The Eclectic Mix

I’m a sucker for punishment.

Yes, a mere one day after a two-day sojourn to the wilds of North Dakota, we hosted a party so Jenni could fulfill her obligation to a magazine and a TV network.

Here’s the short of it: Jenni got an e-mail from her favorite magazine in the whole world: Entertainment Weekly. As a result of the e-mail and a survey, she was asked if she wanted to host a screening party for a show the Fox network is debuting this fall. She agreed, and they decided to let her do it, so she got a box of show-logo-emblazoned swag, said screener copy of the show on DVD, and a few little snack items. Ah, but we needed to host the party before a certain date.

The only available and workable date, for a variety of reasons, was tonight. So, dinner, drinks, and hosting for about 20 folks was arranged, planned, and executed.

In the end, it was a great party. The show, not so much, but I’ll leave it nameless for now. But having some friends and family over for a fairly informal gathering was still a lot of fun. There was socializing, eating, talking, catching up, laughter, and all the good stuff that comes from get-togethers. Then came the watching of the show.

Lone Star is not great. At the same it’s not totally horrible. There’s an intriguing story there to work with, but some pretty bad scriptwriting that is trying to bring it to life. One hopes that they’re working right now to tighten it up for the future episodes and that the pilot isn’t a complete picture of what’s coming down the pipe. And I kind of hope they manage to slap Jon Voight a bit to get him to act a little more evenly. But otherwise, we were laughing when I’m certain it wasn’t intended, and probably didn’t laugh when it was. But no one just stormed out of the room.

So yet another day ends with a flurry of activity. Not that I’m complaining…much. It all has been the result or build up to fun events and good times. Tomorrow’s also busy for me, with a Twins game to attend with my mom, so I’m really looking forward to that. Then a Wednesday with…well, hopefully nothing. But never count things out around here.

I’m heading to bed, all.

See you tomorrow.

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.

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.

Multi-phase post here, kids. Sit back and relax.

Patrick is a full two months into school at Roseville Area Middle School. And, unless he’s got us snowed, he’s loving it. A lot. His grades have mostly been good, but he’s learning that IDDS/FAIR Downtown was a bit too easy for him, and that Roseville is going to be a challenge. But that’s a very good thing for him–he’s a smart kid in a very smart school.

On the cooking front, we’ve kind of had a grand experiment here. I’ve put the bread maker to work, and have made bread for us for almost two months now. And for that same amount of time, I’ve actually bought one loaf of french bread and two packs of hot dog buns. All other bread has been homemade.

I’ve done several different kinds–sourdough, whole wheat, 50% whole wheat, egg bread, whole grain, English muffin bread, and the favorite of the bunch, oatmeal white. Some weeks, I’ve had to make a loaf a day. Most weeks, though, only 4-5 loaves for the week.

The upside: I know exactly what goes into each loaf–six or seven ingredients. The downside: well, really. Who doesn’t like homemade bread?

Moving on, the season must be changing. Friday morning, I was at Cub getting a few groceries, and the muzak was Christmas themed. One of the cashiers was talking to the other: “What, Christmas music already?” “Yeah, it’s been playing since midnight.” TV ads have moved up with Christmas themes. Is it all too soon? The only thing that gives me pause is that Jenni’s holding an event at Sunrise tomorrow talking about advent traditions.

Finally, I sort of had an orgy of movie watching tonight. Finished a watch instantly movie on Netflix: The Hebrew Hammer, a sort of spoofy homage to blacksploitation films, but with a Jewish bent. It was funny, sort of along the line of Airplane, but not quite as campy, and unnecessarily profane. But cute, none-the-less.

Then watched The Usual Suspects, a “crime thriller” that Netflix promised I’d rate four stars. I’m thinking that it decided on that rating because it had Gabriel Byrne and Kevin Spacey. It was trying to be a “smart” crime thriller, kind of told in reverse (we see how it ends before they explain how it got there). But I had it figured out within the first 30 minutes. And just ask Jenni: I don’t do that much. She does, because she’s a connoisseur of entertainment. So it was one of those disappointment moments, because I knew how the movie was going to end, but it kept me a little entertained until we got there. But, I got through another movie. Moving on to season two of a British TV series I really like: Doc Martin. Only three disks to get through it.

So there you go. You’re caught up a bit.

See you tomorrow.