Almost two weeks and I've not posted. You see, a year ago I made a business decision that didn't turn out very well. We made a big change with a group I'd been with for almost 15 years. The new folks over promised and under delivered. BIG time. I finally decided I couldn't spend the next ten years of my life waking up crabby knowing I'd have to deal with all their mistakes. I called the old guys and asked if they'd have me back. Would they ever. They welcomed me with open arms. August 1st I got an email from the president saying, "Welcome home." He may be a Yankees fan but he's a great guy :-) And, I am SO glad to be back. I sorely miss my buds from the old group. It came down to doing the right thing for my clients, myself and my marriage. Being crabby and unhappy doesn't solve anything. Now, I can move forward and know I've made a good decision. But, it does mean doing a LOT of paperwork. A couple of months of explaining to my wonderful clients what's happened and why. And, very little time to post. Or, cook for that matter! I've been trying to fix big batches of whatever so we've got plenty of leftovers.
Thank goodness it's the height of summer around here. Our tomatoes and cucumbers are producing like crazy. A couple of years ago I asked the wonderful folks at the Garden Center if they could get Black Brandywine tomatoes. They rather looked at me like I was crazy but ordered them anyway. Patty told me this year that I'm the only one who ever requests them but they always sell out because folks love the name. This is the perfect tomato in my opinion. It's not mealy or mushy. And, the flavor is perfect tomato with the exact right balance of sweet and tart. My beloved Sallie dog (who died in 2004) used to run to the garden and eat the Black Brandywines just as they were perfect. The year after she died, my yard had a HUGE volunteer Black Brandywine plant. It produced like crazy. My guess is Sallie pooped the seeds :-)
Needless to say, I'm finding all kinds of ways to fix tomatoes. A few days ago I made what wound up being gazpacho and served it in a cucumber boat. Then, there were the BLT's with pesto. Oh, my, but those were good. And, of course we've had tomatoes and cucumbers. And, Caprese salads. You name it and we've had it.
Then, I picked up a Bon Appetit grilling issue and read an article about grilling steaks on slate. Off to buy some slate. Yeah, right. The Stone Center was a bust. So was Lowe's. You name it, we tried it. No such luck. Then, we tried the Tile Shop. Eureka. How about granite instead? Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Now, one of the things you need to know is that we've both been dieting. Connie's lost more than I have but he's tried harder. So, meat has been a side instead of the main attraction. We've not had a steak in forever. These slate grilled steaks sounded just too good to pass up. And, using granite that doesn't flake sounded even better.
What to have with our steaks? Cucumbers and tomatoes. Creamed corn with bacon. I read a great recipe somewhere. But, where? An internet search turned up Michael Symon's recipe. (You can find it on foodtv.com) Wouldn't you love to have dinner with him? He's such a fantastic chef.
Connie'd asked for hell grilled onions. I kicked them up a notch with a bit of Emeril's seasoning.
Our take? These were good but not any better than a plain old steak cooked on the grill. I did manage to make three full meals out of two small steaks by taking the leftover onions and tomatoes and cucumbers and tossing them with chopped steak to make fajitas. Now, those were spectacular!
Saturday was one of those days. I worked and worked and worked and barely made a dent. We're going to be fighting the forces of evil in a week so I had that to contend with in addition to all of the other work. There were two highlights to the day. First was a visit with Duane and Becky in the morning. Second was a visit to the Benjamin Harrison House for the latest version of Victorian Villians.
Let's start with the latter first. The Benjamin Harrison House has a series of plays a couple of times a year. They're typically mysteries of some sort. For those of you in the Indianapolis area, I HIGHLY recommend them. They're quite well done and very reasonably priced. The house itself is well worth the visit. Ben was our 23rd president and the only one from Indiana. My great-grandparents lived kitty-corner from him and were friends. So, I grew up hearing about the house. While we were waiting for the festivities to begin, we chatted with a delightful lady who works for the Indiana department that handles historical markers. We're the nuts who stop to read each and every one of them. How much fun it was to discover that we can actually download a list of all of them AND some additional background info on each. Well, the evening was full of visits from notable guests like Jack the Ripper, Belle Gunness, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Lizzie Borden and a host of other despicable characters. We absolutely loved the show.
As for the visit with Duane and Becky, it was delightful as always. He's a wealth of knowledge about cooking, having spent a great deal of his adult life in the restaurant business. He said something that is oh, so true. A great cook is an artist while a great baker is a scientist. There's a reason I made it through high school chemistry etc. Thank you Lee Ann for all the tutoring! BTW - Lee now teaches chemistry to college kids. I know. I totally lucked out to have her for one of my best buds in high school :-) I know this is shocking, but we did spend some of our time together chatting about food. I know. Go Figure. The conversation came around to mini-meatloaves my Mom used to make when I was a kid. Glazed with orange marmalade. They were the bomb. Duane suggested mixing a bit of orange zest, orange liqueur and crystallized ginger into the glaze. Oh, yeah. Connie was doing the grocery shopping and happened to call while they were there. Ummm, could you please also get a pound of ground beef and a pound of ground pork.
Now, I wish the end result was as good as the story. Sadly, it wasn't. I couldn't find Mom's recipe. And, I wanted to add a bit of pizazz so mixed in some shagbark hickory syrup and some Chinese five spice powder. The meatloaves were good, but not great. A three on a scale of one to five.
The corn, however, was a different story. Corn chowder is the one thing Connie just can't get down his throat. He's not particularly fond of corn in any way, shape or form. I love it so he eats plenty of it - probably more than he'd care. Our grandson, Bradley, visited Friday evening and his dad had said one of the few vegetables he'd actually eat was corn. Out came a can of corn. Three-quarters of it was left. What to do. I wanted homemade creamed corn. I'd never made it and had never even seen a recipe for it. So, I made up my own. Truth be told here, I really expected Connie to take a bite and say thanks but no thanks. He inhaled the corn. So did I. In fact, if I didn't have a huge bag of broccoli to finish up, we'd be having it for dinner again. Yum!
Glazed Meatloaf and Creamed Corn
Ingredients
for the meatloaf:
1/2 lb ground beef
1/2 lb ground pork
2 eggs
1/2 - 1 c oatmeal
1 t Chinese Five spice powder
1/4 c shagbark hickory syrup
1/2 c milk
1 medium onion, finely diced
for the glaze:
1/2 c peach amaretto jelly (or marmalade or another jelly)
1 T crystallized ginger, finely minced
1 T peach schnapps (or a liqueur that goes with your marmalade or jelly)
orange zest (omitted since we were out of oranges)
for the creamed corn:
1 T butter
1 T flour
nutmeg
1/2 c cream
1/2 c grated gruyere
1 can corn, drained
salt and pepper
Directions:
for the glaze:
Melt the jelly in a small saucepan and add in the other ingredients.
for the meatloaf:
Mix the ingredients gently and put the meatloaf into a 9x5 loaf pan. Bake at 375 for an hour or until a thermometer registers 170. While the meatloaf is baking, drizzle the glaze over it.
for the corn:
Melt the butter in a medium saucepan. Stir in the flour and allow it to cook for a few minutes. Don't let it get brown. While it's cooking, grate a bit of nutmeg into the mixture. Slowly add the cream. Cook until the mixture is thickened. Stir in the gruyere. Once the sauce is smooth, add the corn. Heat through and serve.
