Precious freezer space, preserved.

This is how I spent my evening, and the results are marvelous.

Thanks, Mom, for the canning lessons.

P.S. Who else is loving this figure skating team competition?

P.P.S. We got the first gold of the games! Let the medal count begin!

Eat anything you want, just cook it yourself.

This is a fascinating idea. Michael Pollan, author of many books on how most of us are eating hideous things that should not be classified as actual food, gave a short talk just how life-changing it can be to simply cook for yourself. Then some brilliant and clever person illustrated it beautifully. Definitely worth your two and a half minutes.

I write this as I am about to leave to go out to dinner. Boo.

Saturday Improvements...

Today I decided to make some improvements to my apartment...

Sauce Day! Improves both the smell of my apartment
and the contents of my fridge.

I decided to take this blank wall in my closet and put it to better use.
(I also feel the need to tell you that the feather boa
is part of a Halloween costume.)

One inexpensive Grundtal rack from Ikea...

...and it's Scarf City and I'm the mayor.
Better storage and the wall looks prettier.

So I applied that formula to my kitchen
and threw a pot rack up on the wall.

Now I'm off to the AFI theater to see Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, because once was not enough.

Good cookin'

Kris and I went to Casa Bogaczyk last weekend for lots of baby holding, board games, and good food. Every time I visit Liz, I inevitably come home with some great new recipe like Liz's chicken salad or Zack's Polish breakfast or Kristen's mushroom quesadillas. This time it was chicken fajitas with beans and coriander rice. I came home and could not wait to make this for myself.

The beans take three or four hours, but they're so worth it and they make your kitchen smell divine.

Beans and lots of onions and tomatoes. Yum.

Cumin and cilantro and every good thing. The kitchen smelled amazing all afternoon.

This was the first time I used all four burners on my stove at once. It felt rather empowering.

The delicious result. A fajita or burrito or whatever with chicken, beans, coriander rice, sauteed vegetables, avocado, and sour cream. Yum. City.

Also, remember when I was trying to become an avocado person? I'm not sure how it happened, but I have become a full-on avocado freak. I would plant an avocado tree in my yard if I thought I was capable of growing anything successfully. This week I have had avocado on my fajitas, avocado grilled cheese sandwiches (one of the best things you will ever eat in your lifetime), and avocado salsa dip. I am now out of the beautiful avocados I bought at the Delallo store (most gorgeous produce ever) and nowhere around here has good avocados and I am in withdrawal.

I blame Kristen for this. She got me hooked.

Boeuf Bourginon

So, my year of conquering my terror of raw meat has come to an end. Here’s what I made this year:

January: Beef roast
February: Tacos
March: Pork roast
April: Enchilada casserole
May: Linguini with shrimp
June: Ground beef gravy with mashed potatoes
July: Tilapia Meuniere
August: Chicken breasts with mushrooms in cream sauce
September: Beef noodle soup
October: Delmonico steak
November: Halupki

I really did learn to be less horrified by raw meat, and I'm cooking with it more and more often. This experiment was such a resounding success for me, I'm trying to think of other things I could plug into this model. A Kiefer Sutherland movie each month in 2012, perhaps?

For my final meat meal of the year, I wanted to do something a little more extravagant and special, and I wanted to cook the meal for my family. I decided on Julia Child's signature dish, bouef bourginon.

This dish required me to deal with two kinds of meat (bacon and beef) and took about six hours of cooking. In the end the dish was so delicious and I learned that complex recipes with 34 steps are not something to be afraid of. You just start at step one and keep going through step 34, and in the end I had a knock-your-socks-off dinner that my family loved. Here it is in pictures...

There were 4 or 5 steps just for the bacon that started the recipe. You had to trim it, cut it into lardons, blanch it, saute it, and drain it. Really, Julia?

Carrots and onions were the vegetables that simmered with the dish. (Mushrooms are added later, but only after they've been quartered and braised according to strict instructions.) Because I was serving this to my father, I had to pull all the onions out at the end, but their delicious flavor remained.

Look away, Kristen! I had to pat the beef dry so that it would sear properly. This was the scariest part in terms of raw meat, but I definitely noticed the effects of my experiment. I grabbed that bacon with my bare hands and I didn't wig out if beef juice got on me. A year ago I'd have passed out, which is a painful prospect on my mother's ceramic tile floor.

My seared beef. I had to sear it in small batches so it didn't overcrowd, which took patience, but it was worth it.

Next, the carrots and sliced onions are browned, and when they hit the sauteing fat, the kitchen really starts to smell amazing.

