My RSS feeder brings up cooking blogs at the top of my list. I’ve been lurking there a lot lately. I’ll star recipes, knowing in my heart of hearts, I will not get to them. But I do enjoy thinking about food. Lately, the message has been pears/apples paired with brie/goat cheese/blue cheese in salads or sandwiches with a salty meat like prosciutto or bacon. Wednesday night, I had nothing for dinner. I had not defrosted anything, blithely thinking we still had some pasta left.
So, on the way home, I stopped at Metropolitan Market and got a delicious baguette, a bowl of chili, and some brie. Sara went crazy over the baguette. We felt very French munching on half the baguette on the car ride home. The chili was the dinner. Today, I got goat cheese to match all the arugula that’s been lurking in my fridge and not been eaten. (I’m wondering in this political season if my food choices are sounding too partisan at the moment with all the stink about arugula in the 2008 election).
So tonight, we finished the baguette (the measly tail). I sliced my ripest pears (these probably could have been more firm- soft pears didn’t hold up as well to pan frying). I tried to convince the brie to leave it’s rind. Wayne kept marching around the kitchen looking for what was rotting. I convinced him the smell was from the brie. It was not my favorite brie. It was more tangy and added more punch to the sandwich. I like a milder, more buttery taste to my brie. I had cooked a whole batch of Niman Ranch bacon earlier in the day which I’ll freeze for occasional sandwiches and salads. Putting it on a jelly roll pan lined with aluminum foil actually worked pretty well. It got more crisp than my usual pan frying and the drippings could just be wrapped up in the foil. I added the brie and pears and bacon to the baguette and started heating the pan. I was surprised how quickly the brie melted. We each had smaller portions of this high calorie sandwich, less than 4 inches of bread each.
I used the rest of the pears for my salad (the arugula), added some pecans, and trialed the goat cheese. The goat cheese was perfect, mild and creamy. The Briana’s red wine vinaigrette makes any fruit salad pop. It’s become our standby salad dressing. Occasionally, I’ll vacillate back to balsalmic. Nice meal. Relatively quick since we had to head out for home group.
Also this week, I nosed around the archive of smitten kitchen. I had some organic carrots I had ignored. My kids have been eating the non-organic baby carrots and snap peas. Those are easy to pop on the table and check veggie off the list. It’s why my salad’s not getting eaten. I get the main part ready, and I just end up snacking off the kids veggies. So these carrots were fine, but were getting old. So I nosed and found a recipe for roasted carrots. Done earlier in the week. Wednesday, I reroasted them to resurrect them. I added avocado with lemon, olive oil, and salt. Wow. Did the carrots pop with flavor! It was a nice combo.
I’m eying a recipe for brie, apples, arugula quesadillas for tomorrow, just to finish the brie. And I have all the ingredients.
Another blog I’ve been loving lately in Dinner: a Love Story. Just started looking at it. Love the emphasis on kids. The best entry is a few posts back on the Taxonomy of a Picky Eater.
Sara trialed a week of no TV at the pushing from her awesome PE coach. We all tried to go along with it. There were discussions if weather counted as TV. It threw a kink into our normal routine. I attack the tangles in their hair while they watch PBS. Their hair was probably more tangled than normal. It also delayed our normal movie watching night. So it’s with eager anticipation that we’re all hoping How to Train a Dragon comes in the mail soon so we can watch it. I was watching some previews while waiting to check out of Fred Meyer. The animation is sooo good (and they’re the competitors). Toothless’ eye was just mesmerizingly beautiful.
Wayne has also watched Secret of Kells with the girls without me. This evening they were singing a song about Pangor ban, the cat. I felt left out. That might be another movie night. The girls have no qualms watching a movie multiple times.
Books have been slow. Sara forgot to return her library books. That’s normally a mid week infusion of 4 new books. I just returned the dregs from SPL. We made it thru 2/3rd of James Herriot’s Treasury. What wonderful illustrations. I kept thinking if I could convince the kids to watch All Creatures Great and Small from PBS. I don’t think so. Too much adult talking. I wonder if I could stream it from Netflix. We also enjoyed Wheedle on the Needle. The kids now notice that icon with more familiarity. I gave up a hold for Frameless, the story of a mom who took nude photos of her 8yr daughter and go prosecuted for child abuse and lost custody of her daughter for a time. I just couldn’t face it when I have a book club book to tackle. I found a sequel, Imager Challenge by LE Modesitt. That will carry me for awhile. We’ve also bought a few books from our last Northgate date. Sara loves reading me the Piggie and Gerald books by Mo Willems. I didn’t realize there were so many. We also read the new Fancy Nancy book which is probably the best. I’ve tried to get to our school’s library to check out books about 3 times and to no avail. It is always closed or locked. Sigh. I might be resorting to SPL after all. I’ll try again tomorrow.
It’s been a short biking week. I had a glorious time on Tuesday. I biked the girls to both schools. That always is exhausting. I biked to a lunch date with Carolyn at Thai Siam. I did not have the heart to bike to pick up the girls. I was too pooped as my granma used to say. I got a smidgeon of pilates in on Wed. Today, nothing. I’ll probably walk the girls to school tomorrow since it’s going to be raining. We’ll swim tomorrow to make up for our lack of activity.
A mom asked me about a scheduling play date. I look at our calendar and sigh. Halloweeen festivities. AAPM&R conference. Birthday weeks. The next few weeks are very packed. And then it’s just a slide into the holidays. It’s all good, just busy. The WSJ had an article how Halloween is many folks Christmas. It’s an interesting look at culture shifts.
The girls got to open an early bday gift from my Mom. They are loving on fun stuffed animals from the National Parks from their travels. We’re also reveling in Halloween tales. Mom always finds such cute books. I found Goodnight, Goon (a parody on Goodnight, Moon). Laura loves it. One of our favorites from the past is Black Cat Creeping. It is a sweet tale. If I can get to the school library, the have a killer collection of Dorrie the Witch. I read those all the time when I was a girl. I would definitely enjoy reading a few before Halloween.