Bunny & Root Vegetables.

Question: What do you eat as a side along with Roast Duck & 40's of Olde English 800?

(Yup, more from our pre-Thanksgiving/Harvest Moon dinner. )

Answer: The Bunny & Veggie Course, obviously.

Quartered Rabbit roasted in butter & garlic with Butternut Squash, Scarlet Turnips, & Yellow Onions (all Western Massachusetts locally grown, if you care about that sort of thing), Wilted Broccoli Rabe in olive oil, & Owen's homemade Last Minute Dinner Rolls.

Helpful tip from EnD: Several times during the course of the day in which we made this meal, it was pointed out to us that rabbit is not a complete food. Very deficient in amino acids or something, damn you vegan animals that aren't cows. Who knew everyone knew this fact? So, if on a wilderness adventure, I urge you, cook a duck, too.

Dinners at 133 #1: Tuna Steak, Curried Sweet Potatoes, Couscous.

As I mentioned, I'm cleaning up my winter sketchbook archives, & in the process of doing so, I found a lot of sadly ignored drawings, just everyday dinners, no grand plan but usually delicious, & always with a story behind, so here you go, what we ate here at 133 this winter, on the nonholiday, nonspecial occasion work nights, Part One:

12.5.2009: Tuna Steak with Curried Sweet Potatoes & Couscous.

This was a snowy night last December, the first of the winter I believe, & Owen drove me home from work on his break because it was snowing so hard & then went back to close, & I started cooking while enjoying the indescrible coziness of cooking dinner for someone you love while it's snowing. Some frozen tuna steaks, seared in a pan with garlic, & sweet potatoes simmered in a can of coconut milk with a jar of Thai curry paste, over couscous. Some smoked mozzarella grated on top. owen returned from closing at work. We ate while the snow fell. SNOW DAY. (doesn't winter seem so much better now that it's nearly over?)

Root Vegetables & Mushrooms.

DnDnE Dinner with Beth, 10.7.09.

I was very broke on this on particular Wednesday, & was making this DnDnE dinner for the lovely Beth out of entirely free produce from work & what I happened to have in the pantry.

(this is a common situation for me). On this day, I had parsnips, garnet sweet potatoes, carrots, & an excess of crimini mushrooms. I consulted my colleague, Rin, & between the two of us, we came up with this,

(Oh wait! & Beth brought red russian kale & magic minty garlic from the Garlic Fest):

Mashed Roasted Root Vegetables, Pappardelle with a Mushroom Cream Sauce, Kale sauted with Olive Oil & Magic Garlic.

& here is Beth & Maggie, enjoying our dinner. Well, actually Magazine, being a cat, is sound asleep on a bag, & Beth is drawing, but whatever.

(you will, if you look very closely, notice a certain shimmeryness to this drawing.

thanks to the fabulous miss Beth, who gave me an iridescent watercolour set for my recent birthday. thanks honey. I thought it only fitting that I try them out on a portrait of you. ps I LIKE. thanks much xo. )

In further news, I really liked the mushroom sauce, & I invented it off the top of my head too. Onions & garlic sauted in white wine & butter, added to crimini mushrooms in the Cuisinart, with heavy cream.

Wait until my mushroom soup.Totally recreated from the one at Croissant D'Or in NOLA aka one of the best places on earth, when I first moved here.

& was really homesick. Really really good.

If only I actually could make my own croissants. Anyone wanna help me out with that?

I think that this qualifies as a good time.

in contrast to my last post, scenes from the last roughly 24 hours, in which there were very good friends, incredible dreams, & some amazing food. & much laughter & silliness.

Instead of packing, I unpacked the little I've so far managed to pack & we cooked a last minute incredible dinner out of random items in my pantry & vegetable drawer & porch garden, during which rin proved once again that he is in fact a genius. wild & brown basmati rice, caramelized onion & mustard sauce, & roasted yukon gold potatoes, summer squash, eggplant, with garlic, olive oil & fresh thai basil & thyme. with nasturtiums. all entirely vegan, & we bought no groceries for the creation of this meal. & the vintage cloth napkins were beautiful & individually chosen. 

dinner with rin & tim, 7.22.09, at my soon to be former apartment.   a dream I had in the early morning, waking up on the couch with some of my best friends & dusty rose. caught in a rabbit storm. 7.23.09.

breakfast at the green bean with rin & tim, 7.23.09.

another dream, a recently reoccurring dream, of muffins, plus jed's banana peel from the yellow sofa today. & a drawing of the astonishing muffin we witnessed but did not purchase at the green bean, the raspberry marshmellow brownie muffin. no really. 7.23.09.

pizza at sam's with jed tonight, plus jed's sketchbook. pizza in the bar series. jed's slice of pizza was insanely large, so he wins. this drawing would be better but we were there fifteen minutes before closing & bob wanted to kill our arty hipster asses so we ate & drew fast. & I cannot apparently spell "slice." "Sclice." fuck spelling.
We are Drinking & Drawing.

It's those sunflowers again. Tonight, finishing up a night of DnD at the Dirty Truth, 7.23.09. Guess what, it was raining. These sunflowers keep coming up. some guys next to us were having an amazingly offensive yet hilarious conversation about women & later walking home we saw them both pissing in a fountain. nice.

all in all, a good day. confusing & random, but I'm all right with that.