Mmmmm, Dinner

I spent the last five days on a Royal Caribbean cruise. While the cruise was fun, the service was great and the ship's workings amazing, the food was medicore at best.

Basically there are two places you can eat on the ship: the main dinning room and a buffet service cafe.

So, let's start with the buffet. Think Old Country Buffet. I ate every breakfast I made it to there and three lunches. While the food there was bad, I did have a couple things there. The eggs and bacon were good and I had a decent lamb curry at lunch. Otherwise the food was pretty bad.

So, the main dinning room. This is where we had all the dinners and two lunches. Blah. Meat was overdone. One night duck was on the menu. I asked if it is medium rare. I got a strange look and was told it was well done. Yeah, of course it is. The waiter still talked me into getting it. It was overcooked and dry. Boo to that.

I did have a very nice escargot appetizer. It was made with a garlic herb butter sauce and were done perfectly. I also had a tasty onion soup with gruyere toast. The desserts were also passable, though not amazing like they should have been.

The best meal we had was off the boat, after the cruise. We had a lot of time to kill in Fort Lauderdale. We stopped by some tourist trap fish place. I got the best fish and chips of my life. Well, the chips weren't that great, but the fish was awesome. Of course, I lost a tooth filling during the meal, but I guess it was worth it to have the first good meal in six days.

Labels: bacon, curry, duck, eggs, fish, onion, seafood, soup, vacation

It was a long weekend of treats and dinners. Did I take lots of pictures? Of course not. Friends were in town, guests had to be fed, and I was absent-minded.

Friday started out with some homemade Mexican. I made a nice meal of tacos, beans and rice. The filling for the tacos was chicken in a green pumpkin seed sauce. It was outstanding, in my opinion, and you can get the recipe here. I tweaked the recipe a bit, but it is close.

Have I mentioned my love of homemade beans? Beans are the easiest things in the world to make from scratch and one of the most satisfying. Bean juice is the greatest tasting substance in the world some days. Everyone should spend time next weekend making beans at home. Pinto beans are a very easy place to start and give you the most bang for your buck.

Saturday dinner was a bit complicated. It had to be a vegan gluten free dinner. Yikes. I ended up with a mushroom ragu (that was way too watery) on polenta. Tisha brought a spinach salad, that was perfect. Dessert was a bizarre concoction of prunes, oranges, and cardamom syrup on ice cream (and soy cream). It was an okay dinner, but not my favorite by any means.

Sunday, my feet hurt from two days of cooking, so dinner was takeout.

Today, was sort-of-meatless Monday. See, CJ gave me these great crocks for my birthday and Valentine's Day.
I also had a lot of chicken stock left over from making chicken Friday night and no room in the freezer for it.

What could I do? I made super nummy, super tasty, super awesome French Onion Soup.

I used the recipe from Cook's Illustrated. It took over four hours to make; 2 1/2 half were inactive. It was very good and well worth it. While very few ingredients are used in the recipe, it would be too much work to paraphrase, so I suggest you get to the library and get the recipe yourself for your collection.

You do have a collection, don't you?

Labels: beans, chicken, mexican, mushroom, onion, rice, soup, vegan

Yeah, I'll say it. Barak Obama is barely better than Hillary Clinton. But he inspires a really nice soup.

Start with 2 Tablespoons of butter. This was adapted from an Anthony Bourdain recipe, by the way.
Melt it and sautee half an onion in it until translucent.

Then add 4 more Tablespoons of butter and a bunch of mushrooms. Sweat it all for 10 minutes.

Add 4 cups of chicken stock. I use Swanson's Organic because it was tested best by America's Test Kitchen.

Also add some parsley.

Bring to a boil and let simmer for 1 hour.
Then, take out your hand blender and blend.

Bring it back to a simmer and add 2 ounces sherry.

It is really good. Much better than Barak Obama.

Labels: mushroom, sherry, soup

Sorry about the weeks of not posting. It wasn't that I haven't been cooking, I have. It is just that I didn't get pics of everything and that I'm lazy.

So, here you go, a big long list of things I've made recently, with some pics.

1) Roasted chicken- One of CJ's favorites. Super easy and real tasty.
2) Split pea soup
How I love split pea soup. I made a whole bunch last week, froze some, and have been eating it for a few days.
3) Squash- Sauteed with some onions, one of my favorites.
4) Pumpkin Spice Muffins
Ugly, but good.
5) Fava beans and tomatoes- I threw this together real quick one night, and it turned out good. By real quick, I mean under 3 minutes.
6) Homemade applesauce


7) Carnitas

These were really good. Take a couple pounds of pork shoulder and cut into cubes. Add enough water to cover, the juice from a small lime, and a couple pinches of salt. Bring to a boil and simmer for 40 minutes on medium low covered. Uncover once tender and let water boil off. When it does, it will start frying itself in its own fat.

We ate it as we do tacos. It was really good. REALLY GOOD. The recipe came from my new cookbook, The Art of Simple Food by Alice Waters. The cookbook is also great. If you are interested in learning to cook real food, it is a great starter. She does the basics, then goes on to other things, all which look excellent and simple.

Labels: apples, beans, chicken, muffins, pork, soup, squash

I travelled for six hours today to Kittson County for work. Two meals later, I've decided soup (non-Asian) outside of Minneapolis is much better than in the Metro.

We stopped about an hour outside of St. Paul and I got a bowl of Chicken Noodle Soup and a Tuna Melt. The melt was pretty good, but the soup was amazing. It was obviously home mode, it had thick noodles, an awesome broth, and huge chunks of chicken. It was TASTY. It was how I would want to make it.

Tonight, we went to the hotel restaurant. Actually, it has the same name, but is across the parking lot. I got the Walleye and a cup of the Tomato Soup. The Walleye was pan fried, fresh, and pretty dang good, but the soup was the shining star. I expected normal Cream of Tomato soup, but that is not what I got. There were VEGETABLES in it. There were chunks of tomato and onion and celery. Big chunks. While I would have put some basil in it, it was still very good.

So, I was tagged by Emily for a meme of 7 things you don't know about me, or something like that. Since it is Emily, I will comply. Since this is a food related blog, I'll keep it food themed.

1) I really like soup. It is my favorite food. I've been eating it a lot lately and I always enjoy it. I also really like cooking it, but haven't recently. That's more of a winter thing.
2) I've only had Foie Gras once, and I loved it. Everytime I go out to eat, I look for it, but it is so rare with all the "animal cruelty" crap.
3) Oh yeah, I used to be a vegetarian and believed all the "animal cruelty" crap. I actually still do. I was even a vegan at one time. I feel bad, but Foie Gras is pretty damn tasty.
4) Pizza, in my mind, is the most perfect food. Specifically, thin crust, super saucy, square cut pizza from Dulono's. Mmmmm, Pizza.
5) Milk. I love it. I rarely drink it. Years ago, while on Weight Watchers, I cut it out because there are lots of calories. Now, I've gained back all the weight, but I still don't drink the milk. Real healthy, right? Man, I could go for a glass of milk now.
6) Wasabi. I don't like it. It is one of the few foods that I don' t like. But I make myself eat it and I like it more and more all the time. I really do believe that most food is likable, you just need to make yourself like it, like beer and coffee.
7) I really want to learn to cook Indian food. But like lots of foods, CJ gets digestive problems with curries, so I never make it, because he won't eat it. It kind of makes me sad, but I enjoy cooking for him so much, that I just don't cook for myself that much.

Labels: hotel, meme, soup