Hot Tip: How not to make balsamic reduction

You make balsamic reduction by heating balsamic vinegar.  You stir this.  You can add sugar or other things.  It thickens and makes a glaze. 

200th Post Freebie/Contest/Giveaway

I sort of can't believe this has been going on this long. 200 posts.  I'm not going to re-hash all that I explained on our 100th post-iversary but this wasn't something I thought out.  I started taking pictures of my dinners on a whim, at the suggestion of a friend. 


Keep reading to enter to win a thing. 

Frosting fail

It's been a while since I've posted a fail.  I think of that as a personal accomplishment, because it's not like I'm hiding kitchen drama over here and not telling you about it.  Basically, if I make something I haven't made before, you're going to hear about it, success or not.   But this frosting, whoa... this frosting. 

Salmon with Tequila and Cilantro and a Honey-Jalepeno Glaze

I think I've made it pretty clear that we're not big fish-eaters here at Saturday's Mouse HQ.   Neither of us grew up with it, and the few fish things each of us does enjoy, the other generally does not.  I could eat crab and shrimp every day.  I like lox.   Sous Chef Brian likes tuna salad, but hates what I like.  I hate tuna salad.  I could keep writing like this. Enough short sentences with overly dramatic statements about fish.


Both of us are pretty happy with a spicy tuna roll, but the good sushi place in my neighborhood is a bit pricey, so that's a special occasion thing.


Anyhow, I try to push fish.  Because it's good for us.  So we'll be staring at the fish counter and staring at each other and everyone's afraid to make a move because it all means were coming home with something scaly.   Several years ago we did a new vegetable a week, and it really changed how we eat.  The following year we tried a fish a week for a while, which resulted in a lot of evenings eating rice or quinoa.


I told you here that I wouldn't post a fish recipe until I made some fish and said it was incredible.  Here we are.

You could win a thing.

Let's do this again. 

Buying Club - The Goods - Week 3

Week three of the buying club.  I'm thrilled. 

Barbecue Seitan Sandwich

This really isn't a recipe so much as a dinner idea, or really, a suggestion for a sauce to put on a food.   Chewy seitan, crisp at the edges, drenched in your favorite barbecue sauce, on bread. You know I love the wheat meat.  Add jalepenos if you're feeling spicy, or pickles if you're feeling tangy.

How to Freeze Vegetables

Sous Chef Brian labeled the veg, and it's not that he has anything against carrots.

Whether we grow our own veggies or received too much in our CSA or scrambled to the farm market to get the last of our favorite produce before the end of the season, sometimes we end up with too much.   Freezing is a great way to keep the goodness of seasons past on hand and ready for a meal.  But just throwing most vegetables into the freezer isn't the best route to ensuring that today's harvest tastes fresh a few months from now.

I've acknowledged that my freezer overflows with homemade foods and preserved produce and bits of things (butter wrappers for greasing pans, ends of bread for making breadcrumbs, and all the leafy, scrappy ends of things I save for stock).   About once a week, I look in the fridge and figure out what's just not going to make it onto our plates in time, and then I get a pot of water boiling.


A few days ago my friend Kim was asking how we do this, and I blew her off and referred her to a website.  This is a bit more in-depth.  Just a bit.  This is slightly more serious than my "how to defrost peas" post.  

Hot Tip: Unburning cookies

Buying Club 2011 - The Goods - Week 2

I think I over-ordered.  I didn't do the day-of-the-week math.  I picked up the CSA on Tuesdays, which meant three days of good salad-eating for me and Brian, in our packed-for-work lunches.  Now that I look at this, with spinach and mixed lettuce and kale, I don't know how it's going to happen.  I pick this up on Thursdays, and we just don't eat that much weekend salad. 

Whole Wheat Ravioli with Roasted Vegetables and Ricotta

 

It's half whole wheat and half AP flour, stuffed with roasted vegetables and some ricotta.  There's just something about roasted veg, the nutty sweetness, that works so well with whole wheat pasta.  This isn't a recipe, per se, since you'll use whatever roasted veg you have on hand.  It's more of a story of how I made ravioli for the first time, and how you can do it too. 

CSA 2011 - The Goods - Week 23 [end of season]

This is the last week of our CSA.  The fun thing about the CSA is that this week's haul looks like winter, which is appropriate, but whoa.  It's right there in the fridge. Winter. 

Clip Show

this entire post is just a ploy to re-use this image.  i think i'm going to make it into the new Saturday's Mouse logo.

Are clip shows a relic of the 80s, or does TV still do that?  What about very special episodes?


Well, this isn't a very special episode where I write all about hamburgers and then break character and tell you about the horrors of the meat industry.   About four months ago I shared some of my favorite posts for our 100 posts celebration.  We're not at a milestone number, but I have some new favorites.  These are dishes I had not made before, or had not made this way, and they sort of expanded the range of what's possible in my little kitchen. 

Buying Club 2011 - The Goods - Week 1

I've been pretty excited about Winter Harvest.  It's a buying club that gives eaters and cookers access to a bunch of local food growers and makers.  You order a few weeks in advance, so I had actually forgotten what I'd ordered before I went to pick it up this week.  I knew I went light on the veg, since I still have a week of CSA left, but I wasn't sure what else I had ordered. 

On The Road

"Diskette"

So I've been out of town, and not cooking.  MSNDG came through and photographed the goods for ya'll this week.  I couldn't tell what that one leafy thing was from the picture, and neither could she, in person, but I looked in the fridge when I got back, and it's celery.  Celery that is so leafy and green and fluffy that I just feel like I need to make chicken stock.  But ya'll've* seen me with chicken and it's not pretty, so we'll see.  


I was in DC, at a conference.  Sous Chef Brian is a big fan of monuments and statues and blisters and such, so he came along.  He went around taking pictures like this:

And I went around taking pictures of hotel carpets, like this:

"Space Invaders"

CSA 2011 - The Goods - Week 22

I think there's one week of Farmer's Choice left.

 

Apples, which have been delightful.  The yellow-ish ones are like honeycrisps, but I'm not sure that they are honeycrisps.

 

Apple cider, which is always exciting.  Taters, broccoli, bok choy, lettuce and really, I have no idea what the big dark green leaves are.  They actually look like the leafy part of a root vegetable to me.  

Oreo Cookies

No, this isn't a recipe for Oreo cookies, for that you can go here.  I haven't tried it, but it showed up in a quick Googlin'.

I don't care for cream filling.  I don't care what you're filling with cream, unless you're saying "cream" but meaning "cheese," I just don't care for it.

But I like Oreo cookies.  Just not the cream.   They're not food, so I don't eat many of them, and I'm not telling you to run out and eat them.  I am saying that it's pretty easy to make an Oreo cookie cream-lessly delicious.

Open cookie.  Apply business card, credit card or butterknife. I prefer a business card.  Discard cream filling.  Dunk.

We'll be back with our regularly scheduled programming pretty soon.