Outside the dugout: What's cooking?

I would say that I fell your pain but I don't. Yikes.

Heal up ASAP.

 

BTW I am using up the last of my Pat's Ho-Made on the chicken thighs.

I heard that they will no longer make it. A total shame. It was decent and REALLY cheap. Stubbs is a bit better but more than twice the price.

 

When has a doctor ever been on my schedule?

 

Tonight is pork tenderloin with rice and roasted broccoli.

 

Oxtail ragu over bucatini with caprese salad.

 

They were dirt cheap when I was a kid so we had oxtail soup very often. Now they are very trendy and for good reason. They are deelish.

Flank steak was also a cheap cut when I was a kid. Not any more.

 

Last night I made escarole soup because I had some leftover pork roast. And it is really delicious. I had the leftovers for lunch today.

Tonight I am making stir-fried green beans with ground pork and chiles. It tastes like Thai but not really a Thai dish. I have made it before to rave reviews from family.

 

Friday was a busy day and my son is a HUGE Panthers hockey fan so we got take-out wings from Mothers. They were OK. Panthers lost in OT at MSG. Saturday we had dinner at a friends' house and brought some mahi for fish tacos. I made a tomatillo guac and had some leftover pickled red onions as toppings. Tasty. Drove down to Sunrise on Sunday because my son bought him and me tickets to a Stanley Cup Conference Finals game. I can't believe what he paid for the tickets. I have an old ticket stub for a Stanley Cup Conference Finals game at center ice about row 15 for $10.50. We were center ice but at almost the very top of Level 3. It was a lot more than $10.50.

Even though the Panthers lost in OT my son enjoyed a very good game. We went to dinner with my wife (who watched the game in our hotel room with our dog) to an Argentine steak house. We had a very nice malbec with dinner and my wife and I split a one pound skirt steak with chimichurri and really good sides. The smallest steak dishes were one pound and some went up to 72 oz. I just can't eat that much meat.

My son had some steak dish with 16 oz of steak and ate it all. Nice to be a young male with that kind of metabolism.

Back in Gainesville and having defrosted lasagna that we made a few weeks ago.

I am making fresh tomato sauce with tomatoes I got from our friends with the fish taco dinner. Probably about ten pounds of tomatoes.

 

A variation on scalloped potatoes. Pretty much like my mom made except she used much less expensive cheese.

I make two different ones. One with fennel and one with poblanos.

 

Finished making the tomato sauce from scratch with the fresh tomatoes. It wasn't done last night so I put it in the fridge and finished it today. Cooked down so that the wooden spoon I used to stir it could stand upright.

Since it is a tomato sauce with only a wee bit of basil, red wine vinegar and salt it is pretty bland spice-wise but otherwise tasty. Perfect for ravioli so that is what we are having tonight. Usually I make my own but not like my nana. I have a pasta machine and she rolled out the sheets on her dining room table. Not enough time today so I bought some premade and hoping for the best.

 

Tonight is my MIL's 92nd birthday eve. My wife and I are taking off tomorrow afternoon to DC to visit with my eldest over the weekend and to take him some things so her b-day dinner is a day early. One thing we are taking is a piece of furniture that holds bar glasses and utensils. I had to replicate a number of pieces that hold glasses and such. My MIL asked a local cabinet shop for an estimate to do it and it was $400. I did it for about $40 using oak but it was tricky. Replicating small pieces on a router table is normally dangerous but I used double sided tape and plexiglass to get it done safely.

The other thing we are taking is a Japanese screen from my dad. My eldest loves most everything Japanese and it has been sitting at our house for years. My mom hated it, BTW. But it is right up his alley.

Dinner will be KJ grilled NY strip steaks, baked potatoes and a salad. Dessert will be lime tartlettes from Upper Crust.

Looked at a local wine store (Dorn's) for Roederer Estate champagne from the Anderson Valley in California that is almost as good as the French Roederer champagne but they didn't have it in stock. Got the Domaine Carneros champagne which is the Taittinger attempt at making a high quality sparkling wine in California. Probably pretty good. Also looked for Iron Horse for a good champagne style wine with only California roots but they didn't have any in stock.

 

We got in yesterday from the road just in time to see the baseball game on TV. My wife went out to get groceries, drop off stuff at Goodwill from my eldest's apartment and got her car washed so I grilled hamburgers on the KJ and then made victory margaritas.

They tasted great.

I wish that she could have watched but she heard the play-by-play on WRUF.

Tonight we are having a taco Tuesday night. I have some left over tomatillo guac as a topping.

 

Tonight we are finishing off the tomato sauce I made with tomatoes grown by our friends over ravioli. She is in a project about what varieties can be grown in Gainesville and it is tricky. Good varieties have to be started indoors very early so that they set fruit before our overnight temps get too high.