flaneuse

The perfect breakfast

...to me is a vanilla cappuccino and a trader joe's maple vanilla cookie. Must get out to TJ's today before the snow!

Tea time

Tea: teavana's blend of strawberry lemonade, jasimine pearl, and peachberry in my 2 carat cup.

Goodbye Summer

We are finally into Autumn now at the Villa Flaneuse. Cold winds and rains whipped through this weekend, leaving us with a cool, blustery Monday. The refreshing change of weather and the lack of biting insects brought us outdoors to throughly inspect the yard and garden area. We ended up harvesting the rest of the tomatoes and peppers from the garden, then pulling nearly all of it up, save the carrots. More apples (hopefully the last batch) from our three apple trees were collected, and the persimmon tree was dully cut back, taking most of its fruit off. You'll see we had over a gallon of apples, some carrots, quite a few cherry tomatoes and green peppers, and four pomegranates from my vicini.

I took the buckets of apples and turned them into apple pie filling, which I froze. I made enough for 2 pies. The filling is quite easy to make, the difficulty lies in peeling, coring and slicing the apples. Particularly if the apples are of the home-grown varieties, where the shapes and sizes are not uniform. It makes it a little more time consuming to prepare them. And if you have recently had a surgery to your hand and you think it's suddenly a great idea to peel acidic apples and to constantly be washing your hands of apple goo all day, well then I really must advise you against it. Because after you have finished, two hours later, you'll suddenly notice that your hand really kind of hurts. And that your carefully stitched incision, done just over a week ago, might be looking rather angry. 

But anyways, to make the apple pie filling I use a mixture of red and green apples doused with lemon juice while peeling/chopping, enough flour to fully coat all the apple pieces, about half a cup of sugar, and whatever spices you like. I usually add in a large teaspoon of cinnamon, some cardamon and maybe half a teaspoon of ginger. Then I put the mixture in a gallon size ziplock bag, label and freeze! To cook I just transfer the frozen filling to an unbaked pie crust, dot with butter and top with another crust, cut vents, and then bake it at about 350F. Super easy!

We also had a ton of green peppers from the garden. I chopped them up and transfered them to ziplock bags for freezing as well. 

Things I learnt from 2009's garden:

• don't plant 6 cherry tomato plants unless you have about half a football field of garden space. Just for them.
• don't plant the carrots so close together, unless you really want baby carrots for 3 months.
• marigolds do work to keep bugs out of the garden and they look nice. 

Fix, Freeze, FEAST

Yesterday I cooked a total of eight meals. Yes, EIGHT meals. Six dinner entrees and then a lunch and dinner to be consumed that day. And it was easy-peasy, thanks to the innovative Fix, Freeze, Feast book by Kati Neville and Lindsay Tkacsik.

What makes this particular book stand out of the cooking-in-bulk, make-ahead-meal genre, is that it relies on you using actual, fresh ingredients and preparing your own sauces and marinades, rather than relying on things like condensed soups, canned vegetables and canned meats, and the fact that it utilizes warehouse club sizes—think number 10 cans, vast trays of chicken, etc. Each recipe is designed to make at least two to three entrees at 4 servings each. Don't let the warehouse sized items scare you off. but I have been repeatedly successful at scaling down the recipes to make one entree to serve 4 to 6. 

Neville and Tkacsik excel at making recipes that are able to please modern American palates too. There are quite a few Tex-Mex and Asian inspired dishes, as well as updated American favorites like Salisbury meatballs and various barbecue marinades. And not all dishes are casseroles, thank goodness. There are equal amounts of marinade recipes, casserole recipes, soups/stews, breakfast and even side dishes and snacks. 

The beginning of this book delves into how to use the warehouse deals and sales to your advantage, their methods of cooking and freezing, a food safety primer, how to store the meals, and what you'll need. It's very helpful to those new to the bulk cooking and freezing methods. The authors also discuss how to break down the recipes into logical grocery lists.

I like how the book is divided by type of meat (chicken, beef, pork); meat-free entrees, sides and soups; sauces, marinades and flavored butters; breakfast, snacks and sweets; and great appendix which includes xerox-able labels and cooking instructions, ideas on how to use the book (cooking clubs, etc) and how to adopt these techniques to your favorite recipes. 

I find that their recipes are very forgiving if you need to substitute or change an item or two. For instance, I read through their Swimming Rama (a Thai-inspired chicken dish), but because I have my own method for making Thai curries I made it according to my method and then froze it as they suggested. It worked fine. 

Here is a list of the dishes that I made yesterday, for those interested:

Pecan-Crusted Chicken Strips

Swimming Rama (slightly modified)

Spanish Rice (slightly modified--cooked the rice in beef broth and added more veg)

Salisbury Meatballs

Chicken Cordon Bleu (made this and cooked it immediately, by sauteing it in a cast-iron pan until cooked through. It was fantastic!)

Basic Red Sauce Recipe (Modified—scaled down and I added some left-over Chianti)

Other recipes I have made in the past and enjoyed:

Sweet Chicken Tostada filing

Classic Lasagna, Small Pan

Steak Skewers

Ginger Beef (this one was a bit of a miss for me, but maybe I didn't cook it long enough)

An's Pork Chops

Sticky Ribs

Asparagus and Potato Frittata

Breakfast Burritos

PB&J Breakfast Cookies