For whatever reason, I haven’t cooked anything in the last few days that has been noteworthy. Or I supposed I should say blog-worthy. Don’t we all have days like that, or strings of days? I made some beef stroganoff and to me it was just blah. And it was a well-tested recipe from America’s Test Kitchen. Or Cook’s Illustrated. Can’t remember which. I took pictures of it, assuming it would be great since usually I rave about their recipes. Not that one. Toss those photos.

I have been cooking, but sometimes it’s been something from the freezer that I’ve already told you about. We’ve had several meals from my stash of soups. We’ve been out to eat, or been invited to friends, so I’ve not needed to cook anything myself. I fixed Trader Joe’s minted green peas – the last package from my freezer. I’m sad they’ve discontinued that one. I’ve made squash in a couple of ways – my mother’s old tried and true method of finely mincing, steaming it a bit, then adding in a bit of butter at the end. Who hasn’t done that a hundred times? I bought a nice chubby sweet potato a week ago and went to fix it tonight and discovered that it’s mostly spoiled. Today I defrosted some pork chops (boneless) that I’d gotten all prepared to do in the Sous Vide SVK-00001 – SousVide Supreme Water Oven, Brushed Stainless’>sous vide. But by the time I got to it, there wasn’t time to do it that way. So my DH is grilling them outside. We were invited to our son’s home the other night, and I did make some things – the very creamy rice pudding I posted a few weeks ago. And I also made Irish Soda Bread with Orange Zest that has been a favorite of mine. It’s Ina Garten’s recipe. I love that soda bread (pictured at top). My DH just said to me, as I pointed to the photo here on my computer screen, and he said “wow, that was unbelievably good; you can make that any time you’re willing to.” I’ve made nearly all of my usual rotations of salad dressings, relying on the Garlic VIP Salad Dressing most of the time. That recipe was the 16th blog post I did, back in 2007. I also heavily rely on my Creamy Garlic Blue Cheese Dressing too.

We’ve been buying meat for a couple of years now, from a guy who comes to our house, and he sold us a box of his duck legs. Oh gosh, are they good! But they’re not blog-worthy because they’re already cooked and they enclose a package of orange sauce to serve with it. It’s all “done” already – all I have to do is heat it through in the oven. How easy is that?

Maybe I haven’t mentioned it, but we’ve sold our vacation home in the California desert. We sold it because we just don’t use it enough. We love it – and we use it, yes, but not enough. That picture is taken near the country club a week or so ago. Dave and I got into our cute little black, shiny golf cart and just took a long, long jaunt around the complex, looking at all the ponds, the ducks, the herons frozen in place looking for fish alongside some of the ponds. We watched some of the golfers swing. And miss the green. Spring flowers are blooming to beat the band these days. In the photo above, the golf course is off on the right. We had lunch in our favorite café there (that overlooks the Olympic pool, outdoors) and ordered our very favorite item – an Oriental chicken salad. They use a Sysco prepared dressing on that salad. I’ll miss having that. We’re resigning our membership, so we won’t be able to use the clubhouse. On our last visit, we went to our favorite restaurants out there, Pacifica, on El Paseo, and enjoyed our fish-centric meal so much. Likely our very last lunch at the country club will be that salad. We hope some of our friends will invite us out there on occasion and take us there so we can have that salad!

It only took us 5 years to sell the house, and we took a bath on it. Some areas in California have not had much of a downturn (the Bay Area mostly), but other areas, yes indeed! It’s still in escrow as I’m writing this, but will close in a couple of weeks. We’ve made numerous trips out there packing, sorting and getting rid of clothes that have lived there for years and aren’t being worn. The houses there mostly sell furnished, so it’s just our personal stuff we must pack – and all the art, including many paintings I did myself, and nick-nacks. The kitchen – well, let me just tell you – the new owners are getting a treasure trove of gadgets and things. Most herbs and spices I’m leaving behind – they’ve been sealed up in jars, but during 13 desert summers they’ve been up to 88° for months at a time (houses are supposed to be left air conditioned – even if you’re not there – because if you don’t, the glue in cabinets will dry up and you might arrive one time and find most of your cabinets and everything in them – in a heap on the floor – so the houses are kept at 88° all through the hot months). So I’m not thinking any of those herbs or spices are worth keeping. Maybe the new owners won’t notice. I will tell them, in my lengthy letter I’m writing to them on our last day. I did bring back home all of my good Cutco knives (I ordered a second set for that house when we bought the house in 2000). And my old Nespresso machine which I’ll now put in my office upstairs.

