Wild Wednesday! Yeehaw! My once-a-week window into what it would be like to have a really big family - everyone in the kitchen, all talking at the same time, the kids (sort of) doing homework, John (sort of) working, Stacey and I (sort of) chatting, everyone playing with Cooper, all while I make a big, messy dinner. And an early dinner, since everyone's dashing out the door by 5:50 p.m., off to various Wednesday night events. I prefer an early dinner myself, so it's absolutely fine by me to be sitting around the dining room table at 5 p.m., everyone still talking at the same time, laughing at Cooper's Chatty Cuteness, and discussing the pros and cons of the various components of our meal. Everyone's a critic, of course, especially my kids. Tonight's crispy oven-roasted chicken drummies are pretty universally well-loved, except by Nathan, although he digs the accompanying sticky rice with pan juices plenty fine. (The pic is actually from the summer, when I add garden tomatoes to the pan juices. In January, no garden tomatoes, sniff, although the juices are darn tasty anyhow.)

As a bonus, Stace arrived with Whole Foods goodies that everyone happily dug into - spicy nuts, olives, and coconut cupcakes for dessert, yay!

Cooper Cuteness Wednesday! (I babysit my year-old, red-haired nephew Cooper each Wednesday, The Best.) He's busy today, loving Bucky (my Bucky Badger bobblehead), mya-man (derived from Spider-Man, it now means various of Nathan's action figures), eez (I think cheese, for grilled cheese sandwich), ana (banana), and mik (milk). He emptied a few cupboards, played a little hide-n-seek, then was ready for a few books and a nap. He's now sleeping soundly in Nathan's cool, dark room. Cute does not begin to describe how he (and every baby) looks while sleeping. Why are adults so hideous asleep? Mouth hanging open, grey-skinned, puffy-eyed. I have a classic picture of a cherubic Baby Nathan, rosy-cheeked and heavily eye-lashed, adorably asleep next to an also-zonked me...looking old, exhausted, and seriously unlovely. Man, I laughed when I saw that pic, the contrast! Eeek! Need motivation to apply sunblock each morning? Place your face next to an angel-faced child and have a long look in the mirror together. Gasp! Yeah. That should do ya.

We also have both kids on Wednesday nights, and religious school gearing up soon here (my stepdaughter starts tonight), in addition to homework and school craziness. Wild Wednesdays! As a result, I usually keep Wednesday dinner pretty simple. Plus, by the time I come up with menus that both kids and John all like (my sister Stacey, who also joins us for dinner on Wednesdays, likes everything I make, bless her heart, and so far, so does Coop, but that's because they're Meyers, and Meyers rawk, we just do), the choices get, uh, a bit limited. Tonight, hot corn bread (recipe posted in comments, below) alongside tortilla soup. I'll set out chicken, avocado, cheese, scallions, and of course tortilla strips, and let everyone customize. Seems to work pretty well. (I use the same strategy for pizzas, pasta, and tacos as well.)

Can I just say that I am way over this heat? I'm just done with it. I don't want to swim anymore, I've had all the sun I could possibly want, I'm sick to death of exercising in thick, humid air (this morning totally sucked)...done! Now I'm not wishing for winter or anything, just September weather, the best Minnesota weather there is. Ahhh. I'm ready. It's technically September now. Bring it on!

Wild Wednesday coming up! That means a visit from my nephew, Cooper Cuteness, yay! Cooper brightens our week, bigtime, especially since he says "n" for "l" at the beginning of words - that means he nuvs (loves) his new dog Nevi (Levi). Beyond cute. (Of course I haven't talked to him for a week, which means he could by now be saying "l" perfectly well. That's how it goes with a two-year old; one day you're Aunt Settie, the next you're a perfectly pronounced Ste-pha-nie, just nike that.)

