Christmas 2017

It was a pretty emotional holiday season this year. A lot was the same - we had the gingerbread house party, I baked a million cookies, we decorated the house.

















But a lot was different too. I'm pregnant, and it felt extra special during this season. Something about pairing the holidays with this fleeting period in my life felt big. I mean, yes, it was a little sad to skip all the festive cocktails, and I had to buy a couple of holiday maternity dresses that I'll never wear again, but I was extra aware of how short this time is, and it felt crazy to think that this is the last year it will be just the two of us.

My sister moved back down right before the holidays and the best part of the season was getting to spend a ton of time with her family. My niece and nephew light up our lives, and being able to see them for casual hang outs or to have them stay with us for a few days is so, so sweet. I'm not sure how we survived apart for the last three years.

And yet, it was the first year without my stepmom, the first year where we didn't go to my dad's house and sit around the tree. It's been the hardest part of the pregnancy, knowing that I can't tell them this news, wishing we could all be together again. I waited a long time to announce to our families and friends, because telling people really highlighted the fact that I was missing two of the most important people. I take comfort in our time with family, and knowing that my dad and Claudia would have been thrilled. I'm in this crazy space of feeling happy and excited and broken all at once. I navigate it as best I can.

A few more prosaic notes about the holidays this year -

I made a lot of cookies. This year I did my usual almond crescents, melomakarona, and gingerbread, and then added in my favorite rosemary butter cookies and some peppermint pinwheels (which are so cute and tasty, but I only make them every few years because I forget just how annoying they are - the dough always wants to crack and rolling the layers up sucks, and usually one roll looks perfect and the other one is all wonky and sad). As usual, I packaged them up using boxes from Papermart and then printed some labels for them (I just buy some full sheet labels and cut them up after printing). The little decorations are from my stash of wrapping supplies. We made the laser cut snowflakes a few years ago, and the mini ornaments are from Ikea.

Emily and I were able to make our yule logs together this year and it was so much fun. Also a little exhausting. We followed my notes from last year and it went pretty smoothly.

We didn't exchange any gifts but we did get a few things for the kids, and we bought a bunch of lottery scratchers as a Christmas Eve activity (buying scratchers in bulk really proves how terrible an investment it is - we've done this two years in a row and have never come close to making our money back but it's fun).

The week after Christmas D and I waited in line for five hours (!!!) to get tickets to Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrors show. I'm normally incredibly impatient about lines but I can do it if I'm mentally prepared. It helped that the Broad is so close to Grand Central Market, so I took a couple walk breaks to grab good coffee and finally got breakfast sandwiches at Eggslut (which I've always refused to do because the line is usually 40 minutes long, but when it's a choice between waiting in one line or waiting in another it's less frustrating). The show was really fun, and I think the baby will appreciate that we documented her first (?) time in a room of adorable stuffed phalluses.

I'll be back with more posts soon, although they might be about pregnancy for the time being. I'm not sure what else I would write about, since I've more or less stopped cooking, and I'm currently just re-reading the complete collection of Miss Marple mysteries.

Around here

How about a quick catch up session? I don't feel like I have enough to say about any of these (entirely unrelated) things to make an entire post so I'm just going to smash them all together.




- Taking advantage of the backyard superbloom and bringing as many flowers into the house as possible. I was convinced that some of the plants in our yard were dead because of disease, but it turns out it was just the drought. Several tons of rain later and our whole backyard is going nuts in the best way possible. Plants need water, who knew? Normally I'm reluctant to pick citrus blossoms because it means less fruit, but the grapefruit tree is overloaded this year and the flowers smell so good that I can't resist keeping some by my bedside.

- Getting back into running and it feels good. I'd been avoiding it for ages because I'm not a naturally talented runner which means that if I fall off the wagon getting myself back to a place where I can run steadily (without feeling like I'm going to die) is so much work that it never sounds appealing. My usual method is to allow myself to run as slowly as I need to for 30 minutes and gradually improve my speed and distance as I build up strength. This time I wasn't anywhere near being able to run for 30 minutes continuously, so I finally let go of my ego and downloaded the C210K app. I used the C25K method to learn to run the first time, but that was before smart phones and I had to write down my workout each day and then track the intervals with a timer. Having the app is a million times easier. I don't have to look ahead or think about what I'm going to do. I just commit to putting on my workout clothes and leaving the house. And I'm running! Yesterday I ran for 20 minutes without stopping. I'm not really sure why I persist in running when it's so much work, but there's something undeniably satisfying about it. Plus, it sounds more impressive than other forms of cardio. No one wants to hear you talk about how you crushed it on the elliptical at the gym the other day. To be honest, no one wants to hear about your running stats either, but most people will feign interest because running at least commands some respect.

- Not cooking much on weeknights lately and I've been relying heavily on the quinoa cowboy veggie burgers from Trader Joe's. As I was eating my 100th burger a few weeks ago I started seriously considering starting an entire blog just to share my favorite things at Trader Joe's. I mean, I know there are people already doing that, and also I already have a blog that I barely keep up anymore so it hardly makes sense to start a new one. But I keep thinking that my love for Trader Joe's deserves its own platform, even though blogs are almost entirely dead at this point.

- Still not reading anything new, and yes, it feels weird. I'm just going with it and re-reading things here and there.

