The Consuming Passion

[ksmith]

Vacation day. Why am I busier on vacation days than on "work" days.



First thing I did was take Gaby to the vet's. Gland expressing time. She
hadn't needed to have it done for several months, but over the last few days
she'd been attacking herself pretty regularly, which is A Sign. Dogs with
IBD often have gland difficulty as well, so it wasn't as though this was
unexpected. She's fine now. Just came in from the inside, and is currently
occupied with licking the snowballs off her feet.

I wanted to get the grocery shopping done for the weekend, so after I got
Gaby home, out I went again. Went to a store that was only a block or so
from a Williams-Sonoma, so. I cannot justify any new pots at this time given
that the Cuisinart set isn't that old. But I kinda needed a new small roast
pan as the current aluminum one is pitted and warped, and I thought that
would give me a good chance to give All-Clad a try. However, I told myself
that if there were no sales, I would forego.

Of course, the Winter Sale was on, and the All-Clad small roaster was one of
the pans on sale. Got that, then made the mistake of walking around the
store. On the deep discount table, I found an oval 5-qt Le Creuset French
Oven for 50% the W-S price. It was the citron shade, a light clear yellow
that was a W-S exclusive color. The reason the oven was on deep discount was
because said color is now discontinued. 5-qt is a perfect size for me, great
for a small batch of soup or stew. I couldn't pass it up. I now have pieces
in lemongrass kiwi (pale green) and yellow. I guess I will follow the multi-color
collection scheme, aka the Fiestaware method aka whatever is on sale.

I also found some butter pecan quick bread mix on the sale table. A bottle
of oregano-flavored olive oil. I also picked up plain olive oil and balsamic
vinegar. I then got the hell out there. Since I had parked so far away, the sales clerk had to give me a
special plastic thingie to attach to the rope bag handles to make them
easier to hold.

Grocery shopping proved anticlimactic. Biggest splurges were beer (Great
Lakes Brewing--Edmund Fitzgerald Porter) and bread (rosemary-olive oil
sourdough rolls--great with sliced turkey).

Home now. Full. Time to work. Dogs are in the other room snoring, damn them.

But, I can haz new pot and pan. And beer.

Comments

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

Oh hell--it's fun, isn't it? Cooking with nice things. Using good ingredients.

Truth be told, I started thinking about the All-Clad again after I ran into an issue with the Cuisinart stock pot. I got into the habit of boiling the water first before adding salt, in order to avoid white spots--a known issue with any of these stainless steel pots. However, the last few times I have added salt to the boiling water in the stock pot, I noticed spots develop that looked more like rust. Brown, rust-colored spots that did not come off when I scrubbed with Bon Ami. I was able to remove them with a paste of baking soda followed by a rub with foil, but their appearance hasn't exactly given me a warm and fuzzy feeling. So far, the other pots and pans are great, and the stock pot is the only one in which I've seen the brown spots develop. I'll be interested to know if you ever see anything like that in your stock pots.

As for the new roaster, I may be roasting a chicken in it this weekend. It came with a non-stick rack, which I may not need to use since I usually just rest the chicken atop veggies. But if I just use lemon and garlic, I may use it.

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

I haven't had either brown spots or white spots in my stock pots. (um...that's a bad rhyme, there.) That includes both All-Clads (8 qt and 12 qt) and the monster non-All-Clad. However, I've never put salt in the monster, because I don't add salt when making stock. The 8 quart has had salt added when boiling potatoes--no spots. The 12 quart gets used less than the 8 quart and all I've made in it so far is smaller batches of stock, so no salt there.

Of course, I haven't had mine as long as you've had yours. If you've got the small All-Clad roaster like I have, I absolutely love it. The non-stick rack is yards better than the rack I used to have, but is harder to clean than the roasting pan itself. All those little angles. At least it holds still (the one I had before would fold up suddenly on my hand while I was cleaning it.)

Need to go check the lamb shoulders again. They smell done to me. It's plural shoulders because, in a hurry to get things in the freezer, we shoved both shoulders into a plastic bag and then wrapped them and only then thought "Maybe we shouldn't have." But we didn't undo the wrapping. So they were stuck together and had to be cooked on the same day. I made up a rub for them, laid them in the big old aluminum roasting pan, put foil over them, and they've cooked in a slow oven.

[kristine-smith.livejournal.com]

The lamb sounds good...

[e-moon60.livejournal.com]

It was. Though I think I'll be bolder with the spices next time.