Highlight reel

So, I have been remiss in my posting duties; I apologize. In the interest of getting back on track and going to go through some of the highs and lows of the past few weeks.

First the lows: listen when you're always swinging for the fences sometimes you strike out. The first was when I attempted to make a surf and turf. I'll talk about the steak later, but it required a white butter sauce for the shrimp. Well, it was supposed to come together if I heated it slowly, emulsify if you will. It did not, I ended up with melted butter with wine pooled on top and we ended up with just plain shrimp. The second dish was perhaps the worst thing I've ever made. Luckily, it was just for me. I was trying to make a crab salad but didn't realize at the grocery store that in terms of crab, you get what you pay for. In other words the cheapo "pink crab" (rather than lump) that I bought made me want to gag. My inability to throw away food led me to put mayonnaise in it, which made it edible. The final dish was not horrible but it could be better. It was called Mexican lasagna. Basically a casserole. It was extremely, extremely bland. I would recommend the filling (chicken, corn and beans)for burritos or tacos however. Refusing to throw away the leftovers (noticing a theme)I ate it for lunches this week. Once it sat and kind of let the flavors combine more it tasted a lot better.

On the positive notes I made a pretty decent steak. I served it with a red wine sauce that was delicious. I don't think I let it reduce enough but it still tasted pretty good. I tried to halve the recipe but ended up with enough sauce for 4 steaks. I will definitely be cooking it again. This is the recipe that the shrimp was supposed to go with it. I think it was actually better with just the steak, but that's probably because I have a weird phobia about mixing food (watch me eat sometime it's kind of funny). I used some of that shrimp to make a scampi which is seriously one of the better things I've made. I could eat bowls of it. Another classic I made was Chicken Divan. Maybe I've been watching too much Mad Men (no such thing!) but I felt like making a Americana dish. I use to have it all the time when I was little so it is the epitome of comfort food for me. It's chicken and broccoli with a curry sauce, I served it over egg noodles. Graham says it's the best thing I've made yet, the recipe is a family recipe so my dad just emailed it to me. Finally, I made an orzo pasta salad for a cookout with my friends. I feel like it was a success because I was excited to have leftovers. I really really like cooking for people, it's how I show I care. I'm going to have really fat kids.

This week I'm going to try and recreate a dish I had a restaurant, wish me luck. I've only done that once before with goat cheese mashed potatoes; we'll see how it goes.

"And then I had a Joycean epiphany"

So here is the long promised concert post. First of all I need to say, I think the Decemberists are my favorite band. I went to their concert last Sunday and before I get into the awesomeness that was that experience let me get this out of the way. I could listen to literally any of their songs and enjoy it. Every time they started a new song I turned to Graham and said, "I love this song." Also two of Graham and my songs are by Colin Meloy (Legionnaire's Lament because we're odd and Tristan and Iseult because I demand we have a nice song), just ignore the fact that we have more than one song. So prepare for some horribly uncool gushing.

Last weekend Jess was up to visit and we took her to Northampton. We saw a sign for a Decemberists concert so I went in to see if they still had tickets. I bought some, assuming it was in Northampton, until they started talking about no refunds if we got rained out . . .

The Iron Horse group recently bought a new venue. For those of you not familiar with the Pioneer Valley the Iron Horse group ends several venues in Northampton which host really good, diverse acts, my parents say Ray Charles at one of their venues. Anyway, they bought an abandoned amusement park (previously known for concerts, fire happy teens, bumper cars that lit on fire and rattle snakes in merry go rounds . . . of course my family frequented it back in the day) in the hopes of turning it into a seasonal amphitheater. In order to show the town of Holyoke that they can successfully throw a show they threw up a temporary stage and had two shows this summer. Saturday night was a free show of local acts and Sunday was the Decemberists (it was the last night of their tour). It's basically a hill with a dirt parking lot with one access road. In other words awesome. It felt like everyone knew each other, there was a great sense of community, and I actually ran into a girl I worked with at the Clam Box. Three reasons I new this wasn't your typical venue: 1) people brought books to read including one guy with a copy of the Lord of the Ring 2) there was a very long line for the Magic Hat booth, no line for Bud Light and 3) there was a Bart's ice cream truck (awesome local ice cream company out of Amherst).

