Author Archives: Him

Very Meta

Posted on September 11, 2014 | 1 comment

We didn’t have dinner at the Country House last night, but we did have dinner near the Country House.  Or, rather, near The Country House.

I finished teaching and walked downtown; she finished at the office and walked north; we met in the middle for the fall’s first “school night” trip to the theatre.

Theatre-date dinners require some strategizing.  When a show has an 8 PM curtain, there’s time for a relaxed meal before; an intermissionless play with a 7 PM curtain means it won’t be too late for dinner after; but a full-length play starting at 7 leaves just enough time to grab something nearby.

A respectable pizza-and-sandwich shop awaited us at the corner of 47th and 8th. There were two stools at the counter by the window from which we could people-watch while eating. (After she took a photo of our dinner, she realized she hadn’t been mindful of the passers-by. “That could have been Alec Baldwin!” I’m pretty sure it wasn’t.)

My pepperoni-spinach-and-onion slice was remarkably tasty, a little like getting a salad along with the pizza.  She went with the cheese-only variety; a purist.  Thin but pliable NYC-style crust, hot and quick. It wasn’t the most luxurious meal we’ve ever had, but it was just right.

photo 2

Dinner, near…

THE COUNTRY HOUSE

…THE COUNTRY HOUSE

(The Country House  is a new play about a theatrical family–actors and a playwright-to-be–and contains lots of literary references, as well as a “reading” of a new play.  Since last night was only the second preview, it wouldn’t be fair to discuss the performance in detail.  The play is very self-referential.  But then, so is writing about it in a blog about dinner.)

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , ,

Timing Is Everything

Posted on September 10, 2014 | 1 comment

The late afternoon stretched before me like a blank sheet of staff paper.  But one little technological glitch after another kept me my progress slow; between 4 and 6 I got maybe 15 minutes of work done.  So when she pinged to say which train she was on, I realized my plan to have dinner ready upon her arrival would need revising.

The idea was chicken with mushrooms over farfalle pasta, but there would have to be more to it than that.  I diced an onion and sautéed it with some garlic to get the party started.  A pot of water was salted and set to boil.  I looked up to see a can of artichoke hearts on a cupboard shelf; it was easy to see, since all the cupboard doors have been removed for refinishing. I drained the artichokes, filleted the chicken, heard the water boiling, and tossed the pasta in. And saw the clock: it was time to leave to meet her train.  I took the pasta pot and the sauté pan off the heat, put the chicken back in the fridge, grabbed my keys and ran.

We got home, and the pasta was perfect. Who needs 10 minutes of boiling when you’ve got carryover heat to take care of business?

The convergence of sautéing chicken, answering a house painter’s phone call, and assisting with first aid for a neighbor who’d fallen while running nearly derailed the whole thing, but not quite. 

Dinner was splendid.  And, for us, served early.

Timing is Almost Everything. (Good ingredients help, too.)

Timing is Almost Everything. (Good ingredients help, too.)

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , ,

Manhattan Pancakes

Posted on September 9, 2014 | 1 comment

She’d had a rough morning, I’d had a rough afternoon, and breakfast-for-dinner seemed the only way to go.  She replied to my iMessage asking what she’d like:

Ooh! Pancakes? Plain, topped with peanut butter and butter?

I agreed.  It was, in fact, what I was hoping she’d choose.

Meanwhile, knowing that comfort food was on the horizon, I posted jokingly to Facebook that I was having pancakes, and wondered

…what’s an appropriate wine to pair with them. Or perhaps the best hard spirits. Or both.

My friends enthusiastically rose to the challenge.  Suggestions included hard cider (apple or pear), moonshine, beer, various German wines and a couple of sparkling wines, blueberry schnapps, and “honey-infused rye whiskey.” This bunch clearly takes their pancakes-and-drinking seriously.  Or maybe they were just ready to help a friend in need.

The comment stream amused her as much as it had done for me, but that “infused” comment made her sit up and take notice: “We could just pour bourbon over the pancakes.”

All of a sudden I was in the act, too.  “Wait–what if we made some simple syrup…”

“…and added bourbon!”

Now, neither of us is really a drinker. I can mix a Manhattan, split it into two glasses, and there’ll be some left in each glass at the end of the evening. But, as with the one-spoon-sundae that has become a favorite dessert, sometimes just a little taste is enough.

There was no bourbon in the cupboard after all, so she flavored the syrup with rye and a splash of scotch. I mixed batter and heated the griddle. One pancake got the last of a batch of homemade maraschino cherries (the kind where real cherries have been infused with maraschino liqueur, not the candied-and-dyed fakes). We cooked some sausage, deglazed its pan with a little more rye and thickened it with a bit of butter, and drizzled that sauce over the sausage. All the while, she sang Don McLean’s “American Pie.”

