Super Bowl Sunday XLVI

     Super Bowl Sunday has rolled around again, and as always it's mostly a chance to watch the ads, (and look out for Madonna wardrobe malfunctions), but Cy and I are settling an old score on this game, one going back to the last Pats-Giants Super Bowl.  Mom and Cy, are rooting for the Giants, as they did all those years ago.  I'm still for the Patriots, and Dad has gone for his lo-cal team, Avocados.  He's afraid they'll get mashed up and devoured.
     Like last year, and the year before, Super Bowl Sunday here in Oregon has been beautiful and sunny.  Today we went for a walk in Washington Park, and came back home, with a quick shopping trip on the way, to watch the big game.  Tonight, Cy's making fish and chips, while the rest of us watch the game (ads).  I don't think I'll be spending much time in the kitchen today.  I hope the food goes well.
     The food came into us with five minutes left in the fourth quarter.  We watched as the Giants drove down field, and their running back sat down into the end zone for the touchdown with a minute left.  We snacked on fries as the Patriot's came back up the field, and the Giant's were called for twelve men on the field, the second such call in the game.  The Patriot's didn't make the last catch, and it really was a twelve men call, the one on the Pats in the first quarter that decided the game.  Without the twelfth man, they would have had a red zone stop and interception.  Instead the Giant's scored.  The food was good, the salad used a mandolin, but there were no injuries.  It was a fennel, carrot salad with a ginger lime yogurt dressing. The fries were good, the fish was a little soggy.  Oh, and did you notice how the polar bears, had scarves that corresponded to the teams colors, and the bears emotions in the ad corresponded to the game? I thought it was a cool trick.  To bad there weren't any epic Jerome Simpson touchdowns.

Potatoes, Salmon, Winter

     Yesterday, we went to the Mythbusters: Behind The Myths tour; it was sunny and bright outside, not a cloud in the sky.  When the show started, Adam Savage said, "I don't believe that it rains here all the time.  I've been to Portland six times now, and not once has it rained."  But now, we are back to normal, it's been drizzling all day.  To help correct for the cold, dreary weather, Cy's decided to make some classic comfort food, loaded-baked potatoes.  The potatoes themselves are currently doing their first bake in the oven next to some brownies Dad has made for dessert, while bacon is cooking on the stovetop.  Throughout the house, you can smell the brownies and the bacon.  Mmmm.

Appetizers!

     The bacon, brownies and potatoes are now done.  Dad is picking kale from the winter garden, and Cy is separating egg whites for some salmon cakes.  Once the potatoes have been filled and are in the oven, The salmon cakes will get into full swing, with some King salmon that our cousin Drew caught in Alaska last summer. The Salmon Cakes are just egg whites, soy sauce, green onions and finely minced ginger. They are pressed into cakes and then baked on a cookie sheet
     The loaded potatoes are out of the oven. The tops were dressed up with some cheddar and bacon which made a nice appetizer. The salmon cakes are going in.  Cy's working on a salad, and I've been called up to make tartar sauce.  Dinner should be ready relatively soon, and it should be great.





     It was great.  The baked potatoes were amazing, they had a cheddar topping that had melted, then hardened into a crust on top and were filled with bacon.  The salmon cakes were excellent as well, they had just a touch of ginger in them, and they were nice and crunchy.  My tartar sauce caught a little flak, as usual, for using sweet pickles instead of dill.  The salad was good, though I wasn't a big fan of the dressing, which was made with some sort of super-thick Hungarian buttermilk.  Once we digest, Dad will be serving up his brownies.

Pirogi And Frozen Stoplight

     The first weekend after break is always hard.  Instead of days on end, Cy and I have only a pair before we have to go back to school.  Today we knuckled down and managed to write all our Christmas thank you cards, even when we wanted to go somewhere for brunch.  After lunch, Dad and I went out to David Douglas High School's pool, were I had a personal coaching session.  On the way home Dad stopped by Food4Less (unsung hero of Sundays strange ingredients) in search of goat to make Birria.  When we got back, Mom and Cy were watching Terminator on our new TV.  The weather was great, it looked a lot like spring, ten bucks says Cy wants to grill in two weeks.  For now though, Cy's staying inside, making Pirogi.
     Cy started cooking earlier, while I was at my coaching session.  When Dad and I got home Cy had made the potato/cheese filling, and the dough was resting underneath a bowl.  When Sarah Connor had driven away from the Mexican gas station in her Jeep, Cy came up, chopped some onions, and threw them onto the stove to start caramelizing.

