Porkchop Night

Porkchop Night
Originally uploaded by The Tedster

I like this. I had fun creating a brine for the pork chop and enjoyed the suspense of whether or not it would taste good. Discovering I had cooked the meat just enough and roasted the potatoes so that they got golden brown spots just added to my happiness. Then came the actual taste test. I was hooked, it was delicious.

I made a salty, brown sugar, and apple with cloves and pepper brine. Boiled it, cooled it and left the pork in it for 5 hours in the fridge. I added more sugar than salt to the brine and it made an addictingly sweet hunk of meat.

I surprise myself a fair amount actually. It's like a competition with myself; how delicious can I make food taste today? It may just be my low expectations and the anticipation of tasting what I created. I rarely follow a recipe, I consider them just guidance and leave most tasting until the final product is made. I find it all adds to the final enjoyment of the meal. Top it off with a beer and it was a great evening. Now back to the homework I have been avoiding. (Maybe that's why I enjoy cooking!)

- T

Potluck

Potluck
Originally uploaded by The Tedster

Food led to games after. The game Jungle speed came out. When certain card combinations were flipped the first one to grab the totem in the center of the table won. If two people grabbed the totem at the same time it led to a one armed battle of who could wrench it out of the other persons hand. This created a few battle scars but made for a pretty fun evening.
- T

Potluck Cupcakes

Potluck Cupcakes
Originally uploaded by The Tedster

Cassandra made a couple kinds of Cupcakes for potluck on Saturday. Chocolate with a sprinkle of cayenne and a chocolate gnash icing as well as a lemon with a lemon glaze icing. They were delicious and didn't last long.

Making Focaccia Bread

Making Focaccia Bread, originally uploaded by The Tedster.

This wasn't a very picture filled week but I did grab one off the camera. At the beginning of the week I remade my Pureed soup of lentils and carrots and such and Cassandra baked some Focaccia bread to go along with it. It was great, and we were even able to make it while our land lord fixed the seal on our kitchen sink!
Our first real snow fall came this week too. It dropped 37 cm of snow in one day. We now have some large snow banks and a lot of people that walk on the road because the sidewalks aren't clear. We'll see how long the white stuff sticks around.

T

Perogies

Perogies, originally uploaded by The Tedster.

I just figured out how to blog my flickr photos, I think this will make my life easier.

Christmas and New Years

Instead of re-uploading pictures I have posted a link to my Flickr site which has a few photos from Christmas for you to see.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tjerrettenns/

There are also some pictures of Cassandra and me making our first batch of perogies. They were pretty good, we made them with a potato filling and hope to try others soon.

Blogger isn't behaving with up-loads but the perogies are on my flick account too. The left overs tasted great fried the next morning.

T

Uploaded pictures

So I took the plunge and bought a Flickr Pro account after a few years of only using the free account provided. My username is the Tedster and has a stick figure as a profile pic. Add me as a contact so that I can select you as a family member or tell me your username so that I can to add you to see the christmas pictures. They are all private so only who I select as my and Cass' family can see them. If there are pictures people would rather not have online send me an e-mail and I will remove it. If there are pictures you do like I have larger original copies on my hard drive I can send you.

I had a great christmas with everyone and I think I caught some nice smiles over the Holidays.

Love Theo

P.S.

There is a collection of all the christmas pictures categorized into sets. I will probably create a blog post with some pictures here to highlight holiday fun.

Christmas and New Years

Christmas came and went and took New Years Eve with it. The holidays seem to have gone by fast and sifting through 400 pictures to pic ones to edit and post might take a little more time to accomplish then motivation I can muster this weekend, but we'll see what I can do. Thank you to everyone for the great holidays.

To tide you over until I get more pictures posted I will give you a recipe for a soup I created this evening. It was enormously delicious.

Pureed Red Lentil soup with a fruit kicker

- 1/4 cup or lump of butter
- a small onion
- a peeled potato
- a peeled carrot or two
- a peeled parsnip or two
- a peeled apple
- a peeled pear
- 1/2 cup red lentils
- 1/2 cup of soy milk
- 1 1/2 cups of water (I might have used 2 1/2 cups actually)
- a heaping teaspoon of curry powder
- 1/2 a teaspoon of cumin
- a teaspoon of paprika

In a medium pot on medium heat melt the butter and add onions and all other fruit and vegetables cut into cubes. Let cook until onions are translucent. Add salt and pepper to taste if desired. Add 1/2 cup of rinsed red lentils. Add soy milk and water and spices. Stir and let simmer till everything is soft about 25 min. Once everything is soft blend soup until it looks like a milkshake. Add more liquid if a thinner soup is desired. I liked the consistency I got and cooked the soup with the lid on most of the time. This probably makes enough for 4 servings.

Many things could be substituted in this recipe like the soy milk with milk and the butter with olive oil and water with stock but this is what we had and it was really good. I will be posting again soon.

Love T