Food, Glorious Food

Anyone who knows us also knows that I do a majority of the cooking in the family.  There is no real reason for it, it just worked out that way over the course of our relationship. 

I am a main course, grill master, kind of guy and Lisa is side dishes and salads.  My staples are easy but very good; homemade, slow cooked pasta sauce, jambalaya, smoked sausage with traffic light peppers - you know; red, yellow, green, and a curried chicken breast with balsamic rice.  For quick dinners I can make a really good chicken pesto pizza or quesadillias.

Aside from Lisa's sides - a great broiled green beans with almond and blue cheese among them, she makes an amazing cheddar beer soup and the only macaroni and cheese that I will ever eat.  

Lately, we have started to explore our cook books.  Last week I made my own barbeque sauce from the Dinosaur BBQ cookbook.  Last night we went through our slow-cooker cook book and came across a recipe for french onion soup and then a separate recipe for three cheese macaroni and cheese with bacon - total comfort food for the coldest day of the year so far.

I went out this morning at 8am for a paper and everything on the list Lisa provided.  I can attest that on Sunday mornings there are four people in the Harris Teeter, the manager, the stock boy, the cashier, and me.

The onion soup was the easiest thing I ever made; three onions (two vidalia and one red) sliced, four cans of beef broth, salt, pepper, and a little sugar.  I deviated from the recipe just a little to slightly brown the edges of the onions with butter in a skillet.  Everything was thrown into a crock pot and cooked on low for nine plus hours.  We topped it off with fresh sliced french bread with mozzarella baked in the oven for five minutes.

In the afternoon Lisa started making her bacon macaroni and cheese.  We used thick sliced bacon cut into small pieces that cooked into the size of nickels.  After six minutes we added some fresh crushed garlic for less than a minute and poured that into pasta, cheese, and spices before baking it. 

Everything was served at dinner.  The soup led, of course, followed by the mac and cheese.  Maybe it was the fresh ingredients, maybe it was the fact that we made it ourselves - but it was the best french onion soup I ever tasted. The bacon certainly flavored the entire pasta dish, but we don't eat bacon too often and when we do we (I) enjoy the taste. It was amazing.

One of our favorite shows currently on television is Modern Family.  This week's episode showed two of the characters working together in the kitchen in a choreographed flow of ingredients, utensils, and limbs.  It was a brilliant minute and a half of TV.  I realized that Lisa and I found a rhythm in the kitchen.  Its a little awkward at first, just like dance lessons, but once you get the feel of the other person around you, you learn to move as one.

We are not to the point of choreography yet, but we are getting closer.  It's a great way to bond with a little wine, a little food, and a little romance.