u/RainbowDillo

I actually was at a cottage this past weekend with a friend. But we mostly ate cheese and drank wine.

So for Sunday I went for pot pies as they feel pretty cottagey to me. One was chicken, and one was vegan. I tossed some toast on there for crunch, but breadcrumbs might have been a better choice. I hate making pie crust, the crust on the chicken one is store bought.

Friends brought beans and corn.

I do love ginger. I probably could have gone harder into gingery foods for dinner. But on my cursory glance at my cookbook and saw seared tuna steaks with ginger bok choy I stopped looking. It’s my birthday and I want a tuna steak.

The ginger bok choy was really good and super simple. Stuff the bok choy in a pan and then at the end add grated ginger and ponzu. Recipe is from 5 Ingredient Recipes from America’s Test Kitchen.

(Also lemon pearl couscous and green beans made by friends)

These were really good! I wish I’d made chimichurri sauce instead of just using pre made salsa verde though. They came together really quickly.

One of my kids is moving away for most of a year for a co-op and we also chose to celebrate her birthday this weekend as well. So we let her choose the menu.

For lost in translation, she wanted to recall the time last year when she solo travelled to Guadalajara and accidentally ended up locked in a bus in the bus depot. So she chose tacos. I wanted to make Al pastor because they are simply the best tacos, but they’re a lot of work and we had a big party for her on Saturday, so I said I’d just make white people taco night. Enter Mr sous vide who volunteered to make us pulled pork style taco meat. I don’t know what recipe he followed, but goddamn they were good. Other friends made the mango salsa.

This left me having to make something myself at sort of short notice that I still wanted to be fairly easy. I googled “weird food names” and this Portuguese recipe for toucinho do céu came up. It translates to heavenly bacon. It’s pretty good, but not heavenly exactly and there is no bacon. You shove everything in a blender and bake it. I put the batter in the cake pan and then went to clean the blender. It’s not my blender, but I know it has a clean function. Blender blunder, I added soap and suddenly myself and the kitchen and the cake were soaked in soapy water noooo. Second round cake turned out. I left the blender for someone else to clean. It’s very coconutty and has more of a custardy texture than cake.

I may have veered a little off gimmicks and headed into gizmo territory, but I was looking for an excuse to borrow my friends’ sous vide.

I wanted to do some veg in the sous vide so the vegans could have some too. I went with carrots, and they were alright. I think I should have let them steep a bit longer. I would have liked them softer.

The salmon I did at 120• and it was very nice. Bonus tableside flame throwing done by sous vide friend.

Spiralizers we’re all the rage a few years ago and I love zucchini in all its forms.

Before the spiralizer was crinkle cut everything, so a friend brought some crinkly beets.

Skittles vodka is a gimmick for young adults probably everywhere. Technically this was supposed to be for science fair week, but the kid was sick then and it’s still pretty gimmicky. It was also awful.

The last time I was forced to participate in a science fair I was extremely peeved about not being able to use my pet rats (I think I wanted to try different training techniques? It was like 30 years ago). So I decided I’d try growing some plants with salty, sweet or plain water. Nothing grew. I got a failing grade.

The word association of science fair is volcano, so here we have mashed potato volcanos with gravy lava. We were supposed to also have a layered drink, but the kid bringing that wasn’t feeling well so it didn’t happen. If she brings it on Thursday, I’ll add it as a comment.

For me, low effort once again, grade F. For the the kid, extension granted.

I made dirty rice a few years ago when one of the kids requested alligator for their birthday dinner. I really liked it then, so I knew I’d make it again for this week.

I figured everyone else would be less into it, so I made some jokey veg sides as well. Joke was on me, everyone LOVED the dirty rice, it was all eaten up immediately.

Featuring back up plastic plates as there’s been too many 8+ people bbqs in the past week to properly keep up on the dishes.

Listen, I know I’m phoning it in a little this summer. But every minute in the kitchen is a minute less in the pool.

The piggers are gonna go all the way this year!

I do not sport. It’s bbq season. Who’s playing in this World Cup? Brazil? They do bbq. Ended up doing this on a Thursday because we decided to bbq some chicken. The Sunday dinner host has a pool and we all basically move into it for the summer and have dinner together. This marinade was really good!

