Sunday, December 14, 2008

deals, like everything, are relative

just found an interesting article on lobster in the new york times. according to the author, lobster is a steal in new york city right now at $10.99/lb. seriously?!!!! it is $3.99/lb right down the street from my house! this is yet another reminder that i need to take advantage of these amazing lobster prices more often.

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

another reason to love maine

maine shrimp. the small sweet, naturally pink morsels of deliciousness. otis and marya had told tales of these treats many times. on monday december 1st, i heard announced on mpbn that the maine shrimp season had officially started and would be an especially long season, i knew i was going to be indulging within days.
saturday, as we did our grocery shopping, we picked up one pound of unshelled maine shrimp for about $4 a pound. later that night, as seth shelled them, he said to me "these are cooked right?" he was fooled by the naturally pink color because they were raw. we blanched half and had shrimp cocktail and sauteed the rest in olive oil and garlic and put them on top of our pizza. SHRIMPALICOUS!!!!
we may have though our shrimp feast was done for the week but it wasn't. sunday night we went to otis and marya's for dinner and after some amazing appetizers of wellfleet oysters in the nude and rockefeller and blue fish smoked by otis's father, we dug into some amazing maine shrimp etouffee prepared by otis.
i have no doubt there will be much more indulging on maine shrimp.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

i love me some pizza

so today, wednesday, is my week day off. yes i am a very lucky woman and i only have to work 4 days a week. its a new and amazing thing, being a nurse practitioner and actually making good money, good enough to only have to work 4 days a week.
so as it is my day off i am responsible for cooking dinner. i was craving a pizza and i had noticed that the pizza dough from hannaford's is starting to do that crazy thing it sometimes does when the bag gets huge and looks like it will pop. i'm sure it has something to do with the yeast. i have been making some especially tasty pizzas recently with home made roasted red peppers, oven roasted tomatoes from whole foods, winter squash, pesto, garlic, onions, and basically whatever else i have in my kitchen that i think would be good on the pizza.
i called my friend jen, who is also a nurse practitioner and also has wednesdays off, to see what she was up to. turned out she was going to lunch with some friends of her's at flatbread company and wanted to know if i wanted to join her for some pizza lunch. that would be a yes! and guess i have to plan something else for dinner. as i have a long commute to work, i decided to walk and meet them at the restaurant. jen was accompanied by her adorable daughter lucy, her friend pete who was visiting from boston, and pete's friend sean, who lives in kennebunk.
the restaurant was pretty quite, as it is a weekday afternoon. we settled into a table in the back corner and convinced each other that a beer with lunch was appropriate. i was reminded of my many years of waitressing and how jealous i would be when people came in for a leisurely lunch on a weekday and ordered booze. and there i was, doing just that, with my allagash white in hand.
the food was great. we started with two house salads, one with goat cheese and one with blue cheese. they came with a light dressing, seaweed, and sesame seeds. delicious! we moved on to our two pizza selections. the homemade sausage pizza is also topped with sun-dried tomatoes, caramelized onions, mushrooms, cheese and herbs and we added tomato sauce as it is a white pizza. we also created our own with roasted red peppers, carmalized onions, kalamata olives, tomato sauce, and cheese. they were both great but i especially loved the briny kalamata olives as the only food seth will not eat are olives so i don't get to partake often.
after lunch we walked over to micucci grocery co., an amazing italian import store with a great deli, pizza and they even offer cooking classes on monday nights. then it was off to whole foods so we could pick up supplies for our respective dinners. jen was making chicken provencal out of how to cook everything (bittman just came out with a brand new edition) and i had decided to make rosemary fried chicken (another martha recipe) after craving it for days. i hope jen's dinner was good because mine was great!