friday night eats

Last week m put in a request that I make a steak and cheese calzone for dinner one night.

I bought the pizza dough from Whole Foods (I still haven't tried making my own pizza dough. I've had some referrals to good recipes to try, but it breaks my heart to think of wasting all that flour if I got it wrong. So I just buy my dough when I can.)


I'm still working out the kinks with my calzones. They are huge! And the bread to guts ratio is a bit off. I think my problem is that I'm being lazy. I really ought to bust out the flour and rolling pin and roll the dough out so that it's even. Maybe cut it to size so I can make two smaller sized calzones and then fill with gooey goodness to bake.

This was a very good calzone despite the ratio mishap. I'll be buying the dough from that Whole Foods again.

A few more notes about my calzones:
I pan-sear the beef whole and then slice it. This way the meat stays tender and doesn't get chewy from overcooking. It'll still be cooking from the heat of itself well after I take it off the pan. And then there's additional cooking time/heat from being inside a hot oven. I find that the pan-searing keeps the meat tender every time.

I take the dough out of the fridge and let it sit out at room temperature for at least 20 minutes. It gives the dough a chance to rest and do a little rising.

In the future I'll flour and roll out the dough so that my calzones have a better distribution of bread to innards.

I heat up my pizza stone while the dough is resting at room temperature. The heat keeps the dough from sticking too much to the pizza stone. And I always use a pizza stone. The dough cooks wonderfully on it.

Even though m will argue with me on this one, I always keep the ingredients for my steak and cheese calzone to just steak and cheese. He claims I used pizza sauce in it once, but I claim that it must have been his girlfriend's calzone he's talking about.

m-walkers

It's nice to be posting craft-related stuff again.

I finished these socks months ago but haven't had a chance to get a good photo of them in until now.

(Yikes. I'm on a PC and the image quality leaves a lot to be desired. I knew that photos are more saturated on a PC - as opposed to how they look on a mac - but yowsers, I didn't realize just how saturated. Get thee to a mac, if you can, to see my images ;)

These socks took forever to knit because they are for m and he would like me to say that it's because he has big manly feet. Which is true, but really his feet are proportional to his height. The dude is over 6 feet tall.

All you knitters out there will recognize them as being the jay-walker pattern from Grumperina. This is my second pair of jay-walkers that I've knit and the pattern does not disappoint. I've been wanting to knit more socks for m. I have this idea in my mind about keeping him (well, all of us really) in handknit socks. It sounds like a lovely idea until I am in my 7th week of knitting the same first sock in fine gauge sock yarn and it feels never-ending. All told m had two pairs of handknit socks from his wife. He requested a pair of argyle socks after he modeled the ones intended for oss-John Green and so of course I must oblige.

In the works are several gift socks, gift sweaters and a pair of jay-walkers for me. I also had this idea of knitting us matching socks. I'm calling mine j-walkers. Heh, heh, heh. NERDFIGHTERS!

More details about the how's and whatnot at my ravelry* page.


*You need to be a member to see this.

daily commute

I keep forgetting to mention my commute from work to home. We still have only one car so in the mornings m drops me off on the way to his office. And in the afternoons I take the bus home. The bus stop is about a mile away from my office and getting there is the best part of my day. I work at a 91 acre arboretum and garden so we are sort of out of the ways. Our property has walking paths/trails and since we're adjacent to a nature center, I cut through their trails to get to my bus stop. If I didn't cut through I'd have to walk on a curvy mountain road with no sidewalks and crazy drivers who honk at me. I learned that the hard way.

Here are some photos that I snapped along the way. It was an overcast day and I had trouble keeping my hands steady with mosquitoes buzzing around me.

I loved the colors of this plant (can't remember the name) as the afternoon sun hit it. It's part of our gardens at work.


Picturesque stump complete with mushroom.


The stream that leads to skater pond.


Skater pond. It's lovely even with pond scum covering most of it.


The trickle of a waterfall going from skater pond to the stream.


Why are teeny mushrooms so dang cute?


And why do we call them toadstools? Such an ugly sounding word for such a cute looking thing.


A comparison shot with my boot to give an idea of the size.


Not sure what this was but there were a few of them shooting up through the dry brown leaves in only one area of my walk.


The vernal pools are tricky to shoot. Lots of mosquitoes around them.


This fungus makes me think of frilly trim on a retro tuxedo.


And one of the last things I see before I get to my bus stop is a swan. I thought there was a couple, but I only saw one that day caught in the undignified looking activity of fishing. I think he looks like he's drooling a bit. Undignified.

fish dish

The halibut looked awesome at the market the other night. And it was on sale(!). I'm hit or miss with cooking thick cuts of fish but last night's dinner came out great. I loosely followed this recipe which is a variation on my usual dredge-fish-fry-remove from pan-add lemon juice, wine and capers and serve. The key to this fish's success was following the recipe's suggested time for cooking each side of the fish. I followed that pretty closely and was pleased to end up with a fully cooked fish that was still tender and moist. Yum.

