Meal No. 647: Standing Rib Roast

I'm cooking like it's the holidays. And also like it's a good opportunity to have good friends over and to enjoy an evening with folks who mean a lot to me. Tonight I was so pleased that Jen Watson and Jen Martin came over. It has been a week since Jen Watson's mother passed away (the funeral was Friday on a brilliantly sunny December afternoon) and it never seems like we can do enough to help people in troubled grieving times. A full belly (and more of the creamy cinnamon chips cheesecake) were the best I could offer but I think it was well-received.

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"Standing Rib Roast," in The Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook, Birmingham, AL: Oxmoor House (1999), p. 235.

"Campbell's Classic Green Bean Casserole," created in 1955 by Dorcas Reilly, Test Kitchen Manager of Campbell's Kitchen.

"Stuffed Potatoes: Good/Better/Best," a recipe clipping saved from Cuisine at Home, Issue 60 [December 2006], p. 23-25.

Meal No. 646: Braised Chicken & Brussels Sprouts

Yes, it was only 10 meals ago, but I was already ready for a repeat of the braised chicken recipe from earlier this month. It was good yet again, and it served well the five of us 'round the table tonight.

We got to top it all off with creamy cinnamon chips cheesecake afterwards, which was not as good as it should have been...but I've not made a cheesecake in a while so I'm out of practice.

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"Braised Chicken and Brussels Sprouts," in Everyday Food, November 2012, p. 22. Recipe magazine shared with me by Donna Whitley-Smith.

"Creamy Cinnamon Chips Cheesecake," originally from Hershey's Kitchens. Recipe on package and found online.

Milk Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

I'm going tomorrow to Guilford County to continue my training work with their Mission Possible and Lateral Entry coaches, so I figured I'd go over bearing gifts:

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"Milk Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies," from Nestlé. Recipe on milk chocolate morsels package and also found online.

Meal No. 645: Grilled Leg of Lamb with Ancho Chile Marinade

Last night, after the big pork tenderloin dinner and getting myself worn out from a pretty busy day, I just sort of crashed from 10 pm until 2 am. Then I got up, cleaned up the evening's dishes, and by 3 am I started trimming a leg of New Zealand lamb and whipping up an ancho chile marinade for it. That gave the lamb the necessary measure of marinating time to be ready for tonight's meal.

I was pretty excited about this dinner, because on the few occasions when I've cooked leg of lamb, I've never gotten started on it the night before, so this is one of my untested and untried recipes. It was worth it, too: absolutely delicious.

Now, I did have a couple of hitches: I wasn't expecting to still have rain coming down, so I grilled in intermittent misting and sprinkling. I also wasn't expecting my LP gas tank to run out part-way through, so I was not certain about the proper cooking time and just had to make my best guess. Turns out I overcooked it: it would have been better if it had been medium-rare.

But that didn't keep it from being pretty darned amazing.

I returned to the summer discovery of macaroni and cheese casserole and added some rushed baby lima beans to the side. The crew on hand last night seemed to appreciate the good food and all that was left (after packing a doggy bag for a departing teacher to take to school tomorrow) was a single serving of the mac-n-cheese.

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"Grilled Leg of Lamb with Ancho Chile Marinade," by Jeanne Kelley. In Bon Appétit, June 2010 (personal recipe clipping).

"Macaroni and Cheese Casserole," by Sarah Gabriel. In Cook's Country, June/July 2012, p. 17.

Meal No. 644: Spice-Rubbed Pork with Quinoa

Thanks to a clipping from the Food Network Magazine, I had a handy back-up plan when my initial idea for cooking pork tenderloin tonight fell through. The evening meal for a reunion of (mostly) former regulars of the Roediger House was a roasted spice-rubbed pork tenderloin, backed up by broccoli and corn-and-shallot quinoa.

Dessert was a sour cream pound cake, which has the special added palate-delighter to be found in vanilla and butter nut flavoring.

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"Spice-Rubbed Pork with Quinoa," from the Food Network Magazine, April 2011. Recipe clipping.

"Sour Cream Pound Cake," from McCormick. Found online and on the vanilla-butter nut flavoring's packaging box.

Meal No. 643: Chicken with Mushrooms

Wow. What another knock-out mouthwatering palate-pleasing recipe.