Not-frozen Stoplight

     Mom and Dad went on a shopping trip to get the last few ingredients we needed together, and while they were out Cy and I worked on the pirogi.  We rolled out the dough, and stuffed them with potato filling.  When Dad got back, he started to boil them.  For pirogi, this meal has been surprisingly easy, probably because Cy got such an early start.  While that's good, I don't think the potato filling was well served by sitting around.  Cy's started working on his mysterious side dish, something with red, yellow and green bell peppers.   For now, all he's doing with that is slicing them up.  We will see what happens there.  Across the kitchen Dad is working on the Otto's kielbasa, adding a little beer to help steam them.  He's also warming up sauerkraut in that pan.  Turns out Cy's mysterious dish is actually something very simple, it a fresh version of what we called "frozen stoplight" when I was a 3 or 4 years old. It was frozen red, yellow and green bell peppers on a plate, and I loved it.  I don't think we've had frozen stoplight since we moved back to Oregon when Cy was just a tiny baby.


     That was good.  And I mean really good!  The sauerkraut and sausage were excellent, and you could just taste the beer.  The pirogi were some of the best we've had, though we're still figuring out the caramelized onions.  We were first introduced to pirogi at the Ukrainian Church in our neighborhood. They sell pirogi and sausages every Saturday as a fund raiser. There is also a new food cart in our neighborhood called "okie-rogi."  It's pretty good, and they've got some interesting fillings - jalapeño, loaded baked potato, "meat" and vegetarian options, too.  Tonight we had some really great pirogi, thanks Cy.

Here's To 2012 Whatever It May Bring

     Every New Year's, we make country ham and biscuits and cheese grits and have most of the neighborhood come over to help us eat them.  Since we've been eating all day, we rarely eat dinner on the first day of every year.  Instead we'll have a little snack while watching on of the football games somebody turned on.  Sufficed to say, there isn't going to be any Sunday Dinner tonight, not after our biggest meal of the year.  Happy New Year, may it be a good one.

Christmas Dinner

Friday, 4:30 PM

     We're getting an early start for Christmas dinner.  I decided earlier this week, that we should have a real classic Christmas dinner, a Kentucky Country ham, and an even more classic dessert, figgy pudding.  Figgy pudding tastes best if it's allowed to age a day or two.  So we started out this morning, chopping figs, making breadcrumbs, measuring brandy, (and rum, and cognac).  After lunch, Mom, Cy and I went to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie.  After more than two hours of a not-so-great sequel, we came home and mixed up the pudding.  Now steaming,  hopefully it will be done before Mom and Dad leave for Festivus.  

Sunday, 4 PM
     Now we get to make the actual dinner.  We've got biscuits, and a salad, and a Christmas ham.  We're going to gussy it up with pineapple juice and dijon mustard.  The ham was one shipped out to us by our uncle Clark.  Every year in my memory, he's sent us one of Col. Newsom's hams.  They're great stuff, and we got this one the day Mom and I were planning dinner.
     We've spent most of the day playing with gifts, Dad and Cy and I set up our new 42-inch TV in the basement, we went to the park with a water balloon slingshot, Mom cooked breakfast omelettes on a pair of new skillets we got her, and everybody has spent a little time with the Newton's cradle.
     The ham is coming along nicely I think, we have yet to get started on the salad, and the biscuits just got put in the oven.  They're an interesting recipe, even before we cooked them, they were the flakiest dough you've ever seen, and that was after we'd added an extra half-cup of buttermilk.  The biscuits also call for an interesting ingredient, homemade baking powder.  Believe it or not, this baking necessity is just two parts cream of tartar, and one part baking soda!  Now there's something for ingredient based chefs!

