House Husbandry

This Daly City comfort food staple has reopened after at least a year hiatus to freshen up the interior, and I have to say they've done a mighty job.  I most expected the food to have changed, like the San Francisco location seemed to have done, but it's the same great comfort food that it's always been, but with a much cleaner, more moderb atmosphere.  I was really impressed by how they updated the interior without really changing it.  Gone are the tired red booths replaced with an avocado green that somehow works and maintains a feeling of nostalgia.  The biggest thing they did was to open up some of the walls to let a lot more light in.  The place seemed light and airy and the ceiling had been worked over to really dull the noise in the place. We had some excellent, crispy friend calamari paired with crunchy-gooey arancini.  I had the lamp chops. a Joe's special was had, as well as a meatball sub an Sweetie indulged in a hunk of prime rib with sides of mashed potat

We had dinner tonight at the Cotton Duck as a part of checking out the new hood. OMG was this place good. We started with a foie gras mousse that was subtle and divine. Followed that with Duck Scrapple which was so much better than I thought it sounded.  The star of the show though was the Duck Sugo. A trick of flavors, sort of like the lightest barbecue sauce you've ever had with decadent bucatini and an incongruous toasted wild rice on top. So good!  Sweetie had the Bavette steak which, while good, made me yearn for the Sauerbraten. Four thumbs up!

I check www.theflightdeal.com every morning and today it panned out!  $435 RT ORD to NRT this Spring.  I think I paid that much for two tickets the last time we went.  This is too good not to take advantage of, so we're going again!  Can't wait to have an assault on the senses! Time to brush back up on my Japanese.

I've spent most of the day in the kitchen.  After taking the Dog on an epic 4 mile walk, I rested my feet for a minute and thought about what I wanted to do today. Decided I wanted to make some pasta.  I used to do it on New Year's Day for a couple of years in a row, but it's been probably three or more years since I last did it.  I've got the equipment and had bought some semolina back in January, so decided to just go for it. Started by making the dough in the Kitchen Aid. 1 cup Semonlina flour 3/4 all-purpose flour olive oil salt water 2 eggs Mixed that up till it was coming together and took it out and pressed it in shape.  In retrospect I probably should have used a little more water. Then got out the attachment that rolls it out.  Started running chunks through that on the fattest setting.  Fold it, next setting, fold it, next setting ad nauseum.  I really like playing with my food. I got it to the 5th setting today.  The dough was drying out too

Soaked up some lentils until the water was clear.  Sauteed some onion, celery and carrot in some olive oil and added a bit of garlic.  Then added some Anatolian spice that I got in Ístanbul to the mix, followed by the lentils for a moment.  Added the veggie broth I made the previous day and some tomato paste.  Let that simmer for about a half an hour.  That's all it needs. Stuck a hand blender into the pot and pureed that mess up.  Added some salt and pepper and then the juice of about 3/4 of a lemon.  Voila.  Another hearty, tasty meal.

Getting into the soup thing this week. Sliced up a big leek and sauteed it in a big pan with olive oil, garlic and a white carrot.  Made it wilt.  Added some chopped up cauliflower, Ottoman spices, and some tomato paste thinned with water.  Simmered that for about a half an hour in a box of veggie broth. All the ingredients in the pot Got it all mushy, and then tossed it in the Vitamix with some raw cashews and pureed the hell out of it.  Added a little more water to clean the container and poured that back into the soup.  Super good.  You have to make this. To go with dinner, I also cooked up some farro in mushroom broth.  On the side I did a mirepoix of celery and onion, plus those white carrots I was talking about earlier.  Added some garlic.  Then added a container of chopped up mushrooms, and then some thyme.  Blended this mix with the farro.  Yum. Tossing the trimmings into a pot All of the trimming from all of these vegetables also went into my own veggie broth t

Working on some soup for dinner tonight. We the pan with some avocado oil.  Add a spoonful of crushed garlic.  Once that's sizzling and popping all over the place, throw in the white park of the leek I chopped up.  Wilt that a bit.   Add some Ottoman spice I have too much of. Cut up two big bunches of kale and add that.  Start with about half first and wilt it down a bit depending how big of a pan you're using.  Then add the rest.  I also diced up about a quarter of a potato to eventually thicken it with.  Add a bunch of vegetable broth.  Simmer to wilt the kale down some more.  Add some white wine because everything tastes better with wine.  Cook that about a half hour. Plan next is to let it cool down and them I'm going to puree it in the Vitamix.  Baking a sweet and regular potato in the oven now, in case the soup doesn't seem like enough.  Crudite chopped up in case there's some munchies that need quelling. Update:  Needs a little lemon.  A quarter of a we

