First, while I mentioned things that motivated “me,” I need to say “us,” because the truth is my husband Lynn has been doing nearly all of the back breaking renovation work (with the help of a really cool contractor, too) and I’ve just simply been working all hours of the day (and night) trying to earn $$ to make it happen.

This winter has been a real pain. First we had Sandy, then a Nor’easter, then a snow storm (10+ inches) and this past weekend temperatures hovered in the teens but felt like negative numbers because of the wind chill factor. Consequently, cooking as an art form and as a heart-warming endeavor has been put to the way side.

Thus, on those Friday nights when we make the journey up to the Red House from Long Island/Manhattan, I’m still hauling up food to heat up on my handy little one burner guy.  Yep that’s him.

Which leads me to this. We are now approaching our third season without a kitchen and Lynn and I both came to the same astonishing conclusion — eating out is just a hell of a lot easier than eating in! A part of this decision was based on that fact that since December the town lost its only supermarket! Now, we do have a gas station that’s open 24 hours and is well stocked with basics such as bread, eggs, cheese, cigarettes, condoms, beer and of course a milk shake in any flavor, but unless you’re 18…these items don’t really have that much appeal if you’re trying to make dinner.

Now, it’s not that the supermarket we had was particularly great, it wasn’t, but at least I could manage to put together a meal if I had to during the cold weather months when there was nary a farmer’s market in sight. And, since it was small and old school, it had some items that you don’t find in big box stores like maple syrup that was made by a guy just outside of town. And they also had ham at the deli counter that I really liked because it tasted well, like real ham!

The word on the street is that a bigger, better supermarket will be taking over the space. But, two months, later this is what we’re still looking at.

A Slow Supermarket Renovation

Yes, no sign of a supermarket, no sign of activity, no people shopping, no food, no nothing. Just a big ugly tractor sitting there looking like it was going to make way for the new…but actually was just kind of killing time.

Obviously, living on Long Island we have lots and lots of supermarkets so shopping and making dinner is never a problem. One of the reasons I also cook nearly ever night is that we actually rarely eat out on Long Island. Since we find most of the restaurants around us mediocre and overpriced, we try to save our “dining out dollars” for high end restaurants in the city (as in NYC) a couple times a year.  I hate to confess this but eating out near the Red House has enabled us to eat out more frequently for a fraction of the cost.

We visited The Tailor & the Cook last spring a few months after it opened and my review at the time waxed eloquently about the fish I had that night.  We’ve had many dishes since then, taking a cue from one of my online editing jobs that people still had something called “date night,” a word combo I was not familiar with until now! Geez, people actually go out and enjoy each others company and a meal too on a Saturday night?

Therefore this past Saturday night found us once again enjoying the creative cooking geniuses of Chef Tim Hardiman and his sous chef Steve Arbogast at The Tailor & the Cook in Utica, New York.

Three years ago when we first bought the Red House, I met Suzie Jones at a farmer’s market where she was selling beautifully crafted little goat cheeses.  As I got to know Suzie, her husband Peter, and the farm, she also was able to sell me some chicken but most importantly little packages of chicken livers at a fraction of what I would normally have paid for a container at the supermarket.  These livers, since they are from the farm’s organically raised chickens, have nearly no fat on them or any of that slimy green stuff you frequently encounter when trying to clean them.  So imagine my surprise when Chef’s Tim and Steve had concocted a special chicken liver risotto appetizer that evening made from Jones Family Farm liver!

Set before us was a plate of creamy arborio rice, still-pink-in-the-middle chicken livers simply seasoned (so I was told) with ground pepper, fresh ginger, and a little cheese, then served up piping hot. I love liver and I love risotto, so this was a real winner for me.

The house salad that I wasn’t crazy about in my initial review, remains, but since they know my tastes, now when I get the salad, it comes with extra dressing on the side that is not only heavy on the vinegar (which I love) but just makes the salad that much better!

Seeing really fresh fish on a menu in Central New York is difficult. Finding a chef who really knows how to cook it in any part of the country, is even more of a challenge.  Chef Tim who I had complimented the last time about his fish cooking skills, did not disappoint this time either. On the menu that night was a lovely piece of arctic char coupled with a quinoa salad and a green pea shoot pesto. My only complaint? The skin which is great when it’s cooking in the pan and technically holds the fish together, I think with a quick flip of a spatula could be tossed (as in the garbage)  and not plated, too.

