more food adventures...

I've been working with my chef neighbor on my cooking skills this week. I realized that maybe I can't learn to cook the way a normal person can, and I have learned more failing on recipes than succeeding. One of the things we did yesterday was to go through a recipe I made that failed (that horrible chicken) and figure out why the recipe failed (turned out I was right about the vinegar and red wine not being a great match for chicken, and the chicken smothering the vegetables so they didn't cook).

After going through one recipe I went through 20 more with her and tried to predict whether it would be a good recipe. I guessed right most of the time. So today I decided to make a recipe for enchilada orzo. It's vegetarian.

smells good at least! will know in 3 hours if it sucks

And I also decided to make a spinach quiche:

actually, it's two quiches - I didn't read the directions right and got normal crusts instead of deep dish crusts

There were a few disasters in the making. First, I didn't realize the frozen spinach was supposed to be defrosted. Then, because I was splitting the recipe into two quiches, I didn't have enough eggs so I had to add an egg to each quiche after I poured the original eggs in. Well, the new eggs didn't blend with the old eggs so I had to kind of whisk them in which is not easy to do in a already filled pie crust. I think it will be okay though.

they look good, and smell good, they have to cool for 10 minutes and then I'll see if they taste good

I also was worried the timing would be off because I used regular pie crusts instead of the deep dish one...

Well, just had a piece of quiche. It's fantastic! I think I'll bring one over to my chef neighbor's house tonight. She invited a bunch of us in the neighborhood over for a christmas turkey dinner.

dinner party, take 3

Yesterday I was looking at quiche recipes when I got a text from one of my neighbors who was supposed to come to my dinner party. He asked if he and his wife could come by and I was like "of course!" because I had meatballs and sauce that could feed an army. First, I would mention that they loved the spaghetti and meatballs (he had three helpings). Second, I would mention that the french bread was good right out of the oven but by the next day it was rock hard. My chef neighbor said it's not my fault, it's the dry climate, and maybe to add some gluten next time. Considering it took me 12 years to find tahini in the grocery, I doubt I will be able to find gluten.

Anyway, it turns out my neighbors blew off my dinner party to watch the broncos game (even though they were the ones who suggested we have the dinner party on Monday - ?????). I had gone to a new restaurant in the neighborhood, Dunbar's, with them on Sunday and the husband was trying to explain fantasy football to me. Apparently monday was the super bowl, but not the real super bowl, it was the fantasy super bowl, and there wasn't even a real game that was played. But there's an app that tracks the points you get when your fake team does things like catch the ball and that's the game, which is actually a bunch of games and then stats are collected for the fake game but only certain people can be in on your fake game because everybody who wants to play fantasy football would be too many people for one game. Or some shit like that.

On Sunday the husband's football team was winning but then, as he said, "it all fell apart" on Monday night because his defense got negative points which he said never happens and his quarterback only got one point. Don't ask me to explain. His wife thought he got bad luck because he blew off my party to watch football (or, fantasy football, that point was not clear to me). He lost $600.

Then my other friends who were supposed to come to the party showed up too. They said they were too tired after skiing yesterday to come by. When I was like "why didn't you text?" one said "we were on BPT" and I was like "what's that?" and he said "black people time" (after they had a few glasses of wine I found out they had fallen asleep at 5 pm and didn't want to admit it because they're almost 20 years younger than me and always teasing me for leaving dinner parties early to go to bed - I would add that was not a racist comment, they are both black). They liked the dinner too. And even though the recipe said it served 10 people I have only a little bit of sauce and one meat ball left.

Then we watched one of my favorite movies In The Loop.

dinner party, take two

I invited some friends for dinner this evening. I made homemade spaghetti sauce and meatballs (recipe from the Jewish - Sicillian cookbook my dad gave me), plus a loaf of bread.

First, let me mention, it was not only edible but really good! I'm shocked.

gross - raw meat - the secret ingredient for these meatballs is to use wonder bread instead of bread crumbs

frying the meatballs - I only put a few in the pan at once to make sure I didn't burn them

I froze half the meatballs and put the rest in the sauce

spaghetti sauce - I added red wine because no Italian makes spaghetti sauce without wine

loaf of french bread, got the recipe from high altitude cooking blog - it is a "can't fuck it up" recipe

for the first time ever in my life a loaf of bread I made rose

I called my neighbor, who is a chef, to see if the loaf was cooked - it was!!! - and she brought me a huge piece of homemade coconut cake, made from a REAL coconut that she grated

The only problem with this great dinner? None of my guests have shown up yet. I know two of them went skiing today. Maybe the rest were scared off by stories of my last dinner disaster...

a collaborative christmas

My friend Jeffy sent me this picture, and my neighbor came up with a great caption for it and sent it to his friends as a christmas card:

it's hard to find out what Santa's bringing you for Christmas