Simple is the name of the food game on Wednesdays. Tonight the plan is steaks on the grill with a stir-fry of bokchoy, broccoli, and scallions (that's what remains of my veggie share; reload tomorrow) with a good amount of garlic, Thai curry paste, and chopped fresh basil for some interest and heat. (I'm all about the heat lately, outside and in my food. My aunt Mary got me addicted to the most unlikely-named spicy pickle this past weekend - Norwegian Dills, one of the Gedney State Fair versions. If you, like I, crave salty heat at about, oh, 4 pm, these are your pickle, crazy good.)

Hopefully I'll score some leftovers for lunch tomorrow. Monday's fried walleye became yesterday's fish taco - a little chopped cabbage and red onion, slice of avocado, in a small French Meadow sprouted grain tortilla. Delicious. Leftover steak makes a damn good taco as well, and is always good stir-fried with a few peppers, onions, and mushrooms, eaten warm over salad.

On an unrelated note, check out (and chuckle about) this article describing the calorie-shock New Yorkers are experiencing as chain restaurants implement a new law requiring they post menu item calorie counts right next to the prices. Ouch. Maybe it's because I'm a woman who gains weight by merely glancing at unhealthy foods (therefore this blog!), and probably more likely because I cook and therefore know what really goes into making items like muffins, scones, and platter-sized pieces of nut-encrusted fried meats (although I also maintain it doesn't take thinking very hard about it to realize they're loaded with calories), but none of the counts in the article particularly shocked me. I know how I feel after eating food like that (ill). See what you think - do Minnesotans need calorie counts on their menus? I have a sneaking suspicion that it's not the calorie counts alone that freak people out - it's being seen eating the burger that everyone can plainly see is more than 1,200 calories. If shame encourages people to make healthier choices - or skip the chain restaurants altogether and cook their own food - then it works for me? Hmmm...

Moderate it: a small piece of protein (beef, chicken, fish, pork, tofu, lamb, etc.) + lots of fresh veggies (salad, stir-fry, roasted, grilled, etc.) + small amount of grain (whole-grain bread, couscous, rice, corn, pasta, etc.) = healthy dinner in 30 minutes. Of course my kids eat small amounts of fresh veggies + lots of grain, despite my best efforts to encourage otherwise; I try to think about it as a palate-training process, not completed until adulthood... A vegolescence, as it were... Right.)

Ah, back to reality. (Small sigh, wry smile...) And back to cooking for the fam! Tonight, I'm making a typical make-your-own Wild Wednesday dish, in this case chicken noodle soup. The kids take theirs light on the chicken (and veggies), heavy on the noodle. We adults reverse the ratio. Either way, a good chicken stock makes the dish. I tried a new version (I made it yesterday, when I had time, vs. today, when I don't), the Miss Edna Louis recipe from The Gift of Southern Cooking. Result? Incredible, very rich and chicken-y, a perfect chicken soup base. Easy too (all you need is a good, heavy knife for hacking apart the chicken; recipe posted in comments, below).

For the veggies, I just saute a diced mixture of whatever sounds good, in a little butter. Tonight, for instance, I'm thinking mushrooms, garlic, leeks, okra, carrots, fennel. Other tasty options could include asparagus, celery, tomatoes, zucchini...you get the picture. For chicken, I pull apart a deli rotisserie chicken (the chicken from making stock is totally spent and flavorless). Canned (rinsed) navy or canellini beans can be a nice addition. Grated gruyere cheese is lovely too. For noodles, just plain ol' egg noodles fit the bill. To assemble, I line it all up buffet style and everyone builds their own bowl. Few grinds of black pepper, crusty bread, perhaps a salad... Everyone's happy, everyone's full, good stuff.

If you were waiting for me to post recipes for gazpacho or shrimp saltimbocca, both recipes are up now. My apologies for the lame (let's face it, lazy) delay!

Last night I whipped out my new Weber Poultry Roaster again, man I love that thing. Absolutely no mess or fuss - I opened the grill to baste the bird (chicken) a few times, but that's about it - et voila, a browned, crunchy little lovely, with some nice drippings at the base to turn into a bit of sauce. With sauteed broccoli and sugar snap peas alongside (I've got a thing for snap peas this summer, briefly sauteed in a bit of olive oil or butter until just heated through, so sweet and crunchy), it made a tasty din for the Wild Wednesday crowd.

