Winter 2 : Dinner 0
This is the second time I’ve tried to bake off the chicken pot pies that are taking up so much space in my freezer. And, like the last time I scheduled this meal, we again had to cancel Dinner due to a winter storm (called Janus, apparently). I’m starting to feel a little jinxed about these pot pies, and a friend suggested that they should come with a warning that they ‘might cause snow’. Will try again one more time in a few weeks.
First Dinner of 2014 – Dinner January 7th
Curried Cauliflower Soup
Sweet Potato Biscuits
With leftover baked ham & peach jam
Salad
I baked a big spiral cut ham for New Years Eve – as a side note, I love baking hams for parties like that because it looks crazily impressive, but in reality requires nothing more of you than removing the ham from the packing and putting in a pan and then sitting back and letting the oven do its thing for several hours. Also, you get lots of lovely leftovers. I bought a 10lb spiral cut ham – I fed 10 at New Years, 6 at Dinner the next week with leftovers, froze the ham hock and enough ham to make a hearty split pea soup later this winter, plus have enough ham leftover to tuck into barley stuffed apples, and soups for my roommate and I for the rest of the season.
I knew as soon as I decided to bake a ham for New Years that Dinner the next week would involve ham biscuits, and I had my heart set on sweet potato biscuits. The challenge then became to find a soup that would pair well with the biscuits and ham. A tomato soup seemed like the wrong kind of flavor, and a squash soup seemed like starch overkill. I pondered for a while whether I thought curry and coconut milk would complement the sweet potato biscuits or whether the flavors would fight with each other. I came down on the side of complimentary, and I think was proved right. Read the rest of this entry ?
Last summer my cousin married a nice girl from Barcelona*. The first email I got from my parents upon their return from the wedding was not about how the wedding went (smoothly), or how lovely the bride looked (although she did), or how proud the father of the groom was (although I assume he was), it was about how Barcelona had just moved into first place as a Christmas 2013 destination contender. Read the rest of this entry ?
Since we last spoke I have both committed and uncommitted Christmas in my apartment, been to Barcelona, thrown a New Year’s Eve Party, and reluctantly returned to work.
In early December I bedecked every surface in the apartment with seasonal greenery, festooned mantels with garlands, set out the Glam Rock Reindeer, and carefully surrounded the holy family with a host of Provencal characters gossiping, and flirting, and being very serious about their trades.
Monday Night Dinner 