Gawd, I started this post a week ago … thinking I’d write about Fall food. It’s just the ever present dread, and the news is so awful – omigod Pittsburgh … and letter bombs … and executive orders to take away natural born citizenship. Not to mention iSchool and advising week, 35-30-minute appointments with students and generally too busy at work.
We’re getting our new pig tomorrow, (Friday 10/26) butchering was last week and it got processed quicker than any of us thought, so I’ve been trying to use up all meats from last year from the freezer.
The Saturday (October 20) of the freak snowstorm during the UW homecoming game, I made ham steak with mashed potatoes and roasted cauliflower from my CSA box, with a pretty little sweet red pepper and parsley, also from the box, chopped up, tossed in for color.
Friday, of pig pick up, I made a ham & leek tart. Mark & I liked it, Anna, not so much. Saturday I froze the leftover half to be a cookie party appetizer. I made some ham salad, too, and had it for Saturday breakfast on an English muffin.
Anna also seems quite opposed to squash. The first time I offered it – roast sweet dumpling with butter and sugar – she didn’t like it at all. And turns out she doesn’t like brown sugar … I was making oatmeal to take to work. After years of overflowing oatmeal in the work microwave, and even the purchase of a kind of expensive little casserole dish with a lid at Tellus Mater (still hanging on on State St.), I decided that the best way to eat oatmeal at work is to simply cook it at home and just reheat in the work micro. I made a little extra so she could try it, and put out the brown sugar. When she only put on a tiny bit I suggested more and she said she didn’t like brown sugar since she had tried it on the pumpkin. So we fixed up her oatmeal with butter and white sugar, and a little milk – and still no good. I can’t figure out her tastes. I think she just doesn’t like food.
The next Saturday (10/27), I made the squash casserole that I always make in early fall (a little late this year) – delicata rings with an herb-y tomato sauce and Gruyere – Anna wouldn’t even taste it. She has been willing to eat pumpkin muffins, though she balked at the carrot cake muffins with the cream cheese on top.
Carrot cake muffins with a blob of sweetened cream cheese baked onto the top. Eaten on the train to Chicago.
I haven’t been taking many pictures of what I’ve been cooking, I guess I could say that’s been holding me up. Got some nice skies, though, and squashes, and snow on the car windshield.
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Tonight I tried a stove top mac&cheese in the hope Anna would like it better than the last time I served it, Monday – a baked version with roasted cauliflower in it, and crumb topping. She ate a few bites then made frozen French fries and ate half a carton of Ben & Jerry’s. She likes Phish Food. Mark liked the mac and so did I except I thought it had a little too much sauce to noodle. 8oz. cheese to 7oz. noodle in sauce made with 2 cups of milk and a roux with 1/4 cup each of flour and butter. Next time I make it I’m going to try 9oz of noodle to the same amount of everything else. And, PS we went to see Randy Rainbow, and now that we’re home she cooking up a batch of frozen fries, so this version of mac&cheese didn’t work any better than the baked.
We did carve pumpkins for Halloween – Mark’s pic is the best, although the one I took while they were still inside, with only Anna’s lighted, is OK, and the one with just mine, closeup, is my iPhone wallpaper now.