     So far, this dinner has been remarkably simple, the ham is pre-cooked, so we just have to glaze it and warm it up, we made dessert days ago, and the biscuits took less than half an hour.  So far the most time intensive part has been the salad, and really, salads are pretty easy.   Even fancy ones like the pomegranate salad we are making are fairly easy.
     Over the break, I've been working on a new feature for the blog.  We've gotten a lot of requests to post the recipes we use, and I've finally found a good way to do that.  Near the top of the page you should see a bar with two buttons, one labeled "Sunday Dinners" and the other labeled "Recipes".  The "Sunday Dinner" button will take you to all of our Sunday Dinner posts, including this one.  The "Recipes" button will take you to a group of posts of some of the recipes we've used.  If you would like us to put up a specific recipe from the past, just let us know what post it's from, and then we'll try to put it up for you!

     Dinner was great.  The salad dressing was great, the almonds added a good crunch, and the pomegranate gave it an excellent holiday color.  The ham was, like all of Col. Newsom's hams, salty and rich and so, so, good.  The biscuits, with their homemade baking powder, were very flaky, but at the same time very fluffy and thick.  Cy took to drenching his in honey, but I don't think anybody else tried it.

     Now we get to go back to where we began.  The figgy pudding.  It was good, but the general consensus was that it was too boozy (Mimi loved it though!).  We also agreed that it's a little old-fashioned, better suited for a time when you couldn't get fresh fruit all winter.  The still-good part of figgy pudding is only for us young pyromaniacs.  We've got a video of that, but it too is rather disappointing.  But it was a great Christmas!! Merry Christmas!

Let the Break Begin

     Cy and I are out of school until next year, and to celebrate, Cy's making one of his all time favorites.  Mac' n' cheese.  We use the recipe from the yellow Gourmet Cookbook, and Mom first made it about a year before we started Sunday Dinner.  Cy fell in love with the recipe, and in the space of a week we had it for three meals.  For sides, Cy is cooking some winter squash and green beans.
     For Cy and I, it's been a quiet weekend around the house, but from what we can tell, Mom and Dad have been spending a lot of time at shops around the city.  There's a number of packages under the tree, and earlier today they came home, locked us in the basement, and then made a lot of thumping noises up and down the stairs.  'Tis the season for speculation, but by this time next week, we'll know.
     Right now, Dad and Cy are speculating as to the location of a pan large enough for all the green beans.  The squash is out of the oven, and the macaroni is about to go in.  We should be eating in a few minutes.

     The macaroni was good as always, the green beans were great, and the squash was good as well, plenty of brown sugar and butter.  One of the best parts of the meal was the relative simplicity of it all.

Ravioli, Take Two

The outside lights

Satsumas: 'Tis The Season

     We got our Christmas tree yesterday, Memaw, Bamp, Cy, Dad and I went to a farm in the hills outside of Linnton that we've gone to for four years running now.  We got a Noble Fir that sits just a few inches from the top of the ceiling.  For the first time ever, Dad put lights up on the outside of the house, we used lights and a schematic that the home's previous owner left us.  To fill out the festivities, we rented National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation.  Today, Cy and I had breakfast at Fat Albert's with Mem & Bamp, then we spent the day at home with them.  For dinner tonight, I've planned ravioli, something we haven't had since the very first dinner we put on the blog.  Who would have known that we would be making the same dish almost two years later, and who would have thought we'd be making it for the blog.

Delicata squash

     Well, we are making ravioli, and now almost every flat surface in the kitchen is draped in ravioli.  We're making a plate of Delicata squash, it's a yellow winter squash that we like to slice, dust with brown sugar and dot with butter then bake, and eat.  We've got some meaty marinara sauce for the ravioli, and all that's left is to fill them and bake them.
     The ravioli are coming along quite well, about half of them have been cooked, about half are waiting.  None have failed yet, and Mom, Bamp and Cy are watching Sherlock Holmes, it came out a few years ago starring Robert Downey Jr., and Mom and I went to see it but Cy hasn't seen it yet, and the new one is coming to our local theater.

