Day 13: Cold day #4 -a Tuesday breakfast

Today's a cold, cold day. School is closed for the 4th day this month. What will I do? Make delicious breakfast for myself: whole wheat pancakes.

Pancakes are simple. Whole wheat flour, baking soda, baking powder, brown sugar, egg, and oil.

 Mix it up, put it on the griddle.

 Licking the bowl optional.

Perfectly brown on both sides.

Just a little butter and syrup for the breakfast.


Tonight we're eating out with Colin's family. 

Day 12: Monday, the great cold day.

Two big recipes today: stew, and cheesecake.

Colin loves cheesecake. He loves fruit cheesecake. I have an extra day, I'm going to make Colin a cheesecake.

The recipe from Martha Stewart.

The crust is crushed gram cracker.

 The crust is the first step. Gram cracker crumbs, melted butter, sugar applied with pressure in a  9" spring-form cake pan whose bottom is wrapped with foil and bake at 350 for 15 minutes.

Next: Whip the room-temperature cream cheese, room-temperature eggs, sugar, salt and vanilla.

Pour into cake pan. Swirl with fruit compote.

The swirl is pureed fruit and sugar: strained.

 After swirling, place pan inside a large roasting pan, carefully pour boiling-hot water in the roasting pan to half-way up the cake pan.

Bake at 325 for ~65 minutes.

All baked. Next: The Fridge

After baking, let it cool completely to room temperature, refrigerate for 6 hours to up to overnight.

I'll update you after it gets de-panned. I'm hopeful but nervous.

The other part of the day: Stew.

It's so cold. It's good to have soup when it's cold. So we present: stew. Lots of vegetables to cut and get ready. Lots of garlic. Some salt. Lots of pepper. Lots of meat. Lots of tomatoes. Beef broth.

The slow-cooker, ready to go.

After several hours (~4 on high) the stew gets corn starch water mixed in to thicken it. Then dinner:

Tasty, but could've been more tasty.

Colin and I both prefer thicker stews with more taste, like with wine in it. I don't recommend the recipe.

Day 11: Sunday Funday

Today's Sunday:
Snow, brunch, grocery shopping, and rest. It's a cold week ahead. What are we going to do? We'll make some of the things we didn't get to last week. We'll treat ourselves to brunch out today, shop for groceries today, eat leftovers today.

The menu was planned in the breezeway of Blue's Egg on my phone while we waited for our table. This is the plan:

• Sweet and tangy oven-barbecued chicken (published May 1, 2004) and Brussels sprouts with garlic and farrow (published November 1, 1995).
• Pan-seared inexpensive steak (published September 1, 2005) and rice pilaf with vermicelli (published March 1, 2000),  
• Cornish hens with a fruit salad
• Vegetable beef stew and fresh-baked bread
• Parmesan-crusted chicken cutlets (published March 1, 2007) and cheesy risotto

We didn't cook, we barely cleaned, we watched TV, played video games, and watched the Pro Bowl.

Day 10.5: Dessert

Saturdays are days of decadence and luxury sometimes. Today I wanted to make dessert. So I did. But not before we cleaned and played some Wii U Fit -Colin's new gift to the household.

Big brother, little sister.

Not going to let a sprained ankle keep me down.

The Wii U Fit is fun, this one's golf.

Vanilla mousse

The cats were no help cleaning. Arya likes to add dirt and play around while we're cleaning. The vacuum scared her and Jay onto the bed.

Afterward we played Wii U Fit. I like the golf, the serving, and the ski jump.


All the activity got me ready for dessert. A quick vanilla mousse with fresh fruit, choclate shavings and a rolled wafer cookie. Chocolate shavings are best made from good quality chocolate microwaved a little to soften it just slightly before using a vegetable peeler to create shavings. Delicious.

Day 10: Saturday morning brunch

Friday was leftovers and pizza. A nice, lazy Friday night with company.

Saturday morning, brisk and chilly. Saturday morning with a pantry low on goods. Saturday morning with a brand new pan. Today's menu, unplanned and wonderful:

• ebelskivers (dutch spherical pancakes), 
• scrambled eggs, and
• ham steak.

Fun can to go with a fun pan.

 This is a time-consuming breakfast, but it's pretty fun and delicious.

Even though the mix was a great gift to get me started from my moms I'm not sure if I'll get it again. There are so many unincluded ingredients that it may be just as easy to mix it from scratch.

Arya is a perkier little baby. She loves to help.

The mix gets combined with melted butter, whipped egg whites, and milk.

A pretty mixture.

Fill each hole to almost half.