I did have another thought (sorry chefs, humor me here) of what to do with the fish skin. Lynn and I had dinner at Jean Luc Figueras in Barcelona many years ago where an amuse bouche of fried fish crisps (fried cod skin actually) was brought out to the table. At first glance the shape alone (a long thin cylinder) reminded me of those French cookies (pirouettes) that accompany many a bowl of glace or gelato in Europe. It was salty and sweet and crunchy at the same time. Thinking back on my arctic char, could the dish have been elevated ever so slightly with something whimsical (i.e., fried skin) on top?

While the shrimp and grits had been on the menu for a while, we had never tried it. And I have to admit, although it was technically Lynn’s entree that night, I ate at least half of it! Calling a shrimp a shrimp, isn’t fair if you’re cooking up fresh prawns (heads and all) that have been beautifully grilled and seasoned and serve them with fried okra and an adorable dollhouse-size frying pan filled with the aforementioned grits.

Ripping off the heads of these delicious crustaceans and sucking out the bodies, well, had a yacht cruised by the front of the restaurant rather than the hourly snowplow, I could have sworn we were having dinner on the Cours Saleya in Nice. Which I think is the whole point of good cooking, if a chef or two can rustle up a dish that is absolutely delicious and reminds you of eating a similar dish someplace else, wow, that’s real talent.

Which brings me to this part of the story. We think the kitchen will be done this summer. In order to at least believe it will happen, we’ve started picking out floor tiles. We laid the color tiles we’ve chosen so far on the (dirty) rubber mats that are currently lining the floor and all weekend we debated the merits of each and every one.

Kitchen Tile Project

I know ultimately there will be more colors added to this arrangement so hopefully when the time comes we will choose wisely. Because after this long of a wait, the Red House kitchen is only being done once in our lifetime.

And if you think I remembered the name of the restaurant in Barcelona where we ate the crispy fish skin that easily, I didn’t.  What I do have are old school composition books where I usually record nearly every single thing we eat when traveling!

Travel Composition Notebooks

I thought maybe one day I’d manage to weave into a Red House article the time Lynn waited for me at the Milan (as in Italy) train station for 16 hours so we could have a meal together. This story, I think, can be told now.

Why would anyone wait 16 hours to have a meal with a girlfriend one might ask? Well, first of all this was back in the Dark Ages when we didn’t have cell phones, computers, or Facebook, etc., etc., and thus, no way of communicating with each other. So, you either waited for the person or you didn’t. When I finally arrived, parched and starving, everything was closed. We ended up spending the night (on the floor no less) of the Milan train station and got the first train to Florence in the morning. And what may you ask was the meal we had when we arrived? Pasta carbonara of course! Which is the very first “real” dish I hope to make in the Red House kitchen this year. Unless, of course, I can convince one of the T&C chefs to make it for me!

I said goodbye to 2012 realizing that there are quite a few dishes I never used to eat but do now (herring and sardines for example), things I shouldn’t be eating, but crave (chocolate, cheese, bread and pasta), and certain dishes I’d like to simply forget (dry chicken and grilled pizza).

Here though is my year end wrap up of what I think I liked the most.  Remember though, since I have no working kitchen, the following pictures show what I had to work with, namely my “stove,” my “dishwasher” and my “oven.”

2012 saw us eating: Fondue, Fried Green Tomatoes, Farmer’s Market Orange Beets with Jones Family Farm Goat Cheese, Peach Tart, Carbonara(!), Soft Shell Crab, Lobster Claws, Homemade Rosemary Bread, Crepes (both savory and sweet), Shrimp in Green Sauce, French Toast, Burrata, and lots and lots of tomatoes.

Reviewing this list, I realized we did eat chicken and duck and hamburgers and an occasional steak or two but they simply didn’t photograph well. The chicken often looked burnt and the hamburgers misshapen and greasy. This, I think, will please my vegetarian and vegan readers.

If you’re not hungry after looking at these photographs, you should be! Happy New Year!

I splurged at Fairway before heading up to the Red House and picked up a lovely duck breast which I thought I could cook fairly quickly on the grill.

Amazing D’Artagnan Duck Breast

I also had a hankering for crepes and thought they would make a lovely breakfast to start off the 4th.  Seeing how I don’t have a food processor or mixer up at the Red House and am genuinely too lazy to mix things by hand unless I absolutely have to, I prepared the crepe batter the night before and poured it in a container.

In the morning, I found a small enough frying pan to cook them in and before long had a small stack of crepes to eat.

Making Crepes

While I was thinking my crepes would of course be sweet with a topping of fresh raspberries and local maple syrup, Lynn decided his would be savory.  So, the smoked salmon I was saving for lunch that day, ended up being eaten with the crepes for breakfast.

Norwegian Smoked Salmon

At first I thought Lynn would eat the crepes like a “normal” person, (with utensils) but no, he ended up rolling the smoked salmon inside the crepe and making it burrito-like.

