Emmo's First Thanksgiving

OK. So, I've obviously had Thanksgivings before, and have even had quite a few Thanksgivings on my own before... but this was the first Thanksgiving where I actually cooked traditional food. A couple hiccups aside (the beauty of cooking just for yourself is that nobody else really has to know the details of such hiccups), it went pretty well. There were two things I had in mind for this meal. First, I had to prep all of the ingredients to be able to do The Sandwich afterward. Second, I needed both stuffing (because it's the best non-sandwich part of Thanksgiving) and straight-from-a-can Green Bean Casserole. It's far from sophisticated and goes against everything I feel strongly about in terms of food, and I know you could easily make a fresh version, but damned if I don't crave the barely-homemade canned version when Thanksgiving rolls around. The first step, of course, when cooking a large, complicated meal involving lifting heavy containers with your bad back, is to first create a large obstruction in the middle of the kitchen (for a good reason, of course):I'll probably resurrect my recipe blog later to post the approximate recipes (so that I can have an easy on-line reference for myself next year), but here are some pics in the meantime. Cranberries as they start cooking:Brussels sprouts (blanched, then tossed in sautéed shallots and bacon). Here they are finished:

as components cooking:and looking all gorgeous pre-dressing with shallots and bacon:Stuffing (like my mom taught me), with fresh cornbread:and fresh herbs:combined with the rest of the classic ingredients to be just what I was craving:Pan gravy for the turkey and stuffing:That non-gourmet staple, Green Bean Casserole:
And, finally, the turkey. There was a gap in the skin, so I used metal skewers to "sew" it together:and it came out pretty darn well:Here's the final spread (minus that embarrassing casserole):
and a plated version:Honestly, by the time I finished all of the work I was barely hungry enough to make a dent in that plate, but what I could eat was mighty tasty. This year I'm making the sandwich (turkey, cranberry sauce, brie, and arugula) on fresh-baked rosemary focaccia like god intended. My dough is rising right now, but I'll post pictures of that (hopefully awesome) reward for all this work tomorrow.

Back in the Saddle Again...

After almost two months of not being able to cook (due to pain management issues and limitations on what I was allowed to lift), I finally made it back into the kitchen this weekend. After a fun morning buying real groceries (instead of just veggies for the rabbits), I spent a lovely afternoon in the kitchen, blasting great music, cooking yummy food, and realizing just how much the inability to do just that had been bringing me down. I kept things fairly simple because I wasn't sure how my back would hold up, but it's been a joy to get to eat fresh delicious food again rather than selecting from the assortment of dishes I had frozen in preparation for my hiatus from the kitchen. For dinner I made Maple-Mustard Pork Tenderloin with Caramelized Apples. This is a dish I always start craving when fall rolls around, and it never disappoints.
While I was ecstatic to be back in the kitchen, Pedro was not nearly so happy. I suspect he was hoping that this whole "cooking" thing was just a phase I'd been going through and that it was a thing of the past. He was back huddled in the corner (with some company from Rico this time), prepared for impending death. Someday he'll learn that he never actually dies when I cook, but in the meantime he is a pitiful little guy every time I turn on the stove. Such the cute little dork, that one...
For lunches at work I made what I refer to as Emily-Style Chicken with Bok Choy. This is basically chicken marinated in assorted "Asian" ingredients (which vary depending on what I have on hand that day) and grilled, with a side of bok choy dressed in oyster sauce with a few drops of sesame oil and a bit of chili-garlic sauce.
The secret of making this dish for future lunches during the week is that you don't cook the bok choy, just wash it and toss with the sauce, then package it up with the chicken. When you heat your lunch with the lid slightly ajar, the bok choy steams just enough by the time the chicken is warmed through that it's pefectly cooked and still has a nice crispness to it. I can't tell you how amazing it was to have fresh, crispy veggies in my lunch after so long getting by on delicious-if-not-so-fresh reheated frozen dishes. Good stuff.

Sommelier Smackdown!

