Ambitious Dining 1997

What I ate in 1997

Wednesday, Jan 1: Lunch: reheated cabbage rolls. better after sitting (see last entries for 1996). Dinner at Pearl's: Bangers, bread pudding, potatoes with poppy seeds, sweet-sour cabbage. I contributed a pie of layered choco. and mint pudding in a chocolate cookie shell with whipped cream on the top.

Thursday: chicken quesadillas with the leftover chicken. Marvelous

Friday: quesadillas with cheese on onion only. also good. bit of refrieds.

Saturday, Jan 4: Tried Noah's in Hillsdale with Lyza, Ruslan, Maggie. OK. Lunch: snack of calamari at Portland Ale brewpub on Flanders. Good. So was the oatmeal stout, available only there, not in bottles. Dinner: chunky spaghetti sauce with lots of ground beef. Not my favorite, but I had a hunger for olives and mushrooms.

Sunday, Jan 5: Still using up the tortillas, with fresh chicken breasts, some fajitas. No cheese. still great -- oregano, paprika, olive oil, Cajun seasoning, chili powder and lemon juice in marinade. With green peppers and onion.

Monday, Jan 6: Still eating Bob's non-wheat 8-grain cereal cooked in the crock pot. Don't like it much, better when cut with Malt-o-Meal. Lunch: cabbage rolls, since I had to thaw some out for Lyza yesterday. Supposed to use sour cream. Dinner: thrown together yet it worked: chix breast with salt, pepper, lemon juice, basil in a sauce of chardonnay, cream, chix broth, chervil. Damn dandy. With quick risotto of chix broth (from that chix last week), basil, thyme and some of those garlic/sundried tomatoes in oil Ginger gave us for Christmas.

Tuesday: 5-minute meal, dynamite: flour tortilla with homemade refrieds and some of that frozen BBQ junk with sour cream, sliced jalapenos and hot sauce. I though I'd plotz.

Wednesday: Marvelous meal at Lake Grove Bistro. (I left M. at home with oxtails braised in the pressure cooker). Carlo kissed my hand. Three times! Peppercorn steak, just-right rare and crowned with a mountain of tender small onion rings. The potatoes were scalloped and there was a mound of tender-steamed spinach and some mashed sweet potato. All the tastes melded in a special whole. Jan Jordan had pasta with walnut cream sauce and ate all of it. I took most of mine home and M and I had it for dinner Thursday. Dessert was tiramisu, disappointingly swimming in some not very tasty sauce.

Thursday: Leftovers from Lake Grove.
Friday: Leftover ox tails. Biscuits.
Saturday: thawed some spaghetti sauce, extended it with tomatoes left over from the oxtails and some tomato sauce.
Sunday: church annual meeting; made salami sandwiches on rolls. Dinner: oven-fried chicken (a chance to use the Frank's hot sauce, which I adore) and oven fried potatoes and some good slaw with sour cream and chopped jalapenos.

Monday, Jan 13: Chicken quesadillas (M. requested cheese, but there was leftover chicken)
Tuesday: Maggie ate all the leftover potatoes before I got home. I had the last few pieces of chicken and we went out to Dairy Queen. I had a banana split and she had a peanut buster parfait. What can I say. We were in the mood.
Wednesday: Salami sandwich; Maggie ate early again.
Thursday: Spaghetti with that leftover tomato sauce. Soup with leftover chicken broth, chicken base, chopped fresh spinach and cream. wonderful. Bedtime snack of walnut halves and malmsey.

Thurs, Jan 23: Most memorable about last weekend: salad with chicken marinated in mustard, white wine and garlic, baked and sliced and served with a Caesar dressing; black-eyed peas with salt pork; salmon sautéed and served with mushroom-cream sauce and parsley potatoes and baby carrots, glazed. On Monday, Jan 20, Lisa Sarasohn and two boys came and we had lasagna from the freezer with white sauce added. Maggie made fudge and mint brownies to take to school for finals week. I seem to be subsisting lately on oatmeal and refried beans (waddle's AGAIN). Maybe we'll have turkey quesadillas tonight.

Thurs, Jan. 30: The car wreck threw us out of joint for food. Comfort food. Waffles and sausage; turkey crepes (turkey is too strong, but the mushrooms in the white sauce were good). Some salads and bread from at trip to Haggen.
Tues, dinner at Harborside, now the Pilsner Room. Not good. The black and blue ahi was old. Lyza said her chicken was very ordinary, although it allegedly was soaked in tamarind juice. But yesterday, Wednesday, a real winner: lentils with hot Italian sausage and onions over pasta. I had regular hot sausage and made it Italian by adding fennel seed and basil and oregano. The fennel was so fragrant. Boil the lentils while you saute the onions and then the sausage in some oil with the spices. Add to the lentils. It will all be done in about the time it takes to boil the pasta.

