A Short Rest at The Garlic House

Today is Sunday, a day I use to catch up on chores.

Since having workmen in my house on and off for a couple of months, with the end just a pinprick of light in the tunnel, I have been cleaning the house by myself. Yes, usually I have help, but I can’t see paying someone to do deep cleaning when there’s a cloud of dust being kicked up every couple of days. Better to wait until construction is over and done and then do a bang up job.

Sunday is also the day I cook – a lot. It’s the day I make brownies and cookies to send to the prodigal son. I also make an extraordinary dinner, something that requires me to put some energy and thought into the preparation. I love cooking in this fashion. I am a food snob, and think that food should be a joyous and creative nourishment, and not just something to satisfy the hole in the stomach. This is why I rarely eat at fast food establishments. There’s not much about fast food one can savor. Both my husband and I tend to gravitate toward the adventurous when it comes to dining.

For an appetizer, I am going to make oysters rockefeller, which is always a taste treat. For dinner today, I’m making a roast pork, which has spent the morning marinating in pureed garlic, oil, rosemary and thyme. Then I will cover the roast in pancetta.

Sunday is also the day I make roasted garlic. Roasted garlic is a great additive to mashed potatoes or vegetable side dishes. I use this day because most of the other occupants of the house are absent. My husband has an unnatural love for garlic, but my daughter, who sticks her nose up at just about everything, claims that she does not share in the love. So in addition to the roast oozing garlic from every crevasse of the roast, I also have garlic slow roasting in the oven.

Many people do not appreciate the overwhelming yet interesting nature of garlic, and are a bit put off when I subject them to our garlic house. Not that I care too much.

Much as I love garlic, the aroma right now is quite overpowering. That’s why I’m upstairs typing instead of downstairs. When the garlic softens and becomes mellow, I’ll go back to cooking.

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Update on Thanksgiving

1. I cleaned both bathrooms, and started dusting my son’s room and the spare room. Then I went into cooking frenzy.

2. The turkey was excellent! A little dry, because I had to turn it down to give time for the chicken to cook.

3. THE CHICKEN. The chicken was scary! First of all, it weighed seven pounds. Second of all, the legs on it seemed much smaller than a normal chicken’s legs. Third of all, it appeared to be roundish in nature, and looked like a bowling ball in its bag. Fourth of all, it had some kind of slime on it. (I don’t know if that was because it was Amish?) Fifth of all, even though it was in the oven more than four hours, the meat was hard as a rock. I couldn’t even poke a fork into it. My daughter resigned herself to eating the dried out turkey.

3. The yams were delicious! I made them candied. I’m the only person who likes yams.

4. The corn was disappointing. I’m never buying frozen again.

5. The homemade gravy was amazing!

6. The potatoes… well, there’s a post within a post. I usually leave the skins on my redskins, but my daughter moaned that she would for ONCE like to have mashed potatoes that were skinless and whipped. I made them that way, and she didn’t eat any.

7. The dressing. It was edible, but I don’t eat it. That’s my husband’s favorite part of the meal.

8. The kitty attempted to nose-dive into all of it.

9. The cranberry sauce was canned, but I love it.

10. Pumpkin pie was homemade, from pumpkin I grew in the back yard. We used low fat Land-o-Lakes whipped cream.

All in all, it was pretty good. I still have a food hangover.