Labor Day & Lobster

For the third year in a row, Jared and I celebrated our anniversary in NH with lobster. We were a couple weeks late this year (Labor Day) and accompanied by friends, but it made the occasion all that much more special.

I can't tell you what else we ate, but I know it was fabulous because we were there with Jillian, Ari, Ben and Hana, four of my favorite foodies. As a result, I also can't share any recipes with you. However, I can share this wonderful photo which makes me happy every time I see it.

The Amateur Gourmet on Steaks

Like the Amateur Gourmet I cannot cook a steak to save my life. It's been an on going debacle in my kitchen, one that has me permanently scarred when it comes to cooking beef. The tough thing is that beef keeps cooking when it comes out of the oven, so it's tough to tell when it's ready vs being too early or too late.

However the Amateur Gourmet has saved the day by sharing tips from the brilliant Chris Lim over at BLT. I haven't tried this yet, but I full intend to follow these instructions the next time I am feeling adventurous.



I think the tip I am going to use the most is when Chef Lim explains how to tell when a steak is done by feel. I know you are supposed to be able to do this, but I had never heard the bit about the meaty portion of you hand at the base of your thumb. Brilliant!

The Worst Foodie Blogger EVER!

I am officially the worst food blogger ever. It’s almost two weeks after Thanksgiving and I haven’t written about my Grammy’s amazing pumpkin chiffon pie, told you how my fennel casserole was a dud, or shown you the photo of my Turkey Day plate. You should either assume that Thanksgiving is so holy to me that I can’t spend a minute of the weekend (or following weeks) online writing or that I have been communing with my new kitchen and will eventually post all the amazing recipes I am cooking.

With that said, I am still not going to write about Thanksgiving today. I am going to write about something that made me laugh out loud – Whopper Virgins! Burger King’s latest and great marketing stunt was to send a team of documentary film producers around the world to find Whopper Virgins, people who had never experienced a Whopper or a hamburger before. They then did a un-biased taste test to determine which was better the Big Mac or the Whopper.

As you may or may not be able to imagine, this set off a wave of bloggers (here, and here, and here and here) complaining about everything from how they exploited the people they were interviewing to how the campaign is offensive to virgins everywhere. You can be the judge for yourself, since the video was finally released this weekend.



Personally, I enjoyed it. What I enjoyed most was how difficult people found the burger to eat. What we take for granted, they couldn’t figure out. Do I use a fork? Do I eat the bun first? Who knows!

In any case, however unhealthy is it, the burger is one of God’s greatest gifts to man (in my mind) and I am all for sharing it with anyone and everyone. Personally, if I was going to go around the would to introduce people to the hamburger, I wouldn’t have taken the Whopper OR the Big Mac, in fact I do believe I am both a Whopper Virgin and a Big Mac Virgin. No, I would have taken all those people one of the burgers from the Shake Shack in New York City’s Madison Square Park. It is in my mind, the best burger in the world, and believe me, I have tried a few!

Stupid Simple Thanksgiving Dinner

It's November, it's dark and cold outside, and there are leaves all over the sidewalk crunching under my feet as I walk to work. As a result, in the middle of last week I started craving Thanksgiving dinner. I wanted mounded forkfuls of turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce and gravy carefully put together so that each bite had a little bit of everything.

The thing is, the REAL Thanksgiving is only a couple weeks away, and pulling together a turkey dinner in true Thanksgiving style takes time. So much time, that I can't quite convince myself to spend a Sunday, two weeks before the real deal, whipping up a Thanksgiving dinner for the two of us.


So I improvised and came up with my newest favorite weeknight meal - the Stupid Simple Thanksgiving Dinner. It was the easiest, most delicious, craving-curing meal I have had in awhile.

First, I ran over to Whole Foods and picked up a rotisserie chicken. I know it's not turkey, but it's close enough and super easy on a Monday night. Then I got some Stove Top stuffing. Do remember the Stove Top stuff commercial from the 80's? The one where the two kids do dinner twice just so they can have more Stove Top?



