Ever since we got a couple of adorable little pie pumpkins in our farm share back in October, I’ve planned on making this dish.  Sure, it’s two months after that, but thanks to the wonders of living in a 150 year old brick house that doesn’t retain heat very well, the pumpkins were still good and ready to go.

Like most of my…life in general, I didn’t really have a plan, more a set of guidelines: fill pumpkin, bake.  I happened to have some hot Italian sausage I picked up from Steinhauser Farms at the Lunasa market a while back.  I thawed it out to use in a pasta dish earlier this week and wanted to use up the rest of it and this seemed like a good way to do that.  I also had some extra sharp white cheddar and thanks to a stocking-up trip to the store, I got mushrooms and arugula as well.  That’s it.  That’s all there is to this recipe–five main ingredients and some seasonings and olive oil.  You put it together, you let it do its thing in the oven and you have these adorable little self contained meals. Continue reading →

And if that’s not an incentive for you to try it, well…I’m out of ideas.

So a while back, my mother in law accidentally bought half a cow.  I know you, internet reader, and I know that your first instinct is to quip, “Which half? Front or back?”  Oh you witty person, you.  After that, you’ll ask how someone “accidentally” purchases a half of an animal that can weigh up to 700 pounds when they really meant to just buy a quarter?  I’m not sure but frankly it sounds like something I would do.

Anyway, because of that, Josh and I got a fabulous gift of a large amount of beef that we’ve been whittling down over the past couple months—ground beef, steaks, chuck roasts.  And yesterday, short ribs.

I love short ribs.  “But Lauren,” you say, “You love any kind of ribs.”  Yes, that’s true too.  And with good reason: they are delicious.  Beef short ribs are the bovine equivalent of pork spare ribs and can be found cut into a variety of ways.  While I don’t crave them in the same obsessive manner that I tend to crave pork ribs (hey, the pig is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy), I do enjoy them now and then in place of a good roast.  They’re an excellent candidate for braising, which is not quite baking and not quite boiling.  Once when I was practically swimming in an overflow of Pom Wonderful pomegranate juice, I made pomegranate-braised short ribs with an ancho chile and chocolate rub.  It was pretty awesome.  This dish is somewhat similar, but more “traditional” and a bit less fruity.  Also, I’ve replace the healthy benefits of pomegranate with the healthy benefits of a full bottle of red wine: let’s see if anyone notices! Continue reading →

This may come as a shock to some of you, but sometimes I really just don’t want to cook.  Some nights it’s like, “You know, I just want someone to bring me delicious, reasonably healthy food and serve it to me.”  That never really happens though.  Generally when those nights come around, we end up ordering pizza, which ends up being reasonably tasty but not at all healthy, often takes longer than I want it to and then Josh and I have this discussion about what’s better, Jet’s or Cottage Inn (Cottage Inn) and don’t even get me started on the sadness that befalls us when we realize we’ve run out of our beloved chili pepper flakes to sprinkle over said pizza.  I mean, there’s teeth gnashing and wailing and crying…it’s terrible.

Days where it’s just me for dinner can be even worse.  I won’t order dinner out just for me.  Often I take the opportunity to experiment and make something that I know Josh won’t really like to eat but as stated above, sometimes I don’t want to spend an hour in the kitchen doing this or that.  Now, partially to combat cooking malaise like this, we bought a chest freezer last weekend so that we could buy frozen dinners and pull them out when necessary (well, the freezer is partially to store frozen dinners and partially to store large amounts of pork shoulder for when I feel like some slow cookin’).  This is slightly odd for me, because I don’t often eat packaged dinners, with the notable exception of occasional box of Kraft Mac & Cheese (it’s the best powdered cheese-product you can buy and you know it).  It got worse when, after purchasing the freezer and a few bulk packages of Lean Cuisine steamer dinners (thanks CostCo), I got home, ready to crack open and try out a meal of Orange Chicken and realized…we don’t have a microwave.  Continue reading →

Bet you never thought you’d see a Twilight reference on this blog, eh?  Yeah me either.  And I’m actually a little ashamed now.  Although I’m not sure if I should be more ashamed that I didn’t even realize the reference until after I’d written the headline or that I didn’t immediately erase it.

Actually let’s try this post again.

CHICKEN!