When I got to have dinner earlier this week in Luray, VA, with colleagues and good friends John and Donna Whitley-Smith, Donna sent me home with a few more copies of Everyday Food recipe magazine. Tonight I thumbed through and found myself stopping on this recipe for chicken with mushrooms, cooked for a good while in chicken stock and wine, with thyme and shallot and butter. With stuffing and garden peas on the side, it was a tremendous late-night repast.

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"Chicken with Mushrooms," in Everyday Food, September 2012, p. 91-92.

Meal No. 642: Patty Melts

It's been a mighty long stretch of being on the road, and I was very very glad to get home tonight. I was greeted by a cautiously happy Cyprus and a cadre of Roediger House regulars who were already inside and upstairs watching some television series they had wanted to catch up on.

That meant I got busy in the kitchen because there was a ready and built-in excuse to put some dinner on the table. On my way into town I'd grabbed a loaf of insufficiently-sturdy sourdough loaf bread, some cheese slices, a few sweet onions, and some ground sirloin. I set out butter to soften for the toasted bread and whipped up the classic burger sauce (recipe below) so it could set up and the flavors meld. After I got changed, I cooked the thin-sliced onions, buttered and toasted the sourdough slices, rolled the ground sirloin as thin as I could get it between sheets of wax paper, and I made us these:

The burger patties ended up smaller than I'd anticipated and the bread was sort of chewy, but the flavors had us all smacking our lips with glad hearts.

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Classic Burger Sauce
from Cook's Illustrated, July-August 2008, p. 11.

4 T mayonnaise
2 T ketchup
1 tsp sweet pickle relish
1 tsp sugar
1 tsp white vinegar
1/2 tsp ground black pepper

Whisk all ingredients together in a small bowl.

Suspicious Cyprus Refuses to Take Her Meds

Cyprus is on a monthly regimen to counteract heartworms, ticks, and fleas, all in a simple single but large pill. When she was brand new to the Roediger House, I could put those pills in a treat-like pill pocket and she'd swallow 'em right down. Then, somewhere along the way, she decided she would not be so gullible, and now she won't take a pill pocket even without a pill.

So I have two choices given that this medication is in pill form: pulverize it and mix it in with her wet food, or break it into thirds or fourths and shove it down her throat while she looks at me with sad eyes.

For her November dose, I decided to pulverize it and mix it in with the wet food she loves so much. But she was being too much of a smarty-pants and managed to keep herself from wolfing down all the juicy morsels, if she could detect any of the crushed meds on it at all. She put on quite a display of spitting out the tainted pieces.

I reckon when I come in from the road at week's end, at the time her December pill is due, she's going to have to let me shove my fingers and pill pieces down her throat again. I can guess how she'll feel about that.

Is LaRoque on the Lam?

All I can do is marvel that the General Contractor for the renovation and addition project of 2008-2009 has pretty much disappeared. And he did so with quite a few tasks/repairs left hanging.

So a few weeks ago I wrote the following letter to Peter R. LaRoque of Mocksville, NC.

20 October 2012

Peter R. LaRoque
LaRoque Construction
133 Hickory Drive
Mocksville, North Carolina 27028

Dear Pete,

You have left pending a number of items and issues still to be repaired or addressed at my house. Will you be returning to complete the work, or will you be paying someone else to do so? Please let me hear from you by November 15, 2012, regarding these matters.

Sincerely,

Raymond C. Jones

My deadline for him has passed, and silence has been the only reply.

Fire Drill at 1:40 A.M.

Panel Showing "Fire!"

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, there was a horrifyingly frightening event: the fire alarm went off. Insistently. At 1:40 a.m. With hardly any wits about me, I dashed up the stairs (the panel showed it was the second floor smoke detector that had been tripped), but there was no smoke or fire or smell of anything at all.

2nd Floor Landing / Smoke Detector Visible at Top of Picture

Had I had any sense, I would have realized it would be good to get visiting former student Tim Schwarz up and out of his upstairs guest room.

I let the alarm monitoring company still dispatch the fire department...I wanted someone with expertise to confirm that my house was not on fire. Of course, there was nothing. Just a tripped smoke detector.

Unfortunately, once the household settled back in and got to sleep again, the alarm went off again quite a few more times, starting up again around 4 am. So I put in a call to the alarm service and got a technician to call me back, but his recommendations for how to get the alarm to quit going off were to no avail.

