in january

In January, I made a blue cheese and caramelized onion gallette from A Year of Pies. 

And a pot pie stew and sweet potato biscuits from Appetite for Reduction.

I also discovered some new blogs. The first is A Sweet Spoonful, which I heard about from Eating From the Ground Up and Orangette. The blogger, Megan Gordon, from A Sweet Spoonful recently released a cookbook called Whole Grain Mornings. I haven't flipped through the cookbook, but I've been perusing Gordon's blog. I like her writing style and her stories, and I like her emphasis on whole grains. I made steel cut oats with a blueberry compote (her recipe calls for cranberries, but I didn't have any one hand).

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I also stumbled upon The Chubby Vegetarian. I made a veggie meatloaf

and veggie meatballs

and a barbeque eggplant sandwich with caesar cole slaw.

I've also been reading The Kitchn and Food52 and my name is yeh.

at long last

It's been a while, I know, but I have a good excuse. I was on the academic job market last fall, and it was crazy busy. But don't worry, I made time to eat. My goal was to cook simple meals and not rely on pre-packaged garbage or take out, and I was mostly successful. Last night, I scrolled through the pictures on my phone and found these highlights:

Apparently, I made fried egg sandwiches one day. I believe that the biscuit recipe is from the Smitten Kitchen, but I'm not very good at biscuit making so I didn't do them justice. 

I also made a red lentil and broccoli curry, from Veganomican. The original recipe calls for cauliflower, but I'm not a fan, hence the broccoli.

I also made fettuccine and meatballs. The sauce is a butter-roasted tomato sauce from Bon Appetit, and so is the meatball recipe. I made the fettuccine (my reward after returning from a campus interview--fresh pasta is the best!) from Food 52's feature on Mario Batali. 

Let's see, what else? I was on a veggie burger kick and made these beet burgers, from the Post Punk Kitchen. They were super good, but messy to make. I shredded the beets in the food processor and I got beet juice everywhere--the counters and floor--and the kitchen looked like a crime scene.

I also made a butternut squash and cheddar galette, from A Year of Pies.

I was able to make some time for baking, beginning with pumpkin whoopie pies, from either Baked: New Frontiers in Baking or Baked Explorations: Classic American Desserts Revisited. 

For Christmas, I made Funfetti cookies.

And chocolate peppermint cookies from Baked Elements: The Importance of Being Baked in 10 Favorite Ingredients. 

 And rugelach from Baking Out Loud: Fun Desserts with Big Flavors.

I know I cooked other stuff last fall, and the lack of photographic evidence doesn't mean it didn't taste good enough to share. It just means that I was too hungry and impatient to take a few seconds and document it. 

thanksgiving in june

Tomorrow night, Drew is headed to China to spend a year doing his dissertation research. Though we'll miss each other (I plan to visit in September and December), it is an exciting time for the both of us. This is a great opportunity for Drew- I mean, how many people can say they've spent a significant time in another country? And as for me, it will be a busy time as I finish my dissertation, do my own dissertation fieldwork, and apply for jobs. 

Living in China for a year means that Drew is missing out on some important holidays...like my birthday. 

Wait, what's that you say? That's not a national holiday? 

Okay, but aside from my birthday, Drew is missing out on some other holidays. For the most part, I don't think he's bothered by this, but it bothers me that he'll be missing out on Thanksgiving. I recognize that Thanksgiving is not without controversy. I actually attempted to read an academic book on its history, but it was boring and I stopped after 10 pages. Plus, in the introduction, the author basically said that we don't know what the first Thanksgiving was like, so, satisfied that I was not inadvertently celebrating the murder of American Indians, it made it easier to stop reading (um, to be clear, I know that happened, but if an academic can't find evidence that Thanksgiving is rooted in this, then it may not exist).

Anyhow, what really matters to me is the Thanksgiving food. I'm not much of a turkey girl, but I can practically eat my weight in stuffing, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and pumpkin pie. So last night, Drew and I had our own Thanksgiving. We made a seitan roast, stuffed with leeks and shitakes. 

It was easy to make (we made it up a few days beforehand) and I think this will become our new Thanksgiving staple. We also made stuffing:

And green bean casserole, but I had to fight for this one. You see, green bean casserole is usually made with canned green beans, cream of mushroom soup, and french fried onions. I'm a big fan, though I make it with fresh green beans and not canned, but Drew is not. But I assured him that he'd like a homemade green bean casserole, and I was right. I used Alton Brown's recipe, which I watched him make on an episode of his show Good Eats years ago. At first, this dish seems high maintenance, but it's really not. You mix up sliced onions with panko and flour and bake them until crispy for about a half an hour. While that's baking, you blanch green beans and make the mushroom soup. It will all take longer than opening up a bunch of cans and mixing up their contents, but it's completely worth it.   

Of course, we had to have mashed potatoes. These are really simple, just butter and sour cream.

Here's what the full plate looks like:

Even though I don't think it's really Thanksgiving unless I eat pumpkin pie, I conceded and made a chocolate cream pie instead. Drew does not share my enthusiasm for pumpkins, and this was his request. I was happy to comply; after all, I did get green bean casserole on the menu, and I'll get to bake with pumpkins all I want this fall.   

The recipe is from Ashley English's A Year of Pies. I like this cookbook, and I suspect I'll use it more often this fall, which I consider to be pie season (despite it being called A Year of Pies).

