I had a plan in my head, and now it’s written down. Not in stone, though.
This week I’m getting a chance to eat out for lunch twice, for Hudson Valley Restaurant Week. On Monday, I tried the Birdsall House in Peekskill (my first time there). Lunch was very good, and we were able to sit outside on their patio. Not what we expected in March! I chose to start with the Chicken Liver Pate, served with cherry preserves and warm crusty bread. I am a sucker for liver, and I don’t make it myself, so it’s hard to resist when I see it on a menu like this. Then I chose the Beet and Grain Burger, served with wilted spinach, caramelized onions and apples, goat cheese, honey mustard, and a challah roll for my entree. If you follow Chick in the Kitchen on Facebook, you saw a picture of it yesterday. I loved the flavor of this vegetarian main, though there was nothing burger-like about it; the beets and grains had the consistency of risotto and could not be eaten as a sandwich. Dessert was Chocolate Devil’s Food Cake with Rocky Road ice cream. Needless to say, I was stuffed.
Tomorrow I’m headed to Cafe of Love in Mt. Kisco for lunch, and I am already dreaming about their Truffled Chickpeas.
My meal plans have changed a lot since school started in the fall. With an increasing amount of homework each year, we finally hit a point where I felt I needed to change the amount of family we had over during the week. For years, my mom or parents had come after school and stayed for dinner one weeknight a week, and some combination of J.’s family, including my 4 year-old niece, had come another night. Then we often saw them on the weekend, too. I loved having my kids grow up with so much family around, and selfishly I also loved having those nights to cook bigger dinners. The kids were occupied with their grandparents and cousin, and I had a willing group of adults to eat real food with me. It worked perfectly for everyone, until A. started having trouble getting his homework done with so much going on in the house (I don’t blame him — he just wanted to play with everyone else), and after-school activities became more frequent. This year, our family is only here sporadically mid-week, and though it was the right decision I do miss have the company to cook for and chat with at dinner!
For a time, we were in a sweet spot with several meals: grilled chicken tacos, baked ziti, and roast chicken were all dinners that made my boys happy. Now, one or both of them no longer care for those dinners, and I am back to a place where plain pasta seems like the only answer. Confounding that problem is that I have been testing out a low-acid diet for myself, to try to fix a nighttime coughing issue my doctor thinks is due to silent reflux. I’ve already given up carbonated drinks and caffeine (sob!), and I’ve seen some improvement. But now I need to get serious about eliminating tomatoes and tomato sauce, which is pretty big deal when your kids’ favorite meals for you to cook are pizza and pasta.
Certainly, as my kids get older and their schedules and tastes change, it’s normal for our dinners to change. I just want to make sure we’re evolving, not going the other way. Right now I feel stuck in neutral.
Back to school and our regular routine after a week off for winter break! The pizza and roasted chicken are G.’s choice; the spaghetti & meatballs and bagels & lox are A.’s request.
Monday: Make Your Own pizza or calzone (I wanted to try braiding one), sugar snap peas
We had a packed weekend of cooking. On Friday night, I prepped the dough for Pull-Apart Challah Rolls and made Roasted Potato Salad with Garden Vegetables (the tarragon dressing is so unique). I also baked a couple of layers of brownies for my half of a two-person birthday cake project.
On Saturday, we assembled the birthday cake. J. made a batch of mocha chip ice cream with a new KitchenAid attachment the boys got me for my birthday, and we layered it with the brownies. Once it was frozen, we slathered the whole thing with whipped cream. Whoa, I know. The recipe came from Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream & Dessert Book, and although it tasted out of this world, our construction didn’t quite work. The brownies froze too hard; the ice cream didn’t freeze quite enough; and the whipped cream slid off the cake and onto the tablecloth while we wrestled with trying to slice the whole thing. None of our family cared, though, because it was still delicious. In fact, people started putting in orders for what flavors of cake and ice cream they’d like us to make for their upcoming birthdays!
On Saturday night, J. got antsy about the milk and cream we had leftover in the fridge, and decided to make up a batch of David Lebovitz’s Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream Recipe so it could chill overnight and we could churn it the next day. I acted as sous chef. The recipe involves making caramel not once, but twice, and yes we did start the recipe about around 10:45 PM. At least we are crazy together. The ice cream is divine, but so incredibly rich that you can really only eat a spoonful at a time. We gave away a small sample to our dear neighbors, and I do have more to share if anyone wants it! Without any stabilizers, though, it melts quickly, so you have to live close.
After that batch of ice cream I informed J. that we could no longer keep the ice cream maker in the freezer — it was just too easy to whip something up. So now the ice cream maker is washed and put away, and it will come out in a month or so. Did I mentioned I got a pasta-making attachment for my KitchenAid, too? J. made pasta with the boys while I was in Hawaii, and he made another batch of fettucine on Sunday. I only had a tiny bit, but it was amazing. Are you seeing a theme here? Homemade food, made well, pretty much always tastes better than what you can buy in a store. Still, even homemade ice cream is ice cream, and needs to be a once in a while treat.
With all that cooking done this weekend and in the recent past, our freezer is close to packed with frozen overages, so I’m using up a bunch of dinners I’ve already cooked this week. After this weekend’s excess, I could use the break from doing dishes, anyway.
I'm Dara, the Chick in the Kitchen. Living in the suburbs of Manhattan with my two school-aged boys and husband. Feeding my family something more diverse than a different shape of pasta each night. Read more about me and CITK, and keep in touch:
Want to Try
Moroccan Chicken Tajine: I recently had a chicken tajine dish at Fig & Olive in Scarsdale, and wanted to recreate something similar at home. This is an Ina Garten recipe, and she never fails me.
I'm Dara, the Chick in the Kitchen. Living in the suburbs of Manhattan with my two school-aged boys and husband. Feeding my family something more diverse than a different shape of pasta each night. Read more 
Want to Try Archives