Monday, April 5, 2010

Weekend Eats

SATURDAY LUNCH
I went to Perdue's for a specific reason. You can read about it on the barbecue blog.

SATURDAY DINNER
Elizabeth and I spent Saturday night at my parents' house because we wanted to use their computer network for a couple things and also have an Easter brunch the next day. My brother spent the night there, too - my parents were taking him to the airport Sunday morning very early. I went to OSH and bought a pizza stone for the grill, something my parents have talked about getting for years. I made four kinds of pizza (actually I made three and my mom made one): 1) pepperoni, 2) roasted garlic and basil, 3) sausage, ham, mushrooms and olives, and 4) an olive oil-sauced pizza with balsamic onions, chives and goat cheese. All were good, although my favorite was the garlic and basil.

The beer selection for the evening was three kinds of Sierra Nevada and Anderson Valley Wheat. I opted for the Torpedo IPA. This was the first time I had ever tried it - it only was released by Sierra Nevada a little over a year ago. It is quite possibly the hoppiest IPA I have ever had. I have said for years that I have never had a bad beer from Sierra Nevada. This is still true.

SUNDAY BREAKFAST
My parents had gone by Taylor's and picked up eggs, sausage, and Amish bacon, and I cooked them all at once. Elizabeth and I went down and got a few bagels as well. I added cheddar cheese and chives to the eggs, scrambled them, and made a bagel sandwich. My bagel was "super onion," which I'd never had before and was pretty good.  

EASTER EGG HUNT
I filled Easter eggs for everyone for an egg hunt. The yellow eggs you see at the bottom of the picture are mine. They are empty because no one got anything for me to put in my eggs, because I am not loved. 

Clockwise from the top: our cat got treats in the blue eggs; my dad got Neccos in the orange eggs; my mom got Jujubes in the pink eggs; Elizabeth got Peeps in the purple eggs; my parents' dog got biscuits in the green eggs.

The dog found her eggs right away. I had planned to open it for her and give her the treat; she preferred just to tear it open immediately to save time. 

The cat also found his egg, although to be fair Elizabeth put it in front of him and opened it. It was not a tremendous effort on his part.

Sunday Dinner
I wanted Sunday dinner to be simple so that we could watch the first baseball game of the season: the Yankees vs. Red Sox. I don't like either team. The Yankees are the Evil Empire that outspends everyone else; the Red Sox pretend like they're different but spend more than every team other than the Yankees and have the most obnoxious fans in baseball. But I do love baseball, and watching the first game of the season is like a transfusion. 

I made a simple plate of sliced French bread with buffalo mozzarella, roasted red pepper, basil and prosciutto. I also heated up a package of buffalo-style chicken meatballs with blue cheese from Trader Joe's. I had never tried these before. They were great and surprisingly spicy. I could not taste any blue cheese, though. I will cook these again someday and make a blue cheese sauce to go with them. 

Today is opening day for the rest of the league, so I am sure I will be making something else for the Angels opener and NCAA championship basketball game tonight.

7 comments:

Nosh Gnostic said...

First thought:
The arrangement of the eggs in the first egg pic - it looks like one of those Hebrew characters that some Jewish people wear around their necks? Is this a cryptic Easter message?

The kitty looks very happy (and cute) eating it's treat. Maybe because it's snuggled on some kind of pillowy/blankety thing. I bet it would like a real egg too. So would doggy. BTW, does the dog have armadillo paws?

I'm always scared when food product packaging declares "Gourmet". I like the blue cheese dipping sauce idea. A lot.

Lastly, the pizzas. The crusts look great. Are they home-made?
I like the look of the sausage, etc. one the best. When I saw the pic of the onion pizza I thought the onions, at first glance, were some kind of wild mushrooms and was very excited. I would like to try to make one of those (with mushrooms). But I'll bet your basil/garlic was the tastiest.

Now, on to read about Perdue's!

JustinM said...

At least at Trader Joe's they use terms whimsically, so calling something "gourmet" isn't as much of a red flag. (Like their "Simpler Times" cans of beer for $2.99.)

The pizza crusts are from Fresh & Easy. They're $1.29 each and just as good as homemade, in my opinion.

KWM said...

You are loved! In fact, you are loved so much it is ridiculous! You were so well loved as a child and so well taken care of that you cannot imagine an Easter without eggs to hide -- and I hid some for you. Besides, I paid for the candy, so you could have purchased anything you wanted.

Cafe Pasadena said...

Great foodstuff!
Where's your restaurant?

Gotta try the Sierra Nevada, on a hot day - not when it's cold & snowy.

JustinM said...

Ha! Quite a few people have asked me over the years why I don't open a restaurant. I love cooking for friends and family, but I don't think I have the passion required to put in the hard work running a restaurant. Every successful restaurateur (I had to look that word up; I did not realize it isn't spelled with an "n") says you need to be willing to bust your a$$. Doing it for loved ones is one thing; doing it for a career would be something else.

Cafe Pasadena said...

Agree about starting a restaurant - it's one of the last biznesses I wood wanna own or manage.

At the least: don't make your 1st business a restaurant.

Anonymous said...

Having run a restaurant, I can tell you that it's horrifically (is that a word?) hard to make it work, schedule staff, live life, enjoy it, and find time to relax. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . . .