Tegan & Sara, & Noodles & Cake & Friends.

A little more than a year ago, two out of the ordinary events occurred on one winter night in Northampton: Tegan & Sara played at the Calvin Theatre, & someone besides Owen made me dinner.

Yes, last February, Melissa, Ashley, & I had tickets to see Tegan & Sara, & Melissa made Ashley & I dinner (Penne, Red Sauce), I brought the wine (of course) & Ashley brought a chocolatey thing from Woodstar.

The first Tegan & Sara album I owned, The Con, I bought on itunes immediately after my hand surgery in late November 2008, & I have very vivid memories of listening to it in an intense sort of way, tucked in bed with the laptop, vaguely pleasantly high on oxycodone & watching the snow out the window. Staying in bed after surgery gives one plenty of alone time to think, & all the details of those memories are really clear. Made for an interesting show, I guess.

2.12.10: Noodles, Wine & Cake at Melissa's, Tegan & Sara at the Calvin.

This blog did use to be a lot more about rock music, I guess I used to go out more. Back when it was just me & the cat, before we decided (mutually) to add a boyfriend & a dog into the family. It's still about rock music in the sense that it is very difficult for me to paint or write without music, but maybe I should see go see more shows.

Owen & I saw the Corin Tucker Band at the Iron Horse back in the fall, if I can remember what we ate first I'll try to draw that one, because that show was amazing. Sleater-Kinney! Rules!

(Ashley is from Oregon, so somehow this train of thought makes sense?)

Don't worry though, Owen, Ali, Katie & I have tickets for Loretta Lynn this Saturday, & that's sure to be an art piece. Hopefully that show begins with a lovely meal with lovely people like this one did.

Winter 2010, In Random Dinners.

I'm still in a similar mental place to my last post, still feeling archivey, still hiding out in our room, still digging around in the old sketchbooks & rediscovering memories through drawings. Winter is still totally kicking my ass, so my motivation for complicated projects & exciting new recipes is low.

What has been keeping me going throughout these last (hopefully) weeks of horrible snowy icy slushy winter (spring! gardens! soon!) has been just the appreciation of our everyday life here, that we make time to cook & eat dinner together even when it's complicated, even when we hate each other, that we collect objects we like & live in a space that however cluttered & messy looks like us, that we have sweet sweet animals, good kitchen stuff & a cozy home.

Last winter was our first few months of really living together, so these pages of my sketchbook are especially sweet to me.

It is really feeling right now that Winter 2011 is never ever going to end, so to give us hope, some moments from Winter 2010, which did end eventually, becoming this.

1.11.10: Black Bean Chicken Chili.

1.13.2010: Scallops & Noodles.

1.19.10: Sausages & Peppers & Spinach & Whiskey Shots.

1.12.2010: Thyme & Shallot Salmon Fillet, With Broccoli & Cheese.

3.7.10: Weird Curry Stir-Fry.

Sometimes I just want to leave the pictures here by themselves, because to me, the specific details alone mean so much.

We ate this on this date, & it looked like this. That comforts me, when life seems bizarre & overwhelming, I guess just like actually cooking food does.

Would anyone care about that? Does anyone care anyway? When I was in art school I kept a very specific food I ate journal in my sketchbook, maybe I should just start posting those.

But I love those pages, when I look back, even as I laugh at how pretentious I was. Sometimes I can feel the specific moment, smell it, taste it, just from reading those lists.

Damn this blog is getting verbal!

I'll try to dig myself out of this hole soon, the potential of this sort of meal will help, but I have a few more of these style posts planned for the next month or so, then it's garden time.

Steak & Broccoli, With Cheese Or Noodles, Old School Or Spicy.

We are adrift in classics over here lately. Sometimes I want this to be a cooking blog where I tell you all about fancy menus, sometimes I just get into the charm of the details of everyday life, i.e. what did I eat for dinner back on that particular day in January? Along these lines, I notice certain themes, such as steak & broccoli, for example. What better to follow up the poetry of chicken?
A thing we do here is to purchase large cheap cuts of steak, chop them up (Owen loves his meat cleaver), & keep them in the freezer. Frequently this meat is crappy, 'cause, y'know, we are bargain shoppers, so sometimes we really have to get creative with it. Which brings us to cheap steak's good grocery store cousin broccoli, my good old friend: an excellent winter vegetable, it keeps forever in the fridge, can be really inexpensive if you forgo the organic (which guess what, we do), is pretty high up there in the nutrient department, is a nice, substantial satisfying thing to eat for a vegetable, & is delicious. & it looks like little trees! Yay broccoli, you really save my life in winter when we can't grow our own vegetables & most of the stuff in the grocery store is overpriced & tasteless.

1.10.10: A Big Ol' Sunday Night Steak, Drenched in Cheese Sauce, Covered In Broccoli. 2.20.11: Noodly Steak & Broccoli With Ginger, Lemongrass, Lime & Chilis.

Two meals, about one year apart, same kitchen, same people & cat (Only now we have a dog-stay tuned for details!). Basic cheese & meat Americana, or improvised Vietnamese-eqsue with lots of flavor & spice. Both just ordinary nights at home, no special ingredients, nothing special really except for being good meals eaten at home with love.I guess this takes me back to the beginning. Sometimes I think the pages of my sketchbook where I just drew some random unremarkable dinner we had are so pointless, & yet sometimes I look back through them & I remember.
Ah, the beauty of the details.

Winter.

Drunk & Full Of Love: DnD.

Premium Homewrecker. 

Other Nuts? 

Broken Home/Love Boat/Meat & Potatoes. 

What Do Your Friends Know About Your Sex Life?

