It’s our one year anniversary of Date Night In! It’s also my mommy’s birthday today. The boys said they wanted to drive to Pennsylvania this morning to celebrate with you Mom. We can’t really do that, so we will eat delicious food tonight in your honor instead.
Menu
·
Homemade Cream Soda
·
Salad of Apples, Grapes, and Blue Cheese on
Endive
·
Bacon and Leek Tart with Ricotta Custard
·
Bittersweet Brownies with Salted Peanut Butter
Frosting
Last night Roy and I prepped. I made vanilla syrup, a
tart shell, and the brownies. Roy made…are you ready for this…CHEESE.
Just read it. You need to understand this triumph. When
we saw that there was an option of making homemade ricotta for the tart I
immediately said, “You’re doing that.” Ashley’s recipes have proven pretty
foolproof and I hoped it would assuage the disappointment of four years ago.
Also, Roy successfully made crème fraiche last week and we’ve enjoyed it on
oatmeal in the mornings. So…baby steps. Crème
fraiche to ricotta to…how many more steps can we take before we legit need a
cave?
Baking confession time: I’ve never made homemade brownies. I
happen to think that Aldi makes the best fudge brownie mix in the world and
brownies are my "I didn’t have any time to bake dessert for
last-minute company." If you’ve eaten those brownies at my house now you know the
honest truth, but you have to be honest too—they’re not bad right?
Unless you have Aunt Martha’s brownies. Then you know
what you’re missing…
So here are some homemade brownies tonight. And we’re
going to make salted peanut butter frosting for them, which means two things.
1: chocolate and peanut butter=YES. 2: Owen can’t have any unless I save him a frosting-free
corner. Hmm. We will definitely have lots of leftovers so maybe I’ll save him a
space. He’ll want to eat these brownies. “Moe
Mommy! Moe moe! I wan’ moe!”
The salad seems pretty simple for an Ashley salad. If we
had done this DNI first we probably would have considered it elegant and
complicated, but we’ve learned a good deal in the last year about food. This
one looks positively rustic in comparison. But I will always, always take blue cheese and
walnuts in a salad.
It’s shaping up to be a relatively quiet day. We hope to
run to Weggies to pick up a few last-minute items, lay low at home, and take
James to gymnastics this afternoon if he’s feeling OK. (He threw up twice last
night but so far seems recovered this morning.)
Cheese-making update and full summary tomorrow friends.
Happy, happy Tuesday!
Book 53/50: The
Reach of a Chef. I had read Michael
Ruhlman’s first two books on cheffing last year and stalled on this one first
go-around. This time I finished and enjoyed it thoroughly. Bucket list: to eat
at the French Laundry and a Bouchon Bakery.
Book 54/50: Love
Warrior. A new book by Glennon Doyle
Melton. As you know, I read her first book earlier this year and it had a
profound impact on me. Love Warrior is a memoir about her marriage. I give this
woman credit for being brutally honest and for seeking tirelessly to figure out
who she is. (She comes from a long history of eating disorders, alcoholism, and
drug abuse, so getting under all of that is truly a lifelong struggle.) That
being said, this book annoyed me. Maybe I’ll write an entire post on it at some
point, but I found it self-centered and reckless. I hurt for her husband, who
by no means is spotless in the story, but who has no say in the book and is
exploited in his wife’s raw writing. And her innocent children have virtually no voice
at all. Anyway…maybe more to come on this one. Right now I need space.
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