So...whats for dinner?

DH made a slow cooker pot roast tonight, it was very good

It took me 30 years to figure out a good pot roast recipe..... :-)

joycek I agree with you. My dd3 and ds2 are true savers. Funny they are the ones with advanced degrees, have owned 2 homes etc. DD1, though gainfully employed, exists in a world of financial feast or famine. All due to her spending habits. Basically, she eats out all the time, buys whatever she wants, spends on lavish vacations, and then is broke. Literally. All 3 raised the same way. Both my husband and I are recipients of scholarships, parents saving for our education etc. Then we worked hard, saved, and then saved more. These days, my miser kids have to save and scrimp and even then, if they lose their jobs, there are not ready jobs available anymore. So we may very well be the last generation to live better than our parents. That was my parents only wish, that we live and achieve more than they did. That was a high bar that was set, as my mom was a physician, dad an engineer. They acheived all of this in Chicago in the 40's and 50's. Mom was african american, dad was irish.

I digress. Dinner last night was sauteed shrimp from our last trip to Charleston Sc. I spiced them up with red pepper flakes, garlic and olive oil. Sauteed zuchinni with garlic, tomatoes and fresh parmesan was the side.

Again, the camera didn't manage to take a photo before we ate our entire meal. In an unusual move for us, I made an appetizer. Rhode Island calamari– spicy, greasy, and garlicky. We ate this while the fire outside got started. Then dinner was a 2" inch thick Salmon steak, green salad, and the ciabatta I made today.

Tonight, I am making some tandoor chicken on the grill. I may skip the lentils tonight and just concentrate on that lovely cauliflower we found at the farmer's market. Rice, maybe some naan bread. We shall see. I am just a bit exhausted. This is the lowest day of the cycle. Managed to finish Nº 4.

*susan*

Susan, you always make me drool—even more so when you post food porn photos. Ciabatta….mmmm….must…heat…panini…press……

Bob promises to be home for a late dinner, so I will pan-sear halibut (or nuke it in parchment with fresh herbs from our garden) and saute some marinated asparagus. If he wants a starch I might also make some brown rice &/or rainbow baby carrots for him. He gets the chardonnay, I get the blood-orange seltzer.

Joyce, Val, my folks and my in-laws were two different case studies in saving and spending. Neither ever went into debt (except my mom, whose retirement condo purchase was the first home she ever owned—but who did the math and realized her investments yielded more than the interest on the rather small mortgage). My dad was an investigator/inspector (wages, hours, working conditions) for the NYS Dept. of Labor; my mom, who'd been a legal sec'y/quasi-paralegal when I was born (they married in 1940, I was born in 1951) went back to work and worked her way up the NYC civil service ladder (from clerk-typist to caseworker-supervisor at the NYC Dept. of Soc. Svces) by acing every exam she took. Neither earned much, but both had great health & pension benefits; after my aunt sold her summer house in the Shawngunks where we spent summers till I was 10—with Dad driving up for weekends--we took very modest one-week vacations at small Catskill hotels, to visit family in Montreal, or to DC, once a year. We ate out maybe once a week, at restaurants owned by friends.

My mom had a black belt in grocery-shopping: she would bargain relentlessly with the fishmonger, greengrocer (Brooklyn supermarkets had awful produce), and butcher; and would buy large cheap cuts of beef or lamb and cut them into steaks (to tenderize) and stew/burger meat. We always had meat, fish or poultry at every dinner, and always a soup or salad starter (but usually not dessert). She never paid retail for anything she or we wore—and chewed me out mercilessly when I'd saved my allowance and part of my summer-job salary to buy a high-quality lined wool skirt (for the extravagant price of $35) at Macy's one Sept. (I wore that skirt for ten years, well into my marriage). My parents never consciously denied themselves or us anything—our expectations of what constituted necessities, treats, and luxuries were simply lower. We never had more than one car, always bought for cash, and either used or middle-of-the-line end-of-model-year clearance-priced. It didn't hurt that both my sister and I went to Brooklyn College when it was tuition-free, commuted from home, and I had a Regents scholarship that paid for my textbooks and student activity/lab fees. When my mom died, she left us the condo (with a small part of the mortgage remaining but a high monthly maintenance fee, so we ditched it) and a tiny annuity for me and a small inheritance for my sister (who needed the money more than we did anyway—Bob & I were already more than self-sufficient).

My in-laws were very different. They never took vacations—ever. They never owned a car (neither knew how to drive nor wanted to learn). They never took taxis—just walked to the buses which they took to the subway and to the supermarket (schlep-cart in tow). They bought their eastern Queens house in 1950, brand new, for cash ($5000). If they ate out at all, it was the occasional solo jaunt to Burger King my MIL made because my FIL was a vegan. Bob went to YMCA day camp (we went to secular day camp, run by the local school system). My MIL was a full-time housewife—they married & had Bob late, and before she got married she'd been a bookkeeper and would take the train down to SC occasionally to visit her BFF in HS who'd married & moved to Charleston. Those trips stopped when my in-laws got married. My FIL had never been outside NYS, even any further than Nassau County or Rye Beach, until he moved in with us in 2008. He was an accountant (reluctantly, as he was an English major & piano performance minor who was rejected by Juilliard and ended up getting his M.A. in English Lit. instead—and wrote poetry all his life, even as he spurned all music till I began to record & perform). Eventually, he worked his way up to V.P. for foreign ops at Chemical Bank—but while his peers bought large houses in tony suburbs, he & my MIL remained in that tiny 2-BR half-cape in Queens until she died at nearly 96. He was forced into early retirement at 60—with a huge golden parachute—because of his dogged resistance to diversity and technology.

