• After over a year of talking about, construction finally begins on our new closet. Hopefully, by the end of the week, the Lovely Suse will have a nice shiny new closet all for herself.
• I managed to wire an ethernet port in the finished basement so we now have crazy fast transfers from our Tivo down there. I like drilling holes and stripping wires.
• We saw Little Children over the weekend, featuring the Bad News Bears’ Kelly Leak. Also the author of the book it was adapted from lives around the corner from us, so it was really interesting to see all of the references to stuff around town.
• I had this craving for Middle Eastern this weekend, specifically, a falafel. I miss the ones from Sepal, which used to be close to our house, but has since moved on to the MIT campus. They have the best tasting and freshest sandwiches, and there’s nothing even close to that around here. We checked out Shawarma King on Friday, which did the trick, although still not as good as Sepal. We followed this up with making a grilled chicken fatoosh salad yesterday.
• Yes, maintaining my streak, I grilled outside last night in the snow. I have now grilled outdoors every month since last Spring. I plan on maintaining this streak for a very long time.
• In case you were wondering, this is how you make a pizza.
• I’m very excited about the prospect of a Sirius/XM merger. That way, I’ll get Sox games online.
• I finally got a new front emblem for my car. It looked pretty pathetic as all of the paint had chipped off. Of course, it took me wanting the car to look decent before trading it in for me to finally get off my ass and get one.

Ah Valentine’s Day! A day of overpriced roses, uneaten boxes of chocolates, crappy prix fixe restaurant menus, and loads of frustrated men who feel forced to fall in line with expectations and cliches. What’s not to love? Well, starting from our first Valentine’s Day together, the Lovely Suse and I have done away with most of the normal hooplah and made up our own fun traditions. I can’t reveal some of them, but the one major one that I can tell you about is staying home and cooking an elaborate meal together, almost always a whole roasted fish. I don’t know what the symbolism is, but I guess there’s something romantic about having your dinner stare back at you or something. With fish restrictions in place due to the pregnancy, we made some concessions this year.

The first concession this year was an unexpected one, due to the weather. We got hammered by a snow/rain/sleet/slush storm on Valentine’s Day, so while the Lovely Suse cooked, I sloshed around in the messy stuff trying desperately to shovel/hack/snowblow the stuff from our and our neighbor’s driveway. I came inside covered in sweat and my hair all over the place. Not exactly romantic. Still, we soldiered on and the Lovely Suse did most of the cooking, so great success. Inspired by a recent meal at August, where one of our dishes was a flatbread layered with roasted beets, spiced yogurt, smoked Parmesan, and dill, we decided to make a couscous based on the same flavors. The beets were simply roasted in the oven with a little salt and olive oil, roughly chopped, and added to the Israeli couscous with lemon juice, olive oil, dill, and scallions. I swear, we had no idea that it would turn the couscous a flaming pink color, but seeing as how it was Valentine’s Day, we went with it. To continue the pink theme, some fennel, cumin,and coriander crusted roast wild salmon topped the couscous, and to finish it all off, some dill and lemon spiked yogurt, and a salad of cucumbers and radishes (more pink!). Holy crap, that’s a lot of pink. But it was pretty frigging delicious. Lots of cool, crunchy, creamy flavors, beautifully fresh on a miserable Winter’s night.

Now it was dessert time. For the past couple of year, the dessert that we couldn’t get out of our heads (and 2004″ winner of best dessert) was the Vanilla Panna Cotta with Basil Coulis and Passion fruit from Brunoise in Montreal. We’re not huge dessert eaters, usually going for seasonal sorbets and ice creams and the like, but this was one dessert that sounded so interesting that we had to try it. One bite, and we both sort of just looked at each other in stunned silence, took another bite, and then “Holy crap, this is unbelievable.” The flavors just mesh together so well, with the unexpected basil working perfectly with the sweet and tart passion fruit and the super-creamy panna cotta. It’s been over two years since we had it, and we still talk about it. Since we haven’t been able to make it back to Montreal, it was time to attempt to make it on our own.

The panna cotta part was easy. Panna cotta literally means “cooked cream”, which is essentially what it is. Cream, milk, and sugar simmered briefly, and then solidified with some gelatin and chilled. We used this recipe which we halved. Super simple, and it worked like a charm. Next, came the basil syrup. We made a simple syrup, which is equal parts water and sugar, simmered until all of the sugar is dissolved, turned off the heat, and then threw in a handful of fresh chopped basil. After letting it steep for about 15 minutes, we threw the whole thing into the blender, whizzed it up, and then poured it through a fine mesh strainer to leave us with a deep green syrup with small flecks of the basil.

