Recipe a Week, Week 3

I’m a little behind in my posts, but keeping up with the meals at least. I made this one on Sunday morning, 1/15, and I think it was a success. It was also a good lesson to me that not all of the recipes I make have to be a dinner.

I made two other recipes this evening — an appetizer and a soup — which I will post about soon.

But here’s the recipe for week 3, with my notes:
Overnight Eggnog French Toast Crunch

Ingredients

1 20×2 1/2 inch baguette, cut diagonally into 18 to 20 slices (1 inch)
4 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup eggnog
1/2 cup milk
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 cup fresh or frozen craberries
1/4 cup butter
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
1/3 cup pecans, chopped

Method

1. Spray 13 x 9-inch glass baking dish with cooking spray. Arrange bread in a single layer in dish.

2. Whisk eggs, eggnog, milk, and nutmeg in medium bowl; pour over bread. Let stand 30 minutes. Turn bread; sprinkle with cranberries. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

3. Heat oven to 400°F. With pastry blender or two knives, cut butter into brown sugar in medium bowl. Turn bread; sprinkle with brown sugar mixture. Bake 15 minutes; sprinkle with pecans. Bake an additional 10 to 15 minutes or until golden brown.

Notes

This dish was pretty easy to make; you just need to remember to start it the night before. For the size baguette we could find in the store, it seemed to make sense to multiply the recipe by 1 1/2 times.

The cooking times seem a little on the short side for getting golden brown dish in the end. Otherwise the directions seem fine.

This dish was very good for a breakfast. Cathy, Evan, and Scott all liked it. We need to make this one again!

Servings: 8

Recipe a Week, Week 2

Like last week, I made two new recipes this week, this time for our Sunday night dinner. (For the record, I don’t plan to do two a week every week!) The main dish, the chicken, was very good and not very difficult to make. It just took a little time. I think we all agreed that this one was a keeper. The side dish, the sweet potatoes, tasted fine, but did not seem worth the effort.

Again, I’m not incredibly satisfied with the picture of the plated food, but I’ll post it anyway:

Here are the recipes:

Cinnamon-Stewed Chicken

Ingredients

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 teaspoon ground pepper
1 3 pound whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces
2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
2 yellow onions, coursely chopped
5 garlic cloves, minced and divided
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 cup water
1 cup chicken broth
1 6 oz. can tomato paste
1 tablespoon fresh oregano, chopped
1/2 cup ricotta salata cheese, grated

Method

1. Mix cinnamon, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Pat chicken dry with paper towel, and rub with cinnamon seasoning.

2. Heat olive oil in a deep skillet over high heat. (Don’t overcrowd chicken, or it will steam rather than brown.) Brown chicken in oil for about 4-5 minutes on each side. Turn frequently with a spatula. Remove chicken when nicely browned on all sides; set aside.

3. Lower heat to medium-high. Add onions and 3 minced garlic cloves, and cook stirring constantly, for about 3 minutes until onions are soft and golden brown. Add wine to pan, scraping up any browned bits with a spatula.

4. When wine has evaporated, add water, broth, tomato paste, oregano, and remaining 2 cloves of garlic. Return chicken to pan. (Liquid should cover the chicken about three-fourths of the way.) Cover and simmer over low heat about 1 hour or until chicken is tender and cooked through. Add salt and pepper, to taste.

5. Serve chicken topped with sauce and sprinkled with cheese. Remove skin before eating. (Serving size: about 1 piece of chicken with sauce.)

Notes

We could not find a whole chicken already in pieces, so to save time we decided to cook two breasts and four thighs. The weight of the meat made me decide to increase the recipe 1.5 x Because this wasn’t quite enough for two nights for three people (we usually count on leftovers from meals like this), I will probably double the recipe next time.

When rubbing the chicken, I made sure to rub under the skin as well as over it. Since you discard the skin at the end, this seemed to work well.

We could not find the ricotta salata cheese, so used grated pecorino romano cheese instead. This seemed to be a good substitution, but I’d be curious to see what the other cheese tastes like with this dish.

The chicken was very tender — falling easily off the bone when you cut into it. The sauce was very flavorful.

Overall, the dish was not difficult to make, just a little time consuming.

Servings: 6

Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes

Ingredients

5 medium sweet potato, 10 oz. each
1/2 cup cranberry relish
1/2 cup dried cranberries or raisins, snipped or chopped
2 tablespoons butter, softened
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped

Method

1. Preheat oven to 325°F. Scrub sweet potatoes and pierce all over with a fork. Place on oven rack. Bake for 1 1/4 to 1 1/2 hours or until tender. Set aside to cool slightly.

2. Cut each potato in half lengthwise. Using a spoon, scoop pulp from each potato half, leaving a 1/4 to 1/2 inch shell. Place pulp in medium bowl. Set aside shells.