“…drove my Chevy to the levee, but the levee was dry,
and good old boys were drinking whiskey and rye…”

Nobody got over-served.  We each had just a bit of the sort-of-cocktail syrup over very fluffy pancakes. Even so, neither of us was driving anywhere. The miserable parts of our days faded away in the giddiness of doing something silly in the kitchen, and in its unusual and tasty result.

“Who needs ‘American Pie,'” she asked, “when you’ve got cake!”

There’s quite a lot of the syrup left, but we’ll probably save it until we’ve both had a really good day at work.

Breakfast for Dinner for Grownups

Breakfast-for-Dinner for Grownups

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , ,

DIY, Kind-of

Posted on September 8, 2014 | 2 comments

Home cooking is pretty much the definition of “do it yourself,” and we do that nearly all the time. Usually our cooking is done one meal at a time–though often in larger batches so as to have leftovers for lunches. 

Our DIY-ness isn’t confined to the kitchen, though. I’m used to her knitting (or “making clothes from string,” as one of our friends called it, awed at her skill as if it were alchemy). She came home the other day and was delighted by the jewelry keeper I’d fashioned from some screw-in hooks and an antique wooden coat hanger.

This weekend, we were back in the Country House kitchen to make batches of non-meal DIY projects–saving a shekel or two over store-bought, relishing the satisfaction of doing something not everybody else can or would do, and knowing that we are well-stocked for the future.

She’s been enjoying Kind Bars as an afternoon office snack.  I’ll admit they’re tasty, and not full of chemical nastiness, but a little “spendy.” She picked up a box at the market the other day, thinking economies of scale would help matters, and, after doing math in her head decided the bars were still an extravagance. Sure, we can afford a snack, but we’d rather go to Paris. (And eat really well when we get there.)

“I bet we could reverse-engineer those,” I said.  And realized it might be even easier than that.  A quick search proved that another home-cook/blogger had already done the work.  We had most of the ingredients on hand; the few we didn’t were items we usually stock–except for flaxseed meal, which she assures me we will be able to use in many other recipes. As for the extra puffed-rice cereal, as I’m concerned it’s nothing more than an excuse to make marshmallows.

Toast some nuts, add cereal, heat some syrup, spread in baking pan, salt, cut into bars, drizzle with melted chocolate, cool, wrap. It could hardly be easier. Further refinement come with future attempts, but for now we’ve got “Kind-of” bars to last a few weeks.

Her story of the well-traveled salsa will wait for another post.

Dipping Kind-of bars in spicy tomato salsa is not recommended

Dipping Kind-of bars in spicy tomato salsa is not recommended

2 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged ,

One More Time

Posted on September 6, 2014 | 1 comment

We’re both big fans of repurposing.  

She can turn an glass jar into a beautiful vase in no time flat. An ordinary little table here is suddenly a perfect nightstand there. She is kind of masterful at re-combining wardrobe items into new outfits. (I tell you, the girl can dress.) 

My repurposing is done mostly in the kitchen. If the recipe calls for tomato sauce and we’re out, how about V8 juice, tomato paste, and some oregano?  Almost-stale donuts? Bread pudding. Random vegetables and a little protein?  Fried rice. I filled omelets for breakfast with bits and pieces from the previous night’s post-Christmas party, and her mom approved in a pretty serious way.

But you don’t always need to repurpose.  Repetition isn’t always a bad thing. (Her favorite thing to do with Thanksgiving leftovers is have Thanksgiving dinner again.)

And thus, on Friday night, there was fried chicken, corn on the cob, and sliced tomatoes.  And, okay, a few steamed green beans that were so good I thought about making more. She savored the last bites of corn, and sighed. “If this is the last of the summer’s corn, I want to make sure I enjoyed it.”

It’s not; there’s another ear in the crisper. At least there was when I left this morning.

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , ,

Just a Little Something

Posted on September 5, 2014 | 1 comment

There was no dinner at the country house. It was a rehearsal night for me, and the group I was working with threw themselves a little first-night-of-the-season party. I ate a couple bites of cheese and crackers. She met a friend to chat after work and grabbed a bagel for the train ride home. But that was her lunch, apparently, as her all-day meeting had not taken a break long enough for her to fetch the lunch that was in the office fridge.  When I found her–having walked home from the train since I was late with the rehearsal stragglers–she was unhappily poring over her laptop, processing the all-day meeting notes into her tasks for the next several weeks.