Finally came the passion fruit. This is the biggest challenge of this dish since we find passion fruits at Russo’s for about a month out of the year, and they’re often small, under ripe,and expensive. The pickings were slim, but I took my chances on a slighly wrinkled one (they’re ripe when wrinkled), and crossed my fingers. I brought it home, sliced it in half, and success! Perfectly ripe oozing flesh and seeds. We were in business.

At this point, assembly is a snap. Pour the syrup over the panna cotta, spoon the passion fruit on top, grab two spoons, and get eating. While not completely as transcendent as the original, it was pretty fricking outstanding, and brought us back to that meal in Montreal. So despite the snow and muck and sweat and messy hair, it turned out to be a another great Valentine’s Day dinner,and nary a rose or a cheesey proposal or box of chocolates in sight.

• I have no idea why I get President’s Day off and not some of the other Monday holidays (Martin Luther King Day, Columbus Day, Veteran’s Day), but I’m not complaining. It was much needed.
• Happy 1st Birthday to the Lovely Suse’s car. It was purchased one year ago this weekend, and it has at least another nine more birthdays ahead of it. In more car news, I did my first car shopping last week, and if all goes as planned, I will have a nice new shiny car by the end of the month. Does anyone want to buy a 2001 BMW 325i with 105k miles on it? It has been lovingly cared for and needs a good home. I’ll miss her, but it’s time. I need something a little more reliable, a little bigger, and cheap to repair.
• The annual post Valentine’s Day family meal at Tosca. In the past, we’ve been overloaded with extra courses and desserts from the chef, but luckily this year, they took it easy on us. No bad full for us, thank God. We’ve also managed to figure out the best way to order for us, sharing three appetizers and one entree, splitting everything. We basically end up with a four course tasting menu of our choosing, which prevents palate fatigue and let’s us try lots of dishes. Score!
• We made granola this weekend and have had it for breakfast the past two days. More on this to come.
• Finally, after sufferring through fits and starts, we finally finished painting the last of the doors in our house. Now, with the exception of the ceiling in our bedroom (which continues to annoy the Lovely Suse), we’ve painted every single surface in the house. Well, almost. I still plan on painting the basement floor at some point. Maybe. It’s still on the list of projects that we have on our refrigerator door along with getting radiator covers, getting new glass for our front door (which was supposed to be the first thing to get done, a year ago), building a closet which will hopefully get started this week or next week, and redoing the kitchen backsplash, which has sort of been forgotten. We’ll see how many of them we can get done before May.
• Another Yorkie meetup, this one featuring a cake shaped like a Yorkie and yes, a cake for the dogs. Yes, people are crazier than we are. And the cake made the dogs fart up a storm. It was, um, pungent. In other George news, the only person who hates the snow more than we do is him. When you’re all of a foot tall, I can’t imagine walking/sliding on snow and ice is particularly fun. He decided to protest the snow by pooping AND peeing on the rug. Ugh.
• I now have a randomly rotating series of banners at the top of the site featuring some of my favorite food photos. More to come as I get them done. Also, for those of you using Internet Explorer, this site has always looked screwy and the latest post wouldn’t show up correctly. With a change of my theme, that has now been fixed. It should look the same across all browsers. Nice.
• It’s a sad week. After four seasons, it’s time for The O.C. to come to an end. It went downhill a bit after the first year and I know the show is meant for high school girls, but this season has been a strong one and I’ll miss it. I guess it’s just time to move on.

During workdays, I eat constantly. Literally, all day long, I don’t go 30 minutes without eating something. In order to maintain that level of consumption, I need a good stash of treats to keep me going throughout the day. My food is scattered around my desk, so I decided to do a little photo expose of it all.

It all started with the Clif Bar drawer. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been snacking on these bars. I always have a bunch of different flavors to choose from, but my current supply includes Blueberry Crisp (a new flavor), Carrot Cake, Cookies ‘N Cream, Banana Nut Bread, and Chocolate Almond Fudge. From my food diary, my regular readers know how I space out my bar throughout the day. A little bit here, a little bit there. When I run out these, I’m lost. I NEED my Clif Bar like other people need coffee.

