No photo, but a salad.

I’m not even sure where the camera is these days–we’re getting down to the nitty gritty in these parts as we start our move to the other state.  We moved a bunch of stuff this weekend; Monday is the big day to finish it up.  In the meantime we are eating out all the time in order to hit up our favorite restaurants before we go.  Yesterday, we had sandwiches at the Pour House, a cheap little place in the Back Bay.  Today it was Yucatan Tacos, our favorite Mexican joint.  We had Thai at Phuket on Sunday night.  Slowly we make the rounds! I did, however, make a really good salad last night.  This was another number out of the free Gourmet notebook that came with an old subscription.  I made somewhere between half and two-thirds of the recipe, which should serve four.  We at the whole thing.  

You’ll need:1 lb red potatoes
1/2 lb Italian sausages (I used the no-fennel sweet from the Italian butcher)
3 c lettuce (calls for arugula, we had Romaine)
1-2 T red vinegar1 t saltbit of pepper
2-3 T olive oil
1/3 c roasted red peppers, sliced  

Start by boiling your potatoes until softened.  I used smallish potatoes, so they took  about 20 minutes.  Once they got going, I started the grill and tossed my sausage on there, which take 15-20 minutes to cook.  The idea was to have the potatoes done just a little while before the sausages. In the bowl you’ll be serving the salad from, add your vinegar and salt and swoosh around until salt is about dissolved.  Once you’ve drained your potatoes allow them to cool until you can just handle them, and chop into 1″ cubes.  Toss with vinegar mix.  They’ll absorb it like a sponge.   Slice sausages into 1/2″ rounds, and add.  Add everything else.  Toss.  Serve.  Yum. 

I bet you could even do grilled potatoes with this and avoid the oven/stove altogether.  Or, alternately, you could do the sausages inside and not use the grill. My oven right now is self-cleaning.  It’s really gross, but it’ll be much better for whoever is in here next.  We’ve lived here 6 years and never cleaned it, so it was high time. 

Initially, this post was about tonight’s feast.

The heat has finally broken here, so I am excited to use the oven and stove again for longerthan a few minutes at a time. Tonight I’m making a feast–what you see here are white beans, pre-soaked and then simmered. They’ll be used in Mark Bittman’s , which seems to be making the internet rounds these days. I’ve been itching to make it, and while the recipe calls for two lemons and I have but one, I think it’ll be fine. I’m making focaccia to go with it; nothing fancy, just the foccacia I’ve made here before. With both of them, I plan to make pasta with a hearty mushroom and tomato sauce that I found in a Gourmet freebie–Weeknight Meals, I think it was called–discovered during the joy that is packing.Have I mentioned how much I hate packing? Oh, the happiness.Anyway, this feast is in honor of tomorrow being Mr. Pea’s last day at his job, a job he likes ok but which frustrates him more than it satisfies him, and the departure from which signals a lot of potential new things. So hooray for that.But as I waited for my pictures to upload on Flickr (my computer is waging a mutiny by routinely slowing down these days), I started thumbing through a coupon section from an old Sunday paper that’s being used as packing cushion for fragile things like vases. And I found this. I’ll enlarge it so you can see it:This ad….I don’t know. Weirds me out. Makes me kinda cranky. For one thing, it plays upon the fear of average working and middle class Americans of a looming recession, which, in all likelihood, will impact them more than other people. Things aren’t great right now, but technically, there isn’t a recession, but thanks for using it to boost your profit margin, FR. Anyway, above the photo is a receipt that proves this is a wise meal–that you can feed 4 for less than $10–and it includes pasta for $1.25, italian bread for $1.79, salad for 2.50, dressing for 1.59, and FR for 1.99. Grand total, $9.12. Ok. Now I know not everyone can/wants to make Italian bread or quick and easy focaccia, so I’ll let that go. Even the salad. But I guess what makes me kind of sad is that you could make a whole lot more for $9.12. Making your own sauce is going to cost you, on average, a buck and a half, so you’d get your 49 cents there, plus you’d be consuming less preservatives or whatever else goes into a jar of FR. Buying lettuce and a cucumber is likely going to set you back the same amount as “salad”. And you could make your own dressing, though I’m lazy and buy Newman’s Own all the time.  But I also really like their generosity–buy three jars, get one free.  Way to make an effort!  I think it’s the pushing of the buttons that gets me. Pushing of the buttons in the name of profit, which is kind of what got us in this mess to begin with.Rant over. Sorry about that!

I made pajamas

This is the first full pair of PJs I’ve ever made. They are a very belated birthday present for one of my very good friends; she’s moved recently, and while I really wanted to send her a snoopy snow cone maker for her birthday, simply for “we’re-30-let’s-get-nostalgic” reasons, these seemed much more practical and easy to shift from place to place. What do you think?