Mini Christmas

I took a three day weekend and went up to the Bay for some niece/nephew time. It was such a great trip and we tried to cram in our favorite holiday activities since we won't see each other for Christmas. We watched Prancer, made our grandmother's pecan ball cookies, and even tried to get my niece to decorate her first gingerbread house. Turns out 21 months is not quite old enough to understand the concept, although she quickly got on board with shoving as much frosting into her mouth as possible. These kids are the sweetest and coming home gets harder every time.










The adults ended up taking over the decorating duties when it became clear the kids weren't going to step up. Our candy supply was pretty limited this year because we were trying to stick with toddler friendly candy (we got snow caps, mini M&Ms, yogurt pretzels, mini marshmallows, mini candy canes, cereal and gummies) but we had a lot of fun anyways. I baked all the gingerbread pieces at home and added the stained glass windows, then wrapped them up carefully and packed them in a box in my suitcase so we could assemble them up north. In case you're wondering, yes, I totally got flagged for secondary screening at the airport because the scanner couldn't figure out what was going on, but it was worth it.

Monthly meal planning - August (and Big Oven!)

I'm playing August almost completely by ear, hence the very few planned meals. My sister is expecting her second baby in early August and I'm just waiting for the call. It would be very sweet if my new nephew decided to hang in there until I'm scheduled to arrive (his sister was really accommodating this way) but I'm prepared to head up earlier if need be. So this is really just 1.5 weeks of meal planning, but I am using a fun new tool that I wanted to share.



Meals for August:
Miso salmon + Asian chopped salad - both new to me. The salad recipe is for mason jar portions, but I'll probably just make one big salad and maybe set aside one (undressed) serving for lunch.

Meat and veggie balls (in marinara sauce) + green salad - I love these meatballs and haven't made them in forever. They're a great summer dish.

Farro salad with roasted veg - Another tried and true. I made this last month and it was a hit with D's brother, so I'm repeating it.

Coconut, tomato and red lentil dhal - Almost every month. Not sure I'll get up the energy to make saag to go with it.

Modified version of Heather's quinoa salad - We ate this a lot two summers ago but I haven't made it lately. It holds up well in the fridge so I figured it was a good dish to make right before I leave (assuming the timing works out!).

I also got us a couple packs of veggie burgers for quick meals. Trader Joe's has the best veggie burger options and I'm tempted by all of them but we usually end up with the veggie masala burgers, because potatoes are the best.

In meal planning news - I'm experimenting with using Big Oven for meal planning. The actual monthly meal plan is easy enough for me to do on paper. Usually I shuffle through my recipe binder (or the stacks of recipes I haven't put away) and then just sketch out the grid. The sucky part comes next - doing the shopping list. I have to look at each recipe and write down the ingredients, then go back again to compile them into a single shopping list. It usually takes about 5 sheets of paper and I forget at least one thing. It's not a huge deal, since it's basically 30 minutes out of my entire month, but last month it finally annoyed me enough that I went looking for a better option and found Big Oven.

The premise is pretty simple. You can search for recipes directly on Big Oven, or "clip" them from various websites (how simple this is depends on whether the site is using formatting that is compatible - my blog is 100% not compatible because of my formatting, sadly, but it's still fairly simple to enter the recipe), or enter it by hand. Then you can use the meal planning feature to drag recipes from your collection to the calendar and (this is the part I'm excited about) export a grocery list.

This is what my meal planner looks like for August on the website (yes, I still write it out by hand because I like having something to stick up on the fridge).



They offer a two month trial of the Pro membership, which gives you an ad-free experience, unlimited recipe uploads (although I can't figure out how many recipes you can add with the free membership) and custom folder sorting. I've been using that so far and I think I might go ahead and pay to keep using it, since the cost is pretty reasonable ($1.99/mo or $19.99/year).

There was a fairly big time investment to start, since I had to add my most frequently used recipes. I ended up creating a folder that is just called "All my recipes" in addition to my category folders, since sometimes I just want to see everything at once. I'm still getting used to the interface but sometimes I find things a bit wonky. One small example - you can organize your recipes by dragging them into folders (love), but unfortunately the Pinterest button shows up almost exactly where you need to grab the picture and sometimes makes it difficult.

The grocery list feature works really well in general. You can specify what time frame you want to buy groceries for and then the program pops up each recipe to give you a chance to uncheck ingredients you already have. Once you've done that for each recipe in the time period, it will compile everything (sort of - it won't add up how many carrots you need, but at least it sorts everything so that each type of item is grouped) and you can have it emailed to you or just access it on your phone. I end up re-writing my grocery list on paper at the end, because I like to split it up by store. But having everything from each recipe automatically pulled together is amazing.

Because I like to do one massive shopping trip at the beginning of the month for any non-perishables or hearty stuff, and then just purchase vegetables weekly, I do need to figure out a way to modify it a little. Because you have the option to make edits when you are checking each recipe's ingredients (while Big Oven compiles your grocery list) I've just been adding a note to the "notes" section next to the ingredients that I want to buy during a specific week. That note will show up on your grocery list.

Overall, I'm feeling really good about this and I think it will make it easier for me to try out new recipes. In my paper system the most often used recipes tend to rotate back into the top of the stack, and if I lose a recipe sheet then I forget about it for ages. With the online system, I can quickly add in any recipe that catches my eye, even if I'm not meal planning right at the moment. You can flag recipes as "want to try" and scroll through those first.

Anyone already using Big Oven care to chime in? I'm still so new to it that this is all first impressions.

Meal planning - July wrap up

Whew.



