Remembering Switzerland

At this time last year we were at the beginning of our amazing Swiss vacation. It strikes us particularly hard today knowing that it will likely be a long time before we ever have a vacation like that again.

We made the most of today by watching the beginning of the Tour de France, going for a scenic drive (so that Jen could see some sights and still mostly follow the rules of her bed rest), and dining outside. Each time we have a dinner outside we appreciate that it may be our last for some time. Yesterday I left work early after Jen had to take an unexpected trip to the hospital for more monitoring. This is so routine now that neither of us really voiced any concerns about it at the time. After her monitoring where everything was determined to be fine (once again) we ended up just ordering take out burgers and scarfing them down before watching a few episodes of Eureka and going to bed.



Tonight, however, we made the most of what could be one of our last outdoor dining experiences as a childless couple. I started by making this salad with red leaf lettuce from the farm, sliced radishes, tomato, and green onion with a little olive oil, salt, and pepper.



After our drive this afternoon I stopped by the local butcher shop and found these veal sausages, very similar to the many veal sausages we had during our stay in Switzerland last summer. I grilled them up and served them with a nice grilled Berkshire pork loin chop, caramelized onion, and grilled summer squash from the farm.



For beer I chose this Latitude 48 IPA from Sam Adams. It's made with German hops which sort of goes with the veal sausage/Swiss theme so I thought it would be appropriate. It was a very nice, slightly malty, IPA, another from the Sam Adams Hopology variety pack.

Sam Adams, I never gave you the credit you deserved until very recently.

By the way, I'm loving drinking beer out of this amazing glass. I don't know what it is. It could just be that I love a novelty glass.



Jen is at thirty-five weeks now which means the guys could be here any day now.



She looks a bit different than she did a year ago. However, she probably feels more comfortable today. Don't let that picture fool you. That was the most miserably hot highway overpass on planet Earth.



To round out the evening I poured myself a little of this Grande Gruyère Liqueur de Marque that I got on our trip to Gruyère last year. It was actually far better (and less medicinal) than I'd been expecting.

It made it totally worth the experience of dealing with the wretched French shopkeeper in town.

Now it's time for a little culture and a viewing of National Lampoon's European Vacation to complete the European experience before calling it a day.

Salut!

To Egg, or Not To Egg: On the Polenta

Yesterday was Jen's birthday. I surprised her by staying home from work and, in the most exciting birthday in recorded history, I did seven loads of laundry.

I did not, however, take her out to dinner. We would never disobey her doctor's orders to remain on bed rest. We absolutely did not get into the car, drive to the next town over, and enjoy some fine Italian cuisine.

It's such a shame that we are so compliant with her doctor's crazy orders.



Tonight I made use of the chard and spinach -- combining them again, like last week -- and starting off by sauteeing the chopped stems and onions before adding the greens. This week's spinach was surprisingly bitter but still enjoyable.

I made a batch of creamy polenta with corn meal, chicken stock from the freezer, cream, milk, salt, pepper, butter, and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano. I served the wilted greens on the polenta with a little extra grated cheese and cracked black pepper.



For my dish I added a poached egg and stabbed at the yolk, mixing it all together. This was me getting in touch with my Italian roots. The Italians love to just plop a cooked egg on things right before the serve it. Salads, pastas, sandwiches, cakes, it doesn't matter. If they're Italian they're going to throw a god damned egg on top of it.



I recently came across this twelve pack called "Hopology" from Samuel Adams. It's a sampling of all their recent IPA offerings all in one box. I've only had one before so I was looking forward to sampling some of the others.



For tonight's dinner I paired the Baltic IPA. This was a nice, malty (though not all that hoppy) beer which went down nicely in my super sweet new Sam Adams drinking glass. I have long not given Sam Adams enough credit. They've been doing some amazing things, particularly lately, and this beer was quite enjoyable. I'm looking forward to trying the rest, especially the ones with the word "monk" in the name.



Last night I made Jen her favorite dessert: a fresh fruit tart. Tonight was so much more enjoyable because we just got to eat it. I didn't need to make tart dough, pastry cream, cut fruit, or walk all around town trying to find a store that sells white chocolate.

The only thing that could make a fruit tart even sweeter was watching an episode of Eureka featuring the dulcet tones of Sheriff Jack Carter.

And wouldn't you know that's just what we did!

Pot Luck Friends

Tonight we were lucky enough to have dinner guests. Paul and Caolan were, like many before them, kind enough to come and visit us being that Jen is on bed rest. It's nice having friends come visit us. That way they are able to observe us from a distance as though we were a pair of mating pandas who had been penned together at the zoo. It is for this reason that the babies will be named Lan Lan and Tong Tong.



