Meatless Monday - Tofu red curry

It was another beautiful day with much lower temperatures so when I came across cheap pickling cucumbers at Jay International today, I thought I'd do another batch of dill pickles the proper way, with the water bath processing and all. They seem to have worked fine, but next I want to pickle some other vegetables, like green beans or okra.

Since it was Monday, I got the ingredients for a nice vegetarian Thai red curry. That spicy, coconut milk sauce is my favorite curry flavor of all the curries. In today's I put fried tofu puffs, onions, orange bell pepper, baby bok choy, green beans and some bean sprouts. So good over rice.

Weekend Wrap Up

After a week of impossible, horrible, soul-crushing hot weather a magical thunderstorm rolled in Friday night and brought delightfully cool temperatures with it. On Friday night, in the midst of the storm, it was time for bed and the Boy did not feel like doing his nightly duty of taking Foxy Brown for a short walk, so I volunteered for the job. It's always a risk taking her out during a storm since she is very afraid of thunder and lightning, but I knew she had to pee so I took the chance. I hesitated slightly as I had spent the evening in just a shirt and underpants (in my defense, the shirt is long and pretty much covers my ass) and didn't feel like putting on anything else. Considering it was 11:30pm and pouring down rain, I took the chance. What do I care if someone sees my underwear clad tush? Foxy trotted along, unwilling to stop, so I did get soaked but the lower temperature was invigorating. I was cold and loving it so many days of heat and sweat.

Saturday wasn't exactly cool, but there was a good amount of cloud cover and it never got much above the mid-80s. I spent the afternoon running around, buying pottery glaze and vegetables. For a late dinner, I warmed up the leftover grilled chicken thighs, roasted some gorgeous little Yukon gold potatoes and made a salad of cucumber, tomato and onion with my version of Hendrickson's dressing. If you see Southern Illinois tomatoes for sale, buy some! They smell and taste like actual tomatoes!

I also bought some pickling cucumbers and made two jars of a quick, improvised spicy-sweet dill pickle. I used equal parts white vinegar and water, sugar, turmeric, cayenne pepper, garlic, black mustard seeds, salt and a little bit of fresh dill. I took a little taste today -- they were not quite ready -- and they seemed like they were well on their way to goodness. I will work on the recipe and actually can another batch rather than just make a refrigerator version.

Sunday dawned wonderfully cool and all I could think of was baking. My friend Rene had posted a recipe for a summer strawberry cake several days ago and while it was tempting there was no way I was turning on the oven in our no-central-air house. So today was the day! While I was at it, and buying strawberries, I wanted to make more strawberry preserves and can them properly. And while making my grocery list in the morning, I finally remembered to add heavy cream so I could make a batch of butter. As long as I was making butter, and the oven was going to be on, I decided to make a loaf of bread, baked in the Dutch oven to give it a nice crust.

The strawberry cake is a fairly easy recipe, apparently adapted from one by Martha Stewart. This version appeared on the blog Smitten Kitchen. Make a batter, cover it with halved strawberries, sprinkle with sugar, bake. The cake, before baking:

And the cake when done:

While the cake was baking (it takes an hour at a low heat to get the strawberries all gooey), I started the preserves. Two pounds of strawberries, hulled and cut into chunks were tossed in a heavy large saucepan with 1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice and four cups of sugar. Slowly bring it to a boil and then let it go for about 10-15 minutes. Between the smell of the cake baking and the aroma of the preserves, my stomach was growling in anticipation of strawberry goodness. The berries cooking:

In the canner (okay, really just a large pot with a round rack in the bottom, waiting for the water to boil:

And all sealed and ready for the pantry shelf:

At the Memorial Day barbecue thrown by my sister Carol, my nephew Chris brought a container of 40% heavy cream to make into butter.  I've been wanting to do that for ages, but I never seemed to remember when I was at the grocery store. It seemed to take a lot of shaking effort on his part and I lost a little interest...at least until I remembered again on Sunday to buy the stuff. I let the cream sit out for about an hour or so in the warm kitchen before I poured it all into a jar and started shaking. For the first few minutes (really, probably less than five minutes) it sloshed around like you'd expect but then suddenly I couldn't really feel the liquid jostling around so I stopped to take a peek. And there was butter!

