Eggnog Snickerdoodles

Saturday evening gave me a chance to try out a new cookie recipe that had been as yet untested here: eggnog snickerdoodles. And they were well worth it, although I did go to bed regretting that I had been unable to resist eating three of those rascals.

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"Eggnog Snickerdoodles," from Jaclyn Bell of CookingClassy.com. [Published 13 December 2014]

Meal No. 2411: Steak Quesaphillyas

Inspired a bit by the ideas behind a Philly cheesesteak, I took my leftover grilled filet mignon, sautéed onion and sweet pepper strips, and filled tortilla shells to the brim with that and a mess of cheese. For Saturday lunch, I scarfed that down so fast I burned my mouth up a bit. But it was freakin' delicious.

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Preparation and cooking based on "Quesadillas for a Crowd," by Morgan Bolling. In Cook's Country, August/September 2015, p. 18.

Meal No. 2410: Grilled Filet Mignon

Last week we finally got a break in the heat wave, and Thursday was simply gorgeous and Friday was not far behind (even though it did warm up a bit more). When it came time to make a meal, I stepped outside and fired up the grill, tossing onto it some filet mignon steaks I'd picked up at Sam's Club. To go with it, I also fired up the deep fat fryer for French fries, which have definitely not made an appearance at the Roediger House in over a year. I had a few, but only a few! And I really jammed on some sautéed spinach with garlic and shiitake mushrooms. All-in-all, it was quite a show of culinary abundance, followed by some relaxing outdoor sitting with Sumner before I walked up the street to a/perture cinema to catch Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Meal No. 2409: Spicy Chicken Wrap

A quickly-whipped-up meal on Thursday afternoon was a small variation on the recently-created spicy chicken wrap...and it was just right for a speedy supper.

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"Grilled Spicy Chicken Wrap," a Roediger House original recipe.

Meal No. 2408: Grilled Chicken on Caesar-Topped Greens

I had grilled some chicken and still had a small portion of breast waiting in the fridge, so for a day-ending hearty salad on Monday afternoon (after a great but full day of teaching) I was happy to sit down to this amazing salad with a wonderful take on the creamy Caesar dressing that's quite the regular here.

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Based on "Easy Lemon Caesar Salad Dressing," by Kim of lowcarbmaven.com.

Lemon Curd Ice Cream

On Wednesday a week ago, I made a batch of fresh lemon curd. The next day, on Thursday, I made a base for ice cream. On that Friday, I churned it into a marvelous lemon curd ice cream. On Saturday, it had time to fully chill. On Sunday, we smacked our lips at its glorious deliciousness, along with lemon curd loaf cake.

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"Lemon Curd Ice Cream," by Rachel Currier of BakedbyRachel.com. [Published 27 May 2016]

Lemon Curd Pound Cake with Limoncello Glaze

For the crew that came to hang out for the afternoon last Sunday, not only did we have ourselves a scrumptious dinner...but there was dessert as well. Behold the lemon curd pound cake, adorned with a sweet glaze infused with limoncello. This was my second go at this small triumph of devilish goodness, and it did not disappoint this time either.

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"Lemon Curd Pound Cake with Limoncello Glaze," from Shelly Jaronsky of CookiesandCups.com. [Posted 14 June 2015]

Meal No. 2407: Linguine with Smoked Gouda and Wine Sauce

On Sunday night for the four of us at dinner, I pulled back a recipe that I made three times in 2014...and then no other times since. It's linguine in a smoked gouda and wine sauce but I dressed it up with some fresh chorizo and added in diced grilled chicken breast, too. It was pretty darned good, if I may say so.

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"Linguine with Smoked Gouda and Wine Sauce," from The Grit Restaurant Vegetarian Cookbook, by Jessica Greene and Ted Hafer. Athens, GA: Hill Street Press (2001), p. 64.

