So...whats for dinner?

Surprised if McGuinn gets much of a crowd tonight.

Feeling queasy & gassy all day (against my better judgment, had leftover pizza for breakfast after way too little sleep--thought it'd "get things moving" but only intermittently). Can't even think about food. Bob wants to go out for dinner about 7 pm. but tonight we were supposed to go see our original rabbi (we joined the temple in 1987 and he left in '92), a social justice activist deliver the guest sermon. Services start at 8, and traffic always throws a monkey wrench into Bob's ETA. I'd told him twice last week about it, but he is terrible about remembering dates--and refuses to learn how to use the Calendar app on his iPhone. (He won't use his phone for mail, either--and will receive but not send texts).

Have an early downtown rehearsal tom'w morning; weather is projected to be chilly & rainy so travel will be a hassle. And I do need to practice my part in the song we'll be rehearsing and staging--we just got the lyrics & lead sheet yesterday. I am nowhere near off-book on the rest of the show, either.

Wow...a lot going on with this thread! I have a habit of trying to complete reading every entry on site I follow and I think I might be crazy doing so....and in this case, it has taken so long that I never get to an entry. Ha!


But I am determined tonight since I was thinking about Minus and Susan last night when DH and I went to Erbaluce for our anniversary dinner. It brought back real wonderful memories of our dinner there two years ago. Unfortunately for me, since this is a menu created daily based on available ingredients, there was a lot I was allergic to so I ended up getting a sliced carrot appetizer with marinated raw walnuts, and a pistachio crusted steak cooked over rosemary, with a red wine reduction sauce. It was really good, but my best part of the meal was a lemon panna cotta dessert with raspberries. Yum!

Eric, Congratulations on your retirement. Loved the car photo and story!
Special, glad to see you back, but sorry to learn that your MIL is failing.
And Carole, I am also so sorry that your mom is on the decline. I hope that you can feel some comfort in knowing that she has done well with all of your attentive care over this past year.

We visited my stepmother last weekend and brought champagne, cheeses, crackers and dessert to surround a dinner out. But we ended up ordering take out since she was a bit too tired to go out when the restaurant could take us. We enjoyed a nice lunch on the water the following day, and it was beautiful weather, so we enjoyed that late fall gift. It was great to see her functioning at such a high level at 90, but feel very aware of how that can change quickly. She lives alone and has no children...but does have some caring nephews not too far, so I do worry about what would happen if she does need ongoing care. High end of life is never easy.....

This week I made my fave cod in tomato sauce over pasta, which we finished up tonight...always better after a bit of refridge marinating!

Oops, I have to stop writing since I am doing this while watching the Celtics suddenly making a game out of their effort against OKC, and must watch more intently since everyone was expecting them to lose and they have come back amazingly.

Carole, I am totally with you with the scale issues! May we all find the right place on the floor!

The pork tenderloin last night was very good even though slightly overcooked past the pink stage. Still it was moist and full of flavor. I marinated it in a mixture of fresh garlic, fresh rosemary and olive oil. The only side was a baked sweet potato for each of us so most of the tenderloin was eaten. I usually can rely on some leftover thin slices for lunch sandwiches.

Tonight will be salmon with steamed broccoli as a side and a romaine salad. I have a recipe for baked salmon with a yogurt dill topping that dh likes.

Sophiamarie, welcome. I'm a big IP user and am constantly singing it's praises for various things. I'm also a member of the FB group. I use mine about 3 times a week, often multiple times a day.

Having said that, I'm not using it at all today. Flat iron steak on the grill, baked potato and butter lettuce salad with blue cheese dressing for tonight's supper. Pre thanksgiving dinner tomorrow. For some reason, I was craving Boston cream pie, so I made one. If it looks decent, I'll try to post a picture.

Some day I will open my Instant Pot, which is still in its box and now under things stored in the basement! Yikes! Tell me again how wonderful it is so I can get motivated to bring something else into the kitchen. Low cal dishes from it would be great. I have lost track of what it is good for. Losing my cooking gene......

Tonight we are heading to a local charity auction which will feature finger food and desserts related to Mardi Gras...go figure on this cool November day! I was at a Human Trafficking “train the trainer” session all day, so would do better to have some soup and an early bedtime, but since we donated a few things we could need to be available to answer questions about (e.g., the Spanish dinner for four plus us) I will get myself dressed up a bit and move onward. Yawn.

Minus I’ll gladly let you know about what I do with the cod/tomato sauce recipe next time I log in. It is one of my most favorite dishes these days.

Nance I do hope we get to see your Boston Cream Pie. We brought another one of those purchased mini ones to my step mother’s and she was thrilled with it...as were we. Why have I never discovered that earlier in my life? Of course, I do not need those calories! I know that yours will be wonderful!

Happy return to Standard Time everyone! Massachusetts is considering legislation to keep that all year long, but not getting very far. It always feltodd when I was in school in South Bend not to change the clocks. Old habits die hard....

