Grab It & Growl, April 27, 2016

I was on my own for dinner last night, except I forgot that fact until the very last minute. My sweet wife was off to dinner at Mulefoot Gastropub, eating their stellar pork, and there I was, hanging out, wondering when she was going to be home and what we were having for dinner. Then, my brain kicked in and I remembered listening to her make the reservation. Laughing at myself forgetting, I decided to have a wee bowl of Peanut Butter Captain Crunch to tide me over while I decided what to have for dinner. Of course, after I ate that, I wasn't hungry for real food. Realizing I'd basically had dessert for dinner, I pulled out some cucumber slices and carrot and celery sticks to try to balance it out. By 10:30, when Jeannene got home, my tummy was rumbling for some protein, but I was immersed in conversation with Bubbles, my 21-year-old's girlfriend, so I didn't bother. I was pretty dang hungry when I woke up this morning, I'll tell you! The wife's got a couple work trips planned and I am making very deliberate menu plans for those nights! Otherwise, I might succumb again to the lures of a weird, yummy, not-good-for-me "dinner" again!

Pizza & Wings, April 26, 2016

My wife has claimed all the meal nights as her own for the rest of the week, as Pie and Bubbles will be having dinner with us every night before their big move to Alaska on Friday. Last night, she called me and said, "I'm bringing home restaurant food." I said, "Okay, from where?" She responded, "I don't know," and it was a mystery until she texted and said, "Set the table. I'm bringing pizza and wings." It's a pretty safe bet that she'll want pizza and wings at some point or another, usually not spaced terribly far apart. This time, she chose G's in Lake Orion. We've enjoyed the wings there several times and often refer to it as, "that place with the good wings," rather than by its name.

On this occasion, the wings lived up to our previous experience of them as completely yummy. I like their blue cheese dip a lot, too. Jeannene got both hot and mild wings and I couldn't decide which I liked better. I did decide that I don't really like their pizza much. She'd gotten a big pizza with just cheese on half and pepperoni on the other half. She also got a smaller Mexican pizza, which was stuffed and, really, was much more like a casserole inside a slice than anything else. It was just too much, the thickness of 3 or 4 slices of pizza, filled with black beans, corn, ground beef, and other good stuff, but a little bland for me. Had they thrown some of that stuff on top of a regular slice, I might have liked it better. I've got nothing against deep-dish pizza, by any means, but this just didn't work for me.

On the other hand, the pickle chips, even though not as piping hot by the time we ate them as I like them, were very tasty. I thought about adding some veggies or salad to the mix, but decided just to be lazy. As my Pittsburgh Diva friends always say of poor eating choices, "Call it a vegetable and move on." Today, it's grapefruit for my morning snack and a beautiful salad for lunch. I also have veggies & dip for an afternoon snack. We shall see what dinner brings!

Brisket, April 25, 2016

Since the kids are moving away at the end of the week, I expect most of our dinners will be with them---and y'all should have seen Pie devour the fruit kugel I made last night! We weren't sure the kids, who both tend to like very basic food, would like last night's dinner, which was brisket, fruit kugel, tzimmes, and a romaine salad. Jeannene was very careful, when asked what those dark things in with the carrots were, to avoid the word "prune," but she wasn't being quite accurate when she told Bubbles they were a kind of date. I supplied, "Plums! They're a kind of plum!" I didn't notice whether or not she ate them. She said her favorite thing was the meat, but Pie said he really liked "the sweet noodles," and proceeded to go back for two more giant helpings. It wasn't the best kugel I've ever had, but I liked it pretty well, myself. I am not a big fan of sweet cooked carrots, but this version was better than any other I've had. They were a bit too tart for Jeannene and Pie, who are the big sweet carrot people of the family. I like my regular brisket recipe better, but this was also quite good and had the added bonus of not requiring my presence in the house during the long cook time.

Slow Cooker Brisket

1 onion, sliced

3 cloves garlic, smashed

3-4 lb. brisket, excess fat trimmed

Salt & pepper

32 oz. beef broth

Place onions and garlic in slow cooker. Season brisket with salt and pepper. Place atop onions, fat-side up. Add broth. Cover and cook on high 6-7 hours, until tender. Serves 4-6.

Fruit Kugel

8 oz. egg noodles, cooked and drained

2 tbsp. butter, melted (this can be omitted)

2 eggs, beaten

A small handful of raisins (I like golden raisins for this dish)

7 oz. cinnamon applesauce (cinnamon optional, but delicious)

7 oz. crushed pineapple

1 jar apricot preserves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toss noodles with butter. Mix eggs with fruit. Stir gently into noodles. Turn noodles into a greased 8x8 baking dish. Spread the preserves over the top (it helps to microwave them for about 30 seconds before spreading). Bake about 45 minutes. Serves 4-6

Carrot Tzimmes

1 1/2 c. tangerine juice (or use o.j., if you like---I had tangerine on hand)

1 lb. sliced carrots

1/2 c. prunes

3 tbsp. honey

Heat juice on medium heat and add carrots. Cover and cook 1/2 hour. Add prunes and cook, covered,  another half hour. Stir in honey just before serving. Serves 4-6. 