I took the afternoon off yesterday.  It was just one of those days where I just didn’t want to be in the office; I wanted to unwind and relax a bit.  So after having a long lunch with Josh and a couple of friends, I headed down to Kerrytown in Ann Arbor to hang out at the market and do a bit of shopping.  I ended up at Sweetwaters, which if you’re not from around these parts, is a small local coffee shop chain and this particular location is inside/adjacent to Sparrow Market in the Kerrytown shops.  I hung out for a while, people-watching and debating internally what I wanted to make for dinner.

If you’re like me, the problem of what to eat next is at its very core an existential one.  Which means, if you’re like me, we should both be pretty thankful for the obviously comfortable circumstances in which we live.  Yet beyond that, yes, I take “What’s for dinner?” very seriously for a number of reasons.  One, obviously cooking is my hobby; I consider each meal an opportunity to practice my skills.  Two, as a human, I have the ability to raise eating from a basic level of instinctual need to one of enjoyment; you have to eat, you might as well enjoy it.  Three, as an extension to Reason #2, if you’re going to put something in your body and thereby make it a part of your being, it should be high-quality and it should be as tasty as possible.  I mean, what if you really are what you eat?  When the zombie apocalypse comes, I want the droning, vacant cannibalistic hordes of the reanimated to fight over who gets the remains of my mutilated corpse because I am that delicious. Continue reading →

I wasn’t doing a lot of baking for a bit there recently and in the meantime, my Calder delivery kept coming.  By last Friday, I had amassed a small cholesterol-y fortune to the tune of about 4.5 pounds of butter in my pantry.  I thought to myself, I should probably whittle that down before it goes bad.  So I did what any other me in my situation would do: I made cornbread.  And cookies.  And those triple chocolate brownies that I’m convinced could easily be the flavonoid-filled death of some otherwise healthy person.  But it wasn’t enough.  By the end of the weekend, I still had a pound and a half of butter.  At least that’s a reasonable amount for me.  I can always make another batch or four of cornbread.  I mean, it’s really good cornbread. But I also wanted to try something new.  Frosting.

Generally, I don’t like to make frosting.  I’ve tried before, for cakes and cinnamon rolls, and it always comes out “meh.”  Seriously.  It actually shrugs its sugary shoulders with a bored sounding “meh” as I spread it haphazardly across the top of some otherwise adequate baked concoction.  The frosting is unimpressed with my meager talents at creaming various dairy products with sugar.  Well that’s fine, frosting, cause I don’t like you either.  Really, I don’t.  I’ve never cared for frosting.  Generally find it too sugary–I prefer the cake part.  I don’t like filling either for the same reason.  In fact as a kid, when given a Hostess cupcake, I would peel off the frosted design and then proceed to eat the cake around the filling and then throw the filling away.  What can I say?  That’s just how I roll.  Non-frosted. Continue reading →

I miss my Needle Lane farm share.  Shopping for your own vegetables is just not the same.  It lacks the surprise and the built-in push to experiment with new things.  I suppose I could just go to the grocery store, stand in the produce section, blindfold myself and blindly grope around until I grab something…but I’m sure you can see how that will probably just get me a one way ticket to Bannination, population: me.  And on top of that, winter is looming like a giant, frozen marshmallow puff above our heads and soon the farmer’s market will be no more; in fact, some have already ended.  How will I hobnob with the salt-of-the-earth people who grow my food now? How will I get my fresh air market fix?

Well, I guess that’s where Lunasa comes in.  Luna-what-a? you ask.  Lunasa.  It’s a new-ish farmer’s market in Ann Arbor that we’re trying out for the winter.  From their website,

“Lunasa (loo-nah-sah) is an annual Celtic harvest celebration traditionally begun in August. Getting back to our roots and supporting local farmers and craftspeople is something we feel good about doing, for us personally, our families, our neighbors, and our local communities. Come celebrate with us!”

The market itself is kind of an interesting idea: it’s a cross between a membership club and a farmer’s market.  They do have “open house” days where anyone can stop by and shop around but for the most part, you have to purchase a membership to join and regularly shop.  At $40 a year, we weren’t sure if it would be worth it but figured we could give it a shot at least for this year.  And as a market-addict, I’ll apparently do almost anything for my fix….I said almost.  Continue reading →

When I was a little kid, my grandparents raised chickens.  I remember helping my grandma feed them and having to collect the eggs.  I remember the rooster strutting around and generally being absolutely nothing like Foghorn Legorn.  But mostly I remember them all chasing me around the yard.

Chickens are jerks.

But they do produce tasty, tasty eggs.  And I’ll admit that deep down I always hope that I’ll someday get to raise some chickens in my backyard that will be as awesome as Billina, the talking chicken from Return to Oz or even Chicken Boo from the Animaniacs.  That silly Chicken Boo.  He thinks he’s people.  But mostly, I really just like eggs.

