Nice time at Erin and Jake's house, with John and Babs and Neal and Kevin and me. Lovely golden juicy turkey with mashers and a trio of stuffings, onion casserole (and a bread-free one for me), gluten-free gravies and green bean casserole, sweet potatoes and wild rice and lovely nibbles and relishes and crudités, cranberry sauces and pumpkin pie ( Read more... )

The pork butts were in the smoker for about 5 hours, which is the point the coal pan usually fills up with ash and it conks out. True to form, long about 19:30 the smoker started to cool off and wouldn't come back to temp. I pulled the pork out and put it in a 200-degree oven... and went to bed ( Read more... )

Nearly a week since I put anything here? Wow. Must've been busy ( Read more... )

During the day we did nothing for Shrove Tuesday. We serve French toast on Tuesdays and pancakes on Thursdays, and if we'd been on the ball, we could have done pancake races this morning. Ah well, next year ( Read more... )

Lunch was slow, finished off the second batch of chowder (had half left over from last week) and got all the prep done fairly early. Sous' pepper steak and prawns special was yummy and well-received. Deliciously tender, with a crunchy bitter hot black pepper crust. Too bad we didn't have green peppercorns, but 'twas lovely. I made beurre rouge to ( Read more... )

Let's see, what's been happening? Our best customer told me on Friday that the salmon chowder was the best he's ever had there. *shrug* It was left over from last week, so he had in fact had it before (he's in every Friday for it). He had tried my new pasta dish and not care for it as "too dry," so I added some wine and butter and he tried it ( Read more... )

the veggie option!

Vegetable Napoleon: Crisp leaves of phyllo dough layered with grilled portobello, red bell pepper, zucchini, and white bean purée with fire-roasted tomato sauce, kalamata olives, and crumbled feta.

( New Year's Eve 2006 )

Work continues to be stupid. The menu for today was roast leg of lamb, but it's three weeks from the end of the term, so the lead gets all scroogy and is not willing to spend money on food. Thus no lamb. She over-ordered top round, however, so I was told to substitute roast beef tonight. I butchered two whole top rounds (about 40 pounds), and ( Read more... )

Wow, was this ever different from the last couple of Mother's Days, both spent at the Lodge, prepping huge buffets and failing to sell them ( Read more... )