Dark and Stormy cocktail

This cocktail seemed like the just the thing for the hurricane episode. We made it with Gosling's rum and Bundaberg ginger beer. I had some rum recently and wasn't into it but decided to give it a try anyway. Turns out I am still not a huge fan of rum so after the first one I switched to whisky and ginger beer instead (delicious!), but at least I gave it a shot, right? Mark liked them the regular way and happily took the rest of the Gosling's off my hands.

Make sure to get ginger beer instead of plain old ginger ale, I like ginger ale too but ginger beer definitely has a stronger, deeper flavor. Of the few that I've tried so far I like Bundaberg the best, it has a nice balance of spicy and sweet. Also Jenni, Kerri and I drank a lot of Bundaberg on our recent trip to Australia so it brings back memories. We even toured the Bundaberg distillery...both the tour and the rum left something to be desired, but the ginger beer was delicious!

Bundaberg distillery

Me and Kerrie after the tour. meh. Jenni's taking the picture.

I got this recipe from a blog about bartending

http://www.jeffreymorgenthaler.com/2008/dark-and-stormy/

He even has a post about how to make your own ginger beer.

Hardcore!

http://www.jeffreymorgenthaler.com/2008/how-to-make-your-own-ginger-beer/

Dark and Stormy

2 oz Gosling's Black Seal Rum

5 oz ginger beer

lime wedge

Pour in a glass over ice, garnish with lime (apparently a Collin's glass is the proper one but Mark and me just used regular).

Chicken Pot Pie

This recipe is a bit of a Frankenstein from several different sources, but the skeleton in Ina Garten's Chicken and Vegetable Pot Pie recipes, with a little inspiration from Julia Child... Also, I made a large portion for two people, because I usually make for a crowd and also wanted leftovers for the week...I'd say this was enough for 8... Also, Ina Garten's recipe says it takes about 1 hour and a half and this took me about twice that...

Ingredients

2 to 3 large skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts
olive oil
kosher salt
pepper
10 baby gold potatoes
4 carrots
1 1/2 onions
8 oz. sliced mushrooms
chives
parsley
1 cup flour
butter (about 12-14 tablespoons)
chicken stock (about 5-6 cups, plus a little extra if needed)
bouillon
white wine (1 cup)
10 oz. frozen peas
about 5-6 oz. frozen pearl onions
1/2 cup heavy cream
frozen puff pastry sheets (defrosted!)
2 eggs

Preheat oven to 375˚

Rub olive oil, salt and pepper on both sides of the chicken breasts and place on a roasting tray.  Cook in the oven for about 20-25 minutes until done, then remove and set aside to cool.

Next, cube the potatoes (I left them unpeeled) and place in salted water and bring to a boil. When they are slightly tender, remove from heat and drain.

Peel and chop the carrots and onions.  Remove the chicken skin and bones from the breasts and cube the chicken.  Chop up a handful of parsley and chives (I had some left in my fridge that I needed to use up, not quite a handful)

Heat the chicken stock over a medium heat and add 2 bouillon cubes. Melt about 13 tablespoons of butter in a dutch oven over a medium heat and add the onions.  Sauté until tender, then slowly add the flour and mix into a paste.  Cook about a minute or two. Add 1 cup of dry white wine and mix together, cooking about another minutes.  Begin adding the chicken stock and mixing together.  The consistency will start out thick and pasty and what I was looking for was more of a thick sauce.  It's good to have extra stock on hand just in case it needs more. Then mix in 1/2 cup of heavy cream. Add the chicken, carrots, frozen peas, frozen onions and potatoes to the sauce.

In a separate pan, melt the remaining butter and sauté the mushrooms until tender.

Then stir in the mushrooms, parsley and chives to the sauce.  Remove from the heat and ladle into oven-proof bowl(s).  At this point I was working quicker, so I stopped taking pictures...  Separately, crack both eggs into a bowl and whisk, then brush this egg wash around the edges and sides of the oven-proof bowl with the pot pie sauce inside.  Then unfurl the puff pastry over the bowl and cut any excess pastry off the sides (The puff pastry can get sticky or rip and it's best to have some flour and a roller on-hand just in case).  Press the pastry into the sides, the egg wash will help it stick.  Brush the pastry with the egg wash and slice 4 holes in the top for steam.   Then sprinkle with salt and pepper, this is where a fancy salt would be nice.  Then put the bowl on a roasting tray (the pie may bubble over). and cook for about an hour until golden...