Sweetie and I had some free nights to use courtesy of the Ritz-Carlton, so we hunted around for what would strike a balance between a sort of exotic, beachy weekend, but not too far away and not too stressful. Aruba and San Juan made the short list, but ultimately we settled on Cancún. I think we made a good decision. It was only a three hour flight down from Chicago, and about a 70 degree difference in temperature. The worst part was getting through customs, which took about 45 minutes, though it felt a lot longer.  Not all of the rat mazes are quite the same, so look for one that's a little narrower to speed your time through immigration.  That being said, our bag was waiting for us at the baggage claim, so you usually end up waiting somewhere. Coming out of the airport was a little crazy and felt a little scammy.  Not a good start.  For one, the hotel zone is about 20 minutes away and everyone needs a ride.  Cabs aren't allowed to do pickups and it's just shuttle buses

Tonight I got a little industrious.  Cleaned up a baking potato and two sweet potatoes and baked them in the convection oven.  Chopped up a couple of heads of broccoli, half for juice and half to just munch on.  Also cleaned the stalks so I could eat those. Juice has the aforementioned broccoli Some kale Three large golden beets with the greens A huge jicama 1 green apple some carrots a zucchini a turnip ginger turmeric

Used 4 cups cashews, a jar of green salsa I picked up on sale yesterday, a little nutritional yeast and about a cup of water. Puréed the hell out of it in the vitamix. Delicious.

So after the stock was done, cut up 1 1/2 onions and diced two poblano peppers. Threw that into a pot with some olive oil and garlic.  Cooked that up for a few minutes and then added some ground coriander, cumin and ground chipotle chili.  Kept cooking that. Added the stock I made and a touch more from a box.  Got that simmering really good and then added a can of white beans and another can that I mashed up.  Added the juice of 2 limes and about a half a cup of white wine.  Simmered that for about 30 minutes or so.  Shredded the rest of the chicken from last night's dinner and added that along with some fresh cilantro.  Cooked for a few more minutes to warm up the chicken. Served it with with some crushed up blue corn chips and a dollop of sour cream.  Pretty tasty.  Ended up having about a bowl and a half.

Made a roasted chicken, stuffed with lemons on a bed of onions.  Good stuff.  Picture above is some green beans with mushrooms in Ottoman spice from our last trip to Istanbul.  We also had some Brussels sprouts tossed with some balsamic vinegar.  Good stuff. For the Superb Owl I'm making a stock from the bones from last night's chicken.  I added a bay leaf, some poultry seasoning, 1/4 of an onion, old celery, a few baby carrots, a dash of lemongrass and maybe a half cup of white wine.  The rest of it's water and I'm just going to let it simmer on the stove until I'm done with the movie I'm watching.  Pro-tip, simmer very gently to get a clear broth. The stocks going to be the base for a chicken chili.  I've also whipped up a batch guacamole to go with it.  Can't wait to see how the soup turns out!

We had a run of eating out due to being out of the house so much in the past few days. I spent last Friday seeing two movies with a friend, "Anomalisa" and "The Big Short."  We got a glass of wine and some fried calamari and by then it was about 3:30 and I wasn't in the mood to make juice.  Talked Sweetie into checking out a nearby Thai place, Star of Siam.  Ick.  They claimed to have Massaman curry, but it tasted like Jif with pineapple chunks.  What is this, 1976?  I was seriously disappointed.  The spring rolls even had some sort of syrupy-vinegary mess all over them.  Not sure what they were thinking. Saturday was spent house hunting.  We got home about four after neither of us had much to eat that day so we checked out a nearby Irish pub, Timothy O'Toole's, that had pretty good food.   No Irish beers oddly enough, other than Guinness, but they had some buffalo chicken rolls that were interesting.  Might have liked them better if they'd had

Sweetie and I put an offer in on an actual house and it was accepted!  Inspection Tuesday.  It'll be fun to go from downtown condo living to actual city neighborhood house living.  Stay tuned for more updates and lessons to be learned from our experience.