3. Using a potato masher or fork, mash potato pulp until smooth. Stir in relish, cranberries, butter, and salt. Spoon potato mixture into each potato shell. Place, filled sides up, in a 15 x 10 x 1-inch baking pan. Sprinkle with walnuts.

4. Bake for 25 to 35 minutes or until heated through.

Notes

A little difficult to make. The potatoes were hard to handle after taking them out of the oven. I probably should have let them cool a little. Leaving enough potato in the shell was also a little challenging; if you take too much the skins rip easily making it difficult to refill them.

The taste was fine, but I’m not sure that it was a significantly better taste than simply baking them. Not sure this recipe is worth all of the effort.

Servings: 10

A Year of Weekly Recipes, Week 1

2012 has begun, and I started this project with two new recipes, both very good. If I had to do it again, I probably wouldn’t make both of them for one meal, because they were pretty labor intensive. In addition to the pork and squash, I served some steamed broccoli and plain quinoa. The picture is a bit fuzzy, unfortunately… will need to do better next time.

Here are the recipes:

Roasted Pork Loin with Caramel and Sour Cherry Sauce

Ingredients

3 1/2 lbs. boneless pork
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
1/2 teaspoon fresh-ground pepper
1 cup sugar
1 24-ounce jar sour cherries in light syrup
1/4 cup hot prepared mustard, such as Colman’s
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Method

1. Sear the roast: Heat oven to 450°F. Rub the entire surface of pork with the salt and 1/4 teaspoon pepper and place fat side up in a shallow roasting pan. Lower the oven temperature to 375°F, place the pan in the oven and roast for 30 minutes.

2. Make the cherry sauce: Melt the sugar in a large nonstick skillet over medium-high heat until dark amber. Reduce heat to medium, add the cherries and syrup, mustard, cinnamon, and remaining pepper. (The sugar will appear dark amber against a stainless steel spoon.) Cook, stirring constantly, until well-combined — about 5 minutes.

3. Finish the roast and the sauce: Pour the cherry sauce over the pork loin and continue to roast, basting twice, until the meat’s internal temperature reaches 155°F — 30 to 40 minutes. Transfer the roast to a cutting board and let rest 15 minutes. Place the roasting pan on the stove top and bring the pan juices to a boil over medium heat. Reduce heat to medium and let simmer, stirring occasionally, until the liquid is reduced to 2 cups — 10 to 12 minutes. Keep the sauce warm until ready to serve. To serve, slice the pork loin into 1/4 inch thick slices. Arrange on a serving platter and spoon the cherry sauce and some of the cherries over the pork. Serve immediately.

Notes

I couldn’t find sour cherries in light syrup, so used tart cherries in water and added some sugar to the cans before pouring them in.

Yes, sugar melts! Be patient and the sugar will eventually turn into an amber bubbling liquid. I had an impulse to stir the sugar… not sure if that was a good idea or not. Stirring it with a plastic spoon did not seem to be a great idea, as the sugar would cool quickly on contact and stick to the spoon. The high heat was also not that great for the spoon. (I think it started to melt.) A wooden spoon worked well, but I think it may not need stirring at all.

Because of Cathy’s allergies, I “made” the mustard out of mustard powder, white wine, and French’s yellow mustard.

I didn’t have a shallow roasting pan, so used a casserole dish and then transferred the juices at the end into a sauce pan.

This dish does take a lot of your attention while making it, so I would recommend relatively simple side dishes if you are making this on your own.

The result is very flavorful.

Servings: 12

Sweet and Sour Squash

Ingredients

3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed, and cut into 1/2 inch slices
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1/2 cup red wine vinegar
2 1/2 tablespoons sugar
salt and pepper
2 tablespoons fresh mint or basil, chopped

Method

In a very large skillet over medium-high heat, heat the olive oil until it ripples. Add a single layer of squash and cook until lightly browned and tender, about 10 minutes, turning slices over once halfway through cooking. Remove the cooked squash to a paper-towel-lined plate. Repeat the process to cook the remaining batches.

Return the skillet to medium heat, add another tablespoon of olive oil if the pan looks dry, and add garlic, cooking and stirring constantly until fragrant but not browned, about 45 seconds. Add the vinegar and sugar, swirl the skillet to dissolve the sugar, bring to a simmer, and cook, swirling frequently, until the mixture is syrupy, about 1 1/2 minutes. Remove the skillet from the heat and set aside.

On a serving platter, arrange the squash and sprinkle with salt and pepper to taste. Drizzle the dressing over the squash, sprinkle with the mint or basil, and serve warm or at room temperature.

Notes

Very flavorful, but a bit of work. Don’t prepare with another dish that requires a lot of attention.

