Weekend Hospitality

I started this weekend cooking with the following:  1 Kg ground beef  3 Kg Chicken thighs and drumsticks  2 small salami  1 beef chuck labeled Filet M'dume (2 Kg) The challenge: Make dinner for 8 and lunch for 14.  Use beef at both meals. I love cookbooks.  Today, I used Mark Bittman's best recipes in the world.  One of the nice features of this book is that recipes are marked "Make Ahead" and "Serve Cold/Room Temperature".  So, three recipes this week.   Chicken Teriyaki (pg. 317), a simple way to make chicken with a sweet soy sauce. Chicken Escabeche (pg. 294), warm chicken in a sauce.  This one looks strange.  Its backwards.  First you cook the chicken, then add the marinade, then serve it at room temperature.  I'll let you know if it works. Beef Daube (pg 384), a nice simple beef stew.  Since its for Shabbat lunch, I drained the sauce and will serve it for dinner. For the ground beef, I made a mexic...

Big Blue won the Holyland bowl last night after a tight game against Derech Eretz Chayim (DEC).  The contest is the culmination of months of play with more than 60 teams participating in an adult flag football league.  This is the big boys league, with some contact.   DEC is a perennial challenger in this league, recruiting yeshiva students for their year in Israel based on their football ability.  Playing against them, Big Blue is made up of locals, many of whom play on the Israeli national flag football team.  Both teams have previously won the championship, so this was a closely watched game. My son played defensive corner for Big Blue.  We were excited and pleased to watch the play from the roof of the clubhouse.  It was cold as usual for Jerusalem (about 40 degrees F., 7 degree celcius).  The cold didn't bother these players, who had clearly practiced for this game. Since it was a bowl game, there was a half-time show.  But since this ...