Pondering Food

I took my daughter out to lunch one weekend at Grand Lux Cafe and we ordered the Pot Roast Cheese Fries. I was thinking that it sounded similar to poutine, something that we quite enjoyed over the summer, and I figured that she would like it. The pot roast on top of the fries was a bit oversalted to me but it made me think that I hadn't made pot roast in a really long time. I decided to browse online and found a Food Network recipe that became the starting point for our dinner last night. The Pot Roast Cheese Fries from Grand Lux Cafe I bought some beef chuck roast at the supermarket, opting for one of the smaller family packs that didn't have too much fat (but I also didn't want anything incredibly lean). I wanted each roast to be in the three-pound region and I ended up with two that were just slightly less. Buying something huge will take forever on my slow cooker and I don't really like eating the same dish for days in a row so they were perfect. ...

Banana Bread is one of those things that we make all the time. Everyone in the house loves it, especially my four year old. She can be terribly picky but she never turns down homemade banana bread. Ironically, it's one of those things that you're just trying to use up leftovers (too ripe bananas, in this case) but it seems everyone prefers the reinvention to the fruit. I always buy bananas but nobody eats them! So we always have enough to make banana bread. I start with some seriously overripe bananas. For the full recipe, which will yield a loaf and 24 mini muffins, I like to use 4-5 bananas. I like it better with more bananas than less, but the recipe works even if you only use 4. They've got to be so ripe that you can mash them with little effort using a fork. If the bananas are just ripe enough to eat, they're not ripe enough for banana bread. And trust me, using bananas that aren't very ripe can be disastrous. They will not taste good. At all . If you ...

Now that school has resumed, we've gotten back into something of a schedule as far as our food shopping goes. And I'm not just talking about when we go to the supermarket, but even what we buy. The kids and I troop over to Wegmans on Thursday after school where I order a large cheese pizza for us to eat and we buy a french baguette and rotisserie chicken to bring home, along with various produce, milk, eggs etc. My husband and daughter frequently pack a lunch and we must never be without bread, cheese, some kind of meat to put in the sandwiches, lettuce, tomato and cucumber. But if you think about it, if you change up the proportions a little, what you've got are also ingredients for a simple salad. Have a great dressing on hand and make your own croutons. Ever since I started doing it, I've never bought pre-made croutons at the store ever again. I start with the leftovers of an old french baguette, sliced into cubes. I adjust the amount of butter and garlic sa...

This was a simple weeknight dinner that I made when I was hankering for some cajun chicken pasta but didn't have any chicken. Shrimp is an easy substitute that thaws a lot faster. I would cook it differently though. A go-to for me, when preparing shrimp to be eaten with pasta, is a quick garlic butter concoction that goes on top of a separate pasta dish. For this meal, ordinarily, I would have gone with penne pasta but I didn't have any. Rotini is actually easier for the kids to eat so I went with that. I start by boiling a pot of water and cooking the pasta in it. Most would advise you to serve the pasta al dente but my family generally prefers it cooked a little softer and it's easier for the kids to eat that too. I pretty much always use Barilla because I find it to be one that holds up well despite being boiled an extra minute or so. Some brands I've seen become ultra-starchy and terrible when overcooked but Barilla pasta always turns out ok. I fully-cook t...