family

30 days of posting challenge: day 27

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We had our first fire in our very own fireplace tonight. It’s actually the first fire in the first fireplace I’ve ever had in my own home as an adult, so that made it extra awesome. That and the fact that I got to watch out the window as Shane sharpened a hatchet and then chopped wood.

For the record, yes, I certainly did yell out the window: “Aw yeah! That’s the way to do it! Chop that wood, baby!” Which Shane may or may not have appreciated.

We had dinner with the downstairs neighbors (aka my parents) since we had the good fireplace ambiance and all. Shane made some steaks. I made pasta with Marcella’s Sauce. My mom made grilled romaine with a Franks Red Hot and mayonnaise dressing (yum!) and red peppers stuffed with panko, feta and chopped pistachios (also yum!)

It’s really feeling like home around here.

 

Day 19: Melissa Clark

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My dad cooked tonight (I know, the men around here) When we complimented him on dinner he said “Don’t thank me, thank Melissa Clark, she’s my girl.”

My dad has cooked from the New York Times, pretty much exclusively for a very long time. Like since they started delivering the Times in Boston. Before that he only cooked Marcella Hazan. For a while he was into Bittman, now he’s a Clark guy.

He makes this eggplant dish (Melissa’s) that he calls 100% vegetarian, even though it’s got anchovies in it. We don’t complain, it’s really good. Eggplant, onion, anchovies, ricotta, provolone, parmesan, breadcrumbs. All baked up into a nice melty, cheesy, flavorful dish.

You can find the recipe here, thanks to my dad for introducing it to us. But as he’d say: you can thank Melissa Clark.

As always, a delicious salad by my mom (slivered parsnips and pistachios!)

Happy weekend. xoxo

Day 15: 10th birthday latergram

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We celebrated Rose’s 10th birthday last night. 10 is kind of a big deal, both for us emotionally, and for her milestone-ally. We wanted it to be really special.

After a weekend in New York visiting friends Rose wanted to celebrate with family at home. She asked for Shane’s ribs and he basically took it from there, with a few gentle reminders from me about how people might want some vegetables.

Shane’s now makes ribs with ease in his Smokey Mountain Smoker. This is a relief, because there was a time when he would labor for days over only to declare them unfit for dinner because the meat didn’t fall off the bone in quite the right way. He spent a good part of the past week preparing and smoking the ribs and making Boston Baked Beans from scratch along with a couple of homemade sauces. His new go-to site is Amazing Ribs (dot com).

Family pulled us through the rest. My sister made two batches of cornbread (one “chunky” and one plain) with fancy herbed butter. My mom made a batch of our family favorite Blair Slaw (recipe below). Ronni brought one of her amazing salads. And JP Licks took care of the cake for us (chocolate Oreo & mint chip ice cream with Oreo garnishes).

Aside from arriving late because of the car accident, things were pretty easy. My mom decorated while we were away—thank goodness I saved the hand-cut hand-glittered birthday decorations from when she was five— and had the periwinkle and/or cornflower balloons and roses delivered (by my dad).

It was a truly lovely night and seeing our amazing girl so happy and gracious kind of made up for the heartbreak of her hitting the double-digits.

• Blair Slaw •
from our friend Blair’s mom

3 cups shredded cabbage
2 cups thawed frozen peas
3 cups chopped scallions
3/4 cups toasted chopped almonds (or pecans, or both)

Dressing:
1 cup sour cream
1 cup mayonnaise
2 teaspoons curry powder (toasted in pan until golden-er)
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar

Put chopped cabbage, peas, and scallions in a large bowl. Chop nuts and toast gently in the oven or a pan until just golden – watch to make sure they don’t burn. Set nuts aside.

Mix dressing ingredients to combine and add to salad bowl with cabbage mixture and nuts. Toss dressing, cabbage mixture and nuts until evenly coated. Serve cool/cold.

 

30 days of posting challenge: day 14

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I want to tell you all about the meal we had for Rose’s 10th birthday tonight. I really do. But after being at the front of a 3 car accident and arriving home 1/2 an hour after the party was supposed to start, we’re plum worn out.

Tune in tomorrow to hear about the meal Shane spent all week preparing, and more. Love to all the family who cooked, set up, and came out on a school night. I’m off to ice my neck.

xoxo

30 days of posting challenge: Day 10

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Even after 1,000 (or whatever) years of marriage, I still get a kick out of comparing my dinner to my husband’s. It’s true, I married a giant meat-loving man.

Tonight we had burgers (for the burger-eaters), a hearty salad (spinach, roasted sweet potato, chick peas and miso dressing), new potatoes, a plate of red vegetables and cheese with crackers.

