An entire weekend of successes! It felt great to have everything come together and even better that my wife could see the advantages of her husband’s newest moodswing.
Here’s what we dined upon:
Friday night was a night without my wife Lisa, so I spent the large part of it tracking down the ingredients for Pancetta and Hominy Polenta. If one store had Polenta, it didn’t have Pancetta, vice versa, and absolutely none of them had hominy (and I went to five different stores!). I ended up making:
- A salad with gorgonzola dressing and crumbled gorgonzola
- Rib-Eye for One. I splurged and bought some aged beef from Stew Leonard’s. It was worth it.
A pretty tasty Cabernet Sauvignon I bought for the occasion accompanied it all, and although the night was planned as a movie marathon night, the food and the wine put me in a coma halfway through my first movie, A Night at the Opera.
My wife got home around 5 am on Saturday morning, so while she slept in, I made a big breakfast:
- Pancakes with warm Grade B Maple Syrup
- Brown Sugar Lacquered Bacon, the recipe for which advertised itself as a “bacon improvement” and, shockingly, it was. Who knew bacon could be improved upon?
She got some freshly brewed coffee along with it all, so it all turned out great.
For lunch I got to share some of that Gorgonzola salad I mentioned above, which I coupled with sliced fontina cheese and some pears.
Dinner’s highlight was not the main course, which was a Beef Stew we made at Dream Dinners. The highlight was the No Knead Bread. I had whipped up a batch of the dough the night before (in under three minutes, even) and we went through the very slight preparations for it together. The house was filled with the aromatic beef stew and the unmistakable smell of fresh bread. The bread was finished first and we slathered it with Kerry Gold butter, our eyes rolling back in our heads with each bite. Damn good bread.
Sunday morning was spent entirely in preparation for the coming weeks of cooking frenzy. We emptied out every drawer and cupboard, making the more frequently used items more accessible and storing the unused stuff (like our several unused cake caddies and the Butter Boy) in the closet. We whipped up another batch of pancakes before heading out to shop for more kitchen utensils and the night’s meal.
Dinner:
Every ingredient in the name Pancetta and Hominy Polenta proved near impossible to find, although find them we did, in seperate stores. The end result was well worth the effort, as was everything we made. Lisa was doubtful of the Rosemary Pears, but in the end enjoyed them even more than I did.
Lisa’s still referring to this as my “new cooking thing” in conversation but I hope it’s hear to stay. If I’m going to be fat, I might as well be fat from eating delicious food than another faceful of KFC.
