Recent meals

Looking back at some of the meals I've spent time on in the past couple weeks (as opposed to the meals that came out of the freezer), it seems I've been in a piggy mood...or maybe pork has just been cheap lately. Anyway, here are the results:

Pork loin roulade
Want a great tasting dish that looks impressive, but is actually quite simple? This is the way to go. Since it was just the two of us, I used only a portion of loin, not the whole thing, and still had leftovers for lunch the rest of the week. Prep is very easy: trim the loin, "unroll" it, spread the filling, roll it back up, wrap with bacon (optional; otherwise, oil and season), tie it up with butcher's twine, roast 400 degrees until the center is 160 degrees (took about an hour), rest, slice, eat. I used spinach, scamorza cheese, toasted pine nuts and a commercial raspberry-chipotle sauce (if I do this combination again, I'm going to try putting the spinach between the sauce and the cheese; the sauce turned the cheese purple, rarely an appetizing color in a savory dish), but you can use anything that strikes your fancy. Try a pizza theme with marinara, mozzarella, sausage and pepperoni, or go mediteranean with tapenade, roasted vegetables and feta. The spinach in mine did not require any pre-cooking, but if you're using a vegetable that need a longer cooking time, cook them ahead. I cooked mine on my big green egg and added cherry wood chips for a nice smoky flavor. About halfway through the cook, I threw some halved brussels sprouts into the drip pan, where the bacon renderings had started to brown. They were great. If you hate brussels sprouts, but have only had them boiled, you've got to try roasting them; they taste completely different.

Photos of Elly's first few months

Here is the first batch of old Elly photos; from her birthday through the first couple months. You can click each photo to view it in full size, and then right-click and select "Save Picture as..." If you'd like a full-resolution version of any of these, email me, or use the comments feature at the bottom of the post.

A few minutes after birth
Later that evening, a happy grandma

Greetings

Having resigned myself to the fact that Facebook is not the ideal venue for making photos of Elly available to friends and family who wish to download them for printing, screensavers, etc., I have created this blog. As the proud owner of a new blog, I suppose I should do the bloggerly thing and post inane ramblings (accessible to all, of interest to none) for a few weeks, and then lose interest, leaving behind another pile of e-trash to clutter up the webscape. That's the plan, anyway.

I have reviewed the above paragraph, and see that sarcasm and cynicism seem to have a hold on me today. Allow me to adjust my attitude and begin again.

Hi folks! The primary purpose of this blog is to allow me to post photos of Elly for family to download. Along the way, I might begin posting the standard blogjunk about life events, hobbies, etc. If you're just looking for photos of Elly, you can use the categories function on the sidebar to pare down the posts to only those of interest to you. These categories will appear as they are created, so don't expect to see any until I begin posting.

To avoid clogging up my photobucket account with huge photos, I will be uploading them in a slightly smaller size, which should still be big enough for displaying on screensavers, or printing small photos. The photos will appear smaller in the blog, but if you click on the photo, it will display in full resolution. You can then right-click the picture and select save picture as. If you need photos in higher resolution for cropping and printing, please use the comments feature to identify which photos you'd like, and I can upload larger versions of the selected photos.


As an example, here is a photo of little miss sunshine.