Unlike other breakfast foods, which are often greasy or absolutely bursting with sugar which is not a good way for me to start off the morning, eggs are just complete little packages of deliciousness.  I like them scrambled, fried for sandwiches, hardboiled, deviled, baked with herbs and olive oil, and occasionally I like to go all out on the weekend and I very slowly scramble them over low heat for about 10-15 minutes with olive oil, butter, a touch of cream and shavings of my favorite flavored Monterey Jack cheese.  That last one, by the way, is deadly but delicious.  Eat lovingly but sparingly.

But I also like to make Eggs in Purgatory, which is basically eggs cooked in spicy tomato sauce.  One of my favorite egg breakfasts.  And you know what breakfast is really good for?  Dinner.  Continue reading →

This was a most excellent weekend.  A busy, exhausting one, but most excellent indeed.  Let’s recap, shall we?

First, Josh and I had breakfast with my friend Jessica and her mom at Beezy’s in Ypsilanti, which is my favorite restaurant in the entire city, I’m pretty sure.  We stopped at the Depot Town Farmer’s Market to do a bit of shopping and to pick up our farm share with Needle Lane Farm.  I love this share so much.  It’s ending soon and I know from last year, I’m going to miss it so much over the winter.  Plus, I love the people at the farm, so I’ll miss seeing them.  But anyway, we picked up our share and got some good peppers and cabbage and beans and a big bag of tomatoes.  Remember that, because it’s going to come up again later.  And you will be tested.   Anyway, after the market, we wandered up to Beezy’s for some delicious breakfast food with which to celebrate Jessica’s passing out on the bar…exam.  (Love you, Jess :-))  I am convinced that Beezy’s has the best breakfast sandwiches in Washtenaw County at the very least.  I got the breakfast eggel—-asiago bagel with scrambled eggs, ham and provolone cheese.  And a hot chocolate.  Which, by the way, was not a cup of hot water or milk with powdered mix thrown in.  Or syrup.  Oh no.  This was Calder Dairy chocolate milk that was steamed and frothed.  It was amazing.  I live three blocks from Beezy’s.  I think it’s safe to say that if you can’t find me this winter, it’s because I’m down there, face-down in a cup of their hot chocolate, trying to make it through the winter. Continue reading →

I put my hand up on a chip
When I dip, you dip, we dip
You pick up a pita chip
When you dip, I dip, we dip
Apparently October is Vegetarian Awareness Month, according to the Bureau of Randomly Assigned Issue Awareness Months, and October 1 was World Vegetarian Day.  I wouldn’t normally know this, no offense to vegetarianism, except that a group of us at my office were looking for a theme for the beginning of our semi-regular Friday potluck lunches this semester and we stumbled upon this little factoid.  We figured hey, we have a few vegetarians and vegans on staff and, after all, we are planning on celebrating Miss Piggy’s birthday with a ham-fueled pork-gy in a couple of weeks, so why not?  Veggie day was on.

I needed something to make and wanted something simple, that could feed a lot of people but without a lot of effort on my part and this recipe I had tucked away for an 8 layer Mediterranean dip did just the trick.  I got the recipe from Whole Food’s website, but ended up tweaking it a bit because I didn’t want certain layers, wanted to add others and in one case couldn’t find the ingredients for one so I mixed things up.

That’s the beauty of this recipe–it’s infinitely customizable.  And not to get all Sandra Lee on you, but it’s great for those of you who don’t want to make something from scratch because all you have to do is layer and assemble.  Layer and assemble.  And eat.

The original recipe is here, but my modifications are below:

Layered Mediterranean Dip

16oz roasted red pepper hummus
2 c. chopped baby spinach
1 jar artichoke hearts
2 diced tomatoes
1 c. lowfat Greek yogurt
4oz crumbled feta

Layer first hummus, then spinach, then artichokes and tomatoes.
Spread yogurt over the veggies and then top with feta.  Eat.  With
pita chips.

What are you doing for Vegetarian Awareness Month?

As I’ve probably mentioned before, I tend to bake when I get restless.  Judging from most of my blog entries, I get restless a lot.  But there’s also the fact that I like to have a little something sweet in the evenings and instead of opting for a couple cookies made by some questionable elven folk, I prefer to satisfy my sweet tooth with a couple small creations of my own.  One, because as we established, I’m already restless and it’s something to do, and two, because I’m very much in a place where I prefer to know exactly what’s in my food and to eat food that’s…well, recognizable and pronounceable.