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

Over the weekend I did a bit of cookie-making, bringing back an old favorite from the archives: white chocolate macadamia nut cookies. Tasty and all too tempting, because two of 'em went down my gullet when they came hot out of the oven on Saturday night.

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"Premier White Chocolate and Macadamia Pieces Cookies," from Hershey's Mauna Loa. Found online at https://www.maunaloa.com/recipes/premier-white-chips-and-macadamia-pieces-cookies/.

Meal No. 2406: Grilled Pork Chops and Chicken

By the time Saturday afternoon rolled around, I realized I was under the gun to go ahead and cook a couple of items in the fridge, as they were reaching the end of their shelf life. So I grilled up some blackened pork chops and some roasted garlic chicken breasts, all of which came out just really terrific and tender. When I sat down to eat, I didn't even mess with any sides...I pulled out some remaining homemade barbecue sauce and had a chop and a portion of chicken breast, which left room for some cookies I made later that evening.

Meal No. 2405: Sheet Pan Beef Nachos

For a mid-day meal on Saturday, I made up an individual portion of sheet pan beef nachos, and they were again spot on! Sorry for the lousy photo but it was important to snap it quickly so that these could be consumed at their warm and delicious best.

Meal No. 2404: Bacon Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

The main meal last Thursday afternoon: bacon grilled cheese sandwiches on rustic Italian bread. I find myself bedeviled by the simple goodness of this divine construction.

Mocha Caramel Crunch Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

I wanted to have a little sweet dessert for post-dinner on Tuesday night, and I had a new recipe I was hoping to pilot on my Virginia guests: mocha caramel crunch chocolate chip cookie bars. We were intent on digging into them before they were completely set up, but it was well worth it to rush into them...they were a wonderfully full-flavored treat.

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"Mocha Caramel Crunch Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars," by Tieghan Girard of the Half-Baked Harvest blog. [Published 30 September 2016]

Meal No. 2403: Deviled Chicken Thighs

It was a delicious moderate feast at the Roediger House on Tuesday night, featuring deviled chicken thighs along with glazed sweet potatoes and roasted broccoli.

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"Deviled Chicken Drumsticks," by Ian Knauer. In Gourmet, August 2008.

"Glazed Sweet Potatoes," by Patrick and Gina Neely; from The Food Network.

Meal No. 2402: Sheet Pan Beef Nachos

For the foursome at dinner last night, the filling and tasty indulgence of sheet pan beef nachos seemed to be the ideal choice. We all ventured back for seconds and still there remained a small portion for a lunch leftover plate the next day.

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Taco-Style Meat Based on "Crispy Beef Tacos," by Hilah Johnson. From HilahCooking.com.

"Homemade Chili and Taco Seasoning," from Jamie of MyBakingAddiction.com. [Published 03 February 2011]

Meal No. 2401: St. Louis Pork Spare Ribs

The Sunday night meal for six at the Roediger House: pork spare ribs, creamy brie four-cheese mac and cheese, and roasted whole green beans. Amazing.

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"Crock Pot Ribs," from Christin Mahrlig of the Spicy Southern Kitchen blog. [Published 17 January 2019]

"Creamy Brie Four-Cheese Mac and Cheese," from Tieghan Girard of the Half-Baked Harvest blog. [Published 21 November 2013]

Inspiration for Roasted Green Beans from "Foil-Baked Green Beans with Soy Sauce and Garlic" by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat; and from "Roasted Green Beans" by Samanathon on GeniusKitchen.com.

The Sorry State of My Sickly Maple Trees

Looks like I might be one-for-four on the young trees I bought in the fall of 2016 to put in the back yard...the dogwood died within a year, and now two of the three maple trees appear to barely be holding on.

Both of these sad little maples appeared to get a shock of some kind last fall. Instead of a gradual turn of their leaves to a deep autumnal red, the upper half of each went straight to brown. As spring came on this year, the top half of one and about half of the branches of the other never did bud or leaf out.

