Meal No. 168: Asian Ginger Shiitake Chicken Casserole

If you take the idea of stir-fry and try to get those flavors to show up in a casserole dish, this is the meal you might end up with. Amidst all of this past Monday's clean-up from Sunday night's Halloween Party, some kind of dinner was still called for. This was my latest experiment with a new casserole-focused cookbook.


The sesame oil was a nice flavor enhancer.


I was not wild about the finished product, but I still ate two bowls of it. I need more sauce and more flavor, and I expect I'll stick with achieving that using the wok and sound principles of stir-fry. This was faux-fry, and it didn't measure up for me.

The Two-Year Anniversary of the Project

It was on this day in 2008 that the renovation and addition project began. I was working up in Virginia but Pete LaRoque and his crew showed up and started demolition of the old kitchen and mudporch on the back of the house, and we were underway.

Now, two years later, I get to enjoy an amazing kitchen that I pretty much spend most of my time in, thanks to its expanse of space and warmly accommodating "fireside" area. The new bathrooms are also pretty wonderful and I like how my architect Sam Binkley managed to create attractive and useful spaces for those accompanying necessities of life.

Over the weekend, as I thought back to my mad scramble two years ago to clean out all the areas slated for demolition, I guess it's interesting that my general contractor is not yet through with me or with the house. He and Robert were back on Saturday to continue working on the damage that seems to have been caused by the faulty HVAC system installed by Barnette Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc., of Mocksville, NC. Pete patched the hole in the ceiling above the wetbar where the leak had come through, and he and Robert also laid much of the tile in the northwest bathroom, whose exterior wall contains the HVAC lines that likely froze and thawed when the system had that humongous leak in it.

Meal No. 167: Two Kinds of Pizza

In the midst of all the prep for the 2010 Roediger House Halloween Party, there also needed to be dinner. So Saturday night gave me a chance to return to the joy of homemade pizza, and I whipped up a couple of kinds for a small crew of us to scarf down. This here is a pesto-base white pizza with the particularly tempting addition of basil-tomato feta cheese: And this is my first tomato-sauce base pizza, with onion, mushroom, and bacon:

Roediger House Halloween Party 2010

Prepping for Halloween Party 2010

It is time yet again for the annual Roediger House Halloween Party.


The house is decorated, prepped, and ready.


Jack-O-Lanterns kindly donated by a pumpkin-carving crew of friends.


This is a shot of the first goodies I was whipping up yesterday, the classic party item simply known as Sugar Peanuts. Instructions are helpfully included right inside the burlap bag of Aunt Ruby's North Carolina shelled raw peanuts.


The problem, if course, is that when I've got over 24 hours between prepping them and when the party starts up, they remain a pretty powerful temptation sitting there in a Ziploc bag on the counter. Good thing I made two recipes of 'em.

By the time the party rolled around, I had also made:

• monster chip cookies
• roasted red pepper dip
• cowboy shrimp dip
• chocolate fudge
• gnarly garlic cheese dip
• slow cooker sausage queso dip

Meal No. 166: Grilled Ribeye

If this were not the weekend of Halloween, it seems likely I could have been up in Virginia working with one of my regular school districts up there. But of course there is the annual Roediger House Halloween Party to be prepping for, so I made sure my travel schedule had me home by this past Tuesday evening.

You see, if I were working up in Virginia, I think I would have had to get over to Washington, D.C., to be in attendance for Jon Stewart's Rally to Restore Sanity. The idea of it is compelling enough, and I would want to do my part by showing up. Plus, I imagine it will be quite a fascinating experience.

It could also do much to restore a sense of sanity and offer some glimmers of hope that people are willing to think and to "take it down a notch."

Instead, it is a weekend at home, and with the Roediger House as that home, not such a bad place to be.

Yesterday was the first day of the fall when evening brought a noticeable drop in the temperatures, making it a little less appealing to be outside grilling and frying french fries. But with this kind of result, it was well worth it.


Last night's fixins: grilled ribeye steak, thick and hearty and tender and perfectly cooked. On the side, deep fryer french fries. I forgot I'd made a Caesar salad to boot, so at this moment it still sits wrapped up in the fridge. I even had shaved parmesan on top of it.

It was too much food, but as you can see from this shot (which also reveals dinner was consumed along with another episode of Star Trek from its second season), I managed to knock it all down:


It does seem as though I have an "Obsession" with steak.

