What's Cooking (Take Four)

Yesterday, for lunch, I stopped by a sweet Kiosk sitting out in the parking lot of a health food store. A family-owned place that has been in business for a long time. My favorite is a Polish Kraut Dog. They use excellent dogs, long and fat, lots of good sauerkraut, and the buns are perfect. They also make good potato salad. I only get a one every few months, so it is a real treat for me. They also make many other great things, which I have not tried. Yesterday, my esthetician told me they make great brownies, homemade and brought to the kiosk. Will get to those eventually!

I love the irony of a place to buy Polish Kraut Dogs in the parking lot of a health food store! Not that I wouldn't love it....

Also in that same parking lot is a car repair shop and other businesses surrounding it...just like any other city.

Sounds like an ordeal!

But some nice wines and nice times regardless...

[Jenise]

It's a challenge, for sure. But she does know it's weird, and she tries to make less hard. And we really have fun cooking together.
I'm about to put together a Penzeys order as a thank-you gift.

Sounds a little like an Iron Chef sort of challenge, only instead of having to figure out what to do with a single ingredient, you have to figure out how to cook with the very limited equipment/staples on hand. Quite an exercise, but if you're having fun with a close friend, then it's all good.

[Jenise]

Yes, Mike, that's it. Fun with close friends matters A LOT. Still, it's painful to watch someone you care about essentially bury themselves alive. While there we had to try to put away a new jar of cumin in a spice cupboard full of old spices of which only the front layer is ever used and all that space is taken up by unusable things not seen or touched in 30 years. Which my friend is well aware of--her face when I asked for dry mustard!!--she said no use digging for it because if she did find some it would be of unacceptable quality. She knows on how bad it is, but will she deal with it? No. No matter how bad, it's still a crime against her Chinese grandmother's grave to throw anything away. Did I mention that there was a mousetrap on the kitchen floor when I arrived? I make it sound like a slum but this is a neighborhood of $2-3M homes.

Anyway, tonight I'm going to experiment with a cacio y pepe using aged havarti cheese. Can't wait!

Last night's supper was meat loaf, mashed potatoes, and roasted cauliflower. Although I stick with the same basic recipe, my meat loaf is never the same twice. This one came out really well, perhaps because I was a bit heavier with the garlic than usual. The cauliflower was roasted and then tossed with lemon zest, capers, parsley, and thinly sliced jalapenos. We eat a fair amount of roasted cauliflower, but we usually just have it with salt and pepper added. This version was great, and I doubt that we'll ever do plain roasted cauliflower again.

I kinda hate admitting this, but I let curiosity get the best of me. I took Edie out to share a Big Arch meal, which consists of two quarter-pound beef patties, white cheddar cheese, crispy and slivered onions, pickles, lettuce, and a tangy Big Arch sauce on a sesame and poppy seed bun, served with medium fries and a drink. It cost about 12 dollars.

It was a hefty burger, but I think it had identity problems. At first bites, I thought it was okay, but the more I ate the more I came to the conclusion the Big Arch doesn't know what is. It had a mishmash variety of flavors and textures. I like onions on a burger, and I like crispy fried onions, but having both types didn't work for me. I kept tasting the crispy onions after I left McD's.

I wasn't crazy about the overall flavor, and I won't ever order another. So it's a weak okay or a so-so thumbs down. Hope I save you 12 bucks.

We had a neighborhood get-together tonight and I had leftover meat loaf and a baguette that my daughter made. I ended up slicing the baguette thinly, placing a little slab of meat loaf on top of each slice, and then toasting it in the toaster oven. One done, I put a few strips of a sweet, spicy pickle on top. It worked really well and got good reviews from the neighbors.

On the menu today is a rack of lamb coated with sea salt, coarse black pepper, and a mixture of garlic cloves, evoo, fresh parsley, rosemary, red pepper flakes, ground up in a small food processor and smeared on both sides of the rack. Yesterday, I made a pot of
Rancho Gordo beans. My veggie is broccoli, which will be steamed in the steamer and served with spicy brown mustard.