Seventeen steps later, I had something starting to resemble the final product. 95% of that sauce is strong French red wine. Mom was just hoping little Jules didn't get drunk off of dinner. Jen was uncorking the bottles for me and after I poured the first bottle in and told her I needed the second uncorked, she exclaimed, "The second bottle! Are you sure you read that recipe correctly?"

Some sprigs of fresh thyme and it's ready for the oven. Julia's recipe said to simmer it for 3 - 4 hours, but I read that French beef (which she used when writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking) was tougher than American beef and she later said that Americans need only simmer it for about 2 hours, so that's what I did.

While the stew simmers, the mushrooms are braised in butter and olive oil. Julia recommends that you shake the pan to coat the mushrooms in butter and oil. Once they've absorbed the cooking fat, they'll brown nicely.

After the stew is finished in the oven, your work is not done. You have to sieve out the sauce, skim the fat, simmer it, add beef stock if necessary, and then re-baste your meat. This is also the proper time to dip a spoon into the sauce, taste it, and say to yourself, "Yum."

A little more simmering and it's ready to go. I served this with mashed potatoes (thanks to Jen for mashing them) and it was dynamite. (Dad went back for fourths.) I was so relieved it turned out well after all that work. We gobbled it up so fast, I forgot to get a photo of it on a plate, so I leave you with this shot.

Thanks for following my adventures in cooking with meat. Bon appetit!

Eleven down, one to go.

November's meat meal was, by far, the most labor-intensive and scary: halupki.


The labor-intesive part: boiling cabbage and peeling off the leaves.



Then you have a nice big bowl of cabbage leaves and your kitchen smells like brussel sprouts, which is lovely if you like brussel sprouts, and I do.



The scary part: A big bowl of ground beef and pork, which you have to mix with rice, garlic, etc. I nearly fainted.



My very first halupki roll. I was so proud.



Soon I had a lovely mountain of them, and they were pretty, so long as I didn't think about what they were stuffed with.



Into the pot with tomatoes to be braised for three long hours.



And then gobbled up with mashed potatoes. A true western PA delicacy. I love living in an area where lots of Polish immigrants settled.

Delmonico, medium rare

Kristen, look away! October's Meat Meal is a juicy Delmonico steak, and this time I was courageous enough to take a "before" photo. I used this method from Alton Brown (Who doesn't love him? I mean, he is just so adorable and informative.) to cook the steak using the oven and my Grandma Stombaugh's cast iron pan that I borrowed from my parents' attic.


I bought a lovely Delmonico from the meat counter, which I have now learned to approach without nearly passing out. First step: bring it to room temp.


Then you season it with kosher (must be kosher!) salt and pepper, and drizzle a little oil on it. I had to use vegetable oil because olive oil has a much lower smoke point and is not good for this type of cooking.


I heated the pan in a 500 degree oven and them put it on high heat on the cooktop until it was branding iron hot, then threw the steak in for 30 seconds on each side to get a nice crust. Perhaps I should have gone with peanut oil, because there was a little smoke in my kitchen at this point.


Then pop the pan into the 500 degree oven for two minutes on each side of the steak and voila! A perfect, medium rare Delmonico with a nice, crispy crust that goes well with the juicy meat. And a side of sauteed squash and zucchini. Yum city. It wasn't quite as good as Dad's but, well, of course it wasn't.

This may have been my easiest, quickest meat meal yet, which is good, because what I have planned for November is going to be long and labor intensive. And then I have something pretty special planned for December, if I can pull it off. Stay tuned.

Becoming an avocado person*

*That sounds like the name of a hideous Canadian sci-fi movie you'd see on MST3K.

You know how they say if you introduce a food to a kid 12 times, the kid will start to like it? (I think that's how my mother got Julia to eat asparagus. Blech.) Well, I'm about to try that with avocado.

I have never liked the taste of avocado (though I love the consistency) but it's apparently terribly healthy for you, so I think I should throw myself onto this bandwagon. I do not envision myself drinking those avocado smoothies that Kristen and Nicole and Becky love to make (the horror) but I am determined to make myself like guacamole.


I went to the DeLallo store in Greensburg this weekend and nearly wept at the beauty of their produce. The euphoria caused me to buy two avocados before I even knew what I was doing.


I have to say, cutting open an avocado is a lot of fun.


This recipe called for just scooping out the meat and mashing it with a fork.


The DeLallo store also had a huge display of gorgeous Roma tomatoes, one of which I chopped up for my guacamole salsa.


Then you add chopped green onion (which always makes me think of my grandfather) and half a jalapeno, chopped fine. The recipe listed fresh cilantro as an optional ingredient and I jumped right on that because, to paraphrase George Costanza, I would ensconce myself in cilantro if it were socially acceptable.


