Let there be peace
December 24, 2018

And leftovers.
It was a fine Christmas dinner at Chez Brockwell. There was about five times more to eat than we needed or wanted, there was much joy, fun and chaos as gifts were opened. There were tons of laughs, and a tear or two.
In other words, it was just about a perfect Christmas, never mind it was a couple of days early.
I went to bed last night with the kitchen semi-clean, and with the avowed intention of doing no more than was needful to sustain life today. I have fulfilled that. I have put about six dishes into the mostly-full dishwasher, and run it (I have not emptied it, thankyouverymuch), and I have fixed potato skins for Child A, and I have eaten copious amounts of Christmas leftovers and am working on my second glass of good Scotch.
Read the rest of this entry »Baskets, check. Now on to dinner
December 21, 2018

Whoo, Lawd. Treat baskets are done, three of them delivered, two more getting picked up tonight, and a few extra small food gifts on hand for for whoever may show up.
Now, I’ve got to contemplate the logistics of cooking Christmas dinner while finishing housecleaning, tomorrow.
Read the rest of this entry »A Thanksgivin’ dinner that couldn’t be beat
November 22, 2018

Yes, it’s a repetitious headline. It’s a repetitious holiday. Comes around every year, fourth Thursday in November.
Given my fondness for excess, it is little wonder Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I love the cooking, the eating (not so much the putting up and cleaning up), the traditional dishes. Of which I always make too much.
We had all the classics: Turkey, dressing, gravy, sweet potato casserole, cranberry salad, deviled eggs, Brussels sprouts, broccoli salad, grape salad, homemade rolls. Had dessert, too — two kinds of pie which no one ate. Have a vat of everything left, except for what I sent home with Child C.
Read the rest of this entry »Thankful for red beans and rice, and Thanksgiving prep!
November 20, 2018

Smells all Cajun up in here.
Child B and her fam are coming tonight for a small pre-Thanksgiving family get-together, and since I didn’t figure she wanted turkey and dressing two days in one week, I asked her if she wanted red beans and rice.
“YES!” was her reply.
You know how you have that one dish that you can call a kid, tell them the name of the dish, a date and a time, and they’re there? That’s hers. For Child A, it’s zucchini fritters. Child C is pretty flexible. SIL 1 goes for mac and cheese, while for SIL 2, it’s either country fried steak or pot roast.
Read the rest of this entry »Back in the kitchen, after a non-cooking week
March 11, 2018

AGCs and hospitals will play hell with your cooking. There were no exceptional meals, though he thought the grilled cheese and fries were just fine.
We are cooking today. We had not cooked much at all this week, being that we were in Little Rock with AGC2, who had surgery on his ear to, we hope, correct the recurring infections. Came home Thursday, was so exhausted I did little but sit around Friday, had soup kitchen Saturday, and sprang forward today, which pretty much did me in for going to church. Plus, it’s a rainy, yucky day. Not a good excuse for skipping church, I know, but it’s the one I’m using.
In any event, I got up in a notion to cook. So far I have put on a batch of yogurt; made a quiche with tasso ham and grated gruyere; have a loaf of date nut bread in the oven, and just put a fig-blueberry crisp in the oven.
That’s a balanced meal, right?
I wanted to put smoked duck in my quiche, but I’m damned if I can find the duck I smoked and stuck in the freezer. I did clean out a few things from the freezer that were old enough to vote, not to mention have freezer burn on them. The quiche looks lovely; I’m waiting for it to cool down enough to be ready to eat.
Look out, shrimps!
March 1, 2018
The Keyboard clan is going to descend on the beach this summer. Yes, your intrepid bloggess herownself, along with children A, B and C, sons-in-law 1 and 3, and AGCs 1, 2 and 3 are all going to pack up and go to the Redneck Riviera in July!
No shrimp within 100 miles of Fort Morgan, Alabama is safe. Nor is any slab of grouper. I reserved the house yesterday, and I swear, I couldn’t go to sleep last night for thinking about what I needed to take in the way of spices and cooking equipment. By the time we’re ready to leave, I’ll have a box of kitchen supplies and equipment packed, an ice chest full of food, and and extensive grocery list to purchase once we get there. I may even make up and freeze some cinnamon rolls for breakfasts. I will have to have pancake mix, as the littles love “panna-cakes” for breakfast. We can have sandwiches and salads for lunches, and lots and lots of seafood for dinner.
Now. Back to the kitchen
July 23, 2017
It’s sure quiet in my house this morning.
For the first time in more than a week, I have no children here. Well, I do, but they’re of the grown variety, and thus are sleeping soundly. All the campers from Camp KayKay have gone home, or in any event to other grandparents’ homes. There are no toys in my living room floor.
It’s kinda lonesome.
But I have a lot to do today — two work projects which didn’t get done last week, because I was chasing tiny tornadoes hither and yon, plus figs that need to be washed, jam made from them, and canned, purple hulled peas (a half-bushel of them) that need to be shelled and stashed in the freezer. The half-bushel of peaches can wait until a little later in the week, which is also filled with lots of things I need to do, which I hope will involve significant cooking.
Because there sure wasn’t any last week.
The above photo is one of the three times my stove was turned on last week. The other two were to boil eggs for AGC3, and to make a grilled cheese sandwich for AGC1. I did make potato skins one night after everyone had gone to bed and it occured to me I’d forgotten to eat. And while there was plenty of fast/junk food, there were also two good meals out, both Mexican in nature, at Colorado Grill in Hot Springs and at the old faithful Ark-Mex standard, Pancho’s, in West Memphis.