Duck Dinner

Derellek graciously shared Hellen's wild duck with us, provided Gropius cooked it! So, I found a recipe from Rick Bayless's Mexico: One Plate At A Time to try. We all enjoyed roasted duck adobado with a jicama salsa, roasted potatoes, and roasted asparagus.

Some prep pictures:



The dinner itself:



And the huntress enjoying her meal:

Chicken Noodle Soup

The NYTimes had an article on chicken noodle soups this week, so we tried one. We chose to make Curry Mee and it was delicious!

The coconut milk, curry, mung bean sprouts, lemongrass, and fried shallots really made the dish. It was flavorful without being spicy.

Capsaicin

def: is the active component of chili peppers, which are plants belonging to the genus Capsicum. It is an irritant for mammals, including humans, and produces a sensation of burning in any tissue with which it comes into contact. (thanks, Wikipedia!)

Last night, Louisa inadvertently had her first taste of a jalapeno pepper. I helped Walter cook dinner by cutting onions and peppers, including the jalapeno, to make chicken sofrito from Food&Wine magazine. I didn't think to much about it when I rubbed my face and felt my skin start to tingle a bit. I later looked in the mirror after the following incident and saw that the tingling and burning sensation had actually turned my skin red!

Anyway, I had just nursed Louisa and was "talking" with her when she grabbed my thumb and stuck it in her mouth. Oh, you should've seen her face! She got the "What-are-you-doing-to-me?" look and then started to cry. It sort of resembled this face:

I felt horrible about it, but I think nursing her some more managed to get rid of the tingling/burning in her mouth. I did finally manage to get the remaining capsicin oils off my hands, compliments of serious scrubbing and Walter's AgentOrange mechanic's scrub. Walter said my thumb tasted soapy but didn't make his tongue tingle, so I think we're in the clear. So far no repeats and I think I'll let Daddy handle dicing hot peppers from now on!

Peter picked a peck of pickled peppers...

Last harvest of peppers from our garden:

Clockwise from top left is green bell peppers, cayenne peppers, Anaheim peppers, habanero peppers, poblano peppers, and piment d'espelette. Unfortunately, the cold weather prevented the bell peppers from turning orange and the cayenne and espellette from turning red. Still, pretty good pepper harvest for December!

And my proudest accomplishment of the week is baking a pumpkin pound cake ALL BY MYSELF while home alone with a 4 month old baby. And, it's VERY tasty, especially with a nice cup of coffee!


Gropius, Louisa, and I also got our Christmas tree tonight, too. It's funny how trees always look shorter in the tree lot...

Weekend Meal

On Sunday, Gropius prepared a delicious meal of filet mignon with bordelaise sauce from the latest issue of Saveur magazine. We have plenty of rotkohl (red cabbage) in the freezer from our garden, so we defrosted some of that and made parnsip-mashed potatoes to have on the side. Very tasty!

look at that glossy sauce!

I know, the meat should be less done, but I don't like my meat on the rare side, so Gropius let my serving sit in the oven while he finished the meal, so it should be done the way I like it.

Thanksgiving Dinner

For Thanksgiving dinner, we had Gropius's family join us this year. Normally we would travel to Colorado to join them, but they flew out to see us this year (although I think it more to see the baby than either of us!). For dinner, we had...
carved turkey, including dark meat for Gropius and Lisa

dressing (or stuffing) with bacon, cream, port, and chestnuts

mashed sweet potatoes with marshmallows (for me) and streusel or plain (for everyone else!)

shredded brussels sprouts

cranberry relish

acorn squash stuffed with wild rice and black quinoa.

We also had great Oregon Pinot Noir that we picked up in Eugene earlier this month.
my plate--YUM!


Gropius and his father discussing the relative merits of Bamberger Rauchbier (smoked beer from Bamberg)


And for dessert, champagne and apple pie...
Gruet from New Mexico--my favorite!

Virgin apple pie

apologies for blurriness, but look at those apples (it took 9 of them to make the pie!)

Ozapft is!

Gropius and I went to the local Turn Verein's Oktoberfest with a couple of friends of ours on Friday evening.


We went last year, so we knew what to expect, but we had a good time nonetheless. We enjoyed some schuheplatte tanzen (sp?), wurst, bier, wein, and kuchen at the kaffeeklatsch upstairs.

Gropius didn't wear his lederhosen like he did last year (much to Jess's disappointment!) because it was raining. But, I did catch someone from faaaaar eastern Germany wearing his lederhosen!


As you may have noticed, Jess and Esen have a newborn of their own, Ella, who is only 2 weeks old!



Both Jess and I got scolded by the elderly German woman taking tickets at the door for bringing Ella and Louisa with us to Oktoberfest, claiming it was "too loud!" I wish she could've seen the babies later when they were sleeping away in their slings, happy as could be! Jess and Esen took pictures of us which you can see here.

Inspired by the Deutsche Kultur, Gropius and I made vaguely german food for dinner this weekend. I say vaguely because while we had German Spatzle, we paired it with a French red wine-beef stew from Julia Child. So, I guess we ended up somewhere in Alsace? Either way, it was delicious with fresh green beans from our garden (some of the beans had gotten too big, so we had to shuck them rather than serving them whole).