Thursday, September 18, 2008

Last week's eats

This past week's cooking was fairly sporadic, with my wife being away in Virginia, transplanting daylilies to her parents' property. Somehow, cooking for my son and me is never quite as much fun as cooking for the whole family. The menu for us guys was, therefore, fairly simple:
  • Wednesday, September 10: Roast chicken (How to Cook Everything, p. XXX), steamed green beans, baked sweet potatoes (Roast chicken is one of my son's favorite meals, so it tends to roll around fairly often.) Stock made from chicken bones, oninons, carrot and garlic and frozen for later use.
  • Thursday, September 11: Leftovers
  • Friday, September 12: Red Beans and Rice (Saving Dinner, p. 16), garden salad
  • Saturday, September 12: Leftovers
  • Sunday, September 12: Leftovers
  • Monday, September 13: Broccoli and Pasta
  • Sunday, September 14: Latkes (Joy of Cooking (1997 edition) , p. 410) and garden salad

My wife and I got the Joy of Cooking when we were first married. The 1997 version is a significant revision of the previous edition, in that it included many of the foods that had become available in American groceries in recent years. At the same time, the 1997 Joy of Cooking also omitted many of the 1950s recipes that included ingredients like canned cream of mushroom soup. We love this edition and were saddened to see that the even 2006 75th anniversary edition has gone downhill. We ran right out and bought a copy of the 1997 edition to give to my son when he's old enough to need his own cookbooks.

One of my first memories of latkes (potato pancakes) was when I was an adolescent and my family had some friends who fell on hard times and needed a place to stay for several months. One of the side benefits to this arrangement is that, since Sally was Jewish and didn't go to church with my family, she would often have a meal ready for us when we returned home on Sunday afternoons. Often, she would make latkes, served with applesauce and sour cream. Yum!! Since then, I've had lots of varieties of potato pancakes, some made with mashed potatoes, as Sally made them, and others with shredded potatoes. I've decided that I like the shredded best, but I've still never met a latke I didn't like. Also, making them this week gave me a chance to put my new skillet to good use.

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