I started out by putting out this cheese place with clothbound Borough Market cheddar, three year aged Gouda, and Tomme de Savoie. I heard once that cheese plates are supposed to have a theme so the theme for this plate was cheeses you may find somewhere in Europe.



I grilled up some chicken and tossed it with a good amount of barbecue sauce. Since it was not pouring rain I did by best to make the most of the potential girilling weather.



For an accompaniment I made some simple mashed potatoes.



Caolan brought over a salad made with watermelon, orzo, mint, and feta. It was quite good, and, was the first dish we've had which doubled as an acid reflux remedy for Jen.



With the farm squash I stewed it down with browned garlic, onion, fennel, red pepper, tomato, and oregano.



Having dinner guests was the perfect opportunity to use up as much vegetables as possible. I also made this Escarole dish with browned garlic, onion, and cannellini beans.



Since Jen's birthday is tomorrow Caolan was kind enough to bake some gingerbread cupcakes and bring them out with candles as we welcomed Jen back to the room. We didn't sing "Happy Birthday" as we were quite engrossed in watching the 1991 Ozzy Osbourne documentary: Don't Blame Me.



We learned a lot tonight about pot luck dinners, friendship, and Ozzy Osbourne. As Jen ages another year it's important to know about all of these things as we grow older. When she reaches my age I hope she has as much wisdom as I do about such matters.

And special friends.

A friends a friend who knows what being a friend is, talking with a friend.
As friends we were always so close but so far away...
Friends in life are special do you want me as your special friend?
Cause you're the friend that I've been searching for.

Seafood Stew and the Pain of Volunteering

I love the farm share. I love getting random vegetables every week. I love the adventure of trying to run out the clock by using them all up by the next pick up. What I hate is the mandatory volunteer shift. After four years of farm sharing and getting out of the volunteer component my time was up and, today, I finally had to do it.

It's not that I don't want to help out it's that there really isn't anything to do once you put all the vegetables on a table. Then you have to just sit there for three hours and make small talk with strangers. The only thing I hate more than strangers is small talk.

The first two years I was able to get out of volunteering by offering web hosting services to the farm. Last year I got out of volunteering because a hurricane destroyed the farm. That was probably the only good thing to come out of that hurricane.

This year there was nowhere to run. The time was upon us. It was time to pay the piper.



This week I got to set up the vegetables and had first pick, putting my vegetables aside under the awning so that they didn't get soaked in the immediate pouring rain that drenched us as we handed out the vegetables.

This week we got two pounds of summer squash, six garlic scapes, one head of red leaf lettuce, a head of romaine lettuce, a head of escarole, one bunch of arugula, Bright Lights Swiss Chard, summer spinach, a cucumber, and oregano.



After getting home late from a long day of volunteering (which mostly involved sitting around, greeting people, and telling them to have a nice night) I had to act fast so I made this quick salad with leftover green leaf lettuce from last week, arugula from this week, sliced peaches, tomato, feta, Marcona almonds, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Even Jen, the recent hater of salads, ate her entire salad. I figured if I piled enough ingredients she loves on top of the lettuce I may have a better shot at getting her to eat her greens.



For the main course I made a soup by browning up some garlic scapes in olive oil, Chinese cabbage from last week, onion, fennel, red pepper, chopped arugula stems, chorizo, sea scallops, shrimp, halibut, and calamari. For broth I added in the remaining clambake broth (from the freezer), and last night's steamer broth. The result was pretty tasty and the chorizo in the soup made for a very special occasion:

Portuguese Hat Trick!



After dinner I had my favorite dessert: beer. With temperatures dipping into the 50s tonight I opted to have a delicious beer for dessert. I chose this Scotch Silly from Brasserie de Silly in Belgium. It's been in the fridge for four or five months and I've been saving it for a very special night and with the cooler nights behind us this was the perfect evening to enjoy this beer with an episode or two of the final season of Eureka.

Ahh, Sheriff Jack Carter, you are my favorite way to end the day.

The Final Barbecue

When I came home from work this evening Jen was in good spirits but looked like she was starved for some level of excitement. She has been taking this whole bed rest thing extremely well, far better than I would have thought or than she promised to. Her simple request was that we take a drive around. That way she could see things and still follow the guidelines of her bed rest.

Well, sort of.

So we got in the car and drove around the various mansions that surround our old, raggedy, two bedroom apartment. We took a long, meandering trip to Home Depot to finally refill the propane tanks and meet with an audacious cashier lady who asked Jen how pregnant she was then declared, "Oooooh lord, the final barbecue!"



