That looks awesome CG20015! Nice German looking meal. Yum.


Last night I was bored and had some bacon that was getting pretty old so I decided to make some calzones. Dough and Mozzarella were home made, everything else was store bought though

You shouldn't tease a man who just woke up after a sleepless night with Calzone at 6:11 am, VF9_Longbow!

VF9_Longbow, that looks downright delicious! Just the right size too!

toasted cheese (sharp cheddar) sandwich and homemade chicken and vegetable soup. Just finished off with a cup of constant comment tea.
Light supper because we ate late lunch at Biltmore House. Went to see the Christmas decorations before they take them down, starting Monday. What a wonderful job they do of decorating!

Chili Colorado, one of my favorite meals

Tonight was suppose to be an anniversary dinner out, but I've stayed mostly in bed the last two days with a head cold relapse (no fever and I've had my flu shot so I'm not worried).

Anyway, my wife made a Beef and Cannellini Bean Minestrone with pasta and grated Parmigiano-Reggiano on top...



Meh, I'm not big on soups but tonight I guess it's what I needed.

I have only tasted parsnips once when they weren't
too bitter to tolerate - I mean, there is a sweet
taste behind it, but the bitterness is of a kind
that really bothers me (some forms of bitterness, like
in chocolate, or absinthe, or hops, are just sort
of interesting). Perhaps this is another one
of those foods that have to be grown in the right
conditions in order to turn out well - maybe acid
vs alkaline soil, or right temperature, or right
trace minerals. I have also occasionally had carrots
which were horribly bitter in somewhat the same way.

Roasting the parsnips in the oven really brings the sweetness to the fore, if done right they can be passed off as a banana substitute.

I can remember my Mother telling me that having them as a dessert during WW2 was part of the reason she was put off of them.

Parsnips make a fantastic country wine, if you are into winemaking.

Does look good,but where's the bacon?

My mother used to make oxtail soup with parsnips in it.

YUCK to both!

a yummy beef roast, with dauphinoise potatoes and a spicy gravy/sauce.

My last one for a while, feeling better but I wanted another "soup" type dinner. This time I got a chicken and sausage gumbo (roux from scratch, with fil� this time)...



Eating like a true Coonass tonight, sha! Wife is proud because my parents didn't come this week (thus no mom...supervision), she made this one all on her own.

Made as healthy as possible: fat cut off chicken, turkey sausage, brown rice, fresh vegetables, very low salt.

Gonna start hitting the "gym" again tomorrow, been eating smaller portions so I should be ok.

Speaking of wine making, I am currently enjoying a killer
batch made from fresh pinot noir juice shipped up from
California (in 20l pail this time as the company that
brought it in every fall in reefer tank trucks shut
down this year when the owners retired and sold out
to a big eastern outfit which just ran with their
hobby store kits, but shut down all the retail stuff;
but at least this other supplier also brings the juice in
fresh and chilled) mixed with fresh wild local blackberries.
When I can, I prefer to make straight blackberry (requires
addition of fructose to get the right alcohol level), but
recently the summers have been too dry for big blackberry
harvests - if I owned an acreage (as if that were possible
in this real estate market) I could irrigate and get fabulous
crops with the summers as hot as they are getting, but
the wild patches don't have that benefit.

Pinot noir is good, but with blackberry (about 10%, all I
could find this year) it is just amazing.

Blackberry mixed with pinot noir sounds like a good combination, I am going to have to try that. I recently discovered that the property I moved to last summer has a blackberry hedgerow growing by the house, it had been cut back to stubs before I moved in but it is growing out now and next growing season I bet it's going to be loaded with juicy fresh blackberries! I'm also looking at putting up some grape vines as we have a big metal trellis/frame that was once used for kiwi growing. I like grapes more than kiwi so grapes it shall be.


Here was last night's dinner, one of my Indian friends from Punjab made a dish called Saag with Roti. Roti is the bread, Saag is a green curry made with spinach and other green leafy vegetables like mustard leaf. Hard to find mustard leaf in Japan so he just grabbed some random green leafy vegetables and used those. He boiled the greens and the spices off in one pot, and loooooong-fried some ginger and an entire head of garlic (a whole head, not clove!) when they were done they were so soft and deep brown and carmelized and sweet, it was like eating pickled candied garlic. He threw those into the greens after the greens had been blended into a puree.

Man was this curry ever good, unbelievably delicious. Topped off with a big dollop of BUFFALO butter. Man, luxury.

We went to Fogo De Chao.

http://www.fogodechao.com/menu/dining-experience/

It was my Father's birthday.

For those SimHQ members who are not in the USA, it's a Brazilian steakhouse.

They have about 20 types of beef, chicken, sausage, pork, lamb along with sides of plantain, polenta, rolls, mashed potatoes and a full salad bar all included in one price.

They just keep bringing the meat like an entire leg of lamb or an entire side or rib eye or an entire slab of beef/pork rib on big skewers to your table and you tell them how you like it, rare or medium rare etc, and they carve the meat right there onto your plate.

Brazilian BBQ is one of my favorites as well. One of the many found in Shanghai is where we invited a Brazilian colleague to - and after he talked to the owner (an old Brazilian gentleman) we got first choice of everything! So incredibly delicious! Meat, fish for those who liked that and these small warm pieces of bread with cheese inside (forgot the name). And of course a whole section of decoration salad and dessert.
BTW, the colleague told me that Brazilians, like the Dutch, also have a second stomach reserved for dessert. No matter how much you've eaten, there's ALWAYS space for dessert.

Last night I decided to make up some mozzarella from fresh milk, then made up some flour tortillas and used them to make simple quesadillas. Yum!

Can you make those whole wheat?

Whole wheat is fine! Even better is cornflour, but it's hard and expensive to get in Japan so I just use hard white flour with a little whole wheat flour mixed in.