I wasn't really thinking about the side dishes when I was concentrating on the fish so this menu is a little weird. I served roasted beets and some leftover roasted potatoes from a few nights back. I mean I could have done better with the sides to have them compliment the fish, but I think it was still a tasty dinner.

barbecue with out a barbecue

I'm trying to get back into cooking on a regular basis. It's been tough adjusting. My preferred grocery store is a 20 minute drive away and we only have one car which m drives for the most part.

I've been suffering from the fatigue that all expectant mothers suffer in their first trimester. So that made cooking a bit of a hurdle.

And even without the hurdle of logistics or baby-carrying fatigue, I sort of feel like I've lost some of my cooking mojo.

My food doesn't seem to taste quite right to me. Not sure what's up with that, but I guess I don't really have the option to stop so I'll just keep trucking with the cooking.

So Sunday night I made barbecue baby back ribs. I was at the market and saw a rack of baby back ribs and I couldn't say no. Never mind that I don't own a barbecue.

I ended up baking the slab in the oven for about 45 minutes to an hour. This was just under 2 lbs so probably I should have stuck closer to the 45 minutes. They were just a touch over done. The slab gets wrapped in foil with the ends tightly crimped and you just leave them in the oven without ever checking on them. When the baking time's up, you unwrap the slab, slather with your best barbecue sauce (I used one called "bone sucking good sauce." Amen.) and then leave under the broiler for a few minutes to give the top a bit of a char. Then flip and slather and char once more.

The yam fries are just a yam cut up into strips and then tossed in olive oil and baked for half an hour. I can never get mine to be crisp. They are sort of soggy in terms of texture, but m never seems to mind. Something about the yams being cut up into strips sends the message to his brain that they will taste differently and he gobbles them up in a wink.

teenaged bunny

Our apartment/condo is on a big property with lots of green lawn and trees. The landscapers do a really nice job of keeping it looking pretty. There are borders of flowers that have bloomed and died to be replaced with other seasonal blooms.

And right along this border (which is sandwiched by the walkway on our property and a busy street) I've discovered the cutest neighbor I've ever lived next to.

You can't tell his size from this photo, but he's quite small. Not small enough to be a baby bunny but too small to be full sized. At least I don't think he's a dwarf bunny.

Every day when I come home from work I see him hanging out in the strip of lawn next to a border of ground cover. That's where I think he lives. Anyways he hangs out on the lawn, having a little snack and watching passerby's warily. Most folks don't even seem to notice the little guy. But I wonder about him. Why he's alone and without his mum or brethren bunnies is a mystery. I don't think of young bunnies as being the types of animals who hang out by themselves. But then again, I have limited knowledge on the habits of wild rabbits.


This admittedly is just filler content until I can get more crafting and cooking going on chez c+potion. Things have kind of slowed down since wee+potion came on the scene. But I'm supposed to be less tired these days so maybe I'll be more productive with my crafting too. Here's hopin'.

from spain

I got a bunch of fun mail in the past week or so but haven't had a chance to show it off. Back in January, I'd sewn a shirt that I wasn't too thrilled with. Enter Sylvia, one of the three crafty ladies behind mola coser who saw my shirt, complimented me on the work and offered to take it off my hands.

In return she sent me a little hand-made love from Spain.

I love how she cleverly used some of the fabric of the shirt to make up the bottom half of this little purse (she is much taller than me and said that the sleeves were too short. So smart girl that she is, she shortened the sleeves and used up the scraps for purses.).

And as if a handmade gift from Spain wasn't enough, she filled the purse with fabric swatches and a pretty postcard. I'll have to come up with something fun to do with the pretty fabric. Maybe a granny's garden sampler? I've always wanted to do one of those. But most of my crafting projects have come to a halt since I am way behind on some deadline knitting whose deadlines I have long missed.

Anyways, Thanks again Sylvia for the lovely trade! This adorable purse will go to good use!

best quiche ever

Also over 4th of July weekend? We walked around Newburyport, MA which is the cutest stinkin' New England town you ever did see. While walking around taking in the sites and cute shops, I got hungry. So we stopped at this promising looking place and ordered up a few quiches.


They were to die for! I ordered some combination of asparagus+mushrooms+truffles+heaven. I can't remember what m's contained but duck confit and dried cherries were mentioned in the description.

The crusts were flakey, the egg custard smooth (so smooth!) and the ingredients well balanced in proportion.

We also shared a pain au chocolat (chocolate croissant, basically- but oh so not basic when done right!) which I forgot to photograph. I have to be honest. It was quite good, but it didn't take me back to Paris. (The closest I've ever gotten was the croissant and pastries at Amandine in L.A.) But Pralines' pain au chocolat definitely ranks in my top ten of croissants I have eaten and enjoyed outside of France. If we lived closer, I'd make Pralines+Pepper a regular stop.

meathead

I have a lot of catching up to do on this here ole blog. So let's get this party started...

4th of July weekend, M and I drove up to see his family. We also delivered our father's day gift to meathead. It was met with approval and laughter.


The gift was the framed photo of the grand-daughters (not the plate of grapes).


They're wearing shirts that say:
Meathead is in denial.
And he's bald.

This photo is better suited for the gift, but I was worried that the words would get lost in the goofy poses. So I made it into a card instead.



Thanks for a fun weekend, meathead+mum!