I continued with a vague Portugueses theme by making these steamers with chorizo. I browned up some garlic and chorizo in olive oil, tossed in some vidalia onion, then threw in the steamers with a little water and steamed for five minutes. It's a version of the "recipe" we used at the first restaurant I worked at except that one was notably simpler requiring only onion and water.

I melted some butter on the grill and served with a little leftover broth for dipping.



After We were finished enjoying the steamers I grilled up a chicken breast and served it along with whole leaves of green leaf lettuce from the farm, avocado, red onion, tomato, scallions, and sliced radish.



It was like tricking Jen into eating a salad by telling her that this was actually lettuce wraps. They were actually quite good and this was one of the simpler and healthier meals we've had in a good long while. Probably not what the lady at the Home Depot had in mind for a final barbecue.



For a beer I had this Summerfest Crisp Summer Lager from Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

This was a bit more promising than last night's beer. I hadn't actually read the label before pouring it and I was a little disappointed when I saw that it was a lager. Crisp Pilsner-style lagers have their place, don't get me wrong. When I'm in the mood for a lager I really enjoy them but I had been thinking this would be a flavorful, hoppy ale like Sierra Nevada normally brews so I was a little thrown back.

Nevertheless it was a good beer but probably would have been even better had temperatures been about ten degrees warmer.

I hope the lady at Home Depot was wrong. I hope this is not the last barbecue. It's going to be quite cool next week so if the babies decide to come on the scene a little early she could be right. I just hope we have a few more opportunities to enjoy some outdoor summer cooking as it's only the fourth day of summer.

Perhaps I can convince my mother and sister-in-law to change up poopy diapers while I am still able to grill up a storm outside.

I love to prove Home Depot ladies wrong.

Lazy Portuguese

Nature must be preparing me for babies. I have spent many nights, as of late, having a restless night's sleep. This has left me groggy and sluggish for a full day of work only to return home in a stunned daze, too tired to do anything but stand and look around at the debris in our transitionary apartment.

After pretending to snap myself out of it I went outside with all of our dinner fixings only to find that our propane tank which had died a few nights ago was still dead. Somehow this caught me by surprise and after a string of curse words I was able to milk a few more minutes of flame, just enough to grill some dinner.



I grilled some nice pork chops and some littlenecks in an incredibly lazy homage to Portuguese cooking. That is to say that these are two ingredients often paired in Portuguese cooking and that is pretty much where the theme ends. It would be like serving up a plate of raw ginger and rice and calling it an Asian-inspired meal.



To accompany the pork I boiled up some potatoes -- leftover from the clambake -- and tossed them in olive oil, butter, salt, and pepper. Just like they do in Portugal!



I also made this classic Portuguese recipe: creamed spinach. I browned up a few cloves of garlic, tossed in some washed, chopped Swiss chard and spinach from the farm, cooked them down with salt, pepper, and nutmeg, then added in some cream, grated Parmigiano-Reggiano, and sprinkled lightly with flour to thicken.



For beer I chose this Long Haul Summer Session Ale from Two Brothers Brewing Co. I've had a few of Two Brothers' beers before and I've liked them a lot. Sadly, I was not a fan of this one. It was interesting enough, I guess, but just not my cup of tea (or beer, for that matter).

I didn't have to pour it out, which is good, but I don't think I'd ever try this again. It sort of tasted like someone soaked some cedar planks in a sort of watery beer. It's barrel aged, which generally I like, but I couldn't get into it.

It gets fairly decent reviews so maybe I'm just an uncultured Philistine.

I'm almost through my summer beer selection so I've got a few more to get me back on track before I move on to the rest of the random bottles in my cellar which has been reaching the unfriendly beer temperature of 80 degrees in the last few days. Luckily most of the beers in there are hardy enough to weather this summer.

I, on the other hand, may not make it.

Yard Sale Risotto

Today was the official start to summer. It was fitting that it was in the 70s just yesterday and it was 94° today and it will be an absolutely miserable 96° tomorrow. With little more than a few hours' notice my least favorite season has begun!



I made what might be a final attempt to woo Jen back to the world of salads today by using some of the farm green leaf, arugula, mixed tomatoes, feta, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

It was a bust. I think I'm going to just freeze all the lettuce until after the babies are born.



For a main course I turned last night's clambake leftovers into a tasty risotto. The only thing I added to the leftovers was arborio rice, butter, and garlic scapes. I didn't add any additional seasoning. I simply melted the butter, tossed the arborio in it, then slowly added the leftover clambake broth a little at a time along with diced andouille sausage. At the very end I tossed in some chopped potato, corn, shrimp, mussels, littlenecks, and lobster. This turned out remarkably well, added a minimal amount of heat to our already hot kitchen, and left enough for lunch tomorrow.