It really kind of was like magic! I shook it a bit more after this stage, just to make sure I had collected all the fat out of the liquid. The next step involves draining and rinsing the butter. You have to get rid of all the milky liquid to avoid the butter going rancid quickly. I rinsed it in the jar a few times with cold tap water, but then attempted to get the butter into a [way too small] piece of cheesecloth. That was kind of a disaster because at this point in the butter's life, it is still rather soft (particularly in warm weather) and it kind of sticks to the cheesecloth. After that somewhat failed experiment I opted to squoosh the butter into a ceramic dish and repeatedly stir in and then drain off cold tap water. At some point in the process, I stirred in some kosher salt (I like butter to be a bit salty), but that's up to your own personal tastes.

Try this at least once. It's really delicious.

As long as I was making butter and turning the oven on, it seemed to follow that I should make a loaf of bread. Expert bakers will be appalled at my bread making methods. Generally I measure nothing and today was no exception. Here's my bread recipe: Put some warm water in a big bowl to proof the yeast (along with a little glug of sugar for the yeast to eat) and then dump some flour in after the yeast proofs. I happened to have a glob of very melted butter handy so I put that in along with perhaps a teaspoon of salt and some more water. Mix it up, turn out onto a floured surface and knead for several minutes. Like this:

Put a little oil in a bowl, plop the dough in and let it rise till it's about doubled. Punch it down and knead again for a few minutes, then back into the bowl for a second rise. About 30 minutes before you are ready to bake, put a heavy Dutch oven (including the lid) into a hot (400F) oven to heat up. When you're ready to bake the loaf, gather up the ball of dough, toss a palmful of corn meal into the pot and set the dough atop the corn meal. Whether this does anything or not, I'm not sure, but I generally run a bit of water on the inside part of the lid (be very careful as it's really hot and will steam up) precisely to put some steam into the pot to help the bread. Now I will confess that I'm not sure exactly what this does, but I know it's supposed to be a good thing.

 Bake for about 30 minutes or so (I swear I'm not being obtuse - I really don't remember how long - somehow I just know when it's done...). About 10 minutes or so before the bread should be done, take the lid off the pot and let the bread get a nice golden brown. Again, be very careful as things are very hot! This method makes a nice crusty loaf.

And it goes really well with freshly made butter (add some strawberry preserves and you have my breakfast).

My friend Rene also inspired the evening's cocktail as she offered bunches of mint. I didn't want to drink rum so I made vodka-based mojitos, but I think they suffered a bit without the rum flavor. At any rate, they were refreshing.

Dinner was grilled pork boneless country ribs and buttered noodles with leftover tomato and cucumber salad.

And of course strawberry cake for dessert.

Now I'm contemplating making more pickles and two different Asian-inspired dishes for dinner...

Dressed up like a million-dollar trooper/Tryin' hard to look like Gary Cooper (super duper)/Come let's mix where Rockefellers walk with sticks or umbrellas in their mitts - Taco Thursday

It's still too hot to live, particularly without central air, but we can't eat takeaway every night. Tacos seemed like  a good idea - minimal cooking and lots of vegetables, easy peasy. Still, I nearly burned up just cooking the ground beef. Tomorrow I'm going to have to think of something cold to eat maybe.

The Boy bought extra large hard taco shells (yeah yeah, not authentic, but I love the crunch...perhaps we should do tostadas instead) and held a lot of filling. Yay!

I suppose I've set it up that we can only have tacos on days of the week that start with a "t"...

Eat beef, eat beef it's a mighty good food/It's a grade A meal when I'm in the mood - Sirloin with caramelized pears and gorgonzola, Indian-spiced okra

Beef! Finally, beef! I went to the grocery store today on my way home from work and encountered a lovely sirloin steak, my favorite cut. Inspired by my great-niece Kyrie, who had posted a photo of her porterhouse steak with pear and bleu cheese, I bought a nice ripe red pear and some gorgonzola (I prefer the salty tang of gorgonzola to the moldier taste of bleu). When I was strolling through the produce department I spied the fresh okra and remembered this recipe.