It was a busy month. As I mentioned, I bumped up my planning to four meals a week, to accommodate our slightly larger family last month. As it turns out, four meals a week is pretty much perfect for three adults on a good week. We had two weeks where we were all at home for dinner almost every night and it was nice. But then everyone got busy at work and the last two weeks were pretty unpredictable and we all seemed to eat at different times. I cut out a few meals to accommodate this and it was fine.

I didn't try anything new last month, so this is going to be very short.

But, I do have the PDF of the monthly meal planning template for you, in case you want it! It's very simple, but I much prefer using the grid to hand sketching one every month, so hopefully it'll be useful for some of you. You can download it right here.

Friday flowers

Ranunculus and peonies and hypericum, plus filler.







D is in a major time crunch right now and needed to block out most of Sunday for work, which meant no trip down home for Mothers' Day. But luckily our moms were willing to drive up here and I put together a simple brunch (which ended up looking a little formal once I set the table). I love, love, love our wedding china and my dad's beautiful crystal together. We're still on the hunt for a good set of vintage silver for big gatherings, because we only have eight settings of our silverware and we never remember that's an issue until we're setting the table for a big party and suddenly start scrambling for forks.

I made these biscuits, these eggs (which I overcooked to an embarrassing degree - lesson learned) and this citrus salad. Plus coffee and bacon, of course.

White chocolate chip cookies

No idea why it took me so long to do this ...



I usually make white chocolate chip cookies for Em's birthday, but since it's the only time all year that I make them I'm always scrambling for a recipe. I think I've tried a different one every year, and they've all been good (when are cookies bad, really?) but I keep thinking I'll find the perfect recipe to stick with.

And then I realized I already had the perfect recipe - the famous NYT chocolate chip cookie recipe, but with white chocolate subbed in for semi-sweet. They were so good that I couldn't stop eating them, and I'm not really a white chocolate person. This year I used the mini white chocolate chips from Whole Foods because they were decent quality and readily available, but next year I might try getting a high quality white chocolate bar and then breaking it into chunks. Hopefully I remember that a year from now.

I have to say that the last few times I've made this recipe I've made the cookies a more realistic size so that people are less intimidated by them. The original recipe calls for using a huge scoop of the dough for each cookie and you get massive, bakery sized cookies (a #12 scoop works well). Perfect for a special treat, but a little much for putting out in the break room. This time I went big and of course, they are so much better this way. The texture is just perfect, soft in the middle and crisp at the edges. So I'm back with my old debate - make enormous cookies and hope people will just split them if they want less cookie? Make normal sized cookies and accept the not-quite-as-perfect texture?

My favorite arroz con pollo

I can't believe I've never shared this recipe before. It's one of my all time comfort foods.



Arroz con pollo is just chicken and rice, but the sum is so much more than the parts. It has a pile of sauteed onions and green peppers, the rice is fragrant with saffron and rich with tomatoes and I could just eat it forever.

I don't actually make it very often, because the process takes much longer than I can usually spend on a weeknight, so this is more of a weekend dish but I'll also break it out for company if I can get out of work early enough. We were having friends over a couple weeks ago and I had such a strong craving for this that I rearranged our meal plan for the week so that I could make it.

The recipe is right here (I trust Epicurious to keep their recipe links functional, so I think it's safe just to post the link but let me know if it goes dead).

My comments -

There is no universe in which this makes four servings, unless all four people are starving teenage boys who like enormous amounts of rice. When I make this recipe as written we have enough for four people plus generous leftovers. So maybe 6 - 7 servings is more accurate?

I don't like to bother with a whole chicken, so I just get bone-in thighs and drumsticks (or whole legs). Never, ever skinless.

This is much heavier on the rice than the chicken, so if you want a higher protein to carb ratio, you might want to increase the amount of chicken. Obviously you could decrease the rice, but that will be a bit trickier because you'll have to figure out the liquid ratios. Also, the rice is delicious.

I don't have a saucepan large enough for this recipe. It calls for a 6-7 qt pan that is 12" wide and 4" deep. My beloved stainless steel saute pan (I posted about it here ages ago and I'm still in love and use it almost every day) is 4 quarts, which is perfect for almost everything, but a bit too small for this. My workaround is a little annoying. I use my saute pan right up until the point where you are supposed to add the rice. Then I move the chicken over to one of my Dansk pans, which are larger and still oven-safe. I add the rice to the saute pan and bring it to a simmer, then transfer everything to the Dansk pan with the chicken. Yes, this is a little frustrating, but I'm not willing to invest in a slightly larger pan just for this one recipe. I have considered trying to scale the recipe down a bit so I can just use my normal pan, but I love the leftovers so much that I haven't attempted that yet.

Sorry for the lack of finished product photos, but did I mention that this recipe is time consuming? I've never managed to get it on the table while it's still light enough to take pictures.

Best oatmeal cookies

Chewy oatmeal cookies in one bowl, no mixer required.



I like oatmeal cookies but they aren't my favorite so I rarely make them. But when I saw that Stella had developed a recipe, I decided to test them out. Every recipe I've tried of hers has been delicious, so I trust her implicitly. Also, we were having people over for dinner and I was a little bit short on flour, so my dessert options were limited.



These turned out soooo well. They are chewy but still a little crisp and the flavor is perfect. I meant for D to take the leftovers in to work, but they were so good that we ended up eating almost all of them over the course of the weekend.

