Pumpkin Carving 2009

If you're going to live in a house with a nice big parking area, why not take full advantage of it when Fall rolls around and Halloween is approaching...and people are ready to carve up some pumpkins?




So on a recent decent day, with a bit of a nip in the air, the pumpkins were gathered and the knives sharpened and the designs determined, and creative mastery of this art form was put to its best test.





And in the end, the true art ended up being found in those who did the cutting, and not what they cut:

Meal No. 38: Chicken with Coronation Sauce

In the numbering of the meals since the new kitchen was completed, this seems like a quick reappearance of a dish. But it's actually been almost a month. I just haven't been cooking nearly enough.

[Editor's Note: There is a pretty good stretch of Roediger House meals in the early days of the new kitchen for which there are no pictures and no blog entries. I still wanted them to be recorded, as long as the blog serves that purpose so well, so I made some efforts both in 2011 and in early 2016 to at least post what those meals were on the proper dates.]

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"Coronation Sauce for Chicken," from 400 Sauces, by Catherine Atkinson, Christine France, and Maggie Mayhew. Hermes House (2006, 2008), p. 155.

Meal No. 37: 2 x 2 Soup

Based on my cousin Betsy's recipe, a wonderful concoction of beef and Rotel and red kidney beans and minestrone soup, made cheesy with hunks of Velveeta mixed in. That's the story of two-by-two soup, and it pleases our palates.

[Editor's Note: There is a pretty good stretch of Roediger House meals in the early days of the new kitchen for which there are no pictures and no blog entries. I still wanted them to be recorded, as long as the blog serves that purpose so well, so I made some efforts both in 2011 and in early 2016 to at least post what those meals were on the proper dates.]

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"2 x 2 Soup," from various sources.

Shining Movie Night

October seemed to beg for a good horror movie, and I finally let myself be talked into having a movie night in the cold, serious chill of mid-October. The selection: Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. People bundled up pretty well, and we managed to make it through what's actually kind of a long film (although there were portions of the evening when people slipped off into the kitchen to hang out). By the time the film wrapped up, AccuWeather was reporting that it was a bone-chilling 43 degrees. Not sure I want to do that again, but it was a really fun time.

Wait: There's a Kitchen?

Hmmmm...so, one of the greatest aspects of the addition to the house is the kitchen, and I've not actually posted any pictures of it in its finished condition? Wow. Let me rectify that now.

Meal No.36: Cumin-Rubbed Pork Loin with Jalapeno-Oyster Sauce

A $10 purchase at Edward McKay's Used Books here in Winston-Salem got me The Bon Appétit Cookbook, and I'm glad I made that investment. It led to a mighty fine meal for my thirty-sixth effort in the new kitchen: cumin-rubbed pork loin with a wild mushroom sauce that included jalapeno and oyster mushrooms. Yummy.

[Editor's Note: There is a pretty good stretch of Roediger House meals in the early days of the new kitchen for which there are no pictures and no blog entries. I still wanted them to be recorded, as long as the blog serves that purpose so well, so I made some efforts both in 2011 and in early 2016 to at least post what those meals were on the proper dates.]

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"Cumin Pork Roast with Wild Mushroom Sauce," from The Bon Appétit Cookbook, by Barbara Fairchild. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons (2006), p. 299.