Well let me tell you, that commercial completely worked on me as a kid and I still think Stove Top is great. Not in a, make it for the real Thanksgiving kinda-way, but definitely in a Stupid Simple Thanksgiving Dinner kinda-way!

I threw some acorn squash in the microwave, steamed up some green beans and opened can of cranberry sauce (actually two cans, the chunky kind for me and the jelly kind for JR) and honestly I couldn't have been happier. The whole meal took maybe 15 minutes to pull together, looked beautiful (see the photos above) and it will hold me off for a couple of weeks until I can celebrate the real deal with my family.

Recipes to Drool Over

I have a couple foodie blogs that I love. I am frequently drooling over their recipes and photos, wishing I could cook as beautifully and that I could take such amazing photos. Last week I came across this recipe for Seasonal Stuffed Peppers on Straight from the Farm. I think I save every other recipe she posts, but this one spurred me to action and I made it the very next day.

However, since I do try to be semi-unique on my blog and not just re-write all the recipes other bloggers post, I am not posting this recipe, but I still highly recommend it. Since I save at least one recipe a day to try later, I thought it would be fun to add one of HubSpot's latest tools - a web voter - to Gormandizing and let all my faithful readers vote on what sounds the best.

You can check out the recipes I am reading and loving in the new Recipes to Drool Over section! Click the up arrow to let me know you think something sounds good, add a comment if you want me to make it when you come over, or push something down if you don't like the sound. I can't wait to hear your thoughts!

Still River Cafe - Eastford, Connecticut

The other day I was chatting with a couple other foodies at work and I was trying to tell them about this amazing restaurant near my parents house. I was explaining that it would be the perfect fall Sunday get-a-way and trying to do the food justice in my explanation. My glowing recommendation missed a little, when they asked, "What's it called?" and I blanked on the name.

Boston Magazine (and my father for sending the article to me) came to the rescue this week, clearly thinking along the same lines. Their article about various Foodie Road Trips in New England has the Still River Cafe in Eastford CT as the #1 recommendation!


I agree 100%. If you are looking for something to do on a beautiful fall weekend before the cold sets in, I highly recommend heading down to Eastford. The only thing they forgot to mention is that you MUST have reservations to get into one of their 3 seatings a week, but trust me the drive is worth it.

Now I am going to try and convince JR to start taking me to the other places on the list!

Ice Cream GALORE!

This weekend we went over to dinner at our friend BC's parent's house. S&BC live out in Wellesley and for 4 years I have been hearing about their freezer.

Apparently they love ice cream and there is never a shortage. Everyone always talks about how many flavors of Ben & Jerry's they have and I always thought "of course, EVERYONE loves ice cream!" Boy was I wrong, no one loves ice cream as much as S&BC!

Here is a quick glimpse inside their freezer,


That's right, you can see 9 flavors of Ben & Jerry's alone, not to mention 2 sorbets. What you can't see is the 3 other half gallon tubs on the bottom shelf! BC also assured me that they are about 8 flavors short right now!

I haven't told JR yet, but I am considering moving in with them just to be closer to their freezer....

Wildflowers, Lobsters & Tomatoes

Last week JR and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary. We were lucky to be able take a long weekend and head to New Hampshire where we spent our honeymoon. New Hampshire in August is breath taking. There are wildflowers and butterflies everywhere, and the mornings are cool enough for a sweater, but the days are long and georgeous.


As can be expected, I crafted our honeymoon around food. Since we were staying in a house with a great kitchen, we used the week to gormandize. This weekend was not different, we made glorious feasts each night, and then headed to town to gorge ourselves on desert.

Friday we headed down to the local farm stand and picked up corn, tomatoes, fresh peas and cucumbers. We then went down to the nearest grocery store (a half hour away) to stock up for dinner and the weekend. We decided on our honeymoon to start a Lobster dinner tradition and continue it each year, and so the required lobsters had to be picked out.


This year we went for 3 soft shell lobsters. They have less meat than their larger hard shell brothers, but the meat is supposed to be sweeter and easier to get to. They are also a little smaller, and last year we had tons of left over lobster. As always we played with them for a little while, and I was happy to see they had some spunk.



