So...whats for dinner?

Tonight was French onion chicken, roasted carrots, sautéed garlic butter zucchini and garlic bread. Very good but had a late lunch and just can’t finish it yet.

Tonight, DH cooked ratatouille with leftover veggies. It was delicious but the kids refused to eat it.

Mae, your dish looks delicious as always. I bet my kids would have loved it!

I don't know why the kids wouldn't like the ratatouille. (shrug) It looks good to me.

Illimae, I've also been drooling on my keyboard. The garlic bread...I love garlic bread! And, of course the "Chocolite" Delight. It is lite. Right? Question, for the carrots.....did you use a regular oven?

Chi, there are keyboard covers that waterproof the keyboards so they can be "Covid cleaned" with a disinfectant spray...perhaps that would work for the drooling problem. I should get one for me :-)

We've been experimenting with all sorts of "don't usually buy" vegetables, like parsnips and turnips being cooked in the air fryer. It's still in the "next time try....." stage. The first few attempts used some oil, salt, pepper and garlic powder. The turnips and parsnips seemed to be overwhelmed by the garlic, so "next time" will be no garlic, but I'm not sure what to try instead.

Minus, I still get cookbooks, although with Covid, I'm not at my "haunts" (either the thrift stores, or the "dollar table" at the local Barnes & Noble store) so I haven't been adding to the collection. Still, when we move I think there will be probably 8,000 pounds of books. I think I'm trying to out do the library. There is just something about real books that, to me, will always be better than books on the various electronic readers.

Special, my mom told me that about a week before the last military move (I was almost 3), dad caught me looking in the liquor cabinet. I apparently tried to put the bottle back, but hit the bottom of the bottle on the cabinet and broke the bottle. Mom said it faded the floor and they had to go get 2 more bottles of the $11 per bottle (in 1963) "booze" so they could mop the floor with it to get an even floor color. She said the less expensive stuff didn't hide it properly, so they had to go with the expensive stuff to not get gigged by the housing inspectors. Dad said the neighbors thought they had lost their minds :-) I wonder if it would have been cheaper to let the housing inspectors gig them for the stained floor. If it was $11 in 1963 from a class 6 store, it must have been "real good stuff"

Eric, yes, the carrots were roasted in our oven (back in Houston for a few weeks). I tossed them in EVOO and seasoned with S&P used the middle rack for 20 minutes at 425. Roasted carrots are a frequent side with the Hello Fresh meals and I’m glad they are, I never really considered them, other than as a snack.

No idea about Christmas dinner yet, DH and I don’t celebrate it but our anniversary is on Christmas Eve, not sure about that dinner either.

When I was a kid back in Brooklyn, the only fresh veggies we had were lettuce (mostly iceberg), cucumbers, and tomatoes (mostly unripe mealy winter ones) for salad. The rest of our veggies were either canned or frozen. It wasn't until I got married, moved to Seattle, and encountered gorgeous fresh produce that I began eating fresh veggies. (Never even saw a fresh asparagus spear outside of a restaurant till I was 21)! My mom, when she visited us, stood awestruck in the produce aisles at QFC, marveling at not only how fresh & beautiful everything was, but that you could pick it out yourself and buy as much or as little as you wanted. At the greengrocer, we weren't allowed to touch--we had to just point, say how many and have the guy weigh & bag it for us. And in the supermarket (Waldbaum's or Key Food), everything was shrinkwrapped on styrofoam trays--as often as not, when we got it home we found the underside had begun to rot.

Dinner tonight, from Boston Market: dark quarter of chicken, creamed spinach, steamed mixed veg., and cornbread (gonna take a starch-blocker).

Brunch was a diced-veg./Provolone omelet. Learned the hard way this morning not to handle Hatch or Fresno chiles w/o gloves--even though I washed my hands afterwards, when I brushed a fingernail past a corner of my eye, yeeeeOUCH!

Lacey - just saw that Legal Seafoods has been sold. Wonder what the new owners will change??

Carole - I don't remember my Mother ever soaking or pre-boiling beans. She just simmered them for most of the day.

Cleaning out the fridge. Night before last was sauteed spinach, leftover fresh baby carrots simmered in dill and boiled new potatoes. Last night was green peas with mushrooms with a hard boiled egg on the side. This afternoon will be salad. And I need to eat the guacamole I made last weekend to use the avocados & tomatoes that were nearing EOL. I really haven't been in the mood for salad since it's colder - so I need to stop buying so much and throwing it away.

