Meal No. 2635: Roasted Salmon over Caesar-Topped Power Greens

Tuesday night's simple supper: salmon Caesar salad. I really upped the fresh-smashed garlic paste and the resulting kick to the dressing took it to the next level.

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

Meal No. 2634: Spicy Chicken, Broccoli, and Quinoa Casserole

I'm a fan of Hilah Johnson even if I've experimented with a precious small number of her recipes (tacos on Navajo frybread, copycat Chic-Fil-A sandwiches, tres leches cake), and I've been looking forward to trying the latest one I came across: spicy chicken, quinoa, and broccoli casserole. With some chicken breasts I needed to cook and some other tasks keeping me occupied, I decided to go with a sous vide prep on the chicken portion and then went back to her recipe to prepare the rest of the casserole. That's what filled the Roediger House bellies on Saturday night, when once again I am pretty certain that the deliciousness of the grub enticed me to eat beyond a reasonable limit.

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"Spicy Chicken, Quinoa, and Broccoli Casserole," from Hilah Johnson of HilahCooking.com.

Chicken Breasts were cooked in advance, based on "Sous Vide Chicken Breast," by Yolanda on AllRecipes.com.

Red Hot Velvet Cinnamon Rolls with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting

Only a few days after my most recent attempt at cinnamon rolls, and I decided to take a deep dive into a distractingly funky variation on these delightful pastries: red velvet cinnamon rolls! That's what I found myself tackling last Friday night, carrying over into Saturday morning. It's a yeasty dough but leads to a somewhat pudding-cakey result but it's not without its fun and allure. Perhaps because of the amount of cinnamon-sugared butter that serves as the filling, combined with the wetness of the dough itself, it was hard to serve it up as a constituted whole...each one managed to break or smoosh in some way as I portioned out the individual servings, so the pics are not glorious.

But I could still be cautiously happy about the reviews from the neighbors with whom I shared it:

"I greatly approve. I agree, nothing like I've ever had before, really unique. BUT it was delicious!"

"You are a mad genius, Ray, this is amazing! I am in love with the texture - thank you for sharing!"

"They are like a dessert you would try in a foreign country. Reminds you of a few things you had back in the States, but also not like anything you'd ever had before. Super sweet and familiar yet strange."

Well, mostly happy. We shall count these as my 12th batch of cinnamon rolls, in the ongoing chronicle of them.

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"Red Hot Velvet Cinnamon Rolls with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Frosting," from Juliana of the Haute + Heirloom blog. [Published 12 February 2012]

Meal No. 2633: Baked Chicken Breasts Supreme

State Arboretum of Virginia, 1998

In 1989, when I started my masters program at Wake Forest University, I also was a graduate hall director in charge of Kitchin House, at the time the freshmen men's dorm (with a few fraternities thrown in for good measure). My direct supervisor was the delightful Cindy Coulson who, fortunately but unfortunately, had met and fallen in love with the also-delightful Harley Knowles, who is now president of Tennessee Wesleyan University. After one terrific year of working with Cindy, that lovely pair married and moved off to Williamsburg, VA. Fast forward a few years, and beginning in 1996, when I moved to Charlottesville to begin my PhD program at the University of Virginia, a fellow hall director named Lynne Sponagle had moved to Blacksburg and Cindy and Harley were up in Winchester, in the hump of Virginia. Perfect for easy weekend convergences on the Coulson-Knowles household! Then, for quite a few years after I'd moved to Winston-Salem, I still spent a lot of time with Cindy and Harley because I was fortunate to do a lot of consulting and training with school divisions in their area. That means I've had many a meal at Cindy's table, but I also scavenged the heck out of her extensive recipe book and magazine collections and there are quite a few dishes that she deserves credit for helping connect me with.

One delicious entree that Cindy made from time to time was Baked Chicken Breasts Supreme, but the blog tells me I've only ever made it once (at least since the "new" kitchen was completed in 2009). I think it's because it requires advanced prep and marinating time that I haven't been good at planning for. I brought it back out for a go this past Friday, and was definitely glad I did...both because of how good it is but also because I love indulging in the sentimental and fond remembrances of this dear, dear friend that I never get to see anymore.

