Fish n Chips

I love me some fish n chips.  I must say the best I have had so far was from Ned Devine's.  Wait, we served it at the Bistro once, beer battered fish n chips.  Unfortunately I didn't have any because I was working.  Hmm, I think we must run a fish n chips special again one day soon.

I made fish n chips for dinner tonight.  I used fresh-made seasoned bread crumbs for the fish coating and then pan-fried them.  I cut up some potatoes for oven fries.  Mom cooked up some kale and mustard greens.  I also served a pasta salad, which I will not be posting pictures of because it looks weird.  I made the pasta salad last night and used vegetable alphabet pasta since we didn't know what else to do with pasta.  It tastes really good, but look really weird.

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Lost Boy
by MyChildren MyBride

Lasagna

I made my Five Cheese Lasagna again for dinner tonight.  If you remember, a while back I blogged about lasagna.  I made garlic bread using ciabatta.  Mom steamed some veggies and made a salad.  Austin made tea.  It was a good dinner.

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Illinois
by Sufjan Stevens

Woodberry Kitchen

Last Monday, September 27, was Janina's 21st birthday.  Her boyfriend came down from New York for a couple days.  Monday evening we went to Baltimore.  We went to eat at Woodberry Kitchen with our cousins Danae, Donna, and her husband, Brian.  Now, there is a little back-story to all of this.  A while back, before Donna was married, Glen and I went to Baltimore to spend the day with her.  The plan was for us three to do stuff in and around Baltimore, then go eat at Woodberry Kitchen with Danae.  The thing is, we didn't know when exactly what time we would go to Woodberry Kitchen, so we didn't make reservations.  We drove up there probably around 5:00 pm or something, and were told that without reservations we would have to wait 3 hours.  We didn't have that much time because Glen and I were planning to go to Sonar for a concert later on in the evening.  So we went to the harbor and ate at McCormick & Schmick's.  It was very good.  However, we were kinda bummed that we did not eat at Woodberry Kitchen.  So I made sure to make reservations for us Monday evening.  I think we were all impressed with the place.  It has a nice, casual vibe.  They have a big, open kitchen.  It was Monday evening and there was probably 8 chefs working, with about 5 other servers and baristas.  That was different to see, since I am not used to an open kitchen and at most we will have 4 chefs working the line on the busy weekends.  It was cool though to see how they all worked together.  Each one of them had their own specific task to do that made the whole process run smoothly.  The food was excellent.  Our server greeted us soon after we were seated and took our drink orders.  We were given complimentary water and bread before ordering.  The bread was excellent, by the way.  I ordered one of the specials, John the Butcher's Board.  It was a long, narrow board lined with several different cold cuts of meat, shaved hams, pepperoni, sausage, and such.  Oh, and there was some head cheese.  It was served with crusty bread, a bit of jam, mustard, and pickled veggies.  Was quite good.  Then for dessert I had something called Beer and Chocolate.  It was interesting, but very good.  There was some sort of house made cracker on the bottom, topped with a big chunk of milk chocolate, a bit of beer sorbet, a chocolate tuille, and sprinkled with caramel popcorn.  Quite good.  I don't know who would think of putting caramel popcorn with it, but it made the whole dessert better.  The crunch of the popcorn with the chocolate and the sorbet was very good.  They serve a wide variety of ice cream there.  Probably the most bizarre one was basil.  Brian asked the server if he had ever tried it.  He said that he had and that it had recently won an award for best dessert of something in the area.  When he brought out our other desserts he gave us a complimentary scoop of the basil ice cream for us to see what all the fuss is about.  I must say it was good.  Interesting, different, green of course, but very good.

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Pies

This week I once again tried my hand at my nemesis, baking pies.  First I made a shoofly pie.  Since I can't make regular pie crust, I used a crust recipe that said to mix it right in the pan and then press it into shape around the pan.  Um, it didn't really work.  The pie tasted okay, but the crust was too soggy.  I also made two graham cracker crust and baked them.  The next day I used them for a peanut butter pie and a butterscotch pie.  They are good.  The crust is good.  I kinda put in a little bit of cinnamon in the crust mixture.  I was wondering if anybody would notice, and of course Mom said something about it.  Haha!  I think it tastes okay, though.  It's a little twist on peanut butter and butterscotch pies.  I still must learn how to make a real pastry pie crust.  Next time I will use a different recipe, not the kind that you mix in the pan.  I think I would actually enjoy baking if I could learn how do it right and not have everything flop.

Shoofly pie

Butterscotch pie

Peanut butter pie

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Pizza Casserole

There is nothing really glamorous about pizza casserole.  It's just a casserole, but it tastes so good.  Mom was making applesauce yesterday, so I didn't want to make anything that took a long time.  So I made pizza casserole.  I didn't really follow the recipe.  I didn't have enough pepperoni, so I used some turkey bacon and pepperoni.  I didn't have enough sausage, so I used some cooked chicken and sausage.  I used bow pasta and elbow macaroni instead of just elbow macaroni.  It made the casserole different.  It looked a bit different, but it tasted pretty good.  It  was a tad bit spicy, because I used Mom's habanero pizza sauce.  Habanero pizza sauce, yea.  That's another story for another time.

 

It tasted a lot better than it looks.

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by Luna Halo

Beef Enchiladas

I love enchiladas.  So yummy.  I made beef enchiladas tonight for dinner.  I was going to make Crock-Pot Enchiladas but didn't have time to let them slow cook, so I cooked them in the oven instead.  I didn't have enough flour tortillas so I used some corn tortillas as well.  It would have been tricky to try and roll up the small corn tortillas so instead I just put everything in a baking dish and cooked them, then scooped them out with a spoon.  Mom made rice.  I made a salad and Janina made croutons for it.  She didn't make them the right way though.  Now croutons are supposed to be small, cubed, crispy pieces of bread.  Janina likes her croutons soft.  She loads them with butter and Ranch seasonings and then bakes them for a short amount of time.  They taste okay, because of all the butter, but they are not crispy like croutons should be.  The problem is, when you let them sit overnight they become stale.  Then they are horrible.  Anyway, that was my rant on soggy croutons.  Time for pictures.

The salad, minus croutons.  I let people put croutons on their own salad if they wanted them.

The enchiladas

The plate of food

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Authentic Cincinnati Chili

I made Cincinnati Chili for dinner tonight.  I actually made it last night because that is the traditional Cincinnati way to do it.  I boiled the ground meat in water for half an hour, then added the other ingredients and simmered it for three hours or so.  Then tonight I skimmed the layer of fat off the top and reheated it.  I also cooked up some spaghetti, because you have to eat this chili over spaghetti.  Now there are five official ways to eat this chili, as mentioned on the Wikipedia page.

• two-way: spaghetti and chili
• three-way: spaghetti, chili, and shredded cheese
• four-way: spaghetti, chili, shredded cheese, and either diced onions or beans
• five-way: spaghetti, chili, shredded cheese, diced onions, and beans

I kicked it up a notch and served it six-way: spaghetti, chili, shredded cheese, diced onions, beans, and sour cream.  It is different than most chili that people are familiar to, but it's good.  I like it.

I also made cornbread muffins.  We didn't have normal cornmeal.  We had roasted cornmeal, so the muffins looked and tasted different than normal, but they were good.  Different can be good.  Different is good.

The cornbread muffins

The food ready to be assembled on the plates

The finished plate

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by Ben Glover