They saved every penny they could—and supplemented Bob's research asst. stipend at U.W.'s grad school (we'd met at Brooklyn College & married & moved to Seattle after graduation) until I finished law school and began working. Bob became a doctor. When my FIL moved in with us after my MIL died, he sold his house for $450K and invested the proceeds, teaching Bob how to pick stocks. He left us as much as Bob & I had already saved for our retirement; we hope to be able to leave at least a modest trust for Gordy.

By contrast, one set of my aunts & uncles were quite status-conscious and moved in wealthier circles (they were, respectively, a symphony & session violinist and a B'way pit-band French horn player, and their friends & colleagues were much wealthier). They spent lavishly on restaurants (though my aunt was a fantastic cook), clothes, luxury cars & furniture, took foreign vacations and bought a country house retreat. They went into debt a few times, but died pretty much even. (Their kids had already comfortably “self-launched" and made them grandparents and even great-grandparents).

Realized the halibut wasn’t going to be big enough for both of us, so I also defrosted a small tail piece of Copper River salmon. Pan-seared them both, with just salt & pepper (no oil), and put them on a bed of arugula sprinkled with a bit of orange olive oil and sea salt flakes. Bob said he didn’t need a starch, so I blanched some asparagus and pan-seared them in olive oil, finished with balsamic vinegar & sea salt. Dessert was a little mango mochi ice cream ball from Whole Foods (they have a mix&match freezer case full of different flavors). We’re going to dim sum brunch tomorrow. (Yeah, it’s carby, but the portions are small and I can always fill up on the Chinese broccoli & braised duck feet).

Ah, good ol’ Club cast aluminum! A dear friend of mine bought a set one piece at a time, on subscription. She passed in 1999, and her daughter inherited it. Now you have me craving popcorn!

You had me craving popcorn too! Just put some kernels in the air popper, which promptly crapped out on me. Back to the old fashioned pot and stove top.

I use a plastic microwave popper, with a dollop of coconut oil. We just came home from dim sum brunch (in Chinatown North, a couple miles south of us). Dunno why, but we chose almost everything with pork in it except for the duck skins, Chinese broccoli, shrimp har gow and sesame balls. We each had one piece of each (3 to a plate), and Bob had wonton soup and a couple of Tsingtaos. Gordy will have a nice lunch waiting when he comes in (he is now the technical director for a comedy-magic club and there's a matinee).

85 and sunny. Rain forecast but not a cloud in the sky, so watered my tomatoes (which were drooping a bit). We now have enough basil to make both pesto and phô !

MIne’s the hard-plastic Nordic Ware one, with polyethylene vented lid.

Sunday night dinner and TV with friends is Spaghetti, Salad, Garlic Bread and Preacher. If it wasn't for DH, I'd be living off hot dogs and ramen.

Special - yes we did discuss popping corn in a paper lunch bag in the microwave. That's the only way I've made it for 20 years. My microwave actually has a button labeled 'popcorn'. It cooks for 3.5 minutes but I do stop it early if the kernels stop popping. I think the discussion was for Carole to try in her camper some time when they were still towing it back & forth.

Brunch was a bowl of raspberries drenched in heavy cream.

Supper was a frozen dinner - PF Chang Shrimp Lo Mein. Not bad since I forgot to take anything out of the freezer. Finished the last glass of a lovely Syrah wine.

Freya - glad to see you. Welcome back to the kitchen table.

I try to pick my zucchinis when they're in the baby stage. There are always a few that get away however. I picked several yesterday along with quite a few haricots verts. I'll dig a few potatoes and make a new potato green bean salad Tuesday to go with whatever I grill. Yesterday I also got a dozen ears of new local corn, which is delicious! I love summer produce.

Dad is in the hospital (sigh} with an intestinal blockage. He was very nauseated Friday and his nurse thought something was not right so sent him to the er where he was admitted. He's doing fine but has an ng tube (probably for another day or so) and complained that he was hungry when we visited him. But he wanted to know all about what we had for lunch in great detail lol.

Carole, even though dad can have his electric wheelchair, it's incumbent on his passing a "driving test." The reality is that he is really unable to get himself up and into a chair of any kind and is unlikely that he's going to be able to use it anyway. He's a good driver of the thing though.

My weekend is being spent fighting Japanese beetles! This is the worst year we've ever had. They've decimated the apple trees, several ornamentals, all of the roses and many more things, like a plague of locusts It's war!

Simple supper of grilled pork burgers and fresh corn.

Helping DD move the last of her stuff into the condo, so we got some takeout - I had a chopped salad and gazpacho, she had chicken tacos and tuna poke. I made a grilled cheese and andouille sausage and tomato rice soup for DH before I left for the condo. We also stopped at the Sprinkles Cupcake ATM, got a salted caramel and a strawberry. It's pretty hilarious - I had just a bite of the strawberry and DD kept the rest.

We are smoking up some ribs tonight. Three racks to be precise. They have been brining in my special rub for two days. Mr. 02143 will mop them at the very end with a mustard-hot sauce that we will make up this afternoon. Serving with a tortellini-pesto salad, and who knows what else. Will head to the Monday farmer's market and hope that I see a vegetable that my picky kid will eat and some good berries for dessert. We will be joined by our daughter, her husband, and of course, Miss O and Miss O's godmother, who is very much part of the family.

Should be fun actually.

*susan*