When I got the idea of preserving stuff, either by jamming or pickling, I probably had the idea that I would be doing it all the time. Isn’t it something that cooks do? But, the reality is that it can be a whole lot of work. I’ve really decided I like what amount to micro batches. 3 or 4 precious little jars of tasty things. When I have to boil multiple batches I find that things don’t work for me as well. I get stressed out Things in the second or third batch don’t seal. Things don’t gel. Things go …wrong. The Sunday I came down with the flu Z went to the grocery store for me. It is something I normally do on Sunday afternoons. I made him an ambitious list thinking I’d be better in a day or two. He came home with the whole deal and 2 1/2 pounds of Meyer Lemons too. Meyer lemons are a super sweet lemon that is a Chinese hybrid between lemon and mandarin oranges. So, after I started to rebound from the flu I figured I’d make some marmalade. Ever since we were offered marmalade on a cruise I have been a total fan. I used to have those kid feelings, of gross-the peel’s in there-but I’m over it. I like the faint bitterness and long cooked carmelly texture of a well done marmalade. It usually has a certain body that is richer than regular jam. 
The recipe I used was out of Food In Jars by Marisa McClellan – She is kind of a darling of the canning/food blogger world right now during this rebound time from the recession where people are looking at how and what they spend and eat and with the explosion of Pinterest where people can take pretty pictures of things that someone made and packaged up nicely. In this particular recipe she advocates for soaking the chopped fruit for a couple of days. I think this made my jam bitterer than I would’ve liked. I’d probably actually skip it next time. I tend to like a bit more sweetness although the offset of butter and English muffin cures some ills. For some reason my marmalade also doesn’t have much jelly-more thick and bitey. I don’t think I’ll share these jars out which kind of defeats why I make it. This makes two marmalade fails recently which is sad. Hopefully I can get back in the game next month.
Fire In My Belly
last week (10 days ago) I had the honest to goodness verifiable with a swab (gross), infuenza type A. I woke up Sunday morning with a weird painful cough. By Monday morning I had a migraine that was like a mallet with every wracking cough and Z sent me to the Dr. Best Martin Luther King Jr Day ever. The doctor asked me if I’ve ever had a swab before and then said that I should have one since i had a fever. I said I thought I had one before. As it turns out I was wrong. If I had known what was coming I would’ve run. They practically poke you in the brain. That junk is intense. Anyhow, like five minutes later she said I had the flu. So POW. I was down and out for the week. I still feel tired and semi-rotten but definitely better. All that to say, I didn’t cook anything last week. One night I ate mango sorbet for dinner. One night Z reheated some sloppy joe’s I had stashed in the freezer. My taste buds all broke when I was sick and everything tasted horrible and hurt my tongue anyway. This week was better. I actually made dinner and felt like eating it. So, back to the book. I cooked two dinners out of this week’s book called Fire In My Belly by Kevin Gillespie. Kevin was a cheftestant on Top Chef and he cooked lots of Southern type food. This cookbook is Southern in scope but also a lot of regular old chef-style comfort food. The two meals we made seem like things a chef would eat at about midnight or 2am after dinner service. The foods are pretty accessible and the ingredients easy to find for the most part. Story runs through the book and I think the blurbs by recipes are funny. ‘Feeds 2 ravenous snackers’ 
The first thing I made were twice hash filled baked potatoes. A load of sausage and cheese are hashed with the insides of baked potatoes and sprinkled with diced jalapenos. They were topped off with a really fresh and tasty lime creme fraiche (sour cream because we can’t really get creme fraiche here) We really liked the dish. It was easy and comfortable. The leftovers reheated great the next day at work too. The second dish was cheddar waffles. They totally went sideways. I’m not sure what went wrong with them exactly. Somehow the egg whites didn’t incorporate and the baking soda didn’t do it’s thing because they didn’t rise at all. But the cheddar waffle combined with Blis bourbon barrel maple syrup and fried eggs was AMAZING. I could eat that every day. A little bit of hickory thick cut bacon didn’t hurt either. Both dishes were easy. They both tasted great. We’ll be back to this cookbook a lot more often.
Pasta Alla Norcina
‘Man, I’m drooling’ was noted on the slip of paper that my friend Danny gave me with the {recepy-his Italian mother tongue spelling} for pasta alla Norcina written on it. I was always more than necessarily impressed with my friend Danny’s cooking. He is Italian born of a native Italian mom and a New Jerseyian (?) dad. He could and would cobble together fantastic pastas from ingredients that I really didn’t understand like salami and could make a meal out of the most random (to me) odds and ends. Having grown up myself in a meat and two veg with a roll kind of household with a motley mixed background ranging from Danish to English to German to other things the main three’pasta’ dishes we ate where interestingly, chicken cacciatore, spaghetti and lasagna. My mom is a great cook-solid in every way rarely making grave errors and rarely making things we didn’t like. Weirdly I used to put american cheese slices on that chicken cacciatore that my mom cooked for hours. I was happy to get to know Danny as a friend when he came to Denver to go to Seminary and attended the same church. We had great times hanging out, serving at church in our college & career group and he was so good to share this recipe with me along with lots of fun memories too. Pasta alla Norcina is the pasta dish of a small town in Umbria Italy called Norcia. I have fished around the web for recipes and found lots of different versions. This is a super easy version that makes a huge pot of delicious pasta taking only about 30 minutes. Thanks Danny!