Boy howdy, did I overeat. With a sizable chicken breast, in the face of which I would not be daunted...plus homemade mashed potatoes and Brussels sprouts gratin...the full plate was turned into a clean plate in short order. All such good stuff!

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"Baked Chicken Breasts Supreme," from Jane Hobart via Cindy Coulson [recipe received 19 October 2006]. Pillsbury.com has a pretty close version, with the addition of minced garlic: "Baked Chicken Breasts Supreme." Another somewhat less similar version can be found at "Baked Chicken Breasts Supreme," by Marjorie Scott from TasteofHome.com.

"Brussels Sprouts Gratin," by Alison Roman. From Cooking on newyorktimes.com.

Meal No. 2632: Emeril's Skillet Beef Stroganoff

While serious downpours inundated downtown Winston-Salem last Thursday, it seemed an early supper was called for. Into the bowls went the well-seasoned and easily-prepped skillet beef stroganoff, based on a long-ago recipe from Emeril Lagasse. Tasty and satisfying, especially when topped with freshly shredded white cheddar.

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Based on "Beef Stroganoff Hamburger Dinner in a Skillet," by Emeril Lagasse. Found online at The Food Network and also on Emerils.com.

Meal No. 2631: Chicken Salad Sandwiches on Buttermilk Maple Bread

When suppertime rolled around at the Roediger House on Wednesday night, after yet another scorching summer day that compelled me to keep all activities inside, I went with homemade chicken salad (with herbs from my kitchen garden) but jazzed it all up by putting it on sandwiches with some homemade loaf bread.

This quick return to the Roediger House dinner table of sous-vide split chicken breast chicken salad was in part because it has been awfully darned delicious these last few months...but also because it sounded like the perfect thing to put on my first genuine effort at making a loaf of bread.

Mind you: I've got a bread machine and used to regularly have fresh-baked bread from it to go with whatever dinner I was serving. But that stopped being a thing back in, oh, 2012, I think...? Loaves of yeast bread from scratch just haven't been a chosen endeavor for me. I'm quite proud of the round challah I made, back in 2013, and I thought I might at least return to that as a special treat from time to time, but so far, not so much! Anyway: I made bread.

Was the dough all too sticky, probably? Did it rise wildly and spill out of the loaf pan on the second rise? Did I have to fix my mess by dividing it into two smaller loaf pans and giving it a third rise, leading to small and dainty sandwiches? Have I now ordered a true bread loaf pan from Amazon? You may now tally all those yeses. But the key question is...how was the bread? I must say: Quite good!

Also, now that I've begun putting my Joule sous vide immersion circulator to more regular use, I decided to break down and look into a vacuum sealer foodsaver appliance. Since this is another novelty for me, I let the reviews on Amazon direct me to a cheaper one that customers were still quite pleased with. So far, I'm liking it, both for prepping future sous vide meals to toss into the freezer and also for saving leftovers. And it worked well that afternoon to help me bag and cook those chicken breasts in the immersion bath.

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Adapted from "The Best Classic Chicken Salad Recipe," from J. Kenji López-Alt, Chief Culinary Consultant of SeriousEats.com. [Published 03 June 2015 / Updated 17 April 2020]

"Soft and Sweet Buttermilk Honey Bread," by Beth Kirby of The Local Milk blog. [Published 09 April 2014]

Cinnamon Roll Sticky Buns: Batch No. 11

As I confessed back at the end of March, in the blog entry noting the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic shut-down of the city and of the state, I was among those swept up by the hoarder's shopping instinct, which led to rather huge bags of flour and sugar (well, one of each) in the butler's pantry. But I didn't follow through with the mad baking quite like most folks did (and there was never any sourdough experiment undertaken at the Roediger House). All that flour, though, did bring dancing thoughts of various baking endeavors to mind, which I have mostly failed to follow through on.