Meal No. 165: Roast with Onion & Mushroom Gravy

Last evening, a crockpot extravaganza. I never seem to make crockpot meals, but a pot roast was calling my name. This is a beef chuck roast with onion and mushroom gravy (I also seldom make gravy), and it was mighty, mighty good. A side of green beans, yeast rolls, and company mashed potatoes made it savory and spectacular.


A cast of the usual suspects took part in the edibles of the evening.

Slow Cooker Roast with Onion Mushroom Gravy: Southern Living Slow-Cooker Cookbook, 2006, p. 18. [rj19; sbw19; aw16; bw15; bp10]

Meal No. 164: Kung Pao Chicken

I went through a phase where I was liking stir fry so much that I wanted to try to do it at least once a week. I guess I didn't stick very well with that, but I have been breaking out the wok a bit more of late. Last night's meal was a good excuse to do so again.

Meal No. 163: Coronation Chicken

Coming in off the road last night with some chicken breasts waiting in the refrigerator for cooking, I reached for a simple recipe that is filling and good. This is Coronation Chicken over jasmine rice, with some crescent rolls and a Xingu on the side.

A Taste for Abita Amber

Thanks to my former student Tim Schwarz, who has me working regularly with him and his faculty at a charter school in New Orleans, I've developed quite a fondness for Abita Amber. This Louisiana brewery has quite a few nice selections, but they are not widely available to me here in Winston-Salem. So I am left to order it through friends connected with a local restaurant.

It's always a pleasure when a fresh case arrives. I keep the beverage cooler in the wetbar well-stocked with Abita Amber, Xingu (a Brazilian black beer), Viru (a nice find from Estonia), and occasionally Starr Hill Amber (from Crozet/Charlottesville, VA) and Newcastle.

Who's the Branch Manager?

It seems I'm going to have to do a bit more education of my neighbors about the City's policies on yard waste. The fact that I collect and pile sticks and branches on my curb is because the City has a program to collect these at regular intervals. There are restrictions and limitations, of course: the limbs cannot be more than 6 inches in diameter and they cannot be longer than 6 feet. Leaves are another matter: they're piled along the curb but must be free of branches, and they're only collected during the fall.

So when I come home and find a limb longer than 6 feet, with a pile of leaves mixed in, it presents a problem. Why is it piled in front of my house instead of at the curb of the property owner from which it came? And why does it violate the City's rules for this stuff?

Instead of taking the time to break down the branch and separate out the leaves and vines piled thereon, I just picked it up and took it back across the street from where I am pretty sure it came.

Meal No. 162: BBQ & Vegetarian Chili

Listen: when Lowe's Foods in Winston-Salem decides it wants to offer a $20 Boston Butt pork roast for only eight bucks, seems to me it's a good time to plan on another round of indoor pulled pork barbeque with a sweet and tangy barbecue sauce. Alongside for this meal is the perfect accompaniment of blue cheese coleslaw, which was as good this time as it's ever been, and some of Granny Wilson's honey wheat cornbread.


Below is a picture of Jennifer Twineham-Subasavage, who was the sole vegetarian in attendance for this grand meal, and who was therefore my inspiration to try my hand at a new dish. Here, she is looking down at the pot cooking on the stove with what I hope passes for happy anticipation....


And here's what she was taking a gander at: a pot of vegetarian chili...


It was a delightful gathering of seven for the evening's meal, served buffet style from the grand expanse of countertop in the new kitchen:


The dinner was delicious, I'd say:

---

"Vegetarian Chili," from All About Vegetarian Cooking. By the editors of Joy of Cooking: Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, and Ethan Becker. New York: Scribner (2000), p. 82-83. Cookbook was a gift from former student Alison Pomeroy.

Spring Street Closed for WSSU Homecoming Parade

I found signs on Spring Street on Friday which were an early warning sign that the road was going to be closed off again. Sure enough, that's exactly what happened on Saturday morning.

I get that I live right off Fourth Street, an ideal location for much that is fun to do in the greater downtown area. And I know that this close proximity means occasional inconveniences for me as a downtown dweller. What does get me irked is that the kind of event that requires a permit for street closures is probably planned well in advance. Why is it so hard for these closures to be communicated to the residents and property owners? And while I have generally liked the members of the Winston-Salem Police Department's downtown bike patrol, I can safely assert that the motorcycle cop manning the barricade at the end of Spring Street this morning was equipped with a butt on his shoulders when I told him my general contractor would need to get through.

"How long have you lived in that house?" he asked me.

"Since 2003," I told him.

"Then you should know that the Homecoming Parade is going to be happening," he sniffed, as though it's my fault that I do not track down every possible occasion and reason for Spring Street to be closed off.