I still have some leftover broth so now I need to figure out how I'm going to use it in the next couple of days without making something that will accentuate the miserable heat.

Maybe I'll make seafood Popsicles!



For beer I cracked open this Hop Sun Summer Wheat Beer from Southern Tier Brewing Company in Lakewood, New York. This was another citrusy, hoppy summer number that went over beautifully on this disgustingly hot and humid evening. Even though we didn't need to use the grill at all we set up shop outside to enjoy the evening while I greeted people I'd met on Craigslist to sell off our excess Ikea furniture. It was like a strange pot luck yard sale.

At the end of dinner I had ten crisp dollar bills in my pocket. That's five dollars per babies' college fund.

Score!

Clambake in America

Tonight was a special treat. We got a last minute visit from our friends Katherine and Sylvain whose wedding we attended last summer in France. Since this was Sylvain's first trip to America and an extremely rare visit from the couple I was intent on putting together a shoddy American meal to try to sweeten the bitter taste that America had undoubtedly left in his mouth.



I started off with a showing of American cheese, two from New York and one from California. Representing New York were the Toma Primo and the Point of Origin which was washed in Sixpoint Diesel beer.



To get the point across I was able to secure a little Sixpoint Diesel (which is getting a bit hard to fine these days) and pair it with the cheese.

From California we enjoyed the Truffle Tremor which was probably my favorite of the bunch. Sorry, New York, I'm a sucker for truffles.



Additionally to enjoy as a warm up to dinner we had some Chestnut Valley Toscano sausage with lemon garlic olives and Marcona almonds.



Along with the Sixpoint Diesel and Captain Lawrence Freshchester Pale Ale we also had the Liquid Gold from Captain Lawrence Brewing Company. I also shared a bottle with the main course which shared a name with my favorite Elvis Presley song . . .



That's right . . . a clambake! I tossed onions, potato, beer, mussels, littlenecks, Andouille sausage, and lobster in to a pot on the grill and cooked them until they were done. My super happened to be grilling this evening as well and even donated some steak to the dinner. I served this all up with drawn butter and cornbread in hopes of achieving maximum East Coast Americana.



Overall the dinner was pretty successful but, food aside, it was just nice to see our friends who we rarely get a chance to hang out with short of an intercontinental journey.



After beer we opened this bottle of 2009 Social Club White from Brooklyn Oenology to pair with the clambake. With all the fantastic foods available to the French I wanted to expose Sylvain to the best possible American food, for better or worse. This was a very nice white wine. I think Brooklyn has done America proud with this offering.



I had a lot leftover caramel corn and caramel sauce from Jen's New York baby shower and, thankfully, last night I decided to turn it into a dessert by making it into ice cream. I can scarcely think of anything more American than caramel corn ice cream. I've never actually seen this anywhere before but I'm sure it's been done.

I heated up some cream and milk, tempered it with some eggs, then mixed it together with the caramel sauce (complete with bits of popcorn and Marcona almond) then chilled and processed it in our ice cream maker. The result was a salty, sweet, tasty ice cream which went nicely in an ice cream cone.

The only thing that could have made this dessert more American would have been to serve it between two batter-fried chicken breasts.

Oh well. There's always their next visit.

Soup and Salad . . . in ONE!

Today was the first day off of work in a month where I spent less than an hour monkeying around with Ikea furniture. I did, however, spend some time tidying, cleaning, doing six loads of laundry, and installing the bases to our car seats. That last chore was made a little more annoying when I foolishly remembered that I need to pick people up from the train station tomorrow evening, meaning I'm going to get some practice at uninstalling and reinstalling them very soon.

I'm an idiot.

The most annoying task of the day was our new bi-weekly task of spending an hour at the hospital with Jen and the babies hooked up to all manner of monitor so we can listen to their hearts beat for an hour. The doctors are hell bent on diagnosing Jen with some life-threatening pregnancy complication but for them it's a race against time. They only really have about six weeks left to have their alarmist dreams come true. So far the babies have not been cooperating with their doctors' Chicken Little predictions.

Sorry, docs.



After driving home from the hospital it was time for week two of this year's farm share pickup.

This week's delivery consisted of six garlic scapes and one bunch each of red lettuce, green lettuce, arugula, Swiss chard, summer spinach, mustard greens, mizuna, and Chinese cabbage.

One of Jen's recent pregnancy anti-cravings has been salad. This is an incredibly unfortunate turn of events at the beginning of a farm share season but I've been trying my best to accommodate this craving by making a minimal number of leafy green dishes.