They weren’t terribly hard to make; the shirt’s going to be big, but that’s comfortable, I think, for pajamas. My friend lives in California, thus the shorts. Here in New England these days, even shorts are too hot to wear.

Despite the fact that I am melting away, I am going to cook dinner! I have the beans soaking, and everything else cooks in a few minutes. We’re having an old standby, curried couscous, though without the chicken.

This is likely the last craft project before we move; Mr. Pea aims to have our place cleared out of darn near everything but furniture and the cat this weekend, so that’s pretty much that. It’s ok; once we get to our new place, I’ll start assembling the quilt, which should be more than enough crafting for me.

Packing

This is my house. It’s in these boxes, and the other half-dozen or so around the floor. I don’t cook much these days, as I mostly just put things in boxes and try not to melt. It was in the low 70s all weekend but now we’re in the steamy 90s, so I’m avoiding the oven pretty much entirely. We’ve also begun our Farewell Tour of eateries and friends around town, so that’s keeping us from our kitchen, as well. Yesterday I went hiking with a friend of mine in the sun most of the day; that night I met my cousin for dinner with his friends and forgot I was both dehydrated and hadn’t eaten in a while. A little bit of wine went an awful long way. 

Strawberry jam, I said! It’ll be fun, I said! Ha.

This is a photo of round two of one batch of jam. I love to can things, but jam and I are not friends.

I had some berries about to expire, so I cooked them down with sugar as instructed, and boiled them to a certain degree, and then jarred and put them in a water bath. Nothin’. So then after several days I opened them, poured the guts into a pan, and added pectin, a powder derived from apple juice that’s supposed to make this process easy, following instructions. This was Saturday. Today, still nothin’. I’ve put them in the pantry so I’ll stop peeking at them. This time I even did a gel test with a spoon and it passed and STILL no jelly. Jam. Preserves. Whatever. I’m giving it two weeks before I try one last time, following the pectin packages “didn’t set?” instructions and hoping for the best.

The ironic part of all this is that last time I tried to make strawberry jam, many years ago, it turned into a brick. Ha.

Do any of you have experience with this and can make some suggestions? It’s making me batty. It tastes so good, too, which almost makes it worse. Sigh.

July?

Hi!

I’ve been working on a freelance project pretty much nonstop for June, up until yesterday. Today I am finally free. Though I spent most of my time in the last few weeks on the computer, I tried to avoid doing anything fun there in order to get myself back to work. This made me into a news junky, which, given the news lately, has made me into a cranky old crab.

Anyway. Today was my first day of freedom and it’s not too hot, not too humid–probably because I left the house early enough that these two hadn’t settled in completely. Today I went to city hall and officially dissolved Sweet Pea. It had to happen eventually, and there it is. Nearly all the paperwork for related things like sales tax is completed; it’s pretty much a done deal. This is good, because it’s time to start packing it all in not simply metaphorically, but quite literally. We move in three weeks.

I loathe packing. But that’s something else.

Lately most of my cooking has been limited to things I know I can cook quickly and well, in order to get myself back to work. I’ve also done some recipes from other blogs, but I didn’t want to post them here and seem as though that’s all I do, borrowing from other people.

Among the few things I made that went well and were fairly new was homemade barbecue sauce and pulled chicken. After reading Omnivore’s Dilemma some time ago, I’ve been working on limiting my intake of corn syrup. In addition to that, our bottled sauce was long expired. In any event, I made my own. This is part of a new project of sorts for me–making my own of things I buy and take for granted.

Now unfortunately, the main ingredient here was ketchup–seeing as we had a full bottle I wasn’t about to make my own, and our full bottle is loaded with high fructose corn syrup. You just can’t escape that stuff. So my bbq sauce does contain plenty, but I have good intentions to someday, when our bottle of Heinz is gone, make my own.

I put about half the bbq sauce yield in my slow cooker with some boneless skinless chicken thighs and turned it to high for a couple hours, as they were still frozen; I then turned it down and let it simmer away. They cooked for probably five or six hours. The last hour, I left the lid off so that the condensation inside would begin to evaporate and thicken. I was rewarded for my efforts–the chicken easily just fell apart as we loaded it onto bread and ate it with some cole slaw. While the slow cooker does generate some heat, it really wasn’t too bad and didn’t make my kitchen terribly hot, especially if I left it on low.

The sauce recipe is from Joy of Cooking. I made a half-batch.
1 1/2 c ketchup
1 c cider or red wine vinegar
1/4 c worcestershire sauce
1 c packed brown sugar
2 T dry mustard
4 T chili powder, or to taste (I use less)
1 t ground ginger
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 T veg oil

Combine in a medium pan over medium heat and stirring often, cook until it comes to a simmer. Simmer 5 minutes. Keeps 2 weeks.

This turned out well…much better than my next project, strawberry jam…