Cooking Mag Mommy

Warning: The post below mentions blood... If you are not comfortable with blood and food in the same post, do not read! When I was young, one of our favorite sleep-over games was to try to scare ourselves silly. The best way to do this was to tell stories about Bloody Mary, then at midnight, stand in front of a mirror, spin around, and look for the bloody face of a young girl to look back at us. Thankfully, we never did see a bloody face but as I grew older, I couldn't help but think of this game every time someone referenced the tomato-based cocktail, the Bloody Mary. As you can imagine, this visual picture would not make you want to drink something so I've never been a fan of Bloody Marys. There were two recipes in Gourmet this month that made Bloody Marys and with a small amount of dread, I saved them until the very end of the month. One of the recipes was a drink recipe to go with the brunch menu, "Wake-Up Call". Since I'd done this menu in parts anyway, I dec...

I've occasionally complained while doing this project of making every recipe in Gourmet magazine for the month about the huge menus with 10+ recipes. I think Gourmet got it right with this month's dinner menus. Tonight I made the menu titled "American Idyll", the last of the three dinner menus in this month's Gourmet. All three of these menus where of manageable size and could easily be reduced for a smaller family. The menu I made today was the largest with 9 recipes but I was able to make one of the two pie recipes at a different time and only the pie had an active time of more than 30 minutes. Tonight's menu was a true summer classic with Mint Ice Tea, lots of fresh veggies, ribs, and pie with ice cream. Every component went together well and there wasn't a single recipe that I thought, "Why did they stick that in here?" The menu began with a Fresh Mint Tea Julep that could be made with or without alcohol. I'm not a huge sweet tea person...

Just a few days ago, Richard was reading the weekly updates we receive from Babycenter .com, a online site with helpful hints for parents. One of the suggestions of things to do with a young toddler was to have a tea party. Naturally, Eyrleigh is a bit young for tea but she sure enjoyed the scones I made to go with the tea. This month's Gourmet had a wonderfully simple recipe for currant scones on page 13. These scones were light and moist, almost like a cookie. I'm not a fan of the dry, hard scones and these were a perfect blend of sweetness and texture. Dinner was a refreshing change. Gourmet is not a hot dog kind of magazine but tonight's recipe was as close as it gets. Tonight's recipe was basically a dressed-up hot dog and called for any type of of fully cooked sausage. I choose a Chicken and Apple Sausage by Bruce Aidells to make the Sausage, Arugula, and Piquillo Pepper Sandwiches on page 63. This sausage was a good match for this recipe as its mild flavor di...

Some days the pictures I post on this blog really show off the food I have made and let the reader know what the dish should look like. Other times, I think I'm just about the worst photographer on earth and a beautiful dessert looks like a blurry mess. Sadly, today was a bad picture day. On the tiny little screen of my digital camera the picture at left of tonight's dessert, the Three Layer Berry Pavlova, from page 63 of this month's Gourmet, looked just fine. After loading it to the computer, long after we had cut into and made a mess of the meringue, I realized the picture was blurry and looked really lopsided. As the saying goes, it looked much better in person. This dessert tasted great, too. I have made one other Pavlova, also for this project, and love the flavor and texture of this dessert. The only down side is that it is not good for leftovers. It gets soggy pretty quickly and after cutting, looks like it has been struck by a small bomb. Yep, that's why you ge...

Nope, if you can possibly help it, do not drop kiwi sorbet on your head, particularly if it is still in liquid form. There was some television show in the 80's that regularly dumped green slime on its host and audience members and I can confirm that unfrozen kiwi sorbet would be an excellent substitute. Let me explain. I was making tonight's dessert, the Kiwi Sorbet on page 52 of July's Gourmet, and I put it into the freezer for a quick chill before putting it in the ice cream maker. I needed to dig into a lower drawer in the freezer to get out the frozen bucket for the ice cream maker and I must have jostled the rather precarious bowl of unfrozen sorbet. It fell right on my head before flipping over and landing right side up on the floor. Thankfully, only about half of the liquid fell out so I simply put what was left into the ice cream maker. The rest I washed out of my hair or wiped of the side of the freezer or the floor. I should have taken a picture but I didn't ...

No, your eyes are not deceiving you. There is a distinct green hue to the tapioca pearls in the dessert picture on your right. Tonight I made the Fruit on the Bottom Tapioca Pudding on page 45 of July's Gourmet magazine. I learned several months ago (see blog post for 2/17) that there is a vast difference between quick cooking tapioca and small pearl tapioca. So with that in mind, I looked diligently for small tapioca pearls at Super H Mart. I found some, but they were green. I couldn't find any other item labeled small pearl tapioca. While checking out, I double checked with our favorite cashier, who adores Eyrleigh and speaks to her enthusiastically in Korean every time we see her. Her English is limited but I'm pretty sure she knew what I was asking and she said the only other color was purple. It wasn't exactly what I wanted but I thought green tapioca made this dessert looked a bit festive, maybe a bit of Christmas in July. It is the 26 th after all:)! For the me...

I have never been the queen of brunch. It's too early for me. I don't mind going out for brunch and let someone else do the cooking but to make brunch, I would have to be awake much too early. Today, I made brunch for lunch before we left for the night. Richard has a triathlon tomorrow so this afternoon we will drive to Thompson, Georgia to help him get ready. I've mentioned before that I am dividing up the large brunch menu "Wake-Up Call" so it's more manageable for the 3 of us. It was surprisingly easy to reduce the ingredients for the three tarts in the menu to make just 4 tarts for us. The three kinds of tarts were Pea, Scallion, and Pancetta Tart, Goat Cheese and Tomato Tart, and Crab and Tarragon Tart. Since all three tarts used the same crust recipe and the same custard recipe, the only thing different was the fillings. I really liked all three variations, though I found the Crab and Tarragon Tart to be the most flavorful. The other two tarts were mo...

