With the exception of Friday night, we had a warm and sunny weekend, so we tried to get outside and enjoy the beautiful weather as much as possible. I spent a ton of time hanging out on our deck – reading, taking care of our container garden and inhaling the wonderful aroma of the lilac bush down below. We cooked a slightly disappointing dinner on Friday night, but we made up for it with all of the great stuff that we made the rest of the weekend.
It’s been a while since we’ve made fresh pasta, and with fresh eggs from Matt’s coworker in our possession, we decided to make spaghetti carbonara. We had all of the ingredients on hand, or at least reasonable alternatives. Instead of pancetta we had black forest bacon and instead of pecorino romano and parmesan we just had parmesan. Not a huge leap, really, but enough to throw us off our game.
The only real issue was overcooked bacon, but with such a small list of ingredients it’s hard not to notice when one element is off. Having said that, when the ingredients are freshly made pasta, laid-the-day-before eggs, good cheese, and bacon, the sum of those parts can’t be too bad, but we’ve made better and we knew it. We washed away our first world problems with a glass of good red wine and reality TV.
My Saturday started with a homemade English muffin with ham, provolone, and over-easy egg, fruit, coffee, a crossword, and PBS cooking shows. I love Saturday mornings.
I’ve been searching for something to use as a plant stand for a long container of herbs, and when I ran by an antiques store in downtown St. Paul on Friday I spotted some wooden crates that I thought might work. I headed back there on Saturday afternoon to check them out only to discover that some people place a higher value on old beer crates than I do. I’m not much of an antiques shopper, but I suppose that my viewership of and visit to Antiques Roadshow should have given me a better idea of what to expect. I found one promising option, but I wasn’t quite ready to commit to it. I was, however, ready to commit to a few silver serving pieces that I polished and started using immediately. The serving spoon will likely see the most use of the pieces, but the dangerously sharp relish fork is my favorite.
I also couldn’t resist these brass champagne flutes. I tried to walk away from them, but reasonably priced ($10), gold, and sparkly are some of my favorite things (what’s up tanning mom?).
Fresh air is a necessity after spending time in antiques stores, so I took a tea and crossword break in the sun.
And then…homemade hoagies! I used the recipe for Italian bread in The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, cutting it in half and then forming two hoagies from the dough. Judging by the pictures in the book I figured that the recommended division of dough into four or five pieces would make smaller rolls than we were looking for, so I only made two rolls. In hindsight I should have stuck to the directions as the hoagies grew considerably during the final rise and the baking, and they ended up being larger and more dense that I had anticipated. I really hate to waste bread, but I ended up scooping out about half of the soft interior of my roll and probably discarded a good third of the remainder in the process of eating my sandwich.
In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, the hoagies were for a Philly cheese steak redemption. We made a few adjustments to our method from the other night, and the result was even more enjoyable, more flavorful sandwiches. This time we used a little butter in addition to oil for cooking each component (more flavor), we were much more liberal and thorough with the salting and peppering of the ingredients (more flavor), we sliced the meat into larger pieces (more lengthwise cutting instead of crosswise), and…we added green peppers (more flavor?).
This is where I apologize to Matt and admit that I exaggerated a tiny bit and was a little off on my characterization of green peppers. They’re not all that bad. They’re just not my thing. Round two of Philly cheese steaks? Kind of my thing.
On Sunday I tried a new yogurt waffle recipe, which I might prefer to the last batch of yogurt waffles that I made. They’re less sweet than the previous ones, making it less like eating dessert for breakfast. I would happily eat either one of them again, and I like being able to make what is virtually the same recipe in two ways – one that is less sweet and one that tastes like more of a treat.
After breakfast we took advantage of the warmth and sunshine, and we headed to the driving range. It was my first day at the range in almost two years, so I was a little rusty at the beginning, but thanks to a lot of coaching from Matt, I was feeling pretty good by the end. The cornfield in the distance is a little beyond my range, but there was another one just beyond the tree line to the right that I managed to hook a few balls into. It’s my specialty.
We wrapped up the weekend with more outside time – this time at our neighborhood Thai restaurant. My chili mint chicken was delicious, but the highlight of the meal was the peanut sauce that came with our spring rolls, which I hope to recreate based on the limited information provided by our waitress.
Hope you all had a great weekend!
