Both inspired by my Year of the Kitchen and to hold myself accountable, I’m going to attempt maintaining this page with pictures or recipes or descriptions of what I’ve made recently.
Week of April 12
Similar to last week. I made an awesome, easy Asian shrimp noodle dish that I want to repeat often. I also made a totally fine tray bake. But again, I let life get in the way. We enjoyed some ballpark food on Friday, and celebrated a birthday on Saturday. I believe this week has a clearer runway, and I have a stupid easy set of recipes to keep us on track.
Week of April 5
A strong start and a middling finish. I made my excellent pan & oven chicken legs, this time eschewing the sliced cauliflower in favor of a Caesar salad mix I had bought for something else. I also had some surprisingly solid grocery store pho. Strange logistics and poor planning meant my intention of a couple of sheet pan dinners fell by the wayside. Even so, I’m confident I can get back on track with a simpler week coming up thanks to two of the concert bands I’m in taking a break from rehearsal.
Week of March 29
I was in San Diego for work most of this week. On Friday, we split the difference with a frozen pizza. Cheaper than going out, slightly worse than cooking. Not much to report, but I have a good plan in place for this coming week as we reestablish our routine without travel, dog-sitting, or other interruptions. This week reminds me of two things:
- Interruptions will happen, and it matters that I keep committing to bouncing back after one.
- What I define as an “interruption” is up to me, and I want to do better to stay on top of cooking even when our schedule doesn’t provide an ideal time for it.
Week of March 22
This was an in-between week. I bought a chicken pot pie at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago, and that was solid. It’s a lot cheaper than actually ordering food, and was big enough for two meals.
We had a book club event with dinner as part of it, then I made a pound of pork taco meat to keep working at the taco fixings from last week.
It hasn’t been spectacular—I ordered some Indian food for dinner on Saturday—but I continue to find a reasonable balance.
Week of March 15
I got back on the horse this week, aided by Tuesday and Thursday band rehearsals requiring meals that I could easily reheat. On Monday, I made the Beef and Guinness Hot Pot, and it was my best attempt yet. It came out just moist enough to make sopping bread worthwhile, but in no way was it a stew. I used a pound of ground elk and pork we brought back from Erin’s family at Christmas. It makes the perfect amount for two days of meals.
The rest of that elk was earmarked for tacos on Wednesday. Again, a pound of taco meat is great for Erin and me to split across two days.
The weekend was more of a wash. We spent two days at a local brewery—once for trivia, and once for a birthday party—and both times availed ourselves of their in-residence food truck and their fantastic quesadillas. Sometimes it’s okay to support local businesses.
I have another week coming up before a trip to San Diego, so I want to lock in and stick with some of our classics.
Week of March 8
Excellent intentions of old standby options were foiled by a sudden medical situation. Everything is fine, but suffice it to say that I relied on the local restaurant scene a few times to handle dinner for two days at a time. I’ll run back the same plan for next week and aim to execute on it.
Week of March 1
The week started well with an awesome roasted chicken with hoisin sauce, orange, and peppers.
This tasted great. We ate it with sliced cucumbers, green onions, and peppers, along with two scallion pancakes from Trader Joe’s we still had in the freezer.
I then made toasted sandwiches using leftover chicken.
The rest of the week was a bit of a wash. Erin had dog-sitting duties, so we went out to an Irish pub one night, which offered ample leftovers for the next day. We also ordered pizza on Saturday. There’s room for improvement and this week I aim to revisit some old standards.
Week of February 22
I wrote this week off. We had to travel to Ohio for a funeral in the back half of the week, so I made the shrimp linguine again on Monday and a frozen pizza on Tuesday. I did add some lemon juice to the linguine in the final step, which did help it all come together that much more. I served it with roasted cauliflower and a bit of baguette.
Week of February 15
I didn’t cook anything new or novel this week, but I did further refine two recipes.
- I remade the beef and Guinness “hot pot”. I cut the amount of stock in half to ensure it didn’t turn into a stew, and the effect was excellent. I also sliced the potatoes a bit thicker as a further defense against encroaching liquid. Next time, I’m confident I can slice them thinner to get a crispier result. I’m also considering par-baking the sliced potatoes to really get a solid topping.