I followed the recipe almost exactly, except that I used chocolate chips instead of unsweetened cranberries and I made the scoops 1.5 oz instead of 1 oz. What can I say? I like big cookies.

The recipe calls for regular AP flour, and I only had unbleached, so I think they spread a bit more than they would have otherwise. Really interesting explanation of why she recommends not using unbleached flour in the comments, right here.

I am definitely looking for an excuse to make these again very soon.

Once a month meal planning - March

March is a little wonky because we'll be taking a short trip and the way the calendar works out for my system it's actually five weeks instead of four. I'm trying to add in more side dishes this month so that we're getting more veg. I'm normally really lazy about sides other than salads but now that I have the bigger kitchen there's no excuse. I guess I'm still being lazy because mostly what I'm doing this month is adding a big side of saag to our crockpot meals. I love cooked spinach and since I'm not doing any cooking on crockpot nights anyways, it won't feel like I'm adding too much extra work. Baby steps, right?



Recipes for this month:

Spicy tuna cakes + arugula salad (thinking I'll improvise a Meyer lemon and olive oil dressing for this) - I love this simple recipe and I haven't made it in a few months. I do NOT use the muffin pan because I find they stick like crazy and cleaning a muffin pan is annoying in the best of circumstances. I just form patties and bake them on the Silpat.

Braised cabbage + poached eggs - a perennial favorite. I always like to add some thinly sliced fennel and extra carrots.

Sweet potato dirty rice - another good spiralizer recipe.

Brown rice noodle and vegetable bowls - planning to increase the veg:noodle ratio by getting some large carrots so that I can spiralize them and have carrot noodles. Hope the recipe is good, since I haven't tried it before and I'm using it twice this month!

Crockpot chicken tikka masala + saag (using that recipe minus the paneer) + cauliflower rice (I get it frozen from Trader Joe's) - I haven't tried this recipe yet but I'm hoping it will be a keeper.

Dal nirvana + saag + naan (frozen from Trader Joe's) - Another new to me recipe, recommended by a kind reader!

Roasted root vegetables with soft polenta - Not really using a recipe for this, but similar to this one (+ some mushrooms, probably) except that I like polenta soft rather than sliced, so the polenta will be more like this.

Cashew nut chicken + saag + cauliflower rice - Making a triple batch of sauce this time, freezing the other two portions for future months.

Sweet potato bolognese + salad - again, no real recipe. It's just 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 1 jar marinara and 2 large sweet potatoes that have been spiralized. (spiralizer post is here).

And the grocery list for the month. The top left corner is where I write down pantry items that I'm pretty sure I have but I need to check. I get all of my meat for the month at Whole Foods and then divide it up and freeze it. For veg, I decide which items I can get at the beginning of the month (onions, garlic, etc, usually last fine, bell peppers and fennel and the like will hold up a couple weeks) and which items I have to get week by week (salad greens, mushrooms, etc). For the most part, it's been going pretty smoothly and I feel like I spend a lot less time at the store.

Once a month meal planning - February revisited

February was a little rough for me. I was pretty emotional about my dad, Dustin had an insanely heavy work schedule so I was solo most nights, and it just didn't seem worth it to cook all those weeknight meals. I ended up skipping two of the lentil dishes I had planned (weeks 3 and 4), but that's fine because the lentils will keep. I stopped even marking up my planning page after week 2 because I was cooking on different days and just generally doing whatever was most convenient, rather than sticking strictly to the schedule. But it was still nice to have it laid out and know what my options were.

I'm sticking with the monthly system again for March (post up tomorrow). I think it's helping a lot because we hardly ate out at all in February (although that might be due to the whole D = working, me = sad thing I mentioned). I did go over on our grocery budget this month by quite a bit, partly because we entertained a few times and I made a Costco trip to restock some critical items (enormous bag of chocolate chips, bourbon) and partly because I might have been treating myself a bit too much (flowers, wine, good cheese, nice beer). But hey, you do what you need to do, right? I'm going to buckle down again this month and make sure to hit our target.



New recipes I tried in February: 

Lentil and garlic sausage cassoulet - I thought this was pretty tasty but so much work for a relatively simple dish! You make the broth, skim, then cook the lentils, then you're supposed to bake everything in a casserole dish. I would only make this again if I were going to streamline it a lot, or I would have to move it to weekend only rotation.

Spiced butternut squash, lentil and goat cheese salad - This was great, and it came together super fast because I did cooked the lentils and roasted the squash on Sunday afternoon while I was doing stuff around the house.

Canal house lentils - Didn't get to this one.  : (

Once a month meal planning - January revisited

You guys, I loved having all my meals planned for the month. Looooved it. Front loading the "real" cooking on M/T/W worked really well for us because it left us a lot of flexibility at the end of the week but ensured that we always had enough leftovers to take to work for lunches. Grocery shopping was super minimal week to week, which makes me happy. We also came in below our usual grocery budget, which is probably because we weren't at the store as often and there was almost no food waste, which makes me happy (totally guilty of being overly optimistic while shopping and buying more produce, etc, than we can actually use - I've been working hard to improve this).



I did adjust as necessary (see all my scribbles - I was trying to keep track of how it played out) and we almost never needed our Th/F quick meals because we usually had leftovers. But it worked out well to have the ingredients because we used them for weekend meals and ate out less.