Smoked Salmon Crepe “Burrito”

I, on the other hand, stuck with tradition, and ate my crepes in a civilized manner (with a fork and a knife!) I know, I know, sometimes I’m just no fun.

Crepes with Raspberries

This breakfast for the first time since acquiring the Red House, we were actually able to enjoy on our newly built deck.  Last summer I had bought an outdoor furniture set complete with big red pillows and even a red umbrella!

Partially Finished Deck!

While I, of course, coveted much hipper outdoor furniture I had seen at Crate & Barrel, (with outrageous price tags to boot), this set (four chairs, the table and cushions) cost me a mere $99 from Walmart. And the umbrella? Well, I found that online for $39!

Comfy Red Chair!

The fact that these chairs are the most comfortable chairs I’ve ever had in my entire life (really), makes it even sweeter.

We did occasionally get up from the chairs that day, and I was about to make some crab cakes as an appetizer before I put the duck on the grill, when suddenly we heard the sump pump do its thing in the basement.  Well, that was curious I thought, since there hadn’t been any rain in days, which meant there had to be an ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF WATER IN THE BASEMENT.

Since the Red House basement is particularly scary, I sent Lynn down to investigate and sure enough a pipe had burst.  In order to get the water to stop, we would have had to turn off the main water valve.  Obviously, if we did that we wouldn’t have any water for eating, washing or drinking, so that wasn’t a viable option.  One of us (not me) had the not-so-brilliant idea we would try to duct tape the leak (that didn’t work), while the other one of us (me) thought rigging up a contraption to get the water to flow directly into the sump pump rather than pool on the floor would be a more manageable temporary solution.

It took about 2 hours to finagle some old metal radiator covers that we positioned under the burst pipe so that the water would go right into the pump.  We thought about calling a plumber but seeing how it was nearly 8:30 p.m. on the 4th of July and the water was still at a non-threatening level, we thought our “flood” could wait until the morning.

Which is why even though I managed to fry the crab cakes up relatively quickly after this plumbing adventure, by the time I got the duck breast on the grill, it was pretty dark outside. The crab cakes, courtesy of an easy recipe I found in Food & Wine, consisted solely of crab, mayo, hot sauce, and homemade breadcrumbs.

Amazing Crabcakes

And while I thought the duck cooked up perfectly fine (slightly pink in the middle), the photograph I took shows the meat swimming in a pool of grease.  This shot I absolutely cannot publish.

I will however, leave you with this, what the old deck used to look like, broken and crumbling and slippery when it snowed.

Old Porch, Finally Gone

Happy belated 4th!

I had brought up a couple of steaks to grill but also had a hankering for sweet potatoes. Since I knew sweet potatoes were going to take way too long to cook on the grill, I had to cheat a bit and pop them in the toaster oven. Since using the toaster oven any time in the house causes all the lights to flash on and off (yes, we still haven’t quite finished updating all the outlets), it’s kind of annoying.

After tolerating about 45 minutes of blinking lights, I’d had enough and decided to finish them on the grill as the steaks were cooking. We had a simple green salad, a bottle of red wine and that was dinner.

Dinner the next night I thought would be easier.  I had brought up some frozen shrimp and was thinking of making a shrimp in a zesty green sauce.  I thought I’d grill the shrimp first, then finish them in a wok with some parsley pesto (made by hand with a mortar and pestle).

The Red House "Food Processor"

Problem was I forgot to bring up some garlic but got the idea that perhaps I could dig up one of the many garlic bulbs growing in the garden. That didn’t work too well, because the garlic when I finally freed it from the soil, looked more like a large green onion (albeit tinged purple) than anything else, but I cut it up anyway and if nothing else it smelled like garlic!

Now, I think I got the original hankering for owning a mortar and pestle because I saw Jamie Oliver on TV once crush some herbs with some olive oil, a bit of salt and pepper, and voila, he had instant pesto.  Not I.  I kept crushing the parsley but it just kind of sat there and got well, mushy.

Not So Pretty Parsley Pesto

I put it aside and threw the shrimp on the grill.  In the meantime, I cheated this weekend and brought up some burrata and sliced prosciutto from the Italian deli.

Yummy!

I made a quick tomato salad with some red onions and by the time everything was cut up, the shrimp were done.

Tomato Side Dish

Shrimp on the "Barbie"

The shrimp were pretty decent even with the ersatz parsley pesto. Before we left the next day though, I decided I would grill some chicken along with a couple of potatoes so that when we got back  to Long Island we’d have dinner!

Great Grilled Chicken, Potatoes, Too

Now Lynn has some fond memories of his Mom cooking up some extra food (chicken in particular) when they went on picnics so that once they got home, she didn’t have to worry about “what was for dinner.”  It made perfect sense for me, too.