Per Colbert the Decemeberists can be classified as "hyper-literate prog-rock" and they did not disappoint with their last album, a high concept rock opera about a fawn who falls in love with a fair maiden and then must battle the fairy queen for her. Yep, excellent. So since this opus is basically one continuous song they just played the whole album straight through. Which was cool, and I've never had a band do that. Faves included the Rake's Song with almost everyone in the band playing timpani. To give you an idea of what the band thought of the absurdity of this venue as well as a relieving hint that Colin Meloy is aware that his music is weird the "worst song he ever wrote". Graham appreciated that the band was seconding what he has always said about Western Mass after many misadventures involving me and country roads (I promise I will blog about that in a later post).

It was amazing, if they get the proper permits and such we need to go see a show there with more people, it was just a great time. Here are some pics I took on my cell because I foolishly forgot my real camera:

A very special post

As this blog isn't just about food I cook but food in general. Hence I needed to share an experience at had last night with you. Graham and I did a date night (dinner and a movie, we went to see Bruno). Well I love love love sushi, so I try to find the different restaurants in the area. I'd seen a billboard on the highway in Hartford and it looked like a good restaurant in Manchester but I couldn't figure out where it was. Well last week when I was at Big Y I saw I finally found it! It's not just your run of the mill sushi restaurant. Oh no! It is Misaki Sushi and Seafood Buffet. All you can eat sushi? Sign me up.

So after overcoming Graham's good sense of self-preservation (he questioned the quality of buffet sushi) I wore him down and we headed on over. First awesome part: our hostess was 12 if that. I feel good supporting a family business, child labor laws be damned. We were brought to our seat, ordered our drinks and headed up to get some sushi. It was a fairly good, basic selection of sushi, surprisingly fresh. There were actually guys there making it in front of us. So main concern averted, it is not old sushi. On the way back from my first fill up I saw the second awesome thing: a guy with no arms eating sushi. My first thought was, why does that man have his foot resting on the table? Oh because he doesn't have any arms and eats with his feet. Clearly. I was very impressed.

So overall I would recommend this for the sushi fiends like myself. Better for lunch than dinner when I went. It's a lot less expensive that way and I'm pretty sure the selection would be the same. They had the basic sushi (salmon, tuna, eel etc) and those gimmicky spicy rolls and such that I normally don't eat because they're kind of pricey for what you get. But when it's all included, they delish! The non-sushi options were kind of blah, although I did not try the hibachi that they make to order, it looked pretty good. The only problem is that it's all you can eat, which is also why it's awesome. Normally I am given a plate of sushi, so when I'm full there's no more. This natural limit is not present at the buffet, so it took Herculean effort to stop eating sushi (also Graham pointing out that I was going to make myself sick). But in closing, I will defintely go there again when I want to scratch my sushi itch and only the want that basic hit.

Combo Father's Day/4th of July

So this is delayed due to moving, getting the flu and general procrastination. Upside: We're moved in to the apartment with all of our furniture. I even made a couch from Ikea, my most ambitious furniture building to date. Our guest room is complete if anyone wants to visit the tourist destination that is Manchester, CT. We have an awesome breakfast place you can walk to, the Landmark Cafe. I just ate the breakfast quesadilla, sooo good (basically scrambled eggs and cheese in a tortilla).

I've fallen off the vegan bandwagon, just lost the motivation. Although I did finish my run with a great salad. Spicy Boca Chik'n patty, fat free refried beans and salsa over lettuce. Pretty darn good, although I don't think it's all that healthy for you. Basically, it's better than fried chicken patties, but it's not good for you.

