Jenny Check

kids vs. kittens II

Alma and the kids came up to visit. (pics) We made cookies (had to use some cake flour because we ran out of all purpose: made the cookies flat and chewy), watched Nemo and played with kittens.  This time since the kids were on the kittens turf, the kittens did less hiding. 

lunch club!

Lunch club meeting on Thursday.  We made lasagna and chili with the cornbread crust.  This time we did ground beef in the lasagna with tomatoes, carrots, mushroom, spinach, red peppers, onions and garlic, parmesan, cheddar and mozarella cheese.  A solid staple with all food groups represented.  The chili was free form with ground turkey thigh, garbanzo beans, black beans, onions, garlic, red peppers, cayenne, cumin, oregano, thyme and chocolate.  The cornmeal crust came from a Nigella recipe from the NY Times for vegetarian chili.  Also very delicious!  Emily was figuring out whether lunch club could turn into a business, but the outlook doesn't look good.  Plus we found competitors like www.thehomebistro.com.  Oh well. The kittens made lunch club cute!  They didn't get on the counter too much and played in the towel cabinet.  See the pics!

Cake Club with special guest star!

John Launder was our special guest star at the last Cake Club. Kyle Minor and Jennifer Check in attendance. Kyle and I made a two layer yellow cake from the Cake Bible and neo-classical chocolate buttercream frosting. Then all three of us made a golden wheat carrot cake for John Polito's birthday. Both cakes turned out delicious! The buttercream frosting was very very buttery. So buttery, that you could almost not taste the chocolate. I didn't like it at first, but the more I ate it, the more it grew on me. John Launder saved the day on the carrot cake. It split coming out of the cake pan, but somehow, he got the top layer to come off in one piece and flipped it onto the base exactly at the right spots. Amazing. We doctored the cracks by making the cream cheese frosting a glaze that easily covered the blemishes. Ingenious!

birthday!

It's John Polito's birthday today! He turns 29. Visit his site!

Emergency Meeting!

Emily Tilles, John Polito 2, Harold and Jenny Check in attendance. Topics discussed: Google, law school, privacy laws, commercials targeted at zip codes, email addresses and spam. I amazed myself with a moderate three cosmo limit. Afterwards, Papalotte, and some delicious bean and cheese dip. Despite my forty-five minute jog yesterday, I still gained a pound. sigh.

Pork Pibil

Harold made a triumphant pork pibil from the "Once Upon a Time in Mexico" DVD last Monday. It may or may not have made our guest, Robyn, sick. Something made her sick- it could have been the chocolate pudding, the whipped cream, the water, the pork... the pork cooked for four hours though in the oven and reached a temperature well over 185, so if it was the pork, it was whatever the critters left behind. It was very delicious, tender and gently spicy with a sauce that went well on rice. If only we knew!

Paul Dana in "The Inspector"

San Francisco Free Civic Theater is putting on "The Inspector" now at the Mission Recreation Center Auditorium through April 18. Harold, Emily, Kyle, Christopher and I saw the play last weekend-- very funny. Paul Dana, as the postmaster, is hilarious. It must be fun to play a postmaster that reads all the mail. Afterwards, we had hot chocolate and English muffins at Kyle and Christopher's. A delicious combination.

more on kittens

I cannot concentrate.  I cannot get any work done.  All I want to do is follow the kittens from room to room and pick them up and hug them, which they don't like very much.  They're getting bigger by the day.  Vince has lost his spock ears, so it's harder to tell them apart.  But they've gotten more affectionate and now jump in my lap and purr. See the new photo gallery!

lunch club!

Emily and I had another lunch club meeting yesterday where we made lamb in fragrant spinach sauce over couscous and chicken sopa, which was kind of like a mexican lasagna. The recipe for the sopa was from the Jimtown cookbook again, and it was miraculous that we could fit all of the layers into the mini loaf pan: fried tortilla, chicken in sauce, cheese, fried tortilla, vegetables, roasted poblano chilis, sauce, fried tortillas and cheese. We even left out a sour cream layer, thinking that it wouldn't freeze well. The lamb with fragrant spinach sauce turned out great. We followed the recipe directions to the letter and actually pureed the sauce separately (a step I was tempted to skip) before bringing it all together to cook the final hour and a half. yum! Yield: ten lunches each at $3.10 a piece. Not too bad... It was hard to keep the kittens off the counter with all the chicken and lamb, but they were cute and have now become totally immune to the spray bottle.

kitten field trip

We took the kittens on a San Jose field trip yesterday.  See the pics!