I cook every night so its time to join this thread! Tonight I made a pot of hamburher noodle soup and a toss salad with Romaine, kale, green onions, dried cranberries, feta cheese and shredded carrots. The salad was so good! I served it with a Greek type dressing.

Lacey, even that limited "hypoallergenic" Erbaluce dinner sounds divine.

Bob made it home by 6:45 last night, so we set out for Cellars. We knew (from their e-mail newsletter) they were having a 4-7pm happy-hour fundraiser for McCutcheon Elementary--a public school in the poorest part of Uptown, a struggling yet newly-discovered-and gentrifying neighborhood. The neighborhood demographic has been, at various times, Native American, Appalachian, Latino, Southeast Asian, African-American, and still a mixture thereof. It's ironic that there are gut-rehab condos cheek-by-jowl with shelters & SROs (single-room occupancy apt. hotels); and lately, a tent city that despite the city's attempts to disperse it, continues to re-appear under viaducts and along lawns along the northern reaches in Lincoln Park (the miles-long lakefront park, not the posh neighborhood further south that is its namesake). McCutcheon makes do with teachers digging into their own pockets to provide school supplies for their students--many of whom are homeless.

The e-mail said the fundraiser.would be in the front bar section and did not mention reservations, so we planned to have a drink or two to support the cause, then have dinner; after which I would head off to temple & Bob would bring home my leftovers. We paid our $4 via app to street-park (grabbed the last space, as besides the fundraiser there was a "cocktail-crawl" going on among several other neighborhood hot spots) and walked in. The place was absolutely mobbed--dining room and bar area. We would not be able to be served at a table for at least half an hour, and though we could sit at the bar, it wasn't guaranteed we'd be able to drink anything but water till the crowd thinned out. Our favorite bartender, though, immediately took our drink & food orders so that the tab would count towards the fundraiser. We split first a mesclun/haricots-verts/gorgonzola/walnut salad (of which I had about 1/3) and then the fish & chips special: four pieces of batter-fried cod, homemade slaw, and sweet potato fries. I had 1/4 of that, polishing off my mini-portion (just the perfect size for me) and took off for temple.

We had a smallish crowd at temple, because most of the newer members (<20 yrs.' duration) had no memory of Rabbi Edelheit (Rabbi Marantz, our current rabbi, had just met him hours earlier), and the family of the boy to be Bar Mitzvah this morning was in from out of town. Even though the entire congregation is always invited to Fri. & Sat. services at Bar & Bat Mitzvahs (and the "oneg Shabbat" coffee hours immediately following), most congregants feel uneasy "horning in" on what they feel are more properly celebrations for the honorees' families. So the congregation was the core of regulars, the Bar Mitzvah family, and many members from the Edelheit era (1973-92), including former religious school staff, for "homecoming."

Edelheit, when still our rabbi, became known as the "AIDS Rabbi," for his work as one of the first Chicago clergyman to minister to AIDS members (and the first local rabbi to welcome gay congregants and embrace interfaith families--he eventually got a PhD in Christian theology from U. of C.). In 1987, his first Yom Kippur sermon about HIV-AIDS and compassion caused several older politically conservative congregants to walk out of the sanctuary (something that had never happened before or since). With the Catholic and Lutheran churches in our neighborhood, he co-hosted an interfaith Bible study class culminating in a trip to Israel (in which my mom & I took part). By the time he left for a larger congregation in the Twin Cities, his activism had earned him worldwide recognition. (But that congregation, though 10x the size of ours, insisted on moving to the suburbs--where they would feel safer and not like such a minority). Passionate about serving the Jewish community and reaching out to other minorities and the Gentile majority in the midst of the city (as he was able to do in Chicago) he first joined the faculty of St. Cloud Univ. and eventually retired to Rio de Janeiro, where he teaches theology and advises Progressive Jewish congregations across Brazil, and continues his social justice & AIDS activism throughout the Third World.

I may have overindulged at the Oneg--a little fruit, a piece of rugelach and a sliver of coffee cake, the frosting off a mini-cupcake (the sweets were getting a bit cloying to me by then), and decaf. But not to the point of discomfort. I've discovered portion control is key, and that I need to pay more attention to the difference between taste-cravings, appetite and hunger. Getting a handle on it. Tonight Bob's back down in Oak Lawn, since he has a bunch of nursing homes to visit down there tomorrow.

