Eye Round Dinner Runners

I had a pretty busy day today driving all over Brooklyn, Manhattan, and parts of Western Connecticut in search of adventure and riches! What I found instead was business meetings. At some point between Brooklyn and Connecticut I managed to throw together some steaks to marinate.



The salad was another quick pomegranate affair with tomatoes this time as I got some nice ripe cherry tomatoes.



The eye round steaks were marinated in the same sort of marinade I used the other night for the pork. I used mustard, horseradish, salt, pepper, and olive oil. I browned up some onions in a little olive oil, then seared the marinated steaks in the same pan. I also made a mashed turnip and carrot concoction with just a tiny amount of butter, salt, and pepper.

All in all it was a pretty tasty meal. I'd love to get into more detail but unfortunately Jen and I have become hopelessly addicted to Fieldrunners.

Gotta go!

Desk Dinner

As I've had a bit of a busy stretch at work I have had quite a bit of computer work to catch up on. Also, last night's dinner (and excessive post dinner snacking) left me feeling a little queasy all night and into the morning. So I decided on two things: 1.) Tonight's dinner was going to be a little more tummy-friendly, and 2.) I would eat my dinner at my desk. Jen was having dinner at a work function so the desk dinner would be something she would not have to witness which was good because it would cause her infinite sadness (and not of the Mellon Collie variety).



I made myself a salad again with clementines, chiles, shallots from Holland (isn't that weird?), olive oil, salt, pepper, and some toasted naan bread. I also made some miso soup with a touch of green chile paste, a dash of tamari, some noodles, chopped spinach, and poached chicken breast. Aside from the chicken breast this would have been the perfect vegan meal!



For dessert I responsibly ate a single chocolate marshmallow. That was it. I was being responsible. The marshmallow was all I ate. Except for the slice of pumpkin pie. And the yogurt.

And maybe some chestnut ice cream later.

Crabtown Races

Firstly I would like to honor this great Fish Jokes website for supplying today's title. Who knew that a Google search for "Crab Puns" would yield such an amazing site? I am grateful that such an amazing resource exists.



Last night Jen made some whole wheat pasta with some of the sauteed bok choy from the farm along with some scallops and lemon zest. I was not fortunate enough to sample this particular dish but I am told that it came out famously.

Today I rushed home from work, my parking efforts dashed by some impromptu "No Parking" signs that were not there yesterday, with the intention of making fresh goat cheese. I had purchased lowfat goat milk in an attempt to recreate what costs $10.99 from Coach Farms. My experiment was a failure. More on that later.



For a salad, a split clementine with mixed greens, shallots, pistachios, olive oil, cayenne, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

After bringing some lowfat goat milk to a simmer, stirring in lemon juice, running out of lemon juice, stirring in apple cider vinegar, stirring in more apple cider vinegar, the curds were not separating from the milk. So eventually I decided that this was just not going to work and abandoned the project. I figured it was $3.69 down the drain.



Simultaneously I was making a corn and crab bisque with some of the frozen corn from the farm share this summer. I used a little of the turkey stock, some cayenne pepper, salt, Old Bay, onion, and turkey bacon. Then, instead of using the milk in the fridge I opted to use the failed goat cheese experiment. The result was actually pretty good. The lemon and apple cider vinegar made for an interesting flavor and I would strongly consider using goat milk again in a cream soup in the future.



For the main course I marinated some thin-cut boneless pork chops in German mustard, horseradish, spices, salt, pepper, cider vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Then I seared them in a pan that I was already using to make my pan-roasted brussel sprouts with turkey bacon, and shallots.

It's a little humorous to use turkey bacon to accompany a dish with pork in it but turkey bacon was all we had in the freezer so I was eager to use it up.



There is no better wine I can think of than my favorite label: Smoking Loon. While I prefer the Syrah to the Merlot, it still features a newly packaged version of a loon puffing away on a cigar. For that I am truly grateful.



For dessert we had some of the chestnut ice cream with some melted chocolate, chopped walnuts (which generally I hate, but thought would go nicely with this ice cream), and whipped cream.

