Pat

Judging from the help wanted signs throughout the months, they have had a hard time getting employees, so maybe people who are hired can get away with quite a bit. It sounds like they still don't have the text system working too well. First time I ordered from them, I went down at the time they said it would be ready, got my pizza, and then an hour later got a text saying my pizza was now ready for pick up. 

I'm happy they're there but they're not my first choice, unless the only criterion is proximity. I'm just as likely to walk a much longer distance home balancing an enormous pizza box from Slice Joint at The Roost

Made something last night I hadn't in a long time: a large casserole of baked ziti. The intention was to generate leftovers and that succeeded. I supplemented Rao's marinara with more onion and garlic, plus chopped button mushrooms, diced red bell pepper, and diced fennel. I added sliced black olives in as I layered the pasta and sauce. Mascarpone (layered in), mozzarella and Parmesan cheeses (on top). It was excellent. We had with rosemary focaccia from the outside bread vendor at Eastern Market that is not Ravenhook. I intended a salad but ran out of steam.

I made nachos last night, which was enough for me. In addition, my husband had the last of a rotisserie chicken (drumstick and some white meat), spinach, and carrots.

I ran out of white/yellow tortilla chips so made some out some blue corn tortillas I had bought at Whole Foods that I didn't really like in tacos. They were okay and filled the need.

Tonight we split a pan-fried boneless strip steak with sauteed mushrooms. Also on the menu: simmered asparagus topped with fried eggs and Parmesan, and boiled carrots with butter and parsley. The steak took a little longer to cook than I first estimated but came out great, a perfect medium rare, with a bit of crusting on the outside from the cast iron skillet.

Scattershot meals lately. I improvised a delicious mushroom stroganoff several days ago. My turkey meatballs with sambal oelek were slightly less successful but salvaged by making them hot and sweet meatballs by finishing a sauce with fig preserves. The meatballs were first served with Royal Blend rice and baked sweet potatoes. Last night they were reheated with something from the freezer (tofu, broccoli, same rice blend) that I doctored up (chopped Calabrian chilies, chickpeas, and diced tomatoes). There have been a bunch of salads as well.

Last night was a beef stew made with bone-in short ribs, carrots, onions, and garlic. I cooked the beef and sauce in the Instant Pot the day before and let it rest in the refrigerator overnight. I reheated it and thickened with a cornstarch slurry. I more or less followed this recipe from The Kitchn

I served it in bowls over polenta, along with some extra cooked carrots. We also had slices of a striata baguette from Radici and a green salad (romaine, tomato, radishes, thinly sliced red onion, chevre, and marcona almonds).

I don't know offhand but have someone I can ask. (His wife is from Morocco.) I should see him at some point this weekend.

A few nights ago, I made a recipe for one-pot creamed corn bucatini from the Half-Baked Harvest Super Simple cookbook. I was a little wary of the process, which involved adding 9 1/2 cups of water along with pasta to the pot in which the vegetable portion had been cooked. It was supposed to cook down and leave a sauce. I was tempted to cook the pasta separately, and that's what I should have done.

The water did not cook down sufficiently to make a sauce. I used my regular pasta pot to make this, but it might have helped to use a bigger pot. In the end, I drained the pot into a colander set inside a pan to see what I could salvage. The pasta itself was fine but the enhanced pasta water was not thick enough for a sauce. I didn't want to throw it out, so I saved it (almost a quart of liquid), thinking it looked like it would be good in chowder.

So, that's what I did. The next night I made a salmon, corn, and potato chowder using that as the bulk of the liquid. I also added some milk. Cornstarch slurry to thicken. It was excellent, like really impressively good. My husband had that along with some leftover rice and vegetables from the freezer and chicken sausage. I had the last slice of pizza along with mine. I'm not going to go through that whole process to get the liquid again but I might save some pasta water from something and use that.

Last night was air fryer chicken drumsticks, broccoli, and Royal Blend rice mix. We also had a salad of baby arugula, Campari tomatoes, chickpeas, and feta.

I've noticed they're also open for lunch. I'm not sure if that's every day or not. I'm glad all the years of work (and probably a boatload of money) they've put into this spot are paying off.

Tonight my husband had one leftover piece of chicken, the last curry-stuffed squash, and the last of the spaghetti. Then he finished what I made for myself and didn't finish.

I was craving eggs, so I made myself fried eggs over a bed of baby arugula. Before making the eggs I cooked some thinly sliced yellow onion, a sliced garlic clove, and two sliced cremini mushrooms in some olive oil. That went over the arugula first and then the eggs. (I had sprinkled a little grated Parmesan and black pepper over the arugula before the toppings went on.) Some chopped parsley to garnish. It was fabulous. I'm typing it out so I can make it again. Both plates looked really pretty but I didn't take photos...

We also had some sourdough bread.

Last night was air fryer chicken thighs, steamed broccoli, and a wild rice blend (Rice Select Royal Blend--white, brown, wild, and red).

On 2/23/2023 at 10:00 AM, Katya4me said:

Hubby has been trying out Too Good To Go and got a bakery deal the other night. 

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!

3 hours ago, Katya4me said:

Last night's dinner was very simple. I'd gotten a loaf of bread on markdown and had goat cheese and mushrooms in the fridge.  I made mushrooms in sauce, sliced the loaf in half, buttered and popped in the oven for 5 minutes to toast up.  Finished up with the goat cheese and all of the mushrooms for the two of us. Really good and definitely worth doing again.

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.)