This one comes to you from the City of Brotherly Love, where my aunt and uncle hosted a family gathering.

Sauteed almonds, sesame seeds, green onions, olive oil, and ramen noodles (minus the flavor packet), plus:

chopped-up napa cabbage, courtesy of my sister-in-law, plus a dressing made with white vinegar, soy sauce, sugar, olive oil, and diced garlic, equals:

… a slimy-looking salad. That’s just my camera, I promise. It’s actually a great salad — the dressing is sweet and tangy, the cabbage has just the right amount of bitterness to balance it, and the almond/ramen noodle mix makes it crunchy. My family loved it, and I finally managed to redeem myself for the time I accidentally fed them worms.

What’s that, you say? The worm story is more interesting than looking at slimy cabbage? I’m happy to oblige. See, my mother decided to go back to school for her bachelor’s degree after we children were old enough to take care of ourselves. One of the classes she had to take was a health-related class, which filled her head with all manner of ideas regarding the horribleness of my family’s diet. She decided we needed to eat whole-wheat noodles rather than egg noodles, so she stocked our cabinets with health food and ignored our grumbling. One night, she asked me to make dinner because she was going to be late, so I made brown gravy to be served over the wheat noodles.

While I was boiling the noodles, I noticed some little curly things floating on top of the water, but I figured they were noodle crumbs and let it go. We ate dinner and I put some away for my mother, then went about my life until she got home. She got as far as taking the Tupperware out of the fridge and popping off the lid, then brought the container to her face to scrutinize it. If my mother was a shrieker, she would have shrieked, but instead she informed me in her cool manner that they weren’t noodle crumbs — they were tiny worms. And my whole family just ate them.

It’s been at least 10 years now and I have yet to live down that incident, but tonight’s fabulous salad went a long way toward redeeming my culinary cred. And if there’s one thing the Dumbass Gourmet needs, it’s culinary cred.

The Best Friend received some good news last week, so a celebration was in order. At her suggestion, we had parmesan chicken (at my request, we had champagne), made as follows: dip chicken breasts in olive oil, then roll them in a mixture of black pepper, italian breadcrumbs, and parmesan cheese, then bake for half an hour. Halfway through, the chicken breasts got another sprinkle of parmesan, which should have gotten crispy and melty but didn’t. I was really hoping for a crunchy shell, but I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out anyway. We rounded out the meal with alfredo noodles and a salad mix with dried cherries, cranberries, apples, almonds, blue cheese crumbles, and some sort of amazing vinaigrette. I cleared off the dinner table for the first time in months and we had a lovely little dinner party with The Husband, The BFF, and my friend J, toasting the BFF’s success and generally having a great time.

It’s fuzzy, I know — I promise it’s the picture and not the food.

Here’s some non-Dumbass cooking from a restaurant the BFF and I went to this morning for their weekly jazz brunch:

A bloody Mary, homefries, mushroom-cheese omelet, and some wheat toast to make it healthy.

I’m sorry for the short entries, but I’m on vacation and having a wonderful time! I’ll be in Philadelphia for the last part of the week, visiting my aunt and uncle. They were like second parents to my brothers and I when we were small, and I am beyond excited to see them again.

Have a great week, all!

I may have mentioned earlier that The Husband, in all his thrifty glory, picked up about six containers of ground turkey during a recent $.99 sale at Kroger. This is excellent because we’ve pretty much completely replaced any use of ground beef with ground turkey or chicken, but sucky because I am so sick and tired of ground turkey that I try, usually unsuccessfully, to find creative ways to spice it up. (See: spanish rice.)

So when I visited Kroger on Tuesday I was determined to find something a little different. I strolled through the aisles, packing my basket full of fresh fruits and vegetables, then came upon the meat cooler. I’m weary of poultry, ham and pork chops just weren’t sounding spectacular — then I spied a little sirloin on sale. The cogs were spinning as I drove home, combining ingredients in my head until I ended up in the kitchen, preparing a marinade of olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper.

Which is when I remembered that earlier that week during a girls’ day out I decided to get fake nails put on. Crazy fake nails, too — ones that impeded my typing and made it hard to text-message. And now, staring at the lonely bulb of garlic on the cutting board, I began to realize the folly of my ways. If I can’t stand garlic juice underneath my normal fingernails, how would I function with garlicky fake tips? I couldn’t very well tear them off, so I did the next best thing: wrapped my hands in sandwich bags and started to dice. And I bet you all can guess how well that went.

Undaunted, I put the steaks in the fridge to marinate and started quartering red potatoes. I planned on boiling them with a little salt and some butter, but it belatedly occurred to me that I didn’t have enough pots to do so. The medium-sized pot was full of fresh broccoli being steamed and the small pot wouldn’t fit all the potatoes, so after a brief moment of panic I was seized with inspiration: I would coat the potatoes with olive oil, Mrs. Dash, salt, and pepper, and roast them. My mother used to make a similar recipe with dried onion soup mix, but I was fresh out and, besides, Mrs. Dash is better for you anyway. The potatoes went into the oven, the broccoli came out of the pot crisp and green, and the steaks sizzled away on the Foreman Grill. For once in my life, everything was done at once.

I love the grill marks. They remind me of the fake ones on the Salisbury steak at my middle-school cafeteria.

Dinner was delicious, and there were enough leftovers to make this later on in the week:

Steak stir-fry with edamame and rice.

So it’s not filet mignon or stuffed trout or what-have-you, but it’s a far cry from the crap I’ve been churning out lately. These next two Sundays will be fairly challenging because I’ll be traveling for my spring break, but I’m looking forward to two “Very Special Dumbass Gourmet” episodes — one with my BFF and one with my family! If nothing else, it’ll be amusing.