The Weekend Trifecta 1/31/10

A trifecta is generally described as a type of bet where, in order to win, the bettor must pick the top three finishers in the correct order. Here, on yet another cold but beautiful winter day, are the weekend’s top three:

Filling the tank for 89 cents. Yep, that’s not a typo, we got 15 gallons of gas for 89 cents, because we shop at PriceChopper, use our rewards card, cut coupons, and earn money towards gas every time we shop. This is the best we’ve ever done; we’ve saved as much as $2.40 a gallon before, but this time we saved $2.80 per gallon. 

Now, I know we probably spend too much money on groceries and I know our pantry is full, and I know it takes a while to save this much at 10 cents for every $50 spent. But I wonder, now that Tops has finalized their purchase of Penn Traffic and the local P&C stores, what kind of benefits they offer on their rewards card? Had the Golub Corporation, parent company of PriceChopper, been allowed to purchase the 22 stores they wanted out of the bankrupt Penn Traffic empire, others in Central New York would likely have had a convenient PriceChopper and would be able to do what My Sweet Baboo and I have been doing for the past couple years – saving on groceries and saving on gas.

Syracuse scratching out a win at DePaul. Holy three-pointer, Batman! How SU managed to pull this one from the jaws of defeat is almost unbelievable. Scoop Jardine and Kris Joseph both managed to drill baskets from downtown, after not having done that practically since the exhibition season. And the Orange come away with another win, this time after being down 18 to the Big East’s last place team. After having to bounce back from 14 down against Georgetown, they’re at least proving they can play together and do well against long odds. Whew!

Culinary adventures. I’m fortunate that MSB encourages me to cook with abandon. He’s always maintained that I’m the cooker and he’s the eater, so pretty much whatever I want to cook is fine with him. OK, there was that one time with the flaming macaroni salad, but since then everything’s been fine…So after our ‘fun food Friday’ where I throw together a host of different finger foods, mix up some dipping sauce, pour a nice glass of red for me and white for him and call it dinner, on Saturday we moved way up the gourmet scale to ginger-mango marinated ahi, tri-color couscous with yellow and orange peppers, diced mango and pineapple, and chopped green onions, and rounded it out with some lightly sautéed zucchini. Today, we scaled back down to the comfort food range, with a turkey, mushroom and cavatappi casserole – the height of one-pot cooking. The fun of all this is that for me there are no limits in the kitchen – and on those days that I feel like stretching my wings, I’m welcome to, but on days like today there’s no pressure and the best food in the world is the simplest thing I can think of.

The Weekend Trifecta 01/24/10

A trifecta is generally described as a type of bet where, in order to win, the bettor must pick the top three finishers in the correct order. Here are the weekend’s top three:

Stuffed appetizers. The appetizers were part of the whole Stuffed Dinner we put together for my oldest brother’s birthday. Making them was made all that much more enjoyable – in fact the entire event was that much more enjoyable - because my nephew Sam helped.

One of the appetizers, tomatoes stuffed with tuna fish, Sam indicated he wasn’t really excited about, because while he really really likes tuna fish, he’s not a big fan of tomatoes.

The second appetizer was stuffed celery. I put my Mom in charge of this one. While Sam wanted to help with, he’s not allowed to use a sharp knife until he’s a little older; right now, he’s a few months away from his seventh birthday. He thought his mom said he could use a sharp knife when he was seven, but his dad said not until he turned ten. Turns out he had the parents backwards, but with a ‘safe’ knife and careful supervision, he cut the pieces to size, putting a tiny mark in the side of the celery, and then lining up the knife to make the cut. He stuffed the ones with peanut butter, Mom did the ones with cream cheese, and a careful count was taken to make sure we had the same number of each, along with a ‘tester’ for each flavor. Peanut butter was a hit, earning a big grin and many "mmms" and "oh boys." The horseradish was a little too much for him, but the adults enjoyed it.

The last appetizer, stuffed potatoes, was almost too much for Sam to believe. I halved and roasted some small red potatoes, then we scooped out the inner potato leaving the skin intact; the innards were combined with some chopped green onion and some cheese, then put back into the potatoes and baked, served warm. Sam couldn’t figure out why I’d want to do this in the first place, but he helped scoop some and then he and Mom did the mashing – by hand – which he thought was pretty cool.