Making lobsters couldn't be easier, we threw them in the lobster pot, steamed them for 12 minutes, and presto, beautiful red lobsters. We had them with a some corn and of course the required butter. We ended the night biking down into town for ice cream.


The next night we dinned on grilled steak, mushrooms and onions, but the star of the evening were the slow roasted tomatoes. I had been catching up on my blog reading earlier in the day and had seen this recipe for slow roasted tomatoes. I had some amazing cherry tomatoes from the farm stand and I knew instantly what I was going to do with them. We chowed down on them as appetizers, popping them in to our mouths like cherries, while we made the rest of dinner. That night we ate out on the porch and followed up dinner with drinks and desert down at the local hang out. It was a perfect weekend.

5 Things That Scare or Intimidate Me

I cook and eat a lot, but there are some things that intimidate me enough that I stay away from them. Here are my top 5 (on this Wednesday morning.)

1. Squid & Octopus Suckers – I have a hard time eating any squid or octopus that still has the suckers on it. They make me think of those plastic suckers that you can stick to windows or your refrigerator and I truly believe that they will suck on to the back of my throat and never come loose. If we order calamari I only eat the rings without any suckers and let JR risk the inevitable coughing and hacking that would come with a sucker in his throat.


2. Poaching Eggs – I love eggs benedict and this amazing dish that they serve at Dizzy’s in Park Slope, but the thing they have in common and the reason I don’t make them at home, is that I am afraid to make poached eggs. Apparently I am not the only one, but unless I go out and buy an electric egg poacher I am wary that this is a skill I can master. It seems complicated and too likely to lead to disappointment.


3. Cuisinart Mandolin – I was so excited to get my Cuisinart mandolin as a wedding present and now it totally intimidates me. I tried to use it once and it was a disaster and it hasn’t come out since (it’s been over a year!) I really want to make Swedish Cucumbers, a fantastic salad that demands super thin cucumbers. I recently learned that my Great Grandma makes it by using a vegetable peeler and peeling the cucumber slices. This sounds tedious, but I will probably try it soon to keep from breaking out the mandolin.


4. Ordering Tuna – I love fresh tuna but I hate having to send it back when it’s over cooked. I tend to order anything but the fresh tuna when we go out to eat because it always breaks my heart when they serve it and it’s so over-cooked it might as well have come out of a can. I don’t like sending food back at restaurants because then everyone at the table is eating without me, then they have to wait while I eat, and most of all, chances are good someone is going to spit in my food! So in the end, I deprive myself of fresh tuna in restaurants, which is really sad.

5. Pie Crust – Who doesn’t love a good apple pie? It’s one of the few deserts that JR enjoys and yet I steer clear of making them because the crusts scare me. It seems like an awful lot of work, and I am pretty sure I will manage to punch a thumb through it after I have rolled it thin. Also it’s something people are (for some reason) picky about. Personally, I have never met a crust I haven’t enjoyed, but lots of people are more particular.


(Thanks to Google Images and the Photographers for the the photos!)

A Perfect Sandwich

I don't know what makes a perfect sandwich. I guess it depends a lot on the quality and proportion of the ingredients, but I know that 9 times out of 10 when I make sandwiches, I am not satisfied. Generally they have too much turkey, or not enough jelly, or the bread is too crunchy and hurts the roof of my mouth. In any case, sandwiches have gotten a bad reputation in my kitchen and I tend to not make them very often. Until recently.

The other evening I wasn't feeling top notch and was just hanging out at home reading and catching up on some relaxing. For dinner, all I could think about was a perfect grilled cheese sandwich. By perfect, I mean the kind of grilled cheese where the outside is a little crunchy and very buttery and the inside is warm gooey cheesy goodness. I headed over to the Whole Foods and picked up some German style whole wheat bread, a hunk of gruyere (a nice nutty cheese that is AMAZING for sandwiches) and a beautiful tomato.


I put that panini maker to work and within minutes had a gorgeous sandwich for dinner. It was so amazing. I had it with some fresh fruit, a pickle and some of this fantastic Mild Yellow Swedish mustard that JB brought me a couple weeks ago. The stuff is like no other mustard you have ever had and I want to drink it from a spoon.