Potatoes
because of things totally in my control I made this the most complicated dinner I’ve made in the last six months – and that’s saying something after Thanksgiving which wasn’t that complicated, just took a long time. I’m cooking from one of the first cookbooks I bought myself when I picked up my cooking ‘hobby’. It is called Potatoes by Annie Nichols. The worn sticker on the back proclaims I bought it at Williams Sonoma but you can pick it up for a song on Amazon. I have cooked more than a handful of recipes from it-everything from Rosti to Champ to the best Massaman style Thai curry. Never anything Indian though. I’ve made one or two Indian meals in the past and let’s just say that they aren’t my forte. I one time, having maybe eaten one Indian meal made an Indian feast for like 12 people. It took me ALL day. 
Tonight we made dosa-which are essentially/roughly/kind of crepes and dhal aloo (lentil potatoes masala) with sambar. The dhal aloo was from the Potato cookbook. It was fairly easy to follow and took about 45 minutes to make. Overall, a more challenging recipe than most in the book but doable. On the side we had pappadoms and chili chutney. The only things here that we actually tried to make were the dosa and the dhal aloo. Hilariously the dosa didn’t turn out and I burned the dhal aloo. I do not fault the recipe because I love this cookbook and really, it was tasty other that a kind of undercurrent of burnyness. My stove is glass topped and irritates me endlessly. Because of that the dosa seriously stressed me out so Z had to take over. He did a way better job than I did and we at least ended up with two-one for each. We stuffed them with the potatoes and dipped in a Patak chili chutney that was fiery! The photos tell a story of a really well put together dinner. It could have been. 
Yellow Dog Eats
*I have started and stopped writing this post 3 or 4 times. I just need to push through the block. I know what the block is. How to live when people around you have passed away.
I am not sure where to take this post at all. We have been going through a prolonged season of grief at work and then Saturday we went to a memorial service for one of our close friend and colleagues mother and then in the midst of that another colleague passed away last Thursday. And as these things are they were both expected and shocking at the same time for the speed with which they happened. I was actually surprised to watch myself walk through Thursdays events in a way that I hadn’t expected. I could in no way convince myself that what I had heard and repeated was actually real and repeatedly found myself going to Facebook to hope that I would find out that I was wrong. I watched myself do this in a detached kind of way and kind of marvelled at my own actions as they happened because they seemed to come from someone other than me. A friend wrote a great post about hope in mourning that I resonate with. This same friend has a great way of keeping it real and suggested we all go out for lunch after the service on Saturday. So, that’s where we are. Life goes on for us as we contemplate the loss of life in another. It’s interesting how I feel sad or loss but those weird moments of joy too. Laughing feels wrong and right at the same time. Life is funny that way.
The service was on the west side of Orlando so we went to a place we had all heard about and no one had been to-unusual for a party of 6 in a town where one had grown up and the rest have lived between 5 and 15 years. Yellow Dog Eats. A really REALLY casual place (for two of us in heels and a couple of suits and a few more in ties and the fact they allowed dogs inside—incidentally not my favorite.) We tried to dissect the decor and found it could easily be dropped in a beach town or in my mind Breckenridge -it sort of had a surf shack/mountain bar vibe of casual thing. Lots of writing on the wall, a faux biggie fish, and in general a weird over-packedness. It’s an order at the counter and find a table spot and was really crowded over Saturday lunch. I would definitely recommend scoping the menu online before you go to avoid problem of a long menu and a short time to think about it. They have two general lines of food, deli type sandwiches and pulled pork sandwiches and all are sort of cheffy over the top towers of food. Prices in general are 8-12 for a sandwich with chips which is slightly high maybe but the portions are big. We could have easily shared something if we weren’t both so happy to eat lunch.
Z ordered the Fire Pig which is savory pulled pork, pecan-smoked bacon, Gouda cheese, tangy coleslaw and Sriracha, topped with Fish’s Gold BBQ sauce and fried onions, served in a southwest chipotle wrap. I was surprised to see him order a wrap and he offered me a bite. A sweetish bbq pork with a bit of heat and crunch from the slaw. I had the Mr Smokey which is pulled pork topped with smoked pineapple slices, fried onions, pecan- smoked bacon and Fish’s Gold BBQ sauce on a fun-fluffy bun. I used their text there and yes, the bun was fun and fluffy. It was a sweet handheld and I loved the addition of the pineapple. It could definitely become something I would crave. Bags of Miss Vickies chips and nice big dill pickles were served on the side. I liked the addition of the pickle for the acidic cut through the sweet sandwich fillings.
The food was good. Actually go back good. The atmosphere I didn’t love and would likely try to sit outside next time on the patio and definitely in casual clothes. The company though – that was the best part. This life is too short not to enjoy and adventure through with good people. We have another service this weekend for our beloved co-worker. It will be hard but I know that I should go into it looking for the joy in life.
My Urban Pantry 