gourmet

Last week was a surprising challenge due to the fact that I had a slight relapse and wasn't feeling up to playing around in the kitchen as much as I had desired. Paul had pity on me more than one night by eating bagels with carrot sticks or other veggies a couple nights and taking me out to eat one night. That being said, I have a much fancier menu planned this week just to pay him back for my slacking week and to allow my creativity to be uncanned for a while.

In case you ever think I'm some kind of superwoman, think again. Looking around my disaster of a house and remembering the ironing board upstairs stacked with clothes makes me feel significantly like an unorganized maniac. However, I thank my friend, Lisa, for an amazing and encouraging pep-talk on Friday that really made my weekend. Also, Nora had her first play-date (er, rather, Mommy had her first play-date) with a lady and her daughter that live just one street away. Splashing in the kiddie pool and sitting in the sun of a glorious Spring afternoon also revived the tired, old mommy.

I'm sorry to say this is not the best photograph I can take. Moreover, I'm sorry to say I didn't think about taking a picture of it when we first made it. It was a huge pile of covered fruit in the middle of a glass 9 x 13 pan, and I wondered if it would all stay in there. But it did, and it was magnificent.

This dessert followed gumbo for a large family gathering just after Christmas. My mom and I used flash frozen cranberries (which I was slightly nervous about at first) and the flash frozen apples I had laboriously peeled and cut myself back in October. The great thing was how the recipe focused on the natural flavors of the fruit and had exceptionally less sugar than you would expect from a dessert of this nature. I suppose it made a difference that we used my mom's pie crust recipe--that is generally more salty--instead of the one in the magazine. We were already making the crust for another project and just decided to keep on with the same recipe for the crumble. We doubled the recipe to fit the 9 x 13 pan and ate on it two more times after the big meal.

I got my November Gourmet Magazine this week. The fact that I found this edition meeting my vegetarian creativity needs head-on makes the receipt of this last issue of the famed 60-year-old magazine more distressing.

For the first time, I came across a vegan dish-Vegan Chocolate Cheesecake. There's even a complete menu for a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner. I'm intrigued by the carrot and beet soup that is made with water instead of chicken stock "so it's a delicious alternative to your vegetarian guests." And totally unrelated to Thanksgiving is the tempting pizza topped with yellow potatoes, yellow onions, and rosemary.

The November Gourmet will find itself being used often over the holidays and likely for many winters to follow. Might I suggest either researching some of the recipes on Gourmet.com or actually acquiring a copy of the mag at the newsstand? Keep in mind not all the recipes in the magazine are available online, and I am not sure I've seen all online recipes in the magazine. Do your research now as the website may not be available someday.

So long, Gourmet. What a fabulous finale!

It's a good thing Paul's folks got us this baby book and my parents got us another copy of my favorite book as a child because our Baby Rabbit won't get to read Gourmet magazine. Conde Nast announced today that Gourmet magazine will cease publication at the end of the year. If you've been collecting these magazines any time since its inception in 1940, you'd better hold onto them. There won't be anything else like it.

I've enjoyed my subscription to Gourmet this year and will seriously miss it next year. I understand where some people come from when they complain that the ingredients for the foods are not always readily available or that the meals take too long to prepare. But I do feel that more and more people are taking pride in their own cooking and are recognizing that a great meal can come out of their own kitchen at a cheaper price than restaurants can offer.

I think I'd rather start with the positives about this dining experience. . .the soy sauce packets were pre-marked for easy removal of a corner. And as we all know, soy sauce can be very messy. The cut to help the corner tear smoothly eliminated the mess. The spring rolls, were nice and hot, a hint of ginger flavor (which today did nothing for the not-just-morning-morning-sickness) and appeared to be without mushrooms, which always makes the two of us happy.

Now, for the not-so-nice part: The mixed vegetables in the upper left part of the photograph were all brown--the onions, the broccoli, the zucchini--not very appetizing for even Paul. The vegetarian options were fried rice with eggs, chow mein (very similar to lo mein), the spring rolls, and a hot and sour soup with tofu. I ordered the chow mein and spring rolls, and the longer Paul stood at the counter, the more he decided we'd limit our losses by just sharing my plate. Turns out, that was a really good idea. The lo mein was stone cold. I mean fresh-out-of-the-fridge cold. It had celery, onions, and bok choy or cabbage (too small a serving of which for me to tell) and filled only half of the styrofoam plate and it still cost us $5 with tax. It's safe to say that the motto of "Gourmet Chinese Food" is a great stretch for the imagination. Mine just couldn't get there.

Gourmet Magazine's April 2009 edition had a tempting recipe for asparagus and tortellini in a cream sauce and topped with a generous serving of Parmesan Reggiano. I thought having some of my mom's cream that needed to be used up gave me a perfect excuse to buy the ingredients for the dish. (Tortellini is rarely in our house just because we like dried pasta best.)

The sauce was a success. It was thin because I didn't have the corn starch to thicken it, but the flavor was fantastic. My father and Paul loved the crushed red pepper the recipe called for. I also thought the recipe was easily prepared in the 10 minute window the magazine said it would take. The only question I had was about the purpose of the lemon. I did not notice any effect it had on the sauce.

This recipe is a perfect example of the additional ease of being a vegetarian. The first step in the recipe is to cook down chicken stock. However, when making your own (vegetarian) chicken-flavored broth, there's no need to cook down the liquid, just flavor the necessary amount of liquid needed as the final product.

Cost Per Person $1.14

I just got Gourmet Mag's June issue in the mail two evenings ago and have only been able to glance through it for about 10 minutes while also talking on the phone at the same time. (I know all about what happens when you multi-task. That is why I'm not promising I read everything properly.) This issue seems to have interesting information about tofu and a number of fabulous summer recipes that would appeal to meat-eaters and vegetarians alike. I have attached links to topics that are available on Gourmet.com. Otherwise, I recommend making a trip to your local library and check it out--although you'll be surprised with all the vegetarian recipes considering the large slab of steak(?) on the front.

Homemade buns and condiments to go with vegetarian barbeque

Grilled Avocado, Fresh Corn, Romaine and Chipotle-Caesar Salad Dressing

Raspberry Buttermilk Cake

Gourmet's April 2009 Magazine had this fabulous recipe, and they've even made it available online. When I first read it, I was intrigued by the recipe and curious to know how it would work. I'm always looking for ways to get extra heart-healthy nuts in our diet. Making this recipe for dinner actually turned out to be a very economical move on my part. Paul's aunts gave us raw almonds from Trader Joe's at Christmas. We also got Trader Joe's pasta as an Easter present. Garrett Nudd left the garlic a few weeks back when he was making concoctions in our kitchen. So, much of the ingredients for this recipe were free to us.

My mother-in-law sent me this very cool idea. I hope she wasn't thinking she wanted some of these for Christmas because I failed to catch the hint. I hope she was just thinking this would make a nice post on ELAR. The cards are 16 for $34.95. There are two copies of each design, which are well-photographed types of cookies yielding intriguing and beautiful card covers. On some of them, it took me a while to recognize what might be a cookie. This is important for people married to designers, which means food has to look good not just taste good. Attached to the card is a tear-away card to add to a recipe collection to make cookies that look as good as the pictures. I hope they taste as good, too.

Check them out.