I am also searching for a killer egg sandwich. I try something new at least once a week, but generally it includes good bread, two fried eggs, some kind of special cheese, fresh herbs and a spread (pesto, mustard, cranberry sauce, olive oil, the list goes on.) The desire for this sandwich comes from a couple places.

First, the movie Spanglish featured Thomas Keller's BLT Fried Egg and Cheese Sandwich which rewound to watch Adam Sandler make 3 or 4 times while I drooled. It was written up in Food & Wine about a year ago and I tried to make it one night while Jared was away. It was not all I had hoped for, although the F&W photo still makes me drool, and thus I started on the search for the perfect egg sandwich.


The second inspiration is the Jerusalem Egg Sandwich from the Andala Coffee House just up the street from us. A couple months after we moved here, I started going to Andala every Wednesday morning for a networking event. My first or second time, someone ordered this sandwich, and I have been in love with it ever since. It's a scintillating combination of eggs, parsley and tomatoes wrapped in a toasted Mediterranean pita that I would recommend to anyone.


My egg sandwiches are good, but this one has me coming back week after week and nothing I have made has accomplished that yet. I'll keep trying but if you have a great sandwich recipe that you want to share, please send it along.

The Way to a Girl's Heart is Through Her Stomach

JR and I met during the last couple months of college. On our graduation day, I told my mother I wasn't sure where the relationship was going to go, then Lobster Bowl 2004 happened and I was hooked.

Lobster Bowl is a golf tournament that JR's father plays in each year. It's actually called the Adams Bowl, but I have officially renamed it, because at the end of each tournament they serve the most amazing feast. I went that first summer back in 2004 and I was sold, I knew right then I had to marry JR so that I could come to the Lobster Bowl each and every year and eat enough lobster and shrimp to stuff me full. I am not exaggerating when I say it's tables full of lobster, shrimp and oysters and other amazing goodies.



After showing me this wealthy of goodness, JR didn't bring me back for 3 whole summers! I thought I had been cheated, until today when he finally returned me to the Lobster Bowl, and it was all I remembered.

I stuck to the seafood for plate number 1, and was not disappointed.


I branched out for plate number 2 and included some meat. When I brought this back to the table, my MIL (mother-in-law) said "You go girl!"


When I brought back plate number three, she said "Oh, I think I need to visit the desert table...."


It was amazing, and I am so lucky that my wonderful in-laws were willing to share the lobster and bring me back to the Lobster Bowl.

Inflation and my grocery bill

Have you started to feel like every grocery shopping trip is a "big one"? I have, so I decided to do a little under cover research (meaning I did this while sitting in bed resting my legs from our hike up Mt. Washington this weekend.)

Since JR and I started living together 3 years ago I have been tracking our food expenses. It's been well worth it since it has helped us make some good decisions in the past. For example, it was a comparative study of 3 months that made us quit the Park Slope Food Co-op and start using Fresh Direct. We have also, on numerous occasions cut back on eating out and buying lunch at work to save a few pennies.


In general, a normal week of grocery shopping for us was under $100, and a big week was about $115. I didn't track every penny, but at long as our expenses were within that range, I didn't worry or think I was buying anything too excessive.

Then we moved to Boston, and whole bunch of things changed. First, we started cooking a lot more (because we have a fabulous kitchen and a grill) and eating out a lot less. We also stopped using FreshDirect because it's (sadly) not available in Boston, and started shopping a lot more at Whole Paycheck (aka Whole Foods) and Trader Joes. So I accepted that for a couple months, I would have wait and see what our food expenses in Boston were.

The thing is, they seemed really high. I mentioned it to JR at one point and he commented on inflation, but I was still trying to blame on our lifestyle changes. As our weekly expenses have crept upward, we stopped shopping at Whole Foods almost all together, and make a point to go to Shaws for our big shopping every week. I am also paying a lot more attention to the sales, and this weekend we even talked about starting to cut coupons.


