The Brown Bag Deli

This is one of our neighborhood delis. (I love that we live in a neighborhood where I can say that.) I had a half grilled cheese sandwich that had cheddar and havarti cheeses AND Granny Smith apple slices. My salad had cranberries and gorgonzola cheese and grilled chicken and a balsamic vinaigrette. All in all - it was delicious.

Now Kirk, on the other hand, didn't like it that much. His "Russian vegetable" soup was only mediocre, and he says the portions were too small. It's true that his little cup of soup was small compared with my half salad...and didn't look that great. Not that he would have liked what I ordered either. He hates when fruit is included in savory dishes. He says he'd rather eat garlic ice cream than pineapple on a pizza. Okay...

-eva

Hot Food for a Cold Night

Well, I've been cold a lot lately.

I think that this is due to 2 things:

1. I'm not used to the mid-west's bone-chilling weather.
2.During the past few winters I was spoiled with free and plentiful heating.

So here I am, dressed in a sweatshirt, scarf, and fake Russian chopka , eating curried lentil soup. It was the perfect dish for a blustery night.

No real recipe, but here are the ingredients:

lentils, water, tomato bouillon, onion, garlic, carrots, celery, fresh ground pepper, curry powder straight from africa (thanks ashleigh!), and coconut milk. saute the veggies, add the cooked lentils, water and everything else, puree half of it, and voila!

- eva

fresh mozzarella

The other night, Eva and I decided to make some quesadillas for dinner. I made mine with some freshly grated Romano and I made Eva's with fresh mozzarella. Big mistake! The mozzarella was so liquidy that it soaked the entire quesadilla. Eva picked it up and it just sagged, the whole thing was soaked with liquid. Ewww..
I forgot to photograph the weird quesadilla, but you can imagine.
P.S. Last night we had hot dogs for dinner?!
kirk

The True Meaning Of The First Thanksgiving

Awhile back, on Thanksgiving Day, we made a lot of good food. We seriously cooked all day long while listening to old punk (and miscellaneous--shout out to Huey Lewis' "Power Of Love") records, and generally had a good time. Here is a picture of what our table of food looked like:


Next is a close-up of our loot. We had lots of starchy stuff like stuffing, garlic mashed potatoes, sweet potato (savory) pancakes, and rolls, along with cranberry sauce and green beans. Am I forgetting something? Anyway, we invited a couple of friends over to share with us but even still, we were eating those mashed potatoes weeks later.


And then there were pies. I made the second pie of my entire life--pumpkin. Eva made a crumbly apple pie and a chocolate pecan pie. All three turned out nicely, but I think the chocolate pecan pie was the Michael Jordan of the bunch.

And that is the story of the first Thanksgiving.

-By KARI!

Cookies Were Just Okay

So, when our folks were in town, Dad had a real hankering for some cookies in the small window of time that took place after our previously-mentioned dinner and before he and Mom had to leave for the Indianapolis airport. I am usually up for cookies because they are awesome!

These are the cookies that my dad and I made. As you can see, they look sort of anemic and flat. I have no real idea how or why this happened, so I will place blame on the dubious recipe. They tasted fine, but not awesome! I should have had Dad make his signature Ranger cookies, but I don't think we had any corn flakes or grape juice or whatever he puts in those things.

-By KARI!