For All the Cows

Dear Food Diary,
First off -- yes, we did end up making sandwiches with our leftover prime rib.  We had an excellent two days of beef: grilled/smoked prime rib with grilled toast and giantsalad, followed by thin-sliced steak on ciabatta rolls with homemade horseradish, caramelized onions, and mushrooms.

  
Yes sir/diary, it was a beef party in my mouth.  Sarah and I have a longstanding love of the cow meat, and with rarely any qualms about it.


This weekend we went to Madison for many reasons.  Among them, we went to celebrate our anniversaries (dating and wedding) and stomp around our old stomping grounds.


Did you know this weekend was an event called "Cows on the Concourse" at the Madison Farmers' Market?

Cows are adorable, and now I feel kinda bad about loving to eat them so much.  Or loving so much to eat them.  Both I guess.  Sorry, cows.

Everyday is like Sunday

Dear Food Diary,


There are things we've seen, or partially seen, that we'll always wonder about -- times where we caught a passing glimpse of something beautiful (or horrible) and quickly turned our heads.  Instead of facing the full glory of the mysterious, we backed cautiously away.


Lots of these choices, or non-choices, are life-changing.  But some just leave gnawing, insignificant questions -- questions that could have been easily answered if we had just chosen to step towards the unknown.


For instance:  Two years ago I was in line at Cub Foods behind a guy who had a cart full of beef jerky and disposable cameras.  That's it.  Two-dozen packs of beef jerky and three disposable cameras.  




Look what I've eaten recently:

That's homemade pork sausage on top of a grilled portabello mushroom, on a bun with reduced balsamic vinegar and a tomato slice.  Also some potatoes.

I'm Glad I Spent It With You

Dear Food Diary,

After our solo adventures on Friday, Sarah and I decided to spend most of yesterday afternoon at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.  We walked several miles and saw some nature.  It was pretty, and the exercise made us both feel a little better about all the sitting, eating, eating, and sitting we'd done the day before.

As soon as we got home, Sarah started working on a turkey pot pie. 

She chopped fresh celery, shallots, garlic, and some carrots from the garden (now taking up lots of space in the fridge's veggie tray).  After sweating the root veggies and celery, she browned some flour in the same pan, then added a few ounces of Surly Darkness and let it reduce.  Then she added chicken stock and simmered that until it thickened a bit.

She transferred it all to a baking dish with some fresh green beans and chopped leftover turkey, popped it in the oven for 20 minutes, then added frozen peas.

 We topped that with puff pastry and tossed it back in the oven.

Twenty minutes later, this happened:

It was by far the best meal I've had in the past month.  Better than the squid rings at Sawatdee, better than the roasted pork at Conga, better than the plate of cookies I had for lunch Friday.

Sarah made some genius choices with this one.  Like when the Darkness reduction turned out slightly too bitter (Darkness '09 is much hoppier than '08), she added a teaspoon of honey along with the chicken broth. 

In the end, the whole thing melded into this super-deep and complex combination of flavors and textures.  The puff pastry stayed crisp and buttery, each vegetable was cooked to its perfect texture, and the flavors spiraled into stupifying depths of, um, awesomeness.

Darkness was a distractingly rich side beverage -- the stuff, which pours like lightly carbonated maple syrup and tastes unlike any other liquid intended for human consumption, added plenty of depth to the pot pie.  On its own it was almost too complicated to actually enjoy.  The 2009 batch is sweet, hoppy, earthy (like confusingly delicious mud), and hoppy.  Refreshing it's not. 

It played its part, though, in what turned out to be a pretty much perfect Fall day.

Yours truly,

Matt

An Eerie Sight

Dear Food Diary,
All things considered, it was a sufficiently creepy Halloween weekend.
First Sarah pointed out these terrifying mutant eyebrows:

We shrugged it off as another pre-birthday sign of me turning into an old man.  But by Saturday night the situation had grown considerably more serious and it was clear that I was becoming something else entirely.

I wandered the streets under the cool light of the autumn moon, filled with an ancient yearning to scamper, crazed, into the darkness that lay just beyond each streetlight, to run into the silent shadows that struck warily in from every grove of trees.  Howling in delirious wonder at the understanding that I was leaving the crowds of civilization forever, I would be free to roam the wild places.  Free from the eyes of any who would look for me among the ever-passing multitudes of humanity, I would never be found again.

Anyway, Food Diary, I don't remember much of what I ate on Saturday.

I woke up Sunday with a little indigestion, since you asked, like someone who'd spent the evening eating sugar cookies and drinking Blue Moon from a keg.  

Why must you always be so disapproving?!

You'll be glad to know that Sarah and I collaborated on an excellent meal Sunday night, after she got home from work and I'd enjoyed an afternoon of leisure.

Sarah made a spicy fall-themed peanut butter and pumpkin penne dish, while I chimed in with a garlic/onion/mushroom-stuffed tomato.  We continued the fall theme with our beverages.  I had apple cider and a Schell's Stout while Sarah enjoyed a hazy Blue Moon.

Sarah had just come up with the pasta idea Saturday, after mentally merging the elements from a couple of separate Food Network segments.  It turned out tasty for a first try, but we'll probably add edamame and garnish with scallions next time we make it.

...I guess that's it for now, stupid judgmental Food Diary. 

Your Friend,

Matt