Sunday Night Lunch

Yesterday Amanda, Rachel, and I had a "Sunday Night Lunch." The term comes from the Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace. Betsy's family, the Rays, have "Sunday Night Lunch" every week. It's really supper, but the Rays have always called it lunch, which is just one of their many endearing traditions. Mr. Ray sits in state in the kitchen and makes thick sandwiches with lots of salt and pepper and dressing. And they always have cocoa and fudge and other goodies. Plus a house full of people and singing around the piano, and maybe a waltz or a two-step when the rugs get rolled back.

So last night we had cheese and crackers and bread and pickles and tomatoes - a kind of Betsy-ish picnic. But the culinary centerpiece of the evening was the fudge. In the Betsy books people always made fudge at the drop of the hat - how hard could it be?

We stirred the ingredients over the stove...


Then we put it in the fridge to cool and harden, while we went and sang hymns around the piano. Eventually the fudge was cool so we went to cut ourselves some....



Goop! Not sure what happened, but it was kind of a disaster! In fact, it didn't even remotely resemble fudge, except that it was sweet and chocolatey. Of course, one of the best things about fudge is its fudgy texture. Oh well. We comforted ourselves with the fact that Betsy apparently couldn't make fudge either:

"[Betsy and Joe] were making fudge, or rather, Joe was making it. He scorned Betsy's cooking and fancied his own, so he took charge of the bubbling pan while Betsy watched from the kitchen table." (from Betsy and Joe)

Yes, well, what I want to know is this: where is Joe Willard when you need him?

JKC banquet

I've been posting on TRP about my time in DC for the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Scholars weekend, but I had to double post here about the banquet at the Russian Embassy. It was delicious. Here's the menu; click to read:


Brooke always says she hates figs, but the figs in my salad were so good. Are you sure you've had good fresh figs before, Brooke?


I wish I could have taken pictures of every course, but that's a little tacky, don't you think? (I managed to get the salad since no one had sat down at our table yet.) The steak was incredible...it was so tender you could cut it with a fork (what a cliche, but true!) and the molasses and balsamic glaze gave it an amazing flavor. My other favorite part was silver queen corn souffle timbale. Sounds weird, I know, but it was delicious. Light, hot, sweet, and not a bad texture at all. I'll try to find a recipe some day!

The wine was decent, if not spectacular. The only weak spot of the whole meal was the coffee. But it was served in the most beautiful little cups and saucers (with miniature gold spoons for stirring), that I had to forgive the fact that it wasn't very good.

Sunday Night Cooking

I'm finally posting about food in keeping with our bloc theme! Tonight I've had an Anne quote stuck in my head: "There's so much more scope for the imagination...." That's one of the things I like about cooking. Don't have ground nutmeg? Try a pinch of coriander instead. (Although why we have coriander and not nutmeg...)

This evening I wanted to make an Amanda Hesser recipe for pasta with roasted cherry tomatoes and corn. But there was no corn, so I decided to sauté onions instead. (Sautéed onions is one of my favorite smells.) And while I was changing the ingredients, I might as well add garlic and a dash of hot curry, too, huh? That part I think was a success.

Amanda's tomatoes didn't go as smoothly. I picked fresh, ripe cherry tomatoes, sliced them in half, and put them cut-side up on a cookie sheet as per instructions. Then I drizzled them with olive oil, sprinkled on salt and pepper, added breadcrumbs, and stuck them in the oven at 425 degrees. After 15 minutes, I sprinkled on some parmesan and let them cook for another 10 minutes or so. (Not exactly as she described.) But I don't think A.H.'s look like mine when she takes them out of the oven. Apparently I didn't add enough oil; the bottoms of the tomatoes were completely blackened and I had to scrape out the insides, which is mostly seeds - not the best part of a tomato! Now there's a pan with black crusted tomato guts to be scrubbed. Oh well. So we'll see whether the pasta's any good for lunch tomorrow...

My other project tonight was making nectarine shortcake from Martha Stewart. You can't go too wrong with that, can you? I followed the recipe (other than substituting a peach for two of the four nectarines), but the dough was such a sticky, gooey mess that I just scooped cakes of it onto a baking sheet instead of cutting neat little circles. They just came out of the oven and are rather flat, unbiscuit-like things. But they taste just fine, so I suppose Martha didn't let me down after all!

For Brooke

Happy birthday, Brooke! (two days early) Thanks for introducing me to OK Go and many, many other good things in the last few years. :)

London Calling...

I was finally going to upload my London pictures from 2004 and 2006, but decided I'm too lazy after all. I had fun looking at them in Picasa, though. Here's one of my quick visit to Westminster Abbey, which was fun but I was in too much of a hurry to actually look at much...

Westminster Abbey, 2004

Anyway, I have the travel bug this week, but for now will just have to be satisfied with imagining future trips...like, to visit Melodee at Aberdeen next year. :)