Everything Must Go!

Friday and Saturday of this week were strictly devoted to the making of foods to clear out our pantry, freezer, and fridge. This all culminated with last night's party to rid ourselves of as much food and drink as possible. We intended to also get rid of as much of our unneeded clothing, electronics, and other assorted items as well but kind of forgot. Therefore Good Will will be getting a large drop off early next week.



Friday I thawed out some frozen chorizo and made a sausage and pepper variation with remaining rolls from the freezer. I also made a salad from the beet greens, arugula, and red leaf lettuce from the farm along with some beets and dill potatoes.



Another thing that's been clogging up the pantry for some time was a big old bag of garbanzo bean flour. With that I made some hummus. I actually made a giant batch of hummus. It might be like a gallon of hummus. We had people over last night and all I had out was hummus and there's still about 98% of it left. So we may be "enjoying" hummus frequently until we move.

This morning we woke up early and took a rainy drive up to Westchester to sign the lease on our new apartment. To celebrate the move to suburbia we had lunch at P.F. Chang's, one of Westchester's myriad Asian fusion type restaurants. It appears that Westchester is a bit stuck in the mid-to-late 1990's as far as restaurants go. Luckily it doesn't extend to music so we will be spared infinite loops of Rob Thomas songs.



Tonight we used a leftover baguette, pizza sauce, mozzarella, sausage and peppers to make these French bread pizzas. We also used the leftover beet greens, arugula, and red leaf along with grape tomatoes to make a Caesar salad that may not have worked all that well.



For dessert I made a graham cracker crust with a little butter and some Lyle's Golden Syrup. I also soaked some pear slices in brandy, Amaretto, and chopped almonds to top the crust.

The result of all of this nonsense is now we have slightly less to move!

Foods we now don't have to move:

• A large bottle of Fish Eye Shiraz.
  
• Some garbanzo bean flour.
  
• Chorizo sausages.
  
• Green Peppers.
  
• Some black currant lambic.
  
• Rolls.
  
• Farm pears.
  
• Old, stale graham crackers.
  
• A jar of pizza sauce.
  

Hooray for making lame meals!

The Great Ravioli Tragedy of 2009

Yesterday we began the final steps in signing the lease for our new apartment! In celebration we ate dinner out. However, tonight we had to continue the task of cleaning out as much food from our freezer, pantry, fridge, and farm share as possible to minimize the amount of foods we have to move. That meant it was time to put together a dinner keeping this goal in mind.

Sadly, with this goal, sometimes dinner has to be weird.



For a salad I made a yawn-inducing beet and goat cheese salad, all from the farm. It may be trite but it was delicious. The beets from the farm are the palest I've ever seen. It's as if they were attacked by some sort of vegetarian vampire.



For a main course I sauteed some garlic and red onion and cooked it down with some kale and wax beans. You may be thinking that this seems like a strange main course. You may also be wondering what those ravioli-shaped things are that are clearly in this picture.



Well, they're raviolis. I prefer to call them tragediolis. For reasons unknown they turned this horrendous brownish color around the edges. I volunteered to sample them and quickly regretted my decision. Something went horribly wrong and they tasted sour and disgusting. It was a horrible tragedy that will go down in pasta history.



To make up for the fact that we no longer had enough food to eat I quickly cooked up these cheese toasts with some leftover bread and the Armenian string cheese from the other night.

It ended up being a weird dinner. I knew it was going to be a weird dinner originally when I set out to clean out the freezer with the raviolis, however, it took a different weird turn than I'd expected.

So it goes. Tomorrow will hopefully take different approach assuming the items being cleaned out of the freezer are not infected with the same bizarre curse that the raviolis were.

Eggplant Stuffed Eggplant With a Side of Indecision

Today we concluded (sort of) our apartment hunt in Westchester. While we haven't really nailed down a place to live we have found several places with pluses and minuses that we must now talk to death until we finally grit our teeth, pick a place, and hope for the best.



