Asparagus was on sale at the grocery store, so I decided to take another stab at my potato and asparagus salad. Last time I made it with our homemade mayonnaise.
This time I simplified the recipe to cut down on time an effort.
Like I’ve said before, I’m trying to get better at baking bread. Last week I tried a no-knead ciabatta recipe and was only somewhat pleased with the results. I decided I’d try again, so I made another batch of dough on Saturday. On Sunday afternoon, the dough was ready for the oven. I know what you’re thinking; what kind of man spends all day in the kitchen when there are football games on? Well, I addressed that dilemma when we remodeled the kitchen:
Thanks to my new TV and my island on wheels, I can watch football and cook at the same time.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the quality of the pictures on this site has degraded over the past year. Specifically, the sharpness of the pictures is has been falling off (examples here). Our camera is about 5 years old, and it just doesn’t have the right stuff anymore. Every time I take pictures of a project I’m working on, I have to take them from several different anglers on several different camera settings, hoping that a few of them turn out sharp and in focus. There were many recipes and projects I didn’t blog about because the pictures came out too blurry. What good is a photoblog without good quality photos? This was the old camera:
It was a good little Kodak, and it’s features were innovative when it was made. Unfortunately, those days are long gone.
As I recently mentioned, I’ve been trying to get better at making bread. I haven’t been having much luck. I think the kneading is the problem, so I decided to remove that step from the equation. I found this “no-knead ciabatta bread” video/recipe at the Food Wishes blog and decided it was right for me:
It seemed simple enough, so I gave it a try.
Bruschetta is one of those recipes that many people really like to make, but few make really well. This past weekend, my wife and I had some great bruschetta at a restaurant in Hendersonville, NC. What made it great was the simplicity of the ingredients. It was just sliced baguette, crushed tomatoes, basil and soft mozzarella. It was nothing like the bruschetta you often get at restaurants. Those dishes are usually made with pizza sauce or canned “bruschetta spread.” This dish was made with freshly peeled and crushed tomatoes, and that made all the difference. I decided I wanted to recreate the dish at home, and the results came out great.
First, I prepped the tomatoes and peeled and halved a clove of garlic while my wife picked some fresh basil.
While my wife was sitting on the front porch, she saw something moving in the monkey grass. It turned out to be a praying mantis:
To conclude our Labor Day staycation, my wife decided to try out some recipes form the latest issue of Gourmet:
We made a chili-crusted pork tenderloin with roasted tomatillo salsa, a side dish of bulgur with herbs, and some provolone popovers.
As apart of our Labor Day “staycation,” we cleaned the house. While my wife worked to organize her sewing supplies, I was cleaning the workshop in the garage and fixing a few things around the house. I’ve been looking for something to do with the wood that I have leftover from the kitchen remodel, so we came up with a short list of things to do:
It just doesn’t feel like a weekend unless I paint something white.
