So...whats for dinner?

Stuffed peppers tonight with carrots and salad.

It's actually cool enough today that chili would be good. We like chili with beans, too.

Pork tenderloin with Seeds of Change rice/quinoa mix.

I actually cooked both long pieces of the tenderloin. The one I ate today was basted with Apricot Chipotle sauce. Yummy. I still have 1/2 left. The other piece was rubbed with sage. After cooling, I cut that in 1/2 and froze both pieces. What a bargain. I got the 2.7 lb loin on sale for $5.24. That four meals.

Lacey said to please extend her greetings. She will be on the way to the wedding in FL on Tuesday. She mentioned that a destination wedding has lots of extra issues. Just one for her was the definition of "beach formal". Her DIL who had open heart surgery has made a remarkable recovery and will be traveling to the wedding. And all of her grandkids will be there, in addition to all the young men who grew up with her son & their wives. Once she gets through May, she did say she will tackle "the mods" to find out why BCO keeps kicking her off - but in the meantime, a shout out to everyone at the kitchen table

It was really chilly and rainy here today...high 58- so I made a nice Thai chicken soup tonight.  Maybe the last soup of the season but it was so nice!  Company tomorrow-Thursday- DH's cousin in town for a job.  DH is out of town so cousin and I will have fun making suppers DH wouldn't really like. 

Susan- snakes make me shudder, too....especially SO very early in the season...ugh!

Glad to get a shout from Lacey.

Said a blessing for all of you at my little dinner table tonight...so thankful for this thread!

It is done. Mom's house is completely cleaned out except for the bare minimum needed for SIL to spend one night there. There is a mattress on the floor, a chair, bathroom supplies and the security system. Before the work crews descend on the place to repair picture frame nail holes, and tiny cracks in the walls, paint and install new carpet, I will remove the security system and put it in a box for the eventual new owner.

I feel good about how this went. My brother and I wanted very little of the stuff..family heirlooms mostly and a couple of things that meant a great deal to one of us. The rest of the stuff....95 per cent went to friends of mine that I know will appreciate the things they wanted.

The remaining 2-3% is in the garage for the thrift store to pick up. The stuff is nice, but neither my brother, nor I, nor any of my friends wanted the it....Everyone has enough bread pans, pie dishes, lamps and bed frames/headboards.....I guess it's the "garage of misfit toys". Hopefully the items will benefit someone I don't know.

HI to lohoff. I *think* Poland, OH is not too far from Akron...which is where my mom was born (in 1918) and raised. I love potato soup, but have not heard of the Hungarian variety. I'd be interested in the recipe if it's shareable.

Tonight's dinner was healthy albeit insufficient..a Pink Lady apple....which was better than the nothing I had for lunch. I did make plett for breakfast, so I didn't totally go without food. :-)

Hi ladies (and Eric:)

My daughter and I had a wonderful dinner on Friday night. From start to finish, the meal met all of my expectations. We started out with a shared appetizer from the specials menu of caprese salad made with buffalo mozzarella. Incredible! My daughter had the porcini mushroom ravioli in a truffle cream sauce and I had the 10oz Filet Mignon served with a vegetable hash and roasted fingerling potatoes(yes, it was HUGE and I brought half home for my hubby). The steak was cooked perfectly and was a perfect piece of meat. I have had a lot of steak in my many years, but this one was exceptional. I also had the pleasure of the keeping the leftovers of my daughter's ravioli which were to die for! I will definitely order that next time if in the mood for a rich delicious pasta dish. We split dessert which was the ricotta cheesecake with a raspberry coulis. It had a fresh light lemony flavor and was much lighter than your standard NY style cheesecake I am used to. Fantastic! Is it a bit expensive? Yes, but worth it plus I was not paying..LOL We shared a bottle of montepulciano (similar to a chianti but I like it better) and enjoyed just being with my daughter where we were the only two people. Usually I share her with the rest of the family...LOL

Yesterday, I used my new pasta machine and made pappardelle with a Bolognese sauce that cooked all day. What a fattening and lovely weekend! Today, we are having chicken thighs, roasted root veggies and rice.

Eric - eeek!

YIKES, Eric! I don’t think I could handle knowing that rattlers could come that close to the house.

Will grill steak tonight (pre-salting in the fridge with espresso-infused salt), and roast carrots and green romanesco cauliflower. I know cast iron cooks it better, but every warmish clear night I can use the grill is a gift. Using cast iron means preheating the pan till the oven reaches 500F, and flipping the steak every 2 minutes as well as keeping the vent hood and ceiling fan on full blast with windows open. I could preheat the pan in the gas grill and cook the steak in it there, but it’s riskier and I’d still have to let the pan (and grill) cool and bring it in to clean.

Carole - congrats on the 8 lbs.

April - YUM. If I ever come you're direction I will ask for the name of that restaurant.

Eric - Just sort of normal, right? I live in the middle of the 3rd largest City in the US and it's not unheard of for us to have snakes (rattlers, cottonmouths or copperheads) in our yards or on our patios . I expect Special K sees a similar thing in Florida.