Which got us discussing what was happening, and spawned my undercover investigation. One of the beautiful things about FreshDirect (among many many things, not the least of which was that they delivered) is that they store all your orders on their site. So this evening I went back to last summer, and took at look at what we were spending. Then, I re-added each shopping list to the cart for 6 weeks to see what the same weeks worth of groceries would cost me this year.

On average, it was 10% more expensive this year than last year. 10 PERCENT!!! That's more than even I expected. I recognize that 6 weeks isn't a huge about of data, so in my free time I am going to continue adding weeks to get better numbers. I'll update you to my final findings. In the meantime, enjoy the cartoons.

Best New Job EVER!

What could be better than a new job where the kitchen is stocked better than your kitchen at home? I could not believe my eyes the first day at my new job. The kitchen literally has EVERYTHING I COULD EVER WANT TO EAT!

You might think "well sure, if you want to eat junk food all day," but that is totally not the case. It has so many options, I find something new every day. It's also not just the kitchen in our office, every floor of the WHOLE building has kitchens that are free for all.


So far in my first week, I have found,

- Fat Free Fig Newtons, 100 calorie packs of Oreos and Chip Ahoy
- Fresh fruit - bananas, peaches, plums, apples, pears
- baby carrots
- 4 types of cereal in our kitchen and at least 10 in the kitchen upstairs
- 3 kinds of single serving cheese (string cheese, the kind in wax, and Cracker Barrel)
- 4 kinds of yogurt including Greek Yogurt, fat free yogurt, and the kind that comes with granola on the top
- Klondike Bars, ice cream Milky Ways, frozen fruit bars
- Easy Mac & Cheese
- 5 kinds of granola bars
- M&Ms and Skittles
- Stacey's Pita Chips, baked Lays, Pretzels, Cheetos, Pirates Booty, Pringles, Ritz with Cheese AND Peanut Butter
- Milano Cookies
- 3 kinds of fruit snacks
- Bagels and cream cheese
- Any kind of soda you want, and 3 kinds of flavored seltzer
- Juice boxes, including Paul Newman's Lemonade

And that is having only explored our kitchen thoroughly. As I continue to explore others and find more I will update the list.

Farmers Markets

There is little that makes me happier, on a weekend morning in the summer, than getting up early and heading to the Farmer's Market. I love the energy and vibe at a good market. It's so healthy and green.

I have been lucky to live near a couple great Farmer's Markets since I lived in Germany in college. The markets in Germany should be famous. In Freiburg, where I studied, the large market in the cathedral plaza went on every day and in each neighborhood there were markets that went on during the weekends.


It's possible my love of a good market started when I was in Freiburg. I could walk around that market for hours enjoying the piles of fresh fruit and vegetables, amazing baked breads, cheese and sausages, pottery, jewelery, dried fruit and nuts. You name it, they had it.


When we moved out to Brooklyn, JR's sister had told us about the market at Grand Army Plaza. I loved living a block away from it and early on Saturday's I would slip out and buy as much food as I could carry (and sometimes more.) This time of year was the best. I could get fresh fish that had been caught less than 24 hours before, ripe cherries, piles of snap peas, and peaches and strawberries that were out of this world.


Yesterday, I headed up to the Union Square Farmer's Market with JB and AB. It was my first time checking it out, and I came away thrilled. It is much smaller than both the Frieburg and the Grand Army Plaza markets, but the quality and variety of foods is amazing and the vibe was great.


There were 3 significant fruit and vegetable stands, a honey and tea stand, a bread stand and a chocolate stand. I was able to get some beautiful beets that I roasted for a salad last night, juicy, delicious cherries, some wonderful American cucumbers, shelling peas and these amazing green garlic spirals (I can't remember what they were called for the life of me!) It was great to be there and I ma thrilled to continue to be lucky enough to be near a beautiful Farmer's Market.

BEHIND!

I am so far behind, and I have so much to write about, but first the excuses about why I am so late.
1) I started my new job this week and it's keeping me super busy, I love it!
2) I have a number of great things to blog about, and no photos! I keep pushing off on writing about them hoping some photos will show up.
3) I am completely behind on my Reader and if I write another blog, that just adds one more thing for me to read!!!

