On Cooking: #2 in 50

So I am a week late, but here we are. As a reminder, my goal is 50 new recipes over 50 weeks to expand the ol’ home repertoire. Sound easy? try it sometime. Week #2 was Baked Lamb Shanks (also via Cook with Jamie, p. 162). Lamb shanks, sage, thyme, butter, garlic, salt, pepper – all piled on top of finely sliced carrots, onions, and leeks, then wrap in foil, tip in a glass of wine, and cook for 2.5 hours. Witness the raw ingredients:


(props to Ela for taking the picture for her dad: my hands were filthy, and we can work on her focus).

So what was so fun about this recipe:

1) It’s lamb! I love it, but this is the only the second time I cooked it. I couldn’t resist the noise: “what’s this bleating of sheep in my ears?”

2) It’s meat. Ok, I love meat: all the Cornetts do. But we, like most Americans, eat too much of it, so I’ve been cutting down our portions. The two times I’ve cooked meatless, I’ve endured long, mournful glances from the children before one of them gets up the courage to ask, lips trembling, “Dad, what happened to the meat?” Lamb shanks don’t give you a ton of meat, but just enough.

3) It’s the first time I frenched a bone: something I’ve wanted to do, but never really had the excuse. This was fun, and not as hard as I expected.

The end result was delicious: I tucked in with a good will, and I think the others all tried some. But let’s just say it’s not a meal fit for a sweltering August night in south Florida. Think early December, up north, with cold winds outside and steaming potatoes alongside the toasty packages on a platter.

In other cooking news, let me share two recent developments. After a hearty dinner of a homemade Tuscan Bean Stew, Michael pushed back has half-eaten bowl and said: “Dad, can’t we just have canned soup next time? I mean – can’t we just trust Publix?” Oh, Michael – you don’t want to trust canned soups. Second, I have decided that my current guilty pleasure in cooking is pancetta. Expensive? Salty? Fatty? Yes. Delectable? Oh yes. In small amounts – omelettes, pastas, arugula salads, and more – it’s both worthwhile and economical.

Love to you all - andy

(cross-posted at Facebook)

On Cooking: 50 in 50

Some of you know that I love to cook. I’ve tried to analyze why: it’s the creative outlet, it’s the routine, it’s the necessity, it’s the joy of fresh whole ingredients, it’s the satisfaction of doing well at something others enjoy – and yes, it’s because I love to eat.

But lately I feel like I’ve been in a rut. So two things are happening: (1) I’m making a list of new recipes, and (2) Robin signed up so for this 2x/month organic co-op fruit-and-veggie box which will force me to use things outside my normal repertoire (like the fresh globe eggplants I turned into “Operation Grilled Baba Ganoush” last night – don’t think that campaign went over very well).

That means I have a goal of using 50 new workable recipes this year (I cook for my wife and kids, after all!), trying out one new dish in each of the 50 weeks. I’ll keep a running log for you of what I’m cooking, where it’s from, and how it went. It has the added bonus of stretching me to write about something outside my normal zone. And if it helps inspire you in any way about what you put on your table, then so much the better!

Just a teaser from this last week: summertime tagliarini(via Cook with Jamie – a 447-page effort by Jamie Oliver). Think smashed pine nuts, copious olive oil, lemon juice and zest, flat-leaf parseley, parmesan, pecorino, sea salt and pepper, and hot fresh pasta. Killer good.

Love to you all - andy

(cross-posted at facebook.com/AndyCornett)

if you missed hearing it in person...

Andy recently had the unusual opportunity to preach from the pulpit in our sanctuary. I personally thought he did rather a good job (I know I'm biased but I do not think I err). I am not sure how to link directly to the file itself, but the sermon is available online if you would like to listen to it. Here is the link to the online sermons. Currently, Andy's is three down from the top: his sermon was titled "Every Picture Tells a Story".

New Orleans

What can I say? The spring was really busy, and so far, the summer has been, too. I have no other excuse for my neglect. If you are still with me, thanks, and if not, well, I'm sorry.

Andy spent two weeks in Orlando in June to finish out his MDiv. That's right, I said FINISH OUT. He's sitting at the other table working on his last assignment as I write this, and then he'll be done. This spring/summer felt like quite a pile of classes! He came home late one Friday evening, and early the next morning, our whole family, plus my dad, were in our church parking lot and getting ready to drive to New Orleans with 30+ high school students. My first work trip in years.

My work this year was different, though--I was going along as the photographer, not just for our group, but for the whole camp. I feel like I could say a lot about the trip in general but for now I'll just (hopefully) share a slideshow that I put together for the last night of the trip.

Actually, if you have ten minutes instead of five, watch this video first:



Ellison (from Son Servants) showed us this one night so we could get a reminder of what the city looked like in the days following the storm. The music is Bruce Springsteen's "My City of Ruins" and I personally got chills watching it. Katey and Abbie, from the Son Servants summer staff, suggested the Chris Tomlin song "God of this City" for our video, and I really love the juxtaposition.

completely random

Many apologies for neglecting this poor blog for so long. There's really just no excuse for it! The spring around here has just been kind of nonstop busy and I think all I will do here is just share a really random, stream of consciousness kind of list of what's been happening around here:

• Andy is almost done with his master's degree. I feel like he's the Little Engine That Could. "I think I can, I think I can, I think I can." He had a class in January, is currently flying to Houston for four Friday/Saturday classes, and will be in Orlando at RTS for his last class. Which is apparently two classes. It's added just a bit of chaos to the spring.
• I've been taking a lot of pictures. It's been fun.
• I've also been a featured photographer for the company which produced my blog theme. Really really fun, although it has resulted in some extra email.
  