Going all the way back to Father's Day I got a very special treat (being the only Filkins sibling in town). I got to go to the Chicopee Meat Market. It's only the best place on earth. Any store that allows you to buy 10 lbs of hot dogs in a giant bag, displays it's macaroni products with a hand drawn sign in a grocery cart (this store doesn't have grocery carts) and just amazing polish food is a winner in my book. My dad and I got the aforementioned bag o' dogs and lazy pierogis. I really can't describe how nummy it was. It also reminded me that the Polish Festival is in West Warren next month and I want to get a Polish plate! Kielbasa, pierogis, golumpki, kapusta (which is the West Warren version is soup) and a slice of rye bread. AAHHH I CAN'T WAIT! I don't think you can come from Western Mass and not have healthy appreciation for Polish cuisine.

Graham and I enjoyed plenty of Americana over the 4th of July, complete with jello cake and Martha Stewart sparkler cupcake toppers. Lisa's dessert spread just proved to me that as much as I love to cook I don't think I'll ever reach that level of Susie homemaker. If Walmart runs out of red white and blue sprinkles my kids are getting regular rainbow, patriotism be damned. I know I'm going to be kicked out of the PTA. I made the corn salad in the previous post and I think it went over well. I know I enjoyed the leftovers along with some bbq chicken. I appreciated that it used the best bbq sauce, Sweet Baby Ray's.

Finally I had a successful boyfriend's parents dinner to thank the Rowes for hauling the giant couch up from Ikea. Salmon in a yogurt marinade (baked, not grilled), orzo with peppers, onions and feta cheese and a salad. I would really really recommend this menu for entertaining, easy and tasty. Especially the salmon, we ate it twice in a week, and I ate it at another meal for lunch. I was proud of the dinner for two reasons. 1) Donald said how lucky Graham is to be able to eat my food all the time (I'm awesome!) and 2) I finally used this pretty desert cups my grandma got at the church tag sale for ice cream and whipped cream.

I guess that's all for now, I'll try to update more frequently and come up with some new and exciting dish! Hope everyone is enjoying their summer.

"I want to eat the whole state of North Carolina!" "Aubrey, that's not something thin people say."

The above quote is basically what our (Graham and me) apartment is like. I'll watch tv (in this case Man vs. Food . . . the best series eva) and Graham will periodically respond to my outbursts.

So I'm going to try and update more often. I realize that when I don't do it I forget all the comments I have about the food. As far as the Philly trip goes it was super fun! I had awesome grilled cheese and got drunk twice in one day (thanks low tolerance). I did not, however, try another cheese steak. I credit this with not feeling like I was going to vomit on the Liberty Bell. I also managed to get Popeye's on the Jersey Turnpike, which, as always, was so good. It probably didn't help my health kick that I went to Hooter's the night before. Fried chicken two nights in a row is not good for you. After Hoot on the Turn we when to Stew Leonard's, which is the coolest grocery score. It was a fatty date for Graham and me, good times.

As far as meals go, I've hit a wall in terms of vegan burgers, I just can't eat anymore for a little bit. I did go out with a bang though. This delicious salad was from the Ask Aida show, which I've never watched. It was excellent. This is really the perfect time of year because I got fresh corn on the cob, which I think really makes a difference. I didn't make the dressing, I just used a bottled lime vinaigrette. I topped it with a burger, mainly to keep me full until dinner. There's nothing not to like: sweet corn, avocado and tomatoes. I took out the mozzarella to make it vegan. Honestly, with the creamy avocado, I didn't miss it.

The main dinner last week was a recipe I got from Ina Gartner. Crunchy noodle salad. I added chicken, didn't put in any giner and used broccoli instead of the veggies she recommended. It was okay. Tasty, with one big problem. The sauce, which I followed letter for letter from the recipe, was pretty oily. I read reviews of the dish and knew to expect that. So I doubled the amount of pasta and figured that would soak it up. I would still half the oil, that would probably make the sauce more flavorful as well. I should have known better though, having seen Ina cook on tv for several years now, she tends to overdo it.