Dessert

Dessert

     The ravioli were excellent.  Despite fears from Dad and I that a lot of them would break open, because most of them had small holes, none of them did.  On a few the pasta was rather tough, but most were soft and the ricotta filling nicely set off the meaty marinara sauce we poured on top.  The meal was nicely set off by our dessert, six cake slices from Papa Hayden's down the street.

Lost Sunday

     Tonight's Cy's night, but he (and Mom and Dad) are sick, so Dad's taken over.  He's making some basic, uninspired quesadillas from the Outdoor Living Cookbook (though no one would want to live outside on a night like this).  As per the recipe, dad is shredding two boiled chicken breasts, and there's a nice big pile of grated Montery Jack Cheese on the counter.
     Yesterday, I went to my first Speech and Debate Tournament, at Clackamas High School.  I liked it, but I really shouldn't have been competing in prose.  This morning we went to Mimi's house, and came home with her turntable and some speakers.  Cy and I spent most of the afternoon setting it all up in the basement, but we couldn't get it to work.  Mom got about five seconds of Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds to come through the speakers, and then, somehow, Dad got it to work.
     We've had the quesadillas, and while they were perfectly good, they weren't anything of Sunday Dinner caliber.  For a side, we had a winter squash, one of the ones that works their way into every meal that we have this time of year.  It's a lost Sunday I guess, but that isn't too important, especially when almost everyone is sick.

Thanksgiving, On Another Day

Word games!

     We spent this Thanksgiving with family in Corvallis (we made a great movie while we were there), and while our dinner there was excellent, there are some dishes, and traditions that we couldn't do without, so today I'm going to make Thanksgiving dinner again, a few days late.  We are having our old friends Sam and Elaine over. As we've done for as long as I can remember, the important part of our Thanksgiving feast is not the turkey; it's the side dishes.  For the all-important sides, we've got Mimi's butter-rich dinner rolls, cranberry smash, brussel sprouts cooked in bacon fat, and yams, and for dessert, we've got pumpkin pie.
     Right now, we've got cranberry smash boiling away on the stove, in the oven the pie crust and yams are baking.  Cranberry smash is a very simple dish that has been a family tradition for at least three generations, going on four. The dough for the rolls is almost done rising.  Once we've got the pie filled and back in the oven, we're going to start on the rolls.

     The rolls went ... well.  Usually, Mimi makes them, but it was up to us today, and without Mimi we were bumbling along.  Mimi always makes her rolls crescent shaped, and so we followed suit.  Once we'd spread the dough out in a circle, I started halving the dough, so that we could make the crescent rolls.  We halved all the way to thirty-seconds before we started rolling them.  By the time we'd rolled about a quarter of the rolls, the other rolls had risen enough that they started to grow back together.  So, after tugging re-slicing and tugging a little bit more, we had 32 rolls laid out.  They're certain to taste as good as Mimi's, but they're not as beautiful.
     I just finished peeling the brussel sprouts.  What a bunch of work they were!  When I started on 'em, the sun was still up (though behind clouds), when I finished removing the bad spots and chopping them, it was completely dark outside.  I think Dad started the stuffing while I was chopping brussel sprouts.  The cranberry smash is done, the pie is done, the rolls are rising, the yams and turkey are in the oven, and the brussel sprouts just got thrown into cook with shallots and bacon fat.  Yum.  The stuffing is on the stove, replete with onions, celery, garlic and lots and lots of butter.  The croutons and chicken stock have yet to go in.



     Dinner is taking a little longer than expected, because of the turkey of course.  Hopefully they'll be out in a few minutes though, and then we can throw the rolls in.  While we wait on the last few dinner items, we get to fulfill one of the other Thanksgiving traditions, word games.  Most years, we'll play dictionary (also known as balderdash).  This year though, we've got a new game, called konexi.  You build words in a three-dimensional tower, a sort of Jenga meets Scrabble.  Like camping, it's in-tents.