Sid doesn’t like any of those things except crackers, so we made him him a very special kids meal… you guessed it, ketchup with a spoon.

30 days of posting challenge: Day 7

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We had a lovely, delicious, early dinner tonight with framily (OMG did I just coin that?!) which I forgot to document.

Instead, I give you this unsolicited message from Rose who thinks we need more followers. Perhaps I should put her in charge of my social media strategy.

It’s Sunday night. Go to bed. xoxo

P.S. Dang! I did not coin framily.

30 days of posting challenge: Day 6

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Today was one of those days. Shane was working. I tried to do some unpacking since we moved back to our house in June and are still in boxes. Between 10am and 1pm, I managed to unpack approximately one box, thanks to my incredibly helpful offspring.

I tried to take the kids for a “fun” trip to Party City.

Mistake.

Took them to Trader Joe’s partly as punishment and partly because I wanted to buy wine.

Mistake.

After rolling all over the floor of Trader Joe’s, Sid screamed all the way home because he wanted to take his sweater off, but couldn’t because he was in his car seat. When we got home, he stripped naked in the parking lot and demanded justice at the top of his lungs.

By then, Shane was home so I locked myself in the office to contemplate what kind of salad might just be good enough to turn my day around.

I settled on this salad from Epicurious, but substituted walnuts for pecans, and radicchio and romaine for red endive.

It’s a lot to ask of a salad to be so good it turns your day from poop to gold, but this salad did it’s best and I give it an A for effort. And I’ll definitely make it again.

Shane made pork tenderloin.

 

Dinner every night

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I’m challenging myself to revive the blog by posting every night for 30 days (more on that later). Today is a great day to start. Even without fantastic photos, it seems 100% worth documenting the salad Sid made for me with his very own 3 year old hands… and a pair of scissors.

I’m not entirely sold on the ketchup and fresh mint salad dressing, but I love that my little laddie made his own. And I adore that he’s got his vegetarian mom’s back on BLT night, since dad wasn’t home to do his magic.

Father’s Day

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“All I want for Father’s Day, Nina, is steak and eggs for breakfast.” said my husband (and father of my children). So that’s what we had, plus cheese biscuits.

The eggs were from Drew & Cathy’s own, happy, western Mass, free-range, table-scrap & weed-fed chickens. They were particularly beautiful and extremely delicious.

Cheese biscuits are really my sister’s gig, but she wasn’t here so I took a stab at them. They came out good. The recipe is below. Here’s to all the good dads out there. Or as my mom likes to call them: the motherf#*kers.

• Cheese Biscuits •
Adapted from Bernard Clayton’s New Complete Book of Breads
Makes 20-24

4 cups flour
8 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
5 tablespoons cold butter cut into 1/2 inch cubes
1-1/2 cups grated cheddar
2 cups whole milk at room temperature

Heat oven to 450. Line two baking trays with foil and grease them. 

Combine flour, salt and baking powder in a large bowl and whisk to combine.

Cut in butter using a pastry cutter or two knives. Stir in grated cheese. Add milk and mix until just combined.

Turn out onto a lightly floured surface. Flatten into an approx. 8″ x 8″ square, fold square in half and flatten again. Do this two more times lightly dusting work surface as needed to keep dough from sticking. 

Flatten dough to 1/2″ thick and cut buiscuits with a glass. Gather remaining dough, flatten again and cut until there’s no more dough. 

Place biscuits about an inch apart on prepared baking trays and bake for 12-15 minutes or until lightly golden. Serve warm with butter.

Easter Saturday 2017

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This is the first Easter in forever that we have not had at my parents’ house. That’s because their lovely house is currently being torn apart and turned into a two-family house, with one unit for my folks and one for our crazy gang of four.

We had our annual Easter Saturday lunch and egg hunt at my parents’ temporary gigs, where due to size restrictions we simplified significantly. My mom asked people to bring salads and she and my dad served up lots of good bread, cold cuts and other sandwich fixings.

It was not our usual savory pie extravaganza (which you can read about here, here, here and here) we’ll get back to that next year, but it was easy and perfect. And a gorgeous day to boot.

As always, there were over 100 eggs and a gang of kids who were delighted to find them. This year, the eggs were numbered and it wasn’t the kid who found the most eggs, but the kids who found the three lucky eggs with a fiver in them who won. So basically everybody was happy and every kid won.

After lunch we died eggs using tinted shaving cream in plastic bags, which was pretty weird and also lovely to behold.

Christ is risen, y’all.

xoxo

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