Even with the move thrown in there things didn't get too hectic. I just cooked as scheduled M/T/W and then as soon as I was done cooking on Wednesday I cleaned up and packed our entire kitchen other than the bare essentials (two bowls, two plates, two cups, a skillet and a smattering of utensils). I knew we'd have enough leftovers to get us through the rest of the week so we'd basically just be microwaving and cooking eggs.

I was so excited about this system that I got my February meals planned well ahead of time so that I'd be all ready to jump in on week one despite our move. Those will be up tomorrow! Fair warning - it will be almost as boring as this month.

Which leads me to this question - did we get bored? Nope! I was afraid we would, but it turns out we're just really hungry when we sit down for dinner and the fact that we ate something two weeks ago doesn't even register. I'm relieved because am I the only one who sees those fancy meal plans and thinks people are crazy for being willing to make a different breakfast, lunch and dinner every day? I love the idea of that much variety but in practice it is way too much work for me. That said, I did search for a few new lentil recipes to try out in February because I don't want to push my luck.

Best biscuits

I woke up a few weeks ago dreaming of biscuits, so I spent an inordinate amount of time searching the internet for recipes. I have a biscuit recipe from Tassajara that I've used quite a few times and it's pretty good but I don't believe in being 100% faithful to recipes, even my tried and true ones. Sometimes it pays to stray.



I am so, so glad I cheated.

I stumbled on this Alton Brown recipe that uses buttermilk (vs. the cream the Tassajara recipe calls for). I almost never have buttermilk on hand, but I always have full fat Greek yogurt, so I mixed a couple tablespoons into regular milk and it worked just fine. I also used all butter, rather than butter/shortening. I'm sure that if you have all the correct ingredients it's even more delicious, but considering the fact that I made these twice in a one week period, I don't think it's critical.

I also love that the recipe is very easily halved, so I can easily make a small batch (although you can always freeze unbaked biscuits and bake them later). The recipe below is how I made a small batch.

Best buttermilk biscuits (my adapted recipe for a mini batch, makes 4 - 6 biscuits, depending on how big you go, original recipe from here)
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar (optional - I like a little bit of sugar in my biscuits)
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup buttermilk (or 1 tbsp Greek yogurt + milk to 1/2 cup, whisk well)

:: Pre-heat oven to 400 F.
:: Whisk together flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt.
:: Cut the butter into the flour mixture using a pastry cutter, the food processor, or your hands (as long as you don't run hot - warm hands ruin pastry). The mixture should look like crumbs, with small pieces of butter intact.
:: Pour in the "buttermilk" and stir until the dough just comes together (I always use a rubber spatula for this).
:: Scrape the dough out onto a lightly floured board and pat into a rectangle, then gently fold the dough over on itself 5 - 6 times (you're creating layers here - if you haven't done this before watch the video in the original recipe for a demonstration).
:: Pat down into a rectangle at least 1" high and then cut into 4 (or 6) squarish pieces. You can also opt to make circles and then re-roll the scraps, but the second pass won't be as tender, so I go with squares and save myself the trouble.

Add some egg, cheese and bacon and these make the ultimate breakfast sandwiches.

Saving citrus

We are deep in the midst of our annual citrus glut here in Southern California. Neighbors are ditching bags of oranges on your front porch and running away before you can give them back. The farmer's market is bursting at the seams.

What I mean is, it's the best time of year.

{pomelo slices from our tree}

Citrus season is fleeting, and I pretty much only eat oranges during these few months. Spoiled brat that I am, I hate buying subpar oranges from the grocery store. And it's not just oranges! It's tangerines and Meyer lemons and pomelos. What do you do with all that? The answer is you eat as much as you can and save the rest.

{zesting}

I've been trying to be extra good about putting up as much of the bounty as possible this year. I had a huge bowl of these beautiful Meyers and no immediate use for them, so I zested them (I used the microplane on half of them and then used a peeler on the other half to get strips of zest - I like having options) and popped the tray in the freezer and waited till everything was frozen before I bundled the zest up in the cling wrap and tucked the packets in a large freezer bag. Then I juiced all the lemons and froze the juice in ice cube trays that hold 1 ounce each (I have these and love them).

I also zest our oranges and tangerines before we eat them and at this point I am well stocked with zest from lemons, tangerines, pomelos, and a nice variety of different orange breeds.

We should be set on cocktail supplies for the foreseeable future, is my basic point.

Citrus salad

We are overrun with pomelos around here.



I tried to force Circe in there for a size comparison but it still isn't quite doing justice to the scale of these things. They are huge. I tried zesting one and realized that I couldn't do it alone because I needed both hands to hold it and therefore couldn't also hold the microplane.

Pomelos are closely related to grapefruit, but the flavor is a bit milder. You can easily eat them without any sugar at all, although they aren't as sweet as an orange.

A few weeks ago we were going to a party and I needed to bring something. I stumbled on this citrus salad with bitters and honey  recipe and we had everything we needed. Done.



After spending over an hour supremeing all that citrus I was starting to regret my decision not to run to the store and pick up a bag of chips instead. But the end result was so good that I'd actually be willing to do it again, although probably on a smaller scale. I used pomelos, Cara Cara oranges, blood oranges and Satsumas (I tend to go nuts in the citrus stall at the farmer's market this time of year) and then added some sliced kumquats and pomegranate seeds for garnish. So, so good.

Regular fruit salad skeeves me out. I think it's the bananas (that inevitably turn brown) and the grapes, which I love on their own but hate mixed in with other things. But a pile of citrus is always a winner.