     Dinner was awesome.  It had every thing we need to feel that the holidays have begun, from butter rich dinner rolls, to cranberry smash and chipotle yams.  For dessert we had the requisite pumpkin pie.  To finish off the evening, we've got more word games.

Pork Chops to Brownies, Family Classics

Canadian "Candy"

     It's currently 5 PM, and completely dark outside.  It must be winter here in the Pacific Northwest, because in addition to the darkness, it's raining.  Since it's winter, Cyrus is making a winter time staple for our family, pork chops.  as with the past few dinners, the pork chops are from our 1/4 pig, and are guaranteed to be good.  With the pork chops, we'll be having the all important apple and pasta side-dishes.
    For as long as I can remember, that's the way we've had pork chops, with apples cooked in butter, and buttery, buttery pasta.  Actually, I think I look forward to the apples and the pasta more than the pork chops. Cy is also making squash and baked apples, and earlier in the day, Dad made brownies for dessert.
   The squash is out of the oven now, and Cy is grinding it and the baked apples through a grape juicer to make a casserole-puree.  It's a new recipe, but it should be good.  Since we're are still waiting on the cooked apples, the pork chops haven't been started yet, but they should be en route soon.

     It was an excellent meal, the apples were sweet, moist and buttery as ever, and the pork chops were done quite well.  They were crunchy, and slightly spicy, because the batter Cy used had some cayenne in it.  The casserole-puree was very sweet and dessert-like, because it had been pulped so finely.  For the real dessert, we had Dad's specialty brownies, the ones that look like they've been sculpted from tumultous lava.  A great precursor to Turkey Week.

Vancouver, B.C.

     We spent the (4 day!) weekend with family in Vancouver, B.C., and only just got back a few hours ago.  The trip was awesome, we ate dim sum in Chinatown, and dinner at Vij's sister restaurant Rangoli, and spent one afternoon at the aquarium.  Tonight, though, Cyrus won't be cooking dinner, as we're going to Ken's Artisan Pizza with some in-laws.  And yes, we brought back some smarties for Diane.

Lasagna, Nasturtium Salad, and Bittman Bread. Take Two.

     Yesterday was the OSAA state cross-country championships.  One of the schools that went to the championships was Cleveland High School, and though the girls team got 4th, and the boys team took 6th, I'm excited.  Next year, the girls team will have lost only one of their runners to graduation, and the boys team will have done equally well, bringing back their top two runners (who are twins) for another year.  I'm really excited for cross-country next year.  I'm also excited for dinner tonight, Dad is putting one of his loaves into the oven, the sauce for our lasagna is on the stove, and we've planned to attempt the salad from our hoisin chicken meal (June 27, 2010).  For dessert, we've got a good sized stash of Halloween candy.

     The past few times Dad has made bread, it hasn't quite lived up to the luster of the loaf in that first Mark Bittman tribute dinner.  This time though, he thinks he's figured out what he's doing wrong, and the loaf is progressing well.  The lasagna is nearing it's final assembly, and it's getting dark outside.  That's one of the things about daylight savings time.  I mean, its great that when I woke up at seven this morning, the sun had already started its arc through the sky.  But the payback is that it's completely dark outside by half past 5:00.

     The lasagna has been assembled, and is in the oven for it's hour long bake.  Dad's loaf is ready, and like the first time he has put out a little olive oil and sherry vinegar on a plate.  Is it as good as the first time?  Yes, it is.  The crust is thin and crunchy, though it doesn't detract from the softness of the loaf inside.

This is the author

     The lasagna was excellent.  It was a different recipe than we've used previously, and it was simpler than previous renditions.  The lasagna was packed full of meat (including some of the pork sausage that wasn't put to use last week)  and cheese.  The ricotta/egg mixture wasn't used as much as the other recipe, (which greatly disappointed Mimi) and it had a shorter baking time.  Its too late in the season for the nasturtiums, they didn't have much nectar, and we had to reject a few of the flowers Dad picked because of slug damage and mold.  Lasagna is always a good meal, this time especially.

