The best laid plans of mice and men... We were going to go see Alton Brown's Eat Your Science. We had an hour to either fix dinner and eat or go someplace and eat. My mind went to a great pasta dish from Michael Symon's 5 in 5. Sausage and kale pasta. I was thinking I'd put some goat cheese in. It'd be super quick and so much less expensive than eating out. Got home and put the water for the pasta on. Cut open the sausage and crumbled it into a skillet. Fed Wee Mac the cat. Took off my jacket. Headed for the fridge to get the kale. Ewww. A slimy mess. And, the power greens were at the office. Ok, plan B. Let's go for Arriabiata sauce from Trader Joe's. Drain the sausage, add about 1/4 c of red wine to deglaze the pan and pour in the pasta sauce. You know, that goat cheese still sounded good. So, 4 oz of goat cheese went in and happily melted away. Then, to round the flavors off I added about 1/4 c of cream and about a teaspoon of crushed red pepper flakes. Served with small shells and we had a five! Oh, and we had no photos...
So, let's talk about some food that we have photos of! Or, as my mother would say, food of which we have photos... LOL, isn't it funny how our language changes?
We went to Cape Cod for a few days. Drove out the south route and stayed in Harrisburg, PA. Had a decent dinner at a great restaurant and bar. Actually, it was the deck that was killer. It was huge, had a bunch of fire pits and a wonderful covered bar. But, alas I can't even remember the name... The next day we drove the rest of the way. It was a bit unnerving to go through a tunnel in NYC behind the flashing lights of a bomb truck.
But, all was safe in the tunnel. We got to Cape and headed straight to Salty Lou's. He's our favorite lobsterman.
The next day I went shopping. Barbara had been planning on renting out the Cape house so she'd cleared it out. The rental had fallen through. We needed all kind of things like washcloths, dish detergent... A LONG list was in hand. After the shopping we were to go up to Boston to see Auntie Kay. It felt like everyone from Boston was heading south to Cape and everyone from Cape was heading north to Boston. On top of that there was a grey, steady rain. Miserable traveling. About the time we should have been arriving our navigation system said we had an hour and 11 minutes go to. UGH! So we plodded along. And, half an hour later it said we had an hour and 14 minutes to go. We were going backwards! Needless to say we bailed and went up to see Auntie Kay another day.
A couple of days later we drove around Cape for about half a day looking at condos for Matt. Just the outsides to see how well maintained they were. At one point we headed toward the water. And, saw a juvenile red-tailed hawk. He wasn't particularly concerned about the humans taking photos. He was just interested in finding lunch!
Now, the good news is that with all of that time in the car I got some old cooking magazines read. There was one recipe that I saved out of the pile of recipes to try. For a shredded carrot salad. From Cuisine at Home. We finally got to the grocery so I actually had all of the ingredients in hand. It was good the first day but better the second. The carrots softened a bit. Which brought out their sweetness. This is one we'll make again!
Carrot and Cranberry Salad
Ingredients:
1 t minced lemon zest
3 T fresh lemon juice (I used 2)
2 T extra virgin olive oil
1 T grated fresh ginger
1 T honey
salt and pepper to taste
1 bag shredded carrots (10 oz - about 3.5 cups)
1 c dried cranberries
3/4 c chopped walnuts, toasted
1/3 c each chopped fresh parsley and minced scallions
Directions:
Make the salad dressing by combining the lemon zest, lemon juice, ginger and honey then whisking in the olive oil. Toss it with the carrots, cranberries, walnuts, parsley and scallions. This is wonderful left over so you may want to make it the night before...
