Ready to road trip again

Huevos rancheros. Over easy for me, scrambled for NS.

Well. It’s been a busy Sunday. I have done laundry, clogged up and unclogged a sink drain, cooked enough to feed my starving young’uns while I’m gone for a week, and packed.

NS’s birthday is Tuesday, while I’m in Chicago, whence I am headed at oh-early-thirty tomorrow. Where I will go to the American Girl store and purchase my granddaughter her first American Girl doll, as well as to the Levis store to purchase her — well, you know. And where I will eat at Bistro 110, because I don’t care how out of style it is, I love it. And will have a drink at the Signature Lounge. And will eat breakfast at the Pancake House. And have a cocktail at the Violet Hour.

I love Chicago. More specifically, I love to just eat my way through it.

Then I’m off to Atlanta, where the dining is still decent, though not nearly what it ought to be in America’s what, fifth largest metroplex? A preponderance of chains. If I can recall where I ate in December, we’ll go back there; it was good.

And then I’ll be home Saturday, and home for a week, until I head back out to go see Child B and Stunningly Gorgeous And Intelligent Granddaughter. And THEN I’m home until the middle of June, so I can catch my breath.

Meanwhile, we have cooked. We have cooked huevos rancheros for breakfast, and brisket and sauteed sesame snow peas and roasted potatos for dinner, and a chocolate pound cake birthday cake in between. It has been a profitable, if tiring, day.

Yum. Good dinner. I'm still stuffed.

This brisket, I might note, is one of the better briskets I have ever cooked. I browned it, sliced and caramelized three onions and four cloves of garlic, added some tomato paste, some mustard, some brown sugar, a bottle of Guinness, four or five fresh sage leaves and two cups of beef broth. Put the brisket back in, clapped on the lid, and into a 325 oven he went for some 3 1/2 hours (he was about a 3-pound brisket). He could have been pulled earlier; he was so tender he was difficult to slice. I put the slices in a baking dish, pureed the gravy with my handy-dandy immersion blender, and poured that over it.

Yep. Sweet Baby Jesus brisket, that is.

I missed naptime

And I’m tired and my feet hurt. But we had a wonderful visit to Garvan Woodland Gardens, after a good breakfast at the English Muffin, a stop by the library, a trip to Kroger because I forgot red cabbage yesterday, and coming back home to put a roast in the oven. That’s how you deal with heat in the house for braising; leave.

And come home to this:

I am just pretty anxious to tear into this.

Two (or more) meals in one

Or at least, on one grill.

I’m cooking for tonight, and for tomorrow, and for most likely several tomorrows after that.

Pork tenderloin for the lake. Burgers left over after the thundering herd got through.

On the grill (or already off the grill): burgers, pork tenderloin, barbecued bologna (which I got sidetracked and burnt, but that’s OK because I was really cooking it just to get it out of the fridge. And two or three pieces, which are all I want, are salvageable. I like it just before burnt.

On the stove are squash and onions, and purple hulled peas. I’m going to slice the kernels off the left-over corn on the cob from last weekend, mix it with some black beans, roasted red peppers if I have any left, and if not I may saute the half one I do have left, and douse it with a lime viniagrette with a tad of cumin and some pico de gallo seasoning.