Dinners this week have largely consisted of sandwiches and leftovers. I did have one triumph – a grilled concoction I’m hoping to perfect and share with you in a week or two – but most of our meals were dictated by heat and the time of the semester which, if you look at the recent weather forecasts from Los Angeles and my most recent Photo Friday post, will tell you all you need to know.

Thus, I’m giving myself a week off here, to let my brain refocus and my cramping hands heal from all the paper commenting I’ve been doing.

Be well. Have a margarita, maybe, in celebration of Cinco de Mayo. Maybe rim the glass with some fancy salt! Maybe, if tequila’s not your poison, and you, too, are wilting from the recent heat wave, some frozen sangria will help keep you feeling celebratory. Or maybe just treat yourself to some cake. I like this one, which makes use of the beautiful springy pinkness of rhubarb.

In any case, I hope May has been kind to you thus far. “See” you next week.

What would have been today’s post worked out to be a disaster, mitigated only by how delicious the weird, flat, damp, strawberry jammed discs that were supposed to be biscuits turned out to be.

I’m considering posting photos and a recipe, though the photos need to be downloaded still (it was a busy evening yesterday), and the recipe definitely needs some tweaking because, you know, disaster.

Stay tuned…

Guest shot, courtesy of my dad.

Running late this week…. please check back this afternoon for a new recipe post.  Teaser photo below!

Last night, at a New Year’s Eve party for which the unintentional theme appeared to  be cheese (brie en crout!  Hot artichoke parmesan dip!  Goat cheese with fig butter!), S. asked each guest if he or she had New Year’s resolutions.  When it was my turn, I was filled with bleary uncertainty.  The fact that I’m an academic always makes the new year an odd event, because regardless of what the calendar says, my new year starts in September.  That’s when I go back to school and to teaching.  January 1st happens in the middle of the term break, and though I have a new class of students when I return, it’s still the same school year.  So school-related resolutions don’t seem appropriate.  I’m not going to resolve to complete my dissertation, though that will get done.  It’s not really a resolution because it’s not a decision I’m changing.  It’s a set-in-stone-requirement for me, at this point.  I’m not going to resolve to get a job, because I’ve done what I can to help that happen, and now it’s out of my hands.

And then the Bittman project drifted into my mind.  With the dissertation winding down (amazing what a few afternoons of post-Christmas reading at the in-laws’ will do for brainstorming!) and my on campus schedule quite manageable this term, I feel a slow and only slightly unsteady confidence that I can inject enough regularity into my weeks this term for blogging to take place.  That and getting my year end report from WordPress yesterday made me feel a certain hunger to get back to my regular schedule here.

So that’s my resolution: I will finish the Bittman project.  The original list of sides was 101 items.  Eliminating those I knew N. and I would never eat, we began with 82.  Last year I made 39 of those, including one about which I hope to post sometime this week.  I know, pitiful.  So that leaves 43.  Doable, right?  Less than one a week, especially if I get my act together and double up occasionally.

It feels a little sad to be resolving to complete my unfinished resolution from last year, but I guess that’s what a lot of people do with these things: lose weight, get in shape, year in and year out.  Here I have exact numbers, exact quantities of what must be done.  Exact numbers of soups, chutneys, relishes, salads, desserts and breads and sides.  And so we’ll plow on!

Happy 2012, everyone.  May your resolutions bear fruit.

Inspired by my dear friend S, who blogs over at http://sarahlitchick.blogspot.com/, here’s our menu for the big bird day tomorrow:

Appetizers: tomato and cucumber bruschetta, along with (maybe) some nice dill havarti I forgot I had

Wines, red and white

Main course: lemon garlic herb butter roasted turkey

Sides: Giblet gravy, Stuffing (also with giblets, probably…), baked creamed spinach, chipotle mashed sweet potatoes, homemade cranberry sauce

Desserts: Mom-made pumpkin pie, currently in transit up from Northern California, and Pumpkin cheesecake.  Both with fresh whipped cream, if desired

Today’s tasks include: baking a cranberry swirled, well streuseled coffee cake for breakfasts.  I first baked it three years ago and my sister adores it so much I now cannot escape the task of making one every year (not that I mind… it is pretty delicious).  Making the cranberry sauce.  It needs to set up in the fridge, although the fact that one shelf is completely taken up by a 17 pound, still mostly frozen turkey makes that whole storage thing difficult… Making the pumpkin cheesecake.  Here, too, a night in the chiller is required, which makes me slightly anxious.  Where will it go?  Why did I buy such a big turkey?  Why, when I liberated it from the freezer section of the grocery store on SUNDAY, is it still rock hard to the touch?  What would happen if I stored it in the garage overnight?  It’s kind of like a walk-in fridge out there, isn’t it? 

These are my pre-Thanksgiving preoccupations.  But I suppose they are largely good ones, because they mean I get to be in the kitchen today AND tomorrow.  And I do like it there. 

What does your Thanksgiving menu look like?