My mom's ALWAYS saving the day

Isn't she helpful? :)

"So here's what you do about bland gravy. Taste the cooking liquid before you thicken it. It should taste just about how you want the gravy to taste but just a bit stronger. If it is not strong enough you take out the meat and veggies and boil the liquid till it is stronger tasting. This is called "reducing". Then thicken it and it should be right. Oh - and don't leave out salt. It belongs in gravy and makes it taste "gravy like".

Mum"

pot roast turned out well

I did it by my mom's method. (It's my favorite way to get acquainted with cooking a new food--try it how my mom does it and then play with it from there, if I even need to!)

In this case it meant I browned it on all sides, then nearly submerged it in water and gave it a good simmer until it got really tender. I also threw in some carrots and potatoes to boil in the meat water as the meat finished up.

At the last minute I decided I wanted to make some gravy too. I don't really know the first thing about gravy, except that you start with a roux, and that it involves flour and meat juices, but it turned out okay--a bit bland but definitely edible. Some salt and bay leaf fixed that up okay, and the meat was tender and moist enough that it didn't really need gravy anyway. The thing I ended up being proud of with the gravy was that I didn't burn it to the bottom of the pot. :)

eat at Hoaty's :)

This is the best little breakfast place in the WORLD. I'm convinced.

Alex and I discovered it for the simple fact that it's right next door to our apartment building. We can walk over there, so one day we did.

They are old-fashioned in the best way--they only take cash, none of the waitresses wear uniforms, there are pigs EVERYWHERE (their decorating theme), and the people packed in at other tables are going to talk to you about something or other, so you'd better just embrace it. (Can we borrow your cream? Gee, that looks tasty--what is it? Gosh, your child is adorable! And every other thing you can imagine....) The kitchen is right out where you can see everything happening, and the owners (a really nice couple) are in there serving with the rest of their crew.

I took my sister there (more properly, I made her take ME there :P as payback for her getting pregnant at the same time as me and stealing my round-bellied glory) and we had a SCRUMPTIOUS breakfast:

A giant blueberry muffin, sliced in half and grilled, then drowned in butter
A giant slice of sour cream cinnamon coffee cake, also sliced and grilled
Home fries
eggs
toast
baked beans (homemade)
corned beef hash
hollandaise sauce
2 apple juices
...and it's been a few weeks. I think I'm forgetting an item or three.

We also left a hefty tip, because we were sharing all this with my sister's baby (10 months old) and you know how that goes--we thought we'd leave some extra to cover the floor-cleaning. :)

Well, not to be crass by mentioning money or anything, but tip included, the whole meal was only $20! And it was scrumptious, of course. :D

second artichoke

I settled for a really simple lemon-mayo sauce. (Yes, I did go out and buy a lemon.) :)

The taste was okay, but it really obscured the flavor of the artichoke, so I think I'll be sticking with melted butter in the future!

artichokes, artichokes, yum yum yum

Alex has informed me that he doesn't care much about artichokes one way or the other, so I am eating them both myself!

Last night I had the first one fresh from being steamed, with melted butter to dip it in. Tonight I am looking for some other sauce varieties, but they all seem to be mayo-based. I wish I had lemons--I would make lemon-butter sauce, which is more up my alley.

I guess I'll just have to try one of these recipes and see how it does. How about a combination of mayonnaise, mustard, cayenne, ketchup and Worcestershire sauce? (Does that sound hideous to anyone else???)

delicious artichokes

0. chop off annoying stem and leaf-tops
1. steam artichokes
2. melt butter
3. peel off leaves
4. dip and devour
:)

EDIT: Just to be clear (after reading Chris's comment) I love artichoke leaves. I just meant I was cutting off the very top where the leaves are all spiny and don't have tasty parts anyway. But as far as I'm concerned the whole POINT of artichokes is the leaves! :)

new things to cook with

Alex and I were grocery shopping and I got inspired by artichokes and pot roast. Not that I've ever cooked either.... but I will! And they're going to be GOOD. :)

catfish, continued

I've been trying to think of a good way to describe what catfish tastes like. The best I can come up with is "like cod or halibut, but definitely freshwater." Instead of having a different flavor than these other kinds of white fish, it was more that it had a LACK of some mysterious part of the flavor --which I can only attribute to the fresh vs. ocean water situation. (The catfish we had was from Mississippi freshwater. Actually I don't know if any kind of catfish can even survive in salt water....)

Boy, I hope that made sense. It's considerably past my bedtime!

PS--have I revealed myself to be terribly uncultured because I think these fish taste pretty much the same? :)

Catfish

I ate some. :)

But Alex wants the computer (we're in the airport and only have one) so I'll have to elaborate later. :D

another tasty dinner by the Bowlings

Alex and I were feeling inspired by the beautiful weather that we had today, so we decided to go to the store and see what jumped out at us for a good springtime dinner.

We found some yummy-looking pre-marinated pork tenderloin, but decided we could marinate some ourselves (pre-marinated was $7 and change and non-marinated was $2 and change, which was good motivation).

We also got corn on the cob to boil up, and then the real stroke of genius was getting apples and onions to boot.

We rubbed the tenderloin in this ridiculously yummy stuff called Maple Pepper. Aside from those, it also has garlic and some Secret Ingredients. My sister and brother in law gave me a jar of it from a restaurant somewhere in the boonies a while ago, and it turned out to be the perfect complement to the pork.

So we baked the pork while we fried up the apples and onions in yummy butter, then we poured the apples and onions onto the pork and baked it all some more.

This was possibly the yummiest thing we've EVER eaten. I'm not exaggerating, either. The pork was so tender we could cut it by waving a fork at it. I think it helped that we had a cover on the baking dish, so all the moisture stayed inside. Also, we threw a little brown sugar into the apple/onion mixture, which helped to caramelize it gorgeously.

The only flaw is that it used up a bunch of maple pepper! We'll have to find out where it came from, so we can get more. :)

crab rangoon

Alex and I had crab rangoon from this little Chinese food store right next to us-- YUM, it was really, really, REALLY good. I have tried crab rangoon a couple of times before and it always just tasted like cream cheese and a little generic fish-taste. But these ones were very delicious and much more flavorful. Mmmm.... :)