Bailey's Feelings-Fueled, Ill-Advised Cooking Marathon: Day One

 I will be the first to admit that I may have gone a wee bit overboard this time. These recipes were taken during Spring Break which, if you'll remember, was the week in which my sister was off larking about major geological formations and I was alternating between bouts of compulsive Poirot watching, tea chugging, people-eschewing and double cake baking. So when my parents invited me home for the weekend I immediately decided that it would be a SUPER good idea to plan out basically the culinary equivalent of a marathon--creating menus of never-before-tried dishes to trot out for the parents. The fun part was that each day I'd make breakfast, lunch, dinner and a dessert. ("Fun?" I hear you ask. "I bake my feelings and then give them to people," I reply. You probably don't make any further comment because you're picturing someone eating my feelings.)

So here's how Day 1 went. I woke up at 8:00 a.m. I taught from 9-11. I was stuck in traffic from 11-12:15. From 12:15-12:45 I packed, snarfed down cereal and managed to watch most of the latest Project Runway episode before meeting my teacher at 1:00 for a meeting till 2:45 and then driving straight from there to College Station. After arriving at 4:45 my mother and I went shopping, after which I cooked and cooked and cooked until about 11:00 and then we watched an episode of Horatio Hornblower, which, if you really think about it, is a pretty fitting conclusion to the day's events.

The Menu:

Appetizer:

 Orange-Caramel Scallops

Main Dish:

Poached Salmon with Peas and Shiitakes

(the original recipe used morels, but I was actually really in love with the flavor of the shiitakes in the sauce. Super rich, but the lovely thing about sauces is you don't have to use too much!)

Sides:

Thomas Keller's Potato-Scallion Cakes

(Unless you're making these for a huge crowd, I would highly recommend using this version of the recipe; I made half of what Keller recommends and we've now got a gigantic bag of potato bits now turning purple in the fridge. True story.)

Slow-Roasted Green Beans

Fear not! These look terrifying, but are actually really delicious. Roasting them in the oven really caramelizes them and brings out a beautiful flavor--plus the sage and scallions infuse them with some really nice undertones. 

Dessert:

I pretty much don't have to tell you anything about this except for the name.

Rum Butter Crepes with Honey Sauce and Butter Pecan Ice Cream

I mean. Come on. 

One teensy note--as with life in general, I feel like these could have used even more rum. Maybe even add some to the sauce! Go crazy. 

Whew! That was a long day. Stay tuned for Day 2, in which our intrepid hero loses her will to continue on after battling with a really belligerent batch of gnocchi. Will she gather the strength to carry on? Or will she lie motionless facedown on the kitchen floor until her mom notices what's going on and then comes over to finish making the dough and generally save the day as our hero rouses herself and proceeds to drink three glasses of white wine while looking over her mom's shoulder and really contributing nothing except moving the cut gnocchi to a plate but then keeps getting them stuck to her fingers and then drops them on the floor and spills some wine on her foot?

You tell me.