Holiday cooking

As you know, I like to cook on holidays. I usually take on too much and this weekend was no exception.

We've been watching a lot of the Barefoot Contessa. Last week, we watched her make a ribollita, which J was instantly drawn to. I think it was the cabbage and kale because otherwise, it's almost exactly the way that I make minestrone. Neither of us liked the bread part. I know, that's what makes it a ribollita so forgive me. In any case, we bought all the ingredients last weekend at Whole Foods, and they've just been lonely in the fridge so the first thing I did was put together the ribollita: onions, celery, carrot, cabbage, kale, tomatoes, and two containers of chicken stock. I also simmered some dry great northerns and added those in. Dry beans really do make a difference. They are creamier and healthier too, since they don't have all those extra ingredients in the can. It does take time, but I think it's worth it.

The soup came out pretty well, I think. I ladled it out and topped with some olive oil and parmigiano. We've always used a Greek olive oil, but I think it's time to get a nice Italian one since we serve more Italian than Greek food. I think my sister can probably give me a good recommendation of something we can get here. C, what do you think?

I also made a ragu and left it to simmer on the stove all night. It will turn into a nice lasagne for next week and the extra ragu will get frozen to top pasta on a night when I'm too lazy to do anything else.

I also make a chicken stock which I added the celery leaves to. You know, I always watch on tv how people add leaves to their stocks, but I really think that they taste too green and it makes the whole stock off. I'm going to cook down this stock and see how it turns out, but I'm afraid I may need to toss it.

I also bought veal to make marsala, but on the heels of everything else we had yesterday (late snack of cheeses and salumi, followed by fritto misto), we ended up skipping it. I'm undecided if I should make it sometime anyway. The creminis that are supposed to go with it are getting close to their expiration date.

Tonight is a UFC, so I'm going to fry some chicken wings for J. I can already hear my mother telling me to not fry things so I'll mention again that if you fry things at the proper temperature -- hot -- they don't absorb oil because the oil actually seals the outside of the food and it's actually relatively healthy. I know healthy is all relative. Anyway, it's a holiday. I'll also make some more of that Joy of Cooking blue cheese dressing to go with it.

I also bought ground beef for burgers so we'll have that tomorrow. We cook them inside, so I guess we aren't really grilling for the 4th. I think cooking outside is a rather lot of work.

So that brings you up to date on what I've been cooking. The fridge is packed and we have lemons to make lemonade.

After a long battle with pantry moths, I think I am close to prevailing. I'll pick up new shelf liners tomorrow and begin to put everything back inside when I know that all the moths are gone. I'm going to try to take advantage of the cleaning and shift the containers for my flour (too small for anything except the 1/4 cup measure) and sugar (don't have one). Not to mention that I threw just about everything in that cabinet away so I suddenly have a lot of space. Woo!