Moving down to my bottom drawer, it’s a total mess. It originally came into play as a dumping ground for my various bags of tea and random bags of candy leftover from Halloween, Christmas, and Easter, as well as my eating utensils and napkins for my lunches. As I brought more random stuff in, it was the only place that could fit it all. In the middle of the photo is my giant bag of homemade trail mix. Peanuts, almonds, raisins, dried cranberries, dried mango, pumkin seeds, and the all-important chocolate chips. Yes, i know that chocolate chips aren’t healthy, but whatever. They taste good, and I always make sure to balance it out with the healthy stuff. The the right of that is extra bags of peanuts and almonds to replenish the snack bag.

At the top is my box of chinese green tea and my Oregon Decaf Chai. I used to drink green tea every morning, often multiple cups of it throughout the day. For whatever reason, I stopped doing this, and now only drink it when I’m REALLY tired in the morning or when I’m freezing cold. I only drink the chai in the afternoon, and while this used to be my 2pm fix, I now have it maybe once a week if even that. In the upper left corner is a bag of Trader Joe’s Whole Grain Pretzel Sticks that I hardly ever eat. I think that bag has been in there since October, but somehow, the pretzels haven’t gone stale yet. I’ll eventually throw these out, but I’m not quite ready yet.

Finally, on the left is a bag of “Bartons Old Fashioned Vanilla Chews”. Remember Bullseyes? The caramel chews with the vanilla creme inside? When I was a kid, these were my favorite candy ever. These Chews are basically that, but without the creme filling. They came from my next door office neighbor who had this giant stack of candy filled boxes shaped like a snowman. Over the course of a month and a half, I ate the entire bag of yogurt covered pretzels. Wanting it all out of his office, he gave me the bag of Cremes. They sort of frighten me, but I’ll have one every once in a while.

But wait, there’s more! On an upper shelf is a box of < ahref="http://www.kashi.com/">Kashi Honey Sesame TLC’s, and a jar of Trader Joe’s Desert Mesquite Honey. Last, but not least, is my Jelly Belly Machine, complete with a stack of pennys.

Now, let’s take a look at The Lovely Suse’s snack drawer:

Holy crap, look how neat and tidy it all is. The Lovely Suse says:

“here is what is in it:

TLC’s
honey
assorted teas (4 different kinds)
box of S’mores Luna Bars
assorted Luna Bars (4)
leftover candy- twix
2 cans caffeine free Coke
bag of trail mix
1 packet of maple and brown sugar instant oatmeal
box of instant hot chocolate
box of caffeine free chai
large bag of mini tootie pops (assorted flavors)
box of microwave popcorn
2 rolls of ribbon (red and white)

“of course, some of this stuff is for the kiddos- candy, tootsie pops,
popcorn. ribbon and hot chocolate is leftover from their holiday
treats. the rest is all MINE! ;)”

“on an interesting note, i actually haven’t eaten anything out of the
drawer for awhile. the only thing i’ve used is the tea and honey.
oh, and i guess some TLCs.”

“my advisees are facinated with the drawer and usually come begging for
food out of it at some point during the week outside of our scheduled
meeting. i am, however, quite stingy in what i give out and try to
feed them the things i want to clear out. they finally finished off
the end of the other trail mix with cashews. and they’re slowly
working on the bag of tootsie pops. it took them a whole year to
finish the last bag of tootsie pops.”

I know, fascinating stuff, huh? So, what treats do you have hiding in your office?

I usually take pride in buying only the freshest, most seasonal ingredients, preferably still dirty from the soil they were grown in. The amount of packaged processed food in our house is pretty minimal, mostly limited to breakfast cereals, tortilla chips, canned beans and tomatoes, packaged pasta, etc. One day last week my shopping basket contained the following: JIF peanut butter, Fluff, and a package of Jelly Bellys. Nice and wholesome, huh? As much as I wish I could be completely all-natural and good for the Earth and blah blah blah, sometimes it’s impossible not to give in to some of most ingrained and basic food cravings from your youth.

