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.]
Last week I was not being particularly good about eating, so Thursday night I made a point of working up a decent dinner, depending on the sous vide to perfectly cook two prepped chicken thighs; these were joined by roasted Brussels sprouts and a nice heap of Midnight snack cherry tomatoes from my kitchen garden, with a few good shakes of Red Gold Hawaii Kai’s Palm Island Sea Salt. The goodness of this bounty helped make up for my nutritional calamities of the preceding days.
When I undertook the arduous culinary journey ultimately intended to result in some nice handheld iced apple turnovers, it was mainly to force me to try my hand again at working with pie crust dough. Don't misunderstand: I'm definitely a fan of apple turnovers and was excited that these would be on a plate for me to enjoy, once it all was finished. Even though the outcome was far from what was intended! But with a scoop of dense creamy and chewy New England-style vanilla ice cream, also made from scratch, it helps overcome what fell short.
My previous attempt at turnovers was tasty but looked horrible, when "apple hand pies" was one of the slips drawn from my Quarantine Task Jar two years ago. It takes practice, which means I have to be willing to work with pie dough and fail, or work with it and get something ridiculous looking but still tasty, and ultimately I might be able to figure out how to roll with it.
At least so far as the blog can tell, we can count this as scratch-made pie crust attempt number two, with a generous rough determination of ±33% degree of success, let's say.
Let's also say that the new lilies are showing their marvelous beauty as they come in for the first time this summer. These photos (above and below) are from the bulbs I planted on the rear yard landscaping slope, tossed into hurriedly-dug holes back in the spring.
It's definitely summer, and while he still prefers to be outside and often in the direct sunlight, Sumner is also keen on finding the perfect cooling spot where the air blows from under the kitchen cabinets:
"Apple Turnovers," by Sam Merritt of Sugar Spun Run. [Published 08 September 2022]
"The Best Easy Pie Crust," by Sam Merritt of Sugar Spun Run. [Published 08 November 2021]
"Dense, Chewy, and Rich New England-Style Ice Cream," from Max Falkowitz, former senior features editor of SeriousEats.com. [Updated 28 February 2019]
Peaches I'd not assigned to another use yet, and buttermilk nearing its use-by date: in the lead-up to the Fourth of July, that combination propelled me back to my ice cream maker and the output was a batch of peach-buttermilk ice cream, heavy on the peaches but needed more dairy, and still sweet enough to invite scrutiny from the authorities, if they'd caught wind of it.
Then, Tuesday brought the official Independence Day holiday, perfectly warm but not as humid, calm breezes to keep it from being miserable, and yet hot enough that it was clear this special day comes in the fullness of summertime. A big celebration and a massive fireworks conclusion at the nearby minor league ballpark brought tons of people downtown, and that made Spring Street busy and so that's where Sumner insisted that we while away a large portion of the evening. Once we retreated back upstairs, just after 9 pm, I snagged this photo of the full parking lot up behind the house, with summer's dusk light and Venus bright in the western sky:
And then all those cars had to find a way out of here once the evening concluded, and that sure filled things up on Spring Street on our final trek out for Sumner's potty business:
Adapted from "Musings on Peach-Nectarine Buttermilk Ice Cream," from Carolyn Jung of the FoodGal.com blog. [Published 24 July 2013] Her recipe was adapted from The Animal Farm Buttermilk Cookbook by Diane St. Clair. A print-friendly pdf of the recipe is available.
Monday was that strange normal weekday nestled between the weekend and Tuesday's Fourth of July holiday. It was quiet at the Roediger House for me and its two guests, a leisurely afternoon spent mostly up on the third floor, each up to his own particular shenanigans. It was just too hot and humid outside, and the promised storms for late afternoon never materialized. For the final meal on the last night of the weekend’s guests, we had piled-high pasta with basil, mustard, and Italian sausage. It’s one of Nigel Slater’s minimalist recipes, designed to be simple and no-fuss while still delivering a delicious and filling dish. It also struck me that it could be well accompanied by a copycat version of garlic breadsticks from a famous chain known for its endless supply of them. While I still don’t portion or shape them all that expertly, I certainly can consume them like a champ.
Our daily pattern during their visit was to enjoy coffee and snacks to start the day, pursue our own interests on laptops and phones and gaming consoles in the afternoon, and then gather for that evening meal. Sumner, as shown above, was always close by.