So the other night, I had one of these moments.  A little voice in my head said, “Bake something,” which I figure is better than a little voice in my head telling me to “burn things.”  Hopefully, anyway.  And after looking through my pantry, which is getting a little low on things–like eggs–, and then flipping through my Evernote cookbook, I finally settled on a classic: sugar cookies.

Like I said in the grilled cheese sandwich post, Fall totally revs up my need for comforting foods and sugar cookies are one of them.  While chocolate chip cookies are my absolute no-exceptions favorite cookie of all time, sugar cookies hold a special spot.  When I was a kid, my mom used to make sugar cookies at Christmas and I would help…so that I could steal bits of the raw dough and eat them while watching my sister play Super Mario Bros.  The 80s were a magical time indeed.  So I love them because of that memory but to be honest, I don’t like to bake them often because one, they often require a lot more time and rolling and whatnot and two, they don’t have chocolate on them.

Well this recipe addresses both of those points.  Both. Continue reading →

Cream makes everything better.  So does butter.  We always suspected it, but more and more I realize that it’s an eternal truth.  In fact, I’m starting to suspect that primordial ooze was really sweet cream butter.  Yep, that’s right.  Full-fat dairy gave birth to the universe as we know it.

All right, well maybe not.  But it did give birth to these pancakes.  But don’t worry; it was a lot cleaner than you think, and with less screaming.

I’ve struggled to make good pancakes for a while.  I could do it when I was a kid but that was when we bought like, Aunt Jemima boxed mix and it was chemically engineered to be so easy that even a 9 year old could do it.  But when I try to make that kind of magic out of raw ingredients on my own, sometimes it doesn’t work out.  They turn out rubbery or chewy or whatever.  This is, of course, a travesty because Josh likes pancakes.  So Lauren practices her pancakes.  I have a go-to recipe that I trot out and it’s usually pretty good but a few weeks ago, I found a way to make it even better.  And then earlier this week, I tried it again for dinner.  And let me tell you, it works.  What’s the secret, you ask? Continue reading →

It’s getting to be that time of year again.  Football season is in swing.  That’s good.  School has started up again.  That’s bad.  The days are bright and cool.  That’s good.  It’s darker in the mornings when I leave for work now.  That’s bad.  This post comes with a free frogurt.  That’s good.  The frogurt contains potassium benzoate.  That’s bad. But it comes with your choice of toppings!

(That’s a Simpsons reference, by the way.  If you got it, that’s good.  If you didn’t, that’s bad.)

But fall is also the time of year where I start thinking about, craving, making and eating what I consider to be the ruling class of the gastronomical world: comfort foods.  And that’s good.

Comfort food is not just a universal cultural icon, it’s a necessity.  It’s an inevitability, really.  It’s not just about favorites, it’s about associations.  And I have a lot of associations.  For instance, baked mac and cheese is one of my very top comfort foods because it’s a dish we always have at family holidays.  Apparently that’s not very common, but it’s a must for us.  And then there’s barbecue, which is more of a summer comfort food for me but really works all year round (I mean, I don’t turn down barbecue for just about anything).  I used to watch my dad make his neighborhood-famous ribs and homemade sauce every summer as a kid and it stuck with me.  Sugar cookie dough–because my mom used to make sugar cookies at Christmas time and I used to swipe the unbaked dough and eat it while watching my sister play video games.  Chili, because it’s the first comfort dish I learned to make on my own–and the first dish I ever cooked for a friend, in middle school.  And chocolate chip cookies because…well, I’m alive.  That’s reason enough.

And these are all things I find myself wanting in the fall and winter, as it gets colder and darker and a slew of holidays begins to creep forward (or sprint—Costco actually has Christmas stuff on sale.  In September).  So the time has come, the Lauren said, to talk of tasty things, of stews and soups and casseroles, of comfort foods and drinks.  Continue reading →

You know, there’s a lot of good cooking that doesn’t go in this blog.  Okay, maybe not a lot but a fair amount.  It’s not usually fancy, it’s not usually unique, but it’s generally really pretty good.  And I don’t want those things to go quietly into the gastronomical night.  That, I’m bored and I’m not yet prepared to write posts on recent experiments in buttermilk fried chicken (really good) and pancakes made with cream (really freaking good) until I’ve had a chance to eat some more try them again.