Wow. So, the wine shop on the corner of my street has a monthly event called Sommelier Smackdown. I wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, but I recruited my friends Joe and R to join me for the November Smackdown. (Someone was too stupid to remember her camera, so luckily we were still able to get some pictures with Joe's iPhone. The room was pretty dark, so apologies if the food pics aren't high-def enough to make you drool...) As I said, we didn't entirely know what we were in for, but I think it exceeded all of our expectations.
The basic premise is that you have 4 courses, each paired with two wines - one from each of the two dueling sommeliers (that's Kate, the defending champion, on the far left and Mike, employee of the wine shop and challenger, next to her in the picture below).
Here's how it works: A chef (Ian, above on the right) prepares each course at the front of the room.
The sommeliers taste, then head out into the wine shop to find a wine (or beer) that they think would be the perfect pairing. They are limited by a $20 per course budget, with an additional $20 to use at their discretion to splurge on any given course (or a couple courses).
While they pour the wines and explain why they chose them, the chef plates the rest of the food and sends it out to the audience. You taste, you vote, you discuss. At the end of the night the winning sommelier is announced and is invited back to face a challenger at the next Smackdown. The menu of the night was referred to by our chef as "Strange Asian Fusion." Everything across the board was quite good, and each of the three of us had a different course that was our least favorite (which I think is a good indication that there was no crappy course, just some less awesome among the generally quite tasty selections).
First up was a fried dumpling filled with Gouda and apple and served with a dried fruit compote. (Picture, below, taken after we all had dived in...) The Gouda was almost imperceptible, but is probably what contributed the nice savory background to the apple filling. This was R's least favorite. I thought it was really good, and enjoyed the challenge with which it presented the sommeliers. Kate went with the Evolution White from Sokol Blosser (which happens to be one of the wineries I like to visit when I'm in Oregon), and it was absolutely beautiful with the dish. She got all of the votes from our small group. Mike told us that he believes that the dish shouldn't be sweeter than the wine, and I whole-heartedly beg to differ. His pairing was a Willi Haag Riesling, which was sweet and very grape-juicy. If you tasted it with just the (sweet) compote then you could see what he was thinking, but with the savory-sweet dumpling it was no good. First round to Kate.
The second course was duck! Yay! Ian talked about this dish as a salad version of a Bánh Mi, which was a mistake (in my opinion) for the two of us in the audience who know and love Bánh Mi. It was a salad of pickled daikon, crispy duck (duck confit that was then lightly battered in cornstarch slurry and deep fried), cilantro, cashews, and baguette slices. This was Joe's least favorite course, and I was a bit let down just because of the flavor profile I was hoping for from the description. When you put together the perfect duck-y, cashew-y bite, though, it was damn fine salad. Mike talked to the three of us after the course about how this salad (and salads in general) was tough to pair wines with for that very reason: You don't have an even distribution of flavors, so some bites are strong on pickled, vinegary elements, some are strong on fatty duck and cashews, some are really well balanced. Kate faced (or, rather, hid from) this challenge by pairing with a Hefeweizen from Munich, while Mike went wild with a Four Vines Old Vine Zin Cuvee from Paso Robles. Kate's pairing was fine, if too safe for my taste. It didn't compliment the dish, but it never fought it and didn't risk clashing with those vinegary bites. I have Zin issues, but Mike's Zin was fantastic. It clashed with some of the bites, but was awesome with those "perfect bites" where you balanced all of the salad components on your fork. He got our votes for that daring and for how well his wine complimented the perfect bites. Plus, his wine just rocked in general. This round went to Mike by one vote.
Third course was Penne with Black Bean Garlic Sauce, Smoked Chicken, and Truffled Pecorino. This was my least favorite, but I still enjoyed it. In some ways it was the easiest pairing, but it was a bit tricky because cheesier bites matched the wine differently than less cheesy bites. Kate went with an absolutely fantastic Catena Malbec from Argentina. This was probably our favorite wine of the night. I felt like it really called out the anise flavor accents in the dish, which was an effect I didn't particularly enjoy. It paired a bit better with the cheesier bites. Mike went with a Campi Nuovi Sangiovese. I thought the finish on this wine paired perfectly with all elements of the dish, but the wine itself was not something that you would ever drink on purpose. All three of us felt that his pairing was better, but the Malbec was the wine that came home with us at the end of the night. Kate kicked Mike's ass in this round, with half of his votes coming from the three of us. Heh.
Finally, just... wow. The pork belly. This was unreal. I realized I had never had pork belly before, which is a crying shame. Mmm... So good. It's an extremely fatty dish (R and I were not able to finish the fatty portion (which you can see in the bottom picture), and were both a bit queasy thinking back on it later, but I have no regrets), and that makes the pairing somewhat tricky. Kate paired with a Cossart Gordan 5 year Madeira, which was awesome. We'd all cooked with Madeira before, but never knew it could be so delicious to just drink. The sharp alcohol cut the fat, and the pairing was beautiful. Mike paired with a Quinto do Coa Duoro Tinto. It was really nice and balanced well with the flavors of the meat, even if it didn't cut the fat as well as the Madeira. He got my vote, but my friends were part of the 3-vote majority of the crowd that went with Kate, so she'll be back next time (in January) to take on a new challenger.Oh, and the organizer baked us M&M cookies for dessert, since the chef wasn't in the mood to do a dessert course as one of his four courses. Hee. All in all, it was a lot of great food and a whole lot of delicious wine in a really unique and fun setting. Can't wait to go back...

