Month: February 2004

Breakfast this morning was half of a white grapefruit, a piece of toasted Italian bread with homemade strawberry jam, a glass of orange juice, and several cups of coffee. Gretchen made the Italian bread last evening. I weighed 155 pounds.

I went for a four mile walk around campus over lunch today. On my way, I stopped in at Dee’s and had a Texas Hot Dog — that is with chili, mustard, and onions. I guess you could say that I satisfied a craving. I could not help myself. It was calling to me. I can still taste the onions.

Gretchen made a sautéed onion pizza tonight. We were a little dissapointed with the mozzarella we used last time so this time Gretchen tried a four cheese mix from Sargento — Monterey Jack, Mild Cheddar, Queso Quesadilla and Asadero cheeses. Pretty tasty. We split the pizza and had a Waldorf salad on the side.

Dave Scarpetti, over at Weber Cam, seems to have nailed “the most common bread offered with meals in France.” Well said… the French having nothing that they call “French Bread.”

The breakthrough came as I caught the end of America’s Test Kitchen on our local PBS station a couple weeks ago. They were making Rustic Country Bread. This site is free but requires an annoying registration.

Dave’s photos of his results look great! I think Gretchen and I are going to have to try this out.

Breakfast this morning was half of a white grapefruit and some coffee. I weighed 155 pounds.

I walked over to the HUB — about two miles, round trip — and got a salad for lunch.

Dinner was a turkey salad and two glasses of Bolla Cabernet Sauvignon.

I just wanted to save a link to Shenanchie’s Pistachio Cookies. I love pistachios.

Breakfast this morning was half of a white grapefruit, a glass of orange juice, waffles with maple syrup, and several cups of coffee.

Lunch was a bowl of whole wheat fusilli pasta with Béchamel sauce and a glass of Bolla Merlot. I weighed in at 157 pounds.

Dinner was some turkey rice soup and popovers and two glasses of Bolla Cabernet Sauvignon.

By popular demand I have added a link to my Atom feed at the end of my list of links for those of you who would like to be informed immediately of updates to my journal . It is an Atom feed and not an RSS feed — since I am using the free services from Blogger and Atom is the only desktop syndication option available to us cheapskates . I would like to apologize in advance to those whose news readers do not yet support Atom. Since Blogger just started offering it, I assume that client support will come along fairly quickly.

We have an evergreen tree just outside our window where the English sparrows like to perch while they wait their turn at the bird feeder. Our cat, Sierra, likes to think of it as her own private “cat feeder.”

Breakfast this morning was half of a white grapefruit with a maraschino cherry for color, a bowl of steel-cut oats with brown sugar, milk, and walnuts, a glass of orange juice, and several cups of coffee.

I weighed 156 pounds this morning. Lunch was fried rice and a cup of orange and spice tea.

For our Valentine’s dinner, Gretchen and I started by making dessert — or rather the topping for our dessert. We made glazed apples that we would serve over vanilla ice cream later. The first step was to pour ourselves a glass of Bolla Merlot. Next, we gathered our ingredients.

• 4 large Apples (peeled, cored, and sliced)
• ⅔ cup Raisins
• 4 tablespoons Butter
• ⅓ cup Shrub
• pinch each of Cinnamon, Allspice, and Cloves

Peeling, coring, and slicing the apples was easy, since I got Gretchen a peeler, corer, slicer for Christmas. This was a lot of fun, since we had to get our hands on the food and there were invariably the few odd imperfect pieces of apple slice that we did not want in the topping and we got to pick them out and feed them to each other while we were cooking. Next we melted the butter and sautéed the apples and raisins. Once the apples were soft, we added the shrub and the spices and turned the apples until they were uniformly coated. We covered this mixture and set it aside until we were ready for dessert.

So now the question arises, “What the heck is shrub?” Shrub is a light syrup. From the information on the bottle “Recipes for ‘fruit shrubs’ can be found in 18th and 19th century cookbooks including those by Martha Washington and Mary Randolf.” In addition to its use here, shrubs make a nice base for soft drinks or as a flavoring in a Champagne cocktail. We received a bottle of Raspberry Shrub from Tait Farm, just across the valley from us, from my sister-in-law for Christmas.

Once our dessert topping was finished, we went on to making our entree of Soy Braised Chicken. We had left over white rice, from my binge the other day, to go with it.

While we were waiting for the chicken to braise, we fed each other an appetizer of shrimp cocktail.

So, that was our Valentine’s Day dinner — in reverse.

As I just mentioned, it appears that Gretchen and I are not alone in not going out very often because we prefer our own cooking to that which can be had in local restaurants. However, we do go out occasionally. If you are like us but thought that Valentine’s Day would be a good time to break that “eat at home” habit, here are a few people that would caution you otherwise:

Valentine’s day is not a good night to go out to restaurants. Basically, people who go out to dinner only once a year go out on Valentine’s Day. The restaurants have to cater to these people’s narrow tastes and enormous expectations. Not a good night to go out. [tastingmenu.com]

Then there is this:

Ah, Valentine’s Day. It makes me think of red roses, candy hearts, snuggly kisses, over-booked restaurants, grumpy servers, and the time I was seated next to couple that was breaking up. It’s hard to be cooey with your love while over-hearing, “Nope, not once. I faked it every time.” And, as you may recall from my New Year’s Eve column, Valentine’s Day is one of the worst days, service-wise, to go to a restaurant.

I say skip the dinner out, make a kick-ass meal at home, and go out to brunch on Sunday morning. [Cinnamon Cooper]

And this just supports that belief:

With Valentine’s Day falling on a Saturday for the first time since 1998, restaurants have been turning away hundreds, and in some cases thousands, of frustrated diners who didn’t make reservations early enough. One restaurant had to buy more dishes, tables and silverware.

“You hear this phone ringing?” said Ken Lurie, a partner and front-of-the-house manager at Tersiguel’s French Country Restaurant in Ellicott City. “Every call is for [tonight], and we’re just filled. We’ve turned away thousands.”

At restaurants across the area, the message seems to be: If you haven’t secured a Valentine’s Day dinner reservation by now, you might as well forget it. [Baltimore Sun]

So, I hope you have a nice romantic dinner at home planned!

Because of a medical procedure I was having done today, I have not been able to eat anything for the past 27 hours. Everything turned out fine, so now I am breaking my fast with hot and sour soup, egg rolls, lo mien, general tso’s chicken, and fortune cookies.