Within the last week, one of the two main trunks of one just split off and fell over. When you've reached an age yourself where the years no longer seem to stretch endlessly in front of you, the loss of three years' growing time for trees that need about 15 or 20 years to really establish their presence is no small blow.

Guess I'll be planting something new there in the early fall, nonetheless!

Meal No. 2400: Roasted Salmon on Caesar-Topped Greens

I guess it's appropriate that a momentous meal like "No. 2400" ought to feature a mainstay of my current eating life: roasted salmon with homemade creamy Caesar dressing on a pile of power greens. I very nearly planted my face directly into the bowl, such was the degree of my hunger at the moment I sat down to eat late Saturday afternoon.

Salted Caramel Butterscotch Blondies

Right at the end of June, I whipped up a batch of salted caramel sauce and used it to make a pan of salted caramel butterscotch blondies. But I wasn't quite pleased with how they turned out and wanted to give it another go as long as I still had a nice portion of caramel sauce remaining. So last night I stayed up past a decent bedtime and pulled these out of the oven after midnight. And then ate rather a sizable corner portion that was too hot to handle and too tasty to ignore.

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"Salted Caramel Butterscotch Blondies" from Maria & Josh of the Two Peas & Their Pod blog.

Meal No. 2399: Homemade Caesar Dressing on Power Greens

The Friday evening entertainment was to walk up Fourth Street to a/perture, our local arthouse theatre, to catch a really terrible film: Wild Rose. (I hated it, just about every minute of it, and I can't imagine why it currently has a 94% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.) Then I came home hungry and piled a plate high with power greens, topped with homemade Caesar dressing, and gussied up with roasted sunflower seeds. My supper was much, much better than my cinema.

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Based on "Easy Lemon Caesar Salad Dressing," by Kim of lowcarbmaven.com.

Meal No. 2398: Roasted Pork Tenderloin

I was working in Virginia the last couple of days, so it was nice to return to my kitchen this evening to make a filling dinner of hoisin-roasted pork tenderloin, along with roasted broccoli and parmesan'd red potato slices. Since I don't eat well or much when I'm traveling these days, I took great liberties with the size of my portion.

The Immense Popularity of a Tonsured Bradley Phillis

I am under no illusions about the level of public interest that the Roediger House blog generates. It's a selfish indulgence that satisfies a pungent strain of OCD within me, it's an easy means for record-keeping and cataloguing, and it's also a way to share with interested friends and colleagues the comings and goings of RoHo life. Maybe it's safe to say the blog is also a habit.

Sometimes I glance at the stats, and a while back it struck me as remarkable that a brief post about friend and former Wake Forest grad student Bradley Phillis had earned over 500 hits and ranked 2nd of all-time. (Color me peeved, also, since I've cooked some amazing things and taken gorgeous photos of them...and they've not proved to be anywhere near as popular!)

Oh, but the power of Google! When I started digging into some explanation, here's what came up when I did a simple Google search for "tonsure":

Quite likely, it was the photo posted with that entry that got picked up by Google's search engine, and when I ran that image search at that time, I found that Bradley's picture was the fourth most popular image...which might reasonably explain why that blog post has been visited so many times:

The image's popularity deviates, as might be expected...I've searched other times and it's been the 5th most popular, or the 7th most popular...but more recently it has completely fallen out of the top returns. (The last time I checked, Bradley's tonsured mug was at the end of the 43rd row of images on the search results page.) I guess past notoriety and faded glory will have to achieve for us a small bit of satisfaction.

Restless Granite Wallcaps

04 July 2018

The position of the Roediger House along North Spring Street is somewhat elevated from the street grade and the whole front of the property sits behind a retaining wall adjacent to the city sidewalk.

Over time, the granite wallcaps especially atop the northern end of the wall have been gradually pushed out over the sidewalk.

