Oh Cake! + What We're Eating 11/8-11/14

I used to only make cakes out of a boxed mix. It was what my mother did, so I followed along. I remember hearing how it was tricky to get a good cake on one's own and that it just wasn't worth it. For years I believed this. In some ways it became my mantra. Everything but the cake, my friends would tease when I had them over for small dinners, big parties. Then I had a child and that child and I discovered Bake Off. It's fair to say that having a child and watching Bake Off have made me much braver than I ever thought I could be. Learning with her is so much fun. Even when we fall flat on our faces. The most recent week on Bake Off was Caramel. A while ago, Nuala managed to make caramel and candy some nuts to decorate a fruit tart. It was perfect. Our plan today was to make a Salted Caramel Chocolate Cake. Nuala wanted to practice her piping of icing and we wanted to work on our caramel. Thank goodness we weren't in the tent under the glare of Paul and Prue. Our caramel kept seizing and our icing kept splitting. After some long reflection, we figured it out, but by then we were worn out and just about out of ingredients. So we cobbled together the best we could. We ate it for dessert and you know what? It was totally fine. Not the best, but not the worst. Most definitely ugly, but tasty.

Does this qualify for a terrible beauty?

The Best Laid Schemes

It's Monday afternoon and I'm currently importing my fall courses into my spring course shells. I am in between grading and figured I best get ahead. Even though based on talking to everyone else I'm actually well behind on this. Oh well. It will get done. In the 250 seconds it seems to be taking each course to download, I am writing this. Tonight's dinner will be quick version of a slow cooker chili. 

Tuesday's dinner will be a chicken that I forgot to put in the crockpot yesterday. Oops. It will be fine today. Totally fine. 

Wednesday will be mushroom stroganoff because last week's mushroom bourginon made me think about it. One time during lockdown proper Watts ordered a stroganoff from a restaurant doing take out. It was disgusting. I still think about that. It almost makes me afraid to make mine, but then I remember how good mine always tastes so I shake it off. This isn't me boasting about my cooking by the way. It's a truth universally acknowledged that a good stroganoff will change your life. Or at least make it almost impossible to stop eating (which eventually will change your life, I suppose). 

Thursday will be a shakshuka because I haven't made one in ages. 

Friday, Saturday & Sunday I will be all alone because Watts will be leaving for Portugal and Nuala will be at her dad's so I'll probably fix myself a proper sad girl dinner of a jacket potato. I say sad girl because I'll be sad that they are all gone, but there's nothing sad about a jacket potato. Absolutely nothing. In fact, the whole weekend will pass in such a fashion. My goal is to grade papers and clean out a closet and start pre-baking for Thanksgiving. On Saturday I may eat the eggplant parm that's in the freezer. On Sunday I might do a quesadilla. The beautiful thing about eating alone is I can be weird and eat all the food combos the too sophisticated for her own good part of my brain tells me to avoid on a regular basis.  

I'll be back soon to tell you how these best laid schemes Gang Aft Agley....

Monday's chili was perfect. That's going into a regular winter cooking rotation and I'll probably make it with impossible meat next time so we can have it as a full family dinner. 

It's Tuesday morning and I didn't put the chicken in the crockpot so I had to figure out something else to do with that bad boy. Before I ever moved down south, I used to make something I called Morroccan Chicken quite a bit. It was a rip from a recipe in The Silver Palate Cookbook. I would pour a bag of frozen lima beans in the bottom of a roasting pan and then rub a whole chicken with butter, olive oil, cumin, cinnamon, salt and pepper. Plus lemon juice, onions, garlic and black olives. Anytime I made it, people loved it. They especially loved the lima beans. Roasting a chicken on a week night can be a little tricky, but I popped it in when I got home, left it roasting when I made a school pickup run and it has just enough time to sit and rest a bit before Watts came home. The result? Apparently, it was a hit.

Wednesday was indeed the mushroom stroganoff which is most definitely a house favorite. Then on Thursday I looked in the fridge at all the leftovers and considering we had kind of an all over the place schedule and decided that we needed to do some clearing out. Success. On Friday night it turned out I wasn't alone. I picked Nuala up from school and we had some leftover soup from the freezer and I roasted a spaghetti squash that has been sitting with the potatoes for a very long time. On Saturday I did a repeat of the wee leftovers and right now on this beautiful Sunday afternoon I'm making these loaded fries. I didn't really have all the right ingredients, but I had things that would substitute. I already know I'm going to make them again mostly because I have almost eaten all of the toppings before the potatoes are even roasted. 

PIES! I decided to get a jump on Thanksgiving baking and on Saturday I made a pumpkin (from the Libby can), two chocolate pecan pies inspired by an Emeril recipe and this gorgeous looking cranberry curd tart only mine wasn't quite as gorgeous as the picture. However, it was ridiculously tasty. The tart was mostly a taste test and have eaten and shared most of it already. The other pies will freeze until they're called up for duty. I know frozen pies aren't preferred, but considering that I had time which I won't have later in the week it was a necessity. 

So good at the picture taking

Must fix the crust and make it smooth. Remember!