Servings: 6

And… reactivate…

For 2012, I (Scott) have decided to reactivate this family newsletter blog. I plan to use it primarily for two things:

1. I will use it as another place to post my picture a day project — probably by posting weekly or once every two weeks with a group of pictures I’ve taken. To get an idea of what my picture a day is like, you can see what I did last year.

See the whole set by clicking here. Cathy did this last year as well and has a great set of pics up on Facebook.

2. I’m also hoping to use this blog for a new project: A Recipe a Week. Every week, I plan to make one new recipe, choosing from the vast number of clippings that Cathy accumulates from various magazines and websites. After it’s made, I’ll blog about it here. My goals here are pretty simple: challenge my cooking skills a little,  try something new every week, and take advantage of all the recipe clipping that Cathy’s doing. It may be a bit ambitious, but I think I can do it. I already successfully made two new recipes tonight, which were delicious. I’ll blog about it soon!

I’ll also try to throw some other updates in here from time to time. You can always follow my daily doings on Twitter and Facebook. Happy New Year!

Oops…

Sorry for the confusion for those of you who subscribe to this blog via email. I accidentally posted some notes here that were work related. (I have a private blog where I keep all of my work related notes.) Luckily they weren’t ultra secret!

A quick update, though: We are back from our week-long vacation in Yellowstone an the Grand Tetons. We had a wonderful time in a grogeous setting, and took a kazillion pictures and a bunch of video as well. I’ll post some of this on Flickr and our new YouTube account soonish. And one of us will try to do a better update soon!

Hammer Fist!

Evan broke a board at karate today!

Day camp

Yesterday was the end of Evan’s second week of day camp. It’s a really great place here in town, with a lake, two pools, and tons of land. It runs year-round as a preschool, private kindergarten, and after-school care for older kids, so it has a gigantic building. In there, they have gyms, including a climbing wall, an art studio, and lots of other rooms they use for activities like drama, and karate.

But the kids are outdoors most of the time. Evan passed the “kayak test,” which included treading water for two minutes and swimming up and down the pool a few times without touching, so he can take a boat out by himself. They play soccer and kickball and other sports, and each day they have both swimming lessons and free swim. They also have a free choice period, during which Evan usually chooses to play Capture the Flag. He loves that game!

They also plan lots of extra activities. They have people come to the camp to do things like magic shows, animal shows, kite-flying demonstrations, you name it! And they have the campers do fun things, too. Yesterday was the “Penny Dive.” They dump pennies into the pool, the kids dive for them, and then they trade them for candy. (Poor Evan, with his spacer, couldn’t choose Starbursts or Tootsie Rolls, both of which he loves. He could only choose Twizzlers. Fortunately he likes those too!) Next week, there’s a day when he’ll stay late for extra activities and a pizza and make-your-own-sundae party. Also next week, there’s Crazy Day (or something like that). The kids are all supposed to show up in wild costumes, and the counselors will do funny things like whistling with a mouth full of saltines and painting each others’ faces while blindfolded.

Evan’s in a group (the “Sting Rays”) with a few friends he remembers from previous years, and one friend who’ll be in his class this year, which is nice. He has a head counselor who’s a teacher, a few teenaged counselors, and a C.I.T. He’s very well supervised!

That camp, for some reason, only runs through the second week of August. We send him there for 6 weeks, then take our summer vacation, and after that we send him to Audubon camp in the next town–he loves that, too. There’s no swimming there, but he really loves learning about nature, and they play fun games and make cool crafts. And this year, a friend from school arranged to go for one of the two weeks Evan will be there, which I think Evan will enjoy.

Camping at Waquoit State Park (Washburn Island)

Just thought I would expand a little on what Cathy wrote about our camping trip and include a few pictures.  We camped at Waquoit State Park on Washburn Island in Falmouth, MA — campsite 6 on the map to the right. The only way to get to the island is by your own boat; they don’t offer a ferry service. The island itself is just a series of camp sites, two outhouses, hiking trails, and beaches. So, you have to bring everything with you, including water. This was a nice step forward for us in camping, because up until now we’ve had access to freshwater, a bathroom, and our car when we’ve gone somewhere. This felt a lot more like what I think of as “real” camping.

On Friday, we arrived at the boat launch just after lunch, packed up our kayak, and launched for a nice 45 minute paddle to the camping area on the island.

Our camp site was up on a hill that overlooked a small beach on Waquoit Bay. Here are some shots of the site, the beach, and the view we had from it.

As you can see, it was beautiful there. The beach was great for swimming (though Evan did get a minor jellyfish sting), and we ate our dinner sitting on the steps looking out over the water. While we sat there, several osprey flew overhead fishing for their dinner. I counted at least 8, but some of them were probably the same bird. Two or three of them flew overhead with sizable fish in their talons.

