A Chill Saturday Morning

So much of December thus far has been gorgeous and warm, which is much to my liking. We haven't had a single day with a high lower than 50°F. We've had eight days in the 60s, and three in the 70s. It's been pretty nice, if you ask me!

But on this fine Saturday morning, after I made a lot of headway cleaning up the dishes from last night's delightful dinner party, and I took some recycling outside to the roll cart, it was clear that this was a winter day. At just shy of 7:30 am, it was a brisk, clear, sunny 26°F here in Winston-Salem.

I realize it's all relative, of course...later in the winter I'm going to wish it was as high as 26°F, I'm sure!

Fire No. 31

With a forecast high today that stays in the 40s, and with this chilly start, it seemed a good time to get a fire going for the first time this season.

As of yesterday, I am officially on my Christmas vacation, so I'm looking forward to using today to catch up on the blog, get some laundry done, probably do a little baking, perhaps continue updating some presentation powerpoints...and enjoy the heck out of this fire.

Tonight is the Joe and Lucy Milner Christmas party, and that's something to look forward to as well. Lucy was my teacher in the summer Governor's School program back in 1982, and Joe was a professor of mine in my master's program at Wake Forest, and then he was my department chair when I was on faculty there in the early 2000s. This Christmas party is quite special to me, because I've been fortunate to be on their guest list now for nearly 30 years. They are a terrific couple of people.

Meal No. 1436: Grilled Blackened Pork Chops

On Wednesday night, with it being another lovely warm December day, it returned to me the hankering to do some grilling. The simple Roediger House meal for the small crew on hand was grilled blackened pork chops, along with garlic roasted baby yukon gold potatoes and steamed broccoli.

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"Garlic Roasted Potatoes," from Ina Garten. From the FoodNetwork.com website.

Caramel Popcorn Crunch Cookies for Rankin

This school year, I'm spending a number of days with the instructional leadership team and coaches at an elementary school in Greensboro, and I've been promising to bring them a sampling of the Cap'n Crunch cookies that seem to be a favorite product of the Roediger House kitchen. On my fourth and final visit of the fall at the beginning of the week, I finally did so. These ladies were hilarious as they playfully fought over how to divvy them all up. Next time, I think I'll bring them in individual labeled baggies.

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"Cap'n Crunch Cookies," found online at The Capitol Baker, with credit going to The Sugar Plum Blog for inspiration and the source of the adapted recipe.

Possum No. 11

Yesterday, when I was headed out to the car to drive to Greensboro to begin a Project CRISS training, I saw that the Havahart® trap had yet again snagged a neighborhood possum. This is the 11th one I've trapped around the house. And they are always so frickin' ugly.

I just got back from a middle-of-the-night run out to the river to set him free into the wild. Good riddance.

Meal No. 1435: Hamburger Supreme

This is a little embarrassing, because only two meals ago, I made hamburger supreme. But let me point out that it's actually been over a week ago, because I had a whole week on the road working in Virginia Beach and I was also behind on the blog posts.

When it came time for this past Sunday's evening grub, though, I didn't get time to run to the grocery store, and some regular company was coming to hang out and play pool. I had everything on hand for this dish, so it earned a quick repeat after being on the menu so recently.

The other bonus? Leftovers to take with me to work on Monday.

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

French Yogurt Cake and Peach Nehi Ice Cream!

About a week ago, before hitting the road for a full five days of work in Virginia Beach, I used a portion of a Saturday afternoon to bring back a couple of desserts that had been neglected from the Roediger House offerings for a while: French yogurt cake and peach Nehi ice cream.

Yeah. That's some good stuff, there. And a fine combination at that.

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"French Yogurt Cake," by Andrew Knowlton. In Bon Appétit, May 2012, p. 30.

"Peach Nehi Ice Cream," as detailed in the Southern Living Community Blogs online. Another version that incorporates pureed canned peaches and a little more sugar can be found here.

Meal No. 1434: Chicken with Coronation Sauce

Yesterday was December 12th, and it was a picture-perfect blue-sky sunny warm day here in Winston-Salem. The temps hit just past 70°F and there were some light breezes. My view out the attic window just after mid-day shows the neighboring office building (751 West Fourth) bathed in sunshine with bright blue skies behind it. If you look closely, you'll see people down on the sidewalk near the middle of the picture in t-shirt and shorts.

