MONDAY I ATE:
Breakfast: Grapenuts with cranberry juice
Lunch: Roast-beef sandwich on salted caraway seed bun. I miss a whole lot of things about our old home in Friday Harbor. One of them is the “Roast Beef and Rocket” sandwich from The Market Chef. This was a perfect combination of flavors: thinly sliced rare roast beef, crisp arugula, a salty caraway-seed bun, and a tangy horseradish sauce. (It should be noted that the original version of this sandwich also includes some sort of olive tapenade… since I think olives are nasty, I always suffered the withering stares at the counter as I ordered it without). But here’s the rub: I can’t figure out the horseradish sauce. Suzanne surmised that it is probably sour cream and horseradish. I’ve tried it 3 times now, using prepared horseradish. The first time, it was bland, the second time I added more horseradish sauce, but that made it runny and gross. This time I set the horseradish on a paper towel to drain before adding. This got the texture right, but it was back to being bland. I’m thinking of looking for some sort of dried horseradish powder so I can just keep dumping it in until it has a real bite. Fortunately, I’m going back to Friday Harbor in a couple of weeks and can try out a couple “RBR-no olives” from the source.
Afternoon snack: Chocolate chip cookie from Bittersweet. After eating my poor imitation of the roast beef and rocket sandwich, I started thinking more about The Market Chef. The sandwiches are good and all, but the chocolate chip cookies are something else. They have just the right balance of crunchy outer skin with a chewy matrix holding the chips and an unusually bold caramel tinge that I love. I would often structure my day so that any errands I needed to do for work got done at cookie time. Bittersweet has pretty good cookies, to. As might be expected, their chocolate chips are out of this world, but their dough is inconsistent. Today was one of the good days; they were caramel-y and chewy, though the dough was thinner than the chips, which isn’t my preference. So, a distant second choice compared to my favorites 1,500 miles away, but still made for a great afternoon.
Dinner: Mac-n-cheese. Always a crowd pleaser.
Dessert: Jelly doughnut cake… Suzanne has been experimenting with this one based on pins like this. Pretty much nailed it:
