No kidding

I was glancing through a homeschool magazine that Home Science Tools advertises in, and couldn't help laughing at this article byline:

Michael Jackson is the music pastor at...

That would be interesting.

Thai

I went out to dinner tonight with the Stordahls to a little hole-in-the-wall Thai place downtown. I had green curry chicken. It was delicious, although their "medium" spicy was hot enough that I would hate to try something "spicy". We had egg rolls for appetizers too, and they were very good - crispy on the outside, piping hot and juicy on the inside. Yum.

You know, I thought that in this impersonal society "The Usual" was dead. When have you ever gone into a restaurant and ordered "the usual"? Well, Adam did tonight. . .not in those words, but the waitress came up and said, "You want the green curry chicken with steamed rice and a pepsi, right?" (Apparently he goes there for lunch often and always has the same thing!) Cool.

The Weekend

The back way to Red Lodge

Last week I went to Red Lodge with some cousins who were in town. We ended up going the back way, through Bridger, which was rather different scenery than the usual way...

Old

Red Lodge was full of motorcycles and black leather, although the candy store was fairly empty. This was my favorite bike; everyone stopped to admire it as they walked by. If you want to stand out in a crowd of big flashy Harleys, this is definitely the way to do it.


This post does have something to do with food: check out Chocolate & Zucchini, a blog by a French food lover. She just got back from a trip to the US and is making me want to go on a culinary roadtrip, too. :) I could certainly go for some pecan pralines and crawfish!

Tadpoles

Tomorrow we're doing a photo shoot, to get a bunch of great shots for our next catalog. Annie and Melodee have done a lot of work to make sure it'll be fun; I've helped, too. My main contribution has been caring for the seven fat bullfrog tadpoles we got express-shipped to us on Friday. I kinda like the little guys...as I've said at least a couple times already, they are SO cute. Dan and Rachel were making fun of me tonight because I actually took some video footage so you can all see how cute they are (or are not), too.

Had to post it again...

I know I posted this over on itsajoy, but I had to do it here too for your U2 freaks. It's not about food, but the fact that it's about U2 makes it ok, right? ;) Enjoy...

A Peek at the Past

I was reminiscing yesterday about the first dinner party that Amanda and I gave. In 2003 we sent out invitations that read,

Amanda and Melodee
Request your presence at a
Formal Dinner Party
on Friday, July 18th.
The festivities will begin at 5:30 PM at the
Mattson home.
Please be prepared to share a favorite
poem or passage of literature.

We were very ambitious. Our meal was 5 courses, and if I remember correctly, it seemed like we were cooking for two days straight. Somehow we barely got into our formal gowns before the guests began to arrive. We had appetizers and sparkling cider on the back deck to open the evening. Unfortunately the elegant atmosphere was somewhat marred by the heat and the PA system at Senior High, where the Big Sky State Games were going on a block away!

Here was our menu:

• Antipasti I: Spiedini alla romana
  (Mozzarella Skewers)
  
• Antipasti II: Torta di peperoni al forno
  (Roast Bell Pepper Terrine)
  
• Zuppa: Zuppa di fagioli alla toscana
  (Tuscan Bean Soup)
  
• Carpo piatto: Pollo alla valdostana
  (Chicken with Prosciutto and Cheese)
  
• Dolci: Crostata e Ravioli dolci al forno
  (Cheesecake and Baked Sweet Ravioli)

If I recall correctly, everything was delicious except the roast bell pepper terrine - that was gross, actually. And it took the most work to make! Too bad.

Between each course our guests shared a poem and after dessert was cleared away we did a reader's theater of the "play within a play" from A Midsummer Night's Dream. All in all, a most successful and satisfactory party.

When everyone left Amanda and I said to each other that we were so glad we did it, but if we ever did it again we'd have other people contribute to the meal! Now, three years later, we have it worked out perfectly. . .when we have dinner parties each person is in charge of one part of the meal.

My table. "[Amanda] is the useful one; I confine myself to the merely ornamental."

The delicious Zuppa

The yummiest Dolci

Dessert in the garden

Eggplant Experiment

Last week for my calzone stuffing, I bought two eggplants. One went into the calzone, and the other sat on the counter for six days. Eggplant skin is weird; it gets loose and shrively with age, which doesn't exactly encourage you to use it up. I meant to make something with it for my lunch, but cold eggplant sounds pretty unappetizing. So it continued to sit.

Tonight, being Friday, I decidede to live it up and cook that eggplant, if it wasn't completely disgusting inside. But it wasn't. My new Taste of Uganda cookbook has some eggplant recipes, but the one I wanted to make requires a tomato. We have no tomatoes. So I decided to try to imitate Laurie Tricarico's eggplant "recipe" - I think she dipped thin slices in something that looked like sugar, and then cooked them in a frying pan. (She was making up the recipe herself, since eggplant was one of the vegatables plentiful at the market that time. It tasted good, giving me a good impression of eggplant, which I'd never really tried before then.)

Breaded eggplant sounded good, so I dipped thin de-skinned slices in flour and salt. Kind of a lot of salt, actually. Then I fried them crisp and firm in a little bit of oil, so they were kind of like fries. They smelled oddly like pancakes; sweeter than I expected. Actually, I've come to the conclusion that I just really like the smell of eggplant, raw or cooked.

The eggplant fries were exactly what I hoped - crisp and tasty. It was unfortunate that I put quite so much salt on them, though. I had to eat slices of plums in between eggplant slivers to get rid of the over saltiness. Oops!

So next time maybe I'll actually follow a recipe. (If you have any, please pass them on!) But it was fun...

The strawberries.

4th O'July Strawberries

I found this recipe in Martha Stewart Living. I have only altered the presentation.

1 pint strawberries
6 ounces cream cheese(room temp)
3 tablespoons powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Clean strawberries, hollow out top with a melon baller, and cut the tip off so it can sit up by itself. Place the cream cheese, sugar, and vanilla in mixing bowl. Whip with electric mixer until fluffy, 2 to 4 minutes. Pipe cream cheese mixture into strawberries and put a blueberry on top.

Enjoy.

Oops, wrong blog!

But since it's here, I guess I'll keep it. :)

The shy version of a friendly Karamojong smile.

Absolutely nothing to do with cooking.

I don't know if any of you have heard about England and their national pasttime.