Wed. Feb 4: Weekend at Triangle Lake, eating big American meals. Sunday, after Baroque Festival, Thai Villa -- Tom Gah Kai and satay and sizzling shrimp. Lunch Monday at Higgins most excellent stuffed baguette with smoked turkey and duck and garlic aioli and a nice salad with odd greens. We ate leftovers for dinner at the ZooBoo planning meeting, then went on to see the Russians about a car and were given tea with sliced lemons and oranges and a plate of Russian chocolates that were very good. Wed lunch, old favorite salmon teriyaki rice with seaweed and shredded egg at Koji. Dinner with Maggie at Fernando's. Tapas: quail in chocolate sauce, roasted potatoes with hot dipping sauce, toasted bread with a thin slice of parmesan on top and shrimp-stuffed peppers. Arm of the Gypsy, a chocolate cake roll, for dessert. So relaxing.

Tues, Feb. 25: On Feb. 15, went to Indigene with Sarasohns and Foster Church. Seafood stew not too good, but the vege platter was -- many tastes, cool to spicy, and textures, from stiff to soft. I had chicken with rosemary and garlic under the skin. Really good, too. Took an extra dessert home to Maggie, some meringue with chocolate and whipped cream.
Feb. 18, lunch with Pearl at Hands On. Roasted veggies, a good combination of flavors, with herbed aioli. Worked well. Pearl had a turkey sandwich. Hum. Feb. 19, lunch at Toulouse, where Betty didn't turn up. Wild mushroom soup had a gorgeous base, but was only lukewarm. Olive bread. "Caesar" salad had lettuce with brown edges. Feb. 20, lunch at Bima, where the combination of the pork loin sandwich and David's shrimp skewer and rice was swell. By themselves, the dishes were ordinary. The shrimp had a good mayonnaise-like sauce, but no hint of the coconut promised on the menu.
Things I made on vacation, week of Feb. 23: Breakfast squares (Foodday), some whole-wheat oatmeal bread that came out perfect, molasses-bran muffins, adobo with pork sted chicken (a success) and pilau, which Maggie likes. Cleaned out the spice cabinet and made chili with a mix and also some jambalaya with both chicken and sausage. That was a winner. It's hard to list dinners because we eat so many leftovers.

March 5: Lately, pearl in hospital, just grabbing food. Jambalaya and chili leftovers; the rest of the hot Hillshire farms sausage, which I didn't like much. Saturday (march 1), Maggie gone, I had a big salad with a dressing including some of the Japanese plum vinegar. It needed lemon to broaden it out. With some bread, all I needed for dinner.

Sunday, tried some of Andy Mershon's BBQ sauce on some sliced pork which I baked. Very good, a little hot, a little sweet, with mid notes so often lacking in other sauces. with baked beans and potatoes mashed with turnips.

Monday night, the potato-turnip leftovers went into the Cuisinart with some sorrel chiffonade that had been lightly sauteed in butter. A few drops of cream and some home-made chicken broth from the freezer and boy was it good. I made some croutons from this bread I took to Pearl but she didn't like, and they were marvelous on top. We had some cherry yogurt from Brown Cow, but it tasted like cough syrup and was not a success.
Still snacking on the home-made breakfast bars from the freezer. I like them more now.

Tuesday, sauteed some pork until it was crunchy carne asada (no spices, just salt), then folded into warmed flour tortillas with sour cream, guacamole (which M. surprised me by wanting to have; I thought she didn't like it), hot sauce. MMM ... forgot the onions but didn't miss them till just this minute... They were very, very good. We had some carrots with them that didn't cook long enough, so that was a wash.

Wed: crepes with strawberry-rhubarb sauce

Thurs: No dinner cause of Sound of Music practice. Went right from work. Had a bowl of cereal or something when I got home.

Friday, march 7: Cathy was here. Marinated olives* and the artichoke dip* that won third place in the recipe contest. The other artichoke dip I made in January was better. Lunch (I was home cleaning), leftover crepes and strawberry sauce. Dinner at Pearl's: angel hair pasta with 6-8 sundried tomatoes plumped in hot Chardonnay chopped with 5-6 cloves roasted garlic. Include the soaking liquid and cream in the sauce. Cathy liked it a lot. Mesclun mix.