Then we would follow dinner with a game, take a break for dessert, and ultimately retreat to the attic man cave to work our way through episodes of Black Mirror. I was not familiar with this show but loved it. Sumner would snooze and dream nearby and, if I would lie next to him, might even be persuaded to finish his dinner before bedtime.
"Pasta with Sausage, Basil, and Mustard," by Nigel Slater and published in Food & Wine, September 2002. [Online recipe updated 18 May 2023]
"Copycat Olive Garden Breadsticks," from Tessa Arias of HandletheHeat.com. [Published 13 December 2013 / Updated 18 January 2023]
With company in town over the weekend leading up to the Fourth of July holiday, dessert rose on the priority list. On Sunday, following our delicious pan pizzas, I wanted something lighter and crisp, given the size of the dinner and the heat of the day. Atlantic Beach Lemon Pie stepped into that role perfectly. With its Ritz cracker crust and lemony punch, it is the coastal North Carolina cousin of the more famous key lime pie (one of the few good things to be found in Florida). Easy to put together and always impressive in the final result, the slices are almost always both too large and too small, and certainly that pie is also often too fast gone.
"One Phenomenal Pie: Atlantic Beach Pie," from Chef Bill Smith. Published in Our State Magazine, May 2014. Also featured in "Found Recipes" on All Things Considered from National Public Radio, broadcast April 13, 2013.
A bonus of having weekend guests was the energy and inspiration to put together a two-pie version of barbecue chicken pan pizza. Prepping the dough for its long slow rise before they arrived Saturday, it was keenly mature just when I needed it to be by Sunday afternoon. Once it settled into a slow spreading in the cast iron skillet (for one) and the 9-inch cake pan (for the other), I finished those yeasted bases with barbecue sauce, cheddar cheese, prepped barbecue chicken thighs, slices of sweet onion, a shake of bacon pieces, and mozzarella. Some salad with creamy Caesar dressing was the lead-in but oooh child those pizza slabs were dandy!
That Sunday morning began with manageable light breezes to stave off the reality of summer settling on us, with it 76°F at 6:45 am when Sumner and I arose to start our day. Coffee on the driveway was intermittently reasonable as long as the citronella incense was burning. There was a brief sighting of a young hawk, perching briefly on a high limb before dashing off, which is among my outdoor pleasures. It’s been so wet that I’ve not bothered to put the irrigation system onto a schedule; a manual activation of key zones before the sun rose too high seemed the right call to make.
Among the in-fridge snackables I wanted to have at the ready for the guys was a fresh batch of pimento cheese, available when the snacky urges overtook any of us. Always good but always just a touch different each time I make it, this recipe is a dependable staple in the appetizer category here.
Pizza Crust based on "Fool-Proof Pan Pizza," by J. Kenji López-Alt, culinary consultant for SeriousEats.com. [Updated 26 April 2021]
"South Carolina-Style Pimento Cheese." Recipe worked out by me, based on Sharon's Palmetto Pimento Cheese.
Heat, humidity, haze, and, with timely precision, the first hum of a cicada: that was the Saturday morning start of July in the quiet and calm of Spring Street. Not ideal for cutting the grass but the forecast for the following days looked to be even more forbidding, so I knocked out that chore once we’d gotten to a decent enough time of the morning where the neighbors wouldn’t be too outraged.
He may love the sun but Sumner also recognizes the benefits of a shady retreat.
A surprise opportunity to have a holiday weekend visit from the dear duo of Jeremy and Mark ignited my muted energies and broke me out of the quiet summer’s malaise. Things like making a batch of ice cream, getting towels washed and hung, putting together a pizza dough for a long rise, cutting up fruit, and solidifying dinner menus to accommodate three at the table for three nights…I was glad to feel in motion and in sync again.
Shortly after they arrived, we partook of a mid-afternoon snack: carrots, bell pepper strips, grapes, pita chips, and delicious avocado-lime dip.
Saturday night’s menu was designed more for me than really attuned to their more vigorous appetites: roasted spiced salmon over a Caesar-topped spring mix. The homegrown Candyland tomatoes were a bonus.
