The on-going chronicle of all things related to the George and Laura Roediger House (c. 1905) in the historic Holly Avenue Neighborhood of downtown Winston-Salem, NC. More info and pictures can be found at RoedigerHouse.com. [Mobile users: CLICK TO SEARCH the blog.]
Not so long ago I tried making a batch of Bailey's Irish Cream Chocolate Pudding, but it was not quite what I wanted it to be. I decided to use that same recipe to make just a straight-up chocolate version of it, without the Bailey's and without the cinnamon. Turns out, that was a freakin' brilliant move: that pudding was amazing.
Based on "Baileys Irish Cream Chocolate Pudding," from Ashley Manila of BakerByNature.com. [Published 07 March 2020]
Tuesday night was the right time to bring out the remaining roasted salmon from Saturday's excellent meal and to turn it all into what might have been the best salmon croquettes meal yet. Perfect roasted broccoli and excellent garlic-enhanced asparagus fatties made the meal all too complete.
Recipe sent to me by my sister Allison, who cracked up when I asked about the source: adapted from "Salmon Burgers" (p. 396) and "Herb Sauce" (p. 395), from Denise Austin, Shrink Your Female Fat Zones, Rodale Books (2003).
"Chili-Lime Aïoli," from David Wald of Princeton, NJ, May 2009.
This past Monday's supper was roasted hoisin-glazed pork tenderloin, together with roasted Brussels sprouts and roasted spiced potatoes. I'd been on my bike earlier in the day for the first time in over two weeks, getting in just over 8 miles, so I managed to kick my appetite up a few notches by the time the steaming goodness of dinner sat on the plate before me.
This past Sunday's delicious brunch also included a dessert, following a respectful rest period to let the big meal settle a bit: banana pudding, with its store-bought whipped topping but the glory of homemade vanilla pudding within.
"Murray's Old Fashioned Nana Puddin'," from the Murray Vanilla Wafers package. Also found online at http://melissaannbrook.blogspot.com/2011/04/banana-and-vanilla-wafer-with-pudding.html.
As we ease carefully into some approximation of increased normalcy, following 15 months of sequestration and hypervigilance, another occasion for a small gathering of our all-vaccinated crew occurred. The main food feature this past Sunday: brunch. That meant some delicious savory bread breakfast pudding, a real upgrade of the usual sausage-egg-bread-cheese breakfast casserole, plus creamy grits and diced strawberries. The last time we had this meal was the last time Amy and Gern were over before we all went into complete shut-down at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, at the end of March 2020.
"Savory Bread Pudding," from King Arthur Flour. [recipe clipping]
Guidance for making the creamy grits: Luquire Family Stone Ground Grits, milled in Greenwood, SC.
While I was working in Washington, DC, the last couple of weeks, I was rather intense about my walking and also very strict about my food. I subsisted on bananas, overnight oatmeal made with almond milk, and granola. One night I did pick up Thai, which is only the second time I've had restaurant food in 15 months. I lost a few pounds, for sure. But instead of going hogwild for my first supper back at home, I was actually ready for the faithful favorite of roasted salmon and roasted broccoli...and it was unfailingly delicious.
A recent blog post offered the bold and possibly premature proclamation that we are entering a post-pandemic era, at long last. The reality of the coronavirus pandemic is that we are not yet out of the woods. But there's a pretty significant corner turned when one is post-vaccination, especially with the reportedly incredible efficacy of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines at preventing both infection and transmission of the virus, even with the variant strains becoming increasingly common. To feel like there is a potential return to normalcy is awesome. So too was the chance to work again onsite in a school. That's what the last two weeks have permitted me: eight days of (mostly) onsite work at an elementary school in the District of Columbia Public School System. Last Wednesday, an early conclusion of my duties gave me a whole afternoon to head down to the National Mall and enjoy extensive walking and lots of photo ops.