Once a month meal planning - January

Trying out this new thing, where I only plan monthly instead of weekly. I don't know that I'll do this indefinitely, but January is always a rough month for me and this one will be particularly insane. Work is crazy for me, D is going to be studying a lot, we're going to be moving. I didn't take the moving thing into account when I made this schedule, so part of me feels like I've already failed, but I'll adjust as necessary.



I've always been a weekly meal planner but I'm a fairly repetitive cook. I tend to make the same few dishes regularly, so I figured - why not run with it? Those of you who like to make new things all the time will probably die of boredom just looking at my list. I did have that month where I tried making a different (new) dish every weeknight and it was fun, but not sustainable for me.

What I did here was assign each night of the week a different theme. Mondays are spiralizer nights (and you'll notice that this month I'm just sticking with our favorite - sweet potato noodles with bolognese). Tuesdays are lentils, and this month I'm alternating between two of my favorite recipes. Wednesdays are crockpot nights as long as it's chilly. Thursdays are for baked potatoes and Fridays are for whatever can be made as fast as possible, because I have a three hour weekly meeting on Friday evenings and by the time I get home I'm exhausted and starving.

I've front loaded the recipes that involve actual cooking at the beginning of the week. That leaves me flexibility because if we have too many leftovers I can just skip the planned Thu-Fri meals and the ingredients will keep till next week (or the weekend). We're only in the first week and I'm already taking advantage of that because D ended up having lunch meetings every day this week and didn't need to take any lunches to work, so the three cooked meals will probably carry us.

As usual, I don't meal plan for weekends, because we often end up being out and about and if we're at home there's generally leftovers or something quick.

Can't decide if I'm going to get super bored and go off the rails. I actually don't think this is much more repetitive than I am normally, but there's something about seeing it all laid out that makes it feel more repetitive.

Recipes that I'm using this month: 

Sweet potato noodles with bolognese - not a real recipe, but I mention it in my spiralizer post and it's one of our favorites. I bought all the meat at once and divided it up and froze it into four portions. If I was truly getting serious, I could have made a huge batch of marinara to portion and freeze but I just bought four jars. Baby steps.
Coconut curried red lentils 
Black lentils with caramelized onions
Butternut squash coconut chili (new to me)
Chicken in cashew nut sauce - as usual, I'll make a double batch of the sauce and freeze half for next month
Sweet potato and black bean chili - I love this recipe and I've been making it about every three weeks to use up the odds and ends of sweet potato leftover from spiralizing.
Chicken enchilada soup - still a favorite around here.

This month is going to completely decimate my freezer supply of homemade chicken broth, so I'll probably make sure that a couple of our weekend meals consist of rotisserie chicken so I can restock. The homemade broth makes such a huge difference in soups.

I did most of our shopping last weekend and it was surprisingly not that much work. We're only two people, and there are a few things I'll have to pick up weekly (salad greens and produce) but all in all it was really manageable. It was also really cheap. I know the bill will go up because we'll still be purchasing things throughout the month, but it was crazy to see what a small portion of our grocery budget went towards the bulk of our food needs this month. The lentils help with that. We're not vegetarian (clearly) but I try to limit how much meat I eat and this is the general level that I'm comfortable with. This month we have red meat once per week (but we each get two servings because there are leftovers) and we have chicken every other week (again, we each get a couple servings). I've posted about how we approach meat here.

I'm mildly obsessed with meal planning and don't hesitate to switch up my system as our lives change, so you can find lots of other posts on it here if you search "meal plan." My original post on developing my meal planner is here and my 2014 update is here. This post is about coming up with your own system. Here is a post on three weeks of meals in detail.

Spiralizing everything

{zoodles}

My meal planning has been somewhat sporadic this year but I've been picking it up a bit the last few months. I've been trying to eat fewer grains* for a long time and not succeeding terribly well, mostly because I was having a tough time figuring out how to bulk out our meals without using them. While I love vegetable side dishes and I know those would work well, I'm just too impatient to make multiple dishes for a week night meal. Honestly, adding a side salad is pushing it some nights. I just want everything in one bowl and that always seems to lead me back to pasta dishes or grain salads. For a while I tried focusing on a protein + a vegetable, and that worked pretty well but, side dishes - I don't like making them. And I'm picky about our meat, so eating it more than a couple times a week blows up our entire food budget.

But in my dogged searching for plant based recipes I keep seeing this gadget pop up and I finally gave in. Enter the spiralizer. This is possibly the most gimmicky, as seen on TV purchase that I have ever made, but I love it. It turns vegetables into noodle shapes and it is amazing. I previously had a julienne peeler that I would use for this purpose, but it's annoying to use, you get short noodles, and the risk of shredding my hand was so high that I almost never used it.

I got the spiralizer a few months ago and use it two to three times a week. When we were in the midst of a violent heatwave, I used it for raw veggie salads, which are delicious but admittedly not very hearty. As soon as the weather cooled down I became deeply obsessed with sweet potato noodles and now I make a big batch of them at least once a week. They're perfect because I can get all the carbs I need (my legs go totally dead and refuse to run on a low carb diet, which is part of why cutting out grains is a challenge for me - I like my hobby jogging!) but not wake up with a wheat hangover.

