Meal No. 854: 2 x 2 Soup

Tonight, a return to my cousin Betsy's recipe for the wonderful and wonderfully simple 2 x 2 soup:

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"2 x 2 Soup," from various sources.

Meal No. 853: Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

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"Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic," from James Beard. Published in One Big Table: A Portrait of American Cooking, by Molly O'Neill. Simon & Schuster, 2010, p. 350.

"Green Bean Casserole," from Campbell's Kitchens.

"Tammy's One-Hour Dinner Rolls," from TammysRecipes.com. Guidance also came from Tammy's YouTube video, found here.

Meal No. 852: Pork Medallions in a Dijon Cream Sauce

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"Pork Medallions with Dijon Mushroom Sauce," by Frank Hollands of Minnesota. From Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks' A Taste of the BAKE-OFF Issue from March 2001, p. 40-41.

Slugfest!

Back in August, on a humid and stormy Saturday night, I was relaxing between dinner and clean-up and noticed a strange sight in the condensation of one of the kitchen bay windows: cool and intricate designs in the dewy coating. I had slugs galore and I marveled at the artistry of their movement on my window pane.

Cyprus's Crappy Morning

File Under: What the Heck Is Wrong with People?!

On a beautiful Saturday morning back in the summer months, I went out in the backyard with Cyprus. I stepped back inside to grab something, which is never a problem, because she always stays close by. When I went back out, I could not see her, so I called to her. I called again. I looked left and right. I looked in the parking area. I went around to the front yard, calling her name and clapping my hands. This has never failed to bring her hustling back to me, if we are out of one another's line of sight.

I started to freak out a bit: had she dashed after a squirrel, and actually uncharacteristically left the yard in doing so? Had someone snatched her that quickly?

With my heart starting to pound a bit, I went back around to the backyard and all the way around to the narrow side outside the kitchen eating nook/bay, which is really just a small drainage yard and serves as access to the heat pumps.

There she was. Not only was she ignoring my calls. She had discovered where some horrible sorry excuse for a human being had scooped his or her pet's poop with a city-issued poop bag but then tossed it through my fence. Cyprus had rubbed in that poop and she was (graphic warning!) eating some of it. She has never done this on any walk, but I guess when a dog's poop has crossed into her realm and invaded her space, the best thing to do is to turn it into her poop. That's domination in the natural world, eh?

That errant girl was brought inside for an instantaneous and immediate bath. Yuckity-yuck-yuck!

Meal No. 851: Hamburger Supreme

A late lunch fixed at home before taking Cyprus to her 6-month vet appointment and then hitting the road for a few days working in Winchester, VA:

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"Hamburger Supreme," from the late Mrs. John T. (Glynn) Johnson of Buies Creek, North Carolina, via Janice Jones Bodenhamer.

Meal No. 850: Chorizo-Baked Sea Scallops with Basil Cream Sauce

Oh my gosh. Another super fantastic meal thanks to the Tupelo Honey Cookbook. These are sea scallops with a chorizo-panko topping and a creamy basil sauce. There's onion and roasted red pepper, too. This was pretty awesome.

Finally used some of my home-grown basil from my new kitchen garden!

This flavorful and rich cream sauce was amazing.

I might be stuck in a rut but I do love these grits!

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"Chorizo-Baked Sea Scallops with Basil Cream Sauce" (p. 103), 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.

Luquire Family Stone Ground Grits, milled in Greenwood, SC.

Changes Coming to the Back Wall

The double-lot that makes up my property is 120 feet across and right at 100 feet deep. The house squats on a fairly large portion of it and sits within feet of the north property line. When I built the addition on the back, my architect helped me to maximize its size by pushing fully out to the 20-foot set-back limit ordained by county building codes.

The property behind the house was, at one time, the used car lot for Modern Chevrolet.

When Modern moved up on University Parkway on the north side of the city, the original dealership lot was developed into condos and townhomes. The used car lot, though, has been mostly sad and used for various itinerant things: it was the leasing office for those new condos; it was home to a private ambulance service for nearly two years; it was the base of operations for a film crew for a couple of months. It does sit up considerably higher than my lots, and there is a tall retaining wall that goes the complete length of this property from Holly Avenue all the way to Fourth Street.