I'd hoped to go by the Jefferson Memorial but it was closed for renovations. I went ahead and parked near the Tidal Basin and hoofed it around the base of the Washington Monument and across the Mall to the Ellipse area to get as good a glimpse of the White House as I could, now that it's occupied by a decent and effective President. Lots of big construction, though, is happening on the South Lawn and that meant a construction fence blocked the better views.
The new National Museum of African-American History and Culture has such impressive exterior architecture.
It was a beautiful day to find myself at the base of Capitol Hill and to photograph the US Capitol while it currently enjoys majority control by a party committed to democracy, rather than opposed to democracy.
The sun was brilliant upon the Supreme Court Building.
This was my first chance to visit the new World War II Memorial, which was beautifully designed.
It is always sobering and moving to visit the Vietnam Memorial.
Steps away is the Lincoln Memorial and its timely reminder of what a fragile republic this is, once more raising the question as to whether this nation, or any nation, conceived of and by and for the people can long endure, given the unfathomable divisions of the moment.
And was I in time to spot Presidential transport coming in toward the White House, by chance?
The Lincoln Memorial is an imposing edifice.
One last look up the National Mall toward the US Capitol...
I'd never seen the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial so I made sure the walk back to the car allowed me to circle through that monument.
An additional bonus, of sorts: this was also exactly when the remarkable Brood X 17-year cicada emergence occurred!
The delightful neighbors down the street took their toddler on another round of strawberry picking the weekend before last and once more generously shared some of their bounty with me. It was perfect for making that good ol' Shoney's-style all-too-sweet strawberry pie, from the recipe that is credited either to my mother or my older sister Janice. Anyway: it's really good stuff and I had not made it in quite a while. But with fresh-picked strawberries? Now, that's some pie!
If I weren't rushed and harried because of having to leave home for a work week out of town, I would definitely have also made some whipped cream to go with it. It didn't need it, mind you, but let's not dismiss the potential benefit of added bonuses too quickly.
For the last two weeks, I've been up working in an elementary school in the District of Columbia Public Schools. When I was home for the weekend in between, I tried to squeeze in some good meals and decent desserts. That even occurred last Sunday, before I hit the road for the nearly 6-hour journey back up to where I was staying in Silver Spring. Wonderfully tender beef tenderloin medallions with roasted broccoli florets in a ginger-soy glaze over lo mein: that was a pretty awesome send-off!
A week ago tonight, as I enjoyed a brief weekend at home between work trips to DC, I brought out split chicken breasts, gave 'em a good spicing and seasoning, and let the sous vide work its magic on them. The tender juicy morsels I cut out as I skinned and deboned them were delightfully accompanied by the last of the garlic-lime aïoli I had made. The previous evening's potato salad and more roasted broccoli elevated it to feast proportions, with the accompanying guilt of overindulgence.
When the Roediger House regulars came over last Friday night for supper and pool and hanging out on the third floor, it was the first time we'd gotten together inside the house in 14 months and a day. We are all vaccinated now, post-gestation, and it felt so good to have the crew back in the house once more. Sumner was very excited. I'd been out of town that week for work, so I kept supper simple: juicy burgers on the grill with chips and homemade potato salad.
Boy howdy, was it nice to get back to some pool playing!
Naturally, there had to be a dessert, and a long-time and oft-requested favorite seemed called for: chocolate eclair cake. Yum.
Adapted from "Juicy Burgers," originally from Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks recipe magazine, July 2003, p. 52-53. After Pillsbury was purchased in 2001 by General Mills, home of Betty Crocker (founded 100 years ago this year, mind you!), it basically ceased to exist as a company and lives on just as a brand. I guess that's why a Pillsbury cookbook recipe from 2003 is now only found on the Betty Crocker website.
