Dim Sum!

In honor of one of my colleague's pregnancy, another of my colleagues and I threw her a baby shower. But, since baby showers are an enigma to the Chinese, we turned it into a co-ed dim sum Sunday brunch instead. We made LOTS of dim sum that involved LOTS of effort, but (contrary to Hellen's opinion), I think the end result was worth it. Everyone had a good time, we didn't run out of dim sum and Joni got lots of useful presents. Honestly, what more can you ask for?

And what did YOU do for Easter, hmmm?

After attending Easter services, Gropius and I came home, changed clothes, and got started on our much-procrastinated yardwork. I planted flowers in the backyard. Red impatiens underneath the Heavenly Bamboo:



And, then I dug up the soil and planted flower seeds along the back fence:





If they aren't choked by weeds, here are the flowers that we should see:

A tale of two dinners....

Last night we had a nice dinner with some friends of ours and their newborn at a local microbrewery, Hoppy Brewing Company. Gropius agreed with Esen that it did indeed have a nice hefeweizen, even if it wasn't exactly the same as what you would get in Germany. I shocked Jess and Esen (who didn't realize I'm not a beer drinker) and enjoyed a nice pint of cider. Our research of local microbreweries continues!

I snapped this picture of Jess with Sophia:



Yeah, Jess is from North Dakota, how could you tell?? ;)

And the night before, we made a really tasty Asian-style Chicken Noodle soup, compliments of Martha Stewart. It didn't have any fat in it other than what is naturally occuring in the chicken breast and chicken broth we used. We had to add a bit more salt and I was pretty loosey-goosey with the red pepper flakes and we sub'd sugar snaps for snowpeas, but all in all it turned out well:



It went nicely with a cheap rose (the best kind!) we found at BevMo. Close up of the Udon noodles, red bell pepper, and chicken breast:

Mmmmm.....cabbage!

So, Gropius found this purple cabbage at the natural food co-oop and Whole Paycheck had a sale on corned beef the day after St. Patrick's day was over (who would've guessed?). Being the creative types we are, we had cabbage and corned beef last night for dinner. We also had some leftover potatoes (blue and gold) and some fresh asparagus. Man, was it good!

Irish Eyes are smilin'...

So, in deference to my Southern Scotch-Irish roots and St. Patrick's Day tomorrow, I had an Irish by way of the American South by way of Italy breakfast. I enjoyed a nice cafe latte (Italian) along with a couple of cinnamon pecan scones (Southern-Irish).

Here's the recipe:

Cinnamon Pecan Scones

1 1/3 cups all purpose flour
3 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/8 teaspoon salt
1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 Tb ground flaxseed
1/3 c rolled oats
handful of pecans (~1/2 c?)
5 tablespoons cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/3-1/2 cup buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract



DIRECTIONS
Preheat the oven to 425°. In a food processor, mix the flour with the sugar, baking powder, salt, spices, flaxseed, oats, and pecans. Pulse the food processor to cut in the butter until the mixture resembles fine crumbs.

In a small bowl (or large liquid measuring cup), mix the buttermilk with the vanilla. Add to the dry ingredients and pulse just until the dough comes together.

Turn the dough out onto some saran-wrap on the counter. Pull the saran-wrap over the dough and use it to pat the dough into a round and cut into 8 wedges.

Set the wedges on the baking sheet and spoon a little cream (or half and half) over the scones and sprinkle with demerara sugar.

Bake for 12 to 14 minutes, or until the scones are puffed and pale golden. Transfer to a rack and cool before serving.



The crushed oats are the best part of the this recipe, I think. The butter (which could be reduced to only 3Tb or so) makes them nice and flaky. And Gropius spent the better part of 5 minutes trying to figure out what the spices were (the cloves threw him for a loop).

Dijon Dinner

With the warmer weather recently, we decided that we should break out the grill pan and fashion an erstatz grill on the back patio.



This is the burner that Gropius bought to fire up his as-yet unbuilt still. In the meantime, it's a powerful flame for cooking!



That picture is with the flash and this one is without it:



Whole Paycheck had some beautiful rhubarb and asparagus. The Delta is *just* starting to come into season.



So, we assembled a riff on the Napolean and served it with some baby blue potatoes and the grilled chicken with a dijon mustard-cream sauce.



Close-up of the potatoes (check out that rhubarb in the background!)

I wonder what the poor folks are eatin' tonight!?

That's what my great-grandfather always used to ask as he sat down to a much anticipated meal. The implied statement being, this is a meal for a rich man.



Now, if only Paw-Paw could've seen this meal. We had an assortment of roasted vegetables: purple potatoes, candy-striped beets, golden beets, carrots, celery, red onion....



All drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and pepper and roasted in the oven. To round out the meal, we had a nice NY strip that Gropius cooked outside on the propane cooker that he bought for his future still and some English peas.



Poor folks indeed.