Ironically, we hit absolutely no traffic on the ride home, which meant the chicken I had double-wrapped in tinfoil was still warm even after a four hour ride! And pretty darn good.

For starters, I’ve never had a problem making cookies.  This year it seemed I made batches of my usual kinds (butter with raspberry jam, chocolate chip, almond and amaretto butter, cinnamon sugar) and only two of the four were decent.

Decent Christmas Cookies

The others spread across the pan as they were baking as if they were trying to escape!

Raspberry Jam Cookies Wanting to Escape!

Since I’m also fairly stubborn when faced with having to pay large amounts of money for things that I think are overpriced ($9.99 for a bag of shelled walnuts???!!), I bought two bags of walnuts in the shell ($2.99 each), and then not only shelled them, but proceeded to crush them with a rolling pin the way my mother did, and her mother before her. Note to self: no way in hell will my daughter EVER do this to save a few bucks.

Crushed Walnuts, the Old Fashioned Way

Consequently, with all the holiday baking and eating behind us, I definitely felt it was time to do some serious work up at the Red House (or at least try to).  So, instead of leaving after work on Friday, and getting there at midnight, and then being hopelessly tired the next 24 hours, I actually took a day off from work to get a head start.

One of my first projects nearly two years ago when we bought the house was to paint a pink hallway at the top of the staircase white. I had, however, never gotten around to painting (priming actually) the actual staircase, so this I decided to tackle.

Half Pink, Half Primed Staircase

Problem was, since everyone knows I’m afraid of heights, I actually couldn’t reach to paint the ceiling and no way in hell was I going to figure out how to rig up a ladder (without falling down the stairs) that would let me do so. I moved on.

Next on the list, help Lynn finish insulating the dining room.  This involved me doing nearly next to nothing (holding up pink foam board with two fingers), while he’s struggling with screws and an impact driver.

A Nearly Insulated Dining Room

While he was doing that, I decided that a closet that had been installed in a hallway that leads down to the basement, had to be ripped out.  I’m assuming the closet had once been used to hold towels or other toiletries since it had been located outside the original bathroom.  Well, now that the original bathroom is  gone, it was not only taking up room but was hideously ugly as well.  It had to go.

I started ripping it apart and Lynn didn’t like that I was attempting to dismantle it old school-like, (with a screwdriver and a hammer), so suddenly I found the impact driver pushing my hand away from the screws that are holding the closet shelves in place.  They do come down rather quickly that way (impact driver 1, Julie 0), and we decide to stack all the pieces in the kitchen.  Arranged, I realize they very much look like a Georges Braque still life.

The Closet As Still Life

After this much work in a single afternoon, we decided it was definitely time for cocktails with some smoked oysters as a little amuse bouche. Lynn and I are the only people that we know who actually enjoy eating smoked oysters (other than my parents and occasionally our son if I wrap them in some puff pastry with a big dollop of goat cheese, too). I have to however assume there are other people out there who enjoy them just as much as we do, otherwise they wouldn’t bother smoking them and canning them.

Awesome Smoked Oysters with a Lime Squeeze

While Lynn would have probably liked to use his impact driver to open the can, luckily it was simply a pull top! (I promise I will soon stop the impact driver jokes.)

Since before the weekend had started I thought in order to spend more time renovating and less time cooking, I would simply bring up a bunch of food that was already cooked. That meant for the next three days, we would be eating chili, chicken rollatini and sausages.  I cheated a bit with the sausages because while I did grill them beforehand, I still had to boil some water for pasta (they were going to be thrown into a pasta dish), and slice them along with some roasted peppers, too.

Chicken and Apple Sausage Fixin's for Dinner

The next morning we woke to snow, contemplated whether we should eventually get a snowblower, but then realized it would probably be one of those toys (like the Troy Bilt) that wouldn’t start when we needed it the most.  That said, we both went out with two big blue shovels and simply shoveled the driveway and part of the sidewalk.  This took less than half an hour.

Real Women (and Men) Shovel

We didn't shovel this part....

Besides the snow (3-4 inches), it was also pretty cold (think 2 degrees), and while the rest of the house was warm, the kitchen in it’s current unfinished and uninsulated state was simply unbearable. This meant that when I tried to wash the breakfast dishes that morning, the sponge had frozen to the sink!

Isn't this a beautiful kitchen?

I tried not to spend much time in this room the rest of the weekend and instead helped Lynn put more insulation around a new window we had installed.  Luckily, we had a big bag of that cotton candy looking stuff that comes in rolls, that Lynn reminded me we had used when we redid our kitchen on Long Island.  Since I’m the queen of throwing things out I think we no longer need, I’m actually amazed we still had it!