Potato Salad loosely based on "Best Ever Potato Salad," by Michelle, who blogs at the BrownEyedBaker.com. [Published 06 June 2016]
Guidance for Hard-Boiled Eggs from "Instant Pot Hard Boiled Eggs," by Jill Winger of the Prairie Homestead [Published April 2016]; and from "Instant Pot Recipes Everyone Should Know," by Alina Bradford from c|net.com. [Published 17 May 2018]
"Chocolate Éclair Cake," a common and popular recipe.
He might as well be considered the Mayor of Spring Street, or at least this block of it, for all his faithful watching and monitoring but especially because of how happy he is to see people going by on the street and sidewalk. Sumner is possessed of such a sweet and well-behaved disposition and there are lots of regular passers-by who make a point to stop and speak to him and maybe give him a rub or a kiss. But he's also got some special friends and neighbors who love to give him a treat or two. One of those is DeeDee, who lives about three blocks north but (at least in the good weather) she makes quite a few trips up and down the lane. Sumner gets so excited when he sees her, throwing his hips back and forth ridiculously with the biggest, most sweeping tail wags. DeeDee loves to treat him, and this example (from May 2nd) was a multilayered concoction that Sumner had to work to figure his way through.
Speaking of Cindy Coulson (see yesterday's blog post), she's also the reason I initially tracked down the McCormick Company's recipe for sour cream pound cake loaf, made with an old flavoring (vanilla butter and nut) that has since been rechristened as Cake Batter flavor.
Thanks to dear Spring Street neighbors Lori and Cody, we got a batch of incredible strawberries from a weekend picking excursion they made to a strawberry farm.
I finally decided they'd be best highlighted and allowed to shine when featured with warm-baked pound cake and freshly-made sweetened whipped cream. On this, I was quite right.
"Sour Cream Pound Cake," from McCormick. Found online and, formerly, on the original Vanilla Butter & Nut flavoring's packaging box.
"Failproof Sweetened Whipped Cream," by Morgan Bolling in Cook's Country, June/July 2021, p. 26-27.
In the late 90s, as a pretty regular getaway from Charlottesville, and then through a good chunk of the early 2000s, because of lots of teaching and consulting in the area, I made lots and lots of trips that included stays with my friends Cindy Coulson and Harley Knowles. So many meals eaten at their table, and so many recipes that I walked away from those visits with! I should have made a label/blogpost tag for Cindy a long time ago to easily find all the meals I've made that have a connection to her or to my visits to Winchester, VA. Anyway: a pretty regular dish we enjoyed and that I made a lot after I permanently moved to Winston-Salem was chicken breasts in sour cream. But alas: I have put it aside for nearly 11 years now, having only made it once, for Meal No. 39, since the kitchen addition was completed and the tracking of all meals was initiated. I brought it back Sunday a week ago, along with layered green bean casserole and the last of the broccoli I'd bought, roasted to a nice charred perfection.
Quite a few things are included in blog entries, not so much because I think the blog's small but faithful audience has an insatiable desire for all tidbits large and small...but because it really helps me with my inclination to record and document. Dinner may have been especially good to me that night because I'd once again headed out for a circuit around Salem Lake on my bike (my fourth time), and then also included taking the spur trail down to Quarry Park (the second trek there) as well.
Round trip came in right at 24 miles, and I still managed to get in a 3-mile walk with Sumner (at an under-15-minute-mile pace, at that!). So, food tastes awesome.
"Chicken Breasts in Sour Cream," from Ann Lafferty via Cindy Coulson, 13 July 1997.
"Layered Green Bean Casserole," from my sister Allison in Rossville, Indiana.
The Saturday night before last was ripe for ripe avocados that needed to be employed in something worth indulging in, and I found great appeal in returning to the creamy avocado ranch dressing that showed up here over the winter a few times. Generously herbed and whipped into a well-combined tasty topping for power greens, the salads that night did their jobs grandly, with pan-seared seasoned chicken tenders making it complete.
"Creamy Avocado Ranch Dressing," by Traci Antonovich of TheKitchenGirl.com.
