Pat

I like Too Good To Go, except I keep getting way too many Bagels from Bullfrog. I mean, they're great, but I end up with too many. That's my favorite place to order from. I'm building up a freezer stock I will need to use. Otherwise, it does make dinner much faster to have part of it already done. Of course, if you're buying from a place with multiple locations, be very sure you are buying from the correct location. I ended up spending more on metro fare than on the order to pick up something from the wrong We the Pizza (U Street).

Last night was a not quite breakfast for dinner meal. We had Vegan Black Bean Breakfast Tacos from Joy Wilson's (aka Joy the Baker) Over Easy. If I'm going to have so many cookbooks, I should make recipes from them. (I get excited for this project every now and then.) They came out reasonably well. I used half blue corn tortillas and half yellow corn. For the 8 oz. tofu, I didn't want to open a 14 oz. package and deal with leftover, so I dug into the freezer and pulled out one of the 7 3/4 oz. packages of Wildwood Organic Tofu (that comes in a 2 pack) that I'd resorted to buying when Whole Foods went through a lengthy period of not having their 365 brand. Perfect solution, though it was frozen hard and took a bit of time and a lot of drying to use. The rest of the meal was an improvised dish that was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself. I made curried bananas and vegetables and used that to stuff roasted delicata squash halves. I put the filled squash back in the oven topped with a little turbinado sugar (learned from the recent pork recipe) and finished cooking them. The vegetables were onion, red bell pepper, tomato, and cauliflower. Two very ripe bananas and about a half cup each of the veggies yielded just the right amount. I used Penzey's hot curry powder, some of their Northwoods seasoning, black pepper, and some generic pumpkin pie spice for the curry part. Will make again.

I made another recipe from the Milk Street tv series cookbook last night, this one for caramelized pork tenderloin, and it was excellent. The free cookbook is now 2-for-2. I had two 1 lb pork tenderloins and cut them into more than 6 pieces, maybe 10? I thought it seemed like too much sugar and went a little under 1/2 cup. It caramelized nicely. It also used up most of my remaining stock of turbinado sugar, so if you have an excess, this is a good recipe for taking care of that. The orange peel is a small but key ingredient in the mix. Do not omit. The spiciness from the cayenne played really well with the other flavors, and the sauce was just right with everything. We also had a pretty basic salad and mashed potatoes. Since I'm usually too lazy to dirty another vessel and heat the milk ahead of time, I've stumbled into the shortcut of pouring some milk into the still hot pan after the potatoes have been taken out to drain. Then I put the potatoes back in with some cubed butter and mash them into the warmed up milk, adding extra milk as needed. These were the best (and easiest to get right) mashed potatoes I've made in some time. Just s + p, otherwise.

Last night I used the last bit of the aforementioned pumpkin puree and improvised a ziti dish for dinner. I cut up a plum tomato and heated it in olive oil with some black pepper, onion powder, and a pinch of kosher salt. Then I added the puree, a few squeezes of tomato paste, a pour of chicken stock, and a smaller pour of milk and simmered briefly. Meanwhile I cooked the ziti to al dente and drained it. I put that back in its pot and added the sauce and some grated Parmesan. That all went into a greased casserole. I mixed in some Monterey Jack and cheddar and put more on the top along with a grating of baguette and more Parmesan. It came out well. We had it with a salad of romaine, tomato, avocado, carrot, and croutons from more of the bread.

I used the rest of the Costco salmon to make Salmon Chraimeh from the Milk Street cookbook. I don't own any of Kimball's other books and had picked this one up for free quite a while ago from a sidewalk giveaway. The salmon was fantastic. We had it with a real basic spaghetti aglio e olio. I was trying to find a carb to serve with the fish that wasn't more of the risotto, and the two matched up fairly well. Lots of garlic between them!

This sounds fabulous.

Tuesday's dinner was scaled back from what I planned but came out well nonetheless: bruschetta; smoky and spicy pan-seared salmon; and lemon, pea, and saffron risotto. I found some carnaroli rice at Radici and drew from a few different recipes to make this. It was very creamy. I added some mascarpone near the end, which made it even creamier. I used black pepper, smoked paprika and Penzey's Northwoods Fire seasoning on the salmon. Last night was the rest of that salmon (I had made half of a 2 1/4 lb. Costco fillet) over a little of the risotto, Cauliflower and Pumpkin Gratin with fried sage from Half-Baked Harvest (the original cookbook), and toasted sourdough bread. The gratin was excellent. There's only a little pumpkin puree left from the can, so I think I'll be making it into a sauce for a small amount of pasta soon. I had discovered another use for that but can't remember what it is...

