Number 98: Polenta

Ah, polenta.  I had it about a year ago for the first time at Karyn’s on Green (a vegan restaurant in Chicago) and almost died it was so good.  It may have been because the polenta was made into truffle chive polenta cakes.  It may have been because the cakes were topped with the most delicious roasted mushrooms the world has ever known.  It may also have been because I hadn’t eaten for hours beforehand.  It was damn good, though.  Knowing that I could never come close to matching that polenta experience, I decided to make a simple vegetable and polenta bake.

Number 80: Bellini

When Dan and I had our housewarming party in April, one of our lovely guests brought us a bottle of champagne.  We were saving it for some noteworthy occasion, but as nothing noteworthy has happened of late, we decided that a sunny Sunday afternoon would have to be occasion enough to pop that bottle.  The difficult lives we live…

Number 44: Goat’s Milk

After making a 10pm run to Whole Food’s for goat’s milk and polenta last Tuesday, I started to realize how odd my life has become.  My life currently revolves around calling butcher shops and inquiring about their quantity of haggis, followed by hours of planning on how to obtain roadkill, ending with me attempting to cook something that, if done incorrectly, could kill me.  Yes, I have certainly been doing a lot of things lately that I’ve never done before.  So, I decided to do one more thing I haven’t done before; instead of just tasting goat’s milk for my blog post this week, I decided to actually make homemade goat’s cheese out of it!

Number 81: Tom Yum

I can’t help but feel that I’ve been gypped.  I spent all day today gazing at pictures of tom yum soup on various blogs (like this one and this one) and looking forward to eating it tonight.  All the pictures showed a rich broth loaded with plump shrimp and fresh, colorful vegetables…mmm… So after work, I braved the 93-degree weather, headed to my favorite Thai joint, and ordered a piping hot bowl of tom yum soup.  When I took it home, I opened the lid and THIS was what I found inside.

Number 35: Root Beer Float

For dinner tonight, I made myself a Greek salad.  I picked some plump ripe tomatoes and tossed them with crisp sliced cucumber, crunchy Romaine lettuce, beautiful black olives, and feta cheese.  I then drizzled it with a reduced-fat Greek dressing.  After I ate this delicious and nutritious meal, I took three oversized scoops of vanilla ice cream, plopped them into a Coke glass, and poured some high fructose corn syrup-laden root beer over the top.  I’ve never felt happier.

Number 94: Catfish

Remember when I had Kathryn’s Seafood Mania a couple weeks ago? Well, this is a leftover that I never got around to posting.  Sometimes I like to pretend that I am a gourmet chef and I throw together amazingly delicious meals in no time.  The truth of the matter is that lots of the time, I’m just heating up pre-made stuff and passing it off as my own.  This is one of those instances!  How much did I actually MAKE of that yummy-looking meal?  Uh, one-third.

Number 69: Fried Plantain

I am going to re-name this post “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Frying Plantains.”  Basically because I did it like a complete idiot and almost burned my own house down.   Here are my rules for how to fry plantains if you’re looking to maim, injure, or otherwise harm yourself and your loved ones.

1. After neatly cutting the plantain into thin slices, fill a pan up with canola oil and turn the temperature up as high as it will possibly go.  I mean, it should be so hot that smoke is pouring forth from the pan.  Yeah, that’s it.  Even though that recipe tells you to measure the temperature of the oil and bring it to 340 degrees, you don’t own a thermometer, so that doesn’t apply to you.  You can estimate just as well.