Improvement

My back is much, much better today. I could walk at an almost normal pace, sit down without easing myself into the chair, and drive without wincing when I moved my foot from the gas pedal to the brake. I have high hopes that in the next few days I'll even be able to bend at the waist. Such dramatic improvement!

I'm doing well on my goal to keep a clean pantry. I don't even want to reveal how bad it was before. The first step is admitting you have a problem. Here's the damage as it was on January 2:



And as it is today:



I took an inventory of everything in the cupboards. The most interesting realization was that I had 15 varieties of salt:

• Mesquite Smoked Maine Sea Salt
• Black Cyprus Flake Mediterranean Sea Salt
• Alea Coarse Hawaiian Red Sea Salt
• Hawaiian Red Alaea Sea Salt (former bought in bulk at Whole Foods and latter packaged by faerie's)
  
• Slovenian Fleur de Sel
• Gusto Mundial Hibiscus Flor de Sal
• RealSalt All-Natural Sea Salt
• Morton Table Salt
• Morton Kosher Salt
• Fleur de Sel
• Saltworks Smoked Serrano Salt
• World Classics Fine Ground Sea Salt
• Bolivian Rose Fine Salt
• Lemon Coarse Salt
• Alderwood Smoked Sea Salt

Certifiably insane! I'm glad I didn't order any Guerande or Maldon sea salt as I wanted to last month. Completely crazy. I also have 8 kinds of honey and 7 types of vinegar, but only 4 kinds of peanut butter, which may be a record low.

Good progress on my other resolution as well - I haven't eaten out this month, or to be specific, I haven't paid for a meal out. I've spent $187.03 on groceries so far this month and feel confident I can ring in under $200 for January. And that total includes the cost of a dinner party I hosted for 8 people. Not bad at all. More details on the dinner party to follow.

The next project is to transform the other kitchen cupboards into a picture of organization that would make Martha Stewart proud.

Le Petit Gourmand

I've camped out at Mom and Dad's for a few days because of a nasty pain in my back that makes any movement excruciating. The highlight of my day was when Katie and Nancy came home from the library and Nancy showed me the book she chose for herself.



She curled up next to me on the bed and we flipped through recipes for Croque Monsieur sandwiches, Sole Meunière, and Clafoutis.

My niece has very discerning tastes. She asked for seconds of a 72% dark chocolate and sea salt bar from World Market.

Another high point was finding that I could laugh without writhing in agony, so you know, small victories today. 

Dark Vador Burger

Now that I've been back from my trip to Belgium for 3 months, I figure it's time to blog about it before it becomes like the Alaskan cruise that I never wrote about or the New Orleans trip about which I still have posts sitting in the drafts folder.

There's a burger chain in Belgium and France called Quick Burger. While we were there, Katie and I saw ads everywhere with two burgers in battle mode that read Hard Pepper vs. Strong Bacon. I laughed every time I saw it. Best photo evidence I could find online here and here.

My friend Shelley sent me a link to a story about Quick's new Dark Vador Burger, which has a terrifyingly black bun.



Who do you think will win that battle?

One of my favorite parts of traveling is walking up and down city streets. It's especially fun when you've traversed cultures because there are even more things to gawk at, very discreetly, of course.

A few pictures we snapped in Antwerp:







And if you were wondering what language Smurfs speak, it's clearly Flemish. Clearly.

Resolute

Happy 2012! Does anyone have any resolutions or goals with regards to food? I'll go first.

For the month of January, my goal is to not eat out. It looks like I spent about $180/month at restaurants last year, but I didn't count the calories. I'm hoping that I can cut expenses and pounds by cooking my own meals. Wait wait, I just checked my supermarket purchases for last year, and they averaged around $260/month. I don't know if eating at home will save me any money, but I do know that I have an overstocked pantry right now that I could probably eat on for a month. Which brings us to goal #2...

My goal is to keep my kitchen pantry organized. No expired foods. No partially opened bags spilling in the cupboard. No pushing unwanted items to the back of the cupboard to be forgotten for years. I'm doing a pantry purge now and it is not pretty. I was well past the point of needing an intervention. I realize that I can be a hoarder. I'll try to combat it with an inventory list and by trying to make do with ingredients I have on hand, Chopped-style, no matter how crazy the combinations may seem. I accept the culinary challenge.

