cook: double stuffed baked potatoes

I stayed after school the day before Thanksgiving break glazing a bunch of bisque. I still didn't finish, and it was already dark at 5. However, the lights at SFO were pretty in the night sky. 

 

And after grocery shopping, I stopped at a discount department store to get my Black Friday fix but without doing so on the actual day when the store would be swarming with bargain hunters. I merely wanted to see what useless stuff I would be tempted to buy if I weren't trying to be a minimalist. For example, I am a sucker for tongs, but didn't buy.

And I like the idea of this egg container, but then remembered that I hate, hate, hate the stupid home edit trend of fridgescaping and pantry organization of stacking clear plastic storage with labels. In my 20s, I liked the Container Store, and now well, its concept is just dumb. And the Princess Diana cookie tin caught my eye because it reminded me of the travel candy tin of her wedding portrait that I bought as a souvenir when I first traveled to London and that now stores some of my buttons. Don't need it. Didn't get it.

 

Back to cooking for Thanksgiving. I was originally going to fry spuds for patatas mixtas, but then decided to cook ahead double stuffed baked potatoes in order to not crowd the kitchen. I got up early just to bake the potatoes, which I cut in half after an hour in the oven and then got to chopping scallions and chives while ....

 

....melting butter in half and half in the hot oven.

However, the potatoes looked pretty dry even with the hot dairy, and so I melted even more butter and some heavy whipping cream to boot in the microwave.

  

Yep, that made the whipped potatoes even creamier and fluffier.

 

....and more importantly, even tastier. Lots of salt and pepper and the green alliums to season and flavor the spuds. Potatoes stuffed back into their jackets....

and ready to be covered with foil and then re-heated for the afternoon feast. I kept the side simple and did not add the sour cream or cream cheese or cheese called for in various recipes.

Roast chickens were delicious for thanksgiving, and leftover chicken made for a delicious chicken salad sandwich for lunch the next day.

 

And I've got a cold, but am trying not to flake out on social commitments. I got together with Meral on this Black Friday after our ceramics session....

...and ate a delicious dinner at a Pakistani-Indian restaurant where we ordered papadums just for the mint and tamarind chutneys and paneer makhani and a spicy chicken biriyani with raita and some kind of warm red sauce. I'm supposed to do friendsgiving tomorrow, but my throat is scratchy and my head hurts. No fever, but I feel just yuck. I'll get up early to take the stupid turkey out of the refrigerator to come to room temperature and start the gravy and mashed potatoes. Ugh. I'm thinking I'll just do cooking duty and then bow out of lunch because I see myself becoming more miserable in order for this cold to run its course.

cook: bibimbap my way

I clipped or copied yet again ANOTHER recipe from the New York Times Cooking newsletter; and I finally had occasion to make Eric Kim's recipe for an easy Korean meal.  T'was the night before Thanksgiving and at a loss for what to eat before nonstop feasting, I still wanted to cook, but something not too stodgy and therefore loaded with vegetables.

                               

And I always read other cooks' comments before cooking any New York Times recipe.

Yes to more mushrooms because I found both oyster and king at Trader Joe's as well as a sweet potato, but alas the store was out of gochuchang paste. I also had kale leftover again from Trader Joe's which had gone into my black bean chili as well as sugar snap peas in my fridge. I sometimes cook kimchi fried rice with an egg on top, and for this bibimbap, I opted for no fried egg on top, which would be too similar. And so in the mad rush of shoppers at Trader Joe's the day before Thanksgiving, I opted to buy frozen bulgogi instead for my bibimbap. Luckily, I had gochuchang sauce already into which I added toasted sesame oil, rice vinegar, sugar, and toasted sesame seeds, AND also had cooked white and brown jasmine rice earlier in the week.                     

Supper super success.

This Korean rice bowl that you bibimbap or "mix mix" before you eat is going into my regular meal rotation. With or without egg. It's so easy to just roast everything on the sheet pan, and per other readers' suggestion, I added the kale and red onion on to the sheet pan the last 10 minutes of roasting and mixed everything to prevent the kale from getting too crunchy or burnt and for it to pick up some moisture from the other vegetables. As mentioned, I didn't fry an egg, nor did I warm my rice on the sheet pan, but instead microwaved the leftover grain. The creative possibilities are now endless--I see change-ups with carrots, bok choi, chicken, salmon, green onion, bean sprouts, broccoli, etc. for future bowls of bibimbap.

clay: sgraffito #3, #4, #5

My tinned fish obsession has transferred into painting black underglaze into ceramic forms built from Styrofoam containers and then scratching away the coating to reveal the white Bmix underneath.

Sgraffito #2, inspired by Trader Joe's Calamari Pieces in Olive Oil.

Sgraffito #3, because sardines, especially Trader Joe's Lightly Smoked Sardines in Olive Oil, are tasty, forked into and eaten straight out of the can.

And with Sgraffito #5, I just wanted to try to free hand draw coral next to a swimming Pacific rockfish.

Last Sunday after a frustrating couple hours of throwing, I resumed scratching pomegranates. My backgrounds have been black but it's time I think to start scratching away around the figures.

clay: kurinuki box with stormy blue + rutile green overglazes

My obsession with hollowing out clay has finally subsided. I've one more cone 10 box to glaze, and I'm hoping there is Coleman Red or Flambe glaze left at the high school. Below is the second-to-last of my cone 5-6 kurinuki boxes.