Sat, mar 8: Yogurt waffles don't get very crisp if you forget the butter. Market Street pub: first beef for Cathy in 2 years. really good burgers and the beer sampler. Coffee: Steen's, where a young woman was noodling on the piano. Dinner (Cathy went to Pearl's): salad with a dressing of veg oil, cider vinegar, tarragon, cloves and salt. Toasted rosemary baquette, artichoke dip and olives.

Mon, mar 10: hash browns, sunny-side-up eggs and some roasted red peppers and eggplant with Parmesan cheese. No one was nuts about the eggplant.

Tues, Mar 11: Desperation dinner of bacon and biscuits, but the bacon (from the freezer!) was old and had to be tossed. It was really more like tea. We are snacking on a salad mix and making lunch sandwiches with cheese, sun-dried tomatoes with roasted garlic, sliced yellow peppers, green onions, salad mix -- that sorta stuff.

A superior lunch at Montage Tuesday. Chicken with some sort of hot herb stuff on it that didn't get into the way of the meat but was real hot. It tasted good with the limas and corn and I don't even like limas. I had rice. D. had dirty rice with his Cajun blackened (charred) oysters, and that was OK, too.
Maggie made some of that easy toffee, but she took it all to school.

Wed, Mar. 12: Maggie not home till late from model UN. I tried making a posset by heating milk and eggs to 160. It was like a wonderful, creamy custard that you could drink.

Tues. March 24. Not too much. Lenten fare, often just oatmeal or bread or potato. Last week, a nice treatment of a pork steak, baked with garlic powder and basil, then drizzled with lemon juice. Leftover chili from the freezer. A stew of pork and chicken using up leftover cut up veggies from a school function that didn't work. A really fine lunch at Obi, where the standout was the salmon skin roll. They brought us some grilled salmon that wasn't on the menu, probably because it was David. Maggie continues to like veggie-cheese sandwiches.

For Academy awards, made the spicy chicken wings* and killer noodle salad* that won the contest. Also cream cheese with sun-dried tomatoes and roasted garlic (I'm still only halfway thru that bottle), guacamole, some fresh-baked bread, veggies and rocky road brownies from Gourmet with chunks of bittersweet chocolate in the topping. Wow. But the party was a semi-bust.

Wed, March 25
lunch yesterday a cream of mushroom soup at Market Street Pub. huge 1-inch-square chunks of mushroom, must have been portobello. Intriguing hint of thyme in the broth.

April 24, 1997
It's really been a long time... Easter was a disaster. Made an angel cake, though, with strawberries and whipped cream. That was OK.

Restaurants: Salvadore Molly's, spendy but worth it. Lyza's jerk chicken was tasty and just fiery enough. I had calamari appetizer, which was pretty good and had a chance to put all sorts of sauces on it. Especially interested in Inner Beauty Real Hot Sauce, since we had put nearly half a bottle in Pasta From Hell*, which I made as a test for a story on hot sauce on the Internet. It had bananas with pineapple, orange and lime juice. It was good but really too hot to eat. Could be improved with less hot sauce.
Fiddleheads: another real find. Lyza had french toast with ham and farmers cheese, I had a chile bean soup and Ruslan had some kinda saucy chicken tacos I can't quite recall. Good atmosphere
Esparza's: I like it better each time. David had soft tacos with big hunks of bbq beef in them. I had roasted lamb enchiladas that were remarkable.
Il Piatti: A restaurant and coffee house combo, warmly decorated. Outstanding was the appetizer of thin toast smeared with chicken liver something.
Koji with Maggie, where I got her to eat raw tuna in a spicy tuna roll. Also salmon skin roll (obi's is better) and some ebi nigiri.

March 28: Some notes indicate this was the banner day I made the Puree of rutabaga with crispy shallots*. Oh, was it fine. Served with roasted red peppers and onion. Filling and satisfying.

March 29, Good Friday. no fat. mostly ate milk and homemade bread. Lentils with onions for dinner. Curiously satisfying, too.

March 31, Monday: I made a quick sweet and sour pork with brown rice, using bottled sweet and sour sauce. It was a hit.

April 1, Tuesday: Big lunch at Higgins: duck, chicken, rabbit stew over cheese polenta. Good.
...
April 20, Sunday: Roasted lamb. Leftovers made these great sandwiches with sliced red onion and some salad mix greens. Had that for one dinner and another lunch.