Boyfriend!

Mark here...so this episode, "Boyfriend"...totally weak after last episode which was soo good! Jen's ex shows up from New York and the whole episode is a back and forth with him Dawson. Jen asks if he can stay with Dawson....totally unrealistic. The pay off is that Jen breaks up with Dawson at the end of the episode, after a lot of drama.  Really, we like Jen and think that the poor writing shows here.  She never should have been with Dawson and the boyfriend from New York is a bad excuse for the break up since he's been kind of a dick to her for a while.

Meanwhile Pacey continues to be awesome. He saves Joey from a douchebag at a party when she gets drunk, and continues to be the "adult in the room" character.

Laurel here...I agree it's a good thing that Jen broke up with Dawson, but I think it's BS that her ex had to show up to be the catalyst.

Also in this episode we finally see Dawson's parents again.  They acknowledge the affair and are trying to work through it via couples scuba diving (!) etc.  However, there is still no mention of the fact that a neighbor gave birth in their living room while they were away, the mom presumably at work, the dad doing god knows what...

Dawson's got Detention!

Mark here...This episode is called "Detention" and is an ode to "The Breakfast Club". We open with Dawson and Joey in Dawson's room and talk turns to Jen not sleeping with Dawson... cut to Paula Cole's "I Don't Want to Wait"...finally the song is appropriate!

I have to say, this was a particularly good one.  The last two were good as well, but this one was written so teenagers acted like teenagers.  To recap, everyone gets Saturday detention, and we meet school trouble-maker Abby Morgan. I should note, this episode was written by Mike White who wrote several "Freaks and Geeks" episodes and it stands up to those.  Abby cuts to the chase with these characters and it's a breath of fresh air.  We get to see the characters without a lot of overly talkiness. The references to "Breakfast Club" are nicely timed, over all very entertaining...

Laurel here...this particular group of kids all get detention for various reasons, some are of which are worth mentioning...Dawson gets detention for breaking Pacey's nose, which he does because Pacey calls him an umpaloompa.  The truth hurts.

Joey gets detention for being AWESOME!  She smashes her lunch tray into some jock's balls and then punches him in the face, both of which he totally deserves...way to stand up for yourself Joey!  If only you could do the same in detention!  She basically gets called out on the fact that she is in love with Dawson, to which she responds that she couldn't possibly talk about the guy she's in love with because it's too real and embarrassing.  I guess this is supposed to be dramatic but the fact that she is too embarrassed to talk about it with this particular group of people is basically tantamount to admitting that she is in love with Dawson...which Pacey, Jen, and Abbi already totally get.  Everyone except for the always oblivious Dawson who is still wondering who she could possibly be referring to.

Baby!

Mark here.... Wow! This one was kind of fun...  Joey's sister has her baby and of course an ambulance can't make it to Cape Cod in the off-season.  So they end up at Dawson's (after rowing across the creek...totally realistic).  Conincidentally, Jen's Grams lives next door and is a retired nurse.  Grams really shines in this episode.  Previously she was a one-dimensional religious schoolmarm but here she whips everyone into shape to deliver this baby.  Dawson of course wants to film the whole thing, not at all creepy or gross.  Dawson's parents are nowhere to be seen, but I'm sure they won't mind a little blood on the living room carpet.  I know when I was a teenager and my parents were out, they wouldn't question blood all over the carpets.

Meanwhile, the secret's out with Pacey and Ms. Jacobs and once again Pacey is the adult in the relationship...confessing to the school board that it was all a fantasy and nothing REALLY happened.  Exit Ms. Jacobs...

Laurel here...I agree on all points.  I'm curious to see if Dawson's parents acknowledge in any future episode that someone gave birth to a baby in their living room.  There was blood everywhere.  Aren't kids supposed to have parties when their kids are away?

When Ms. Jacobs breaks the news that she is leaving, she talks to Pacey about how their relationship has to end, blah blah blah..and they hug a bunch ON HER FRONT PORCH!!!  I mean, seriously it would have been safer (and more fun) to just do it one more time in the privacy of her home than to do a bunch of PDA on the front porch of her beach house, basically in public.

Hurricane Dawson!

Laurel and I are settling in with our Dark-N-Stormys for Episode 5, "Hurricane"! We've made Chicken Pot Pie and an Arugula Salad and the weather here has thunderstorms conveniently predicted...