The okra was very good, though, like most of the commenters on the recipe, I should have doubled the spices. The flavors were rather subtle, but they worked really well with the okra. I didn't realize that okra was a vegetable eaten in India; they call it bhindi. I like that name better. The only way I veered from the recipe as written is that I added about a half cup of water to pan about 10 minutes before the bhindis were done.

For the steak, I seasoned and grilled as usual. In the meantime I sliced the pear and caramelized it in a pan with a little butter. I added a little pink salt and some pepper just to make sure it was properly savory. Once the steak was done I piled a some pear on each serving and sprinkled with the crumbled gorgonzola. The combination of steak and pepper and sweet pear and cheese was very delicious.

Alongside I also steamed a couple of potatoes and chopped them up with a bit of butter, salt and pepper.

Meatless Monday - I didn't succumb to the lure of beef

Even though various friends and family on Facebook kept discussing cuts of beef today, sorely tempting me to the dark side, an afternoon spent with my hands in real clay for the first time didn't really leave me much time to plan anything complicated for dinner anyway. So I went simple. Jarred marinara with peas over penne rigate and a spinach salad with the leftover grilled vegetables from yesterday.

I'm thinking there shall be beef tomorrow.

Grilled cod and vegetables

I managed to avoid cooking most of the weekend, but Sunday night is Sunday dinner so I had to think of something that wouldn't kill me with heat in the midst of all this horribly hot weather. So, cooking on the grill was the only option, of course.

Cod, seasoned with lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper, was cooked on thick foil over direct flames. It was okay but there was a slightly bitter taste that I couldn't identify. I sprinkled them with some fresh dill just before serving but it didn't really have any flavor. Alongside, in the grill basket, I seared eggplant slices, zucchini, onion and asparagus. They were all seasoned with oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and this peppery mustard blend (another of the superb Durkee grill seasonings). And finally, corn on the cob, husked and set directly on the grill to cook.

Sometimes junk is the only answer

I usually have a very clear idea of what I want to make for dinner, but sometimes I am completely adrift and all sorts of things cross my mind. Add to it an offer from the Boy to do a grocery store run on his way home and then I'm somewhat forced to make any requests before he leaves work.

Today's first idea was sausages (little breakfast ones from G&W) and some kind of potatoes and salad. Then suddenly tater tots got into my head (and honestly, I don't know why; I didn't grow up with them and I'm not a huge fan) and I was thinking of sausages and a tater tots casserole thing, complete with a can of some Campbell's cream soup. Then I was reminded on Facebook by my niece, Kate, of chili cheese tater tots and then I knew: Totchos! Yes, nachos made with tots instead of chips. Not a healthy meal, but a mighty tasty one.

I baked the tots first, according to directions. Meanwhile I heated a can of chili, and also melted a hunk of Velveeta with some salsa. I poured the chili over the tots, then the melted cheese, and topped it off when some shredded lettuce and chopped tomato (see, not completely unhealthy!).

Tomorrow, perhaps a salad...

Your face just won't leave me alone/Pictures of matchstick men and you/Images of matchstick men and you/Alls I ever see is them and you - Dinner from Target

Last fall we bought a new mattress set (embarrassingly enough, the first one I'd ever purchased; I'd slept on a rather ancient hand-me-down for years and years). Since mattresses are now so big, none of our old sheets fit and I had to get a couple new sets. Because the weather was getting cooler (and I was feeling budget-conscious) I bought cotton jersey sheet sets. And they were a revelation; soft and stretchy and so comfy, like getting a warm hug from the bed. Then the nighttime temperature topped out in the 80s last night and suddenly those sheets felt like a cloying, suffocating straitjacket.

Unable to bear the idea of sleeping on those hideous sheets again (I will love you again in the fall, sheets, I promise!), I headed to Target to get some nice, regular cotton replacement sheets. Sheets successfully found, I headed over to the grocery department, just because. I suddenly got a huge craving for tuna melts and got a big can of tuna for dinner. A loaf of bread, some microwave brown rice, and a can of baked beans later and dinner at Target was done. Except then I passed a display of some microwave molten caramel cakes. Then dinner at Target was done.

So the verdict: tuna melts were good, brown rice was a little weird, I always love canned baked beans, and the microwave cakes were sweet but really rather bland (what did I expect for two bucks?).