After my rehearsal this morning (took a Lyft there in the pouring rain and the train home in a milder drizzle), which was productive & fun, I decided that the last thing I wanted to do today was pack a suitcase, drive 2 hrs., have a so-so late dinner out and sleep in a hotel room--slept in too darn many of those in the last couple of weeks. And then turn around and drive home while Bob works all day tomorrow. So we'll go out tomorrow night when he gets home. It's just me & the cats tonight--Gordy's spending the weekend with his GF (for whom he pined while in Vegas). Besides, someone's gotta feed the little furballs. So there's the last 1/4 of that fish & chips dinner waiting in the fridge, which I will supplement with one of our dwindling stash of ripe homegrown tomatoes.

auntienance, it looks delicious, what ingridients do you have in your sponge cake? There are those to purchase in the store but they might be too fluffy so crustard will just spak them wet and the pie will turn into semolina porrige. And the frosting, is it just melted dark chocolate or ganash?

SpecialK, this dog is so lucky)

ChiSandy, it islike reading a magazine article) How many cats do you have? I have one but she is a 7 kg furball.

It will be leftovers for today, yesterday I also baked a semi-large char so those who would find cassoulet too fat would have fish, no one even touched it. Cherry

Cherry, this is a basic vanilla two egg cake (but my eggs were small so I used three), but it has quite a lot of butter. It's denser than a sponge cake so holds up a little better. The topping is ganache.

Here is a reference to Boston Cream Pie history:

https://toriavey.com/toris-kitchen/american-cakes-boston-cream-pie/

It is one of my favorite desserts, and I also like the mini version in the form of a cream filled doughnut with chocolate glaze, lol!

SpecialK, you just have a link for any occasion, thank you, is I will Google Washington pie and cake too. I never heard of Boston cream pie before this thread but when I looked it up I thought it was simple and contained my favorite things. We have vanilla berliners here, if I spread some ganache on top of it, it will be a Boston pie donut, but I decided to go for a real deal.Cherry

I have two cats--Heidi is 12 yrs, old and about 13 lb.; her "brother" Happy is only 10, but easily 15 lb. (not quite 7Kg). The vet says they're both obese, but she's more worried about Heidi because she is part Ragdoll, with those short little "Corgi-cat" legs and petite frame that is less able to bear so much weight. Happy is tall, with long legs, but still blocky & beefy. He is always hungry--it's as if he has a feline version of Prader-Willi Syndrome (in which sufferers either make so much ghrelin & so little leptin, or are insensitive to leptin, that their brain never receives a satiety signal and they'll keep eating unless physically denied access to food). The vet says that's not uncommon in middle-aged male cats. Happy loves to play but Heidi is sorta lazy, though a more skilled hunter.

I love Boston Cream Pie. I've had it at one of its claimed birthplaces (there are rivals for its origin), Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston. Their recipe is two layers of sponge cake, with custard between, and then covered in chocolate frosting (not ganache) sometimes decorated in contrasting vanilla in a spiderweb type pattern. No "cream" despite the name. Dunkin' Donuts' "Boston Cream" donuts are yeast-raised, chocolate-iced, and custard-filled. Krispy Kreme makes two versions, both yeast-raised and chocolate-iced, neither of which have "Boston" in the name. One has a custard filling, the other cream (which they call "Kreme," sugar-sweetened whipped cream with a pleasantly slightly gritty texture). I prefer the latter. IMHO, Dunkin' does better cake-batter donuts and Krispy Kreme is better at yeast-raised.

Rumor is that the owner of Krispy Kreme (which also owns Panera) is in talks to buy Dunkin'. Here in the Chicago area, there's a Dunkin' seemingly every few blocks (even more ubiquitous than Starbucks), but almost all the local Krispy Kreme locations that opened in the late '90s closed a decade ago. Jewel supermarkets do sell boxes of the iconic raised glazed and the chocolate iced cream filled, as well as bags of mini-crullers (which unlike Dunkin's raised version are buttermilk-cake-batter). Sadly, that means if I want a Krispy Kreme I'm stuck buying six of them at a time. Somehow, they do get eaten, however.

Yum! Such good food pictures! I love Boston cream pie, too, and have probably never eaten anything as good as Nance has made from scratch. Those I have eaten came from a bakery or even a bakery section at the supermarket.

Cherry, your cassoulet sounds delicious.

Last night's baby back ribs were very good along with a baked potato and tossed salad.

Tonight is chicken breast, probably flattened and quickly panfried. One side will be baby lima beans. I have a frozen package and really like lima beans. I know that's a strange liking for some of you. We'll also have a salad.

Back in the 80 degrees range here.

Lunch was left over T-bone steak and asparagus. Supper was a bowl of plain, old, original cheerios w/a sliced banana. I never put sugar on my cereal. In fact even with hot cereal like Oatmeal, I only add salt not brown sugar or honey. Dessert is going to be a glass of Malbec.

I can't begin to describe how much I hate having to turn the lights on in the house by 4pm. It's only been one day back to the standard time and I can't imagine the slog ahead. It's 6pm and seems like 8pm. Oh well I expect I'll start being a recluse again for season. Not quite two months until the shortest day of the year.

Sandy - exactly. I just want to keep munching because it's dark WAY too early to do anything else.