I had the remaining portion of a batch of vanilla ice cream hanging out in the freezer, and apparently a perfect amount of leftover hot fudge sauce, so I reworked them into a little container of fudge ripple ice cream for our dessert that Saturday night. The fudge sauce was chewy but chocolatey and it did not spark any complaints.
Based on "Easy Lemon Caesar Salad Dressing," by Kim Hardesty of lowcarbmaven.com.
Appetizer avocado dip based on "Cilantro Lime Sauce," from Alexa Blay of Key to My Lime. [Published 04 September 2019]
"Sweet Milk Ice Cream," a recipe from King Arthur Baking that is no longer available online.
And then came in fast fashion the final Friday—and final day—of June, the summer well underway but now feeling a bit rushed, and dreary sprinkles muted the mood in the morning hours. Coffee and Sumner and I all retreated to the third floor, the Miles Davis station playing on Pandora, and Sumner snoozed while I flailed a bit, finding sparks of creativity or catalysts to productive endeavor to be elusive quarries.
With guests coming in, it required heading out for groceries and supplies and then returning to the homestead to tackle laundry and guest bedroom preparations. This was a humid day, once those showers ended, with a bit of haze from the Canadian wildfires. It was not particularly pleasant for outdoor time, so I had to be all busy indoors instead. Sumner does not thrill to the frantic activity but he remains a good getalong guy.
At dinnertime, a salad with plenty of Candyland cherry tomatoes atop it was just what I needed:
Those tomato plants are coming along well, even if I have not figured out staking. The abundance is pleasing for satisfying personal appetites while still having enough to share with neighbors.
Once more with it well into the evening Sums insisted we undertake hang time in the front yard. I fired up the citronella incense sticks and anyone coming from or going to Quanto Basta that he could catch the attention of was required to let him sniff and snort at ‘em and get a good head rub. A couple of times, I suggested we ought to go in but he just gave me that Oh, Dad look.
We waited as late as possible to undertake our downtown stroll, and had not gone far before we ran into, and had an extended catchup conversation with, my UNC chum Steve.
That’s the story of June’s conclusion in the wonderful homestead of this Roediger House.
Not so long ago, when I got it in my head to make beef and cheddar melts, I ended up throwing together a special sandwich sauce with which to adorn it. The filet mignon dinner from a few nights ago was a two-steak sous vide, with the spare one set aside with an eye to another round of those melts to follow. Early in the week, I went ahead and whipped up that sauce. When I realized I had some lettuce to use up, and with the accumulation of ripe and ready cherry tomatoes, that sauce was well-suited to a beef-topped salad, the main meal last Tuesday.
For those in a certain age range, perhaps that Big Mac jingle and the mastery of its fully descriptive ingredients list remains a treasured accomplishment of days gone by. The triumph for most of us accrued a tempering element—and some might even remember where they were when they learned this incongruous detail—when we put it together that the “special sauce” was more or less Thousand Island dressing. Oh, the wounding sting of the death of innocence!
Once more it was a good sale that made me reach for a package of baby back pork ribs, and this past Monday proved to be the right time to roast them. That’s been my go-to method: an ample spice rub and sealing them for an overnight rest, followed by a light smear of dijon mustard and a fresh barbecue spice rub, before settling them onto a pan with a wire rack, covered with a tight seal of foil, to slow roast for several hours. I roasted the rest of the broccoli I had on hand, and got to do my first major sampling of the Midnight Snack cherry tomatoes, which were quite tasty!
But to me the way to make pork ribs even better, even more tender, and even more flavorful is to pull them out of the oven at the end of the cook time, allow the ribs to cool down, wrap ‘em in foil, bag ‘em for an overnight rest in the fridge, and then subject them to a gentle low-heat warm up on a following day. That’s what made the leftovers even more tasty, as a simple solitary meal-snack a few days later.
While the threat of storms Monday was dire enough to earn me a “how-to-prepare” email from Duke Energy, we relished what was instead a perfect breezy day under sunny skies. Sumner and I passed quite a bit of time, first with coffee on the driveway, and then in the yard or under the Bradford pear’s enormous canopy.
A lot of laptop time for me, a lot of nap time for Sumner, and we considered it a winning way to kick off the final week of June. It wasn't until dinnertime that the dark cloud cover moved in, with the barest sprinkle of the shortest interval, a single roll of distant thunder, and then a gradual lightening of the evening sky to indicate the first threat line was passing.