I left her working and returned from the kitchen with two little ramekins, each containing a scoop of vanilla ice cream, a smear of peanut butter, a drizzle of chocolate syrup, a dab of whipped cream, and a sprinkle of granola: a little salty, a little bittersweet, a little creamy, a little crunchy, cold on the tongue on a warm summer night. And, of course, some carbs and protein.

I won’t pretend this was a balanced meal. (What was I going to do, top the sundaes with strips of grilled chicken, carrot, and green pepper?) But it was comforting, and not too indulgent. And nobody was cranky afterward.

 

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged ,

Crunch Time

Posted on September 4, 2014 | 1 comment

Her sister’s sons–adorable little boys–are picky eaters, so it was big excitement for sis to include some paprika in the cracker-crumb breading for the chicken nuggets she made them last night.

“Crackers?” I said.  “She wants the boys to eat homemade nuggets, they should be covered in crushed pretzels.”

“You’ve done this?” she asked.

“No, but it would work.” I was just trying to think of a crunchy snack the boys would like–and that she would actually serve them.  Cool Ranch Doritos-covered chicken, probably not so much.

We started thinking about some terrific beer-battered fish we’d made one night in early Spring, and that we could do something very similar with the chicken I was defrosting.

Two chicken breasts, deboned, yielded six good-sized chicken strips, with the bones added to a bag in the freezer; that stock will become, when the bag is full, stock.

The strips got a quick dredge in flour seasoned with salt, pepper, and lots of sweet Hungarian paprika, a dunk in batter made with a Rolling Rock I keep on hand for such purposes, a roll in multigrain cracker crumbs, and three minutes a side in half an inch of 350ºF canola oil.  The cooked ones kept warm on a draining rig in the oven until all were finished, and were served with CSA-fresh corn and sliced tomatoes. The crust was crisp, the chicken perfectly moist. I envied the little boys their broccoli, but she tells me they probably didn’t eat that.

After dinner, I dashed to the basement and returned with a cardboard paint bucket to store the leftovers. They’re not a bit oily, but the porous container will keep the crust from getting mushy.

When we try Cool Ranch Doritos-covered chicken, it’ll probably have to be baked rather than fried, but I suspect we won’t need a bucket to store leftovers.

The bucket says "wet," but the chicken is not.

The bucket says “wet,” but the chicken is not.

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

Running out for Pizza

Posted on September 2, 2014 | 1 comment

She sent me an email one day, a long time ago.  (I believe she sent the same message to many friends, but I could be misremembering.)

My doctor said I should get more exercise.  I’m going to try this thing called Couch to 5K.  Care to join me?

I figured exercise was a good thing, since I basically sit for a living, so I followed the link she included, looked at the plan described there, and thought:

5K?  Five kilometers?  3.1 miles? I can’t run from here to the corner!

But then I read further, and realized that on the first day of the program I’d have to run (or jog, or waddle, or whatever) for 60 seconds, then walk for 90 seconds, and then run for 60 more, walk for 60 more, and so on.

60 seconds–that’s the lightning round on Password.  I can do anything for 60 seconds.

I finished my work for the day, put on some old shorts, a t-shirt, and a pair of sneakers, and went outside to give it a try. Although by the fifth or sixth repetition of that 60-90 cycle my butt was well and truly kicked, I kind of enjoyed the experience.  Half an hour, three days a week, nine weeks.  Let’s do this.

I was into week 5 of the program before I learned that she’d hated it and given up long before. But I finished–in 16 weeks, not 9, but who was keeping score?–and was encouraged by the success and the thought that if I could do that, what else could I do? I continued, with a program called Bridge to 10K. And then trained for and ran a half-marathon. And another. And another. I haven’t tried a full marathon yet, but I hope to one day. I gave up old sneakers and cut-off shorts long ago in favor of specialized shirts and shorts and socks, and I actually have a favorite brand and model of running shoe. Eventually, she took up the program again; now she’s done 5K races with me and by herself, and we run together whenever we can.

There’s a Labor Day race in New Haven–20 kilometers, the national championship at that distance.  That’s not far from the Country House, so I signed up to run in it, and she came to cheer me on. To say that it was humid in New Haven on Labor Day does no justice to the drippiness of the runners in that field. My running clothes aren’t as wet when I take them out of the washing machine as they were when I took them off when we got home.  Drippy.  Disgusting.  Although my finishing time was not my best, it was very satisfying to finish safely under such nasty conditions. Which means, officially, that I am the 1327th fastest person in America at the distance of 20 kilometers.  (Well, at least of those who entered.)