Tonight, as I mentioned, dinner at Morton's with Zim's and Mack's to celebrate Aaron's birthday. Happy Birthday Aaron! My plan is to bow out early and head over to catch the end of Nathan's baseball game - he's had a little post-season tourney pop up. See you there, I'll be the one in a dress gnawing a side of beef in the stands. Rarrr...

Moderate it: oh Lord, Morton's is the most immoderate place on the planet. I man, I eat meat, grunt. It's all delicious, but even the potatoes are gargantuan - where do they find those things? I don't know what I'm ordering, probably a fishy appetizer of sorts - I'm making beef tenderloin on the grill tomorrow night, so no steak, sniff. I do love their steamed veggies, with just a teeny bit of Bearnaise (The Kill). Hopefully right about when those naughty hash browned potatoes appear, I'll be driving to Nathan's game...

L'chaim! Yep, I get dinner out with my minxes tonight, woo hoo! We're hitting up Bar Lurcat this time, for gazpacho, mini-burgers, and those irresistible, cursed frites. I even have straight hair (for now) since I got my hair cut today - a blow out in this weather is only worth it if someone else does it. Since that happens, oh, about every 8 weeks, it's feeling a bit rare and swingy. Whee! Hey, what can I say, I measure my days in dewpoint, always have. It's a frizz thing, not a curl thing (I can handle curl, curl is cute; frizz is, uh, I'll let you fill in the alliterative blank).

Anyhow. Just quick meals lately, last night nothing more than good ol' spaghetti with meat sauce for Wild Wednesday, although I did grill thin slices of zucchini to go alongside. Way easy - brush both sides of slices with olive oil, sprinkle with a bit of salt, let sit a few minutes to soften, then grill away. Eat hot off the grill, as is or showered with fresh herbs, maybe even a grate of Parm. Mmmm...

Oh, speaking of zucchini, I can't forget to pick up my La Finca CSA veggies on my way to pick up the girls (Thursday is pick-up day, just a few blocks down). Maybe some tomatoes this week! I received two huge, juicy beauties as a little gift this week, OMG, so good. Nathan and I had BLTs for breakfast today, loving every juicy-crispy-salty-smoky bite. We agreed that whoever made up that blessed sandwich was a genius. So simple - which means the ingredients have to be top notch. Nueske's bacon, a garden-ripe tomato, crisp lettuce, good toasted bread, and real mayo. Oh man, pretty hard to beat.

Moderate it: BLTs don't have to be unhealthy - on whole-grain bread, easy on the mayo, two slices of well-drained bacon, heavy on garden-ripe tomato. Fabulous.

Cooper! Stacey! Both kids! All my favorite things about Wild Wednesdays (you too Johnny!), love 'em. Add in some sunshine and we're jamming, woo hoo!

Good walk-before-the-snow this a.m., keeping food simple and relatively light for the day. Steak fajitas for dinner, as light or decadent as you want to make them, garnished with jack cheese, sour cream, guacamole, tomatoes, and lots and lots of grilled peppers and onions. Think I'll spice up some black beans to go with our ubiquitous Wednesday rice (oh how everyone in this house loves rice, the white version, they've refused my attempts at passing off less-processed brown, sigh) and call it a meal. Easy. Spicy. Nutritious. Tasty! Done.

Little exercise, plenty of veggies. Make sure to take good care of yourself today!

Haven't posted for a couple of days - minor crisis here on Wednesday night, I was thisclose to wrapping up a post, when John and Nathan realized our dog Sigmund had disappeared. Sigs, or Roo as we call him (pictured here), is an old guy now - 13 years old, almost 14. He (almost) never leaves our yard, at least not in the last couple of years. So we set out, at 9:30 p.m., combing the neighborhood looking for him. For HOURS. John was still out looking for him, at midnight, when Sigs finally came home on his own, after we'd sadly started to conclude he was, ahem, perhaps no longer of this world. I had finally calmed Nathan down and gotten him to drift off to sleep, when we heard, "ROOO!" at the door (that's the sound he makes, thus his nickname), and sure enough, he was home. Happy, wanted a treat, no worse for the wear. We have no idea where he was - as Susie said, only Roo knows...

