We were trying two different types of lobster in the sous vide—fresh and fresh frozen. You had to parboil them all first so you could get the meat out of the shells.
It was a lot of work but I think it was better to have it done ahead of time instead of at the table.
It was unanimous that the fresh lobster was better, though we ate every last piece of both…plus the steak and green beans.
Which, speaking of the green beans, we had a helper:
So we originally were going to have the lobster for dinner Saturday night, so I just threw the bag in the garage fridge and didn’t think about it. Fast forward to a change of plans and we weren’t going to eat them Saturday night but we still needed to get in that fridge. Imagine Tom’s surprise when he opened the door and the lobsters were trying to escape! They had made it out of the (untied) bag and were in the door compartment!
Lobster for dinner… I mean what better way to celebrate Mother’s Day?
The five of us (not six because Katie won’t eat it) side a pretty good job of almost finishing the entire cowboy ribeye… But Tom can’t let the bone go without a little cleaning. 😉
A Cowboy Ribeye as big as your head vacuum sealed and seasoned with fresh rosemary, onion, and spices going into a 132° sous vide water bath for a few hours and then it will be quickly seared on a 600° grill. I am already drooling just thinking about the melt-in-your-mouth smoky meat that you can cut with a fork.🍴🤤 Do you sous vide? (If not, you totally should!)
I finally found them! Adult ice pops! The only thing I don’t think I’ll like is that they’re “skinny” and those usually have a weird fake sugar chemical taste to them. But I’ll try them for science.
We may have had just a bit of smoked pork butt and chicken last night. I think we could have fed the neighborhood instead of just eight of us. 😂
And we let Maggie lick the platter at the end of the night and she REALLY got into it.
I love dollar stores and on a total whim stopped at a new Dollar Tree while I was making a run to ALDI. Oh wow. It’s much bigger than the one I normally shop at and the stock, while mostly the same, just seems so much…more. I didn’t need anything when I walked in, but I managed to spend $50. And I found the holy Grail for my kids.
Orange pineapple!! I’m starting with two. Hoping they are just as delicious as my favorite Strawberry Lime…
Decent, but not even close to my fave.
I went to visit a neighbor’s new baby and ended up being fed fresh homemade Cambodian spring rolls. I also tried a steamed bun, sticky rice with jackfruit, and intestine. I’ll take a pass on the intestine in the future but I did try it. 🤣
We figured we’d eat some of the cake and share some with friends.
It really is beautiful. They do a great job decorating and wrapping.
But surprise! A hole where we hoped (assumed?) frosting would be. 😄
Plates to share…
Kudos to Chef Tom who did the whole thing.
Our good friends and amazing chefs invited us for dinner. They don’t do seafood with their regular dinner group so were excited when I said we’d be ALL IN for as seafood extravaganza. And what an extravaganza it was…
Pre-dinner drinks! Jami tried to give me a margarita replacement. It was okay but I really missed the sugar!!
Salmon Rilletes and Gingered Crab Potato Nests
David’s homemade soppressata and cheese.
Lobster Cheesecake
Seared Scallop on Truffled Parsnip Purée
Lobster Bisque w/Anchovy Butter toasts
Lobster Stuffed Chateaubriand with Bernaise Sauce, asparagus, and failed duck fat potatoes.
Raspberry Soufflé
One additional special thing that happened… Tom and I finally opened a bottle of wine we bought after our first cruise in 2006. We had done a wine tasting on board and liked that so bought it once we got home. Then we didn’t remember what we needed to drink it with and never looked it up and just moved out around with us. So tonight it was time. And it was okay but not my style at all.
All in all an amazing night of friendship and food.
It’s been awhile since we’ve made homemade pizza and Tom had been wanting to try them on his new grill…
Our pizza? Garlic aioli, sopresseto, caramelized onions, home-smoked cheddar, and some tomato mix we forgot to spread on top of the aioli.
The kids? Peanut butter and jelly.
Owen tried ours and then asked for ours!! What?!
You gotta love personal cookie delivery!!! And just so we’re clear, is a serving size a sleeve or the box?
This might have been more prep then we did for dinner.
We didn’t have a special NYE dinner so we’re doing it tonight. #cowboyribeye #samsclub #NYEredo
I might have ended up burning the dressing just a bit but once I picked off the worst of it, it was still pretty good. Owen LOVED it!!!!
Tom went to Glen’s (it will ALWAYS be Glen’s) and came home with a bunch of new $1 bottles for me to try. It’s not bad but it’s not a margarita.
Just when you get complacent thinking your 9yo is self-sufficient in the mornings… You find out he put a plastic container in the oven to heat up pancakes. 😳
You see, Katie came up to ask me how to toast the pancake pieces. I told her to have Owen help her (since he heats up pancakes in the toaster oven regularly). She said she knew but they were (cut up) pieces (instead of full pancakes) so it was different. True, good point. So I told her to put them on a tray and we discussed which tray to use.
Owen came up a little bit later and told me that they put the top in the refrigerator because it was hot. Huh? What? Top? What top? What was hot?
A quick check of the June oven cooking replay shows the entire plastic container in the oven. Top and all. Slowly melting.
I asked Owen how he thought that would toast the pancakes (being inside the container) and he says “BUT I DIDN’T KNOW MOM!”
I asked how it was so different from how he normally does pancakes and he stands there like he can’t understand English.
Stuff like this is so frustrating… How can he not have common sense? I suppose that’s normal for a 9yo boy. Right?! 😣 At least he noticed and took it out and didn’t burn the house down.
I think my friends thought I was crazy asking to bring the turkey carcass home (they aren’t cooks)…but I had to make stock! I am my mother’s daughter!!