Stuffed Dinner. This is what started us off on the whole mission of stuffing stuff into stuff. My brother requested stuffed peppers for dinner, and we then got carried away. Sam, watching me stir the hamburger, rice, and secret ingredients, thought stuffed peppers was kind of weird. I explained that even Grandpa (my Dad, gone three years now) loved them and not only that; he called them stuffed ‘poopers’. Well, this was almost too much, peals of laughter as Mom and I explained that Grandpa always did the grocery shopping and he’d write down the week’s menu, always putting poopers instead of peppers. We mentioned that we missed little things like that.

Sam said, very honestly, “I miss him too. And I don’t get to have Boost anymore either, because it makes Grandma think about Grandpa and get sad.” Somehow, Mom and I managed to maintain our composure – not really sure how, but we did. I had forgotten that Dad used to share a Boost – called it a milkshake – with Sam, and was amazed that he even remembered. After all, he was three when Dad passed. Mom explained very reasonably to Sam why they don’t buy Boost any more, and that was good enough for him, and we moved on.

In addition to the regular stuffed peppers, we also had stuffed poblano peppers with Mexican corn, into which I had stirred a little hot mustard.

Sam’s job with all of the peppers was to do quality control. Since he couldn’t help (a sharp knife, again), he inspected all of the peppers to make sure there were no seeds left in them. He found a few that I had left behind, fewer that Mom had left behind, and then declared them "ready for stuffing stuff into."

We also had stuffed salad, a delicious fruit salad that Mom put together, then stuffed back into a halved pineapple and two melon halves. A little orange juice, brown sugar, and balsamic vinegar on the fruit helped bring out the flavors.

And for Sam and my teenaged niece, we stuffed some hotdogs inside crescent rolls, ensuring that there was something stuffed for all ages.

Stuffed dessert. This one was the silliest of all. I made a rectangular Bundt cake, then we removed most of the cake and stuffed it with a mousse made with Cool Whip, condensed milk, and chopped pineapples and their juice. Getting the mousse into the cake was easy; flipping the cake and mousse onto the platter without making a horrendous mess turned out to be fairly easy as well, once everyone left the kitchen. For Mom, the official family dessert server, it was a little more challenging getting everything served; next time, I think I’ll freeze the mousse.

It’s rare the Weekend Trifecta all occurs on one day, but Saturday had it all – it was a day stuffed to the brim with three generations of family, good food, and lots of fun. And I can’t wait to cook with Sam again!

St Patrick's Day

Revisiting another post from 2009. No corned beef this year, and a little too early (and cold) for the garden to wake up, but I just know it's not far off...

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I was hard-pressed today to determine which I liked better, the house filled with the aroma of corned beef roasting slowly in the oven, or the smell of spring that greeted me as soon as My Sweet Baboo opened the bedroom window, put up the storm and pulled down the screen. Each could have stood independently as the sign of a great day, but taken together they were almost intoxicating.

It’s been a beautiful three or four days here in The Valley – I don’t remember for sure how many nice ones we’ve strung in a row, because I get a little lost in each of them, especially at this time of the year.

Our winters start early and end late, it seems – and we can generally count on about 120 inches of snow on average. This year we’re up around the 140-inch mark, I think. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like all of the snow is on the ground at the same time – it’s just a big number when the TV meteorologists start doing the math.

When we have days like this in March – and there were a couple even warmer earlier in the month - there’s a temptation to do too much. Too much raking, too much pruning, too much cleaning up around the perennials. We tend to focus on the fact that we can be outside in the garden, we can shake off some of our winter doldrums, we can try and take advantage of every minute of the day.

What we forget is that Mother Nature has to catch up to our exuberance. We forget that she’s got a plan (and I think at least part of the plan includes torture, by the way), and we have to remember the patience that we hung up with the hand tools last fall.

Today, I enjoyed a walk in the yard, and took a picture or two, mostly to send to my brother who still has several inches of snow on the ground in southwestern New Hampshire. I admired the progress that our daffodils, tulips, irises and lilacs have made in the past few days; I watched as sap dripped out of the sugar maple, and fell into the garden below. But then, I got closer to the house, and caught a whiff of the corned beef, and reminded myself that it’s still only the middle of March.

I’ll have hours and hours to enjoy being outside in the coming weeks and months, but the corned beef is a treat that we only have this week.

Today, the kitchen trumped the garden.