The radar from around 7 o'clock Monday night did show that compact pockets of stormy energy were in play elsewhere...suggesting there was a general threat overall but only isolated specific manifestations of whatever that system was packing.
And then by 8 pm, one of those intense cells passed over downtown Winston-Salem, a brief soaking shower, a bit of lightning and some good rolling thunder...all well-tuned in the key of summer.
And towards the end of it all, from the 3rd floor front dormer window looking out at the city's skyline, there was this endnote:
"How to Make Great Ribs in the Oven," by Emma Christensen. From The Kitchn. [Published 01 July 2017]
An even more beautiful day was upon us this past Sunday, even if the afternoon grew a bit warm under a full treatment of sunshine, and Sumner could not get enough of it. The morning east-origined light lit up the house and pulled front and center the summery mix of colors and shades.
More lily blooms have appeared in front of the porch, with others looking increasingly ready to follow suit.
The squirrels were particularly active that day, and it kept Sumner’s watchful eye turned up to 11. But it also seemed to wear him out:
...and he didn’t seem to mind when we occasionally took inside breaks so that he could sit (or lie) a spell in front of a kitchen AC register:
And then he spotted the new neighbor groundhog, feasting on the untended hillside of the adjoining property behind the house:
As the day wore on, and the kitchen called to me to undertake my main meal’s culinary shenanigans, I gravitated towards the sous vide, pulling a prepped beef filet steak out of the freezer to gently cook. Then I prepped a russet potato for baking and cut up broccoli florets to be ready for roasting. I felt I’d been eating a bit of junk the previous couple of days and was jonesing for a full meal centered on beef, which got a nice two-sided sear in the skillet just before I plated the food. This did not disappoint!
“The Perfect Baked Potato,” by Lan Lam. In Cook’s Illustrated, January & February 2016 [Number 138], p. 14-15.
The long week of rain and showers and mist and grey finally stepped aside last Friday afternoon to allow a short run of sun and a boost in the heavy feel of humidity, and Sumner and I went out into it for a walk of just over three miles. His panting, though, meant a couple of sit-down breaks but we were unhurried and it was just nice to be outside. Saturday morning was our first time out on the driveway for morning coffee in almost a week, even though it was initially cool and cloud-covered. We had just long enough for a cup before the arrival of my high school classmate Shelia, a noted academic and upper level university research administrator, alumnus of Wake Forest University, and proud mom taking her daughter for a college tour.
Activities surrounding the Winston-Salem Pride Festival brought a morning closure to Spring Street, with the parade checkin just up from the house, so Shelia and I had oatmeal in the kitchen instead of venturing out to a breakfast spot. It was a fine visit and she was not gone long before it was time to greet Amy and Kristen and Mookie as they pulled into the driveway for parking convenient to the Pride events they were heading to. Sumner and I stayed close to home and he enjoyed happy interactions with the wide-ranging strangers passing by who were almost as glad to see him.
Thank goodness the weather broke late the previous afternoon so I could get the yard mowed before the influx of passersby, given how the house does seem to stand out and catch the eye of many. I like the idea of putting my best foot forward. Timing is everything, too, with the daylilies and astra blue balloon flowers and pansies and, now, the new lilies all blooming gloriously, with that luscious lawn well watered by so very much rain of late. The mix of clouds and sun, still humidity and soothing breezes, quiet solitude and gaggles of pedestrians…the weather’s unpredictability kept an elevated edge to the feel of the day, the uncertainty of when it might turn pushing the happy enjoyment of right now so that none might be guilty of squandering opportunity.
A brief surprise visit occurred near the end of the afternoon, when the day at last committed to be mostly sunny. It was Ken, my fellow PhD chum from the University of Virginia, whose family is still here in Winston-Salem. Has it been a decade since he came by here? We did a quick bit of catching up before he dashed off to his destination.
By evening, Sumner and I headed out for our evening walk, clocking in just a nudge past 3.5 miles, enough that we realized it was warmer than we first thought. But it was such a nice night that, at 10 pm, he still wanted to lie on the grass of the front yard and watch the activity of our well-situated street. Eventually, I was able to talk him into bedtime, to which we both eagerly surrendered. It was a fine first Saturday helping roll us into official summer.