Making a pie always reminds me how little time I have spent being taught how to cook. With no offense to my mother, she was never a person who enjoyed cooking. She did a lot of cooking but it was not something she enjoyed. I never remember her inviting me into the kitchen to cook with her or showing me how to make something. She helped me when I asked her but I think watching me cook made her nervous. She still leaves the kitchen when I cook at home. I also belong to perhaps the first generation of American girls that did not have to take home economics, a high school class that centered around cooking and sewing. It was, in fact, discouraged for those of us in college prep classes so I never took home ec . My only real training was when I was involved in 4H when I was a kid and I took a cooking class once a week at Mrs. Coulter's house. We made a volcano cake, a chocolate cake that looked like it was erupting, and lots of variations of chop suey . After Mrs. Coulter moved away,...

The best part of this "Month of Gourmet" project is those nights were dinner is delicious, everything looks great, and cleanup is minimal. Tonight was one of those nights. I only made two dishes from July's Gourmet but both were outstanding. I made Linguine with Mussels and Fresh Herbs on page 48 as a main. Some may notice I made a major substitution to the recipe. There were no mussels at the store so I substituted clams and the dish still worked great. It was simple to make, looked impressive, and the herb and wine sauce flavored the dish well. I'm realizing shellfish are a sure fire way to impress because most American cooks are less familiar with using them and therefor think cooking with them is difficult. The dessert recipe was equally impressive. I made the Almond Praline Semifreddo with Grappa -Poached Apricots that was originally listed in the "Sail On Home" menu but I'd repositioned because of timing. I've never made a semifreddo and was ...

Chocolate cake is the axis of evil. Richard may be the first husband in history to be upset that his wife made a chocolate cake with dinner. We worked through it by the end of the night but the basic gist was that he felt that I made the chocolate cake with the intent to derail his triathlon training program. For the record, that was not my intent. I made the Dense Chocolate Fudge Cake on page 52 in this month's Gourmet because well, I'm making every recipe and this was one of them. Part of Richard's frustration is that I am not tempted by sweets as much as he is and having a chocolate cake sitting around was too great a temptation. Resisting temptation is a very wonderful skill to practice, dear! The dessert kind of ruined it but for what it's worth, dinner was pretty healthy. The Chicken Breasts with Zucchini Pappadelle on page 44 was a simple and flavorful dish. I don't have an adjustable-blade slicer but a vegetable peeler dragged across the width of the squash...

I was a teacher for 13 years before taking time off to be a full-time mom. As a busy teacher, there was many a day when I forgot to make a lunch to bring to work and ended up sampling the school cafeteria fare. I've got to tell you something. All jokes aside, the cafeteria staff at a large public school have a challenging and often unappreciated job. Cooking for over a thousand children and loads of adults like me who didn't bring lunch is no easy task. Cooking all this on an extremely limited budget and with little room for creativity is even harder. If you are not familiar with the typical school food service system, there is a certain percentage of their food that is government surplus and menus must be created months in advance. There are a required number of fruits and vegetables that must be served at each meal and the drink is milk unless a child shows documentation of a milk allergy. I had the privilege of working with a number of women who were extremely dedicated to...

As you may have realized if you read this blog regularly, despite returning home from vacation almost halfway into July, I am well on my way to finishing Gourmet's recipe for the month. Throughout this project of making the recipes from Gourmet for each month, I always find those recipes that don't fit well with the others. Today was a bit disjointed as I made a few recipes that didn't seem to fit well into another menu. Yesterday, I'd spent over an hour making a chicken salad so it's somewhat surprising that I would try another so soon. The Walnut Chicken Salad with Green Apple Vinaigrette was a much simpler version of chicken salad, using much of the same flavors as the famous Waldorf Salad. This salad is mayonnaise free and is quick to make. I was not a huge fan of the flavor, however. The dressing as called for was not enough to coat the chicken so there was a lot of dry chicken. The flavor of the dressing was good but again, there was not enough of it to effect...

When I think of chicken salad, I traditionally think of something with chicken, mayonnaise, and another ingredient to add crunch, like celery or apples. Tonight, I made the menu from July's Gourmet titled 'Blue Skies Ahead". The centerpiece of this menu is the most amazingly complex chicken salad I have ever made. I should have figured that out when the start to finish time was identical to the active work time, an hour and a half. It was actually 6 smaller salads in one. That's some chicken salad! I found this menu a bit odd. Usually it's quite easy to understand the theme that brought together a menu, usually focusing on either a regional or cultural subject. Other than each is universally appropriate for dining al fresco, these recipes were a bit disjointed as a menu in my opinion. Each component was good by themselves but didn't complement each other in flavor. The spicy Buffalo Grilled Shrimp with Blue Cheese Dip and Celery overwhelmed the other accompani...

Here's a picture to prove we really did leave Georgia. This is us, Richard, Eyrleigh , and I, at Oriole Park in Baltimore. We arrived back in Georgia on Monday, July 13 th but it took me a few days to get back in the swing. By Thursday, I was ready to start on the Gourmet recipes for July. I won't finish every one. I don't boil live lobsters so that eliminates 2 recipes right there. But I will try to do as many as I can and I started off with the Summer Salmon Cakes with Zucchini Fennel Slaw on page 56. I've never felt very confident with "cakes" or patties of meat held together with some binding ingredients. Getting the oil hot enough but not too hot is the first tricky thing. If the oil is hot enough, the patties don't hold together right away and can start to break apart. If the oil gets too hot, the patties get too brown before they are cooked through. These patties were no easier and as the picture shows, I got the oil a little too hot. The patties w...