The week before last, I made a very bad decision about the next recipe I ought to try. It was a lengthy unnecessarily overwrought process, complicated and expensive and with a stunningly disappointing result. The recipe: limoncello creme cake. While it seems to have enjoyed tons of "shares" from the recipe website, and an oddly uncritical mass of favorable comments, I appreciated that at least one person commented: "There are so many things wrong with this recipe that I won't bother to go into them all."
An 8-yolk lemon curd, mixed into THREE containers of mascarpone cheese, various tablespoons-full of lemon extract and limoncello, plus a recommendation that you zest, like, 6 or 8 lemons...but a freakin' box mix for cake and an insistence that you find Cook-and-Serve lemon pudding...for the love of all that's holy: I am a moron for choosing to try to make this ridiculous absurdity that was a physical disaster but an interesting nod toward a different kind of lemon cake. The recipe printout has been tossed in the rubbish bin.
"Limoncello Creme Cake," from Kathleen Hagood and posted to JustAPinch.com.
The pattern is becoming well-established: when I return to my much-loved roasted salmon, I'll cook extra so that soon thereafter there can be the deep indulgence in the new-round favorite, salmon croquettes. Thursday before last, with the addition of the perfect chili-lime-garlic aïoli, and the slight variation of roasted Brussels sprouts, I overdid it with a double serving on my plate.
I talked myself into that overeating, though, because that afternoon I took the mountain bike out for a good long ride, marking my third trip all the way around Salem Lake. Total ride: 22 miles.
Recipe sent to me by my sister Allison, who cracked up when I asked about the source: adapted from "Salmon Burgers" (p. 396) and "Herb Sauce" (p. 395), from Denise Austin, Shrink Your Female Fat Zones, Rodale Books (2003).
"Chili-Lime Aïoli," from David Wald of Princeton, NJ, May 2009.
I suspect this counts as a wild hair: Tuesday a week ago, after I cleaned up from an early salmon supper, I decided it was high time for me to try making funnel cakes, just like you'd get at the fair. And boy howdy, were they delicious. This was not the occasion to go all crazy with hot fudge sauce or homemade whipped cream; instead, I kept it at the bare minimum of powdered sugar and ground cinnamon. Fried dough is a terrible health choice but a glorious nostalgic tongue dance.
"Classic Funnel Cakes," from Chris Elizondo on JustAPinch.com.
Perhaps two weeks is long enough for me to go without my much-loved slab of salmon, roasted to a perfect temperature and quite regularly accompanied by perfectly roasted broccoli florets. That's how the Roediger House marked a rainy and stormy May the Fourth. It might have seemed particularly good that night because I'd snuck out between storms to get in a bike ride of just under 12 miles, which proved a sufficient workout to make me extra ready for dinner.
Oh, my gosh: on Monday a week ago, I used sous vide to cook thick-cut boneless pork chops again, finishing them in the cast iron skillet, and they were simply amazing once more! So very tender and juicy and still full of flavor, and that extra step of searing them on the cooktop in a hot pan is the perfect finishing touch. I slow-roasted potatoes almost to a crispy stage but also had whole green beans as well. The plates were cleaned.
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| My sister Allison and me on Mother's Day 1987 |
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| 2002 Project CRISS National Trainers Conference San Antonio, TX L-R: Sheryl Cohen, Me, Janelle Weathers, Evelyn Maycumber, Julie & Tom Estes |
Recipe for Eddie's Apple Torte shared by Thomas H. Estes, Professor Emeritus of the University of Virginia, on 09 December 1997. His closing comment on that email is as follows: "Please think of Eddie and all other victims of the AIDS epidemic when you enjoy this recipe."
"Vanilla Ice Cream" (p. 35-36), from Bi-Rite Creamery's Sweet Cream and Sugar Cones, by Kris Hoogerhyde, Anne Walker, and Dabney Gough. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press (2012).