Autumn Arrives In The Rose City

Condi and Moamar

     October is harvest season, and this past week has been an especially extravagant one for us.  We have a quarter pig in our freezer, and fresh winter squash from the garden.  Cyrus is making red meaty sauce to go on top of pasta, and this is the first real fall meal of the season.

     The red meat sauce has spent most of the day simmering down, and has a little bit farther to go.  Earlier this after noon, Cyrus took part in the Monster March as part of the Sellwood Band.  He had a successful zombie costume, last night, Mom and Dad were Moamar Qaddafi and Condoleeza Rice, and on Friday I won a costume contest at the Cleveland Cross-Country teams Halloween party for my Katy Perry costume.  Tonight though, only the spaghetti is dressing up.

     The red sauce is almost done simmering, and the pasta is on the stove.  Dad's loaf of bread came out of the oven a few minutes ago, and the squash is only a few minutes behind the bread. The squash was a roasted delicata squash drizzled with olive oil and dusted with brown sugar.

   

 

The meal was excellent.  The red sauce could have simmered for a few extra minutes, but it worked out because dad's bread was a little crunchy and could wipe up the extra juice.  A great way to begin the fall.

     One of the things Sunday Dinners have done is show us how every weekend holds something memorable.  The Sellwood 5k was this morning, and mom ran the apple sale that coincides with it.  Cy and I ran the 5k, which is 3.18 miles, and enjoyed the festivities.  This afternoon we got a few well deserved hours of rest to, among other things, read the paper.  This evening, (yes it's completely dark, at 7), we had the Quick family for dinner.  As far as I can remember, they've never come for a Sunday Dinner before.
     Because we had to meet certain dietary requirements for the Quick's, this was one of the more challenging recipe searches.  But ultimately, we found one, an ancho chili marinated skirt steak on a salad of black beans, roasted poblano peppers with onion, cilantro and red bell peppers.  The poblanos and steak are on the grill, and everything else is ready.  The Quick's are here, and it is time to eat.  
  The steak salad was awesome.  The steak was immensely flavorful due to its marinade. The beans were sweet, and the roasted poblanos, tomatoes and red bell peppers balanced them out.   In addition to the steak salad, we had Mark Bittman's No knead Bread, which has somehow become a Sunday Dinner staple.  The steak salad was from Sunset magazines October 2011 edition, and is definitely recommended.

    

Short-Short Cakes

     Dad is out of town this weekend, a produce conference in Atlanta, and Cy wanted to make strawberry shortcake for dinner.  What, you ask?  Isn't strawberry shortcake traditionally a spring dish?  Well yes, it is, but today, it has been indistinguishable, from spring.  We were at OHSU in the morning, and the sky was clear and beautiful.  The warm weather has persisted throughout the day, and now the strawberry shortcake seems oddly fitting.
     Strawberry shortcake is rather simple, just mix the shortcake ingredients, bake and serve.  It was this easy for Cy, only a few extra minutes spent on figuring out how the food processor worked.  Food processors are very complicated after all, with all their fancy technology.

   The strawberry shortcakes were excellent.  The strawberries had great full flavor, especially for frozen California strawberries (never buy California strawberries, they're mostly water and not as much sugar or flavor).  The whip cream was sweet and full as well, and the biscuits were perfect.  Not off flavor like past shortcakes, and not burnt at all.  Excellent strawberry shortcake.

Marathoners Are Crazy

     In 490 BC, the Greek soldier Pheidippides ran the the 26.2 miles from Marathon to Athens, to deliver a message after the Battle of Marathon.  Legend has it that after delivering his message, he dropped dead.  Today, the marathon is a popular recreational sporting event, and more than 500,000 people finish at least one marathon every year in the United States.  Today, is the Portland Marathon and among the 20,000 participants is our crazy Canadian aunt, Paula.  (There's a distinct possibility that all Marathoners are crazy)
     After I finished manning a water station near Mile 8, Dad and I came home and tried to find a Greek dish, with plenty of protein for Paula.  It was surprisingly easy.  By the time we started, we were done.  After peeling onions and chopping parsley, the most complicated things we had to do were find bay leaves (in the very back of the spice cabinet) and open a can of tomato paste.  Then it was into the oven for dinner.

The "Power Burner"

     After two-and-a-half hours, the beef stew is done, and Paula has yet to return from her marathon.  This has been a long but simple meal, and all that is left is the orzo to accompany the stew.  While it never hindered us, this is the first ever Sunday Dinner in which we have a fully functioning stove.  Our previous stove had had only three working burners since November 2009, only a few months before the first Sunday Dinner.  After that, the glass on the oven cracked, and the door wouldn't close all the way.  Finally, the heating element inside the oven broke.  We had to get a new stove, so we did.  In addition to actually working, it has a few interesting features, namely the "Power Burner".
     Dinner was amazing.  The meat fell apart on your tongue, and the walnuts added a crunch to every bite.  The orzo helped to soak up the juices and one down some of the sharper flavors.  I can not believe we didn't come across this recipe sooner.  Not only was the food amazing, we spent maybe 10 minutes actually cooking.  Page 450 of the green Gourmet cookbook, not the quickest, but one of the easiest and best meals ever.

Flames

     Kids that live in Multnomah County are very lucky.  For one week during sixth grade, every single one of them goes to a summer camp and studies the ecology there.  This week is Cy's turn  in the woods, and he leaves this afternoon.  This means, of course, that he won't be able to cook dinner.  But it also gives us an opportunity.  One of the things about Sunday Dinners is that until now, they have been only dinners.  But since he can't cook tonight, he cooked this morning.
     Cyrus made créme brulée, and while I was asleep for most of the cooking, I got there at the end, for the most important part: the flames.

Wheel, Reinvented

Glasses!

     It was a food cart that introduced to the idea of a stuffed burger.  For fifty years The Burger was a basic, can't-go-wrong, entree.  But somebody wanted to reinvent the wheel, and they did.  The new wheel, is the stuffed burger.  Rather like an eclair or jelly filled donut, extra goodies are hidden inside the burger patty.  At the food cart where we were introduced to the stuffed burger, Burger Guild, there was only cheese inside.  But I decided to take it to the next level.  In addition to cheese, our burgers have mushrooms and olives inside.  With bits of cheese poking out the corner, you can't wait to eat them.

     As with any burgers, by the time you've started, you've also finished.

     The burgers were excellent, though the stuffed aspect wasn't as exciting as at the cart.  The cheese stuffed did taste like a cheeseburger though.  For dessert we had grilled, home grown plums (our tree is finally producing) with ice cream.  It may be fall, but summer is still here in spirit.

Pirogi: Has It Really Been a Year?

     It's been exactly a year since we made a certain Sunday Dinner staple.  No doubt, the landscape of Sunday Dinner would be different if we hadn't had this one dish.  It seems impossible that it's been a year, but the last time we made pirogi was September 19, 2010.  Now that cold, rainy weather has returned to Portland, it was the first thing Cy wanted to make.  So with a weak winter sun coming in the window, Cyrus and Dad are rolling the cheese/butter/potato balls.
     While the dough for the pirogi rests, Cyrus is practicing his trumpet.  He's been playing his trumpet for about a year-and-a-half, and he was just accepted into Sellwood Middle School's prestigious Jazz Band.  He's the only sixth grader to get in in a number of years, and he's understandably excited.  But right now he's more excited about dinner.  The dough is getting rolled out, a plate of stuffed pirogi sits next to the bounty of a delayed summer, waiting to be cooked.  Scout, a visiting Corgi, is playing with a laser pointer. It's been awhile (a year!)  since we've cooked pirogi, but I remember the smell.  The onions, the sausage, the pirogi, it creates a delectable aroma that you can't forget.  The steam rising from the numerous pots on the stove creates an unforgettable image to go with the unforgettable aroma.  Pirogi are really special.

Dried tomatoes from our garden

     The pirogi, as always, were tasty.  We put them next to Otto's sausage and Mom's home pickled beets.  With sauerkraut and sour cream to top off the plate, we had a flavor-bomb.  Now if only we had something good to do with all those tomatoes.

The bounty of a delayed summer