tonight's dinner is roasted buttermilk chicken with roasted peas, and am also making brioche. as the saying goes, if you don't have bread, eat brioche!
Dinner at the Moore-McKown House: January 21, 2015
The Moore-McKown House: Jamie (and Jacob) and Spencer (and Casey).
Menu: Meatloaf, Green Beans, Macaroni and Cheese, and Potatoes.
Location: North Little Rock, Arkansas.
As Liz and I walk through the open garage door, we can see through the glass pane, Jamie sitting on a stool at the kitchen bar. When she sees us, a smile creeps across her face and we exchange waves.
Spencer is pulling something from the microwave. Jacob sits on the couch in the living room, keeping an eye on the television and his hands on the laptop in his lap. After Liz and I walk in, Jacob puts the laptop aside and takes a seat beside Jamie.
"It's kind of her thing," they told me. "It's really good."
We've had the dinner planned for a couple of weeks, and now there's the meatloaf, sitting on the countertop in a cast-iron skillet. It's been labeled the "blog meal" on the calendar they keep on the wall.
Jamie and Spencer are roommates, but their boyfriends are around enough that they're listed on the house dry-erase calendar and have cooking responsibilities. Most days have a dish listed--pork tenderloin, spicy shrimp pasta, chicken parm--and each one is written in either blue or purple marker. Spencer and Casey are responsible for the purple dishes, while Jamie and Jacob are responsible for the blue dishes.
Jacob pulls a fancy wine opener from the drawer to open a bottle of Chardonnay. And when I say fancy, I mean it looks like a small piece of construction equipment and I don't know how to use it, but Jacob operates it with ease. (He can probably also operate construction equipment.)
Spencer announces that dinner is ready, which prompts Casey to come in from the other end of the house. He grabs a plate and serves himself at the stove top. Meatloaf, green beans, macaroni bow-tie pasta and cheese, and potatoes, sliced and buttered. With his plate full, he walks into the next room and sits at the ping pong table.
"I'm so embarrassed we don't have a better place to sit," Jamie says. But somehow the ping pong table is perfect. Made more so when someone placed the chilled bottle of wine on the ping pong paddle, like a giant, handled coaster.
The meatloaf is good as is evidenced by my inability to sit still knowing there's more waiting for me in the kitchen. Liz and I both go back for seconds.
We all talk about how Jacob and Casey have known each other for most of their lives. They're friendship is what brought Jamie and Spencer under the same roof to be roommates.
When we finish the bottle of wine, Casey excuses himself to go meet his friends for trivia. The rest of us decide to open another bottle.
As the night winds down, Jacob makes his way to the kitchen to start cleaning up. From the little bit of food we left behind, some of it gets scraped into the trash can, but a few bits of meatloaf are going to Wingo, Jamie's dog, a tiny little Maltese. She holds the small pieces of meat in the air over Wingo's head and he stands up on his hind two legs like he belongs in the circus. With his front two legs, he bats them in unison. It's an impressive show of balance. When Jamie gives him the meat, he goes back down to all fours, happy. And the show is over.
Meatloaf Recipe:
Preheat oven to 375.
2 eggs
1 chopped bell pepper
1/2 chopped onion
2 pieces of bread crumbled
1 can of condensed milk
Meatloaf seasoning packet
2 Lbs ground beef
Mix everything together in large bowl. Pour ingredients into a cast iron skillet and press the meat to mold to the pan. Bake for 30 minutes and take out of oven and cut into pieces and then continue cooking for another 35-40 minutes.
No matter where you are, if you want to invite me and Liz to dinner, we’d love to come. In return, we’ll do our best to be good conversationalists and I’ll document a small piece of your everyday life. We’re fun dinner guests, people. Kids are sometimes skeptical of me, but they love Liz. I’ll give your pets a lot of attention, though. I’m good at that. If you want to invite your weird uncle over for dinner, too, so he’ll stop bugging you, now’s the time! I’ll talk to him so you don’t have to.
We live in Little Rock, Arkansas, but I’ll keep a list and when we’re traveling in your area, we’d love to meet you and your family/roommates/cat and enjoy a home-cooked meal. Email me at gchoate17 (at) outlook [dot] com with the subject line: Dinner at Our House.
