two misses and a hit

Okay, sorry I've been quiet. I might not have been, though. I can't remember when I last posted, and, because I'm typing at the moment, I'm not going to check when my last post was. (I'd better get out of this on-again off-again thing with this here blog because NaBloPoMo is coming up in about six weeks).

So...food. Yep, sounds good. Recently I made a super-easy dinner (and super-out-of-season): acorn squash. I cut the squash in half, scooped out the seeds and added some butter, colby cheese (it was on sale and cheddar wasn't) and, of course, garlic and popped the halves into the oven (at some temperature...400, maybe? 425? details, details). The squash was in the oven for an hour and that's what we ate for dinner. Yes, we should have had something to go with it, but we ended up snacking a bit before the squash was ready. I'll make this again soon because I was so sleep-deprived when I made it that I forgot to add the tarragon. Oops.

This counts as the first miss. I liked this, but Pic didn't even touch it (I was too tired to give a crap...I'll be accepting my Wonder-Mamma award any day now). Cardo ate it, but he actually preferred the sweet acorn squash to the savory! (That deserves such punctuation because Cardo almost never prefers sweet to savory. I can't remember any other instances of this, i'fac.) When I make this again, one half will be made with maple syrup and brown sugar and the other will be made like the one described above with the freaking tarragon added.





















The second miss is the pasta thing Pic and I made the other day. We had a box of Earth's Best organic alphabet pasta and Pic had pulled it out. We cooked that up, making our characteristic enormous amount of pasta. I made a cheese sauce and learned that I don't really know how to make a cheese sauce. I tried to make a roux, but I've never made one without having pan drippings as a base (I've only ever used a roux before to make gravy). Then, I added milk. When it began to bubble, I added shredded cheese. The sauce wasn't thickening very well, so I added more flour. As I was doing this, I knew that this was the wrong thing to do, but I didn't have any Wondra (nor do I know what is actually in Wondra) and I didn't know what else to do. The "cheese sauce" (those quotation marks are not misplaced) was grainy. And, when I told Cardo the ingredients, he responded, "Oh, there's supposed to be cheese in this?" Yeah, good job, v. Anyhow, I added frozen peas and a can of tuna to the mix of pasta and cheese sauce. I thought this was very bland, but decent. Cardo said he liked it. It was much better, though I'm not sure why, the second day. Pic, Baby K and I ate this for dinner and Pic finished her entire dinner (and the heavens broke open and rained down milk and honey...or something else equally unlikely and unnatural). Baby K ate a good deal of it, but he had more fun spearing his fruit with a fork and then feeding his fruit to himself.





















Finally, the hit. Yesterday, I hauled out How to Cook Everything (alas, not mine, but the library's) and flipped to "cream scones." Bittman's are the classic currant scones made with AP flour. He notes that up to half of the flour can be replaced with whole wheat so I did that. Instead of currants, I used dried cherries. And, I added dark chocolate chips. These were freaking easy to make (although it took quite a while because Pic was lending her skills) and super-quick to bake. Cardo and I both like these. Pic just mined the chocolate out of hers and set the rest aside. Ah, well. Try, try again, right?

I wanted to make tons of scones, but I figured I'd better only make one batch so I could decide whether I even liked them. Next time, I'll make more of this same kind and I'll also make some savory scones. For whatever reason, I want to make ham and cheese scones, maybe with green onions, although this combination doesn't sound all that hot to me. I'm not a huge fan of hot ham and cheese. Oh, and the next time I make these, I'll not add all three eggs to the batter, but reserve one for brushing over the top like the recipe instructs. Again, oops.