On the roster

My sister is here. This means a lot of things. For Sally it means her favorite playmate and an audience. (She's here! Watching me! ba-ba-ba-babble, comin' up!) 

For me it means naps, projects, and hopefully lots of work. For her daddy it means more time at the office, and for everyone it means cooking. Lots of it. Anna and I spent most of our free time together in the kitchen growing up and on visits, it's the same. We just made a batch of this lemony olive oil banana bread, a vat of homemade vanilla ice cream from The Art of Simple Food, and an anchovy-Narragansett feta-spinach frittata to use up all the leftover egg whites. 

We are not done yet. Not even with the planning, but here's what we've got on the roster so far:

• this crunchy kale and coconut bowl with oat groats from our grain CSA and pan-seared Maine shrimp
• this buttermilk roast chicken courtesy of Smitten Kitchen and the never-ending parade of freezer meat
• Melissa Clark's zucchini latkes with grated "Our Garden 2011" zucchini from the freezer

Last but not least a kidney special! Thank you for all of the suggestions. I think we have settled on an attempt at Darina Allen's rendition of scalloped potatoes with steak and kidney. It addresses the potato supply along with the kidneys so we are leaning that way for the time being. What do you think? We will report back as soon as we cook and eat.

3.27.12 Update! The crunchy kale and coconut bowl was superb. We didn't have dino kale so we subbed regular old kale. We also ran out of olive oil midway so used a bit of walnut oil instead, which gaves the leaves a wonderful buttery taste. And we couldn't get big coconut flakes, so we used small ones instead. Anna said they weren't quite the same, but I thought they were pretty great. We will be eating this again and again, for as long as the oat groats hold out.