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Mama-Made Meals and New Guest Bloggers - By Z

Cinnamon buns
I realize it’s been awhile since I’ve last posted, but rest assured that I have good things in the works for you, my dear readers. Both of you are in for a treat when we start getting dispatches from our new guest bloggers. If all works out, we will have an English teacher (and my old roommate) writing about his adventures growing a rooftop garden in Korea, an astrophysicist telling us about his culinary experiments in Minnesota (and if you happen to live in the Twin Cities area or just really love cheeseburgers, check out his blog), and a culinary student in London who is preparing to start at Le Cordon Bleu. So, once I manage to tweak the code on the site so that the guest posts fit in seamlessly, we’ll be ready to go. Stay tuned.

Now, I know what you’re thinking… “That’s all well and good, but I don’t want promises of food in the future. I want food now.” And, while I haven’t been in the kitchen as much of late, I have had some excellent meals. Among my favorite (if not my very favorite) was a home-cooked meal by my good friend Elliotte’s mother.

She made pot roast with* au jus (and definitely hit none of the snags that I did), creamy mashed potatoes, sweet and savory green beans (cooked with almonds and brown sugar), a green salad, and dinner rolls from scratch. Then, when I was too stuffed to move, let alone eat more, she brought out strawberry shortcake with homemade whipped cream. Then, she even baked cinnamon rolls for me to take home (seen above).

God bless southern mothers.

*Edit: Asad (the cheeseburger scientist) pointed out that "with au jus" is redundant.
 Au jus = "with [its own] juice." Thanks, Jeffrey Steinga... I mean, Asad.
Covering the pot roast with au jus

Covering the pot roast with jus

Note that we didn’t make a gravy. Elliotte prefers au jus to gravy and I didn’t mind at all because the pot roast was so fall-apart tender and juicy that it didn’t need any additional liquid.

I wish I had taken a better picture of the pot roast, but every time I tried to do so I just ended up picking at it and eating it and then not wanting to get my camera all greasy. I even took home leftovers, intending on taking a nice picture with them, but alas, I ate them before even warming them up, let alone setting them up nicely to take a picture.

Green beans, mashed potatoes, pot roast, salad, and dinner rolls

Green beans, mashed potatoes, salad, pot roast, and way in the back, homemade dinner rolls

These green beans are excellent and how can they not be with copious amounts of butter and brown sugar?

Oh, I also forgot to add… Elliotte’s mom bought her a stand mixer (yes, I am super jealous), so that means I get her hand-me-down hand mixer. Now I can start baking!

K, I probably won’t, but it’s nice to have the option.

Pinot Noir and Strawberry Shortcake

Pinot Noir and Strawberry Shortcake

If I do start baking, you can be damned sure I’m going to ask for the recipe for this shortcake. I was near bursting when she brought this out, but the smell alone convinced me that death by shortcake was completely acceptable. This was, without a doubt, the best shortcake I’ve eaten in my life. Light and fluffy with the perfect amount of sweetness to complement the strawberries without overwhelming them. Oh, and the mountain of whipped cream on top was its own brand of light-fluffy-strawberry-complementing-deliciousness.

On an unrelated note, when I was younger, I used to enjoy calling strawberries bawstrerries.

Actually, I still do.

Shipping Seeds

Shipping seeds to Korea

I sent Harold (the English teacher in Korea/my former roommate) some seeds to round out his rooftop garden and was a bit worried about them getting stopped by customs. You live in California long enough, you assume everywhere is as draconian about agriculture as it is here. Click on the picture to zoom in on our conversation. The thing that Harold was excited about is being a guest blogger.

I’m excited too Harold. I’m excited too.

Edit (5/1/2010):  Harold has started growing the seeds.


2 Comments

  1. asad wrote:

    Unlike Jeffrey Steingarten, I know how to properly hold a spoon.

    Monday, February 22, 2010 at 3:24 pm | Permalink
  2. Anni wrote:

    Mmm… We gotta make tamales soon, before it gets too hot.

    Saturday, May 1, 2010 at 8:16 pm | Permalink

5 Trackbacks/Pingbacks

  1. Food, By Z › Liquid Nitrogen & You! on Monday, March 8, 2010 at 1:11 pm

    [...] I’m Asad. You may remember me from such comments as “Unlike Jeffrey Steingarten, I know how to hold a spoon” and “This looks…NOM” as well as from Z’s link to my own blog about [...]

  2. Food, By Z › Surf and Turf and Thirst on Monday, March 15, 2010 at 10:19 am

    [...] growing up. The green beans and the mashed potatoes were made by Elliotte who did justice to her mom’s recipes. She also made the brownie and chocolate chip cookie dough dessert, but that’s another post. [...]

  3. Food, By Z › A photographic photosynthetic update on Saturday, May 1, 2010 at 6:11 pm

    [...] may notice some of them are different. That’s because I started up some tomatoes and peppers from seed courtesy of Z. I should thank him by sending him the fruits of my labor by mail. And if they’re all rotten [...]

  4. Food, By Z › Cheezburger…om nom nom. on Monday, May 24, 2010 at 10:15 pm

    [...] Z was just sitting on his thum…er, too busy to put it up. However, as you may know from a previous post, I like cheeseburgers. In fact, I like cheeseburgers so much I have a blog about them. Given my [...]

  5. [...] in bacon, but I thought of a wonderful meal I had at Gitane, hosted by the same person who cooked me a meal during her visit to San Francisco. It was quite a while ago and I had a few glasses of wine, so [...]

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