Let’s Talk About Food

Food. Cats. Plants. The Weather. I think those are all still safe topics these days, although I do have a (completely misguided) coworker who would disagree about cats. His loss. BC often joins our video calls. 🙂 We like him anyway. Food – my family is most definitely a FOOD family. All the men enjoy cooking, with at least 2 of them into baking as well. You know I enjoy cooking and baking. Now that I stop to think about it, I’m not sure about the other females. They are absolutely fine cooks, I’m not sure if it’s something they “enjoy”. Funny how you can be so close to someone and still not know something that important.

In our family our winter holidays are Chanukah and my husband’s birthday. Obviously these days we are not dining out very much but even so I was surprised when a friend asked me what *I* was doing for the birthday dinner. Moi? Excuse me but in OUR family it’s the MEN who cook the birthday dinners. My husband knew exactly what he wanted – a standing rib roast and potatoes au gratin – French style. He’s taken great pains to teach us that “au gratin” does NOT mean “with cheese”. It derives from the French for “scrapings” and is used typically to mean covered with crumbs (OR cheese). When HE makes the potatoes au gratin, it means that the potatoes have been drowned in butter and then baked. 🙂 Unbelievably delicious.

The problem with our meal arises with cooking the beef. My sister and brother-in-law like the meat to be moo’ing when we bring it to the table. While I don’t like my meat well-done, and I do like beef carpaccio, the rare ribs in these pictures are too rare for me. Not a problem because I can always toss mine in the microwave if necessary or, as in this case, have my slices cut from the ends of the roast. You can see the end, covered in garlic. Oh my – nirvana. 🙂 The beef just melted. My apologies to the vegetarians reading this. I don’t eat meat very often so when I do I really enjoy it. I’m not sure if you can tell from the pictures, but each rib must have been nearly 2 inches thick. Four ribs. Only 3 fit on the platter. 🙂 Each couple ended up splitting a rib (and not finishing it) so we all had wonderful leftovers as well.

My brother-in-law asked what kind of bread my husband wanted for the meal, and of course the answer was salt sticks. 🙂 My contribution was the steamed vegetables and the dessert. I knew my sister and I would be tempted to keep picking at the meat & potatoes, so I tried to distract us with 2 bowls of vegetables. One had only cabbage (we all like cabbage) and the other had broccoli, cauliflower, carrots and brussels sprouts. They may have deterred us a trifle but seriously, given the options, which would YOU have picked at??? Not to mention the salt sticks. 🙂 For dessert I made a cranberry/orange/apple cake. A friend wrinkled up her nose like “that’s a birthday cake????”. In our family, yes, we always have at least one sugar-free dessert for the menfolk. I gave my husband a choice of different fruit pies, tarts and cakes and that was the winner. I still had some sugar-free espresso ice cream which tasted great on top. Keeping in the birthday spirit we added whipped cream as well.

Now one of us doesn’t eat fruit. In anticipation of these meals where 3 of us would happily eat apples & cranberries & oranges, I sliced the chocolate pecan pie into individual servings and froze them back on Thanksgiving. SHE had the pie. 🙂