Life of Wry

I know.. I’m 69 and have never made a real pot roast*. I don’t think I could have told you e x a c t l y what a pot roast was, until today. Pretty much, it’s exactly what the name implies: a pot roast.

Duh.

Jim suggested yesterday that I make one. I looked through my saved recipes (that crazy-stuffed basket — well organized, I might add — of hundreds (maybe thousands) of recipes I’ve printed off the internet) and found numerous pot roast recipes (not surprised). Picked two: the Ina Garten one and a Southern Living one, and married them.

First you pat dry, season, dredge in flour and brown the thing (a prime boneless chuck roast), then set it aside:

Then you cook til tender carrots, onions (I used yellow and green), garlic, celery:

Then add red wine, cognac, chicken broth, tomatoes and bundled fresh herbs (I used rosemary only, having just discovered all our thyme got snuffed out by our overgrown sage):

Then add back the chuck:

The pot then moves into a 325 degree oven for an hour, then the temp gets reduced to 250 for another hour and a half. An hour before it was done, I added potatoes.

And… voila, my first pot roast:

It was a thing to behold, and quite tasty. We’ll eat it a couple more times this week and froze two more dinners-worth. That’s 5 meals for two.. for about $50. Nice.

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(*) I have made numerous briskets, corn beef and other beef slab dishes in the crockpot, but I feel like those weren’t real pot roasts.

Six stuffed peppers, all in a row.

That describes both the look of this new potato recipe and the overall result. I’ve seen variations of this recipe for parmesan crusted roasted potatoes pop up in various of my social media video feeds for years.. reels, stories, Insta and god knows where else these addictive videos appear. Been wanting to try for a long time.

Yukon Golds (I had small white potatoes and a fingerling mix) are tossed in an olive oil, garlic powder, dill (was supposed to be parsley), s/p marinade. A paste of grated parmesan and melted butter is pressed onto a sheet pan. Then the potatoes are cut in half, scored and pressed cut side down in the cheese mixture and baked for 25 minutes or so.

While messy.. it was certainly tasty! The parmesan/butter mixture adheres to the potato (and beyond) and is crispy, salty and buttery.

They’re a bit deadly.. not sure I’ll make them again.

This is not frank and beans. I don’t eat beans, so no chance I’d go there.

This was tonight’s dinner. I’ve made it a couple of times before. Both times, we gave it our highest rating, which earned this recipe a place in the big binder.

Tonight, imho, it was a meh. A good enough meh.. just didn’t live up to its stellar rating of the past. I prepared it correctly, I have no doubts about my work…it seemed like there just wasn’t critical mass. I think it’s because I’d halved the recipe.. which yielded so little “sauce.”

So..give up? It’s Italian sausage and red grapes. You saute the grapes in a bit of butter, do a red wine reduction, then add parboiled Italian sausages (I went with both turkey and pork, mild). It then goes into the oven for 20 minutes, and finally, on the stove, you do a balsamic vinegar reduction. That’s it. It gets syrupy and sweet and goes really well with the salty sausage (better, prob, if we liked hot Italian sausages). Serve with ciabatta to soak up the sauce.. but there wasn’t enough of that.

So.. dunno.

I just found an Ina Garten video where she cooks this dish with the owner of a Providence, RI restaurant, Al Forno. The owner’s been cooking this dish for 30 years, and it’s one of the most enduring on her menu. I was gratified to see that I did exactly what she did. She had no more sauce than I had. Her grapes were bigger and she used both red and green. Her presentation was better (we served from the pot): she placed the sausages around the outside of a platter, piled the grapes in the middle and then surrounded the whole dish with pieces of focaccia (instead of ciabatta). Rustic Italian.

Here’s a screen shot from the video…

I’ll do that next time.

I’m a smoothie-a-day person. Around here, they’re known as smoofies, don’t ask me why. I guess smoofie has become my own little endearment for a concoction I look forward to with excitement each and every time I make one (as I said, nearly daily).

Anyway. My formerly trusty blender gave up the ghost a couple weeks ago… I wore the damn thing right out. So we finally took the leap and bought a Vitamix. I think it is a good investment. This thing is so powerful, my smoothie’s done in like 6 seconds (I like them crunchy). Seriously, push the button and the ingredients swirl and fold together in an instant. It’s quite a sight.

Today was smoofie #3. Same formula for a while now (though they have evolved over the years): 3 cups of ice, 2 cups of water, 1 banana, 1/2 cup of blueberries, 1/2 cup of applesauce, and a large scoop of chocolate protein powder. More or less. For the time being, I’m forgoing the chocolate chips, peanut butter and honey, though I miss those ingredients! Trying to bring my weight back down to normal (and have a long way to go), so being sensible. It still tastes great to me.

PIctured above and below is the inaugural smoofie.

[Note: After posting this, WordPress offered three blogs with similar themes — as they do — and provided a link to a blog I wrote on June 6th of 2016.. the night of the California primary, as a matter of fact. The subject was smoothies, and included was a list of ingredients I used back then for my daily smoothies (interesting). Also, I used the same endearment when referring to my smoothie. Seems I’ve been calling them smoofies for a very long time!]

Batted .500 on the week in the dinner category.

This should have been great..

…it’s a seared pork tenderloin, laid upon a sheet of puff pastry slathered in mustard and honey, sprinkled with thyme and rosemary, then wrapped, slitted, eggwashed and baked. But it was a big fail! I’ll know next time to roll the puff pastry flatter so that it has a chance to cook through. I won’t over saturated the veggies (in this case broc, though the recipe called for Brussels sprouts) with balsamic reduction. And I won’t overcook the tenderloin (as I try to finish off that damn puff pastry).

I was very bummed.

But redeemed the next night with this!

That would be a sheet pan Greek chicken dish. The marinade was the key to this one: olive oil, mustard, lemon juice, salt, garlic, oregano, thyme and lemon pepper. Both the chicken thighs and the veggies (red onion, yellow pepper, cherry tomatoes, zucchini) were tossed in it. After 30 minutes, I added a cup of kalamata olives and a 1/2 cup of feta and returned it to the oven for 10 more minutes. Tossed with garden parsley. So so good.

And just to prove to you that I have absolutely no overarching grand scheme for this blog, no theme, no rhyme and no reason:

I shall blog about what I ate this morning.

(Mostly because I took a picture of it and thought it share worthy).

Banality at its essence.

That said.

If food sustains us, and if one gets as much pleasure as I do from what I ate this morning, then let’s just say it’s fair game.   ‘k?

The ingredients need no introduction, but here they are anyway: toasted whole wheat english muffin, crunchy peanut butter, roasted sunflower seeds, perfect banana.

Flavor, texture and comfort all rolled into one nutritionally acceptable (if not exceptional) breakfast.

Alright. That is all.