i realize that my neglect of the blog has resulted in not recording the culinary exploits of the brewers for far too long now. as visitors to my kitchen are aware (in a “omg, stephanie’s a freakin’ lunatic” kind of way), i’ve taken to printing out monthly calendars (both ‘lunch’ and ‘dinner’ versions) & keeping it on a clipboard that sits atop the kitchen water cooler. alas, my black printer cartridge has been out of ink for a good long while, and rather than drop it off at bi-lo to get it refilled, i’ve just been making random notations in various & sundry notebooks about what we might like to eat on any given week. that’s no way to live!
to try to get back to some kind of organized record keeping of the good (scotch eggs..yum…), the bad (the chili-marinated stir fried pork that looked great on paper, but ended up bland as hell), and the ugly (again, scotch eggs–so yummy, yet so reminiscent of big meaty fists), i’m gonna give another shot at recording menus here.
this week was a lovely week off for me, so i got pretty ambitious in the kitchen. along with having a pretty labor-intensive recipes, i also tried to go low-budg as much as possible. we had pecan-crusted salmon and roasted vegetables (salmon was on sale this week), which a couple of nights later were reworked into really good salmon croquettes that we had with perfect silver queen corn that b & i picked up at the chattanooga market. one night we did grilled steak with a dry rub that was originally used for fish, but turned out to be pretty steak-friendly. the leftover steak made some totally bad-ass cheesesteaks a couple of nights later (we used more chattanooga mkt. produce–red peppers that were sent from the gods via a walker county, ga. farmer). round that out with the aforementioned pork “didn’t we almost have it all” stir fry & there you have it.
last night we dined at chez ormsby & were dazzled by their mad steak salad skills. tonight we’re going with the old stand-by of smack & cheese and a salad along with bread & butter. sometimes the simple ways are best. sometimes you just feel like you don’t want to go to the store & a dinner of found objects is required.
tomorrow we will stock up on provisions for the week. again, we’re trying to go low & lean. it is such a rough adjustment getting used to both jerad & me being paid once a month–both on the same day, i might add. for the “fiscally-challenged” folks like us, it’s really hard to not pretend we’re rich the first week of each month, then suffer through the inevitable “raman noodle fest” the last week of the month when we’re trying not to bounce checks until we both get paid again.
this week bi-lo has flounder on sale along with chicken breasts and bratwurst. tomorrow evening we’ll probably do emeril’s recipe for beer brats with cabbage. monday’s looking a lot like creole chicken & okra (the okra at the market last week looked really good–i hope they have it tomorrow…); tuesday is the screamin’ deal down at sweeny’s bbq on broad street, so we’ll hit that along with the leftover mac & cheese from tonight. wednesday will be chicken & rice soup with corn muffins, followed by stuffed flounder (alton brown’s recipe–it’s a new one, but alton usually does us right). friday, generally speaking, is pizza & beer night unless something better comes along, so we’ll see.
i’m really going to try to get caught up with some pictures on here tomorrow…