I got outside and did a second round of gathering the leaves and piling them at the curb. There were still a lot of 'em on the Bradford pear tree, as well as in a tree along the back wall, so I might have to rake one more time.

I also have to note that my crazy azalea bushes are largely STILL in bloom. They started in early October, and they've held their blooms for over two months now. It's blowing my mind.

I did a quick run to the store to grab something fairly easy for dinner last night, and I settled on chicken with coronation sauce. This is one of the house favorites that proved most satisfying to the small Saturday night crew on hand for it.

Downtown Winston-Salem, mid-morning
Taken from Wake Forest Innovation Quarter
(the other side of downtown from the house)

As for today (Sunday), our fair city woke up blanketed in an incredibly thick fog. When I took Cyprus out in the morning, this was what it looked like to try to view the city skyline:

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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.

Meal No. 1433: Hamburger Supreme (and W-S Holiday Parade!)

On the first Saturday of December, the annual Jaycees' Winston-Salem Christmas Parade took place yet again, which means there was a ton of activity all around the house in the hours before its 5 o'clock kick-off. It's sort of like I get to see the parade without even having to go out to the parade route. I enjoy sneaking out and snapping some shots of it when I can.

It was pretty perfect December weather that day. A ton of sunshine during the afternoon and just enough of a nip in the air so it felt like it was the season of Christmas. By the start of the parade, though, since it's approaching dusk, I end up with dimmer/darker pictures than I'd like. Here's a sample:

Then, for the evening meal in the middle of some seriously competitive pool games, I served up the Jones family favorite of hamburger supreme, along with corn and applesauce.

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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. 1432: Brendan's Moroccan Bistro Chicken

Every time I make this meal, I try to make sure to give credit for it to my former 7th grade student, Brendan, who made it for one of the annual get-togethers I enjoy with him and his folks at Christmas time.

When I see them all in Raleigh on December 26th, it will be in the midst of the 20th year since he was my student. Time flies.

Anyway...not sure he approves of the name I give it, but I persist anyway: Brendan's Moroccan Bistro Chicken. Spiced and seasoned chicken thighs in a long-simmering onion and broth sauce that all comes out warm and tasty and soothing to the soul. Last Friday night, I served it over Basmati rice so our boys' night crew could enjoy a simple one-bowl meal.

Meal No. 1431: Adult Grilled Cheese

Back in my teaching days, when I lived in Raleigh, a favorite restaurant was The Rathskeller on Hillsborough Street. They had amazing food and terrific specials and they were in walking distance from the downtown apartment I shared with my childhood chum, Jay Brown. My favorite regular dishes were the Mojack City Chicken and Creamy Basil Chicken. If I wanted a change of pace, I'd order the Five-Cheese Grilled Cheese.

I've wanted to replicate it here at the house sometime, and last Thursday night was my first inspiration to do so. With cave-aged cheddar, smoked gouda, gruyere, and feta, along with sliced fresh tomato and thick-cut cherrywood smoked bacon, all on top of a split English muffin, it was darned good.

I could not resist another slice of mocha buttercream chocolate espresso cake, with some of the remaining homemade vanilla ice cream:

Mocha Buttercream Chocolate Espresso Cake

After enjoying the heck out of the homemade vanilla ice cream over the Thanksgiving holiday (and for a very few days afterwards), I had it in my mind that a chocolate cake was needed. Initially the intention was to have the cake to go with the ice cream, but having a gluten-free guest as part of the holiday festivities made that choice seem inhospitable to me.

Nonetheless, the urge to bake something chocolatey had led me to a few untried (or rarely seen) recipes that have been tucked away in a folder in the butler's pantry. The one I settled on while avoiding important chores during a recent cold rainy Monday at home was a mocha buttercream chocolate espresso cake.

A little backstory, here: When I was a schoolteacher in Raleigh, I had great colleagues and was particularly close to two of them: Stephanie and Mary. The three of us regularly worked at school late but then often took supper together. For a pretty good stretch, we found ourselves going like clockwork to the Hillsborough Street Darryl's restaurant (which sadly is no more!) and partaking of an early dinner special. Entree, drink, and a dessert for around $9.95, if memory serves...? My sweet finisher of choice just about every time was the chocolate espresso layer cake. Yum, sirree!