A Nod To The Humble Chicken.

It's not all duck & lamb on this blog. I have a great fondness for that humble protein, the chicken. A grocery store classic, a childhood memory, an ionic kitchen image, a barnyard pet, what's not to like? It's cheap, it's always on sale Buy 1 Get 2 Free at the Big Y, it's versatile, & if our future goes according to our long term plan, we'll be able to eat our own someday & really see where our meat comes from. Visually pleasing yard creatures who bring us eggs, have crazy feathers, & can become stew? Wow.
As we are still enjoying archive month here, I present some chicken meals we ate about a year ago, just random things we through together creatively on work nights, mostly.

1.2.10: With Hot Sauce & Blue Cheese, & Collards & Bacon.

2.24.10: Snow Day, Roasted With Rutabagas & Thyme.

2.26.10: Leftover Stir-Fry With Broccoli & Brussels Sprouts, Over Rice Or Udon Noodles.

3.10.10: With Apple Sage Stuffed Delicata Squash & Melted Gorgonzola & Olives.

3.9.10: Buffalo Style & Blue Cheese Dipping Sauce.

As Owen as says, we are well on our way to being a ceramic chicken museum at our house, well well on our way. As I type this, I can see a truly impressive selection of chicken imagery. I guess I like those delicious birds.
So thank you, chickens, the more exotic proteins are lovely, but as one of our major themes here is living well yet cheaply, we appreciate you. You bring us many dinners, & warm dinners are truly a miracle during a Massachusetts winter. The garden veggies can't start soon enough...

Tarts, Or How To Be A Broke Food Diva.

More from the fabulous, fabulous EnD archives, this one from just about a year ago. An excellent no-groceries-ordinary-night dinner secret is the TART, filled with whatever random items you can find. Leftovers, frozen veggies, odd possibly expired cheap canned goods from Ocean State or Deals & Steals, whatever. Once you have mastered a decent pie crust from scratch, which is easier than you think, whip one up, clean out the weird crap from the freezer, & you have something worthy of Martha herself (I think it's the word "tart". Sounds fancy). Just keep flour & butter in the house, & enjoy the innuendos.

Carmelized Onion, Pinenut, Spinach & Goat Cheese Tart, February 2010.

So sounds impressive, right? well, Martha wouldn't be Martha if she didn't know how to work it. As I may have mentioned I get a lot of free & random groceries from work, & other than that am underpaid & broke, which certainly leads us to not grocery shop & work with what we have.
A Classic EnD theme.
Another tip along these lines are caramelized onions which only require butter & a bag of cheap onions & yet taste way more delicious than that implies. So yeah, the free pinenuts & goat's cheese are totally a work perk for me, but if it wasn't, this would have tasted awesome with cheap swiss cheese from Stop & Shop & just the onions & frozen spinach. Garlic is cool, also cheap bulk spices from the Asian Market. Thinly slice a cheap russet potato, drizzle it in olive oil (don't tell anyone but if you can't afford olive, just use whatever you can get your hands on) & throw it on there. It's all about what you can do with the simplest, cheapest, most basic things.
If you can't cook well with expensive ingredients, lord help you. If you cook well with only expensive ingredients, you are an amateur. Cook something right on while dead broke with whatever you can find that still makes your boyfriend happy & you're there, way more impressive than any Iron Chef challenge.

A Trip Down Memory Lane & More: Cape Cod, January 2010.

Late winter on this blog is traditionally when I dig back through my archives from the past year or so, aka all those unfinished drawings of things I ate & cooked, just sitting in my sketchbook waiting for me. So expect very little time continuity in posting whatsoever for the next month or so. Here comes random food moments from 2010.
Tonight I bring you a little story from last January, in fact the first trip Owen took with me to my Mom's house in Brewster, Cape Cod, Massachusetts. First of oh so many. He already knew my dear sister quite well at this point, & had met my Mom & stepmom Barb briefly over Christmas, & then of course this magical trip to New Bedford, my original hometown. It turned out New Bedford was not the only place we had in common, & that Owen's family is from very close on the Cape to mine, & essentially we grew up with the same childhood summer. This trip was full of firsts: Owen sleeping in my teenaged bedroom, Owen & I on the Cape together, & me bringing someone home who knew where they were.
I believe I had previously mentioned that my mother is an excellent cook...

Dinner With Mum: Roast Pork With Pears, Red Onions, Gorgonzola & Rosemary Still Growing In The Winter Garden, Over Rice, A Green Salad, & Apple Pecan Muffins.

The next day, a sandwiches at the beach, a Cape Cod ritual, these particular sandwiches an Italian (ham, salami & peppers) for Owen & a chicken salad with cranberries & walnuts for me, from Nauset Market, with Utz Salt n' Vinegar potato chips, eaten on a bench overlooking Marconi Beach in Wellfleet. (Owen's sandwich choice was better than mine. Somehow a year later I still remember that clearly, shows where my priorities lie, I guess). But Utz chips freaking rule & so does eating a sandwich by the ocean on Cape Cod with someone you love in January.

Sandwiches & Chips At Marconi In January.

& before we left for home back in Northampton, pizza with the family, the current favorite (circa January 2010 of course) of Spinners Pizza's Chicken BLT ranch from Ring Bros. Market in Dennis, with the constant sides on Seamans Lane, Brewster, wine & a green salad.

BLT Ranch Pizza, Salad, Wine.

So there you go, a homecoming & meeting the family & road trip (&eating) story all in one. Welcome to Archive Month. Just paging through all these sketchbooks opens up so memories, whoah, I GUESS THAT'S WHY I DRAW. Go figure.