I'll evaluate my success with not eating out at the end of the month. I already know I'll make an exception if I go out of town. And I'm not offering to cook at my house if I am asked out on a dinner date. It could happen. I'm not very confident in my motivation to maintain the pantry inventory list, but as of now I'm resolved to do it. I hope it will reduce the amount of food I let go to waste.

As for the pantry purge, I think the winner, or rather, loser, of my game of expiration date roulette was the seaweed package with a use-by date of July 26, 2006. I know I didn't buy that because I can't read ANYTHING on the package except the expiry date. I assume the rest of the characters are Japanese. Now I'm trying to remember why someone gave me seaweed.

The Year That Was - 2011

I ended the year with a hangover-free club soda taste test. I've gotta give up this party-girl lifestyle. Next year.

The contenders were Canada Dry, Seagram's, Schweppes, White Rock, and Food Club (store brand). My favorite was Seagram's.

Here's my year in cities. Not too extensive on domestic travel, but the Paris+Belgium trip was unforgettable.

San Diego, California
Hot Springs, Arkansas
Mountain Pine, Arkansas
Austin, Texas (in April and November)
New Orleans, Louisiana
Houston, Texas
Palo Duro Canyon, Texas
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Paris, France
Brussels, Belgium
Bruges, Belgium
Damme, Belgium
Antwerp, Belgium
Amarillo, Texas

This year stacks up pretty well compared to previous years: 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010. Wish list for 2012: Australia, Chicago, Hawaii.

What's on your 2011 list?

This was a fat and happy year for me. Life just keeps getting better. Cheers to a fantastic 2012!

Fish Sauce

Yesterday, I ate Brussels sprouts for lunch. Brussels sprouts with fish sauce on them. That was an interesting way of combining two reviled foods into one dish.

Have you ever tasted fish sauce by itself? The Red Boat Fish Sauce I had was bright red and beautiful. I couldn't resist tasting a swig, because when you looked at it, you thought, now that's going to taste really great!
Here's the thing, you're not supposed to eat fish sauce by itself. The appearance makes you want to pour yourself a glass, but that would be like drinking Worcestershire or soy sauce. Fish sauce is made from fermented anchovies. The Vietnamese name for fish sauce translates to salted fish water. Upon tasting it, you'll recognize the flavor from sauces and curries.

I adapted this David Chang (of Momofuku) recipe for roasted Brussels sprouts. I tossed the sprouts with some olive oil and roasted them at 425º for about 25 minutes. I mixed fish sauce, water, sugar, garlic, cayenne, and Chinese Five-Spice powder and tossed the sprouts in that. I added a little bacon, just because.

The dish was good and just screamed Thai/Southeast Asian. After using that fish sauce, my house smells like Thai Pepper, which was unusual since I don't cook many ethnic foods at home.

Final verdict: If you have picky eaters who say they don't like Brussels sprouts, this is probably not the recipe that will convert them. I think I'll save the fish sauce for a curry, and I'll stick to a more traditional roasted Brussels sprouts recipe like the Barefoot Contessa's, which I could eat twice a week. Fish sauce is good for cooking, not for drinking.

Countdown to Thanksgiving

With Thanksgiving approaching, many of us contemplate the myriad blessings in our lives, but my mind turns to the most important part of Thanksgiving, the food. This year I'm bringing Roasted Turkey and Gravy, Mashed Potatoes, and Pumpkin Cheesecake to the table.

So far, I've cleaned my kitchen, thawed a turkey, and prepared the mirepoix for the turkey roasting pan.



When I wake up, I'll rub the bird down with melted butter, salt, pepper, cumin, ginger, and perhaps some other herbs and spices before it goes in the oven. I like to wing it. Get it? Then I'll get the gravy going.

I'm excited about this pumpkin cheesecake. It's cooling down now.



If there's any baking that makes me quake in my boots, it's baking cheesecakes in a water bath. Water always manages to seep into my springform pans, no matter what precautions I take. Double wrapping the pan with heavy duty foil doesn't seem to prevent leaks. We'll see if I fared better this time.

Also on this Thanksgiving Eve, Mom suggested that we start a tradition of watching On Moonlight Bay (starring Doris Day and Gordon McRae) the night before Thanksgiving because of the funny turkey scene. But the scene is actually in the movie's sequel, By the Light of the Silvery Moon, which we didn't have. We watched On Moonlight Bay anyway, and still enjoyed it. Here's the Thanksgiving scene from By the Light of the Silvery Moon:



We all have to go sometime.