Hiking on the island was a a lot of fun. We had planned on doing some geocaching while we were there, but the GPS unfortunately had dead batteries in it. But that didn’t stop us from exploring. The main trail brought us to a saltwater pond (Tim’s Pond), to a beach along a smaller, calmer bay on the other side of the island (called Eel Pond, I think), and ended down on the Vineyard Sound.

There was plenty of evidence of wildlife on the island. We found raccoon tracks on the beach. Apart from the osprey, there were plenty of great birds: warblers flitting around in the trees in the morning at our campsite, a swan flew overhead at one point, we saw a loon out in the bay, and oyster catchers on the Vineyard Sound beach. And in a tide pool on our way back we discovered several small hermit crabs crawling amongst the snails.

At night, we had dinner (chili cooked on a camp stove), played cards, and did a little star gazing before turning in. And we ended up staying on the island doing some more exploring the next day until about noon, before paddling back to the car. All in all, this was a really great trip, and I’m already thinking about trying to get back there again!

There are a few more pictures of it on our photo site. Feel free to hop on over and take a look at them alongside pictures of other things we’ve been doing! (The ones with Evan in them will not appear unless you log into the site. If you don’t know how, just let me know and I’ll send you a username and password.)

The start of summer

Hello! After a bit of blog neglect, I’m once again going to do as much of a catch-up as I can. There’s no way I can remember everything we’ve been doing, but I’ll get something written, anyway.

I write on July 5th, as we come to the end of a really nice summer weekend.

Scott had Friday, July 2 off (I did not), so he took Evan off on a camping adventure. They kayaked to an island off Cape Cod where they had one of the 8 campsites. The weather was perfect and the surroundings beautiful, but as I was not there, all I can say is they seem to have had a great time, and the pictures were gorgeous. They arrived home around 3 the next day, just in time to unload their gear, then pack up to go to fireworks. (Yes, on the 3rd.)

We go up the road to Sharon, where they have fireworks over Lake Massapoag. Evan and Scott went swimming in the lake, then we had a picnic dinner on the beach, grabbed some fried dough, watched the pie-eating contest, then played cards until it got dark and the display began.

After two late nights, Evan set a personal record for sleeping late: he got up at 10! He really needed it. Then we spent literally hours unpacking bags & cleaning/putting away things that came out of them (all the camping gear and all the stuff we’d brought to fireworks). Then, pool care, lawn mowing, and cooking took a good part of the afternoon. (I made a coleslaw with a lime vinaigrette; Scott made barbecue sauce for the ribs we were having). We did get some pool time though–how could we not, on such a hot day? And we wound up the evening with sparklers, which seem amazingly like magic wands when you’re nine.

So what else has been happening? Let’s see.

Evan got a spacer put in his mouth–like a retainer, but cemented in. It’s supposed to keep his teeth in place so where he has gaps from having teeth pulled, he’ll continue to have gaps until his adult teeth grow in there. Otherwise, lots of crooked teeth.

Evan had another karate graduation, so has moved up another belt level. He also, of course, finished 3rd grade. His report card was again excellent, and we’re really proud of him. I can’t believe he’s going to be a 4th grader! And he has “crossed over” in Scouts, so he’s now a Webelo. So many transitions!

Evan played baseball this spring, and his team got to the playoffs (they were the first place team in the regular season!) and weren’t eliminated until the 3rd playoff game. They had a great season! Evan also played in his 2nd piano recital with, um, four (?) other students of Gigi. (For those who don’t know, Gigi is Evan’s great-grandmother and his piano teacher.) He played two songs, and didn’t seem nervous about all the listeners.

Scott was in Pennsylvania for a week in mid-June. We missed him, but it seems like his conferences were really worthwhile for him to attend. He came back late on a Saturday, then the next morning, got up and ran the Father’s Day Road Race here in town (for the 4th or 5th year in a row). They’ve changed the course, so he can’t compare his time to previous years, but he was happy with his results.

We took a “working vacation” the week between the end of school and the start of camp. In daily life, we can just about keep up with work, cooking/cleaning/yard work, and Evan’s activities. There’s no time for extra stuff. So, we spent a week trying to do some of that extra stuff. We had an enormous list–a full page on a legal pad–and got through about half of it. I wish we’d done more, but on the other hand, we were always doing something, so it wasn’t humanly possible to get more done!

We also have a vacation coming that’s not devoted to drudgery! We’re going to Yellowstone in August. We’ll spend a couple nights in the Grand Tetons, too. We’re all ridiculously excited about this trip.

Day camp has now started for Evan, and it sounds like he’s having a great time. He was already friends with a couple kids in his group (the Sting Rays) and his counselors are nice. His favorite activity seems to be Capture the Flag. He’ll attend that camp until we go on vacation, and then after vacation, he’ll attend Audubon day camp for 2 weeks.

Look who I found on the internet!

Here’s a picture of Scott doing a presentation about presentation software!