Usually I time dinner for halftime of the Super Bowl, but we ate during the second quarter last night. The meal was chicken parts reheated in the air fryer, baked sweet potato with maple syrup, and steamed broccoli. The nod to the Super Bowl was some old-fashioned nachos with 8 or 10 individual chips topped with jalapeno and cheese and heated. That works pretty well for having a small serving of nachos. It's been a long day today, and I am heating up pinto beans and tater tots to go with salad and Kielbasa wrapped in thawed Pillsbury crescent dough. These are effectively pigs in blankets because the flakiness doesn't really hold through the freezing and thawing and baking process.

Friday night I did not feel like cooking, so we had two takeout pies: Tuna and zucchini quiche from Christophe Boulangerie and a NY-style mushroom pizza from Della Barba. I plated the quiche on a bed of baby arugula lightly dressed with lemon and black pepper. Their quiches are really good served that way. They're thick crustless slabs that are very eggy, custardy, and smooth. Last night we finished the quiche, served the same way, and we had it with an improvised casserole of leftover chicken, mushrooms, onions, garlic, thick white sauce, and ziti. Along with the pasta, I added some extra liquid (in the form of chicken stock I had just made from the carcasses) to the skillet where the other ingredients were cooked to cook the ziti part-way. Then I covered the skillet with thin slices of cheddar and baked until it was heated through and the ziti was done. We also had sourdough I got at Christophe at the same time as the quiche.

I hope you hit on the magic formula. I recall making toasted rice for larb was much easier than I had thought it would be and I had a enough extra rice to make it several times. I should try this again.

Sesame bagels London Broil (James Beard's preparation, with tabasco) Leftover scalloped potatoes with pepper jack and pickled jalapenos Honey-roasted delicata squash (from Ina Garten's Go-To Dinners) The London Broil was top round, I think. It was on sale at Whole Foods and I realized I hadn't made this dish for a while. It was just over $5 for a 3/4 lb. piece, which was a dinner for two and enough leftover for a lunch. The squash recipe also called for shallots and fresh sage. It was delicious. I also discovered that my knives really need sharpening. One reason I like delicata more than other squash is that they're easy to cut, but not with the current state of my knives.

Yesterday I bought two D'Artagnan Green Circle whole chickens at YES! for a total of $15 and change. Their sell-by date was the day before, so they'd been relabeled with yesterday as the sell-by date and marked down to half price. (I thought putting a new label with a different sell-by date than the small sticker on the back of the packages was a little 🤨, but I wasn't turning down that deal. Green Circle chicken is excellent. I figured roasting them both that day should be fine, and it was.) I coated them both with olive oil, white wine vinegar, and some kind of green herb I found in my spice drawer (bought in bulk at Souk; probably marjoram). They also got sprinkled with garlic and onion powders, black pepper, and a small amount of kosher salt. I roasted them together on a sheet pan on convection for about an hour at 370F. If I had only bought one, I would probably have used the air fryer. I served them on a platter covered in baby arugula, which looked real fancy (and the peppery arugula was a nice counterpoint to the crispy roast chicken). We also had leftover mac and cheese and sourdough and pumpernickel bread-type products.

Last night I made the last package of TJ's Fall Zucchette Pasta I had acquired. It's made with butternut squash, so I paired it with roasted butternut squash (which I usually do). This time, though, I cooked up a medley of onion, garlic, red bell pepper, tomato, and mushrooms in evoo and mixed that in with the squash and squash pasta as a saucy component. It was good, but the pasta got a bit overworked and broke down more than I wanted. It actually added a fairly nice texture that way, though. We also had sourdough bread, and my husband finished the last of the tomato white bean soup.

I made this Creamy Chive Pasta with Lemon recipe from the NYT for Sunday dinner. (It's a gift link, so people without a NYT Cooking subscription can access it. They started the gift link thing a while ago, and I keep forgetting to use them.) It was simple and quite good. I used ricotta and didn't measure all that closely. It seems like that kind of recipe. I used the remaining half of a 1 lb. box of spaghetti and made approximately a half recipe. I also cooked up the remainder of a Costco bag of baby spinach that needed to be sorted through a bit. There was still enough usable to make a decent side dish (evoo, garlic, onion, white wine, lemon juice, black pepper.)