• My dad is in Ireland right now. With my uncle.
• Andy planned and executed a major drama/presentation/something with his students in April. It was kind of an exploration of who Jesus is, called The Jesus Journey. Michael had a migraine, so the kids and I left early, but it was well received.
• I dropped my camera last week as I was climbing out of the car after an evening at the beach. The camera was fine, the expensive lens which was attached to it was not. Shipped it off to Canon the next day for repairs. About half of the cost will be covered by my insurance, which is awesome. State Farm has been fabulous and fast.
• I replaced my desktop a month ago and have given my "old" computer to the kids to learn on. The graphics card on it went bad just two days ago. If it had been my primary computer right now I would be freaking out. Thankfully it is even still under warranty and a new card is on its way.
• The line to our icemaker/water dispenser is apparently leaking somewhere under the fridge. And has been for a while. Oh snap.
• The kids and I are all just about ready for school to be done this year.
• We adopted a new puppy from the local humane society just over a month ago. His name is Judah. Oddly enough, it took us about two weeks to realize how closely he resembles Emma. For now. Supposedly he will be rather a large dog. Larger than Emma. So far, he is mostly very sweet, and he loves to be wherever we are, especially if we are in the kitchen (not just for cooking; he also loves to be underfoot when I'm unloading the dishwasher, making an already challenging task slightly dangerous). The only issues we've been having are related to the differences between puppy play (wrestling, jumping, nipping) and children play (squealing, running, squealing). Mostly, though, he is a darling, more or less.
• The kids, my dad, and I are all going with Andy on the high school work trip to New Orleans at the end of June. We are really looking forward to it. (I am going as a photographer/pseudo adult leader; my dad is going because between the two of us, one can be working and one can be with the kids, and therefore we equal one "real" adult.)
• I bought a really cute sundress at Target last week (told you this would be random).
• The kids have been watching Star Wars and Star Wars related shows for way too long. We are about ready to burn it all. And if it's not Star Wars, it's Bionicles. I at least have a frame of reference for Star Wars, but Bionicles? Seriously? Some of us are quite tired of Star Wars and long for the good old days when they were just trying to decide between VeggieTales and "Mommy's video".
• Andy and I are finally watching the last season of Battlestar Galactica. I was avoiding picking it back up for a while, and unfortunately know some of what happened thanks to a spoiler article about something else (but NO I do NOT know yet who the final Cylon is, so please do NOT tell me).

Time to take Judah for a walk and let the kids begin the bedtime/unwinding process. Again, many apologies for the prolonged absence.

memorials

The kids and I flew up to Ohio last week to visit with my dad. Why January? Good question. I can only answer that apparently we are slightly insane. Thankfully, a friend down here provided a wonderful coat for Michael and scarves and hats galore. Whew! When we got there, Dayton was covered in old snow, which melted after a day or so, but not before the kids got to play in it. Sunday morning, it was snowing like crazy, so they were able to play outside in the snow as it was falling. Since this trip was about their second experience ever with snow, I was pretty pleased with that.

We went to church with my dad on Saturday night. Although this is the church in which I grew up, this building is still quite unfamiliar to me because it was built after I graduated from high school. My brother had a small farm plot on the land one summer (pending building) as part of a fundraiser for a youth trip. I have to confess, my mind wandered a bit during the service as I looked around and thought about the roots of this church, and the history to get there.

What I was mainly thinking about was that my parents were on the leadership team for the Sow What? campaign--the fund drive for the building which now holds this church. I remember my mother working (chemo and all) to make this property and building a reality. This is a very contemporary church, with no pews, no stained glass, and no gold plaques. My mother's name isn't inscribed anywhere in the building, or in the youth building next to it (in lieu of flowers, my father requested that donations in her name be made to that), but for all that, in a very real way, and maybe only to me, that building is a memorial to my mother. She invested herself in it because she believed in our church and its mission.

Don't worry, I have no delusions that she single-handedly built the church or anything like that--it's a big church and a lot of people poured themselves into it. But just knowing my mother, and how practical she was, and what was important to her, I was thankful to look around at all the unfamiliar faces that night and know that their presence in that building was a small part of her legacy. I think she would like that better than a fancy granite monument, which she doesn't have anyway. I am very thankful for my mother's drive, dedication, and passion, and for the ways in which she chose to invest herself.

a piece of my mind

I just have to share with you this passage from a textbook for my class next week:

"We have seen that postcoloninal criticism is often impaled on the horns of the following dilemma: whether to align itself with humanist notions of an autonomous, sovereign subject and so run the risk of subsuming heterogeneous identities and histories in to an abstract essentialism, or of embracing a post-structuralist antihumanism and so denying any universal moral platform from which to contest the material and epistemic violence of the colonial encounter. Gayatri Spivak has suggested a ‘strategic essentialism’ as a way of resolving this dilemma: that while theory recognizes only the dispersal of ‘subject-effects,’ emancipatory practice requires us to adopt and essentialist stance toward the colonized self. "

It is just me, or the lateness of the hour, or my punchiness due to caffeine and late-night study – but is this not just hilarious? Have a look at those words, and say them with a straight face and serious tone … do I hear you giggle?

The strange fact is that if you read enough of this, you actually begin to understand it. The book is called Subverting Global Myths and it is actually quite remarkable. But this paragraph left me grinning and just begged to be shared.