Well, here we go...in this episode all the characters get stuck together to weather out the storm Jen and her Grams and Joey and her sister's family end up at Dawson's and Pacey and his older brother wind up at ...wait for it... Ms. Jacob's place, because she is too "scared" to weather the storm alone.  We also find out Pacey's older brother is an in-the-closet cop.  I remember when I saw this years ago the brother was supposed to be sort of mean, but now just seems more comical.  At one point, in a dramatic turn, he pulls his gun on Pacey in attempt to get him to say the brother is not gay...after spending the previous few hours debating the finer points of West Side Story and Gypsy, proving not only is he gay, but a 50 year old queen stuck in the body of a 24 year old.  I mean come on, it's supposed to be 1997 and the best we-know-you're-gay references they could come up with was Barbra Streisand and showtunes?!  

We also see Dawson getting his mom to confess to her affair.  Once again, the word soup coming out of Dawson's mouth is that of a 42 year old. It's like James Van Der Beek can barely remember all the lines, let alone "act" them.  His father is caught prepping his dream restaurant, "The Kelp", hoping it will take off and set them all up for life.  I think it's safe to say, a restaurant called "The Kelp" is never going to take off...

Laurel here.. about the affair...Dawson's mom has been keeping her slutty secret for months, but she chooses the night of the hurricane, when they have 5 houseguests over, to confess? Akward much?

Joey continues her habit of spying in people this episode, which makes me think the writers must be doing this on purpose?  We see Dawson come into his room to find Jen sitting in there, has a full conversation with her, then finds...you guessed it..JOEY IN THE CLOSET AGAIN!  which means she must have been hiding in there since before Jen even came into the room alone.  For how long?  An hour?  Longer?  So weird.  Then later in the episode she is hiding on the floor in the corner of the porch (ignoring the many available wicker seating options).  Jen comes out to have a cigarette (bad city girl!) and asks Joey what she is doing, to which she replies "Oh, just watching Mr. Leary"...who is sitting in his car, clearly trying to have a moment alone since his house is full of neighbors, contemplating the fact that his wife is having an affair.  Joey Lurkenstein strikes again.

Favorite quote from this episode...Joey: "You're life IS a hurricane"  Dawson: "It's too late for metaphors, Joey."  Mark and I were talking about how James Van Der Beek is kind of a bad actor as Dawson but we agreed it's partially because they write him as a grown up.  His vocabulary is off the charts and the way he thinks and talks about things are not at all how a teenager is supposed to.  How is a teenage actor supposed to sell that stuff?  They are trying to make him a 42 year old trapped in a teenage body but how is a teenage actor supposed to handle that?  Meanwhile his parents totally act and talk like teenagers...

Ina Garten's Mac and Cheese

Ina Garten's Mac and Cheese

I used shells instead of elbow shape, I didn't put any oil in the pasta water, I used fancy cave aged gruyere and a raw milk sharp cheddar, and heirloom tomatoes. Also I made the breadcrumbs from some rolls I had leftover in a mini food processor. Besides that I followed the recipe as written...


Kosher Salt
vegetable Oil
1 pound Elbow Macaroni
1 quart of milk
1 stick of butter (8 Tbsp)
1/2 cup all purpose flour
12 ounces gruyere, grated (4 cups)
8 ounces extra sharp cheddar, grated (2 cups)
1/2 tsp tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
3/4 pound fresh tomatoes (4 small)
1 1/2 cups fresh white breadcrumbs

Preheat oven to 375

Drizzle oil into a large pot of boiling salted water. Add the macaroni and cook according to the directions on the package, 6 to 8 minutes. Drain well.

Meanwhile, heat the milk in a small saucepan, but don't boil it. Melt 6 tablespoons of butter in a large (4-quart) pot and add the flour. Cook over low heat for 2 minutes, stirring with a whisk. While whisking, add the hot milk and cook for a minute or two more, until thickened and smooth. Off the heat, add the Gruyere, Cheddar, 1 tablespoon salt, pepper, and nutmeg. Add the cooked macaroni and stir well. Pour into a 3-quart baking dish.

Slice the tomatoes and arrange on top. Melt the remaining 2 tablespoons of butter, combine them with the fresh bread crumbs, and sprinkle on the top. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes, or until the sauce is bubbly and the macaroni is browned on the top.

YUM!