I haven’t had a peanut butter and fluff sandwich in about 5 years, since introducing my Indian/Texan roomate to the wonders of the Fluffernutter. After his first taste, it became his 2AM-home-from-the-bar-i’m-drunk-and-i-want-something-tasty snack (whereas I would sometimes attempt to make fresh pasta or freshly fried French fries, to near-disastrous results) I had no idea it was such a regional specialty, but apparently, it’s not well known outside of New England. It wasn’t until the brouhaha that occurred last year when a moronic State Senator trying to make a name for himself tried to get Fluff banned from elementary schools, citing the poor nutritional value of the gooey treat, that the real origins of Fluff became fully known. It was born in the 1920’s in Lynn Lynn the City of Sin by the Durkee-Mower Company, where it is still produced today. More importantly, it’s probably the single greatest sandwich ever created. Those of you who know me know that I don’t take sandwiches lightly, but more than any other sandwich, it has roots that go far back into my childhood. Sure a nice grilled panini on freshly made bread is one of my favorite things in the world, but a Fluffernutter touches something deep inside my stomach and my brain.

The combination of sweet, sticky, salty, and nutty is pretty much perfect, and just thinking about it is making my mouth water. If there was ever any doubt who my future child will take after, I think the Lovely Suse’s sudden need for a mid-morning Fluffernutter says it all. We haven’t had peanut butter or fluff in the house, ever, but last week that all changed. Not having any bread on hand, i went to the next best thing: Saltines. After all, the Fluffernutter isn’t really about the bread. That’s just a vehicle to get the combo to your face. A spoon would work just as well, but I don’t like getting peanut butter in my fluff jar and vice versa (not that I will ever use either of them for any other purpose than this). A couple of crackers loaded up was a nice little snack to get my to dinner, and the smells and tastes of childhood came rushing back. No matter how much of a food snob I turn into, there will always be a place for a Fluffernutter in our house.

• You know what the best days are? When you’re housebound because of a blizzard going on outside, and all you can do is stay inside, watch movies, sleep, eat, and occassionally go out and shovel. So let’s elimate the snow and the shoveling, and keep the rest. That’s what we did on Sunday. We made a deal to not leave the house except to take George out, got all of our errands done on Saturday, and stayed in our PJ’s all day. We finally caught up on our Tivo a bit, watched some movies, did a little housecleaning, and made some tasty food. It was just what we needed, and I think we’ll be doing this some more before the baby comes.
• The return of the no-knead bread. This time with much better olive distribution.
• Painting doors sucks. But the end results are worth it.
• We saw The Departed this weekend, which is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year. Most impressively, everyone nailed the Boston accents, but when are people going to realize that not every single person who lives in Boston has that accent? When the movie was over, I wanted it to go on for another two hours. That’s the sign of a good movie.
• When some one offers us tasty free food, we never say no. It’s nice to get a call asking if we want a huge free lasagna. Um, ok. I think we’re going to need a second freezer soon.
• It’s funny. I’ve become my parents’ handyman. When I go home now, they have a list of stuff for me to fix. When did I become the home improvement expert?

There must be something in the air (or this fricking ridiculously cold weather snap that we’re in the midst of), because over the past couple of weeks, I’ve seen shepherd’s pie featured on a bunch of different TV cooking shows. Whether it’s a proper British Sunday lunch or the perfect comforting winter meal, it seems to be everywhere. A recent visit to Matt Murphy’s, our favorite local Irish gastro-pub, the only place where we’ve actually sampled this dish, reaffirmed our need to attempt to make this at home. We didn’t actually order it that night as our table was already filled with fish and chips and a pulled pork sandwich, but the Lovely Suse made me promise that we would make it at home. Soon.

While knowing that this was the sort of meal that you made on a weekend afternoon, not on a weeknight, we set out to do so anyways. However, we spread the work over two nights, making the filling one night, and then making the mashed potatoes and doing the final baking on the following night. Not very challenging, huh? Well, to make things a little more complicated, we decided to make the filling in the 30 minutes between cleaning up from dinner and a Monday night playgroup for George. Could we do it? How would we have time to do all of that chopping and browning and simmering and reducing? Enter the food processor.

We have pretty much every kitchen gadget that you can think of, from immersion blenders to hand-cranked pasta machines to ice cream makers to panini presses. Let’s just say that we did a really good job of registering for our wedding. One of the tools that we hardly ever use, though, is the food processor. I never think to use it, always choosing to do my chopping by hand, using the mortar and pestle, or using the immersion blender. It feels like cheating. In our quest for time saving in the kitchen, it was time to bring out the big boy.

