The Weekend

I always feel like a cooking slug during the weekend. I do a pretty good job during the week, but the weekend hits and I'm tired. I should cook more because I have the time, but I just haven't been lately. Friday, we went out with our friends Nayil and Jeff. We had planned to have a drink at the Stray Dog, a local pub, but it was Octoberfest and the German polka music was more than any of us could stand. We went to a local bar/restaurant called Machi's. Rob and I had our first date at Machi's. The food is good, but the menu is really limited. Rob had prime rib and I had chicken parmesana. It was good, but it wasn't really what I wanted, and there are lots of things on the menu that Rob and I can't eat, like shellfish and port. It's a bummer.

Saturday, we had a teacher union function at one of the bars, called Muley's. They serve pub food, so I knew Rob wouldn't want to eat there. He thinks pub food is synonomous with fattening. Maybe he's right. Anyway, we had a few appetizers, a beer and then headed back to Elko. By this time it was 9 and we were both pretty hungry. We went to a local chinese restaurant called Monkey Sun and of course our eyes were bigger than our stomachs.

We took home three dishes, when two would have worked. Rob speaks what he calls "restaurant chinese." This restaurant chinese got us extra helpings of the dishes we ordered. We had Sauteed Tofu in Garlic Sauce, Kao Pung Chicken, and Beef Chow Fun. I'll be eating all this chinese for lunch leftovers for a week, I swear.

Sunday we were supposed to go to some friends for brunch. I made a pear tart to take, but my stomach became so upset because of a head ache, that I had to cancel. I couldn't drive the car without feeling like I was going to throw up. It was awful.

Anyway, I made this tart. I used a pecan crust. You make a pretty simple pie crust, 1 and 1/2 cups flour with 2 tbsp of powdered sugar, 1/2 tsp of salt and whisk. Add 1/2 cup of cold butter cut into chunks and 4 tbs of shortening cut into chunks. Cut this into the flour with your pastry cutter and then add 1/2 cup of chopped pecans. Sprinkle 3 - 4 tbs of cold water, one at a time around the edge of the dough and work it in with a fork until you have a nice ball of dough. Gather it into a ball and put it in the fridge for an hour.

Cut up a bunch of pears and sprinkle them with lemon juice so they don't get brown. I used about even medium pears. I sliced them thin. Take 1/3 cup of apricot preserves and 2 tbs of water and microwave them for one minute. When you've rolled out your crust and put it in the tart pan, brush the bottom of the crust with the apricot mixture and then layer it with the pears. Brush the pears with some more of the apricot mixture and then put it in the oven for about 50 minutes at 375. It was really good. Rob had two pieces right away.

I didn't cook much of anything else the rest of the day. We had left over chinese.