This weekend I’m on my own, as Josh is traveling in the Great Dark that is Ohio for a conference about Linux.  Yeah, I know.  I forgive him these little lapses in judgment.  Anyway, I was on my own, me and my two dogs…

Winston and Maggie

…and clearly they were going to be troublesome.  Not to mention, I was starving after a busy day at work and just wanted something right now, not a hundred minutes from now (which was actually then but I’m writing now so it all works out).  I had on hand some leftover roast beef from yesterday’s “Anticipate the Lazy” crockpot dinner, and most of a loaf of Italian bread, plus that Great Midwest leek-and-morel cheese that I am close to obsessed over and that I’ve been putting on damn near everything.  I also had a bunch of organic arugula that I bought specifically for this weekend because I knew that Josh was going away and for some reason, I thought that this occasion was in dire need of arugula.  I was right.  Totally an arugula weekend.  I had an arugula salad yesterday with just a bit of salt, pepper and some blood orange infused olive oil I picked up from Old World Olive Press in Plymouth.  I think later this weekend, I’m going to grill some pizza dough and top it with thinly sliced apples, the blood orange olive oil and I dunno.  Something else.  It’ll come to me later. Continue reading →

If I were a Bond girl, my cheeky code name would be Cara.  Cara Mel.  I’d make sly, sultry comments to Bond while carelessly smoking a long, elegant cigarette that won’t have the chance to kill me because I’ll die in a freak accident by getting a mounted sword-fish nose through the stomach while Bond escapes the clutches of some comical, balding, verbose and vaguely effeminate bad guy yet again.  “Cara Mel burns when hot, Mr. Bond,” I would say.  “Cara Mel lies,” he would reply blithely, the line coming out very suavely if he was Sean Connery, and not nearly as impressively if he was say, Roger Dalton.  Sorry, Rog.  But it’s true.

Of course my action-packed, sugar-fueled day dreams are only tangentially related to post, at point (Caramel, Bar).  Mostly because I’m tired and I get weird when I’m tired, and also because I can’t think of any other way to introduce this recipe other than to say it’s so good that Josh made me take the pan to work so that he wouldn’t eat the entire thing himself.  So there you go.  Bond tested, Josh approved.

No, really, these bars are quite good.  And really easy too.  And of course, I still had about 1.5 of caramel leftover from making the Take Five bars.  I used half of it for this recipe and the other half I melted into a pan of these brownies.  So yes.  I’ve had a lot of sugar this week.  Enough to kill a lesser mortal.  Okay, maybe not kill.  Stun?  Make giddy?  Give cavities?  There it is. Continue reading →

I finally did it last night.  I finally used up the last half of a bag of chocolate nibs and made another batch of my favorite bath scrub ever, the chocolate bath scrub. When I got out of the shower, I was soft and luxurious feeling.  It was excellent.  Now, almost 24 hours later, my skin still feels fantastic, no lotion necessary.  So I’m basking in my own glow as I write this post on my also-finally-finished foodie skin care e-pamphlet, “Play With Your Food.”  It’s my gift to you, free, full of little tidbits I’ve gathered from the farthest reaches of the intarwebs on all the great ways you can use foods you probably keep in the kitchen all the time to pamper yourself and your skin.  And let me tell you, nothing wakes you up better than the smell of chocolate in your shower.  Except maybe a bullhorn.  Or a car crashing through your window.  But nothing else.

Download the “Play with Your Food” free e-pamphlet.

Take 5...leave the rest

I’m calling these my homemade Take 5 bars but really, there are only four lights ingredients.  Caramel.  Chunky peanut butter.  Pretzel.  And chocolate.  Oh unless you count awesome as an ingredient.

These candy bars came as a request, as pretty much all my candy bars do, this time from my friend Chase.  He sent me a recipe, which I pretty much ignored, as I am wont to do.  The story goes something like this:

Once upon a time, in the magical land of NotOhio, there was a little boy.  One day, this little boy felt a rumbly in his tumbly and lo, headed off in the direction of the nearest 7-Eleven to find something to sate his orangutan-sized hunger.  He perused the aisles of this and that, passing Hershey bars and Reese’s peanut butter cups and something called a Goober when his eyes fell upon a beautiful stranger the likes of which he had never seen before, a coquettish, salty yet sweet little minx all wrapped up in  red.  Hey you, she called out, you, with the face.  Why don’t you take a little time out with me?  Just Take 5, just Take 5…”

I’m just going to leave that right there. Continue reading →

I’m feeling pretty old-school these days.  We bought a house that’s 150 years old.  I don’t have a microwave anymore.  My grandmother wants to give me a butter churn.  And we have a milkman.

Yes, that’s right.  We have a milkman.  His name is Stan.  Stan the milkman.  I’ve never met Stan but I heart him oh so much.  Not just because I enjoy saying that I have a milkman, not just because our weekly dairy delivery is always on time and neatly done, but also because thanks to Stan, I don’t worry nearly so much about running out of butter (a constant trouble previously, what with all the baking I do) and I spend less time battling crowds at the store.  Yay!

How did I arrange this magnificent thing, you ask?  Well actually, Josh arranged it.  Through Calder Dairy.

If you don’t know about Calder Dairy, now is a great time to get educated, especially if you live in Michigan.  Calder is a local, family-owned dairy farm and around here you can often find their glass-bottled (!!!!!!!) milk and delicious stacks of butter in various stores, like the Ypsi Co-op or Whole Foods or Busch’s.  Their milk is delicious, as is their butter.  But they also have home delivery, which means that if you live near a route, you can arrange to have milk, cream, buttermilk, eggnog, butter, yogurt, cottage cheese, eggs, bread, even ice cream…and lots more….delivered straight to your house. Continue reading →

I want to make a disclaimer on this post: I don’t really eat that much junk food.  Honestly.  I know it seems like it, what with every other post being a chocolate cake or a marshmallow mousse or fruity alcoholic drink or yet another homemade candy bar.  I eat a lot of fruit, veggies, whole grains and nonfat dairy.  Honestly.  It’s just that those things aren’t nearly as fun to write about.

But anyway.  Let’s move on to the topic at hand.  Which is a post on yet another homemade candy bar!  But not just any candy bar: homemade Heath bars.  Do you know what a Heath bar is?  I didn’t.  It’s toffee, wrapped in chocolate.  Do you know what toffee is?  Sugar and butter.  Which is then smothered in chocolate.  So that’s three essential food groups right there.  Oh and there’s nuts, too, so that’s…you know…vitamin E.  And protein…

My boss Lynne requested these.  And I blame Jeff.  He started this, requesting a batch of homemade Snickers bars, which turned out remarkably well.  Then another coworker requested M&Ms, which I haven’t figured out yet, and then Lynne requested Heath bars for her birthday.  Now that those are conquered, I’ll have to work on Take 5 bars, Butterfingers and Twixes.  And then I’m going to fall into a deep sugar coma that will hopefully last all winter, so I can skip the whole “freezing my butt off” thing.

Continue reading →

Fancy title, isn’t it?  Anyway, I have all these pictures that I take throughout the week of various meals I make.  Some meals I blog, some I don’t.  Some pictures go up on the site, some don’t.  I figured that since I’m recovering from a brief bout of illness just now, I’ll make myself feel better (and make you feel hungry) by looking at some of the delicious food photos I’ve collected over the year so far.  Some are for posted recipes; if you’re interested, just use the search bar on the top of the page to find them. Some were just from experiments here and there. Let me know if there’s something you’re curious about. Happy Friday.

I had some time to waste the other day after work and since it was a beautiful day, I decided to walk down to the Kerrytown Market and pick up something for dinner.  I was thinking, some chicken to grill would be great.  We’d been eating a lot of pork and beef and I was getting kind of bored and it was just the perfect kind of day to break out the new grill again.  I knew we had some lovely, giant summer squash given to us by a couple of friends so all I really needed to complete the meal was an entree and some fresh sliced bread that I could dip in herbs and olive oil.  Yum.  The boneless, skinless chicken breasts in the case at Sparrow’s looked fantastic and I knew just what to do with it.  I still had a few bottles of pomegranate juice from the last case the lovely people at Pom Wonderful sent me (and here you thought I used it all up in those pom-chocolate-mint mojitos), and I had plenty of cream thanks to our weekly Calder’s dairy delivery.  (Yes, that’s right–dairy delivery.  I have a milk man.  I’ll dish more on that in another post later.)  And for some reason, I really wanted to put the two together.

I also had this fantastic cheese I picked up at Whole Foods.  You can probably find it in other places, but I found it there a few weeks ago and we are completely hooked on it.  Like, ridiculously hooked on it.  It’s fantastic in everything–melted on burgers, shredded and stirred into scrambled eggs, eaten by itself…delicious.  It’s a jack cheese from Great Midwest that’s studded with leeks and morels.  Yes.  Leeks and morels.  I know.  You’re drooling right now as you read this.  Go out and pick some up.  You can thank me for it later. Continue reading →