The Faulty Smoke Detector

Since my company is right across the street from the house, the technician came at about 7:45 am. He determined that the contacts had gone bad in the detector, and he replaced it. No more issues or problems. And I'm trying not to put too much thought into what would have been had there actually been a fire. That house would go up like a tinderbox.

Let's not think about that. Instead, let's think about this:

Challah Cobblah

A cross between cobbler and bread pudding, made with fresh pears and some challah bread I got from the Camino Bakery just up the street from the house. As I've said before when I've blogged about making this, the secret is to put way too much butter, sugar, and love in it.

[Overdue blog post: I actually made this back on Labor Day weekend.]

Smithfield's Saved Me from Cooking Supper

What a long week. Not only was I on the road from Monday through Saturday evening, but I know how hard it's going to be to turn around and hit the road for a nearly six-hour drive up to West Virginia tomorrow. So when I realized I would be coming home via I-85 from Hopewell VA, which takes me past Exit 153 and a Smithfield's Barbecue and Chicken restaurant, I took the rare step of not fixing dinner at home. It was a good call.

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies

This might be my best-looking batch in quite a while, although I can't claim they taste any better than all the other batches (this is one delicious cookie, my friends). Using the simple recipe on the package, and perhaps a generous supply of love, these white chocolate macadamia nut cookies were a great treat this past Sunday. It made me very happy to offer them straight out of the oven to Jen Martin and Jen Watson when they stopped by: we put away just a few of 'em.

The rest went on the road with me to Shenandoah County, where they were not long for this earth.

Cyprus at Summer's End

Here are a few shots of that beautiful girl Cyprus while she enjoyed a sunny day at the end of the summer:

I think we can also safely note that her time in the Roediger House has helped turn her into one fat dog. This picture was taken this past Sunday:

Restacking the Firewood

I think I got a pretty good load of wood from Chris's Tree Service, and they did a fine job of stacking it on my rack on the new patio pad that I built this past summer.

There was one rub, though: a lot of the logs were pushed up against the brick of the chimney, making it hard for me to put my new firewood log rack cover over it all. So I took advantage of Sunday's moderate temperatures to unstack and restack a good portion of it all.

Now I've got the cover on it, although I've got more wood than that cover was designed to cover.

Summer-Like Weather

It's one of the great things about living in the South: going from last week's 23-degree morning when I had to build a fire, to driving up Interstate 81 into Virginia last night with my window down and wearing short sleeves. Wish I could have stayed home to enjoy it!

Meal No. 641: Grilled Tuna

Last night's late night dinner, thanks to the grill and the good folks from America's Test Kitchen:

Grilled Tuna Steaks with Red Wine Vinegar and Mustard Vinaigrette
(Served with Brussels Sprouts and Quinoa)

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"Foolproof Grilled Tuna Steaks," by Andrew Janjigian, in Cook's Illustrated, May & June 2010, p. 12-13.

Meal No. 640: Biscuits & Gravy

Had to have a spot of lunch today, and with sausage on hand but getting close to its expiration, the choice was clear: biscuits and gravy.

Meal No. 639: Chicken with Coronation Sauce

For some reason, this week's travel took it out of me. I think it's because I had a one-day trip to Newport News, two days working locally, followed by a one-day trip to Hopewell, VA where I taught all day Saturday. Knowing I have two intense weeks coming up probably exacerbated the degree to which this feels like it's taking a toll on me.

So tonight's dinner when I came in off the road was drawn from the simple side of the ledger. It was fiercely good and put me to sleep almost immediately after the late supper, too.

And December already!

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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.

The Fire Chronicles: Number 7

Following the absolutely gorgeous Thanksgiving weekend (and I wouldn't have minded it being a bit warmer, but it's best not to complain about temps in the low and mid-60s), we got us a pretty sharp cold snap. When I got up this past Monday morning, it was a very crisp and unkind 23°F.

Ah, but what a great opportunity for building a fire! Last winter was so very mild, I didn't even have a fire. The last time I got to have one was back in March 2011.

One of the items on my to-do list for a while now (since early winter of 2010, really) has been to get a firewood rack and a firewood cover. Oh, and some firewood. Ever since the wood-burning fireplace was completed in the new kitchen area, during the 2008-2009 renovation project, I have subsisted off of bundles bought at Lowe's Home Improvement Warehouse.

And it's not been that many bundles, because up till now I've only had six fires.

