Have you just recently started getting posts from this blog? The pause was caused mainly by an accidental change in our mailing-list service. It was also at least somewhat caused by the fact that I hadn’t been writing many posts recently, as I’ve been concentrating on my music blog. For 2021, though, I’m going to set the goal of writing a post a week here. Remember, this isn’t a food blog as such, or a cooking blog. It’s a site that concentrates on the part that food should play in our lives. (“Roles,” remember.) Ideally, all the food that you eat should fulfill at least one of these two roles:
- Nourishing your body with something nutritious.
- Creating or enhancing community and fellowship.
Also ideally, none of the food that you eat should fulfill either of these two roles:
- Eating done out of boredom or habit.
- Eating done solely out of the desire to continue tasting the food.
For tonight’s New Year’s Eve dinner, which normally would also be a Celebrate Carol’s Birthday dinner (my sister-in-law’s birthday is December 30), we have just the six of us—Jim, me, my in-laws (Jim’s parents), our son, and Jim’s brother. After dinner we are going to watch the third Hershey Felder program of the season. I’ll describe the menu in just a minute, but let me tell you about this Felder guy first. So, Carol had e-mailed me a couple of weeks ago asking me to choose my favorite composer from a short list she sent. I picked Debussy. She said she needed to know for something she was sending me that had an expiration date. I thought it was a concert video of some kind, and we watched that program maybe a week and a half ago. Well! It wasn’t a concert, as such, at all. It was a one-man show done by Mr. Felder, in which he portrayed Debussy in words and music. Utterly charming and captivating. I’m not even going to attempt any more description, because you really should see him for yourself. Then my in-laws decided to give Jim and me (but really all of us) the Gershwin episode. Another delightful evening ensured. But we still have one more to go, as Carol had sent her dad and Jan the Irving Berlin program as their gift. All of them expire at midnight Pacific Time tonight, so we’re going to have our dinner and then waft into 2021 on waves of Berlin. I can hardly wait. It’s hard for me to believe that I’d never heard of Felder and his prodigious talent. Normally he gives live shows, which is how Carol became acquainted with him at a performance he gave in Seattle, where she lives. When the pandemic shut everything down he decided to go digital. These shows are not free, but you’re not going to pay any more per head than you would for a movie. While you won’t be able to see the 2020 shows online, be sure to visit his website and see the shows he’s doing for 2021. Right now he has three listed: Sholem Aleichim, the Rachmaninoffs, and Puccini. And there’s a klezmer band in the Aleichim one! Sounds great. All of them do, actually. I’d highly recommend that you try out one. You’ll be hooked for the others.
But what are we going to eat for dinner before we watch the show? Ah, that’s a good question. I’m making the main course and sides, my mother-in-law is making the salad, and my son has made the dessert. Here’s what’s coming up:
A romaine salad with pine nuts, dried cranberries and lemon dressing, courtesy of my MIL
Roast beef, boneless rib roast from Costco, prepared following the Cooks Country method—see the video below. BUT—don’t do that silly thing of straining the sauce! Why on earth you’d want to do that is beyond me. And I’m going to be sauteing a boatload of crimini mushrooms as part of the sauce, probably not doing the onion step but maybe including a couple of shallots. (Just fyi–my roast doesn’t have nearly as much of a fat cap as the one in the video.)
Corn, buttermilk and chive popovers, from the Smitten Kitchen website but made with the beef fat from the roast above, baked in a muffin tin and not in the roasting pan as the CC video says to do, and with a hotter oven than SK calls for. I made these several years ago and they were a total flop. The oven temp was too low, and I think I didn’t let the batter warm up first, so they were pretty much doughy muffins. This time I’m going to go with 4250, have already made up the batter and am letting it sit in the fridge, and then I’ll take it out an hour before baking. As you’ll see in the video, the beef roasts at only 2500, but that’s perfectly okay. I’ll turn up the oven when I take out the roast to brown it, and by the time I’ve made the sauce the oven should be hot. I’ll slide in the pan of popovers, which shouldn’t need more than 15 minutes or so. The beef will be resting on the back of my stove, which actually has a “warm zone” setting. So great!
Some kind of roasted veggie dish. I originally planned to use Brussels sprouts, but the ones at the store yesterday were limp. I refused to buy them. Good cooks (whose ranks I hope to be a part of, at least tangentially) are always willing to change plans if things don’t look fresh, especially in the area of produce. I have broccoli and cauliflower, but I think I may just use the broccoli, with garlic and lemon. Very plain and simple, and very good with the mushroom-beef sauce.
And that’s it for the main meal. You’ll note that there are no mashed potatoes or indeed potatoes of any kind in this meal. That omission isn’t because I don’t like potatoes; I love potatoes. But we don’t need them for this meal. We have salad, meat, sauce/gravy, popovers, and vegetables. Every item is going to be good. It was interesting: at our Thanksgiving meal I suddenly realized that we didn’t have a sweet-potato dish. And I was glad! I was relieved! I didn’t miss them at all! (I’m on record anyway as voting against sweet sweet-potato TG dishes that taste the same as pumpkin-pie filling.)
And then for dessert, my son has made a banana-chocolate cheesecake that he happened to see in a cookbook I was given years ago by my husband’s uncle & wife.* It’s really a great book, I have to say. There was a little bit of the filling left over and we baked it in a separate small dish, so I’ve had one small spoonful of the cheesecake filling already, and I have to say that it’s fabulous. For some reason I’d never thought of using bananas in a cheesecake before.
Hope everyone has a great New Year’s Eve, perhaps with Zoom or phone calls to people who can’t be there in person, and that we’re all back together soon for celebratory meals—or ordinary ones, for that matter. I have lots of stuff planned for this site in 2021. See you then!
*Amazon Affiliate link: If you follow the link and purchase the book, or any other item during your session, I will receive a small commission at no additional cost to you.