April 23, wed. Bunches of food at the office. Land o' Lakes brings in two butters: maple-roasted onion and chive-cilantro. Both very good with their cornbread. There's leftover cake (carrot) from the Stickel lunch tuesday. Thin lemon cookies made by SOM. Ohio Lemon Pie* which didn't work for a reader but was ok when Linda did it. Very tart; the curdly eggs weren't attractive, though. Dinner is all veggie-fruit. Waldorf salad with dried cranberries. Steamed broccoli with soy-broth-olive oil sauce and some roasted sunflower seeds. Late night snack of brown rice, plum vinegar and shredded pink ginger.
April 24. Lunch with Jan at Koji. She has roasted eggplant bento; I have tofu steak. Satisfying.

May 5. Still trying to keep up with it all. Saturday, cooked all day. Big pot of greens from Big City Produce. Spanish rice and baked beans in the oven. Sunday, game hen blackened with molasses-soy marinade, with baked potato and steamed artichoke. Last week, hardly any meat. Some poached salmon seemed lit the afterthought with those mashies with crispy shallots and broccoli with soy sauce and vinegar, not to mentioned some sauteed mushrooms. A few more good meals at Salvador Mollie's.

Mother's Day: dull lunch at Il Fornaio, but great desserts -- stout chocolate cake and coconut cake -- at B. Moloch. Went back a few days later with Jan Jordan and had two other great desserts, a cheesecake and a very very creamy lemon whatever it is if you have a brulee without browning it. Oh, it was good. Before that, we went to Portland Brewing way over by Montgomery Park. I had a black and blue salad which was filled with overdone cow. I took it home and gave the leftovers to the cats.

On vacation, I made great sandwiches starting with a spread of cream cheese, mayo and chopped green onion. It made great veggie sandwiches with cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, mesclun, sometimes avocado. Needed salt and pepper.

May 25: a good soup of mushrooms and sorrel (a bit of sherry, a bit more cream), to go with the corn and pepper salad with grilled shrimp from the May gourmet. It was great -- the kicker was the boursin cheese. the dressing, made red with carrot and red bell pepper, was slightly spicy, slightly sweet.

May 26: game hen soaked with soy, ginger, lime and broiled. It was ok, but made very boring sandwiches after those great veggie models.
Making smoothies with fruit (peaches, mangoes, bananas are favorites) and milk or perhaps sparkling water and Morning Blend juice for breakfast many mornings.

June 3. Dinner last night: strawberry-rhubarb betty, baked potatoes restuffed with sour cream and green onions and rebaked with cheddar, mesclun salad with dried cranberries and boursin. Walnut-oil and garlic dressing with cider vinegar. I just don't like walnut oil much.
Dinner June 1: A really good chili from the crock pot: beef, canned chopped tomatoes, chili powder, cumin, chopped jalapeno, onion, garlic, chopped green pepper. The secret was in the jalapeno; it added intense depth.

June 18:
One really, really good quick after-work snack-meal: At Koji's on Macadam, three great rolls -- spicy tuna, salmon skin and plum-mint, plus a cold sake that was so cold the bottle was ice. It poured slushy. All the tastes went together in a truly spectacular manner -- edge of the sea, smack of brine, sour plum and grassy sprouts, hot pepper and wasabi, crackly skin and smooth flesh, rice and rice wine.

I made a rhubarb goo that was really good. Added cling peach, chopped, for crunchy texture, and chopped in some ginger. I couldn't really differentiate the ginger, but Maggie could. I just thought it tasted really good, deep and balanced and a bit exotic.

I've found that the Grand Central baguette is just fine with honey, no butter. The honey has sat long enough that it's thick and grainy.

I live for Murchie's Russian Caravan tea -- it has a smoky background that tastes like the pictures in Tea in the East.

We tried some Copper River salmon steaks. They were deep red in color (it's coho, I think). Much more flavorful than the salmon I caught last September. I marinated them in lime juice, olive oil and a bit of vodka (out of vermouth) and just grilled them on the grill pan. I made some simple tartar sauce; it was elevated by the addition of Inner Beauty Real Hot Sauce.
There was fruit and fruit and fruit: strawberries, apricots, mangoes, bananas, peaches and raspberries and melon. I make smoothies almost every day for breakfast.

David and I ate at the Tiger Bar. Food was good, but the chicken on my skewer was so bad I thought it was the sauce. I wouldn't let David finish it.
Dinner with David and Jill Thompson and her boyfriend Rick at Hall Street. Starters: chicken quesadillas, crunchy and sweet under a swirl of mango sauce, and smoky grilled asparagus that was far better than I expected. I had a fine prime rib, perhaps the best I've had. Rick's pork chop was nothing special. Everyone loved Jill's crab cakes; I though David would find them too salty, but he liked them, too. I can't remember what David had, but I ate as much of the burned cream as I could get away with. Jill said she had had a better one recently, then couldn't remember where.