Salmon Rillettes

It seems like these days you can't turn around without finding me talking about another Dorie Greenspan recipe. And this post is no different. I can't help it. Truly. The more Dorie recipes I make, and the more Dorie cookbooks and writing I read, and the more I think about how wonderfully friendly she was when I met her, the more I like her. I have quite a growing collection of her cookbooks -

• Around My French Table
• Baking: From My Home to Yours
• Baking with Julia: Savor the Joys of Baking with America's Best Bakers
• and the latest acquisition, which I received as a birthday gift: Paris Sweets: Great Desserts From the City's Best Pastry Shops.

Here's a lovely recipe from Around My French Table for Salmon Rillettes.



The recipe combines fresh and smoked salmon with a little bit of spice and a good bit of butter to form a spread that is fantastic on crackers or baguette slices. Here's a video of Dorie demonstrating how to make it:



It's very nice at dinner alongside a salad...



...and fits just as well at a party buffet. Nice that you can make it ahead, too!

I planned to make some for a party I hosted this weekend, but I ran out of time and put this on my table instead!



Equally festive, right?

Chocolate Rules

I'm all about the recipe contests now. Not that I've entered any since the Callebaut chocolate recipe contest, but now I believe half the battle is just showing up.

Here's a contest that I think we should all enter: Elevate a classic dessert with Scharffen Berger Chocolate. Take a familiar recipe and give it a new spin by adding Scharffen Berger chocolate. The grand prize is $10,000.

I started crafting a list of rules for what makes a good recipe. This is for myself when I'm searching for recipes or, I suppose, for when I'm creating one. You can often tell by simply reading the list of a recipe's ingredients whether you should even bother with it. Here are a few of my rules for dessert recipes:

• No Cool Whip or "frozen whipped topping." Just no.
• Also no instant pudding mix.
• Ingredients should be listed in the order in which they'll be used.
• Should include a good photo (that doesn't use flash).
• I'm turned off anytime a recipe calls for melting chocolate chips. Chocolate chips have additives to help them retain their shape. Buy chocolate and chop it.
• Related: Chocolate should be listed by weight, not volume. "1/2 cup" of chocolate doesn't tell me anything, but "4 ounces" of chocolate, I can work with.
• You get much more chocolate flavor if you use melted chocolate and not cocoa powder alone.
• Be suspicious of margarine and shortening.
• Reading reviewer comments is very helpful, but take reviews with a grain of salt. Look for clues to indicate whether the person has skills or not. Reviewers may rate a recipe very low but give themselves away by saying they prefer frosting out of can. Ought oh! We know you can't cook and we're questioning your taste.

Sure, you can ignore those rules, but chances are that the recipe will be closer to good than to amazing, and if you're going to the trouble of making a homemade dessert, why not aim for excellence? Or pick up something good at the supermarket instead?



Any inspiration or ideas for the chocolate contest? Any recipe rules you stick to?

Can a PB&J sandwich be snobby?

(I don't want to abandon this blog, so I'm going to try writing shorter, more frequent posts. We'll see how that goes.)

Today for lunch I am eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That might not sound appealing but I judged it to be one of the better sack lunches I've eaten. Here's why:

The peanut butter I used was Cream Nut Natural Peanut Butter from Koeze. Koeze makes old-fashioned peanut butter (just Virginia peanuts and salt) and has been since 1925.

The "jelly" is Wild Blackberry & Elderflower Conserve from American Spoon. They describe their preserves as "Spoon Preserves" because they're more suited to spooning than spreading with a knife. Their preserves certainly have more pieces of whole fruit than any other I've tried. It makes me think that their farmers are skipping up and down beside wild blackberry patches, plucking berries off the bushes to fill their handbaskets, while singing in four-part harmony. In the kitchen, they "prepare fruits by hand and cook them in small copper kettle batches." The fruit doesn't seem mashed or over-sweetened in the slightest.

The bread is a multigrain loaf from a local CSA, charitably donated to me. Thanks, Mom! And my beverage of choice is 33 cl of Perrier. I developed a little addiction to the eaux minérales gazeuses in Europe last month.

And yes, I use the same knife for the peanut butter as I do for the jelly. Do you?