A lot of cooking last week led to a lot of leftovers taking up space in the fridge, so there weren’t many big cooking events at our house this weekend. It’s kind of nice every once in a while to have a few days off from kitchen messes and subsequent cleanup, but eventually the desire to roll out pastry dough outweighs the desire to have a clean countertop. Less time in the kitchen meant more time for reading a strange book that I cannot wait to be done with, watching (in the most inactive way possible) never-ending hockey playoffs and golf tournaments, going to Target three days in a row (it’s a step toward getting my Minnesota driver’s license, which I may or may not have just done after living here for almost five years…) and working through a stack of food magazines to decide what to cook next.
On one of those trips to Target I bought ice cream cones – sugar cones for Matt and baby cones for me. The baby cones are both hilarious and adorable, and I can’t look at them without laughing. They’re about an inch tall, one serving is three cones, and three cones add up to a whopping fifteen calories. Look out! We filled our cones with vanilla ice cream and the best chocolate sauce in the world, which I made sure to stock up on during my recent trip to Iowa. Baby ice cream cones and Dateline make for an incredible Friday night.
I wasn’t very motivated to go running on Saturday morning, but I knew that I had to get out before breakfast to pick up two copies of The Onion so we could have our weekly race to finish the crossword. In order to get myself out the door I stuck a twenty in my pocket and spent my run thinking of the loaf of cinnamon swirl bread that I would pick up at Great Harvest before coming home. I proceeded to cancel out the calories burned on my run with the bread, some black forest bacon and garlic and herb spiced sunny eggs. Then I finished the crossword well before my competitor – booyah!
On Saturday night we headed to the suburbs to see The Avengers, which was entertaining even for someone who doesn’t know who the Avengers are and was unaware of the movie’s existence until Friday night. This was our conversation on the way to the theater:
Matt: (after explaining the movie’s premise) Have you seen any of the movies leading up to it other than Captain America?
Me: (with a confused look and about to say that I haven’t seen Captain America) …
Matt: (reading my mind) Yes, you have seen Captain America. We saw it together. Remember?
Me: Oh, I get Captain America and Captain Planet confused.
No wonder my dad was so surprised when I told him that I’d gone to the movie.
After a crazy, crazy storm during the night on Saturday, Sunday morning was beautiful. I made use of our new deck furniture and enjoyed breakfast outside.
You never know what will end up in the cart on the rare occasion that Matt joins me while shopping. Last time we ended up with Nacho Cheese Doritos (his) and Cheetos (hers), and this time we came home with a loaf of sandwich bread, braunschweiger, and Miracle Whip (all his). I took advantage of the bread and made a giardiniera hummus, snow pea and smoked gouda sandwich for a late lunch on Sunday, and Matt made a braunschweiger and Miracle Whip sandwich. To each his own.
By Sunday afternoon I was ready to spend some time in the kitchen, and I decided to make empanadas with the chorizo that we failed to make use of on Cinco de Mayo. I used a Tyler Florence recipe for potato and chorizo empanadas, leaving out the olives and raisins, which I forgot to buy.
They were great! A little painstaking to make, or really just to fill, but worth the effort. I loved the addition of masa to the pastry dough, both for the texture and the flavor. These were a huge step up from the soy chorizo and puff pastry empanadas that I used to make.
Along with the empanadas I made a big salad with romaine, radishes, strawberries, pickled red onions, avocado, feta, and a balsamic vinaigrette. While the salad and empanadas didn’t really go hand in hand flavor-wise, they were both good enough on their own that choosing a favorite was impossible. The weekend wouldn’t have been complete without another baby ice cream cone and a few HBO shows.
