AliThinks

Casual Dinner, Saturday Night Version

Casual Dinner, originally uploaded by Alison.

If you click on the photo, you can see all the notes I added on the Flickr page.

Holy Crap, I Love Cooking

It's easy to forget what a pleasure cooking can be. When you are working, raising children, and busy busy busy, cooking can be a chore. I recently outlined why I never made this a food blog. The main reason is that I never follow recipes, and I never write anything down.

Yesterday I read through the January 2007 issue of Food & Wine, which arrived at our house last week. Besides a whole page dedicated to Clotilde*, number 61 [for Cookbooks From Bloggers] in the "100 Tastes To Try in 2007", there was a pasta recipe that called my name.

Aaaaaliiiiisonnnnn, it said.

Well, not really, but boy, it sounded good. For some reason I wanted to follow the recipe closely. Created by chef Yves Camdeborde for the brasserie/room service at his hotel, Le Relais St. Germain, this pasta recipe is fairly simple, but its flavors defy its ease. Luckily for me, Food & Wine posted the recipe on its website. I do love you readers, but you know how, um, casual I can be about recipes.

The recipe can be found here. (Please click that link) I used a can of Reese artichoke bottoms, drained, rinsed, and drained again. I also used Dreamfields penne rigate. The next time I make this (because the recipe is a keeper), I'll try light cream and/or half-and-half. Oh, and I found some frozen smoked chicken breast strips from the company that starts with Ty and ends with Son. You could probably leave out the chicken, but some tasty lardons would be delish. The original recipe calls for pasta shells, and having prepared it, I can see why. Penne is a good pasta, but shells would capture the sauce so much better.

I didn't take any photos, so you're just going to have to make this yourself. It's pretty quick, easy, and damn, it's tasty, too.

*whom we had the pleasure of meeting at her 2nd blogiversary party in October 2005...which led to my interviewing her for The Parisian.

As Promised

Yesterday I posted a photo of my candied cranberries. It's time to tell you what I did with them.

We didn't decide to celebrate Thanksgiving at my dad and stepmother's house until Sunday. The lot of us will be there: my dad's children, my stepmom's children, and our respective families. If we all make it, there will be 26 of us. That's not counting my two kids, who've never celebrated a real American Thanksgiving.

Since there are so many of us, we all bring something to take the load off my stepmother. I asked what Allan and I could bring. "Red wine* or a fruit pie." I said we'd bring both.

Sweet Jewels

Inspired by my friend NewWaveGurly, I made candied cranberries this afternoon. NWG covered her cranberries in chocolate. I have another plan for mine, but you'll have to wait until tomorrow for the full story.

Orange Tomato

   

    Oh yeah, baby. Click me!

Voilà: a little brightness to counteract the bland nature of my last post. I told you the tomato was orange! It was delicious, too.

Four of Six

   

Click image to enlarge.

   

Here's a little food pr0n for you. We got these organic babies at the local farmers' market. I ate two of them (the eggs, not the farmers) for lunch. My accompanying salad had an orange tomato on it. Not yellow. Orange.

It was a very satisfying lunch.

EDIT: Holy crap, what a BORING entry! Just wait until I take photos of the remaining orange tomato. Yeah, that'll perk things up!

But First, I Made It Look Like A Flying Saucer.

   

    Mmmm, mmmm, finger-clickin' good.

Irresistible, indeed!

   

     Just click it.

   
We walked to Graeter's after dinner, and we each tried the Black Raspberry Chip ice cream. Next time I'll try the Tangerine Cream, and not just because of the cool name.

Well, duh.

   

     Click image to enlarge.

The photo looks much cooler if you click on it, really.

Feeling Pretty Corny

One of the foodstuffs (did I just use the word "foodstuffs"?) I missed when I lived in France was corn on the cob. When I moved there in 1992, it just was unavailable. My husband told me that French people thought corn left on its cob was for pigs. Over the years, corn became more common, but it was always shucked, shrinkwrapped, shriveled, and expensive. One time I calculated that it would cost me a dollar an ear if I bought some. So fresh corn was a luxury. The French don't really do frozen corn, by the by. They put cold canned corn into salads, but that's about it. Again, this is slowly changing.