Not-So-Great Stuff

Thursday was 6 weeks after surgery, and as of next Thursday I'm officially allowed to move around like a normal person and lift more than 5 pounds. Yay! In part, it's these restrictions that have kept me from being able to cook in approximately forever (thus making this culinary blog even less culinary than it usually is...). The rest of the reason is that I've been having issues with my back ever since the surgery, to the point where I've missed almost a month of work between recovering from surgery and dealing with my back issues. The "pain scale" is how doctors have you quantify your pain, and it looks like this when put in chart form:
For almost a month now my back has been at around a 5 most of the day, then shooting up in the 8 or 9 range if I do anything other than sit in a reclining patio chair all day. This has been getting pretty frustrating, but in the last couple weeks I've figured out how to make my back stop hurting: Turn off my cyborg parts. I've tested this several times, and the results are consistent. My back feels OK. I turn on my cyborg parts. A couple hours later my back is at a "6" )even though I've just been sitting in a reclining chair for those two hours). Once it gets bad it stays bad for a few days (and, being me, I keep testing it just to be sure). This morning I woke up with my back feeling pretty darn OK, which I think is only because I haven't turned my cyborg parts on since I ran my last pain-inducing test on Wednesday.

My choices right now are to (a) leave my cyborg parts off, which means my ankles are in constant pain but my back is mostly OK, or (b) turn my cyborg parts on, which means most of the pain in my ankles is masked but the pain in my back gets so bad that I can't function. Obviously I'm going with (a) at this point. Hopefully when I see my surgeon on Monday he can give me some better option (c), because the two options available to me now are frankly pretty crappy. And with that, I'm off to snuggle a fat bunny.

UPDATED 11/16: The guy who programs me gave me a new program to try, but it seems to cause the same problem. There's no good option (c). Just waiting for my back to heal (with physical therapy and muscle relaxants to speed it along, which I was already doing) and hoping we can find a program that doesn't cause these problems. Just have to be patient... which is one of my least favorite things to have to be...

One Last Cyborg-Emmo Update

I suspect this will be the last time I post about this stuff, since I don't want this to become a blog about my ankles... (It's nominally a food blog, after all, so it should obviously be about bunnies and football instead...) Nonetheless, I just wanted to post an update on how things are going, now that I'm (somewhat) getting back to my routine. I say "somewhat" because my back is still recovering rather slowly. I own two of these patio chairs:
one of which is now in my den and is the chair I sit in whenever I'm home (and not in bed), and the other of which is now in my office at work to help me ease back into sitting in a normal chair all day. As is my nature, I've been tending to over-do it, but hopefully in a few weeks my back will be strong enough to at least sit at my desk all day like a normal person. Being back at work has given me a chance to better gauge how much my cyborg parts are going to be able to help me. I work in a building with many hallways, and the floors in all of these hallways are made out of evil.
The stimulator definitely helped in terms of dealing with the pain that comes from a typical work day, but on Friday night things started to come into focus, and it's become pretty clear that my cyborg parts really aren't going to let me do any more walking than the very limited amount I was able to do before. What they can do is let me live that almost entirely sedentary lifestyle without all of the accompanying pain. The thing is, the stimulator can mask my pain (when it's turned up high enough), but that's quite different from being able to get rid of my pain. Since my pain has always been a cumulative thing, this means that even if I don't feel any pain while, say, walking to get water at work, the damage is still being done. Then when the stimulator isn't turned up high enough (the signal varies with position, so I have to turn it down to lie down and sleep, then turn it back up to stand again), all of that pain I've been building up is still very much there. This sort of sucks, quite frankly, but the situation is still vastly better than what it was before surgery, so I'll take it. Luckily, nothing can ever seem too bad when you get to sit around watching Rico eat hay:

Cyborg-Emmo Update

So, it's been almost a week since I got my cyborg parts programmed. (This is going to be super-detailed for those who care to hear the details, but the short version is: "Things remain promising, but still uncertain...") Anyway, the day after my last post, I went on the walk outlined below with my mom:The total distance was about a mile round-trip, with a stop at the post office, a lunch destination of Kabab & Tandoor (a Hyderabadi Indian restaurant in my neighborhood at which I very much enjoy the lunch buffet), a stop on the way home at the library (for a great used book sale we stumbled upon), then home. My ankles held up quite well on the walk, with the only intense pain coming when we had to climb a flight of stairs and walk up a big ramp to enter the library. Even then, my cyborg parts seemed to help me recover much faster than usual from that pain. (Usually, once the pain starts, it's hours before it starts to subside, so this was good.) The trip was a really promising test, and left me quite optimistic. When dinner time rolled around, I needed to pick up a couple ingredients, so I decided to walk to the nearby grocery. (I'm not supposed to lift more than 5 pounds ever during the 6 weeks following surgery, but croissants, arugula, horseradish root, baked chips, and a lemon came in at 4.5 pounds, so I was safe...) This is a much shorter route:but the walk caused me all kinds of problems. My cyborg parts probably weren't turned up high enough (I had wisely turned them up before our lunchtime walk, but forgot this time). I was in quite a bit of pain already by the time I hit the parking lot, but again the stimulator seemed to at least help with recovery, even as I was walking around the store. This struck me more as a user error than a failure of my cyborg parts, so I wasn't too upset. In case you were wondering, here is the kick-ass sandwich we made for dinner (using my groceries with leftover mustard-rubbed pork tenderloin that I had roasted a couple nights before, as well as some caramelized onions from the freezer and a homemade fresh horseradish sauce):
Mmmm... I'm not going to lie to you: That was delicious. We didn't do much walking the next couple days, largely because my back didn't fare nearly as well as my ankles on that first long walk, but I got a lot of (seemingly random) pain again on Thursday morning, and the stimulator had trouble masking it. This was fairly disheartening, and made me start to wonder if maybe my cyborg parts can help make my usual almost-no-walking-ever lifestyle less painful, but maybe can't handle me walking all over tarnation. (Obviously that's less exciting, but I would still consider it a "win.") I suspect at this point that I'm in need of reprogramming. The guy who programs me said that this is to be expected as the wires move a bit while the swelling subsides and scar tissue forms. Thus, the jury is still out, but things continue to look promising. It will probably be several weeks before we find the best program after everything has settled into place and figure out what the real result of all this is going to be, and I'll have to try not to get frustrated with the roller coaster of relative effectiveness in the meantime. This is where therapeutic bunnies come in handy. I'll post more bunny pictures later, but here's Rico when I caught him leaping in the air mid-binky.
Who could ever be cranky living with such cuteness?

Emmo-the-Cyborg, Take Two

Apologies in advance for the rambling nature of this post... As many of you know, I went in to have new-and-improved cyborg parts installed on Thursday.
(Above is the totally-awesome card that one of my totally-awesome friends sent me for the occasion...) This was a fairly invasive surgery, so they ended up keeping me in the hospital until the next afternoon. I got to the recovery room at around 1:45pm and was fairly coherent by 3pm, but it was 9pm before they actually found me a room. Thus, I spent 7 hours sitting in the recovery room in lots of pain with absolutely nothing (aside from the occasional addition of something pleasant to my IV) to distract me from my discomfort. On the patient board we rolled past as we went to my room I saw myself listed, and next to my name: "Time Waiting: 437 minutes." Awesome. Those first 24 hours following surgery were pretty brutal, but I got through it with a little help from my friend, Percocet...
My back is doing infinitely better now. (I guess the good thing about a couple days of excruciating pain is that other pain doesn't seem so bad afterward...) I've been able to go out a couple times, including for football-watching on Sunday, but really can't handle being away from my comfy bed/chair and my pain meds for extended periods of time yet. I went in to get my ass reprogrammed on Monday morning, at which point I discovered that my new cyborg parts are vastly superior to my old ones. Because there are three connected wire leads instead of just one, the guy who programs me has a lot more control, and I even can control the balance between sides with my remote. I also learned how to recharge my ass last night, and took care of that. In case you haven't seen, this is what the thing looks like, essentially:
They re-used my two old incisions, and added a new one (which they kept saying was so very tiny, but which is totally 3 inches long, so whatever...) to get direct access to my spine to place the lead in the exact right spot. Apparently the surgery went about as well as one could possibly hope for, and everyone is very impressed with how lovely my incisions are... (Well, medical professionals think they're lovely... Lay people mostly think they're pretty gnarly...) The one point that you probably care most about and that I am most actively avoiding is whether or not this thing works... and the answer is that I'm not really sure yet. The failure of the last one was pretty soul-crushingly depressing, so I'm trying to stay very much on the "cautiously" side of "cautiously optimistic" this time... but, so far, things look promising. I went to Costco with my mom yesterday, and decided to forgo the cart that I usually need in order to get around (because the floors at Costco are made out of evil).
We were there for a good chunk of time, standing and walking on those evil floors, and I was... fine. That's pretty amazing if you know what Costco usually does to my ankles, but I still feel like it's too soon to get excited. We're going to take me out for a more strenuous test run today and see how my ankles hold up going for a walk... but I guess so far I feel comfortable saying that early indications are promising, and that I'll keep you posted.