Tonight I turned the salad into soup by browning up all of last week's garlic scapes, some vidalia onion, and most of last week's leftover greens including the Chinese cabbage, red leaf lettuce, green leaf lettuce, and mizuna. I added a little salt, pepper, chicken stock from the freezer, and milk before pureeing the mixture and serving it in a bowl with some Italian bread.

I have to admit that it was very strange eating soup out on the patio but it came out pretty good. Hopefully tonight I will not leave the pot on the stove with the remaining lettuce soup like the last time we had lettuce soup. Of course that was about four years ago. Jen made it and I foolishly forgot it on the stove top which resulted in a stream of four-letter words being strung together over breakfast the following morning.



Since we're a little low on anything but lettuces I skewered a chicken and threw it onto the grill's rotisserie.



To accompany this odd dinner selection I chose this Summer Blonde Ale from River Horse Brewing Company.

Summer is not really my favorite season for beers. Summer beers just generally are not really that exciting to me. However, having all these summer beers when it's in the low 70s may not be experiencing as they were intended. If I had this beer on a day in the 90s after mowing the lawn I think my opinion of it would be considerably higher. There aren't many beers that would disappoint under those circumstances.

Of course since mowing the lawn is one of the worst tasks I can imagine I may opt to go for hard liquor should we ever be "fortunate" enough to live somewhere with a lawn that requires regular mowing.

Or maybe straight heroin.

Disjointed Barbecue

Today was all about learning. Knowledge. We woke up and headed to a 9:00 AM class on breast feeding where we all passed around a stuffed breast and watched a montage video of babies latching on to nipples.

After that we headed to the Container Store and Babies 'R' Us to shop for some last minute items, headed home for a quick breather, then back to another class on baby care. I think the main goal of the baby care class was to populate it with people so undereducated about baby care as to boost our own morale on the subject.

We're pretty much a baby experts.



Upon returning home I fired up the grill to make a quick dinner to give us the energy to continue powering through our home cleanup. I grilled up some sausages from the freezer and served them on some rolls with SchoolHouse Kitchen Sweet Smooth Hot mustard and leftover Bubbies sauerkraut from St. Patrick's Day.



Since we got home kind of late from our class I didn't have too much time to make an appropriate side dish. Instead I made this. This is a pasta salad with Cotija cheese, tomato, red onion, cilantro, vidalia onion dressing, and cumin. It was pretty good but instantly broke what had previously been a perfect German theme for the meal.



For beer I had this Wildeman Farmhouse IPA from Flying Dog Brewery I don't think I've had too much from Flying Dog in the past. Their label art intimidates me. I will not let this intimidate me anymore because this beer was damn good.

I didn't honestly read that it said IPA on the label while I was drinking it. I simply enjoyed the farmhouse style. Could there be anything better to drink in the open air than a farmhouse ale? Maybe listening to Farmhouse by Phish would even enhance the experience Unfortunately it may attract the unbathed hippies across the street who were streaming into some house party that was blaring Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty."

On second thought, let's just stick with the beer.

Last Days of Summer

The last month has seemed extremely hectic and exhausting. With all the running around, little sleep, and large amount of Ikea furniture being assembled, I am not naive enough to believe that this is anything compared to what it will be like when we soon have to care for two newborn babies.

With that being said tonight we tried to take advantage of yet another beautiful late spring evening by grilling dinner and enjoying a few beverages outside while the sun slowly sets over our idyllic baby-free home.



I started off by throwing some slab bacon on the grill figuring that there was no wrong that could come of that. I just wagered that everything else would just sort of come together after that move.



And I was right!

I also stuffed some ground beef with Stilton and tossed it on the grill along with some portobello mushroom caps. I threw it all on some toasted buns then served them up with some of Jen's mustard pickles and potato chips. Jen had hinted at wanting potato or pasta salad but after informing her that this would hold up dinner by a considerable amount of time she gave in to my simple proposal.



For beer I enjoyed this summer release, the Saison Diego, from Green Flash Brewing Company, one of my new favorite breweries. This was a light, beautiful, lemony beer which would have been perfect for temperatures ten or twenty degrees warmer than tonight but was still quite enjoyable even in the 70s. It reminded me a bit of the Summer Session from Peak Organic or the Oishi from Brooklyn Brewery.



With the grill still on I browned up some marshmallows to make the first s'mores of the season while we wound down the final hour of sunlight and watched as the loathsome birds hopped about on the branches over our head kicking down twigs and bark all over our heads.

I hate those damn birds.