Filet Mignon, April 24, 2016

Our middle child and his girlfriend are flying off into the wild blue yonder of Alaska this Friday to make a new life together there. They've lived in our area for the last couple years and we've gotten into the habit of having a special Sunday Dinner with them most weeks. Yesterday marked the final Sunday Dinner of this current era, so my wife wanted to make it special. She made a gorgeous set of filets, along with shrimp cocktail in the same dishes her dad used for his shrimp cocktail. She also did a package of Bob Evans au gratin potatoes, which we don't really recommend. Hey, ya gotta try stuff, right? Their mashed potatoes are fine, but these were more like cheesy mashed potatoes than anything.

I offered to make some Chesapeake cole slaw (I hate cole slaw---the sweetness of it and the mayo mixed with cabbage is just not my thing---I do like vinegary slaws with no creamy element and just a smidge of sugar, but Jeannene likes regular slaw a lot and never gets it) and a pan of sautéed kale to round out the meal. Jeannene said the slaw was great, for folks who like that sort of thing, and we all loved the kale. For that, I just cut a bunch of kale in chiffonade and sautéed it in olive oil with garlic, shallots, capers, salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon juice until it was wilted & tender.

Chesapeake Slaw

3/4 c. plain Greek yogurt

3/4 c. mayo

1 tbsp. lemon juice

1 tbsp. Dijon mustard

1 tbsp. sugar

2 tsp. Old Bay seasoning (or similar)

A pinch of salt

A good grinding of pepper

1 package cole slaw mix (or 16 oz. shredded cabbage & carrots)

1/2 red onion, chopped

Whisk together everything but vegetables. Fold everything together. Ideally, allow to rest in the fridge for at least an hour----but we served it right away & it was just fine. Serves 8-10.

Shepherd's Pie, April 23, 2016

Last night was my sweetie's night to choose. She's been hungry for the frozen shepherd's pie (Blake's?) we picked up a couple weeks ago, so she heated that, along with some sausages we bought at a meat shop up in Frankenmuth and some leftover whole grain bread with seeds. The shepherd's pie was tasty, with a flavor that reminded me of something I ate as a kid.

Casa Real, April 22, 2016

Jeannene came home from work last night and was bushed, so she suggested we eat either at Casa Real or "that G place that looks like a barn." I figured since Casa Real had come up as a choice for the second time in as many days, she was probably pretty hungry for it. So, I headed there. We were about to be seated when a young man came up to the hostess and told her not to seat us where we were headed because there were just two of us and they might need the space. After some confusion over where they could offer us a booth, during which my wife gamely held our wee boy in his heavy carseat, they finally decided and led us to be seated. They seemed to grudge us the large booth we'd been given, even though I offered to wait a little longer for the smaller booth near us to be bused. The hostess said she had no idea when it would be bused, so we could just sit in the large booth. That turned out to be a good call, since it wasn't bused the entire time we were there and it was not at all crowded, with none of the big groups the young man had worried would arrive. Our waitress was very good and I was glad we'd ended up in her section.

We ordered some queso to go with the chips and salsa they brought to the table. It's a smidge bland there for my taste, but I find their salsa more than flavorful enough to make up for that. For my meal, I got a combo plate of nachos with beans, chicken, and ground beef (which sounded odd, but which I thought could be good), two taquitos (one beef, one chicken), and a pork tamale. I also ordered refried beans on the side, to share with Jeannene, who'd gotten a chicken fajita quesadilla, which was yummy.

Our waitress warned us that it might take a bit, as they were down a person in the kitchen. The time stretched and stretched. Jeannene joked, "When she said they were down a person in the kitchen, she didn't say that only left them with one." That may have been true, for all we know. When my plate finally arrived, it looked like a big plate of shredded lettuce. It was hard even to tell what food was underneath. I ended up really not liking the chicken, which seemed not to have been flavored at all. Blah! The beef taquito was good, though, and the tamale was very flavorful. Their beans are also quite good.

Shrimp Creole, April 21, 2016

Jeannene's been on kind of a shrimp strike for several years now. She will, on rare occasions, eat it. She loves a friend's shrimp cocktail when he brings it to game night potlucks and she loves it when I make my grandmom's shrimp in beer. She certainly enjoyed the shrimp we had in Savannah last summer. However, other than that, she has avoided it since getting undercooked shrimp two weeks in a row at restaurants.

I decided to make Shrimp Creole, though, after finding it in John T. Edge's wonderful Southern cookbook, A Gracious Plenty. I figured I could just pull some fish out of the freezer for her, if she didn't want the shrimp, but she ended up really loving it. I served it with jasmine rice and a green salad.

The recipe originated with the Louisiana Farm Bureau women of Baton Rouge. I made the recipe almost as they gave it and would make modifications next time. I found it skimpy on garlic & shrimp.  I also couldn't believe they recommended cooking shrimp for 10 minutes. My modified recipe would look like this:

Shrimp Creole

1-2 tbsp. butter or olive oil

1/2 tsp. paprika

1 onion, chopped

1 green pepper, chopped

3 cloves garlic, minced

14 oz. can stewed tomatoes

Salt & pepper

2 cups peeled, deveined shrimp (I chopped it because the shrimp I had were fairly large, but i would use smaller, whole shrimp next time)

Melt the butter in a skillet. Add paprika and stir well. Cook the onion, pepper, and garlic until tender. Add tomatoes, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil and cook 5 minutes. Add shrimp and cook another 3-4 minutes, until pinkened and cooked through. Serves 4-6.