Tonight for dinner I unexpectedly made pulled pork sandwiches. Kira had her school's board meeting scheduled for tonight and they usually provide dinner, but after the flu caused her to close some classrooms on Monday they decided to make this a Zoom Board Meeting. Which meant that Kira would be home for dinner. Luckily we figured it out in time. I had a pork shoulder in the freezer and Kira stopped at the supermarket yesterday and got everything else I would need to make pulled pork: an onion and some hamburger buns…

I try to be responsible in how I consume my digital content, but one of the conveniences I haven’t been able to give up is Spotify. I’ve put myself in a position where I no longer own m…

Kira had to stay late at school for an event so I was on my own for dinner again. We had some dried morels in our pantry so I decided to make a morel omelet à la Jacques Pépin. I don't usually dirty two skillets and three plates to make dinner for just myself, but after reconstituting the morels there was just enough for one omelet so it seemed like it was meant to be.

Hell's Kitchen has served a full menu from breakfast through dinner the entire time I've been going there, but they started off as a breakfast and brunch place and many of their strongest recipes reflect that. In the summer of 2017 I was working in downtown Minneapolis and for the last week of my time at that office I decided to eat breakfast every morning at Hell's Kitchen.

We ate dinner out today so I decided to break out a damn good recipe for lunch: Parmesan-Crusted Grilled Cheese. It's like a regular grilled cheese, but you butter the outside of the bread and press grated parmesan into the bread before you fry it in more butter. Also more and fancier cheeses. For a while after learning this recipe I always pulled out some parmesan when making grilled cheese, but it does take a little extra work and you need to have some soft butter and sturdy bread (like sour dough).

which for the last several years has meant me making eggs for both of us—sunny side up, with toast. I started making fried eggs for myself on mornings when I was doing training runs for the Big Sur Marathon1. I couldn't eat much before a long run, but I wanted some protein, and I got tired of eating Clif Bars.

I enjoyed the Special Occassion Goulash I made yesterday, but I think my goulash recipe is better. It's a bold statement that I feel like I can make because I started cooking fifteen years ago and I feel like adding cream and cheese is something that Mitch would appreciate. Sometime last year I ended up with about a pound of left over roast beef from the deli that needed to be used up before it spoiled.

In the last year I have been working on perfecting a pretty good goulash recipe. At least it is a dish I call goulash, because homemade hamburger helper doesn't sound as fancy. My version of goulash is more creamy and less tomatoey than a typical Hungarian goulash, but it does have a lot of paprika. So I was exctied to remake Mitch's Special Occaision goulash which I haven't…

We have BLT's every now and again for dinner, but I don't usually pull out all the stops to make them Hellishly Good. The instructions for a BLT are less a recipe so much as an order of assembly, but Mitch include helpful hints like "fry the bread in bacon grease instead of toasting it." Mitch is a big fan of…

After all of my angst about which cookbook to blog about in December I decided to end the year the way I had planned - with some Damn Good Food. It was the right decision. Once I committed to revisiting these damn good recipes it took me about ten minutes to plan out a week of meals. I already know this cookbook is a great cookbook, and I spent a year blogging about it, so rather than give an outline of the book as my first post let's just get into the cooking.

All three holiday sweaters can be purchased at Microsoft’s company store.

It's impossible not to love someone who makes toast for you." - Nigel Slater This is the quote that start's Mark Pupo's cookbook/memoir Sundays. A few of the recipes I made included toast, but because I swapped out our usual Sunday morning ritual of eggs and toast we probably ate less toast last month than we normally do. We did have some very nice breakfasts though and I am inspired to make some more interesting Sunday breakfast in the future.

Eggs Benedict #28: Thanksgiving Benedict As Kira and I were returning from another evening out with Melanie and Eric on Friday1 we had a conversation about how many eggs we had in our fridge. Eggs would be the limiting factor to determine if a grocery trip was necessary before Sunday. Quickly and confidently I said, "We have 13 eggs." I knew we had 13 eggs because I had put back an egg carton with a single egg in it, on top of another egg carton of a dozen eggs.

I'm trying to decide what cookbook I should pick for December. I do have some thoughts about it, but there is a good chance I will pick my December cookbook the same way I picked the last few times - wake up on the first of the month and make a snap decision. But here are some things I'm thinking over:

Tonight for dinner I made Red Beans and Rice. I hadn't planned to blog about this dish because it wasn't related to any of the cookbooks, but then I realized the only reason we had this meal tonight was because of the cookbook-a-month project. The blog has heavily influenced what meals we eat and what things we have in our pantry.

I've kept my streak on Strava of doing at least one activity each week for the last 32 weeks. I’ve been running 73 times this year with a total distance of 482 km. Eleven of these runs and 44 kms were in October. I've been doing shorter runs trying to work on a plan that increases my pace. Just by paying attention to how fast I am running I've managed to cut my pace from about 12:30 - 13:00 minute mile pace down to 10:30 - 11:00 minutes per mile.