This week I made one of my favorite lunches. Tofu ratatouille. I would recommend this to vegans/vegetarians. It was filling, but I felt better about myself because it doesn't rely on rice or pasta to satisfy. For some reason the sauce made the zucchini look pickles, which is weird. After two days I'm still looking forward to eating it for lunch. It's just a ton of vegetables, I'm sure you could use whatever you wanted. I like how sweet the onions got when they cooked as long as they did.

Finally, I made a Giada recipe. How can I go wrong with the love of my life, that little Italian firecracker? It was pretty tasty, even though I overcooked the chicken breast. I've been using a lot of dark meat chicken lately. It's cheaper and, I think, tastier. I used white meat for this one, and I think I would use dark meat next time. I need something which gives my poor time management a little wiggle room. I added white wine, rosemary and black olives to the recipe. I served it with Bird's Eye frozen veggies in an Italian sauce. Easy and good, although I might be giving myself cancer with the plastic steaming container for the microwave. The meal was pretty good, and Graham realized he doesn't hate black olives. Still haven't managed to wow him yet. Some day . . .

Next weeks entry will probably be pretty short. Graham's in Colorado for the beginning of the week and then we're moving, so there won't be that much food in the house. I will be trying a new idea for lunch, I'm very excited.

Status Update

So it's half-way through week two of this experiment and so far so good I guess. The vegan lunches have been going ok. Although I'll be all right with not eating that casserole for a little while. I've switched over to a delicious chickpea/edamame/cranberry salad we bought at BJs with vegan burger on top. I think the problem with any recommendations I may make is I will eat almost anything rather than throw it out. So I will be finishing these dishes off. Hence, how I ate vegan casserole for six work days in a row.

On the cooking front the most successful dish I've made, per Graham, is sausage and pasta. Let me lay this out for you: I heated up chicken sausage and mixed it with pasta, olive oil and Parmesan cheese. I don't know if this says simplicity is delicious or my cooking is horrendous. I'll choose to go with the former. Tuesday I made this fish dish and it was not a rousing success. Too lemony for my liking. The greens were ok, but I wouldn't rush out to make it again. Wednesday was a goat cheese stuffed chicken, which I paired with couscous. I thought it was delicious but Graham was not a fan. I was proud of myself as this was a "random pick" from the recipe book and I've never made a stuffed meat like this before. I learned that Graham does not like couscous, which I cannot comprehend. The winning dinner of the week was definitely the ribs that Graham made. He put them in a crock pot for 7 hours with some BBQ sauce and it was scrumptious. I made my small contribution with goat cheese mashed potatoes. Again, excellent. I saw it on a menu at Max's Fish in West Hartford and figured it had to be great combining potatoes and goat cheese. What's not to love.

This week has been kind of a barren wasteland in that it is a leftovers week where we kill off everything in the fridge. I did bake some pork chops in bbq sauce and pair it with Zataran's black beans and rice. Four meals for around $8? Thank you very much. I have an excellent looking salad I want to make next week though, which I'll be sure to take pictures of. We're going down to Philly this weekend, so I'll be on the lookout for some tasty treats. Who knows maybe it'll be an Aubrey/cheese steak rematch. I need to get my dignity back!

The attempt

Feeling in an especially domestic mood after moving all weekend and hosting the long awaited, much anticipated meeting of the parents I made my first cooking endeavor as a resident of the Mills. First I made Graham and myself some delicious Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls for desert because gender roles are fun.

Since I don't like to make more than one large meal a day I figured I'd make my lunches for the week in one fell swoop. After a day of Pepe's pizza, beer and pasta I feel vegan lunches will be a healthy balance. So I started on the squash, veggie burger casserole. Very helpful in this was the giant box of Boca burgers Graham's parents bought us at BJ's. That is possibly the best place to shop ever, mainly because everything is in bulk so you feel like your saving oodles of money. Yes it's enough paper towels to last me for the next 10 years, but it's such a good deal!!!