Overall it was a pretty good dinner (Jen declared it a triumph). Jen is working late tonight so my original plan to stretch all of these ingredients into two dinners was scrapped and I crammed everything into this evening.

Only a little lingering turnip (and a whole lot more corn in the freezer) remain from the farm. We'll see how I polish these off later in the week. I think it's going to require a great deal of supplemental ingredients from the grocery store. Perhaps the only farm items I may use will end up being the garlic that we still have in the crisper.

As having this farm share has rekindled my joy of cooking and creating new recipes I have also discovered another culinary fact about myself: I hate making my lunch for work. After all of this I feel completely relaxed and not like I expended any sort of energy at all. However, the thought of slapping two slices of turkey between some bread then putting them in a plastic bag makes me want to cry out of frustration.

Sadly those slices of turkey aren't going to jump into a sandwich all by themselves.

But wouldn't it be great if they did!

Pot Pie Eyed

After a short day at work (well, 7.75 hours, not all that short) I came home with one task in mind: utilize leftovers. It was my mission and I chose to accept it.

Let the games begin!



Jen made some salads with pomegranate and feta cheese.



I worked on the turkey pot pie which I assembled with garlic (farm), onions, carrots (farm), turnips (farm), sage, cayenne, turkey gravy, turkey stock, potato (farm), and green beans (forgotten from Thanksgiving day). The finishing touch was my patented biscuit crust. Some people make actual pie crust for their pot pie. I refer to that type of pot pie as Inferior Pot Pie. Mine may not be traditional but it is far better.



The rainy and snowy evening was capped off wonderfully with hot pot pie for dinner. Jen's game-time decision to go out for dinner last night and eat at home tonight turned out to be a stroke of brilliance.

While we did have a lot of laundry to fold, the night still turned out well with The Return of the King playing on TNT, hot tea, the pitter-patter of rain on our grungy windowsill, and some pumpkin pie for dessert.

It looks like that is the end of our Thanksgiving leftovers. Next week we will start fresh, finishing up the small remainder of last Saturday's winter share pickup.

Soup and an Impromptu "Adventure"

This morning started a bit late with us sleeping in, again, to the late hour of 9:00AM. After that we woke up to a morning of watching that new Beyoncé video where she implores women to make their men put a ring on it while showing off her unexplained cyborg hand.



For lunch I made a very fast turkey soup out of the leftover turkey, the turkey stock, some of the roasted vegetables, the glazed turnips, the remainder of the arugula (which had frozen for some reason), and some of the fusilli from a few days ago. With no bread available I toasted up some of the naan we had in the freezer. It was a light lunch, probably too light to sustain us through our impromptu afternoon jaunt.



We ended up unexpectedly at The Met where I mimicked the catlike statues in the Egyptian exhibit. Jen makes a weak argument that my attempt to simulate whiskers with my fingers does not come across. I think it's obvious by this photograph that I am a master of animal disguise.



Jen, however, can barely pull of this sphinx imitation. Pathetic.



We accidentally wound up getting tricked into going in the American exhibits. Instead of looking at things that were 4000 years old, we were now looking at some parlors from the 1850s. Somehow not quite as impressive.



Eventually we came full circle and ended up seeing a different portion of the Egyptian exhibit. It was then that I was able to fulfill my childhood dream of posing with a fat sarcophagus.



We left the house to try to go to a new restaurant that just opened on 181st street but Jen was so overwhelmed by the cold (it was only 45 degrees) that we turned around and headed to the marginally closer Coogan's.

When we arrived at Coogan's it had already been heavily decorated for the holidays, inside and out. It was nice to take a night off from turkey and let Coogan's do the cooking for us. I had the monthly special: fish tacos. Jen had a cheeseburger. We both ate way too much because we were starving from not eating anything all day (since lunch, anyway). Then we waddled home where we settled down with some tea and the New Jersey Devils game.

What will happen tomorrow? Will we be return to our turkey roots? Or will we decide to make the remaining turnip from the farm share? Only time will tell. There can be only one . . . dinner.