Insulation that kind of looks like a burrito!

Putting the insulation in the window was pretty simple, trying to fit the original moulding around the frame was not. The impact driver got a particularly good workout with Lynn trying to make pieces fit that should have gone back together in a snap, but wouldn’t.

This is what a new window looks like!

I decided to at least try to keep up with all the mess he was making so I started to sweep, then, mop, particularly in the hallway where we had torn out the closet.  Problem is there is just so much dust from all the sheetrock we are using that even after all my efforts at cleaning, the truth is it didn’t look like I had done anything at all!

Where the closet had been...

Bored with cleaning, I decided to try out some new cross country skis I had been gifted.  Now here’s the thing, the last time I was on downhill skis was probably around 1978. Cross country skis, while more recently (maybe 1997), I, in fact, had to think hard about a) how to put them on, and b) how to actually do this.  Once I figured it out, I was even able to do a fairly slow glide kind of thing across the back meadow until I realized how incredibly hilly the back meadow is.  Hilly, means I would have to go DOWNHILL ON CROSS COUNTRY SKIS.  So, not wanting to fall on my ass just yet, I simply took them off and walked back to the Red House.

There, I placed them, skies and poles, too,  against our crumbling red siding. I was always the girl anyway, who preferred to be in the ski lodge (at the bar of course), then actually on a slope. I will however, find a Cross Country Skiing for Dummies book, or some such nonsense and learn how to do it.

A Great Place to Cross Country Ski....If You Know How!

Meanwhile back on the ranch, I mean, the Red House, as I stumbled up our broken steps, afraid that if the ice beneath my boots wouldn’t send me flying, surely the icicles hanging down from the roof would give me a nice bump (or worse) on my head.

Ice Ice Baby

I did look at the other rooms that are shaping up fairly nicely (before we even had an impact driver, thanks Mom!) and thought that if we could just finish one room by the summer, maybe we could actually buy a sofa we could sit on?  One that would be comfortable and wouldn’t pinch our ass?

The Living Room -- Work in Progress

So three days later, after we had tackled as much as we could, I woke up craving French toast with real maple syrup from a farmer down the road, so I made some. Lynn wondered why I needed that much syrup on my plate.  Because I like maple syrup I said, and poured even more on the toast I had fried up in a pan on the hot plate.

Yummy French Toast (Why is it called French, anyway?)

Considering what happened next at the Red House, I’m really really happy I had as much sugar that morning as I did.  Turns out when I went to flush the toilet in our ONE bathroom, there was no water in the bowl.  When I tried to turn on the water in the sink, only hot water came out.  That’s when we realized that the cold water pipes leading up to the bathroom had frozen solid.

This unfortunately came about because yesterday, knowing the temperature was going to seriously drop (think double digit minus numbers), we tried to insulate the exposed water pipes by wrapping some heavy duty plastic between the pipes and an exterior wall.  Wrong! This had exactly the opposite effect we had wanted, hence the freezing pipes.  We turned the heat up in the house, thought about calling a plumber, then I decided I would simply wrap the skinny pipes in towels.  My theory was whenever the kids got out of the ocean and were freezing, wrapping them in towels got them warm in no time.  So that’s what I did.

Trying to warm up the frozen pipes!

Ha. Ha. Ha.  Couldn’t use the impact driver to solve this problem!  Within an hour the pipes had “thawed,” and we had cold running water back up in the bathroom. Shortly thereafter we left the Red House for the weekend, but decided to leave the pipes “dressed” so to speak in the towels.  The theory was, if the pipes actually burst, maybe the towels would catch most of the water!

I already can’t wait until spring.

So after making the dough, I heated up a pizza stone on the grill, then gently put the dough on top, waited for it to cook a bit on one side, and then actually flipped it like a crepe.  Only after that did I spoon on some sauce, basil from the garden, and this funky log of mozzarella that when I sliced it, it was in the shape of a ring.

A Funky Grilled Pizza

Because I flipped the pizza this time around, it had more of a rustic-look to it which I liked.  What I didn’t like was there was way too much sauce on the pie.  Guess what, we ate it anyway, and it was pretty good.

Since the pizza was technically our appetizer, I took it off the grill and we nibbled at it with a couple of cocktails and then I  got down to the business of cooking Cornish hens.  Now, I know Cornish hens are a bit of an old school kind of dish and frankly I actually had trouble finding a supermarket that still carried them but eventually I did find two small birds.