Finally, 20 years later, I'm glad to have taken a chance making one of my own.

Site of the Original Darryl's 1906 on Hillsborough Street in Raleigh
Image Found via UrbanPlanet.org
Image Source: reprehensible.net/~orulz/hillsborough/hillsborough7.jpg

A Postscript: Whereas this popular local chain of restaurants once had around 12 locations, the one remaining Darryl's (which was bought and resurrected by a different owner and is now called Darryl's Wood Fired Grill) is located in Greensboro. I'm darn glad it's there. My memories of going to Darryl's in Raleigh were very central to my high school experience, a bit of college, and for no small number of years through my 20s.

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"Mocha Buttercream Chocolate Espresso Cake," from Nestlé's VeryBestBaking.com. Found online.

Meal No. 1430: Barbecue Chicken Soup

Part of my thinking in getting two whole chickens to put on the kamado grill was so that I could make the incredible barbecue chicken soup.

So when I was still on Thanksgiving vacation last Tuesday, and with the weather wet and quite chilly, I went to work on preparing a batch using the chickens I'd smoked on Sunday night prior.

Wow. The potent and full combination of flavors and sensations makes this a soup you can't quite get enough of.  I reckon you oughta click that link below and go see for yourself what it's all about.

Kamado Meal #32

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"Chicken on a Throne," from Smoke & Spice by Cheryl and Bill Jamison. Boston: The Harvard Common Press (2003), p. 171-173.

"BBQ Chicken Soup," from the folks at the Big Green Egg website.

"Granny Wilson's Cornbread," a recipe shared with me by Linda B. Dunlap.

Meal No. 1429: Pork Medallions with Dijon Mushroom Sauce

This past Monday night, the Roediger House dinner featured pork medallions with dijon mushroom sauce. This recipe takes me back to the early days of my belatedly-developed interest in cooking, which was helped along when my mother brought home check-out aisle cooking magazines from Betty Crocker and Pillsbury. One of the first of those was the collection of the latest winning recipes in the Pillsbury Bake-Off contest. The ideas in that sort of collection were helpful for my initiation into kitchen creations.

I like to have this dish reappear from time to time. A quick check of the blog tells me it's been 13 months exactly since the last time I made it. I'd say it was high time for its return.

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"Pork Medallions with Dijon Mushroom Sauce," by Frank Hollands of Moorhead, Minnesota. Bake-Off Contest 37 (1996). Published in Pillsbury Classic Cookbooks' A Taste of the BAKE-OFF Issue from March 2001, p. 40-41.

Barbara Matthews's Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream

Among all things holy and good, there is homemade vanilla ice cream. The recipe I use comes from the much-loved Barbara Matthews, and it was the delicious treat following a recent gathering of folks for indoor pulled pork barbecue. It had been quite a while since I'd used my big rock-and-salt ice cream freezer. I could not get enough of it!

Meal No. 1428: Chicken on a Throne

Even though Chicken on a Throne was on the menu about ten meals ago, the beautiful weather of the Thanksgiving weekend was a great enticement to put the kamado grill to work again. I had picked up a couple of chickens at Costco and was looking forward to another round of "beer butt chicken."

If Meal No. 1418 was a relative breeze (after a nearly 18-month hiatus from the kamado!), such was not the case last Sunday.

Smoking meats on this grill leads to an incredible result, but you have to have patience and mental fortitude for a finicky and touch-and-go process sometimes. For instance, it took about three-and-a-half hours to get the smoker temperature exactly right, including a snuff-out and restart of the coals. Then, it petered out again after just under three hours, and I finished the chickens on the gas grill with foil-wrapped applewood chips to keep the smoking going.

Ah, but the outcome! Delicious, moist, flavorful, melt-in-your-mouth...

Kamado Meal #31

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"Chicken on a Throne" (p. 171-173) and "Alabama Great White Sauce" (p. 362). In Smoke & Spice, by Cheryl and Bill Jamison. Boston: The Harvard Common Press, 2003.