The future is here. Our Christmas present arrived today—a June wifi oven! (I wasn’t loving our toaster oven and we use it A LOT so when we read about this one—and all that it could do, including air frying, which Tom really wanted to try—we had to try it.)
First things first: download updates! 🙂
Then we had to try cooking something! So brownies it was! Unfortunately it doesn’t recognize a pan of brownies so we had to *gasp* set the temp manually! But they cooked perfectly. Oh, we can also watch the cooking process via the camera…plus it takes a time lapse video of the process.
Then I’d heard about doing hard cooked eggs in the oven… The super cool thing? The oven recognized we put in five eggs and knew how long to cook them!
They turned out perfectly! Whoa.
It actually takes up less space than our last oven.
Holy crap! I just winged the most delicious tomato soup from some old roasted tomatos/onions, some leftover “chicken water” (from those chicken breasts I cooked in the instant pot last week), and a few seasonings. I want to eat this all RIGHT NOW. Maybe this will be dinner…except I doubt either kid will eat it… 😣 How come they don’t know how good they have it to have a mom who cooks real food?!
And yes, that’s a tomato seed in my hair. 😂 I’ve also been chopping the last of our tomatoes for more roasting.
3pm edit: HA! It’s now being turned into goulash!! I put noodles in it…and they kept growing and sucked all the liquid out! So now I’ve added leftover hamburger and a few more spices! And it’s still delicious!
1️⃣ Get orange tag chicken breasts at Sam’s Club (7.45# for $10).
2️⃣ Throw them directly into the Instant Pot with some seasoning (today I did two batches: Mexican and garlic).
3️⃣ Shred in KitchenAid.
4️⃣ Freeze!
Details:
The taco one I used 3 breasts, a can of Rotel, maybe 1/3 can of water (just enough to rinse the can) and lots of taco seasoning.
The garlic one I used 6 breasts, 1 cup of water, some bouillon (I never measure that), and loads of garlic powder.
Both cooked for 8 minutes with quick release.
Technically Tom starts his day at the gym while I sleep in…
But I say our day starts after that with Bloody Marys. This morning we were surprised by a Bloody Mary bar at our usual morning pub! Yes, please!
Isn’t it gorgeous? 🙂 I never did get used to the lime, though, and always forgot to tell them no thanks.
Then it was off for a sushi-making class! A huge group of ours did it yesterday but we weren’t able to get the same class. It was really fun but I didn’t get to take any pictures during because we all had gloves on and were (obviously) touching everything. So here’s before…
And after…good enough to eat!!
Yes, we all had to wear the silly paper hats.
And then we had drinks at our favorite bar with our favorite bartenders… I can’t remember exactly how we started drinking the Snow White (I think it was vodka, cream, and Bailey’s) but it was really good… And then it morphed into a Toasted Almond with the addition of Amaretto…which I then morphed into an Almond Joy (adding a chocolate drizzle) because what coconut almond drink wouldn’t be better with chocolate?! And sometimes they’d blend them for us so we had adult milkshakes!
I always laughed at people who went on cruises and talked about their awesome bartenders. I always thought it was strange when people said that they “made friends” with their bartender or that their bartender knew them and remembered them. But after being on the ship for four days and going to the same bars over and over, I can totally understand that—James and Ti at The Schooner know what drink to start making when they see me. Sometimes they’d see us coming and start making the same drinks. And they had fun creating our new drinks. And we got to know them over the week. (You’ll see more pics later.)
And then dinner was with a group of 12 at Wonderland. Imaginative cuisine, as the sign says. 🙂
You had to paint the portrait in order to view the menu.
Since we had such a large group, they pretty much just brought out everything—we didn’t have to decide. (Looking back at the menu now, I see a few things we missed.) Most everything was expectedly delicious, but my favorite bite of the night (and actually the entire cruise) was the Shrimp Kataifi (under the FIRE section—and actually the very first photo below). The Liquid Lobster and Tomato Water were also favorites. It was a hell of a lot of food and by the time we got to dessert we could barely eat anything.
I’m sure we went to our bar for a nightcap or met peeps somewhere, but [writing this two weeks later] my mind is a bit hazy plus I have no more pics of the day so who knows. 🙂
That said, this was the art above our bed. Seriously, a lady bug? What are the odds? 🙂
I never guessed we’d be eating at The Hummus Factory…but it was walkable from our hotel. Not the best photo, but it was delicious. Hummus Shakshuka.
Also? It’s hot here. We walked from the hotel and I was sweating…partially due to the heat and partially due to a wrong turn. 😝
Day 5: lobster #7 — airport lobster roll
On the way in I debated ordering the lobster roll at the airport…and opted against it. But on the way out I said what the hell. And it was actually pretty good!
Unfortunately a dreary day for sightseeing.
So let’s go candy shopping! Yummy caramels, toffee, and treats for the kids!
And let’s have lobster for lunch.
Day 3: lobster #3 — lobster BLT
Then it was off to visit the marina where mom and David left from on their honeymoon—they’re pointing to it!
Aaaand lobster rolls again for dinner. Mom makes them SOOOOO good we didn’t want anything else.
Day 3: lobster #4
I’ve always wanted to experience Maine (and lobsters!) with my mom, so when she and David rented a cottage (in South Thomaston) for two weeks to celebrate their 20th anniversary and invited us to join them, I decided THIS was FINALLY going to be the year to do so. We lucked out in that my stepsisters Kathryn and Beth were also able to join us!!
This was dinner our first night!
Day 1: lobster #1 — fresh lobster dinner