Kurinuki containers are a fun test pot for glazes.

clay: contemporary candelabra

At the parks and rec ceramic studio, I've been making candelabras of a modernist and organic bent. And even though I had to use candle "snuggers" which are basically a piece of thin, squishy foam to make the tapers fit in a few of the holders, I'm pleased by the final outcome even though there's always room for improvement. First tip, make the taper holders first or before the base, and I need to bring one of those cones to shape them to be more circular. Second tip, don't make the slab of the base too thin; otherwise I'll need really thick coils to reinforce where the base undulates and sometimes rips. Third tip, with this speckled buff clay body, I need to stir the heck out of the white gloss (or maybe even just bring it to my high school ceramics studio where we've a bucket of Laguna white gloss that has more opacity). However, I'm happy enough with so much raw clay in contrast to the ceramic glaze. Fourth tip, let the pot dry much more slowly in order to ground out any instability on concrete when it's greenware which sometimes warp while drying for the piece to be more level after the final firing.

And yeah it's time to buy a bag of speckled buff and start making these at the Clay Life studio, where there are more tools available for me to refine the build and the Majolica glaze produces more contrast of white glaze and raw clay.

cloth: salmon cuisine & swim camp

My favorite meal this past late summer because it was such a delicious accompaniment to all the fresh vegetables from the garden was one of those ginormous ready-to-bake Salmon Milano from Costco. I slow baked the salmon and served it with roasted zucchini and yellow squash and an heirloom tomato salad and rounded out the meal with homemade fettucine Alfredo. For a few days, I kept eating the leftover salmon straight from the refrigerator instead of mixing the fish with green onion, mayo, and celery for a salad or a melt. Winter is approaching, and I'm craving salmon again.

And I regard it as a fait accompli that I finished not only the No Shrinking Violet quilt, but also Swim Camp, both which I'll be gifting to a recently born grandniece and a grandnephew born less than a year before her. That's 2 Christmas presents for children who can't yet read off my list. And I did no hand stitching on this baby blanket, but completely quilted it on my domestic. The aqua Aurifil thread looks great on top of both the navy blue and sky blue and cerulean fabrics.

I stitched a little too much binding, but that beats having to run to the fabric store because of running out. 

 

As usual, I had fucked up the joining of the binding ends and had to do-over twice by watching a YouTube tutorial.

And there was a bit too much pilling from the batting, but it'll all go away when it gets laundered.                                      

I do love this quilt and hope it's cuddled under for napping.

cook: chorizo black bean vegetable chili

I had intended to cook chili the night before my slow sewing meetup because it was going to be a busy Thursday afternoon of a retirement decisions webinar followed by hosting my quilting and embroidery group. Nope! I ended taking off from work an hour and a half early to run to the grocery store for other ingredients and a dessert and then getting the chili started to simmer and finish cooking while on my Zoom meeting. Luckily I had already soaked and boiled black beans earlier in the week. Once I got home I fried the chorizo and for added measure, ground pork I hadn't all used in my white bean and fennel soup. Next chopped onions and garlic went into the frying meat.

 

Next into the pot, the chopped bell peppers and pre-cooked black beans and a jar of chicken bone broth. I also added chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, forgot the cumin but did add this spice from Trader Joe's which had the cumin as well as more chili powder and salt and ground corn.

So much liquid in the pot! And so I added tablespoons of tomato paste to thicken it and as it furiously boiled, I peeled and cut and cubed sweet potatoes and brought out a bag of kale. Once the liquid reduced, I added the sweet potatoes and kale and let it simmer some more in the pot.

By the end of my meeting, the chili looked done. My chorizo, black bean and vegetable chili tasted marvelous though I did add sugar to cut the heat and the bitterness of the peppers.

Even though there were only 3 of us sewists, we each crushed tortilla chips and garnished our chili with cheese and sour cream and cilantro and ate 2 bowls in my condo's club house. AND stitched and talked politics and savored tiramisu. I had also left a couple bowls for Patrick to eat at home for dinner though now there is enough leftover chili for the couple meals before Thanksgiving. But last night, I wanted to Hoover more leftovers and ate again leftover carne asada tacos and nachos with more of those wonderful pickled jalapenos.

I honestly do love to cook and feed people. It's just so much less stressful for smaller groups of people, and so that'll be my December: to entertain very small suppers to make hosting very less annoying.

cook: pork, cannellini, fennel soup

Because of the higher grocery prices, I've been buying meat only on sale, the value packs of bone-in pork ribs or bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs which make for the best soups and stews. I recently pulled out a Ziploc of pork loins from the freezer and then dug in my vegetable bin for whatever root vegetables were there: yep, carrots and oh yeah, I had bought fennel bulbs to make a salad with oranges and red onion. I decided instead to include the fresh fennel in an Italian stew. In my herb box, I had marjoram, sage and thyme and filched rosemary from Cecilia.

But dagnabit, I did not soak any white beans the night before. And so back to the store for canned cannellini. A glass of Chardonnay and some crushed fennel seed too I thought would add even more flavor

 

I also remembered bay leaves and the bone broth I boiled from the Kamala Harris chicken lunch. I did also chop onions and garlic, but for good measure, I added a packet of onion soup mix too. The soup was AMAZING. Even Patrick who does not favor soup for dinner liked it. I had added frozen garlic bread to my grocery cart on that run for beans because I just didn't have the energy to also make a salad to accompany the soup.

I had bought two cans of beans--one to remain whole in the pot and the other which I had pureed in order to thicken the soup. Brilliant, I tell you. I aim to leave a pint jar at work for the other librarian, Michaela who loves, loves, loves my soups.