When I've planned an event weeks in advance, or scheduled something important related to the house (general contractor, tree removal, furniture delivery), it is not really helpful for there to be NO notice of a street closure. I think it's time for a letter to my city councilwoman about the frequency of street closures and the dearth of resident notifications.


Ah, but this street closure was for a very good reason: it was Winston-Salem State University's Homecoming parade, which is always a fun event to witness from the north windows of the Roediger House or to look down on the staging of from the upstairs porch.

Meal No. 161: Country Ham & Rice

A favorite breakfast meal for me growing up in Buies Creek was country ham with rice and biscuits, and a tall cold glass of milk. My mom did a pretty consistently good job making it and I wish I could replicate it better than I do. Every once in a while I get a hankering for this, so that's what happened on this Friday night, after I'd spent the day working with instructional services personnel here in Winston-Salem.

The rice was the disappointing aspect, as per my usual bad luck with that food item, but the biscuits were fluffy and succulent, and the country ham was cooked just right. The milk was cold, the butter was savory, and my belly ended up quite stuffed.

Meal No. 160: Moroccan Bistro Chicken

This lovely plate of food is my best effort to follow the directions emailed to me by Brendan Shanley, who fixed this meal when I visited with him and his family last Christmas holiday. Yet again, it was darned delicious, and as Brendan notes, it's a pretty forgiving dish when it comes to the cooking of it.

Served this time over some white basmati rice, with crescent rolls on the side, it was a good meal to have after two days of working down in Richmond County.

Monster Chip Cookies for Richmond County Folks

I really like the good people in Richmond County Schools that I've been working with these last two years. It is fun to watch the different principals competing with one another to see who can play the best host for the administrators they're hosting when we work on observation skills and post-observation conferencing. I don't want to get caught up in their competitions, but I like being the happy beneficiary of their good food and goodies and such.

Since I like to whip things up in the kitchen as well, I have wanted to bring something along on one of my ventures down US 220 to Rockingham and Hamlet. Since yesterday's dinner was an early one, I had time to get a batch of monster chip cookies baked.


Not my best selection, but they're still tempting to have sitting on the counter.

Meal No. 159: Turkey Cutlets in Garlic Butter Sauce

It is true that I'm often driven in my menu planning by what's on sale when I go to the grocery store. On a whim, when I went to the bank, I swung by the Lowe's Foods store out on Robinhood Road, where I was lucky enough to find Smucker's Mixed Fruit Jelly a few weeks ago. On this particular afternoon, the sale item was turkey breast cutlets: Buy One, Get One Free.

I've never made these before, so I did a quick internet search for some recipes to get a handle on prep and cooking options. I decided to go with browning them in oil and butter in the skillet, which set me up to create a garlic butter sauce to serve with them.


With mashed potatoes and lima beans alongside, and the late afternoon sun coming in the back glass door where the eating nook/bay is, it made a pretty picture and a tasty meal.

Meal No. 158: Easy Taco Pie

After a day spent in Marion, NC, to observe and visit with Wake Forest graduate Brian Hill, I didn't want to make much of an investment in this evening's meal at the Roediger House. So here it is: Impossibly Easy Taco Pie. Pretty good stuff but truly just serviceable.

Meal No. 157: Chicken Alfredo Casserole

The Saturday night meal was comfort food, most appropriate given that the nights are noticeably cooler. Thanks to a new casserole-focused cookbook I got not too long ago, this dish proved to be a simple one to put together. It was mighty good, with a side of Caesar salad and some garlic artisan loaf. Yum.

Post-Play Gathering at the RoHo

This evening involved an excursion over to Körner's Folly in Kernersville, NC, to take in the world premiere of playwright Bill Cissna's show, "Conversations in a Café." (The top floor of this crazy historic house is an intimate theatre called Cupid's Park Theater.) Friend and former student Bradley Phillis was one of the actors. After the play, there was a chance for the lot of us to hang out and get our laughters on 'round the kitchen table. It was a good way to wind down the evening.

NEVER Use Barnette Heating of Mocksville, NC

Lest the point be insufficiently driven home, this morning represents another in a long string of mornings when I wake up too early with my frustration running ridiculously high, and I can thank the lack of service from and problem-plagued installation of my HVAC system by Barnette Heating & Air Conditioning, Inc., of Mocksville, NC.

My experience with them was awful and it galls me that the fall-out continues to affect the quality of life, and the quality of the physical structure, in my historic home in downtown Winston-Salem.

And to think that Barnette Heating & A/C refused to correct the problems themselves. That's just bad business. And it's inexcusable.