The Eclectic Mix

Had brunch today with Mom and Dad, Jenni’s sister-in-law, and my father-in-law. Good stuff, but it also made me resolve to never have Eggs Benedict at a restaurant ever again.

Restaurants always seem to have some part of it screwed up: either the eggs aren’t poached well enough (not the problem this morning–if anything, the egg was probably underdone for most people, but not me), or the hollandaise is tasteless. The sauce was tasteless today–no lemony tang, no fine counterpoint of the salt and butter and egg yolk. So I’ve decided a future cooking project will be to make a perfect hollandaise with the goal of making an amazing Eggs Benedict.

But that’s a project for another day.

Brunch today was decidedly not about the food. I’m not saying it wasn’t good, but it wasn’t great, and it was much heavier than I really wanted today. But talking to mom and dad is always fun. Plus, I was across the table from the awesomest woman in the world–Jenni. Looking at her is always a good view.

But it’s Sunday, and as with most weekends, I try to put some effort into cooking sometime. Last night was tempura, trying to incorporate the panko coating that we’d found at our trip to Osaka restaurant in Roseville. It came out okay, but maybe too crunchy.

So today was the day to push and refresh the teaching at my mom’s apron strings from a couple of weeks ago. It was time to do fried rice again–a qualified success that gets much better with time to sit, but a learning experience to see how differently it works in the nonstick wok that we have here.

But the big experiment was making Vietnamese style egg rolls. Having learned the concept from mom last month, it was time to push on to get to Jenni’s favorite style, which is the Vietnamese style, especially from local restaurant, Que Viet.

So what did I learn? Vietnamese style egg rolls are definitely less fussy in their preparation than the Chinese that mom and I did. Less chopping, less single-item cooking. Much simpler prep. I also learned that the recipe I had (which was one mom found, and was reinforced by several things I found on the internet) was not quite right: a combination of pork and crab, which was OK, but wasn’t what I’m aiming for.

But let me just say that rice paper egg roll or spring roll skins are the weirdest damned things to work with. They start off as hard, fragile, semi-transparent rounds that defied the instructions I had, which said to simply run the rounds under warm water. But as soon as they hit the water, they broke in half. So I just soaked them, and they transformed into a quasi-gelatinous, thin piece of paper, ready for the filling and frying.

But I’ve learned how to handle it and fry them–because in terms of appearance and texture, the skins were perfect. So I just need to tweak the filling to make it work.

But enough on food. The day was for moms, and I spent a lot of time with my mom and my kids’ mom. And that made for a great day.

Love to all moms.

See you tomorrow.

Well, the day turned out great. Everything on the menu for the day turned out wonderfully, and for that I have mom to thank. She’ll probably beg to differ, but while she’ll maintain that I have the skills and did a lot of the work, it was her guidance that got me on the right track.

The Peking duck, more an exercise in patience than anything else, was exactly what I’ve been craving for some time now. And let’s face it, I could live off of the hoisin sauce mixture alone. And bonus: the girls decided they love duck. Ah, the gastronomic gods are indeed smiling on us.

The egg rolls turned out very well, and surprisingly Jenni loved them–Chinese style not being her favorite. The first couple I rolled were a little iffy, but in the end, we came out with nearly two dozen beautiful cylindrical gems. And the bonus there is simple: it’s a lot easier than I’d feared. With my Christmas deep fryer, these babies will be showing up on the menu here at the ol’ homestead a lot.

And finally, there was the fried rice. I’ll admit here to the assembled mob that I’ve never had a penchant for making this. But going forward, it’ll be great. I know now what I’ve always been doing wrong, and, even better, we learned that it just gets better the longer it has a chance to sit. Now I wonder how long I’ll go before Jenni actually asks me to make some more.

All-in-all, a great day. Patrick’s home, I got to spend the day cooking with my mom, which has been a bonding exercise for us now for about 35 years, and one that we probably don’t do as much as we should. So mental note to try to make more time for that–I’m sure everyone will happily indulge us as long as the meals turn out this well.

The girls had a great time playing and being with us at mom and dad’s, and Jenni enjoyed her seminar day, and Patrick loved his day at his cousin’s birthday party. Now we’re all tired, looking forward for the great restorative of sleep, and thinking about getting ready for the Sunday that is tomorrow.

I hope you all had a good day, too.

See you tomorrow.

Omelets for dinner tonight. Stuffed with the choice of sausage, bacon, cheese and mushrooms. The girls even ate them, but Patrick didn’t. He stuck to the pancakes I made to complete the breakfast for dinner motif.

I’ll admit that I’m trying to get my cooking mojo back. I don’t know why, but I’ve been feeling uninspired cooking-wise lately. Now that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been turning out some great dinners lately. But nothing on the great mental wheel of recipes has been turning up a winner in my head, or at least not when I’m shopping. It comes up sometime midday at work, so that I need to stop on the way home to get the requisite materiel.

Actually, I’ve been enjoying the cooking, I guess. It’s been the menu making and planning that’s been crappy. Monday night: chicken parmesan, and Hannah helped do most of the breading of the cutlets, and did an excellent job. Tuesday night: shrimp scampi, rice pilaf and a salad. Having helpers on Monday was really the highlight, even though dinner itself turned out fantastically. But I’ll be damned if I can figure out why I couldn’t nail down the entire idea at the store in the morning, or even over the weekend. Though I did have most of the ingredients in the house…Just no thought to put them together that way.