Anyhow, when I got back to my blog posting, I had lost my internet connection, and out of frustration I just shut down to start over the next day. Which would be yesterday. But I decided to wait until today because I knew I would have something TOTALLY blog-worthy today. BIG food/wine dinner last night, a St. Innocent winery-hosted dinner at Luci Ancora in St. Paul. John and I joined major food-wine lovers Joe and Genie Dixon, and wine-genius Stu Williams (his wife Debbie was ill and couldn't make it). St. Innocent owner/founder Mark Vlossak talked interestingly about his process and thinking in making each of the seven wines we sampled, and as a major foodie and cook himself, had terrific tips about food pairings for his wines. Luci Ancora created a gorgeous tasting menu to complement the wines, the only course that wasn't spectacular was dessert. We opened with a very fresh oyster on the half shell, paired with St. Innocent Vitea Springs Pinot Gris 2003. Nice together, but the Pinot Gris really stood out with the next course, pulled pieces of tender, slow-roasted pheasant served on a homemade whole wheat cracker. Mmm...rich, chewy, crispy, an interesting and delicious combination. Next was sauteed shrimp with garlic, fennel, and dill, paired with St. Innocent Freedom Hill Pinot Blanc 2003. Beautiful together, fennel and dill (I'll tuck that idea away and use it somewhere soon), and beautiful with the Pinot Blanc. Next - no, we were not full yet, the courses were a few bites each, as they should be - was a chewy, cheesey homemade ravioli, topped with sauteed greens, paired with St. Innocent Freedom Hill Chardonnay 2002. I have to confess, I don't really enjoy what I think of as American Chardonnay (big, oaky, buttery) with food, which has unfortunately made me often pass on Chardonnay in general, but this was a fantastic Chardonnay, and interesting with the cheese and greens. AND then, my favorite course, a risotto, cooked in veal demiglace, served wtih poached foie gras. Foie gras, as I've mentioned before, oh how I love it. Luckily, John loves risotto, so I made a fantastic trade - some of my risotto for his bite of foie gras. Yay! I got two bites instead of one. Paired with two Pinot Noirs, St. Innocent Shea Pinot Noir 2003 and St. Innocent Anden Pinot Noir 2002, both so decadent with the rich foie gras and risotto, especially, to me, the Shea. Not done yet (!), we also loved the next course, roasted lamb loin with wild mushrooms and consomme, paired with a jewel, St. Innocent White Rose Pinot Noir 2003. F..a..b. Man, what a meal. Dessert was an almond-crusted savarin, didn't really work. Served with a lovely St. Innocent Brut 2000, however, so I was of course more than happy to call that glass of sparkling wine my dessert. Sigh. My kind of night - fun people, cozy setting, great food and wine... Luci Ancora was packed full of laughing, talking people; at one point I looked around and thought about how grateful I was to be there, in that place, in St. Paul, in Minnesota, in the United States, on Earth, in this universe, a little speck of merriment. And then snap, I was back to the food and wine in front of me, and I took another bite of something amazing. I learned alot, actually, I think Mark Vlossak did a nice job of describing his wines, and which elements complement which foods, I thoroughly enjoyed his remarks. Just a great night.

Today, one small note, I guess I couldn't bear to just eat any old thing, after all that fabulousness last night, so I made one of my very favorite lunches for myself. Over-easy egg, on a piece of toast, sprinkled with a little pile of chopped arugula and scallions. Generous salt and pepper. Mmmm...

One last note - I got a digital camera, woo hoo! Picture of Sigs is my first official pic, awww, Rufus, we're so glad you're still with us. We weren't ready to say goodbye...