I stuffed the cavities with fresh celery leaves from the garden and then sprinkled the hens with fresh rosemary and a bunch of dried spices (notably oregano and paprika),  gave them a good dose of olive oil,  and put them on the grill.  Since I didn’t want these babies to char right away, yet be raw inside, I turned the flame down fairly low and spent the next 30 minutes or so moving them around.

While they looked pretty, the reality is they were completely tasteless! ( Sigh, so much for my Cornish hen fantasy.)  Luckily, the lovely roasted beet and arugula salad (with red onion and tomato, too!) I made to accompany those ucky hens saved the day.  In hindsight, sticking with the pizza and the salad would have been a much better option.

Lovely Roasted Yellow Beets, Arugula, Tomatoes

A Very Sorry Stove Indeed

Since I wasn’t particularly thrilled about having to grill outside in the snow, when I saw a plug-in “extra” burner on sale at the supermarket, I thought I’d give it a try.

This handy little gadget became our “flame,” and with a little bit of planning and lots of creativity on my part, was the answer to our lack-of-stove problem.

The "Flame" As We Know It

The first morning we used it, we plugged it in, and since not all of the electrical wiring is done in the house, we managed to blow out all the lights on the first floor! Sigh, yes, we realized too late that we couldn’t have the toaster oven and the “flame” going at the same time.

Consequently, Lynn went down to the basement and flipped the switch that had tripped. Meanwhile, I turned the toaster oven off and we continued “cooking.”  Turns out though that we still needed to be a little conservative with anything else we had plugged in when the “flame” was on because once we turned it on high, the lights in the dining room started flashing on and off.  Wow, disco this early in the morning!

I scrambled some eggs from Jones Family Farm, went outside to get some fresh chives that are growing in a big barrel by the side of the house, and voila, breakfast was finally served.

Lovely Chive Speckled Eggs

The other thing I discovered was that the “flame” was the perfect dimension for my wok.  This resulted in my making a really wonderful shrimp curry with some green beans and onions and a couple of red grapes thrown into the mix, too.

Wok Stirrred Shrimp Curry? At the Red House -- Yes!

The only draw back was that since I was working with one single burner, the rice I had made before I could make the curry was cold by the time we sat down to eat it.  Minor details.

So far, I’ve cooked a lovely piece of salmon (which we ate with some baguette from Fairway and a creamy brie), macaroni and cheese, chicken every which way, and a really big pot of chili which we ate with a homemade pizza one night.

Nearly Perfect Salmon

Obviously, I still need a kitchen with a real working stove and an oven. Oh yeah, I need a new fridge and a dishwasher, and counters and cupboards would be nice, too.  Right now I’m entering every single contest that is offering these goodies, since that’s probably the only way I’m going to get an entire kitchen in the next few years.

However, I’m happy to know that we don’t have to rely solely on the grill to cook our food and that we’ll make it through the winter at the Red House just fine with this single burner.

So, yes, I would welcome any chef, or chef-wannabe to a Red House cooking challenge.  One burner, no oven. Try me.

That elicited this response from her. “No , I’m serious!” she was practically shrieking.

“OMG,” I said, which since the Oxford English Dictionary now includes as a “real” word, I felt I could justifiably use to counter her statement.  What I really wanted to say was “WTF!”  Why exactly wasn’t there a “food writer” category on the college application?

Instead, I countered with,”Well, how about writer?” I asked.

Apparently, that wasn’t an option either.  My choices were to be  classified as a business owner, self-employed, management, middle management, or laborer. Further down on the form, she was then asked to identify the field in which I was employed, with the good old standby choices of accounting, medical, or education. Luckily, there was also a category for non-profit which considering the amount of money I’m making as a food writer these days, I figured would be the appropriate box to check.

This conversation left me in a particularly wicked mood and the only thing that was going to improve it was to make my favorite dish.  Pasta Carbonara.  Since this is also the perfect dish to make and eat up at the Red House, (one pan, easy ingredients) I did just that.

But since I really wanted an appetizer (also known as the “Vorspeise,” the thing you eat before the meal, for those who speak German), I made my own version of tuna nicoise — searing a piece of tuna on the grill pan and plating it with some tomatoes, arugula, and of course, green beans with lots of freshly ground pepper.  I won’t reveal how much I paid for said piece of tuna but I figure if I’m looking at paying tuition again soon (she’s my second child), I better splurge now while I still have a couple of nickels left in my wallet.

Tuna Nicoise

After that I made the carbonara.  What I like to refer to as an “adult” carbonara because I threw in lots of pancetta, mushrooms, eggs, an ENTIRE container of cream, freshly grated parmesan and some arugula. Dare I mention I mixed it all together in a Wok because that’s the biggest pot I have up at the Red House.  Yes, and it was delicious!

