The kiddos and I are watching the x games during dinner last night. It’s the men’s snowboard super pipe and the. The men’s ski big air. 

That was the biggest pile I’ve ever seen. C says Nstar’s pipe is 18′ and that one is 22′. And many time longer. Goes on forever. And they’re throwing these insane tricks that take them 12-14′ above the lip. But it’s boarders, so it doesn’t make me cringe so much. 

Then they cut to the big air comp. it’s this huge single jump with a long steep run in. And the coaches are shoving each skier out the gate for extra speed because it’s snowing like crazy. 

After the first few jumps, I tell C it’s hard to watch thinking she’s aiming there. And she replies “don’t worry. They don’t even have this for women…yet”

Have I mentioned that I got Bob a quarter of a cow (and a standing freezer) for Christmas?  (and then, 2 weeks later, on the way to Tahoe for Christmas break, we hit Longhorn and bought another couple hundred dollars worth of meat.)

So now, I have a dedicated freezer in the storeroom, packed FULL of cow.

(pic of freezer)

Plus, the Tahoe condo freezer is crammed with Longhorn (plus quarts red beans and pasta sauce).  And the freezer for the regular old kitchen fridge is packed out with country ham and Thanksgiving feast left overs (and 3 bags of Sharkie’s cocoa nibs).  Got some cooking to do.  And it will be an adventure.  Turns out that when you order a cow (I split it with 2 other friends), you don’t just get a package of steaks.  You get 15 boxes (about the size of file boxes, totaling 456 pounds) of various cuts, each vacuum packed and frozen, including filet mignon, brisket, stew meat and various things I know what to do with.  You also get an several boxes of fat, bones, the tongue, liver, spleen and heart, ox tail, and cuts I’ve never heard of.  So first you unload the trunk in to the storeroom and attempt to sort it out a bit so everyone gets some steaks and fat, vs one person getting a box of fat and another a box of filets.  Then you ponder what to do with 30 pounds of fat (candles?).  Then you get cooking.

Tonight: Top Sirloin

Turns out that a “top sirloin” is the tender bit of a sirloin steak with the bone and side muscles cut away.  Super lean, no visible fat at all.  So it’s easy to dry out if not cooked properly (according to Olivier’s Butchery website. and if you can’t trust Olivier about beef, why aren’t you a vegan?).  Coincidentally, Bob and HBG were home alone for the weekend and had left half a package of fancy bacon in the fridge.  see where this is going?

Bacon Wrapped Top Sirloin, on a bed of Sautéed Leeks

Dino Kale sautéed in roasted garlic and olive oil

Firebrand baguette

Cote du Rhone (random leftover party bottle)

So far, this experiment in direct meat sourcing is pretty tasty.

I find it odd (or random, or depressing, or indicative of my life), that after spending most of my 20s learning to think of the year in seasons instead of the school calendar, I live in a world dictated not only by the school calendar, but by the overlaid sports calendar.

I am lucky to be able to basically take summer & winter vacations with my kids. and if it was just that, it would be one thing.  But last week I made a color coded spreadsheet to figure out C’s comp schedule.  and this is a season with only one kid competing.

Spring and Fall are soccer season, which means 2 games on weekends.  except for the weekends that C’s team has 2 games, or a tournament in Pacifica and Palo Alto.  that’s the easy part.  getting them to practice and home has evolved into a 5 families, 9 kids, 3 fields, 4 drivers endeavor.  But at least that’s settled and fairly predictable.

The freeski comp schedule across two leagues is a whole new ball of wax.  When we signed her up last Spring, her team was competing in the North Tahoe League.  Which is a little tricky to get her to comps and Lib to team, but totally doable.  Then, less than a month before the season started, her head coach decided they should move to the South Tahoe League.  Which means that all but 2, TWO, of her comps will be at the other end of a huge lake, and she needs to be there by 8am, and it’s an hour and a half around the lake if there is no ice or snow or traffic.  So we’re looking at which of the North Tahoe comps she can substitute and still have a reasonable shot at making Nationals.  But there is no way to look at the North and South Tahoe schedules at the same time on the website.  Hence my spreadsheet.  and then she’s competing in 3 different events that lead to 3 separate rankings.  hence the color coding.

I’ve become “one of those mom’s” as this super achiever woman at Mia’s birthday party last month called me when David told her my daughter was ranked 12th in the nation in her sport (for her age group).

when I email our mortgage guy about resuming our refi application and ask which doc’s he needs me to update or resubmit, and he responds with a “needs list” that runs to 10 numbered points and actually calls for 23 different documents, that’s enough of a reason to open a beer, right?

I have a tradition, no tradition is too lofty a word. A habit, an almost weekly routine, of roasting a chicken early in the week. We eat about half that night. Then I strip off most of the meat, toss the bones and skin in a pot  with a couple quarts of water and simmer up some stock.  Sometimes the rest of the meat gets packed into school lunches for the rest of the week.  More likely, the next night the rest of the chicken and the stock become risotto or pot pie or look or chicken stew or such.

Yesterday, we had chicken roasted with cured lemons and cumin, curtesy Mark Bittman and the NYT.

http://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/1014407-roasted-chicken-with-preserved-lemons

I roasted one chicken instead of two, and skipped the honey.  Still, surprised by how much sweeter the chicken turned out than when I roast it with preserved lemons.  (Cured lemons = lemons aged in juice with equal parts sugar and salt.  Preserved lemons = lemons aged in juice with salt.  Plus some peppercorns, bay, etc in either case.)  Nice moist bird with rich pan juices to kick start the stock.

Today, we triangulate between the jook, risotto and stew to land in the the South and try out Chicken Bog from Natalie Dupree.

 My stepdad gave me this cookbook three Christmases ago. Years before he’d worked on a PBS cooking show with Natalie Dupree.  I was a little leery because I wasn’t crazy about the recipes I’d tried from of one of her earlier books that he’d given me.  But I was intrigued that she was paying homage to Julia with the title (or having the gumption to position her book there).

I was won over by the biscuit section.  It runs 10 full pages, including three pages on equipment, ingredients and techniques before she even lets you get to the seven different biscuit recipes.

Back to today: I’d been heading toward Chicken and Dumplings, but was sidetracked by this “Chicken Bog” recipe on the facing page, since she intrduces it as “a comfort food for those who ate it sitting at their mother’s kitchen table.”  While I didn’t eat it at my mother’s kitchen table (I’m from LA and my mom didn’t cook; we had burritos, or jook, or pad thai.), it sounded like the perfect and easy dinner for today with the first of the promised el nino storms drumming on the windows.

And, it fact, it was perfect comfort food.  Warm, rich, smooth, spoon it up food.  HBG described it as jook with more chicken.  Super C called it “salmon rice but with chicken.”  Always a good sign then the fam compares dinner to their favorite foods.  Everyone had seconds. And I’d made 1 ½ times the recipe, so there will be leftovers for the kids to have when we go out tomorrow night.

  (These are the left overs.  They’ll set up like risotto does. Off the stove, it was much more like a thick stew.)