(no subject)

Today I had a birthday party in the park! Yay. I want to go back to the park for kite-flying later, possibly after the weather has started to warm up.

I also went to the farmer's market. My spoils: two pies (one blueberry, one peach-raspberry), a beef summer sausage (very tasty; not as bland-salty as a lot of summer sausages), a jug of apple cider (made from Honeycrisp apples, SO tasty), a bunch of rainbow chard (the market was full of winter greens), a half pound of organic cranberry beans, a bag of mixed-varietal potatoes, a kind of Turkish flatbread called khoul (tastes a bit like croissant), a slice of pecan fudge, and a leg of goat.

The beef summer sausage and the pies were for the party. The Honeycrisp cider is going with us as a host gift for Thanksgiving. The rest... is dinner the next few days. :D (I'd've gotten more, except we'll be traveling a lot shortly, and I don't want to get veg and let them rot.)

The leg of goat is currently marinating in wine. I'm going to roast it for a late dinner and serve it with the khoul and a tomato-cucumber salad and a sauce made of minced mint, garlic and sour cream on the side. We'll have whatever leftovers there are either as soup or pot pie, depending on how much there is. I'll keep you up on what goat is like, for those of you, like me, who've never had it. (It's apparently super-lean, which means I'm going to have to be careful not to overcook it, but which also speaks well for it in general. I love my oven-safe thermometer that tells me when the meat is getting close to 'done'....)

I'm not sure what I want to do with the chard. Possibly a simple garlicky sautee -- or a main dish of rice and cheese wrapped in chard leaves that I think I saw on The Minimalist.

(no subject)

Despite the holiday-and-birthday timing, this is emphatically not a please-buy-me-things wish list. It's a mental note of the kitchen implements that I have discovered that I needed more than twice, and that I therefore ought to buy when I've saved up enough for them. (However, if you have one of these clattering around that you actually do not use and that could use a good home, I won't say no to helping you rehome it.)

* A Thermapen instant read thermometer. (I have a lovely probe thermometer of the type that goes into the oven with your item of food and lets you know when it reaches a particular temperature, but a faster, insertion-check thermometer would also be really helpful.)
* A cast-iron dutch oven, with or without ceramic coating but oven-safe to 500F and stove-safe also. (Mostly for bread bakery, actually.)
* A new garlic press. (I broke the last one. Whoops. It did give almost four years loyal service, though.)
* An immersion blender/stick blender. (I used to have one, but I don't know where it went. I've been making my standard blender serve the purpose, but immersion blenders are handier for soups.)
* Baking pans: cake pan, pie pan, 9x12-inch baking pan. (I know that I used to have these, but the Housemates of Doom believed that all of the baking pans were theirs, and I really did not care to fight over what's effectively a $10 purchase.)
* A round casserole dish.
* A mandoline. (The slicing implement, not the instrument.)
* A curved-sided saucier. (Not a straight- or angle-sided frying-pan deal, I have several of those, but a pan with deeper, rounded sides.)
* Another pitcher, so that we can have iced tea and juice in the fridge at the same time.
* A gravy separator. (Little cup thingy that has the spout at the bottom, not the top, so you can pour a sauce or broth into it, let it settle, and then pour off the broth/sauce/whatever and leave the fat, floating on top, behind.)
* A new beaker measuring cup. (Pav got me one of these, and it, too, endured several years of hard service before breaking. Basically, it's a measuring cup with a conical shape, like a beaker, that makes it easier to measure small quantities accurately while still being able to measure large quantities.)
* An Alton Brown-esque flip-top salt dispenser. (I like having kosher salt available on the counter in an open container, because it's easy to pick up and sprinkle. But my best solution -- a small bowl left out, since salt doesn't exactly go bad -- has fallen prey to a fault: the kitties think it's fun to spill everywhere.)

Someday, I will also buy myself a stand mixer and a proper food processor (I have a cute little food processor, mostly for grinding nuts or liquefying certain kinds of sauces), but right now I can do everything I need from those by hand. Including make mayonnaise, which, for the record, is actually not all that hard with a whisk and some patience. (And oh my god it tastes better than the jarred stuff.) But if I ever get into serious cake making, or meringues, or whatever, I will want one....

I'm sorry, my journal is nothing but food and cooking lately.