As she drove us home, we saw a billboard.  “Is that the place with the awesome pizza?” she asked. Yes, it was; not the original location where we’d gone after shopping trips to Ikea, but another restaurant owned by the same family. “Wanna get pizza?” “Always.  Especially after a race.  But I’d like a shower first.”

We continued home, I cleaned up. We did some gardening and cleaned up again, and then phoned in our order.

We arrived at the restaurant to find the doors locked. There were plenty of customers inside, and closing time was listed as two hours away, so eventually we got the attention of the hostess who unlocked the door for us. I went to the counter to ask if our order was ready and waited patiently while the hostess discussed something with the cashier.  After several minutes, the hostess looked up and was startled. “Oh!” “Yeah, me.” “I thought you were looking at a menu.” “No, just waiting.” I gave her my name, she pulled the boxed pizza off the rack; I paid and we headed home.

I’m not going to name the restaurant, because I’d like to think that what we experienced was an anomaly.  I don’t want to believe the owners think that when your pizza is world famous, shoddy service is acceptable. It isn’t. We’ll try again someday. If it’s another bad experience, names will be named.

World famous or not, the pizza was excellent: thin crust, topped lightly with tomato, mozzarella, mushrooms and sausage.  (My salad, made with the last of this week’s CSA greens and green pepper, cherry tomatoes, and an avocado vinaigrette, was crisp and refreshing alongside it.)

Was this pizza better than we could have made at home? Different, certainly, considering they have a coal-fired oven that gets to 1600ºF, and we don’t. Also, we make our crust a little thicker. But on one of the hottest nights of the summer, after a long run and a lot of gardening, excellent take-out was worth the drive and the questionable customer service.

I’ve registered for a race over Columbus Day weekend in Hartford. Wonder if there’s good pizza there…

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , ,

It’s Not the Heat, It’s the Humidity

Posted on September 1, 2014 | 1 comment

‘Twas the night before Labor Day, and the grill was alight.

This isn’t going to be a poem, though that would be fun.  Nor was this a “oh, gosh, it’s the last gasp of summer, we have to have a cookout!” sort of panic.  It was burgers.  One of which was going to be well-done and not one degree beyond.  The smoke detector was not going to sound.

The burgers were originally intended to come from the awesome burger place our neighbor suggested, but they’d closed early for the holiday weekend. Thus, 80/20 chuck was defrosted and formed into patties–one thick and narrow, one thin and wide, so they’d cook to the desired doneness in approximately the same time.

Potatoes were sliced thinly through most of their cross-section, buttered, salt-and-peppered, and foil-wrapped for tucking into the coals. Cabbage was sliced and carrots shredded for slaw. The charcoal was lighted.  The grill-grate was cleaned and swabbed with oil. All was right with the world.

And then it started raining. 

Not cute little sprinkles, either. Let’s-get-this-over-with buckets. The kind that makes you consider gathering the animals by twos.

And thus it was that I fetched an umbrella and became one of those suburban guys who stands on the deck, grilling in the rain.

The burgers were worth it.

Grilling in the Rain 2

I am afraid her umbrella may smell a little smoky the next time she needs to use it.

Burgers 0831

Nothing says “end of summer” like taking off your wet shoes and plating a pretty-much-perfect dinner.

 

 

 

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

Very French, or Nearly So

Posted on August 30, 2014 | 1 comment

There was no dinner at the country house last night; we’d gone over the river and through the woods to have lunch with her beloved Nana, and to deliver furniture to a refinishing shop. We stopped for gas on the way home at a dairy store where she worked during college breaks. Dinner, such as it was, was a double-scoop cone for each of us. 

Brunch today, however, was another matter. Open-faced tomato and mozzarella sandwiches on really good bread, sliced hard-cooked eggs over lettuce with a mustard vinaigrette, and an apple-cider donut, sliced and grilled. She had a wide-brimmed mug of sweet, light tea; I had coffee. I discovered that a beach umbrella fit perfectly into the table on the deck and provided just enough shade.  It might not seemed authentic to a Parisian, but brunch on this late August Saturday felt very much like I remember simple meals at homes in the south of France on a trip long ago.

She broke off a big piece of romaine, wrapped half a of a mustardy hard-boiled egg in it, and mmmmmmdd contentedly after taking a bite. “When you serve meals like this, I don’t want them to end,” she said. “I can’t decide what I want the last bite to be.”

That’s compliment enough for any cook.

Some days you grab a bagel on the way out the door. When there's time for a proper breakfast, you take it.

Some days you barely grab a bagel on the way out the door. When there’s time for a proper breakfast, you take it.

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , , ,