Foodie Lawyer

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

Doesn’t BBQ chicken on the grill just scream “SUMMER”??  We grilled a whole chicken last weekend, specifically so we would have leftovers to make this chicken salad for lunch during the week.  We used a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated that called for coating the chicken with a dry rub (brown sugar, salt, onion and garlic powders, paprika and cayenne) and refrigerating it for 6 to 24 hours, then grilling it and basting with homemade BBQ sauce (ketchup, molasses, cider vinegar, Worcestershire, Dijon, pepper, vegetable oil, grated onion, minced garlic, chili powder and cayenne) about halfway through the grilling time.  The chicken was fantastic, and we reserved some of the homemade sauce to use in the BBQ chicken salad, which also turned out great.

Speaking of grilling, I came across the new edition of one of our all-time favorite grilling cookbooks at Home Depot the other day.  We’ve had the original edition ever since Dan first owned a grill, and we still use it all the time.  We look forward to trying recipes from the new one (bistro-style pork chops with creamy shallot sauce? crispy chicken thighs with basil and prosciutto butter? dijon and garlic swordfish kabobs with lemon vinaigrette?  Yes, yes and yes, with a side of yes!) and reading all the handy “Grill Skills” tips and tricks throughout the book.

This week brought our first homegrown pickling cucumbers of the season.  Since we only have two so far and we already had a half-empty jar of refrigerator pickles on hand, we cut the cukes into rounds and added them to the jar in the fridge.  The cucumber plants in our garden seem to be doing very well (so much so that there are probably a few more harvestable cukes in there that we haven’t found because the vines are so dense) and hopefully will keep us well-stocked with pickles all summer!

We put three over-ripe bananas to good use by making these banana-blueberry muffins.  They were really good, and with whole-wheat flour, a mix of regular and brown sugar, low-fat milk and wheat germ, they’re slightly more healthy than traditional muffins tend to be.  The only changes we made to the recipe were to use three bananas instead of two, add a bit of lemon zest and bake at a slightly lower temperature (per reviewers’ comments about the recipe.)

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

Last Saturday, our good friends treated us to dinner at Whiskey Cake, one of our new favorite restaurants.  All of our entrees were outstanding (especially the lamb dip sandwich, WOW), but one came with props and a story:  the “3 little pigs” sliders have an element to represent each of the pigs’ houses from the nursery rhyme — they are served on a brick, with crispy onion strings for the “straw” and oversized toothpicks holding the sliders together for the “wood.”  And of course, smoky pulled pork to represent the little pigs.  Fun presentation, delicious sandwiches and even better company.  Thanks Paula & Matt!

It’s officially summer at our house, now that the pool is warm enough to swim.  And by “swim,” I mean float around on rafts while sipping frosty beverages.

It’s officially breakfast at our house if we put a fried egg on it.  On Saturday morning we re-heated leftover pizza and topped it with a fried egg for breakfast, and Sunday’s fare was leftover kimchi fried rice, also topped with a fried egg.  Breakfasts of champions.

We celebrated 8 years of marriage this week with, what else — a picnic at the Arboretum and an outdoor concert by an Eagles tribute band.  The food was delicious (a cheese plate and our version of the best sandwich in Paris:  a good baguette spread with French butter and layered with prosciutto), the band was about what we expected, the surroundings were beautifully in bloom and the marriage is better than ever.

We celebrated the bounty of eggplant from our garden by making eggplant parmesan, using a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated’s book, “The Best Light Recipe.”  It turned out great, and we like that this lighter version calls for baking the breaded eggplant in the oven instead of frying it, before layering it with sauce and cheese and putting it back in the oven.  We’ll make this one again.  (We’ll have to if we want to post about it, since I forgot to take photos of it about halfway through the cooking process.  Oops.)

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

Last weekend we went to Brooklyn to visit Dan’s brother and family, including our toddler nephew T and newest nephew A.  Despite a bit of chilly and rainy weather, we had a wonderful time.  One of our rainy day activities was to visit the New York Transit Museum, where T had a blast walking through (and climbing around) the Museum’s vintage collection of actual subway and train cars set on the track system on the lower level.  The weather cleared up on Sunday and we had a lovely stroll along the Brooklyn Bridge Park to the “flea food market” known as Smorgasburg.  If you happen to be anywhere near the Brooklyn area this summer, we highly recommend this dining event.  So many delicious vendors, such little stomach space to try them all!  Many thanks to our Brooklyn family for a great weekend!

One of Dan’s newest happy places is Paisanos Meat Market in Brooklyn.  They have a crazy good selection of all different kinds and cuts of meats, as well as imported cheeses, olives and other antipasto items, and oils and vinegars.  Even though we had gorged ourselves earlier in the day at Smorgasburg, the pre-marinated lamb chops we picked up at Paisanos and grilled that night were so good that we all could have eaten twice as many more.

Our garden is bursting at the seams!  In particular, our eggplants have exploded with fruit and one of our tomato plants is already producing more than we can eat.  Growing our own vegetables is one of our favorite things about summer.

And how about growing our own olives!  I bought this mini olive tree (sort of like a bonsai version) at the grocery store last year on a whim.  It has done well in its little pot, with lots of new foliage.  I never actually expected it to produce olives, but if you look closely, there they are — a bunch of tiny green olives about the size of a pinkie fingernail so far.  It will be interesting to see if they eventually mature enough for us to pick and cure.

Some food-related (mostly) things we enjoyed this past week:

Obviously, the tragedy in Moore, Oklahoma this week is not a “favorite,” and our hearts and hope go out to any and all affected by the massive tornado.   Our money goes out to them too — donating is the least we can do for people who have lost so much.  We appreciate all that the Red Cross accomplishes with donated funds, and we found a couple of ways to give money even more directly to people in Oklahoma in specific ways:  through the Oklahoma food bank, as well as a fund created to benefit OU faculty, staff and students who lost homes and personal property, and via the work being done by an Oklahoma pet clinic with respect to animals displaced during the storm.  We like to think that every little effort makes a difference.

Last weekend we had a “sleepover” with our friends’ son & daughter (and our pretend nephew and niece, who we’ve known since the day each of them was born), while their parents celebrated their 10th wedding anniversary.  We had an awesome time, complete with homemade pasta for dinner (as requested by T), an apres-dinner swim, lots of Wii games, some excellent drawings by A, a visit to the local playground (with an epic kite-flying-adventure FAIL:  one only became “airborne” with me holding it up while running behind A, and the other got eaten by a tree about 15 seconds after T took hold of the string) and a highly successful trip to the video game / child entertainment mecca otherwise known as Dave & Busters.  The kids were great and a good time was had by all!

When luck and planets align every few years, my parents travel to Europe in the off-season, which usually means March or October.  It’s a happy coincidence for me when they go in March, since my birthday is in May (and you’re never too old to hope that your parents bring back something [other than a stupid T-shirt] for you when they travel.)  This year, they brought me a package of calla lily bulbs, with Dan and my wedding anniversary in mind (we were married in June and callas were our wedding flowers.)  I planted the bulbs a few weeks ago, and they have begun to bloom!  The leaves are a pretty bright green, some with cute white speckles, and so far the blooms are a lovely pale pink and yellow combo.  Thanks Mom & Dad!  (And thank you for all the awesome European gifts over the years, none of which has ever been a stupid T-shirt.)

Recently, a friend diplomatically (for him) pointed out that we were remiss in our lavash pizza post because we didn’t mention Cane Rosso among our favorite places for pizza.  Since we had never previously been to Cane Rosso, we apparently didn’t know what we were missing.  Dan and that friend had lunch there the other day (apparently I was busy and unable join them), and Dan reports that their pizza is indeed among the best he has had.  I can’t wait to try it!