So basically - sweet potato noodles for carb loading, zucchini noodles for lighter days or side salads (I know - I just said I hate side dishes but if all we're doing is grilling I'm willing to put one together), and then a whole world of other options that I'm slowly exploring. There is a ton of information and recipes over at Inspiralized although I'm not using her spiralizer. I have the Paderno brand which had really good reviews and so far I'm really happy with it.

{zucchini noodle salad with miso ponzu dressing}

Recipes that I've been using: 

Sweet potato noodle bolognese  - not actually a recipe. I just use sweet potatoes in place of pasta for a super quick weeknight bolognese. Jar of pasta sauce, 1/2 lb ground beef, 1/2 lb hot sausage, 2 large sweet potatoes spiralized. Cook the beef, add the noodles, saute until just tender and then add the sauce. I make this almost every week because it is delicious, fast, and it's a great way to stretch a relatively small amount of meat. Sometimes I'll use more sweet potatoes and pasta sauce to get more servings and it's still great. Leave out the meat (or sub in mushrooms) for a veggie version.

Sweet potato noodles with mushrooms - this is a great recipe and I added extra mushrooms, chopped sage and then dumped half a bag of Trader Joe's Cruciferous Crunch mix (shredded kale, brussels, broccoli and cabbage) in there for some added green. The sage and sweet potatoes make it taste like Thanksgiving to me.

Sweet potato noodle pad thai - still working on tweaking this one. As written, the sauce needs some punch and you end up with WAY more than you need, so I either need to up the potatoes or scale down the sauce. On a trial run I added chili paste, fish sauce, extra soy and again used Cruceriferous Crunch for some extra veg. We're getting there.

Sweet potato dirty rice - love this concept, but it really relies on good Cajun sausage, so make sure you find one you like. I didn't love the one I got from Trader Joe's, shockingly.

Butternut squash noodles with onions and brussels - I'm now always on the lookout for good spiralizing candidates. If I see smaller, skinnier butternut squash (the less of a bulb on the end the better!) I'll pick a few up and keep them around. They're a little more work because you roast the noodles rather than saute them, but they're delicious.

Zucchini noodle salad with miso ponzu dressing (pictured) - tasty, especially with some well baked tofu. I used extra firm tofu and marinated it in ponzu and a bit of sesame oil for a few hours before baking. This salad is pretty light so it's well suited to hot days. The leftovers hold up okay but not great, so maybe wait to dress the whole thing if you're planning to eat some the next day.

Mediterranean zucchini noodle salad - the best zucchini noodle salad I've made so far and it held up beautifully for leftovers the next day. I didn't follow the recipe exactly because I made my own dressing in my tiny blender but it was pretty similar to theirs.

There is a learning curve associated with cooking vegetable noodles. At first I wasn't sure when they were done so I was overcooking them a ton and usually ending up with sweet potato rice instead of sweet potato noodles. Still tasty, not as fun to twirl on a fork. You can read up on tips here, but I still think you just have to feel it out on your own and figure out your preferences.

I know it's still early to say, but I can see myself continuing to use this on a really regular basis. I feel so much better getting my carbs from vegetables and it's worth the tiny bit of extra prep work. I'm being especially diligent about it this month because December can so easily go completely out of whack.

Oh, and you'll notice when you spiralize that you end up with these funny bits of vegetable left. At first I was throwing them away but now I chop them and put them in the freezer (separate bag for each veg) and use them in soup once I've accumulated enough. It makes me feel extra virtuous.



* I am not, at all, allergic to gluten. But the older I get the more I notice that if I eat too many grains of any kind, but gluten in particular, I wake up with all my joints swollen and I feel uncomfortable. This probably means something but rather than fall into a Google black hole I've just been trying to reduce grains in my everyday diet. I still have something grain-y a couple times a week and accept that I will look like a marshmallow the next day. I think that's what they call balance?

Crispy shallots

One of the deviled egg recipes for last weekend included crispy shallots, which meant I had to conquer my fear of deep frying. I've never done it because I've always been afraid that I'll catch the kitchen on fire.

But look! Success!



Full disclosure - there was a tiny fire. But I think I could prevent that in the future.

I used this recipe and it was perfect, except for the part about the "small saucepan," which worked great for the initial cooking, but immediately boiled over on the second round. This is when the fire occurred. Luckily I was able to turn the flame off, pour the shallots into the prepared sieve and set the oil coated saucepan down on another counter. I almost considered giving up at this point but realized that the small saucepan was giving me a tiny surface area, which is basically the last thing you want when you're trying to quickly cook something. So I poured the oil into my favorite large pan*, got the oil back up to temp, dropped the shallots in, and BOOM - magic. The final product is so delicious that it was hard not to eat all of them before I got to the party.

One other modification - the recipe tells you to use a slotted spoon to transfer the shallots after the first cooking. But since you're already going to use a mesh sieve for the second transfer, it makes more sense to use it the whole time. I just set a small mesh sieve up over a large 2 quart glass measuring cup and poured the oil right into it. It was easy to pour the oil back in the pan to get it up to the higher temperature, and a lot less messy than trying to spoon a bunch of shallots out of hot oil.

Turns out there are tons of different methods for making crispy shallots and now I'm curious about them. The one I used was essentially a double fry method - you do a long slow cook at a lower temperature and then bump up the heat for a flash fry to crisp them up. But this Ina Garten recipe does a really long, slow cooking with no flash fry at the end. I'm curious how that would work.