Our Thanksgiving was successful, and we were satisfied. We decided that if we ever host Thanksgiving, we're totally going to rock at it. We also realized that there is a reason people grill for summer holidays-it gets too hot in the kitchen! 

chicken pot pie

I have spent seven winters in Southern California, and I'm still not used to them.  Having spent every winter in Minnesota, except for one in New York, I'm not at all used to the 60 or 70 degree "winter" days.  Anytime someone finds out I'm from Minnesota, s/he inevitably says something like "oh, you must love the winters here."  And then I go all Debbie Downer and say that I actually miss the cold and snow.  In fact, sometimes I deliberately under-dress (meaning that I don't wear a jacket or a sweatshirt) when I go outside just so I feel cold and can pretend I'm in Minnesota...on a fall day.

This winter was probably the "coldest" one since I moved here in 2006.  I had to buy a couple long sleeve running shirts, and I almost considered buying a pair of running pants.  On a handful of days in the early morning (meaning 7am), the air was cool and brisk; I could see my breath, and I found frost on the ground and on our car.  On some days, I even wore gloves while I ran.  

Though others complained that the 50 degree days were freezing, I was sad to see them go.  Aside from the beauty and peacefulness of freshly fallen snow, one of the things I love about winter is the comfort food.  Eating hearty soups and stews when its 70 degrees just doesn't feel right.  But, I adapt and eat these things anyway.  One of my favorites is chicken pot pie.       

The recipe is from Ashley English's "A Year of Pies," and of course, we vegetarianized it, which means that we used a bag of fake chicken strips instead of the shredded chicken.  The result was amazing, and my pie crust was better than usual.     

galumpkis pie

Before I tell you about the dish that inspired the dinner diary project, let me back up and tell you more about my cooking background.  After moving out of the dorms in college, I decided I wanted to learn to cook.  I mean, I knew how to do this more or less, but having lived at home and later in the dorms, I had never been fully responsible for my meals.  So I got started with family recipes (which, being from Minnesota, means they probably involved a lot of condensed soup) and boxed meals like Hamburger Helper.  In the period of time between graduating from college and attending graduate school, I also decided that I wanted to learn to bake.  Convinced that I would never have time to do either of these things as a graduate student (oh how wrong I was about that), I decided that that was the time to learn to cook and bake.  

When I got to grad school, I graduated from cooking with condensed soup and Hamburger Helper to cooking with real food- meaning, not processed.  I went to the farmer's market for the first time.  One of the first recipe source I used was Simply Recipes.  I planned my meals and grocery shopped once a week.  Have you ever gone to the grocery store and seen someone walking through the aisles with a list, checking off items and wondered what sort of people do that?  Well, people like me, that's who.  I continued to bake, plying my friends with cookies and cupcakes.

When Drew and I started dating, we began cooking together almost immediately.  The first meal he made me was an old family favorite: spaghetti and veggie meatballs.  I wish I could say that the first meal I made for him was something that also had great meaning, but I can't.  I think I had a recipe for lasagna rolls with gorgonzola cream sauce (courtesy of Rachael Ray) that I wanted to try, so I made that.  And while we've made veggie meatballs many times since, I can't say the same for Rachael's lasagna rolls.  Sorry Rachael, in case you're reading this.  You're probably not.  

Drew and I continue to share cooking and meal planning responsibilities.  We usually make a main dish and a side dish for each meal (usually the side is less cumbersome than the main one), and we cook 2 or 3 times a week, eating leftovers on the days we don't cook.  Sometimes meal ideas come easily; I might come across recipes while reading food magazines or blogs.  Other times, we each select a meal, so as to not burden one person with all the meal planning.  Eating a variety of good, quality food is important to us, which is why we both cook- it is very, very rare that only one of us cooks any entire dinner for the both of us.  In four years, I can't even count on one hand how many times this has happened.  And even though we keep an emergency box of chicken nuggets and bag of frozen ravioli in the freezer, we steer clear of processed foods.          

The dish that launched this project is Galumpkis Pie, from A Year of Pies by Ashley English, her fifth cookbook.  Her other cookbooks are about canning and preserving, dairy, bees, and chickens, and blogs over at Small Measure.  While I have never looked at her books on keeping chickens or bees, as I have no use or desire for doing either, I have perused her books on canning and dairy.  I checked out A Year of Pies from the Newport Beach Public Library, and immediately fell in love- the text and pictures are captivating, but the recipes- a mix of sweet and savory- are interesting and creative.  

I had never heard of Galumpkis Pie, which is an adaptation of a Polish dish, but I was intrigued.  The dish was easy to make and came together easily.  The bottom layer is a pie crust, and the rest consists of alternate layers of boiled cabbage and a ground beef-tomato filling (we substituted veggie crumbles).  At first, I thought it would be a pain, but it was not.  After rolling out the crust, I let it rest in the refrigerator while I prepared the filling and while the cabbage was cooking.

Advance planning really helped with this dish and made it so easy to make.  The filling contains cooked rice, which I made a few days earlier.  And the pie crust was already prepared too; I made a double crust a few weeks earlier for a quiche and popped half of it in the freezer for a later use.

Usually our dinner rotation contains dishes from a limited number of cuisines- Italian, American, Mexican, and Asian- so this dish was a welcome break from our usual routine.  The filling was really interesting- the cloves, a surprising addition, turned out to be a pleasant one, and one that mellowed over time.

I think Drew made carrots to go with this, but I can't remember how he seasoned them.

I also don't have a picture because I didn't know this would inspire the Dinner Diary project.