Dinner

It’s no secret that New York City is filled with delightful, delectable, delicious restaurants. I’ve had many good, many great meals in the City that are worth the buzz that’s spoken about them. None have been so memorable to me as the two meals I’ve shared at Hundred Acres. We first wandered into Hundred Acres …

Cheese enchiladas are comfort food to me the way matzo ball soup might be to someone on the East Coast. It\’s just one of those satisfying meals that sounds good no matter what time of day it is, where you are, or whether or not you\’ve just eaten.

I just got my Texas Monthly magazine yesterday (thanks to my hubby for subscribing), and this month is dedicated to \”How to Cook Like a Texan\”. Of Cheese Enchiladas, Katharyn Rodemann writes, \”They say our palates memorize flavors. If that\’s the case, every Texan has enchiladas learned by heart.\”

Amen.

Alright, y’all. After my last post about Irish Soda Bread, and it’s non-authentic-ness, (I doubt that’s a word, but roll with me), I decided I should really get into this and make the real stuff, the stuff you’d find on a family’s table in Ireland.

Luckily, I won that mahusive amount of cheese and butter from KerryGold a few months back. Included in that giveaway was The Country Cooking of Ireland by Colman Andrews. It’s a beautiful book, big enough and full of enough gorgeous photographs to grace a coffee table.

I don’t know about you, but some nights I am wiped from work and the temptation to succumb to take out, eat out, or something in a box is almost too much to resist. One meal that James and I are happy to eat any time of year is chicken noodle soup. You may think that homemade soup is something you need hours and hours for, and yes, sometimes that’s true. But on a weeknight, it really is possible to have homemade soup in under an hour.

There are a few pantry items you need to keep on hand in order to make this possible, but believe me, once you’ve done that, when you go to stare into the depths of your fridge, and suddenly realize you’ve got everything you need for this filling and healthy supper, the wash of relief and hunger might just be at equal measures.

I find few things as satisfying as baking homemade bread. I really love everything about it. It is amazing to me that a few simple ingredients can (after a few hours) turn into a beautiful, fresh loaf of bread. Plus, it is a great addition to any meal, and I can’t eat soup or salad without a fresh roll or slice of bread.

I also enjoy the process. My KitchenAid mixer gets plenty of use in my kitchen, but I rarely use it when I make bread. There’s just something stress relieving and calming about kneading bread by hand. Sometimes it’s fun to get my hands dirty, you know?

So, when Amber asked me to write a guest post for Bluebonnets and Brownies, I immediately knew that I should make homemade bread. I bake bread almost every week, and I am always excited to try new recipes.

You can count this as really cool or really crappy. I am going to count it in the really cool category: this year, the entire country will be throwing parties for my birthday. Well, I should probably rephrase that. They’ll be throwing parties on my birthday. This year, my birthday lands on Super Bowl Sunday.

James really kinda likes American Football, as he calls it, but doesn’t follow it religiously. I’m much more a basketball girl. (Go Spurs Go!) Growing up in a town where there’s only one major sports league team, those colors (black and silver) run deep. To this day, my favorite athlete is David Robinson (known as The Admiral to San Antonio Spurs fans), and he’s been retired for over ten years. So it didn’t even occur to us when the Super Bowl would be, where the Super Bowl would be, or why we would even need to know. And that’s how we came to book a vacation to Dallas-Fort Worth, the same weekend that the Super Bowl is being held there. Oops.

Cheese toasties are one of the best comfort foods the British Isles have to offer. They’re not unlike their American counterparts, the grilled cheese, but it’s kinda like Zebras and Donkeys. Kinda similar, but completely different animals.

I know, I know. I’m on a British kick lately. Yes, my blog is dedicated to Tex-Mex and Southern food. But this is a Texan British household, so just as often British favorites make it to our table.

One of the best things about winter eating is soup, and one of the best things about winter eating in my kitchen is Bean, Bacon and Ham soup. I don’t know about you, but I always want Ham when it comes to holidays. But even when I buy the smallest spiral ham I can find, James and I are left with days and days of leftovers.

I have a confession to make. I had never in my life tasted a parsnip until I moved to England in 2004. I’m kind of ashamed of that, because they are the most wonderful of vegetables, and now one of my favorites. Parsnips just aren’t easily found in Texas, for some reason. My nephew, and Rachael Ray, call them “spicy carrots” – not hot spicy, they just have some pronounced flavor.

When I was a kid, I had this favorite movie around Christmas time, simply called “Santa Claus”. I don’t remember a lot about the movie now, I haven’t seen them show it in years. But what I do remember is that one of the main characters was a homeless child. And the one scene I remember vividly, is that he was hungry. And a girl in a big, beautiful house saw him, and made him a plate, with roast beef, and rolls and took it out to him on Christmas Eve.