I've been a bad, bad blogger.

Yes, I've been slacking on the blog front. There's just a lot going on; my newest freelance client asked me to work for them in-house, full-time for about a month or so this spring, so I'm scurrying to make headway on other freelance projects before that starts, since I'll be in an office forty hours per week for the first time in a long time. I'm really excited for the change of pace; I'll get to work on some interesting projects and put on real clothes and speak with someone other than my cat.

Anyway, I just wanted to pop in and drop a few photos before I put up some more substantial posts later this week.

If you've been reading Choice of Pies, you know about my culinary slump, and the great news is I'm finally starting to crawl out of it. I decided, in a fit of frustration, to go back to the basics, and that has helped a lot. Over the past couple of weeks, I've made a few dishes that used to be old standbys for me that somehow dropped out of the rotation. Like stuffed shells:


The filling is so easy: low-fat ricotta, part-skim mozzarella cheese, maybe some parmesan or asiago if you have it, an egg, and some dried Italian herb blend (or fresh herbs, if you have them). I had some leftover spaghetti sauce that I used, but since there wasn't much of it, I sauteed a bunch of frozen spinach and mixed it in to stretch the sauce. I stuffed the boiled shells, topped them with my "Florentine" sauce, and sprinkled some mozzarella on top, then baked it at 375 for about half an hour. Easy, not very expensive, and very tasty served with a big green salad; Dan was thrilled.


I also made one of Dan's favorites: my mom's mac and cheese. It's the easiest mac and cheese ever - one dish, no white sauce - and it comes out perfectly every time. I'll post the recipe tomorrow. This is not the healthiest recipe I've got, but it's delicious and worth it and since almost all my dinners are low-fat I figure I can splurge once in a while.


And lastly, that old classic beef stew: perfect for the drizzly mud-season weather we've got now. I made this on Saturday afternoon, while we stayed home and watched movies; the whole house smelled great as it bubbled away, and I let it cook so long that the meat was falling-apart tender. We ate it while watching another movie (on Dan's laptop, since our DVD player is broken) and enjoyed sopping up the broth with spiced Ethiopian honey bread that we had picked up that morning at the farmer's market. I'm going to have to look for a recipe, because that bread was tasty.

So there you have it: there is a light at the end of my takeout tunnel, and I'm finally crawling out of this slump. Check back tomorrow for Mom's mac and cheese recipe and a review of a great food memoir that I read recently.

Another bread shot

This time as toast. It's still not a great shot, but I wasn't planning on posting about this bread yet. Might as well, though. I made the sourdough honey wheat bread from the Panera cookbook, but I added a cup of my own multigrain blend. I based the blend on this one from the King Arthur store; by shopping the bulk bins at the Coop, I was able to make the same blend for about half the price (and I could leave out the poppy seeds - for me, they don't really add anything other than the potential for embarrassment when they get stuck in my teeth). I also used King Arthur's white whole wheat flour, which I can get from the Coop bulk bins for $.59 a pound (more than 40% off the normal retail price).


Dan loved the bread; while I thought it was tasty, I'm not completely satisfied with it. It was very, very dense, and I'm not sure whether that's due to too much kneading or not enough rising time. It did make great toast, as pictured above; I had some breakfast the other morning alongside a bowl of nonfat plain yogurt with a touch of blackberry jam and some canned peaches.

One batch of dough makes two loaves; I put the other half in the freezer (before the first rise, per the cookbook directions) and will probably bake it tomorrow. I'm going to keep experimenting with this recipe and others until I find the perfect balance. One thing I am satisfied with: the price. I can make my own bread for about $1.00 a loaf, which is a good deal better than the $4.oo or $5.oo that I would pay for the artisan bread that I love. Also, multigrain sourdough, my bread of choice, is hard to find in this area; a lot of bakeries only make it once a week or periodically as a monthly/seasonal special.

Salad Days: The Ploughman's

I'm running a little behind this week. The special project that I've been talking about for the past couple weeks will finally be posted here TOMORROW, so hopefully that will make up for it.

Anyway, on to this week's salad. I had big plans for this week. These plans involved corn, sauteed with scallions and garlic, and an avocado, and a salsa dressing. I was excited about this salad. It was almost finished, too, when I popped a piece of avocado in my mouth - and promptly spit it back out again. I'm not sure why, but it was horribly bitter, and the awful taste lingered for a long time.

Without the avocado, I had nothing - it was to be the centerpiece of this salad. But we still needed to eat. Luckily, I had baked some fresh bread that day (my first ever loaf from scratch - a 7-grain sourdough boule), and that had actually turned out pretty well. So I quickly added some cucumbers to the prepared lettuce to make a simple side salad, and shifted the focus of our dinner to an old favorite from our time in the UK - the ploughman's lunch. The ploughman's, a staple of British pubs, is simply bread and cheese, usually served with some sort of pickle relish and some greens on the side. Depending on how fancy the pub is, you might get a token shred of wilted lettuce or a full, fresh salad, and either one hunk of cheese or a nice assortment. All we had on hand was some sharp Vermont cheddar, but that was good enough, especially paired with the homemade bread.


This meal was just another reminder that in the kitchen, as elsewhere in life, things don't always go according to plan - but they usually turn out okay.