Random Post Involving Eggs

Catching up on posting today, and figured I'd better put something here to avoid two consecutive Bucs posts... One thing from over a week ago that I didn't post was the totally fantastic breakfast I made for myself before that less-than-fun Giants-Bucs game. Behold:
(That would be poached eggs served over crab cakes with bacon and an arugula salad...) Throw in 12 shots of espresso, and you have a pretty good way to start a horrible day, no? I was playing with a new egg-poaching technique because I am inordinately intimidated by the poaching of eggs. If I have a wing-man in the kitchen I will delegate this task to them, and if I'm on my own I will most likely just not have poached eggs. Trying to keep the whites together and whatnot, draining them after they come out of the water without breaking them in the process... Ack! Too much stress first thing in the morning, if you ask me.. For these eggs, I brought a pot to a boil and cracked eggs into a small bowls lined with plastic wrap that had been lightly brushed with olive oil. Add a sprinkle of salt and pepper, pick up the edges of the plastic wrap to form a little bundle containing the egg, and close off the top with a bag clip. When the water is ready, simply drop the bundles in and cook until perfectly poached. The olive oil helps prevent the egg sticking to the plastic wrap, and you get a perfect egg with beautiful (unless you're Steph, in which case it would be gross) runny yolk:
In other random news, I am now the proud owner of the world's most totally awesome soap dispensers. They have motion sensors, so if you have raw chicken on your hands or if you've just been cleaning a bunny cage, you can get soap without having to touch anything. The dish soap dispenser is also great when you need more soap mid-washing-something but don't want to have to set down what you're washing in order to put more soap on your sponge. I am in love with them:
Alrighty... I think this is now a sufficient buffer between pictures of the Bucs...

Creepy Ads Socializing Girls to Be Good Homemakers

I'm not going to lie to you: I love cooking and cleaning (with the exception of dusting, which I loathe). I don't think this is because I'm a chick, so much as because I'm a person who loves good food (and thus needed to be able to make it for myself or go broke buying it in restaurants) and because I'm fairly compulsive (and thus get a lot of pleasure from putting things in their place and making things perfect). I say this to make it clear that I don't think there's anything wrong with women cooking, cleaning, or being homemakers... but I do find it frustrating when products and advertising campaigns are produced that try to socialize girls to believe that this is a woman's job. This ad from the 1960's (hat-tip to Sociological Images) is particularly creepy:

I think my favorite part is that you're supposed to make sure you stay nice and pretty while you're doing all of this housework... Lest you think this is just a dated phenomenon, this modern ad is not all that different:

My favorite part of this one is definitely the fact that you can entertain your daughter's imagination by letting her do imaginary laundry. Awesome. I'm not going to offer any insightful feminist commentary here, (I have a football game to go watch, after all...) I just find these kinds of things fascinating and wanted to share.

Obligatory Non-Bucs, Non-Bunnies Post

Hey there. I've been having a rough go of things as of late, so there has been minimal culinary adventuring taking place relative to the amounts of football-watching, hanging out with therapeutic bunnies, and moping. I was going to make a batch of paella this weekend and post about its awesomeness, but then I didn't really want traditional paella, so I'm not sure what I would call the (delicious) thing I made... and then I slightly over-cooked the rice because I was waiting for halftime of the Panthers-Falcons game before pulling it off of the heat (which took way longer than anticipated)... but it was still super-delicious and somehow sort of exactly what I wanted it to be. My Pseudo-Paella ended up looking like this:
not-so-al-dente rice and all... The one bit of non-football, non-bunny excitement recently was going to see The Walkmen (possibly my very favorite active band) at The Middle East in Cambridge. Joe and I had seen them as an opener for the stupid Kings of Leon at BU, but it was a sadly brief show in a too-large venue. This time (after a decent opener called The Big and a even decent-er second opener in Here We Go Magic) we were ~4 feet from the lead singer and were treated to a nice long set. The audio could have been a bit more nuanced (Why do lead guitarists insist on overpowering lead vocals?), but they still rocked the house and it was an awesome evening. Also, the lead singer is freakishly tall (which is a good thing) and has a very cool leather jacket (as Joe noted a time or two).
Not much else to report... unless you want to hear more of my thoughts on the Bucs? No? OK, then. I go in to get my new and improved cyborg parts in about a week and a half. That day really can't come soon enough at this point.