Adult Carbonara

When it’s overcast, the meadow has kind of a sinister look to it.

A GRAY DAY

When it’s sunny, I can see myself cross country skiing…but I don’t have skis.

BEAUTIFUL SNOW

Looking at all the snow outside the Red House, I realize I probably should have brought up a pot roast or pea soup — something heavy and hearty to eat this weekend.  But I didn’t; I brought up a piece of salmon which I cooked in a pan with some fresh basil and pineapple juice. I thought that would be a nice light and healthy way to start the new year.

PAN SALMON

The salmon was decent but it made me long for summer; the season I’m most looking forward to right now after too many hours spent shoveling sidewalks and digging out driveways.  Dare I mention we spent New Year’s Day spackling and sanding the walls and spackling and sanding some more?

In spite of my salmon dish and partially because of the cold weather, I’ve been craving spicy food, particularly Indian.  Since I’m not big on curry sauces that come in a jar, I decided to look for a naan recipe instead.  I will admit I did NOT make these up at the Red House but wanted to share it here, nonetheless.

I realized when I was making the naan, the execution was nearly identical to making flour tacos except it had a yeast starter.  You make the dough, let it rise, tear off the dough into little balls, let it rise again, roll the balls into circles and fry them in a really hot grill pan and then coat them with butter.  Since in my mind anything that you can grill and top with butter is bound to be delicious, I figured this would be a win-win dish.   It was and when summer finally does roll around, it will be the perfect flat bread accompaniment to lovely BBQ dinners outside at the Red House.

HOMEMADE NAAN

Homemade Naan (courtesy of Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients
1 package active dry yeast

1 cup warm water

1/4 cup sugar

3 tablespoons milk

2 teaspoons salt

4 1/2 cups bread flour*

2 teaspoons minced garlic (optional)

1/4 cup butter melted.

1.  In a large bowl dissolve yeast in warm water.  Let stand about 10 minutes until frothy.  Stir in sugar, milk, egg, salt and enough flour to make a soft dough.  Knead for 6 to 8 minutes on a lightly floured surface, or until smooth. Place dough in a well-oiled bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and set aside to rise.  Let it rise 1 hour, until the dough has doubled in  volume.

2. Punch down dough, and knead in garlic. Pinch off small handfuls of dough about the size of a golf ball. Roll into balls and place on a tray. Cover with a towel and allow to rise until doubled in size, about 30 minutes.

3. During the second rising, preheat grill to high heat.

4. At grill side roll one ball of dough out into a thin circle. Lightly oil grill. Place dough on grill and cook for 2-3 minutes or until puffy and lightly browned. Brush uncooked side with butter and turn over. Brush cooked side with bugger and cook until browned, another 2 to 4 minutes. Remove from grill and continue the process until all the naan has been prepared.

* I used regular unbleached flour for the recipe and although I omitted the garlic I would probably add it the next time.

BLUEBERRY PANCAKES

Once I got back to Long Island though, all I could think about was the food I wanted to make up at the Red House.  To compensate, I’ve gone into a super duper baking and cooking mode.  It helps that the holiday season is upon us and that the weather has suddenly gotten much colder.  Consequently, I’ve been making lots of “comfort food” type meals with a few fish dishes thrown in for good measure.

Here’s some of the meals I’ve been making and hope to recreate up at the Red House…. some day.

October

Roast pork loin with some white carrots that I picked up at the local farmers market with cippolini onions and leeks.  (Lynn likes roast pork so much he could eat this dish every night.  My bigger problem is that no matter how big the roast pork, if I want any “leftovers,” I have to cut pieces off the pork and hide them prior to serving.)

PORK ROAST, CARROTS, ONIONS, LEEKS

Paella with clams, calamari, shrimp and chicken.  I think it’s decent.  (I try to persuade Lynn to at least eat all the fish knowing it’s not a good thing to “brown bag” for lunch next day, but he ignores me. Because he ignores me I tell him not to call me if he gets sick. If nothing else, after 31+ years with this guy, I’ve perfected the Bitch Factor.)

MY VERSION OF PAELLA

Roast chicken with peppers and eggplant and onions.  (I’ve tried to get him to just cut the chicken in half and eat it like the Italians do “mezzo pollo” but he’s big on hacking the bird into pieces. It’s ultimately just as good.)

PEPPERS, ONIONS, EGGPLANT AND CHICKEN, TOO!

Another roast chicken this one from Jones Family Farms. The chicken was leaner and gamier (which I like) but also bloodier than I was used to so it seemed to take a tad longer to cook. It also looks a bit well, sexual in this photograph — maybe I overstuffed it with the parsley?  (I think Lynn liked the chicken, but I’m sure he liked the potatoes that went with it better.)

