February Recipe: Part One

I recently fell in love with Brussels sprouts. (Okay, that was ridiculous. It just took me nearly two minutes to type that sentence. Stupid little phone keys! Stupid uncoordinated thumbs!)

Anyway, when I was a kid, my stepdad, the gourmet chef, made brussels sprouts. Once. And never again. My sister and I thought they were the most horrific little vegetables ever to be invented, and we choked them down, gagging and making gargoyle faces. My poor stepdad took the hint and never made them for us again, although he did threaten us with them at least once a week. Once he had me cut out a picture of Brussels sprouts from the weekly King Soopers ad and he taped it to the table in my sister's spot. She was not amused, though the rest of us laughed our fool heads off.

Anyway, a few (okay, almost ten ... Sheez I'm old) years ago, a good friend mentioned that she was making Brussels sprouts for a holiday meal. I proceeded to gag and ask her why on earth she would torture her guests that way. She said they were really good roasted and that I should try them. No thank you. *shudder*

Then, a few (okay, five) years ago, I found a recipe for Brussels Sprout Soup in my favorite cookbook. I tried to ignore the recipe, but one day I asked Robert to help me pick recipes for the week, and wouldn't you know? He somehow turned the book open to that very page. I protested, I gagged, I threw a fit on the floor, but he just really wanted that soup. Ugh. I reluctantly bought the accursed sprouts and made the stupid soup for him. It wasn't THAT bad, but I still despised Brussels sprouts.

Until ...

This fall, I found brussels sprouts on a stalk at Trader Joe's. I don't usually buy things that aren't on my list for the week, but those sprouts intrigued me. I figured if Trader Joe's had them in their store, there must be some way to make them edible, and besides, they were so pretty! Like tiny cabbages. Call it mothering instinct, but I just pictured itty bitty cabbage patch dolls poking their heads out from under the leaves. They needed a home.

I googled this recipe for lemon-encrusted roasted Brussels sprouts. The recipe was simple, and the girl just raved about how she couldn't stop herself from eating the whole pan. Yeah, right, I thought, no one likes Brussels sprouts THAT much. I figured she just went a little overboard on the hyperbole. And then ... Oh, Heaven! Oh, peace on earth and good will to men! How can there be war in this world when there are lemon-encrusted roasted Brussels sprouts? I could hardly stop myself, and there were only a few left for my husband when he got home from work. Oops.

So, in my recent rekindling of interest in Pinterest (ugh, that sentence makes me ill), fueled by a non-spammy app for my Android, I repinned this recipe and got around to trying it today. And Oh.my.word. I think I may have dreams about Brussels sprouts and rosemary-infused potatoes synchronized swimming in a fountain of olive oil somewhere in Italy tonight. There's just no way that dreaded vegetable that used to haunt my worst nightmares (You know the one where you're about to shove a big, juicy Canaanite grape in your mouth and it turns out to be a Brussels sprout? Yeah, that one) should taste this good.

I didn't follow the amounts of the original recipe (who buys 1.75 lbs of fingerling potatoes?). I used 2 lbs of fingerlings, and two 16-oz bags of Brussels sprouts from TJ's, then just drizzled a bit of oil, crushed five or six cloves of garlic (you're welcome, Robert's coworkers!), sprinkled salt and ground pepper, ground a whole Trader Joe's package (minus one sprig for garnish which I forgot to use) of rosemary in the food processor, then tossed in a couple of pinches of chili flakes. I skipped the sucanat. I never have liked putting sugar in savory dishes. 

We paired our sprouts with rice, beans, and tortillas (insert joke about Mexican diets here). Even with all those extra sprouts, we barely had any leftovers. Robert even said "Thank you for lunch." And that, in my book, is a raving success.

Weekly menu board

I saw this idea in my What's For Dinner? group on Facebook. I have always planned meals for the week since we got married, but I usually had the meals listed on a notepad stuck to the fridge. This is more visible, prettier, and keeps me more accountable to actually cook. And I need all the help I can get when it comes to accountability.

First I went to Target and found a $3 frame on the clearance aisle. Then, I got two different-sized packages of adhesive letters. Finally, I found a pad of scrapbook paper  on clearance at Michael's and cut a piece to fit the frame. Seriously the hardest part about this project was scouring three different stores to find a dry-erase marker that I liked to write in the meals.

Note: Throwing your menu board on the floor will result in breakage of said menu board.

I was getting ready to take pictures of this lovely menu board last evening when this happened

 Oh well. Back to sticky notes on the fridge, I guess. Hey, look! A caption!

Masala Dal = Yum, and also, mess

I've had this recipe for Masala Dal bookmarked on my phone's browser for over a year, and I've only cooked it twice before today. The recipe is super yummy and easy, so we really should have eaten it more than twice in the last year and some odd months. Today I remembered why I hadn't cooked it in so long.

First off, the recipe says to cook the lentils in a pressure cooker. We have a pressure cooker which Robert inherited from his aunt, but we rarely use it for pressure cooking. We (meaning, of course, I because Robert rarely cooks) generally use it for soups and atole. The handle on the lid was broken when I moved in here, and the weight that we have is not the one that came with it (I imagine the weight for Robert's Aunt's pressure cooker doesn't fit too well either) and clearly has been through the garbage disposal one too many times (maybe that's why our garbage disposal doesn't work ... Huh). Add to all this the fact that I'm not even really sure how to use a pressure cooker, and well, you get a huge mess of sputtering and spraying lentil water all over the stove, hood, floor, cabinets, refrigerator, etc. So I turned off the stove after the sputtering spewing mess, and it took a good five minutes to pry off the lid-without-a-handle.

However, the lentils cooked beautifully.

The next problem is that I invariably forget to measure the mustard seeds and cumin seeds before heating the oil. So when it says to heat the oil and add mustard seeds until they crackle, I end up overheating the oil and those mustard seeds just will NOT stay in the pan. I put them in and they're jumping around the kitchen like bare feet on summertime asphault. So while my mustard seeds are scattering themselves to Connecticut and back, I'm struggling to turn off the flame and get the pan to a cooler locale, and the hot oil is spattering all over my arms. And this has happened not once, not twice, but THREE times. And as I mourn the death and burial of my memory, I provide endless entertainment for my kid and my hubby.

Anyway.

It tasted delicious over a bed of rice. If I had remembered to buy some naan it would have been even better. But, my memory is a goner. Wait, didn't I just say that?