- I made the chicken legs and cauliflower remoulade once more, keeping the burner on a bit higher to really cook down the onions and crisp the chicken skin. It was the best effort yet.
Week of February 8
I’ve had a few uninteresting weeks between travel to San Diego for work and a long weekend in Lisbon. I had excellent dumplings in California and superb pastries in Portugal. Now that we’re back, I’ve had a much better work for cooking.
- Just before heading to Lisbon, I made a beef and Guinness stew. It wasn’t quite supposed to be stew, so next time I’ll use less beef stock. It’s supposed to cook such that you can layer thinly sliced potatoes on top of everything, so that they’ll crisp up during an hour in the oven, creating a shepherd’s pie effect. That didn’t happen.
- I improvised on tasty roast beef sandwiches this week. I roasted broccoli for half an hour in oil and a simple seasoning mix we had in the cabinet. While they roasted, I toasted sandwich buns on the top rack and melted provolone on top. Meanwhile, I made a creamy garlic and shallot sauce reduced with leftover red wine, and briefly mixed the roast beef into it before filling the sandwiches.
- I also made what I call “lazy chicken pasta”. I cut up chicken breast into small pieces, lightly toss with oil, then mix it with bread crumbs, parmesan, and Italian seasoning. This forms a thin coating that is just sufficient to fry the chicken without so much rigamarole. What I do next depends on how much emphasis there is on lazy. In this case, I tossed the chicken into Goodles mac and cheese.
- Finally, I made another simple Jamie Oliver recipe: creamy shrimp linguine. Lightly fry some chopped bacon, toss in garlic and shrimp, cook it down in a bit of red wine, add mascarpone, then the pasta with a bit of pasta water, and finish with parmesan and black pepper mixed in. It only takes slightly longer than the total time to cook the pasta, and it was stupendous. We agreed that a dash of lemon would complete the ensemble.
Week of January 18
This wasn’t a thrilling week of food with Erin gone dogsitting. I attended a book club potluck on Tuesday, and we had a tight timeline on Wednesday that led us to eat hot dogs before chatting with a friend on FaceTime.
Then, on Thursday and Friday, I made the same meal for dinner with a few key tweaks the second time. The key components:
- Bone-in, skin-on chicken legs and onions, cooked in a pan for a bit skin-down to crisp it up, then baked in the oven with red wine vinegar and thyme.
- Mandolin-sliced cauliflower with a dressing/sauce.
- Some baguette, toasted by tossing it atop the chicken for the last ten minutes.
The official recipe, courtesy of Jamie Oliver, requested a gherkin, mustard, and yogurt dressing for the cauliflower. It was fine, mixed reasonably well, but we both agreed that we really needed to eat the cauliflower along with bites of chicken and onion because the briny, pickled flavor was too strong.
So, I pivoted on Friday. I accidentally kept the chicken skin-down in the pan an extra five minutes because I forgot to preheat the oven, and that helped. Then, I browned a few tablespoons of butter, quickly mixed in some minced garlic, let it cool, and stirred it with a bit of lemon juice and leftover thyme. I also filtered the cauliflower to grab only the proper crunchy slices, foregoing too many loose bits that slightly ruin the effect. The result was amazing.
January 11
Backfilling here, but we used the ground elk that Erin’s parents graciously let us bring back to Connecticut. We made:
- Tacos, using a seasoning mix from Costco, flour tortillas, cheese, chopped jalapeños, lime crema, and store-bought Pico de Gallo. This was a quick-and-dirty “get back in the kitchen” meal with available leftovers.
- Meatloaf, using half ground elk and half ground pork. It had seasoned salt and onion and some other bits and bobs—we attempted to fill it with cheese, too, but that didn’t work out great—then covered it with a bourbon glaze we had lying around. It had quite the opposite problem of most meatloaf by coming out of the oven moister than ever: it was sitting in a good inch or two of liquid. The leftovers were shoved into a container and served again by pan-frying and tossing them on toast or mixed into pasta.