Mike, your creativity with the toasted baguette, a slice of meatloaf, and the pickles sounds great.

[Jenise]

Larry, you took one for the team! It's been many years since I had a McD's hamburger. Last time it was a neccessity for a fast meal for Bob between doctor's appointments. I hated that the burger isn't wrapped in anything, just plopped in a box with all these parts (like shredded lettuce) that fall out as soon as you pick it up. I will admit, however, to stopping at one just a week ago for a Sausage Muffin on my way to Everett (a 90 mile drive) to catch a flight. I left home at 5:30 a.m. I don't usually eat in the mornings but I wouldn't have a chance to eat again until after landing in L.A.--2:00ish. It fills a purpose.

Karen, I'm having rack of lamb tonight as well. This rack is huge, came from Flannery Meats in California and cost a fortune. It's been in my freezer for quite awhile and I'm having my BIL over for dinner. I'm serving creamed collard greens and roasted splat potatoes with it, and of course some kind of salad. Might include beets.

Lunch was an assortment of samples at Costco. And I filled my car for $3.96/gal.

[Jenise]

I spent yesterday in horse country--lower BC just over the border from me. After the show jumping competitions, we grazed in Fort Langley, a picturesque walking village with quaint shops and restaurants that is the site of BC's first white settlement. There I bought some big, fat, fresh chicken-apple sausages from a local butcher. I emphasize 'fresh'--these are raw, not the already-cooked type you just grill off like the Aidells at Costco most of you might be familiar with.

Those are going to be dinner tonight; I'm planning a lighter, upscale version of bangers and mash.

For our block party last night, I made a salad of favas, asparagus, romaine, cucumbers, dill, and feta. The dressing was a lemon vinaigrette with green garlic. It came out very nicely, and disappeared fairly quickly.

[Jenise]

So Mike, those block parties. Those have been going on for like 30 years or something now? I want to move on to your block!

We must be getting close to 25 years, now. They've expanded a bit as friends and friends of friends have been coming. I think we had more little kids than ever for this last one. Come on down for the Labor Day party!

Invited an old friend from work (though we haven't worked together for 20+ years) to a German-themed lunch. Marinated skinless chicken thighs overnight in lots of smashed garlic, sherry vinegar, and chive, and grilled. My wife made Martha Stewarts German potato salad, which bears a strong resemblance to real German Kartoffelsalat. 2 lbs. of baby yellow potatoes, a small onion, and a half pound of bacon! I switched the latter out for pancetta because German Speck isn't really smoked the way US bacon is smoked, and was pleased with the result. Had a "yellow and red" fruit salad with peak season Bing and Ranier cherries all mixed up with yellow and white nectarine. Finished with rhubarb cobbler, using rhubarb from Trader Joe's (!). God, I love rhubarb, and it is so hard to come by around here.

Served with a bottle I carried back from Berlin, 2022 Horst Sauer Escherndorfer am Lumpen Silvaner (Franken) GG. Wow! Light and spritzig but tons of flowery fruit, long finish, terriffic acidity. Just the whole package. In the non-traditional Rhine bottle instead of a bocksbeutel and sadly not available in the US, except at three times the EUR42 that I paid.

I like rhubarb, too. And to think I came from a state (PA) that had wild rhubarb growing everywhere.

Apparently it needs to get cold over-winter. It was practically a weed in the midwest. I had no luck growing it in California.

[Jenise]

Walt, maybe you need a different variety. My grandmother had a huge plant, probably decades old, in her yard in Bell Gardens less than 20 miles from Los Angeles City Hall.

That said, it was the most popular vegetable by far when I visited Iceland.

That potato salad sounds great, Walter - and I'm going to remember the idea of using pancetta instead of bacon in German potato salad.

We had rigatoni with morels, green garlic, and pancetta last night. Probably the last fresh morels that we'll have until next year.