Grilled the aforementioned grass-fed boneless ribeye—pre-salting it with the espresso sea salt and then refrigerating it for a couple of hours made all the difference. It was really tender & delicious. The honey-curry roasted rainbow carrots, and the pan-roasted romanesco cauliflower with olive oil & lemon turned out great too.

val - we get snakes all the time in our pool cage - and they often go for a swim for some reason, but I think they are thirsty. I have fished a number of them out of the pool with the skimmer. I was surprised the corn snake didn't startle me more - it would have if it was bigger probably! I can only imagine how surprised you were! The ones that worry me are the pygmy rattlers - tiny but dangerous with no known anti-venom available. We have had a couple of those in the pool cage and this one that DH discovered was about a foot from the side door. Not long after we moved here my DD borrowed my car (which was considerably larger than hers) to go run over a water moccasin on the walking path at the outside of our development - it was a really big snake, and even though she was reluctant to kill it the situation was too dangerous for people and pets. We live on the edge of the preserve and get a lot of big snakes and numerous poisonous ones each year. The mac daddy was an Eastern Diamondback DD and her then-boyfriend helped the police with - more than 6 feet long and as big around as DH's forearm, in the next door neighbor's pool cage. When it gets dry they seem to come up near the houses more and we are currently without rain, so they are appearing.

Ouch, Susan—food poisoning from boxed lettuces? If you mean those little heads of “artisan lettuce” that come packaged four to a plastic clamshell box, uh-oh. I had some for lunch on my tuna sandwich. But I did wash them. Maybe it’s confined to one vendor or farm? I would imagine that even loose heads of various lettuces would be vulnerable. At any rate, I don’t take “triple washed” for granted. My salad spinner gets a workout almost daily.

Breakfast was a salmon Benedict: over-easy egg atop lox atop a small piece of low-carb toast. I sprinkled the lox with chopped fresh dill, then napped the egg with hollandaise sauce (shelf-stable packets by Christian Poitier, not that nasty Knorr powdered mix), which I then dusted with a little cayenne and sweet paprika and then some chopped fresh tarragon.

Anyone else here find culling packaged fresh herbs to be a PITA? If you don’t get rid of the rotting parts, they taint the whole package; but it’s often very hard to ditch the slimy stuff w/o sacrificing some good stuff on which it’s stuck. Dill is the worst in that regard. Thyme is also a PITA, either the leaves refuse to come off the stem when you strip them (you end up getting the stem too) or the dried-up blackened leaves are on the same “stem-let" as fresh green ones. I can hardly wait till planting season arrives here, so I can start my own annual herb garden—no waste at all. The only perennials that seem to be sprouting are my chives (robustly), a little oregano, and lemon mint (which doesn’t taste minty at all). I can’t grow lettuce, dill, cilantro or parsley—the rabbits get to them before I can. I don’t even bother with carrots.

Dinner was the path of least resistance. Figured Bob had office tonight, and I’m getting a manicure tomorrow, so I could freely stain those lovely French tips & cuticles. Besides, it’s half-price night for bone-in wings at Buffalo Wild Wings, so I got the “Asian Zing” version (very much like Korean BBQ) with celery & ranch dressing.

And I made a visit to the nearest Stan’s Donuts, 4 miles away down in Lakeview (reached via completely-torn-up Broadway). Before I go back on strict low-carb, I need to find what all the fuss over gourmet donuts is about; the other “cult” places (Donut Vault—which usually sells out by noon, Glazed & Infused and Do-Rite) are all either down in the Loop or in the heart of hipster-yuppie-land (Lincoln Park, Wicker Park or Bucktown) where parking is impossible. I will have one tonight with decaf (probably the chocolate buttercream Bismarck) and—if Gordy doesn’t get to it first—the maple-bacon Long John for breakfast in the morning. We don’t even have Krispy Kreme shops up here (some of the Jewel groceries have bags of the mini-crullers, but most grocers have gone back to baking their own or buying generic ones)—just Dunkin’ Donuts…meh. (Can’t believe that when I lived in Seattle decades ago and all we had was one Spudnuts shop in the U. District and Winchell’s everywhere else, I used to long for Dunkin’).

I've only had problems with the bagged lettuce and then only once have I not felt well. What usually happens is that there is a story of a lettuce recall and I go look in the refrigerator, find the magic bag and toss it in the trash.

I'm glad the episode didn't upset the infusion schedule.

I usually end up using the store bought herbs and unless I know for certain that I'm going to use more the next day, I just toss them in the trash so I don't end up with science experiments. I grow basil, rosemary, garlic scallions, cilantro (it's only a winter thing), mint and several kinds of hot peppers so I don't have to buy too many herbs.

Today I worked from home, but didn't get any cooking done. I went from work stuff to working on the car. The power brake booster failed and the shops wanted between $825 and $900. I think there is an invisible line on the repair invoices that is labeled "amount needed to bring the bill up to $800". The part was $172 and it took me just over an hour to do the work.

Sharon's birthday was this week, so we're going to go out to a Mexican food restaurant.

Moon - so glad to see you. The trip to your sisters sounds fun. Sounds like you're keeping very busy.

Dinner tonight was the buffet at Cellars' “Flavors of Latin America" wine tasting. Tomato-garbanzo salad, guacamole & exquisite house-made chips, chicken enchiladas verde, tortilla Español with romesco sauce, charcuterie (jamon Serrano, chorizo, duck sausage) & cheese (manchego & Drunken Goat), coffee-roasted pork tenderloin, paella, rice pudding and flan. The paella was delicious but inauthentic (too tomato-ey, not enough saffron, no crunchy “soccarat" layer—tough to achieve in a chafing dish, though). Everything was great and I gleefully ate everything (small portions, of course, pacing myself and tasting a couple of wines along with the foods—poured out the other wines after the first couple of sips lest I get drunk and exceed my alcohol “allowance”).

Cellars is really beginning to shine when it comes to Mexican-inspired dishes. They're giving the line cooks a much freer hand and it shows. Not that everything else isn't wonderful.

For the wine list, see the “How About Drinking?" thread.

Minus, I hear that Houston has displaced Chicago as the Indian-culture-and-cuisine capital of America (or so Anthony Bourdain contends). Do you have any favorites?