The first step was defrosting the veggie burgers. This may not have been necessary, but I didn't want any frozen patty so I wasn't taking any chances. I then cut up the squash and onions and combined. I was very proud that I chopped a whole onion without crying. Then I was supposed to saute it. This is where I ran into my first of many problems. I should note to people who haven't witnessed my cook something, I'm horrible at judging how much of an ingredient, especially vegetables I need. So I used an entire onion (the recipe called for 1/2 a cup), and 4 summer squash as well as about 2 1/2 cups of rice (I needed 2). This lack of measuring properly may hurt me down the road when I attempt to bake something, but for now the only problem was not everything fit in the saute pan so I had to do it in two batches. This was quite funny to Graham. While this was all cooking away I shredded up the vegan cheese and combined the rest of the ingredients. Let me tell you the upside of vegan cheese's unsettling texture while a solid block makes it a joy to grate. I actually just pushed the end piece through the grater. I know, appetizing. Aside from a small meltdown when Graham's (I guess technically now it's "our" but I refuse to claim it) can opener refused to work and just mangled the jar of chilies, I managed to combine everything into the baking pan with little trouble. The tomatoes are really necessary to this dish, otherwise it's just one large pan of beige, and that's not appetizing. The recipe calls for zucchini, which would have helped immensely, but Big Y was out. Any other colorful vegetables would probably be helpful as well. I'm looking at you bell peppers.

After baking for 20 minutes (vegan food doesn't brown) I removed it from the oven. This is an after picture, but again it just kind of warmed through and got gooey rather than browning. Graham and I both tried it and we came to a consensus: pretty decent. It needed more salt, but I think if you used actual cheese that would take care of that. I'll leave of declaring it a success until after I eat it all, it came out to six very large lunch portions (again spatial reasoning not my strong suit, it could have made more). So after I eat it every lunch for a week I may feel differently. But as of now I'd say a tentative victory for vegan Aubrey. Confession: I made Graham taste it first because I was afraid it would be awful. But he said it was ok, and he wouldn't subject me to a week of gross lunches.

That's all for now, I have some interesting dinners planned this week so I'll keep posting. Including one Graham opened to randomly in my new cookbook and demanded I make for the blog, so we have that to look forward to.

In which Aubrey tries to make decent food and goes vegan

So I decided to start blogging. However, not having the most interesting post-grad life and being slightly left brained I felt I needed a topic to write about. So I chose that thing I love most . . . food. This came out of my love of the trailer for Julie and Julia and the fact that I got a giant cookbook for Easter. I'm going to try and randomly select a recipe each week to make. I'll post pictures and write interesting tangents as they come.

Also, I've decided to try being a vegan. But only during the day during the work week. Mainly I'm doing this because it's better for me and environmentally friendly. Plus I like strict rules for diets and challenges and have been exposed to Skinny Bitch. I figure I'll eat anything once and you can all watch the hilarity I'm sure will ensue. Especially when I try to feed Graham leftovers.

So I guess to start this blog off right I'll give you the first of what I'm sure will be many vegan anecdotes. I found a recipe for the something that looks like a decent lunch this week. Unfortunately it is vegetarian not vegan having Monterrey Jack cheese (delicious delicious cheese, how I'll miss you during the day). So today I ventured to Whole Foods to buy that which dare not speak it's name: vegan cheese! When the main selling point on the packaging is "It melts!" you get a little suspicious. I also made the mistake of reading the ingredients I stopped after pressed Canola oil. I tried some and it was kind of like what cheese would taste like if the person who made it had never actually eaten cheese, just read about it. I'm hoping it will taste better when I melt it into the casserole. You have that to look forward in the next post! Always leave your audience wanting more.