We had a couple of sets of dishes out there, so have brought those back too, but we’re leaving plenty for the new owners. Including a set of white (very plain and ordinary) dishes for 12 that came with the house when we bought it. They’re gathering dust in the garage. They’ll be surprised when they open that cupboard. Maybe they’ll like them. We didn’t. The cupboards in the kitchen are full of varying dishes, pots and pans (including some Caphalon), bake ware, Pyrex, an ancient slow cooker, even a bread machine. Everything they could possibly need except fresh food. The freezer has a bunch of stuff in it, so we will be bringing all that back on our next trip. Whenever I cooked there, I’d just stash a 2nd dinner portion in the freezer. I’m even leaving them some cookbooks. Not ones that I particularly care about, or they’d be coming back home with me too.

Last night I made a big batch of deviled eggs for a luncheon. Or, as my Bible Study leader said, nobody wants to eat anything related to the devil, so let’s call them angeled eggs. Okay. I’ve made them before – and they’re here on my blog. Most people don’t expect curry powder to be in eggs, and yet, they’re SO delish. I also cut the eggs differently, across rather than lengthwise and I slice just a little flat space on the bottom of each egg half. That’s why they stand up and mostly don’t fall over. Go to the blog post if you’re interested in knowing more. I heard lots of raves, which makes me feel good.

Then I have a short story about my Kitchen Aid stand mixer. The one I had has bitten the dust. My old one was about 30 years old. A few years ago I discovered the beater blade, a gadget you can use in most stand mixers that scrapes the side of the stand mixer’s bowls, so you don’t have to hand-scrape with a spatula when you’re mixing. I loved it, but sometimes it would get a bit out of adjustment, as you need to move the mechanism that holds the blade (or paddle) up in order to accommodate the extra depth of the rubber blades on the beater. This adjustment is done with some very minute adjustments of a screw underneath the tilt head. My DH had to adjust it the first time – I simply couldn’t make it work right. He figured it out. So this one day I knew it needed some adjustment. I tried to do it myself and thought it was okay. I was mixing up cookies. As the batter got progressively more firm once I added the flour the mixer was laboring a little. I slowed it down, and BANG, the beater blade broke in half. It was made of plastic with the rubber edges. Dang. I went back to the regular blade. A few weeks later I bought a new beater blade, making the assumption that it was my fault that the thing broke, and that another one would work fine. I installed the new beater blade and some days later I was, again, making a batch of cookies. The dough was quite firm, I’ll admit. I could see that again, the motor was laboring, so I made an adjustment to the screw, thinking that this new beater blade was different. Well, before it had hardly made 2-3 circuits in the bowl this brand new beater blade broke in half. Oh my. Since I hadn’t finished my cookies, I reverted to the standard batter beater that comes with it, but darn, if the entire head of the Kitchen Aid would wiggled back and forth. If I turned up the speed it would wobble even more. Not good. I tried adjusting the screw. No difference. I think that breaking both beater blade somehow threw out the alignment of the mixer. So, I had to buy a new one. I might have purchased some great new mixer, but because I have an appliance garage, with exactly 15 7/8 inch height clearance, it was quite clear – no newer model for me – I replaced my old stand mixer with the same 4 1/2 quart Kitchen Aid I’d had before. I just chose a different color, and I think I’ll live with the hand-scraping of the bowl from now on. Love the color!

So that’s where I am today. I’ll be back in the kitchen soon. I have a long post I want to share with all of you – have you ever heard of Laurie Colwin? I’ve decided all my readers need to know about her. Coming soon.

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