Eats/Reads

This is an easy version of potatoes au gratin. I made them in a large cake pan so it was just a thin layer of potatoes and they were very crispy. Yum. 4 large potatoes, sliced into 1/4 inch slices 1 onion, sliced into rings salt and pepper to taste 3 tablespoons butter 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 cups milk 1 1/2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Butter a 1 quart casserole dish. Layer 1/2 of the potatoes into bottom of the prepared casserole dish. Top with the onion slices, and add the remaining potatoes. Season with salt and pepper to taste. In a medium-size saucepan, melt butter over medium heat. Mix in the flour and salt, and stir constantly with a whisk for one minute. Stir in milk. Cook until mixture has thickened. Stir in cheese all at once, and continue stirring until melted, about 30 to 60 seconds. Pour cheese over the potatoes, and cover the dish with aluminum foil. Bake 1 1/2 hours in the preheated oven.

We finally made a sojourn to Chinatown to visit our favourite Chinese market today. We sorely miss the Chinese food in San Francisco, so we've been forced to make it at home. We've found a couple adequate Chinese restaurants here but nothing like in SF. You have to be careful what you order here, or you might end up with doughy, deep-fried meat covered in jam (their version of 'sweet and sour'). Yuck. Or sweetcorn in your mu shu. Double yuck. At the market today, along with some sauces, frozen dumplings (yum) and noodles, we bought fresh pak choy (or bak choi, or however you misspell it). This is a quick sauce we tried out for the greens. It came out OK but was a little too thin and watery, and the pak choi could have been cooked less. This is our amended recipe, which we hope will fix that. We served this with pan fried pot stickers. I heart Chinese food!! 2 Tbsp veg oil 6 or so cloves of garlic 1/3 c chicken broth 1 Tbsp soy sauce 1 1/2 tsp cornstarch 1 1/2 to 2 lbs p...

We get an organic veg box and around this time of year we always end up with a fridge drawer full of parsnips. So last night we made curried parsnip chips. How: Washed, peeled and chopped them into chip-size sticks. Mixed them with olive oil and a tsp or so of curry powder. Baked at 200C (fan oven) for 30 mins. Made dipping sauce with yogurt, curry powder and lemon. Result: Tasty chips but some burnt. Dipping sauce OK but left something to be desired. Next time: Cut chips into more even sizes, or watch more closely for little ones burning and remove from oven. Do some recipe research for ideas on how to make dipping sauce better (we did this recipe before, following a recipe online, and the results were much better).