Sprinkle on some salt and pepper, add the juice of one lime, and give it all a mix.


Now, perhaps the true reason I am gobbling this down like a pancake-eater on Fat Tuesday is the lime and cilantro (one of my favorite flavor combinations ever) or the crisp green onion or the juicy Roma tomatoes. Maybe I'm not an avocado person just yet. But I'm getting there.

Beef Noodle Soup

This weekend is supposed to be cold, rainy, and dreary. That's just the thing for me because my plans for the weekend are to sleep in, remain in my pajamas for as long as possible, and get cozy with my DVR.

And the perfect companion to a cold, dreary, DVR-cozy weekend? A big pot of soup. So, on the last day of the month, I give you September's Meat Meal: beef noodle soup.


The first step: carrots. Lots of carrots.


After handling all the ingredients, my hands smelled like celery and black pepper, which reminded me of stuffing, which made me think of Thanksgiving and Christmas. So, bonus.


There is a big old piece of beef at the bottom of this pot. You'll have to take my word because I couldn't bear to photograph it. Maneuvering it into the pot entailed much squealing and shrieking. I'm sure you can imagine.


Perfect. Lots of carrots, al dente ditalini, and a sprinkle of Romano cheese.

Sauce Day

It smells like my childhood in here.

Supremes de Volaille aux Champignons

Well, this one was rough. To be honest, when I started my scheme to cook one meat meal per month in 2011, I thought to myself, "I'll probably never make it to chicken." Chicken is, to me, the most terrifying of all the raw meats. It looks revolting and it's squishy and disgusting. Just picking up the package to put it into my cart was a saga. And that was only the beginning...

Thus far, every meat meal I've done was begun with trepidation and ended with me admitting that it wasn't all that terrifying after all. Not so with the chicken breasts, or "supremes" as the French call them. This was every bit as horrifying as I feared it would be and more. The worst part is that I have three chicken breasts left in my fridge and I just don't think I have the strength to try another meal with them.

I got this recipe from Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I was drawn to it because of a scene in Julie and Julia where Julie makes the dish. It just looked so mouthwatering. It's the scene where she learns, "Don't crowd the mushrooms. Otherwise they won't brown."


This is a Julia recipe, so of course we start with lots of butter.


I couldn't bear to photograph the raw chicken. Just know I was squealing in horror and disgust as I maneuvered them into the skillet. I briefly considered throwing away the tongs I was using, but I only just got them and they're really nice. But here's a shot of the beautiful sliced mushrooms in bubbling butter.


Then I added in heavy cream and Madeira wine, which I got carded when purchasing (yay!)


After the sauce thickened, I popped the cooked supremes back into the sauce. Julia's instructions said to spoon the sauce over them, but in the movie Julie nestled them into the sauce and it looked delish.


And here's the final product. I was so stressed from dealing with raw chicken that I didn't even make a vegetable.

It was really delicious, but I don't know if I can make it again for a few years. That chicken really put me through it. I'm gonna need some time to recover.

Tilapia redux, this time with pics

The Tilapia I made last weekend was so delicious, I couldn't get it out of my head. So I made it again and this time I used a non-finicky photo card.


The recipe is super easy. First you mix up some flour, black pepper, and kosher salt. People, are you using kosher salt? Because it will change your life. It's flaky and a little crunchy and quite ten times better than regular salt.


Brown up some butter (yum city) but don't let it get too brown. This is a quick and easy dish, but it's one of those ones that you have to pay attention to or it can get away from you.


Before I started browning my butter, I chopped up some fresh zucchini and yellow squash and threw it in a pan with a little butter and kosher salt. Soon the kitchen was smelling amazing, and I just love the fresh, bright colors.


You pat your fish dry, sprinkle one side with a little salt, and dredge it in your flour mixture. Easy as anything, even for someone like me who is terrified of actually touching raw fish, despite the fact that I love sushi.


Pop it in the butter and cook one side on low for two minutes. When you flip them over to cook the other side (two more minutes), you add the lemon juice. That's when the butter gets all bubbly and delicious and the two form and wonderful lemon-butter sauce for the fish.

I didn't have any fresh lemons on hand tonight, so I just used lemon juice from a bottle and the dish didn't suffer one bit.


The recipe also said to sprinkle it with fresh parsley before serving but I was too lazy to do that. And too eager to dig in. Delicious!

Now I'd like to try my hand at making other fish dishes, so recommendations for good recipes using mild-flavored fish would be much appreciated.