Category Archives: Eating

Chomp it up.

Surrendering to the kids’ culinary wishes

10/25/2010 Nichole 4 Comments

Macaroni and cheese and fish sticks again? Sometimes I feel like we’d be doing just as well to go to McDonald’s every night for dinner. I haven’t talked all that much here about how frequently Rockford is away, but it’s often enough to make it difficult for me to get into the habit of making a real dinner. Poppy isn’t the world’s most adventurous eater (ha!), and it’s just too discouraging to make a meal for three that one person so vehemently won’t eat. Pete’s a good eater, but his five very enthusiastic bites just don’t make up for her meal-time crabbiness. So I make something I know they’ll both eat, and then after they’re in bed I have a tuna fish sandwich or a bowl of oatmeal. Because guess who doesn’t like fish sticks? That’s right: Me. (Unless they’re on a sandwich. Poppy’s food peculiarity has its obvious roots.)

(Note: I know this is a wrong and terrible way to look at things, but some days I am doing my best to hang in there. So. Mac & cheese and fish sticks it is.)

My, that was a downer of a menu-plan intro. I blame the weather. It’s the greyest of greys here today, and stormy to boot.

Monday: Breakfast for dinner: This will be eggs, veggie sausages and toast. It’s always a hit, which is why we have it at least one night most weeks.
Tuesday: Macaroni & cheese: I was going to make this from scratch, but then Target had the blue box on sale for 90 cents.
Wednesday: Fish sticks: We bought a giant bag of fish sticks a few weeks ago. I’m hoping we’re near the bottom of it.
Thursday: Chicken-apple sausages: I hope it stops raining by Thursday, because I want to grill these. We’ll have them with Alexia oven fries, which are delicious.
Friday: Homemade pizza: I finally made pizza dough for homemade pizzas last week, and they were quite lovely. The pizza dough recipe is here, and I can’t recommend it enough. It takes some time, but it is so easy. Last Friday’s pizzas were pretty standard-issue; I’m thinking I’ll do something different this week. Rockford and I both really like Thai chicken, and I’ve been toying with the idea of a banh mi pizza. I’m just not sure what to do for the sauce. The sauce I make for the sandwiches has mayo and Sriracha in it, but I don’t like the idea of mayo on a pizza. Any ideas?

menu plan Monday

In which I seem to have run out of meal ideas

10/18/2010 Nichole 2 Comments

Monday: Macaroni & cheese: What can I say? I was short on inspiration this week.
Tuesday: Eggs & veggie sausages.: Tuesday is kids’ choice night, which is why we usually have this, spaghetti or tacos on Tuesday.
Wednesday: Fish stick po’ boys.: Rockford loves them.
Thursday: Lentils & rice with caramelized onions.: I have an informal goal of trying every recipe in the Bean chapter of Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything.” This is part of that incredibly slow-going effort.
Friday: Homemade pizza.: Friday’s been pizza night at our house for quite awhile, but I strayed from actually making it for a long time. I’m going to try to amend that this week.

Eating

A carrot cake without flavor is no carrot cake at all

10/12/2010 Nichole 8 Comments

Before we left for Charleston last week, I turned to the internet for carrot cake advice. I love carrot cake, see, and I’m trying to find the Very Best Carrot Cake on Earth. (You can see my top picks thus far over in the left-hand sidebar.) The people at Trip Advisor gave the carrot cake at City Lights Coffee pretty good marks, so that’s where I went.

It’s is a very cozy spot — read: it’s tiny — and its customers were clearly loyal. Everyone who was already there when I walked in seemed to know each other, and they also knew the other three people who came and went while I was there. I’m sure that’s a wonderful feeling for the regulars, being where everybody knows your name, but it was a little off-putting being an outsider in such confined quarters.

But we’re not here to discuss ambiance. Let’s talk cake.

The carrot cake was pretty, with a lovely autumnal color and visible flecks of carrot. The cream cheese frosting was silky and had a nice buttery flavor, but the cake itself wasn’t impressive. In a blind taste test, I’m not sure I would’ve pegged it as carrot cake at all. It didn’t have a distinct flavor at all. On the plus side, it didn’t have raisins in it. Sadly, the City Lights Coffee carrot cake doesn’t even crack my top five. I spent the last $5 in my wallet on it, too, which compounded the disappointment.

Carrot cake. City Lights Coffee. Charleston SC.

Do you know where the Very Best Carrot Cake on Earth can be found? I probably won’t hop a plane immediately, but I’m definitely keeping a list of places to try.