Alas, the siren call I finally could not resist hit me last Monday evening, and I prepped a double batch of cinnamon roll sticky buns, based on the perfect recipe I got from my sister and brother-in-law many, many years ago.

Even though it's a double batch, let's still call it No. 11...and the first time I've made this recipe in almost exactly six years. True, using a laminated dough left over from making cheese danishes, I have somewhat recently made cinnamon rolls, which were also quite good, but they did not include pecans, nor did they have the "sticky" syrupy element that these do.

Because I started around 6 pm Monday night, I already had in mind that I'd prep them as far as the individual rolls were concerned but then tuck them away for the night in the fridge.

That way, I was able to bring them out, let them come to room temperature, rise a bit more, and then bake them up Tuesday morning. Not only did that make for a most excellent breakfast, it also set me up to offer them fresh and warm to neighbors on Spring Street and, of course, the Roediger House regulars that we've hardly seen for months.

If I've kept up properly via the various blog posts over the years, this is the ninth time I've made Allison and Tom's recipe for sticky bun cinnamon rolls.

Other than sort of hacking a batch with that laminated dough back in the spring, I also once tried a recipe from Bon Appetit that was perfectly fine (back in 2012), but not as perfectly good as these.

Chocolate Pudding Pops

The first real heatwave (albeit in the 90°F range, not dancing up to triple digits) of July has settled upon Winston-Salem, with each morning starting out already oppressive and stifling, and with the threat—or promise!—of afternoon thunderstorms looming each day. Kind of puts one in the mind of a counterpoint summer treat, oh, like chocolate pudding pops. So I tried making those for the first time last Saturday, realizing a bit late that I'd pulled a recipe from Cooking Light magazine...so of course it wasn't nearly sweet enough to satisfy my proclivities! Ah, but as a special treat for a change of pace? In that, it was reasonably satisfying.

"Feels like 98°F" and Windspeed = 0.

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"Chocolate Pudding Pops," by Jackie Mills, MS, RD. From Cooking Light, August 2011.

Meal No. 2630: Potato and Cheddar Soup

With the chicken pot pie recipe a few days prior, I had shred a whole block of cave-aged white cheddar but only used a portion of it in the crust I was making. The rest I'd bagged and tossed into the fridge, figuring there'd be a good use I could put it to in an upcoming meal. That led me last Saturday night to make a very cheesy, very thick batch of potato and cheddar soup, which was really mighty terrific.

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"Potato Cheddar Soup," from the Roediger House. Adapted from "Potato and Cheese Soup from KitchenArt: The Store for Cooks in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Replacing the Cellar's Shop Lights

The Roediger House cellar extends across the house, under the master bedroom, the rear half of the main hallway, and the dining room. (The front parlours and kitchen addition both just have crawl space underneath.) For several months now, two of the three fluorescent fixtures in the open area of the cellar have been on the blink, in part because they were old and banged up and losing some parts. The north end of the cellar, which is likely where coal was delivered from the neighboring alleyway back in the day, is walled off as a separate room; the shop light in there was hanging by one sturdy nail and by the wiring that went to the center of it.

I'd finally bought replacement fixtures and was hoping that my usual electrician could take care of it...but I've not been able to get up with him. I decided to tackle it myself last Friday afternoon when it was too blazing hot to be outside doing anything.

It took me between four and five hours, because I don't know what I'm doing, but also because two of the three fixtures were a little complicated, based on how they were hung and the wiring that had been routed to them.

Not only were the fixtures poorly secured, but I also hated to discover that one of them had been wired without wire nuts...just electrical tape had been used. But the day ended with success, and fresh LED bulbs are installed and these new lights are blazingly bright.

Meal No. 2629: Roasted Salmon and Roasted Broccoli

With storminess all about but nary a drop of rain in sight on last Friday's blisteringly hot evening, I chose a favorite sensible meal for dinner: roasted salmon and roasted broccoli. I have a tendency to eat more of that broccoli than would be advisable, but it hasn't led to a visit by the undertaker so I am not yet dissuaded.

