Leftovers

Leftovers, perhaps they should be called love (to have you) overs. They can be so great and have such potential, but at the same time they can be horrendous. Mystery meat anyone?

Tonight we had love-to-have-you-over's [if only! :) ] of cottage pie.

Can anyone guess what they were originally? If you said meatloaf and roasted rosemary potatoes you would be the winner. (of what, I don't know. Luck?)

It was my first time making cottage pie and I would say the results were fair. I was happy to be eating it, but perhaps it wasn't exactly perfect. The top was crunchy (butter helps) but it was only the very top; the inside was savory but perhaps a little too full of carrots.

I guess you could say that life is just a good case of love-to-have-you over-again-and-again-and-again. And as long as there is good food and good people, count me in.

Birthday madness

Arriving at the anniversary of my mother's birthday, I set out to create a meal which would be appropriate, yet delicious. Well, actually my mother decided on the food she wanted to eat. And, actually, the said steak and potatoes had to be postponed for one day due to my father's cholesterol test the following morning. So, that being addressed, the only dish I was able to keep with on the actual day was my mother's cake: Jack's (as in, Jack Daniels) birthday cake. This cake consisted mostly of roux-ish ingredients like of butter and flour, with the necessary additions of brown sugar, b. powder chocolate, pecans (shelled by me and my mother and grown somewhere in NC, our state), Jack, eggs, and vanilla.

It was good, too. I made it in two 7x7 cake pans and was able to squirrel one away in the freezer for a later date. The sauce consisted of butter, confectioner's sugar, Jack, and vanilla. It wasn't really a a sauce--it was more like a glaze--and was actually referred to as the glaze. It didn't dry and it didn't seem strong enough, but it sure was sweet.

I decorated the top with pieces of broken up chocolate and pomegranate seeds (leftover from when I just had to have one!)

Enjoy.

Pasta joy

Yesterday, and the day before I must add, I made pasta. From scratch. Just eggs, flour, some water, and a little salt. I made three batches: one first with random sized strands which I hung along the bottom-side of a folding wooden tray stand; secondly as tortellini, stuffed with remnants from Thanksgiving sweet potato; and lastly, as three-hour fresh noodles, long and stiff. I cooked the second batch first, during lunch. They were eggy and chewy and very, very sweet. The first and third batches I cooked for dinner, complemented with a handmade tomato sauce my sister whipped up during her time working on an organic demonstration farm, with added seasonings from me. We rounded the meal out with some garlic bread and a salad which claims about 50% of it's origins to the sandy, clayish soil outside our house.

It was a good dinner.

Pasta homemade seems like such chore; my mom was commenting on how much work I was putting into rolling the dough translucently thin, when I could easily purchase a decent box of spaghetti at the store for less than a dollar. (in some markets).

But to actually know where something comes from, and how to make it, that's what I really want to know. I think that if more people realized exactly where all of their food comes from, and especially, what they are made from, more people would take the time to make things themselves, or at least contract a chef, etc to do it if they don't have the time, etc.

However, I also know that the idea of hiring a chef to cook healthy meals is something that only certain individuals can even take a gander at. It's a hard line to follow: wanting the best, yet, making sure others have the best, too.