So the only way to deal with this, is to do a quick hits list. Here are some things I want to tell you all about, but haven't gotten to recently.

- The darn fruit flies will NOT GO AWAY! I have no idea what's going on. I have a fruit bowl, which I generally keep on the counter, but this seems to be the cradle of their birth. However, if I keep all the fruit in the fridge, it never ripens. I tried covering it with Saran Wrap, and then the suckers were just born inside and kept on thriving. Do I need to turn to those awful fly strips?


- I have made, not 1, but 2 AMAZING potato salads recently. Since JR doesn't appreciate them, you will have to. They both come from Food & Wine magazine and have been spectacular. The first was a tzatziki potato salad which replaced the mayo with Greek yogurt and used tons of fresh herbs. The second (which I am still eating with dinner each night) has my homemade BBQ sauce and BACON in it. Could anything be better than that?

- The other day, I made the most amazing BBQ Chicken Pizza. It was out of this world! I took one of the thin crust Boboli pizza shells and gave it a good spreading of the homemade BBQ sauce(did I mention I made another 3 cup batch and we finished it in a week?) Then I sliced a grilled chicken breast nice and thin, and laid it over the BBQ sauce. I sauteed up some red and green peppers and a nice purple onion and put those on top, with a sprinkling of mozzarella cheese. I popped it in the oven for 15 minutes, until it was crunchy on the bottom, and PRESTO! Amazing homemade BBQ chicken pizza.,

Tupperware

A couple of years ago, someone gave my mom the AS SEEN ON TV!!! Smart Spin 49-Piece Food Storage System. I thought this seemed a little silly, until she started using it, then I wanted one!



The beauty of the system is that they have 3 size containers all of which use the SAME LIDS. There is no more shuffling through a drawer filled with mismatching tupperware tops and bottoms trying to find the small circle lid to match the container you just filled with your lunch. This system has a great spinning storage unit that holds everything and takes up half the space.

The containers are also the perfect sizes. One is a snack size, one is an individual meal, and the largest is perfect for two meals. I freeze soup in two person servings and JR and I can have it all year round. Right now my freezer is filled with little individual snack servings of BBQ sauce (I made another double batch this week!)

The only problem with these beautiful little containers is that they also make sharing food really simple, and then people don't return them! I think I am going to have to splurge and go buy their expansion pack to make up for all my lost tupperware!

Fruit Flies INVADING!

I totally owe a post on our fantastic house warming party last weekend, but it's been a bit of a hectic week and a half. I just got home from trip to NY where I officially resigned from the company where I have been very happy for 3 years. I am moving on to a great opportunity so the whole trip was a bit bitter sweet.

I got a rude awakening when I got home and realized that alas the world had moved on without me. The fresh cilantro that I had in a glass of water on the counter since the end of last week has accumulated a thriving community of fruit flies in my absence.

As soon as I walked in, I smelled the rotting sickly sweetness that comes with fresh herbs or flowers left in water too long, but JR hadn't noticed it for 2 days. I pulled the glass of green gooey muck from the counter, and a swarm of fruit flies took off into the apartment. I tried to kill as many as possible, and the walls now display a nice smattering of dead bugs, but I couldn't come close to getting them all. So I had to call in the re-enforcements.

I did a quick search on "fruit flies" in good-ol' Google, and found this site, which had a couple of recommendations. I tried the funnel trap.



* Make a cone out of the sheet of paper (like a funnel). Tape the outside of the cone so that it stays in place.
* Check that the cone fits snugly into a glass or cup.
* Cut off the tip of the cone so that you now have a funnel.
* Pour a small amount of cider vinegar into the glass or cup. (Rum mixed with orange juice also works very well - additionally, a half teaspoon of baker's yeast in water can also suffice)
* Insert the funnel into the glass or cup, but don't let the bottom of the funnel touch the liquid. Tape the funnel in two or three places from the outside so that there is no gap between the glass and the cone.
* Place your newly created trap on a flat surface. The flies will be attracted by the smell of the fruity vinegar and fly into the cone. The flies will slip down the cone and will either land in the vinegar and drown or will be trapped and not able to get back out. If you leave the trap overnight, the trapped fruit flies will eventually fall into the vinegar and drown.