Irrigation Zone B3

Apologies for boring you with repeated posts about small elements of large projects this summer, but I'd like to say a word about the final leg of the large labors with the irrigation system I'm designing and installing here at the Roediger House.

I've managed to drone on about how challenging it is to dig on this lovely old downtown lot, thanks to Piedmont red clay, gravel, buried debris, and roots.

There is a narrow strip of azaleas and a few other bushes along the south property line, on the far side of the driveway, that I figured I should supply with irrigation as long as I was doing the rest of the yard.

But with the large parking lot separating that area from the water source, I was either going to have to run a long hose from a connection point in the back yard close to the house, or I was going to have to install a PVC line in the ground.

I opted for the latter, not realizing it would take eight pretty full days of digging and chopping and pickaxe-ing and soil-screening to get it done.

I've bitched and moaned about the difficulties in some recent blog posts but you can see I'm dedicating this post to being a bit of a photographic record of this part of the summer undertaking.

Which almost necessitated an undertaker, as in: half-way to six feet under. That's how far I had to dig down to make a gravel drain beneath a 2-foot frost-free hydrant, to which I'll connect the azalea drip lines eventually.

As of mid-July, all the trenches for running the PVC water lines have now been dug and almost all of the pipes have been cemented and connected and reburied. And that yard hydrant is now set and ready.

Here's what remains: water meter installation; backflow preventer inspection; final connections of the PVC water lines from the service point within the property; ordering all the drip irrigation components; installation and connection of the smart controller for the automatic valves; completing the short run to create a drip system to service hanging baskets and planter containers; flushing and testing the system; setting and adjusting all the rotary spray heads; and setting, flushing and testing the drip irrigation zones. So, I ain't done, by a long stretch, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel, and I'm glad that the hardest labors of this project are pretty much over.

Meal No. 2628: Chicken Pot Pie with Cheddar Crust

By the way, I really struggle with "pot pie" versus "potpie," in much the same way I don't know if "meat loaf" or "meatloaf" is correct. And good gracious, I'm not sure how many different ways I've written "stir-fry" ("stirfry," "stir fry") on the blog over the years. Regardless, it was a lot of pie and not enough chicken in the pot on Thursday night, when I returned to the cheddar-crust version of this goopy goodness. I'd already cooked the chicken thighs sous vide the evening before and only had to dice them, once I'd prepped all the other glorious ingredients that make up the rich filling of this casserole treat. My instinct had been to make a half-batch of the crust and to use a smaller dish, since I knew I didn't need to have a full version of this...and then I remember how good the crust typically is. The first instinct was the better one in this case, though.

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Chicken was prepped based on "Sous Vide Chicken Thighs," from Anne of UpstateRamblings.com. [Published 01 September 2019]

"Chicken Potpie with Cheddar Crust," from Food Network Magazine, Vol. 4, No. 8 (October 2011), p. 132-133.

Meal No. 2627: Boogaloo Wonderland Sandwiches

The crew from PF Plumbing who installed the new meter setter and backflow preventer for the irrigation system had to toil in some incredibly baking hot temps last Wednesday, and it about wore me out to sit and watch 'em working. They didn't hit any major problems or complications and were finished up by about 3 o'clock. Still, too much of the rest of the afternoon got away from me and I had to shortcut supper plans in order to get food on the table. Fortunately, it occurred to me that Boogaloo Wonderland Sandwiches could be easy and also very, very, very good.

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"Boogaloo Wonderland Sandwiches," by Bryan Roof. In Cook's Country, April/May 2018, p. 4-5. Recipe has also been reproduced and tinkered with a bit by Cully's Kitchen. Link to "Boogaloo Wonderland Sandwiches." [Published 10 April 2018]

Water System Connection for the Irrigation System

Here's another chapter in the long-running story of installing an irrigation system for the yard of this fine old Roediger House: on Wednesday, the folks at PF Plumbing undertook the sadly involved job of creating a fresh connection to the City water service so that I can have a second meter just for irrigation and yard.