First, we had to get the meat started. Trying to find ground lamb is pretty much impossible at our local markets, and lamb “stew meat” costs more than $10/lb. Luckily, I remembered the half of a leg of lamb that I had in the freezer, so after an overnight defrost, it was time for the food processor’s first test. In went the leg meat, cut into smaller pieces, and after 15 seconds, out came perfectly ground meat. Nice. Into the pot it went to brown. In the meantime, we had to deal with the vegetables. Well, as long as we have it out, let’s see what the processor can do with them, right? In went carrots, parsnips, celery, onions, and garlic. In less than a minute, everything was ready to go. OK, maybe this food processor thing isn’t so bad after all. Once browned, out came the lamb and in went the veggies. After another 8-10 minutes, once they had softened, we deglaze with half a bottle of red wine. Add the lamb back in with a can of cherry tomatoes, a couple of cups of stock, some fresh thyme, parsley, salt, and pepper, bring to a boil, cover, reduce the heat to low, and off to playgroup you go. After simmering away for an hour (George spent the majority of it fending off Billie the Tibetan Terrier puppy who insisted on bopping him on the top of his head until George finally put him in his place and had him bowing at his feet), it had reduced a bit, intensified in flavor, and had filled the house up with some pretty nice aromas. After cooling off, into the fridge it went.

Fast forward to the next night, and it was time to finish things off. Time for some mashed potaters. I’ve tried many different ways of making them over the years, but I’m really digging the current incarnation of them. Skins off, cut into one inch pieces, dropped into cold water, brought up to a boil, and reduced to simmer until cooked through. After a good drain, instead of going back into the pot for a good old mashing, it was time to bring in another favorite gadget: the ricer. A ricer looks like a giant garlic press, and it’s great for helping to make light and airy gnocchi dough. Mashing the potato makes for a pretty heavy finished product, but using the ricer keeps them light and smooth. Just squeeze them with the ricer back into the pot, add milk, butter, salt, and pepper, and it’s time for some pie making!

Here’s the easy part. Ladle your lamb filling into a casserole dish, layer your potatoes on top, and it’s ready for the oven. The best part about the entire dish is the crusty pieces of potato that form in the oven, so having lots of peaks and valleys in your potato layer makes sure that you get lots of them. Feel free to make whatever sort of crop circles you want. In it goes into a 375 degree oven for about 35 minutes, or until the filling starts bubbling up and the top and nice and brown and crusty. Be sure to have a sheet pan underneath your casserole dish to catch any bubbling overflow. You do not want it dripping to the bottom of your oven, burning, and filling it with smoke.

So let’s see, we spent 30 minutes on night one, and probably another 30 minutes on night two. Minimal work, minimal chopping, and oh, did I mention that we actually made enough filling for two or three pies? Yup. The next time we feel like making this, All we need to do is defrost it, make some mashed potatoes, and stick it in the oven. With the right planning, the right tools, and some swallowing of my pride, it doesn’t have to be relegated to weekend nights anymore.

• We made a quick last-minute trip down to NYC for Yin’s engagement party. It was all a bit of a whirlwind, but we figure we have to take advantage of every opportunity to travel that we can right now. Very soon, this will become a lot more complicated.
• Our hotel was conveniently located, affordable (it’s amazing how much cheaper it is to stay in NYC during the winter), and most importantly, had a giant 42 inch plasma tv in our room. I was perfectly happy not venturing out into the cold weather and staying there and watching it.
• We had the greatest/craziest cab driver ever who managed to get us from the upper west side to the west village in 10 minutes flat. In traffic. I sort of just kept my eyes closed and held on for dear life.
• Ianqui and SuperG picked the excellent The Other Room to meet for drinks. I love dark little hidden places like this that only exist in NYC.
• It’s nice to be able to get into a popular restaurant that doesn’t take reservations on a busy Saturday night. It helps when you’re related to the GM, and it’s even nicer to be treated very very well once you get there. I think we’re still recovering from the meal a little bit, but needless to say, we ate very well, and ate a lot. Three appetizers, two entrees, two sides, and two desserts later, we had to walk it off for a bit before heading back uptown.
• When you’ve got some time to kill on a Saturday night, apparently the Fifth Avenue Apple Store is the place to go. It’s open 24/7, and it’s basically a huge free internet cafe. There are hundreds of people there just checking email, reading websites, playing games, chatting, etc, and it’s an incredibly cool looking place. And it’s warm.
• Is there anything better in the morning than a still-warm everything H & H bagel?
• Geoge won “Pet of the Month” on the monthly Go Play newsletter. We celebrated with an extra duck popper.
• I soooooo didn’t care about the Super Bowl this year. I mean, I watched it, sort of, meaning I read the paper during the game and watched the commercials and halftime show.