I go through these stretches, and they frustrate me more than they should. I know that my family isn’t nearly as fussy as I make them out to be in my head, but I try to make sure that dishes don’t get repeated too often, and I try to make sure that there’s something that everyone likes at least a couple of times a week–so I have to make something that’s Patrick-approved if possible, or at least has something he’ll eat a component of. And it isn’t the effort that impedes me in making things: I truly do enjoy the creativity part of cooking, plus making something that tastes great and everyone loves at the end of that cooking time is really rewarding. But there’s a periodic disconnect between the gastronomic brain and the creative brain when I’m strolling through the grocery store lately getting other things.

I’ve got three options to make for the rest of the week without having to buy any other food. But I don’t know if I’ll do any of it yet. None of them appeal to me right now, even though the clan here might enjoy it.

So tonight turned into breakfast night. Two cups of pancake mix, some bacon, sausage, cheese, mushrooms and a dozen eggs later, dinner was done. Everyone who wanted one got their made-to-order omelet, and the troops were happy.

So in the end, it works. I feel disjointed, and out of phase with life a bit because of this minor problem, but the family is, unless they read this, none the wiser. It’s been a good dinner week, and that seems to help keep people around here happy.

So until tomorrow’s menu choice,

See you tomorrow.

I know, I know. Two days without blogging. Such is the way of the beast. Blogging, thou are a fickle mistress.

Thursday–well, no real excuses. I just needed to detach from the world for a while. All of the hubbub of the car, high school prep, Girl Scout cookies and everything else just had me in a mood to unplug and avoid any semblance of responsibility.

Friday after three turned busy. Doctor appointment, getting Jenni and the girls from Luther and bringing them home, then Patrick to church to start his weekend scout camping trip to Camp Confidence (where his troop does a service project to help clean, supply, and prep the place for other campers). Then off to a new Japanese restaurant in Roseville for a farewell dinner with mom and dad.

Farewell? Yes, they’re off to their annual sojourn to Gulf Shores, Alabama for the month of February. They’ll enjoy their time on the beach, in the (relative) warmth, lots of seafood, and just a nice relaxing getaway. It’s a little depressing to think the last time I was down there was seventeen years ago, but perhaps one of these years, we’ll join them for a week or something. But don’t worry for me too much–the upside to them leaving is that I get asked to clean out the perishables from the fridge after they leave. This time, it came with extra veggies! Good times.

Today was baking day for me. A loaf of bread, about 90 lemon poppy seed muffins and another 3 dozen brownie muffins all came out of the oven or bread machine today, with another loaf of bread planned for cooking overnight–I’m in the mood for some of the english muffin bread. Oh, but I did also clean out the fridge. Started to wonder why I’ve made so many mashed potatoes over the last month or so…Gotta just see about heating it up…

Tomorrow, almost certainly, will be standard Sunday fare: laundry, and general effort around the house. We’ll pursue the usual prep for the school/work week, which finally features a five-day week for all kids.

Okay. This will stand in for a real blog entry, and catch you all up on the doin’s around here. Maybe I’ll have something better tomorrow.

See you tomorrow.

Tomorrow’s Friday, and not a day too soon. This felt like a long week. A very long week.

The car continues to dominate headlines. I need to extend the rental of the clown car probably through Monday, but my daily call today from the body shop said that the Odyssey is in pieces–or at least has the door and fender removed in preparation for the eventual arrival of the replacement door and fender. The broken glass has been cleaned out of the interior, and some of this at least means that the ol’ girl is sleeping indoors for the next couple of nights. If they get the parts tomorrow (and the guy seemed cautiously optimistic that they’d get them Friday), then we could be on track to get the car back on Monday and resume the much sought-after normalcy.

I am back to truffle making, especially since the foodie blow-out of the year is approaching this weekend. Mom and dad’s annual open house is Saturday, and after last year’s hit appearance of my truffles, they’ve been asked back. But when I went to make them the first time this year, I discovered after making the ganache that I’d grabbed the wrong chocolate, so is wasn’t setting up quite right–it still tastes magnificent, but it’s just too squishy. But I’ll still coat some of those, just to see how it turns out.

But Jenni and I rolled 8 dozen of the new and improved truffles last night, and I got six dozen of them enrobed tonight. I’ll do some with white chocolate, but ran out of the milk chocolate for the coating, so just need to grab another bag to finish them up. But I’m not in a hurry now. I’m 90% done with the batch that I need to bring to the party. The rest are for us and work friends.

Oddly enough, though, Patrick asked me tonight if he and I could make some more soon–for a bake sale at Sunrise coming up. I told him I’d have to teach him how to make them and he’d have to help. He said he would, so we’ll see what happens. It’s a time and attention commitment that I hope he can stick to.

I think I’m fighting a head cold, which, I’m sure, had absolutely nothing to do with driving the van a couple of miles with the passenger window open in the middle of January. Actually, I am sure. My head was stuffed up before that. Now it’s just kind of socked in.

But tomorrow’s Friday–the bright light on the horizon that indicates Saturday is coming, along with my one chance during the week to sleep in a bit and try to unplug from life for a little while. All I have to do is get through work and then I can run out of the door like school kids at the end of the school year. Of course, by the sound of things, there may be a coating of ice on the ground when I do that, so running might not be the best plan.

Tomorrow, the truffles get finished. They’ll get their decorative white chocolate  ribbons on top, and then I can package them up Saturday and be done with it. Oh yeah, then I can actually eat one…Or two… That’s been a tough one to pass up so far…

See you tomorrow.