Within 10 minutes those suckers were swarming and headed to their doom. You'll notice this picture has LOTS of little black dots, all fruit files that have previously been enjoying their stay.

Summer Colors

I went to the Whole Foods today after my run, which was a bad idea. All I needed was Hoisin Sauce (for homemade BBQ sauce,) some peppers (for black bean salad,) and some pears (for sangria,) I left with a smorgasbourg of fresh fruit. It's THAT time of year, and I couldn't be more happy.


THIS time of year, means the re-introduction of "Mommy Plates" at lunch. You probably have no idea what a "Mommy Plate" is, because it's something I recently made up the name for. In my mothers household, as the fresh fruit comes into season, a common lunch is a fruit plate with Wasa and cheese.

I call this a "Mommy Plate" because recently I mentioned to my mother how much I enjoyed them and credited her with their creation. She corrected me and explained that her mother, Mor-Mor, should be credited with they creation because she used to serve them to my mother as a child.

In any case, they are all kinds of fresh fruit and vegetables with some kind of bread or cracker with cheese melted on it. There could not be a more perfect salad, and THIS time of year when I am working from home, I always make them for lunch.

Purple Potato Eater!

It was a one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
One-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
A one-eyed, one-horned, flyin' purple people eater
Sure looks strange to me!

I can't help myself, the entire time we were making dinner on Memorial Day, I kept singing about the Flying, Purple, Potato Eater, because we had PURPLE potatoes!

Aren't they beautiful?


JRs definitely thought they looked strange, but I had seen a recipe for fork crushed purple potatoes on Smitten Kitchen that I thought was gorgeous. When I saw them at the grocery store, I had to get a couple.

Since it was Memorial Day, we did our civic duty and grilled (as if you could stop us). We had been wanted to try some grilled potatoes, so we used these. I cut them in half, rubber them with some olive oil and salt & pepper, and threw them on for 20 minutes.


They were nice and crunchy, and such a cool color when you cut into them. Next time I would add some grill seasoning for a little more flavor, but they were a neat summer way to do up some flying purple potatoes.


On a side note, my lettuce seemed to be bouncing back this morning. The mesclun and butter crunch are looking good. The red sails are a little more beat down, but they had most of the water so they might just need a little more drying out.

Since God laughed at me for thinking my lettuce was beautiful, I wanted to see if he would help me out this weekend. JR and I are hosting 13 people for a house warming party. The plan is to BBQ and hang out on the patio and the weather forecast is NOT looking good. If we could arrange for sun on Saturday, I am okay with rain the rest of next week!

Beer & chicken...what could be better?

Last weekend my good friend JB sent me a link to this video on how to make Beer Can Chicken. She was hoping to make it some time this summer, I am not that patient so I invited her and her husband over on Sunday to make it. I kept talking about the recipe at work all week, because I was really excited, and apparently everyone has heard of this but me.

Essentially, you take a chicken and rub it all over with spices. We used the spice rub mix in the video and AB did the rubbing. You then drink down about a quarter of a can of beer, and insert the can between the chickens…legs (no comment).


Then you place the chicken in a heat proof pan on the grill. This video does it over charcoal, we did it over the gas and it worked fine. The only controversy was how to determine if it was done. I pulled out the good ol' Better Homes & Gardens cook book and it said 180 degrees. We left it on for an hour and half and then took its temperature and it was perfect!


Then came the extraction. We weren’t sure how to maneuver this without either dumping out the beer or getting the oven mitts all dirty. This is definitely a job for four. 2 cooks, 1 cheerleader and 1 photographer.


We carved that birdie up and served it with a fantastic meal of Tzatziki Potato salad (a great low fat alternative,) fresh pepper, tomato and basil salad (a la JB,) and cold peach soup (from my Aunt). It was a wonderful summer meal. Too bad it was 50 degrees outside!