A REAL CHICKEN

November

A Friday night dinner at home (our idea of date night) included fresh fettuccine with chanterelles and freshly grated parmesan cheese, salmon with an orange mustard glaze, and some baby spinach and pitty pat squash as a side dish.  (Lynn likes my Friday night dinners when I’m up to making them because I usually do courses or something “fancier” knowing I don’t have to get up early to go to work.  Tonight was no exception.)

FETTUCCINE WITH CHANTERELLES

SALMON ON A BED OF BABY SPINACH WITH PITTY PAT SQUASH

Goat?  I had never actually made goat chops.  It’s not normally a regular menu item in our house but we did buy one-quarter of a goat a while back from Jones Family Farms and we’ve been making our way through it.  Luckily, I also made meatballs from some of the chopped goat meat we had too since I overcooked the chops a tad and they were a little tough. (Lynn loves any kind of chopped meat so much I’ve started calling him “hamburger boy.”)

GOAT CHOPS

GOAT MEATBALLS

Finally, towards the end of November, I came up with the following dinner menu:

Italian wedding ball soup

Slow-baked tomatoes stuffed with mozzarella

Pork “Schnitzel”

Tempura onion rings

The soup

I made the Italian wedding ball soup because a) it was cold outside and unless it’s really really cold, we don’t turn on the heat in our house, we just put on another sweater and I make soup; b) see my comment above about “hamburger boy.”

I must admit that we’ve been to Italy a few times and we’ve never seen this soup on a menu.  Lynn, whose mother was born in Naples, Italy, never made this soup when he was growing up and since she’s no longer with us I can’t even ask her about it.

The tomatoes

Since I hate to throw vegetables out that are overripe, I try to find ways to use them.  Tomatoes that are too soft to use in salads I often bake or broil in the oven.  The tomato flavor is even more concentrated and stuffing the tomatoes with mozzarella is I recipe I found in Fran Warde’s Food for Friends.

BAKED TOMATOES WITH MOZZARELLA

The “Schnitzel”

Other than chicken cutlets (which when I fry up I always call chicken cutlets), everything else that gets fried in our house (namely pork or veal) gets the name “Schnitzel.”  This was the pork version.  (Lynn on the other hand likes to call everything that he fries “Milanese” and here’s why.)

Lynn and Costoletta alla Milanese

Lynn grew up with a mother, Bianca, who was born in Naples, Italy.  A war bride (World War II!), she spent the first 13 years of her marriage moving from one Air Force base to another both stateside and in Japan.  By the time Lynn was born, they had settled in upstate New York.  She had six children to feed but when cooking would rely on classics that everyone liked – veal cutlets being one of her classics.  Why Bianca would spring for the more expensive veal rather than chicken cutlets, especially when you had a family of eight to feed is beyond me but she did.  Consequently, Lynn grew up eating veal cutlets as large as your plate and always with a slice of lemon to squirt over the fried meat.  To this day, he can’t resist ordering a veal cutlet if he sees it on the menu.

(This entry is towards the end of Chapter 9 in my book, Pure Form, Pure Food: In Pursuit of Great Architecture and Wonderful Meals ©2009.)

PORK SCHNITZEL

The onions

Tempura onion rings.  This was originally a shrimp tempura recipe but I’m not particularly keen on fried shrimp but I do like the occasional onion ring.  This is a fool-proof recipe so I’ll include it.

Tempura batter

1 cup all purpose flour

½ cup cornstarch

3 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoons curry powder

8 ounces cold seltzer (add more if batter is too thick)

salt and pepper

Mix all ingredients together.

TEMPURA ONION RINGS

Last but not least my bagel issue

I think it was the sign at the bagel store that may have put me over the edge.  They wanted how much for one bagel?  Ninety-five cents with nothing on it!?  Growing up in Munich and being bagel-less for a good 10 years, we often craved bagels.  My mother attempted to make lots of things overseas that we couldn’t get in Germany (biscuits, brownies, chocolate chip cookies) but bagels weren’t in her repertoire.

I decided to attempt to make bagels on my own and started looking for a recipe in some of my “old school” cookbooks (The Fanny Farmer Cookbook, The Joy of Cooking).  I finally found a recipe in Craig Claiborne’s The New York Times Cookbook that looked pretty simple except for the fact that it required something called “malted milk powder.”  Since “malted milk powder” was nowhere to be found,  I simply omitted that ingredient.

For my first attempt, I think they came out quite nicely.  And the fact that they were gone in a day thanks to big family eaters made me even happier.

BAGEL DOUGH

BOILING THE BAGELS

AFTER BAKING

THE FINISHED PRODUCT