This property sits on two lots, and there are in fact two meter setters side-by-side right at the lots' dividing line. But only one of them still had a viable connection (the current water service for the house). That meant I had to get a utilities contractor who could tap into the water main under the street in front of the house, and it also meant I could choose a less expensive location for said second connection to be established.

I chose the upper/north end of the yard, where the retaining wall is much lower but also where it's much easier to tuck the backflow preventer into the established landscaping.

Pf Plumbing took on the job, for a pretty penny, but they did a pretty darned good job by the time it was all said and done.

Now I'll be waiting for the City to drop the meter in and then to get the key elements inspected and passed.

After that, the ball is back in my court to finish connecting up my irrigation lines and the wiring of the automatic valves at the smart controller I'm putting in the cellar...and then testing and flushing the system before setting it up on schedules.

I'm getting a bit excited, really.

Tax Day Much Delayed

Two of the items in my quarantine task jar were supposed to get me to (1) organize/tally/prep for this year's tax filing day, and then (2) complete the tax forms and send them off. But those slips never did get drawn and the extended timeframe for taxes thanks to the coronavirus epidemic came along this past Wednesday...but I had them in the mail by late afternoon on Tuesday! They were not the bear this year that they have often been in the past, especially with the simplification of tax forms (to a degree) and the fact I'm not having to file additional separate returns for Virginia and West Virginia, as happened for about three years.

Meal No. 2626: Spaghetti with Homemade Sauce

Back in May, I sampled a recipe for homemade spaghetti sauce and was pretty darned pleased with the result. I'd always sort of ham-handedly doctored jar sauce when I made spaghetti like this, and found it generally serviceable. But the from-scratch approach proved very appealing and satisfying and I was happy to bring it back on Monday night, in a cooler kitchen with repaired AC, before turning my attention back to taxes!

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"Our Favorite Homemade Spaghetti Meat Sauce," from Joanne Gallagher of InspiredTaste.net. [Published 16 January 2020]

Meal No. 2625: Lamb and Mushroom Meat Loaf

I don't know how it works at your house, but I'm of the opinion that it will be the end of the workday, a Friday, or a holiday weekend when one of the two house air conditioning systems decides to go on the blink. It was right at 5 o'clock last Friday when I had come in from working outside and passed through an 82°F kitchen...which led me to investigate the unit down in the cellar hoping it was just frozen up again. Alas, that didn't seem to be the explanation, so leaving it shut off didn't take care of things. I decided not to bring out the on-call guy over the weekend, and all the sleeping was done up in the attic guest nook over the weekend, which made Sumner extremely happy since he can bed down there with human company, instead of crashing in his crate as per usual. Yesterday, my longtime technician John came from Webb Heating & Air Conditioning. It was a relatively quick fix but not without a higher price tag: the motor was blown and had to be replaced. Now things are humming along...pretty cool.

Although the kitchen was 87°F while I was in the midst of making dinner Sunday night, which was even worse than I was expecting it to be, I still pressed forward with my meal plans...with a 450°F oven working hard for about an hour just so we could sit down to delicious Tupelo Honey Cafe-inspired lamb and mushroom meat loaf. With creamy homemade mashed potatoes, overloaded with butter (as they should be), and a homemade brown gravy, it was the kind of meal I worked hard in the yard to earn.

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"Lamb and Multi-Mushroom Meat Loaf" (p. 150), in Tupelo Honey Cafe: Spirited Recipes from Asheville's New South Kitchen, by Elizabeth Sims with Chef Brian Sonoskus. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC, 2011.

Meal No. 2624: Oatmeal as a Form of Salvation

I'm going to have to offer up a tribute to the simple pleasures and ease of creating a steaming bowl of oatmeal, when the body is worn down from the day's yard labors and the craving for something quick and fulfilling is strong. Oatmeal has had to take the place of real suppers quite a few times this summer, seldom acknowledged or noted on the blog, but it proved to be the right call this past Saturday night before I headed back outside for some final efforts of the day on the irrigation system.