Meal No. 1427: Indoor Pulled Pork Barbecue

The night after Thanksgiving, it was again a gathering of eight folks, which included the rare treat of Andrea and Mark Bailey. This was the Baileys' second visit to the RoHo, and now that they've moved to Durham, there is great hope that visits might be more frequent and regular.

For dinner, it was indoor pulled pork barbeque with a sweet and tangy sauce, along with Ina Garten's blue cheese coleslaw. Simple but good, and gluten-free.

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"Indoor Pulled Pork," by Bryan Roof. In Cook's Illustrated, January & February 2010 (No. 102), p. 6-7.

"Blue Cheese Coleslaw," from Ina Garten, from the Food Network website.

Meal No. 1426: Thanksgiving 2015

I love Thanksgiving. It's such a great holiday, focused on food and friends and fellowship. Those are pretty essential ingredients to the life of the Roediger House. That might help explain why "Thanksgiving" meal gatherings actually occur several times a year.

The tendency around here is to expand the celebration of food and friends to also encompass the evening before as well as the days following, so it was a full house and a full table for three days in a row.

The centerpiece of it all, of course, is the Thanksgiving meal, served at the proper dinner hour of 8 o'clock. And it did not occur to me until I was drafting this post (while sipping coffee and waiting for the rest of the household to begin stirring) that this was the first true Thanksgiving meal to be taken in the dining room since 2011. I "lost" that space when it became storage for items brought home from my mother's estate, starting in 2012, and then there was also the plaster restoration and floor refinishing that took place in the fall of 2014...and shifting all the rooms about left me with a horrible junk problem in there until this past July. It felt so warm and cozy even though it might be considered sort of formal by some.

Then there was the food, and plenty of it. The menu really doesn't change, although this year's last-minute addition of an unexpected gluten-free guest necessitated some tailoring of the dishes, where possible. Overall, I think we were all well-satisfied and full-bellied by the meal's conclusion.

I was not shy about loading up my own plate, but I could not muster the strength of character or will to return for any seconds:

Clockwise, from top:
apple & bacon stuffing, turkey with gravy, sweet potato casserole,
layered green bean casserole, beef tenderloin in wine sauce,
creamy horseradish sauce.
Center: corn pudding

Rest assured...I am thankful for these kinds of good times with great friends:

Addendum: a vote was taken at meal's end to determine whether or not corn pudding should remain on the Thanksgiving menu. I like it, but the vote was 2-6 against it.

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"Oven-Roasted Turkey Breast," Betty Crocker: Holiday Entrées, Sides, Brunches, & More, November 2001, p. 22-23.

"Beef Tenderloin in Wine Sauce" (p. 296) and "Spicy Horseradish Sauce" (p. 295), from The All-New Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook. Compiled and Edited by Julie Fisher Gunter. Oxmoor Press (2006).

"Layered Green Bean Casserole," a long-time Jones family favorite.

"Sweet Potato Casserole with Pecan Topping," from Southern Living Slow-Cooker Cookbook,  (Oxmoor House, 2006), p. 234-235.

"Cornbread Stuffing with Apples and Bacon," from David Venable. Found online.

Butterfinger Cookies

In the lead-up to the Thanksgiving holiday, I tried a new cookie recipe using Butterfinger baking bits.

They were perfectly decent but not remarkable. I was suspicious of the amount of flour recommended on the package recipe and found from reading online reviews that it was wise to cut it back by at least half a cup.

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"Butterfinger Cookies," from Nestlé. Recipe on Butterfinger Baking Bits package and online.

Meal No. 1425: World's Best Lasagna

Thanksgiving Eve is a celebrated occasion in the Roediger House, and this year it was the scene of the 1425th meal prepared in the kitchen addition (that was completed in late spring of 2009). The table was full with some of the dearest RoHo regulars, and I served up the aptly-named World's Best Lasagna, along with some garlic bread. It was a really fun evening, including quite a few rounds of pool upstairs. It was also an impromptu slumber party, with all beds full once the house shut down its evening festivities.

It was made clear to me from the free-flowing commentary of the guests that this meal was overdue, given that I hadn't made it since the tail end of summer (Meal No. 1371). I tend to agree.

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"World's Best Lasagna," by John Chandler (Dallas, TX). Found online at AllRecipes.com.