July 3: A really fine lunch at Toulouse. Salmon and sole medallions with a sweet orange sauce that had lots of depth and was not too sweet. Maggie had a risotto with smoked gouda and asparagus that she liked a lot but I thought was way rich. Betty had a lamb sandwich with tzatziki.

Earlier, tried the recipe from Gourmet for Pasta with Chard. Fettucini, chard, toasted walnuts, gorgonzola, cream. It was OK, but the chard chunks were too big. Also did a big Southwest something salad from Gourmet. It had Tomatillo-Tequila dressing, roasted corn, peppers, mesclun, black beans, fried flour tortilla on the bottom, goat cheese and fried strips of corn tortilla on top.
Discovered the very best brownie recipe. It's in Maida Heatter.

July 7: A weekend by myself trying new things. I marinated some crosscut ribs (thin slices across the ribs) in two sauces: hoisin and Dijon mustard and oyster with jalapeno, lime juice and orange marmalade. Both were excellent. I also made some barley and ate it plain and with Japanese pickled plums (tiny whole ones that are mostly pit) and also had some underneath a fry of chicken livers and salt pork. I made raspberry muffins with Malt-O-Meal (still good days later) and roasted corn on the grill with the ribs. I had tomatoes and cucumber, red onion and feta in wine vinegar and olive oil with olive bread on the side, spread with anchovy-garlic butter. I had Eggo waffles and homemade apricot nectar at Pearl's and tried some raw kohlrabi, which I did not particularly like. I made some Texas Caviar using black beans sted black-eyed peas (with onions and a vinaigrette-like dressing, with a hint of Tabasco).

August 5, 1997
OK, it's been a while. For a long time, I didn't cook much. That was then.

Aug.1, dinner at Trio in NE Port with David and Karen Pate. Zucchini-coconut soup was like the zucchini soup with curry I had made the day before, but with a hint of coconut. Appetizers included some shrimp on skewers, portobello mushrooms and gorgonzola on bruschetta. The best was stuffed poblano with roasted garlic sauce. Lamb chops with a sort of cake of eggplant that was very nice. Ribeye steak with a butter that had pink-purple shallot butter -- tasted great. Poussin -- well, it was a chicken. Fine, fine Cooper Mtn. 1996 pinot gris. Dessert was a sliced banana and custard sauce over a piece of shortbread and with sugar bruleed on top. I didn't want top share.

I tried another custard sauce at home, serving it with nectarines and banana. We've also had, in the last week, some very nice salads from the garden-- just lettuce and tomatoes and herbs with some cheese added. Maggie noticed what a difference freshness makes. We had soup made of zucchini, and ratatouille (I used basil and it had a very funny smell. None of my garden basil tastes very good this year at all). I also made a chocolate-chip zucchini cake. We had lamb from the farmers market roasted with garlic and oregano and lemon. Maggie ate the roasted tomatoes with parmesan that went with it. The recipe for yogurt potatoes with mint from The New Vegetarian Epicure was fantastic. I made the plum upside-down cake from The Oregonian. Looked spectacular. Last night I threw together a cobbler to use up the nectarines I had bought for a tart I couldn't make cause I didn't have any sour cream.

September 22, 1997
A weekend of cooking out of Gourmet. Mango Cucumber Salsa was so good I made it twice and passed the recipe around work. With that we had seared sea scallops and a wonderful salad of purple potatoes, sugar snap peas and mint.

The next night we had stuffed chicken breasts, only I thawed out thighs by mistake. THe stuffing was prosciutto smeared with mustard, topped with basil leaves and mozzarella and rolled up. With it we had roast vegetables I had brushed with olive oil with paprika, garlic powder, salt, pepper, basil and oregano. The combination on the sweet orange winter squash was outstanding.

Also this weekend, I made an apple crisp (fresh apples) and bourbon pancakes, only I had to use Irish whisky, being out of bourbon.

A good restaurant meal I had several times lately at Heathman Bakery was chipotle marinated goat cheese served with salsa and lamb carnitas and blue corn tortillas.

I made pesto last week with walnuts (from Winnie and Harold Hughes's) lightly toasted. Also chili in the pressure cooker, which didn't entirely work because I put in too much liquid.

And that seems to be it for 1997. I kept eating; I just stopped writing it down.