Make sure you pre-heat the pan and brush each hole with melted butter -this gives the nice exterior.

The other side.

Flip each pancake over, dumping out the un-cooked batter into the pan.


My mom used toothpicks, I used skewers, I heard that #2 knitting needles are "perfect," according to a review on Amazon.com


The can, the reviews, and tradition encouraged me to try fillings. I went with something I had ready in the fridge: maple butter.

The maple butter's sugars created a very crusty outside.

 I'm not sure I'd use a such a sugar-based filling next time. It didn't stay in a nice little pocket in the pancakes and the filling oozed out and was VERY hot.

I burned myself turning a pancake over, it was immediately painful but the pain subsided to be replaced with a pink and white dry blister. I think it's a pretty solid second-degree burn. No more sugar-based fillings for me unless I want a caramelized thumb.

Plain. Dusted with powdered sugar.

Oh yeah, there was other food:

I love this cutting board. It's beautiful

Happy Winter Weekend.

Day 7+8: Colin's big show: Parmesean-crusted chicken cutlets

Day 7: The meal that tastes and looks amazing:
and
Day 8: The meal that was just as good the next day:

• Parmesean-crusted chicken cutlets (published March 1, 2007) and make-ahead mashed potatoes (published March 12, 2007)

Long day. Drama club makes me hungry. I come in STARVING. So time for an after-school snack because tonight's dinner is going to take a while.

Parmesan-crusted chicken cutlets don't have a lot of ingredients.

The first step is to slice each chicken breast in half lengthwise and then to bread coat them in the crust before pan frying them.

We ran out of Parmesan and hand to improvise with "farm cheese" from Colin's secret Santa

Timing everything just so. It's a drippy, messy process but the result is decadent.

While Colin got started on the chicken, I went to work on the potatoes. This recipe asked for the potatoes to be baked instead of boiled. The result was very similar to the boiled mashed potatoes I've made.

Bake, half, de-flesh and mash. That's the process here.

In some ways this baking method was easier. Prior to baking I microwaved the potatoes for a few minutes to get it started.




Halving the potatoes, while hot, was a lot faster than peeling them one on one.









While the potatoes baked, Colin cooked.

Fammie wished for tuna.

After they were complete, it was incredible.

Crispy, but not burned. Melty but not chewy.

The chicken cutlets were just perfect. This recipe was perfect and our cheese modification didn't hurt it at all.

So good.

It's great that there was enough for two dinners for two. Wednesday was delicious. Thursday was delicious.


Thursday was another late day. Colin worked late and I had fillings put in.

Days 6: Menu planning, grocery shopping, and meal cooking and meal eating

Day 6: Tuesday, January 21
Today I planned the rest of the week's meals, went grocery shopping after work and cooked a one-pot couscous meal. Wednesday-Friday of this week was a long one. Every Wednesday I stay late for Drama Club, Thursday I had fillings and Friday I'm always spent -even on a short week.

Day 7-9, Wednesday through Friday, meals were planned from Cook's Illustrated as:

• Pan-seared inexpensive steak (published September 1, 2005) and rice pilaf with vermicelli (published March 1, 2000),
• Parmesan-crusted chicken cutlets (published March 1, 2007) and make-ahead mashed potatoes (published March 12, 2007),
• Sweet and tangy oven-barbecued chicken (published May 1, 2004) and Brussels sprouts with garlic and farrow (published November 1, 1995).

 It didn't turn out quite as planned. Some things were cooked, some things weren't.We'll get to that later.

Tuesday's Dinner:

• Hangar Steak with Spicy Lemon Couscous (Bon Appetit)

This dinner turned out really well. It was pretty quick (hangar or skirt steak both cook so quickly because they're thin) and couscous is so fine it plumps up quickly.

This recipe has lots of veggies. Fennel, carrot, lots of delicious, crisp veggies.

Finely-chopped lemons go with the veggies.

 It's refreshing, literally, to have lemon with vegetables. They have a juicy, tart flavor that adds a different dimension because of the tough rind.

Fennel, carrot, lemon, cilantro, garlic and ground red pepper

The ground red pepper, though delicious and not as spicy as red pepper flakes, dulled the color significantly and made it look monotone. 

If you might recall, the nice butcher counter guy at Cermak mistook my order for 1 pound of flank steak for 4 pounds. I was disappointed to begin with, but then I froze the extra and it was just fine. Especially when they cleaned the fat off for me.

Season the steak with salt and pepper prior to pan frying.

When it's all said and done:

Cilantro for garnish and toast as a side.

 Less blurry:

It would be more beautiful with red pepper flakes instead of ground red pepper.