This next picture might be a little disorienting, but I laid down on the sidewalk and pointed my camera straight up to show how much of this unfortunate overhanging was occurring:

I decided to make that one of my small summer projects back in May and June, which means it was not without its own problems. But please understand: when I decide to tackle these projects solo, I open myself up to no small set of issues! For instance, for this little old man to move those ginormous weighty granite wallcaps, I have to use an oversized crowbar and bit by bit stack wood slats or bricks under them to get any leverage or glide. And that meant I pulverized some of the handmade 100-plus-year-old bricks that were underneath:

And you can also see that at least one of those wallcaps was broken but I didn't realize it until I disturbed their seated positions.

I have pretty limited experience with masonry but I did my best to fix up sad batches of cement and gave it an adequate fix:

I also decided to shift all the wallcaps down so that the broken one would be at the end under the false mop cypress bush.

A lot of the mortar underneath these old granite wallcaps had disintegrated; some were held in place more by the dirt and roots that had gotten under them. I now have them straight along the top of the wall in a linear sense, but they are a bit rocky and uneven given all the variation that resulted from how they're sitting atop the brick wall. I will have to let that be someone else's repair job, if I ever get around to it.

Meal No. 2397: Biscuits 'N Sausage Gravy

The late afternoon meal-for-the-day today: the best sausage gravy I have ever made, over some fresh-baked biscuits, washed down with a tall cold glass of water, and followed by ample happy smacking of lips.

Meal No. 2396: Macaroni Beef Casserole

It was a long, long drive back home from Oklahoma Sunday, and after an afternoon nap, I ventured into the kitchen looking forward to once again making a meal...something comforting and relatively easy. I tinkered a bit with recipe for an Afro-Cuban-influenced macaroni beef casserole and came out with a delightful dish for dinner.

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Based on "Macaroni Beef Casserole," from Imma Adamu of Immaculate Bites, a blog found at AfricanBites.com.

A Stash of Ticket Stubs

Speaking of movies, the quiet and lulls of late winter permitted me another organizing/archiving project, not so wildly different from my recipe notebook endeavor from the fall of 2017. This one involved emptying out a Pearl's Beer pitcher that had the accumulated ticket stubs from movies, concerts, national parks, plays, community events, museums, and athletic events (and such!) over the last four decades.

I sorted them according to type and then started putting them in date order:

Then I started taping them onto sheets and labeling them:

Then I scanned each page so I'd have the digital archive and slid the hardcopies into page protectors to go in a notebook:

I created a new Instagram account (@ticketstubsstash) and have made IG-friendly posts out of each ticket and I upload them no more than once a day. It's been a fun diversion and I've enjoyed the positive reaction to them.

But I've also really enjoyed the trip down memory lane...I've seen a lot of great and even modern classic films...and also some that were utterly forgettable. Many of these posts have been the plain scanned image from my archive notebook, as shown above with my $2.00 matinee price from the original run of E.T.: The ExtraTerrestrial in 1982. Others I've also jazzed up with some photoshop fancification:

It's also rekindled my desire to catch more films in the theatres instead of waiting until release on DVD or bluray or via streaming. Over the last few years, I seem to have seen only a handful per year at the multiplex or arthouse theatre, but 2019 is definitely shaping up to be a record. I suspect that will be discussed in some upcoming blog post.

Winston Theatre

I get why we need megamultiplexes with stadium seating and surround sound and digital projection and all that. But I also feel the loss of local downtown theatres and miss having the chance to catch fun films in those storied and intimate locations.

Fourth Street as seen from Spring Street.
The Winston is just down on the left in this photo.

As I've looked a bit into the history of the surroundings of the Roediger House, I found that just around the corner was once a 999-seat popular movie house called The Winston. The building still stands, but you'd never recognize it for what it once was. It has a new facade and is home to architects and other assorted offices. It's pretty non-descript, directly across the street from the steadily popular Foothills Brewery.

I'm sure that films were better when shown in the remarkable Ultravision:

A bit more about it, and the even more fantastic movie palace that was once the Carolina Theatre, can be found on the classicfilmtvcafe blog.