The Wednesday Feast is the New Sunday Dinner

I've started a tradition, I think. Or maybe its too early to call it a tradition and its more of a recurring event that is blossoming into a tradition. I'm talking about my nearly month old Wednesday Feast. Because my roommate and I don't get to spend all that much time hanging out between me being at school forever, he taking hours of capoeira and the both of us spending weekends with out significant others we had to find some time for us to sit down, chill out, and catch up. It started out on Monday nights for Heroes but then we got a TV that doesn't get NBC (its not poor reception it just cannot switch to channel 4). So our "roommate night" was bumped to Wednesdays once Lost started.

I made the decision this semester to cook dinner as often as possible because it will ultimately save a ton of money even if it takes a while longer. So we've been having nice, hearty meals almost every night. Early in the "roommate night" history, the meals I would make were a little nicer or a little more complex than the rest of the week but not by much - fresh veggies instead of frozen or I'd actually make potatoes instead of the insta-flakes. One night three weeks ago I had some steaks that I wanted to make, Zach had some tuna he wanted to make and so we resolved to have a feast the likes of which the apartment had never seen. And thus, Wednesday Feast was born. We had a copious amount meat and fish, in addition to corn and my specialty mashed potatoes. The next Wednesday, we added Kim to the feast and the three of us ate ribs, baked potatoes, and fresh cornbread (the cornbread isn't too big of a deal, I make a fresh batch once every two days or so).

I'm writing about the feast, primarily, so I can talk about last night's epic feast. I spent about 3 hours in the kitchen preparing and it was tiring, hard, and totally worth it. We enjoyed a veggie quiche in a savory crust, popovers, home fries, and a little bit of bacon with irish coffees with freshly whipped cream. The quiche was an ordeal in and of itself. I made the crust from scratch (thanks to Emeril/Food Network for the recipe) and it included a boatload of spices. I learned that I can flavor my crusts, so here comes the chocolate crust experiment the next time I make a berry pie. I didn't have a deep pie dish so everything was a little runny - especially the cheese - but it turned out really well and very flavorful. I wish I had popover cups for the popovers but the muffin tins turned out ok, and the popovers were delicious, especially once smothered in butter and honey. I burned the bacon a little (kudos to Zach for catching that for me) but the potatoes turned out rather well, I sauteed them in the bacon fat with peppers, onions, and the "Essence" from Emeril that was also in the crust of the pie. I highly recommend his spice blend as a good allspice on meat or chicken. The irish coffees were mediocre, its hard to make them when you don't have a real coffee pot (solo press FTL) but Zach did get tasty bourbon and Kim helped out and whipped the cream really well.

I'm looking forward to next week's meal, but I will not be making a quiche again for a long time.