That wall is not in very good shape, starting behind my house and continuing up to Fourth.

Well, big things are about to happen.

The gravel lot on the north side of the house has been purchased by the same crew that's building the new office building on the north side of Fourth Street.

They've done their soil testing:

They've had the power cut to the building behind my house:

They have blocked off the gravel lot (most likely so that nobody will be parked there when and if that shaky wall suddenly gives way!):

And it's expected in mid-December that this wall will come down, which will radically change the look out the back of my property. It's also going to open me up a bit and leave me feeling a bit vulnerable, once that wall is gone and the adjoining property has been sloped. I might have to rent some fencing or something to make me feel safer. And also to keep Cyprus in check!

Meal No. 849: Grilled Tuna with Sherry Cream Sauce

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"Sherry Cream Sauce," from About.com.

Luquire Family Stone Ground Grits, milled in Greenwood, SC, which is where my father was when he died in 1981, interestingly enough.

Collared Cat

Another yellow cat has been spotted around the Roediger House in the nighttime hours, thanks to the ever-watchful eye of Cyprus. So late one evening not so long ago, I baited the Havahart® trap again with some dry cat food, on the last Cyprus bathroom break before turning in for the night. By 6:15 am the next morning, there was a very loudly whining cat caught in it.

As you can see in this early-morning photo, the cat was wearing a collar, which saved his life. After snagging this photo for posterity, I opened the gate on the trap and this rascal bolted like a shot.

Double Chocolate Cheesecake

This is another catch-up blog post, because it was a heckuva long time ago when I made this cheesecake. But here are some shots of this deliciousness.

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"Double Chocolate Cheesecake," by Lisa McKinney of Berrybille, Arkansas. Published in Southern Living, February 2006.

French Toast Cupcakes with Maple Buttercream Frosting

Cupcakes are fine but they're farther down my list of desserts that I'm drawn to. And that's why it is a rare thing indeed for me to actually bake them. Thanks to a delightful colleague with whom I get to work in Virginia Beach, I was introduced to this serious cupcake proposition: french toast cupcakes with a maple buttercream frosting.

You're actually supposed to also put bacon on these, too, but I noticed on my first encounter with these that folks regularly went for the cupcakes without bacon.

Anyway: for your viewing pleasure:

I have no idea how they turned out. When I typed up this blog post, I'd still had yet to even try one.

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"French Toast Cupcakes" and "Maple Buttercream Frosting," from Bakingdom.com.

License Plate Additions

My older sister Janice was once married to a dairy farmer and lived on a farm just outside Buies Creek. When license plates were changed out at the start of the new year (I think in 1976), and I was hanging out and running around, I started scooping them up. That was the beginning of my license plate collection, which has not continued as an ongoing pursuit, mind you.

However, when local friend Carol Eickmeyer posted an upcoming estate sale for her business Creative Transitions, my eye was drawn to the picture of some old license plates that were among the items being offered. I took my coffee "to go" that Saturday morning and came home with these four additions to my stored collection:

Summer's Adornment of the Front Steps

I was pretty pleased with how the landscaping looked this summer on either side of the front steps coming up from the street. I just haven't gotten around to blogging about it. So here's a quick pictorial recap from June through mid-August...

Meal No. 848: Chicken Cutlets in Lemon-Garlic Sauce

This is sort of an invented dish, a rarity for me, but it's largely based on a recipe clipped from Cuisine at Home. These sautéed chicken breast cutlets are kept light and bright with a good lemon-garlic-butter sauce. It all went quite well with mashed potatoes and broccoli florets.

Meal No. 847: Roast Beef Dinner

Hello, November. You snuck up on me.

On this Friday night, at the end of a week working locally, I decided to go for a bigger meal: roast beef with vegetables. It did the trick. I should've sliced it a bit thinner so that it wouldn't be chewy but the flavors were mighty fine.

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"Roast Beef Dinner," in Cuisine at Home, Issue No. 101, September/October 2013, p. 20-21.