Leftover Smoky Tomato White Bean Soup Green salad with iceberg, tomatoes, radishes, cucumber, and bacon Sourdough bread and butter Air fryer chicken legs Pepper Jack scalloped potatoes I improvised the potatoes. They came out really well. I haven't made any kind of potato gratin is a very long time. I used both Pepper Jack and plain Monterey Jack, plus some chopped pickled jalapenos. The final topping had some panko and Parmesan, with a little whole milk poured in around the edges of the casserole the way my mother used to do it. There was also butter involved, but I showed restraint

Last night I used up the last of my homemade chicken stock to make kamut from an unopened package that I'd had for I have no idea how long. I cooked it in the InstantPot (45 minutes on high) and it came out really well. We had this with a head of romanesco I roasted with avocado oil and Penzey's (salt-free) Justice seasoning. My husband also had more of the tomato and white bean soup and a salad of avocado, Campari tomatoes, fresh basil and marinated feta. I finished the last of a green salad with iceberg, tomatoes, radishes, cucumber, and bacon.

I've got a better phone now but my vision is no better. Trying to do everything with a QR code is a pain in the butt. My husband refuses to do it because he wants human interaction. I hate it because it is incredibly complicated and difficult for me. It's the reason I don't go to the Brig, which I used to like once in a while despite high prices. The QR code thing is insane. I sit there for fifteen minutes trying to make it work, while looking straight at the tap I want the beer from. They're not allowed to let you to do it otherwise, from what they tell me. At least at The Roost, I can ask an employee and they will put the order in for me.

Last night we had leftover rice and mushroom casserole from the freezer that I perked up with extra sauteed shiitakes and garlic, plus canned tomato sauce. I added the leftover chicken drumsticks to the skillet with the rice to heat it all up. And we had a smoky tomato and white bean soup from A Dinner: A Love Story recipe. Easy, quick, and delicious. Tonight, a big salad, more of the soup, and leftovers of the rice casserole with some of the turkey meatballs that were left from the other night. Plus sourdough, toasted.

Turkey meatballs reheated with leftover eggplant involtini and spinach braised in chicken stock with Calabrian chili. Sourdough and raisin toast.

This morning there was a food service delivery truck (International Gourmet Foods) outside Pacci's. If they're getting food deliveries, they're close. However, the ABC hearings are still a way out, so I assume they're opening without a liquor license.

Last night was more salad; more sourdough and raisin bread; baked chicken drumsticks; baked potatoes with bacon, cheddar, and sour cream; and, steamed broccoli.

Last night I made the Apple Butter and Sage Pork Chops recipe again but just made one thick bone-in chop that we split. It was 1 lb., but it was the perfect amount for us to split, given that the bone was a fair amount of that weight. I also made the classic Mueller's baked mac and cheese recipe (which uses cornstarch instead of flour). That is always reliably good. I had cooked up a sheet pan of bacon a bit earlier, so our vegetable was brussels sprouts roasted in bacon fat. A little crumbled bacon went into the salad we had alongside. It was a good Sunday dinner.

Last night we had more salad, the last of the pain de campagne, toasted (it held up really well), and an old recipe I've always loved and hadn't made in a long time. It's a Donna Hay recipe that was in her book Flavours: Spaghetti with Lime and Rocket (aka arugula). I discovered it when it had been published in the Australian Marie Claire magazine and someone posted it to a mailing list I was on, probably in the late '90s. Finding the jarred marinated feta is the hardest part of this. It always seems to be a Danish product when I can find it. I was going to make my own knockoff yesterday when I finally located it in my neighborhood gourmet market (Wine & Butter). Last place I checked, too. This is the version Martha has on her website, which is basically the same as my original, except it has only US measures and specifies that the red pepper be mild. The original does not specify, and I've always used a hot red pepper and like it that way. (I use baby arugula rather than mature and don't shred it.) It does have a crazy amount of sodium, so I made a half recipe and went as light as I could (e.g., less prosciutto) and was careful about serving out my portion. There was a time I didn't have to worry about these things😩.

I made eggplant involtini last night. It came out really well. I put a couple skinless boneless chicken breasts into the marinara sauce in the casserole dish and cooked them along with the eggplant. It made a great one pan meal. We had this with leftover green beans, more salad, and sourdough bread

I just remembered the name of the business they have on that block: Motir.