Bummer about Legal. Been to every branch in the Boston area (including Logan Airport) at least twice, plus Tyson's Corner in VA, Roosevelt Field Mall in LI, and Boca Raton Town Center. My concern going forward (assuming it'll be safe to dine inside restaurants before too, too long) is not so much menu prices but quality and consistency of their recipes. When my committed-carnivore WI-based singing partner & I were on a Middle Atlantic tour a few years ago, Bob, Gordy & I took him to the Roosevelt Field branch and urged him to try the Pacific salmon. Made him such a convert that he became an activist for Musicians United to Save Bristol Bay, AK (the Pebble Mine's permit application was finally denied). Coincidentally, Bob's bringing home salmon as part of Whole Foods' entree+2 sides deal tonight.

Last night I had 1/3 of a Quest "Supreme" (pepperoni, sausage, veg & cheese) pizza for dinner. Crust was meh--but at least (unlike most other 'zas, even cauliflower) I could eat it rather than have to gnaw the toppings off it.

I've got a pork loin in the freezer. What prep did you do? And did you cook the vegetables around it or separately?

Thanks Mae. That looks & sounds just delicious.

The beef pot roast, cooked in the oven, with potatoes and carrots was good. Instead of using dry roux to make a brown gravy, I did the MN thing and relied on Campbell to thicken the broth.

Tonight will be leftover white bean soup and salad.

We decided on carrot cake for Christmas dessert. I bought a small one yesterday at Rouse's and put it in the freezer. I've known of people freezing cake but have never done that myself. The cake decoration is very pretty.

When cleaning out my mom's house, we found a large bottle of scotch in a box, plus 2 shot glasses. On the box was the date of their wedding and where they were married. Each year, except for 1951-1953 and 1962, was a line with a place...ending in 2004 when dad died. It looked like they were toasting their marriage on their anniversary. The second line listed Peking and the remaining lines were pretty much a list of every marine base in the continental USA. The missing dates were when dad was stationed in combat areas. There was barely enough for to fill 2 shot glasses, so my brother and I toasted their marriage. My brother took the empty bottle, box and shot glasses home.

Special...but on Guam you did, for 3 years, get to be among the first to celebrate the beginning of each new day. Wasn't that worth it! :-)

A few Christmases ago, MIL gave us an air fryer and we use that for a lot of vegetables. It works great, but when we are camping, we need alternative methods due to limited electricity. I've tried a dutch oven, but that environment seems to be too moist to allow the vegetables to "toast" a little bit. It looks like an oven will do the trick, which we have in the camper....thanks Illimae.....

Fortunately I like to cook, so when Sharon wasn't feeling well from surgery, chemo, rads...or whatever...the cooking continued on as normal as possible...

I'm starting to make a list up for a small Christmas dinner....DD, MIL Sharon and I. I just looked and I have all the stuff needed to make an apple pie. That sounds like a good thing to try today. If it works, great. If not, since DD is there, there will be time to hide the evidence eat it up before Christmas dinner and I can make a pumpkin pie. Also on tap is the zimt cuchen that I make Christmas morning; a cinnamon cake

We're not bothering with gifts this year, except a bone for each dog. :-) I don't like crowds and that was the case even before Covid, so Christmas was never what I would call gift heavy. I guess this is just continuing with that "few gifts" theme.

Eric, what a sweet and interesting find, that’s great.

Tonight is a pan seared steak with a mushroom cream sauce, roasted potatoes & carrots and leftover cabbage.

Eric, what a wonderful tradition with the scotch! I love hitherto undiscovered links to family history.

Last night Bob brought home grilled salmon, green beans, & broccoli salad from Whole Foods. Tonight, I was hunter-gatherer: more of the same (I had 1/3 of my salmon left over) plus brisket. Appetizer was a pair of WF lobster arancini over arugula. (Arancini were comfort food from my adolescence: we had a Sicilian landlady).

Tomorrow night, the kids are ordering long-distance for us from The Palm for us to pick up, Preferably prime rib, but ribeye as a backup. Seafood ("Gigi") salad to start; mushrooms & creamed spinach as sides. We'll have fruitcake for dessert--I forgot to buy a plum pudding. We will Zoom with the kids & our new future in-laws in Houston after dinner.

The Great Conjunction from my deck last night (12/22):

^

6X zoom on my iPhone 8+. Saturn's the faint blob to the lower right of Jupiter.

Dinner is unknown. Today is our 20th anniversary and on Christmas Eve dinning options are usually limited but we’ll figure it out.

Back in 1995, when I got my first “real job” at age 20, my boss asked me where I saw myself in 5 years? Being young and new, I didn’t realize this was a standard work question, so I answered “married”. My boss looked a little confused and chuckled slightly, then asked me “why”, I replied “because I like cooking breakfast for people”. Then she really laughed and I got the job. We became friends and carpooled daily for over 3 years until I became engaged to DH and we moved to Texas.

So, today I cooked DH an omelette with cheddar, mozzarella, spinach, mushrooms and pieces of leftover creamy garlic pork with a side of bacon and cauliflower hash. After all, it’s why I got married, lol.

Happy Anniversary, Mae..... Love your job interview story!