Small note about frying and oils - I'm obviously a frying novice, but I'd like to point out that you want to make sure you're working with an oil that has a high enough smoke point. This recipe gets you up to 350 degrees. Canola oil is usually a safe bet, but if you want to make them paleo friendly you can use refined coconut oil. It's important that it's refined! Refined coconut oil can safely get up to 350 degrees, which doesn't leave you much wiggle room so make sure you're watching the thermometer. The temp drops down as soon as you add the shallots and never gets back up to 350, so you don't need to maintain it long. The oils I looked at in Whole Foods all had labels with the smoke point on them, which made it much easier to figure out.

Save your jar, because you can pour the oil back in after the frying and use it. It'll be flavored like shallots, and it will be delicious.

* I'm still deeply obsessed with our stainless steel pans, which have held up to daily abuse for the last five years. Of course, it's been so long that the original set isn't sold anymore, which makes me sad. But if you are going to have just one amazing pan, let it be a straight sided stainless steel braising pan, about 12 inches across and 2 - 3 inches deep (it holds about 3 quarts). I had the Emeril version, which I think was just a slightly less expensive model from All-Clad. But if I had to, I'd splurge on the All-Clad high end version, or see if they have any other slightly lower end options available. This one looks most similar to what I have.

Kristin's nautical sip and see

My dear friend Kristin had her second baby in December and instead of a baby shower we had an open house where people could drop by and meet the baby. I was cohosting, so I only had to focus on the food. Specifically, paleo food! Kris and her family are paleo and we wanted to make sure most of the food options were compatible. As is par for the course lately, I failed to get many pictures but it was a really wonderful afternoon of eating and passing around the sleepy new baby. Welcome Matteo!







I have enough friends who are paleo that I was pretty familiar with the restrictions (at the most basic - no grains, no dairy, no vegetable oils, no sugar) and it's really easy to find good recipes that meet those criteria online. I think that most people wouldn't have noticed that any of the savory food was paleo specifically.

For savory bites I made:
- bacon wrapped dates stuffed with pistachios (stuffed and wrapped a day ahead of time, baked the morning of, served room temp) - with uncured bacon instead of lamb bacon
- asian-style meatballs (made and baked the day before, served cool)
- deviled eggs three ways (eggs boiled three days ahead using this method, peeled one day ahead, fillings made one day ahead and stored in ziploc bags, filled the morning of by cutting off one corner of each bag and using them like pastry bags, except for the tuna one which had to be spooned) - with crispy shallots and jalapenos*, with tuna confit, and guacamole style.

I have never made grain free baked goods, so I made sure I picked a well reviewed recipe. These paleo chocolate chip cookies are a definite treat, but they feel healthier and fill you right up (probably because of the almond flour). Bonus - they're basically the easiest cookies you could possibly make. They were best fresh out of the oven, but alas, that wouldn't work for a party. They were still very good the next day and we're actually just finishing up the last of them today and they've gone down well with paleo and non-paleo people alike. The texture is not cookie like - it's more like a muffin top - but they're tasty.

Since not everyone has exactly the same paleo rules, I included food tags slightly more detailed than usual, listing the ingredients for each dish.

To please any carb hungry guests one of our other friends made beautiful sugar cookies, big platters of non-paleo sandwiches, hummus and vegetables and we also had a giant batch of guacamole (paleo) and tortilla chips (not paleo, I think). I also made non-paleo chocolate toffee cookies.

I wasn't in charge of the decorations but I wanted to add a bit of nautical flair to the food platters, so I cut blue cardstock into strips about 1" wide and freehand cut waves. D saw me doing it and asked if he could try and he ended up being so much better at it that I asked him to cut the rest (benefits of having an architect for a partner!). I packed them flat and then attached them to the edge of the cake stands and platters with Zots once I arrived. Easy-peasy.

It was such a lovely, low key way to celebrate with the family and I'm honored that I was able to be a part of it. Congratulations, Kris!



*Because regular mayo is usually made with canola oil and isn't paleo compliant, I tried making homemade mayo with avocado oil. And failed, four times, even after frantically googling several different recipes. I was starting with Nom Nom's recipe and it just didn't work for me. I managed to salvage a small batch of mayo by re-emulsifying it with another egg yolk and it was enough for the eggs, but I seriously don't know what was happening. I think the avocado oil might be more temperamental because I've never had a problem getting my Caesar salad dressing to emulsify, even when I'm being much lazier.

Homemade crackers

Possibly the most unnecessary holiday task to add to your list. Yet still kind of fun.

{fig almond crackers}

I made these for Friendsgiving and while it would have been much smarter not to give myself an extra task, I have to admit they were pretty delicious. And they actually held up well, so I could definitely have baked them a day or two ahead and stored them in a ziploc bag.

These crackers are easy (I think I put together the dough in less than 15 minutes) and they can be stored in the freezer and baked off as needed. I still have a half log that I'm looking forward to using and I'm even contemplating making another batch.

I've clearly been brainwashed by MSL.

Recipe is here - no need for edits. I used vermouth instead of port to avoid buying one more bottle of rarely used alcohol and it worked perfectly well. They are really good with creamy brie. They're more delicate than grocery store crackers, but our guests agreed that the deliciousness outweighed any inconvenience.

A word of warning - I also made the cheddar and gruyere version and I was so frustrated with them. It took a lot of cheese (that had to be finely grated by hand) and then they froze so solid that even after letting them sit out for longer than I was supposed to they still cracked into giant pieces when I tried to slice them. The final product was decent tasting, but I would never make them again.