Day 29

We were visiting my mom this weekend so I don't have all her recipes but the dishes were pretty simple.  She made carrot ginger soup by sauteing onion and garlic (maybe?), ginger, salt, pepper, and carrots, simmering in water, and whizzing with the stick blender.  Nice bright innards-warming lunch with some rice cakes.  For dinner we had pan seared ribeye with potatoes and asparagus that had been roasted in olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Note about long drives while on LID: eat as heartily as you can before you set off.  By the time we got home the thought of eating another raw almond was very depressing.

Back home we had the Crispy Lamb with Cumin, Scallions, and Red Chilis from the NY Times.  I misread the recipe and used rice wine vinegar instead of rice wine and I was out of cornstarch so I used potato starch instead.  My guess is the latter substitution was the reason why it didn't come out all that crispy but it was still good.  We ate it with brown rice and string beans that had been blistered in the wok.

Day 22

For a snack I made the granola bars on page 25 of the Good and Cheap cookbook by Leanne Brown (available here).

For dinner we had watercress sauteed with garlic and a fresh chili.  I attempted to roast a duck which I don't think came out that great; somehow I managed to overcook the meat but the skin wasn't very crispy.  I used the steaming and flavoring instructions from this NY Times recipe (I made a nest out of foil in the wok) and then roasted it whole according to the instructions in this Canadian Living recipe.  Both recommend seasoning the duck 24 hours before cooking which I didn't do and I'm sure there were a few other missteps (for one, the water level was so high that it bubbled up over the nest which probably made the bird soggy).  But it wasn't inedible and we'll get some nice stock and duck fat out of it.