Coley Conquers Connecticut

The below is a guest post from Red, a friend I've had since the fifth grade, whom I visited this weekend in New Haven where she's being a real scientist:

I’m happy to be guest-blogging tonight, as Coley travels on a (fortunately) delayed train back to MD.  He brought his project along this weekend, whipping out the cookbook when he first arrived and after a quality day of Yale football and New Haven pizza, we made a somewhat scrambled shopping list for the evening.  We enticed my Swedish neighbor Mattias to come along when we mentioned Lingonberry salsa, which I’ll describe later.  One lesson, if you don’t start shopping until after 6, then you won’t be cooking until after 8, and the food tastes that much better when you finally start eating after 10, not to mention how incredible dessert can be at 1 am...  I diverge.  

In general, I think our meals were good efforts but we didn’t always cook exactly by the book, so I don’t know what Patrick would think. We did check off a few more recipes for the project.  Tonight we cooked the red pepper soup, but be careful because the cream sauce with Sambuca can turn to butter before you know it.  Coley cooked up his favorite corn and pepper saute, topped with bacon of course.  And, we followed with the lamb carpaccio on a bed of arugula and mystery greens.  The greens give the dish an important crunch, but perhaps we should skip the mystery greens next time and stick to the arugula.  Mattias whipped up a delicious dill mayonnaise, although he didn’t even put a dent in my preposterous stash of fresh dill coming from the garden this time of year.  We finished the meal with a team-effort Chocolate pecan bourbon pie, which is pretty much what it sounds like -- take everything delicious, put it in a newly acquired pie dish, and bake until it reaches the consistency of gooey-goodness.

We went to bed full, tired, and happy, and woke up just a few hours later to prepare breakfast before church.  I put together the lingonberry salsa -- lingonberry preserves, chili, cilantro, lime.  According to Wikipedia, lingonberries can be called cowberries, and are small red berries found most prevalent in Scandinavia and IKEA.  I’ll take the rest to Mattias to test the authenticity of the jam.  Coley cooked his potato crusted fish, and on the side I put together the spicy pecans.  The pecans could take a second try to perfect, I think Coley is up to it.  

I should mention also that Coley whipped up a giant batch of granola in no time at all, using whatever random oats, nuts, honey and maple syrup I had around, and I’ll be thinking of him as long as I’m snacking on this delightful treat.  My house smelled incredible all weekend, so I’d say Coley is the best house-guest ever, y’all should be fighting over who gets to host him next time!  Time for me to sign off, as I just finished a piece of leftover pie and I’m heading back for more.