When I saw this theme, i immediately thought of prunes. Then I thought, who likes prunes? Old timey people! There’s probably a recipe in Baking Yesteryear. In fact there were two - but prune pie scared me even more than this one.

This is from the worst of the worst section and the description states it “initiates a purge as delicate and gentle as a traffic collision”. I tried half a slice, tastes like molasses and there were no, uh, purges. I am significantly less scared of it now. I couldn’t find wheat germ and subbed oat bran, so maybe the bomb was diffused to begin with.

Weak week for me. I purposely bought a house with zero outside space. I don’t want to mow, shovel or garden tyvm. I kill all plants that enter my house. I guess it’s more plantslaughter than murder, I don’t mean to kill them, but they dead all the same.

I went to the local farmers market and bought some salad fixings and we had that with some (not gardened) cod.

We brainstormed this as a group and settled on skewers for swords. There were 7 at dinner this week, so 7 of swords it is.

The internet suggests the 7 of swords is theft, stealth, cunning, rip off, sneak, dishonesty, half assed effort. Hilarious - the meat skewers were mystery meat found in the freezer pre marinated after a bbq sometime last year. I didn’t look up the meaning until after dinner. Stolen half assed meat.

How do you like your coffee? I like it crisp.

I like the smell of coffee but I don’t like the taste of coffee. So I made chocolate chip cookies with chopped up coffee crisp instead of chips.

Baked them a little bit too long I think.

Bonus vegan maple cold brew. I tried a sip. Tasted like coffee.

This Sunday we had ten people for dinner, so I interpreted the theme as 15 min prep time. The rice (stupid rinsing!) did put me a bit over - though I forgot to restart my timer.

Bonus haystacks brought by the vegans, though they said it took closer to 20 minutes.

Another favourite Chef John recipe, another terrible documentation.

When transferring the chicken to a cutting board for carving the legs fell right off ruining my symmetry a bit.

I’ve never made jam before, so I wanted to keep it simple. What is simpler than strawberries, lemon juice and sugar? And yet

You guys, she THICC. This jam is not suitable for a sandwich. I managed to smoosh it some on the crumpet, I think it will only be good when put on hot things.

For this weeks bad food photography I made pesto, tomato, and garlic Alfredo pizza sauces. Pizza dough is surprisingly easy to make.

My pizza is the misshapen triforce looking thing. I should have kept the batch in that oven in a few minutes longer but I was hungry. If you’ve never put snow peas on your pizza you’re missing out.

The round one looks a lot better, but jokes on him because he had random sauce flavour on his slices.

I personally liked the garlic Alfredo best, though it was also the most time consuming to make.

I’ve been lucky enough to visit a fair few places, but I love travelling so anywhere could have completed this week. Japan is my #1 bucket list destination but I eat a fair bit of Japanese food on the regular and I made hand rolls for hanami week.

So I went with #2, England. I hope to visit in 2030 for a milestone birthday. As I do the family dinner on a Sunday, a proper Sunday roast seemed like a great option. It was my first time making Yorkshire puddings and I really liked them. The recipe for them and the prime rib was from America’s Test Kitchen.

The vegans brought some mushrooms to stand in for the roast. There’s two pots of potatoes because one is vegan.

Two bonus desserts this week, friends made vegan scones, though I put sweetened marscapone cheese on with the blueberry jam. Almost forgot to take a picture, so it’s half eaten. I also learned clotted cream is apparently illegal in Canada.

I have been veerrry slowly making my way through Baking Yesteryear and I happened to have ANZAC biscuits as the next recipe, serendipity. New Zealand is the vegans’ bucket list destination.

One of my other kids is actually visiting their bucket list destination right now - Guatamala. I’m only a little jealous.

Another week, another terrible photo.

These didn’t exactly go to plan. I couldn’t find dried beef, so I omitted it. The cream sauce did not thicken.

As I dumped the couscous into the vegan mix I said to myself, hang on did the recipe say quinoa? Oh well, it’s couscous now.

I bought SO MUCH Swiss chard, but many of the leaves were too holey to wrap stuff in.

They were alright. Definitely edible, but not something I would make again.

Bonus beaver tails with maple sauce made by one of the kids in memory of ski trips past. I put way more maple goo on after I took the picture.

Recipes here:

https://soursweetbitter.com/recipe/capuns/

https://www.snapcalorie.com/recipes/vegan_capuns.html