On our way home we stopped by the farm share pickup and picked up this week's share: Corn, lettuce, dill, red onion, yellow onion, yellow wax beans, potatoes, beets, kale, red komatsuma, eggplant, Cortland apples, and Gala apples.



Instead of discussing things right away I went into the kitchen and started cooking with no real goal in mind. We didn't really have any groceries or anything other than then things we've gotten from the farm so it was clearly going to be a vegetarian meal. I started by making this pear and Reggiano salad with lettuce and pears from the farm and a few grape tomatoes.



For the main course I hollowed out the eggplant, and stuffed it with a mixture of garlic, onion, the hollowed out eggplant bits, fennel, tomato, parsley, pine nuts, balsamic vinegar, and chevre. Most of the obvious items were from the farm share. The other items were odds and ends that we need to clean out of the fridge and pantry before we move.



To help lighten the load we will eventually have to move we opened this bottle of Wölffer Estate Cabernet Franc.

After buying some time with that brief culinary venture, which turned out to be quite tasty, we are now faced with the reality of having to choose between at least four really great apartments. This involves the making of a matrix and weighing numerous pros and cons.

I think we'd pay our first month's rent just to have someone make this decision for us. Any takers?

Dynamites (Reprise)

Yesterday I traveled back form Rhode Island to return my car to the great state of New York. I returned only with the clothes I left with and a little care package from my Aunt Pauline: some authentic Woonsocket style Dynamite mix, sealed in a little Tupperware container and ready for use.

Today we spent all day driving all over Westchester to look for a new apartment so when we returned home it was a perfect night for said dynamites. Firstly, they are delicious. Secondly, they required little to no additional work to prepare. Perfect for a day where Jen and I were both physically exhausted form the mental workout of deciding where to move.



Aunt Pauline's dynamites use the traditional green peppers along with celery (an ingredient I forgot in the version I made last week). I also made a salad from the remaining farm share greens and tomatoes as an accompaniment.



Dynamites must be served on these rolls. They are from Dupras Bakery in Woonsocket, RI and inexplicably say "Caranci's Italian" on them with the address of Dypras Bakery listed below. I never really understood this. There are only two and a half Italian people in Woonsocket: My mother, my friend Keith from high school, and .5 of me. I'm not sure who this Caranci character is but that is a French Canadian bakery if I've ever seen one. Also, Italians don't make rolls like this -- no one outside of Woonsocket does.

I guess like most ethnic cuisines this dish is largely tied in to local agriculture and culinary custom, making it difficult to duplicate outside its geographic home. (Read about my solid attempt to recreate it last week.) Sort of like the "New York System Weiner" which is native to Rhode Island and, strangely, does not exist here in New York.

I wonder if the many mothers and aunts of Woonsocket would consider going into some sort of mail order business to supply their scattered relatives with some authentic dynamite mix.

Sort of like Omaha Steaks.

United Plates of Armenia

Yesterday brought our fourteenth week of farm vegetables.



Basil, fennel, arugula, lettuce, tomatillo, cherry tomatoes, tomato, garlic, peppers, celery, cucumbers, romano beans, onion, chili peppers.

We only got tomatillo so I think my greatest culinary challenge of the season is going to be figuring out what to do with only one tomatillo. Any recommendations are welcome from all creative and/or tiny chefs out there.



Tonight I utilized some more of the corn, grape tomatoes, and goat cheese along with the lettuce from the farm to make a salad. I also used some of Amy Hepworth's orange grape tomatoes from Milton, NY.



For the main course I used this marinated Amrenian string cheese from Sun-Ni along with some flatbreads and additional grape tomatoes to make a quasi-traditional Armenian dish. Normally I don't know enough about Armenian cooking to know my lahmahjoon from my jilbour but I have it on good authority that this is how one uses Armenian string cheese.

Now this is the first night this week there hasn't been a random Dolly Parton movie on CMT so we're going to have to work to figure out what to do with the rest of our evening.

My vote: watch some reruns of Psych. That would be sweeter than a bowl full of roejeeg!