. Fortunately, they offer an alternative where you pour the mixture into a pie plate, put it in a roasting pan and pour boiling water around it, and cook it in the oven for 40 minutes (and apparently 80 minutes will reduce it to the thick, gooey Dulce de Leche sauce that goes so well over ice cream – we’ll need to try that too!).

Oh, you want to try some of the cake? You’ll need to come to Game Night, then 🙂

Half of a Useful Weekend

Hmm. Sox tonight, but also Amazing Race. Good thing we have Tivo…

So. The weekend. Saturday was a busy day for us. Takaza got up early (10 AM!) and we made the drive that I know so well up to my employer for the biannual Open House. It was pretty neat, actually – Dan got to see some of what goes into manufacturing tablets and capsules and hopefully got a little better insight into what I’m supposed to be doing up here every day. After the tour I showed up for my timeslot for the department “entertainment booth”, which is to say a toy 4-foot-tall basketball hoop in the middle of a hallway. Compared to other departments (DDR setup with full amp and mixing board, baseball with radar gun, free popcorn) we looked pretty crappy, but the kids seemed to like it when they made a took a couple of shots and got a free trinket. As a nice surprise, on Monday my supervisor instructed me to add the two hours we were there to my timecard, so that was a nice little bit of overtime.

That evening, we picked up unclevlad and gave him a ride to the party in honor of some-event-in-his-life-which-is-not-his-birthday, held at
emrldgirrl‘s place. The party was fun, and I had a good time even though I’ll admit I spent the majority of the evening hiding on the balcony. I don’t want anyone to think this is a criticism of the party, which was fabulous – it’s just that the loud music got to me a bit. That’s my own personal peeve, though; everyone else seemed to be having a good time, so hey – it’s all good. We headed out relatively early at 11 PM, just before the serious drinking started, I’m told 🙂 The blueberry cobbler I made seemed to go over well, so that was good.

Sunday? Well, I had all of the great things I wanted to do on Sunday. In reality, we relaxed around the house and generally were lazy. I did make some peanut butter cookies, which were quite tasty, and made dinner. Dan printed up some Registration postcards for me and was kind enough to grab them on Monday morning on his way to work, then cut them to size, stamp them, and mail them for me. I have the bestest husband!

This week should be a lot less hectic than the last. Datahawk is couch-surfing with us because it works out well for her work schedule; four people living in Linnaeus’ apartment may get a bit close, but I think we can work it out, plus it’s always a pleasure to see her (occasionally) smiling face 😉 On Thursday Dan and I are having dinner with Chouette to celebrate her putting MFF Programming to bed – well, theoretically, anyway. And there’s always more work to do for MFF…