Thanks to the good services of Chris's Tree Service, though, I now have a well-stocked firewood rack. With no where to go last Monday, and my only plan being to enjoy the chance to be at home, I lit the set of logs (that I'd placed last Christmas but never used) and sat back and enjoyed.

It also occurred to me that this was Cyprus's first fire in the RoHo.

Meal No. 638: Grilled Country Style Pork Ribs

Grilling of fresh pork but recycling of leftover sides. That's how the RoHo is rolling on this Thursday eve.

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Big Bob Gibson Bar-B-Q's Recipe for Grilled Country-Style Pork Ribs, from Food & Wine, June 2011, p. 88, 90.

"Stuffed Potatoes: Good/Better/Best," a recipe clipping saved from Cuisine at Home, Issue 60 [December 2006], p. 23-25.

Meal No. 637: Steak au Poivre

New York Strip steaks on sale at the Harris Teeter in Kernersville as I made my way home from Newport News, so tonight's meal as I came in off the road was fancy-sounding but simple-doing: steak au poivre, with over-salted broccoli crowns and mashed potatoes. I need to remember to make a roux or use some cornstarch to thicken the sauce, which is really tasty but came out much too thin to please me.

I will say this, though: the steak was perfectly cooked and tasted just the way it's supposed to. The sauce was only a means to bump up the flavor, but the beef did not require adornment.

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"Steak au Poivre," by Dawn Yanagihara. In Cook's Illustrated, September & October 2001, p. 8-9.

Fun Foods Around Thanksgiving

Last week, there was more to the celebration of Thanksgiving than just the Thanksgiving meal. On Wednesday night, the annual karaoke fun proceeded as per usual, and in addition to the pot of chili I made, there were also some other snackables and goodies.

Prosciutto Roll-Ups

Goat Cheese, Currants, Pine Nuts, Green Leaf Lettuce, Prosciutto
[Idea for these from Brendan Shanley]

Homemade Pimento Cheese

15-Minute Peanut Butter Fudge

Following the Thanksgiving weekend but before I hit the road for work this week, I also threw together a quick batch of Butter Toffee cookies. The recipe came from the King Arthur catalog but I cannot find it in this same form on their website now. That seems to happen with their recipes from time to time: what gets published and what's archived on their website do not always match up cleanly.

Butter Toffee Cookies

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"South Carolina-Style Pimento Cheese." Recipe worked out by me, based on Sharon's Palmetto Pimento Cheese.

"15-Minute Peanut Butter Fudge," in the article "Simplifying Fudge" by David Pazmiño. In Cook's Illustrated, January & February 2007, p. 22-23.

Meal No. 636: Braised Chicken and Brussels Sprouts

I had a heaping crew of fun folks here for dinner tonight and I wanted something warm and comfortable for this chilly (but chillin') November Monday. Another recipe that jumped out at me from Everyday Food that had just been thoughtfully sent to me was for braised chicken with Brussels sprouts.

The verdict: I'm not sure I ever want to cook chicken any other way. I'm not sure I ever want to make Brussels sprouts any other way. This was awesomely delicious. Also alongside, stuffed twice-baked potatoes. Lots of clean plates by the end of dinner.

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"Braised Chicken and Brussels Sprouts," in Everyday Food, November 2012, p. 22. Recipe magazine shared with me by Donna Whitley-Smith.

"Stuffed Potatoes: Good/Better/Best," a recipe clipping saved from Cuisine at Home, Issue 60 [December 2006], p. 23-25.

Meal No. 635: Crab Cakes over Baked Bull's Eye Eggs

With a mind devoid of any useful ideas for dinner tonight, and running a bit short on time, I stumbled across a recipe in a cooking magazine that I'd just received from Donna Whitley-Smith of Luray, VA. One recipe in particular grabbed my attention and I decided to give it a try: baked bull's-eye eggs. Since it was the evening (and, for me, main) meal of the day, I upped the ante by using these baked egg-in-toasts as a base for simple crab cakes, topped with an even simpler hollandaise sauce. Turned out pretty good, and darned filling, at that.

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"Crab Cakes," a recipe shared by David Wald and attributed to The Gourmet Cookbook.

"Baked Bull's-Eye Eggs," in Everyday Food,  November 2012, p. 42-43. Magazine shared with me by Donna Whitley-Smith.

"Blender Hollandaise," by Eric Ripert. In Bon Appétit, May 2011, p. 39.