Meal planning has been a bit weird with the play going on, so I haven’t been experimenting with new recipes lately. We were lucky enough to be gifted some duck and chicken eggs a few weeks ago and I’ve been hoarding them. I’ll start with what we’ve been using them for.
I made this batch of chocolate pb ice cream with two of the duck eggs. Pinch of Salt ice cream base (search cinnamon ice cream on the blog for the link,) with cocoa powder and melted pb. Next time, I will add more chocolate and more pb. And I will not melt the pb, as it kind of disappeared. It tasted good though.
I also made rhubarb ice cream from a different ice cream recipe.
This one had no eggs! In fact, none of the ice cream recipes seem to have eggs in them! It is still delicious and creamy! I definitely want to try some more of them.
It is a little more pink than I wanted, the gel dye was a bit more pronounced than I expected. The recipe started with making a syrup with the rhubarb pieces, sugar, and water. Then you added that the to cream mix and let it chill overnight before churning it. I actually left it about a day and a half, as I forgot it was in the fridge! I think it made it thicker though. I would make this again. Maybe with chunkier rhubarb pieces though.
I also made these Chocolate Chip Muffins with two of the duck eggs, as I wanted to try them in baking. I realized that the Chinese market that we go to has duck eggs, so I will have to get some more. Although, my friends’ eggs will always be better! :). These are from Baking Unplugged by Nicole Rees. The muffins are extra rich with sour cream and the duck eggs. Mmmm…
I’ve made a few breakfast items lately. I’ve been finding myself getting bored with my usual yogurt. I tried a scone recipe from Bernard Clayton’s Small Breads. The Husband and I were not terribly happy with it. It had no sugar, so was more bready or biscuity than usual. It was also pretty bland. I added dried cherries to the batter too and those were probably the best part. Please ignore the dog tongue that I couldn’t edit out in the upper left. Someone really wanted to sample my breakfast and I didn’t notice until after I had already eaten them.
I don’t think I would make this again.
I did make these pancakes again, in fact, I have made them twice this month! They are Coconut Cream Pancakes from The Spruce Eats.
These are delicious! Plus, I don’t have to share them, as the Husband doesn’t like coconut. I added mini chocolate chips to some of them, but the didn’t really need it. I had this batch with chicken sage sausages. Both batches were made for dinner on nights the Husband had play things happening. Fancy shared my apples as they were honey crisp.
My Mom was visiting for a few days back when I was super sick and we made Matzo ball soup aka Jewish Penicillin. 🙂 It did seem to help, as I could sort of talk the next day. It was an interesting and delicious experience. I consulted some recipes, but I ended up using the recipe on the box. Sort of.
I did use a mix for the matzo balls. I thought trying to actually make the mixture might be too much for my poor, sick self. Mom helped too and it turned into a delicious soup. I did make my own broth, with Penzey’s Mural of Flavor spice mix and some extra garlic. I would make this again. Both Mom and the Husband liked it as well.
We had store rotisserie chicken one night with some sautéed swiss chard and berries. I made the chard garlicky and used Tuscan herb flavored olive oil. Mmmm. It was lovely.
I made chicken salad with the leftovers and discovered that french fried onions make a perfect amount of crunch.
I would probably make a smaller amount of this again. It was pretty quick to put together. Maybe the Husband will even try it next time.
I made chicken breasts last night with some Knorr noodles for a side. Today, I meant to make beef tacos, but left the meat out on the counter and completely forgot to put it away before going to work. So… We had chicken tacos with the left over chicken, homemade salsa, and enchilada sauce. They were messy, but good.
Now I have to find something else to make for Thursday, as enchiladas were my plan for Thursday… Oops.
I also made Fancy some treats, but haven’t had a chance to take a picture of them yet. She gets super excited about them. They have ginger, pumpkin, molasses, oats, and flour in them. I thought the ginger might be good for her stomach. A friend also sent me a biscuit book and a list of egg subs, so I’m excited to try some of those too. You know, in my copious amounts of free time. Ha! Sometimes I crack myself up.
Well, I’m headed off to bed to dream of deliciousness. Have a great night!
I keep making food and then forgetting to post it! The Bad Birthday Fairy brought me a “wicked bad cold” – according to the hipster PA I saw at urgent care. I haven’t been cooking this week much, other than the chicken sausage pasta dish yesterday. Tomorrow it will be crockpot chicken soup.
I did make fresh bao last week. They were big dinner sized buns this time. The Husband was quite impressed. I had Brussels sprouts on the side. They had olive oil and “Sandwich Sprinkle” on them.
This was Fancy’s reaction to not getting to eat the Chicken Bao.
Poor thing… So neglected!
I tried Giada’s House Soup from Food Network, which was pretty good. Not our favorite, but we would eat it again.
With the soup, we had Cheese Twists from “Small Breads.” They tasted okay and were fun to make, but there were too many and the Husband didn’t like them.
We had Antelope Meatballs Stroganoff. It was weird and we’re not sure we like antelope. We’ll probably not eat more antelope. It had a strange aftertaste.
Another miss was this Crockpot Chicken Curry, also from Food Network. The Husband has decided he likes curry spice, but not by itself. It was too much for me to eat by myself. The Husband didn’t really comment on the coconut milk in it, so I think it wasn’t a strong enough taste. I wouldn’t make this again.
We had Ricotta Cheesecake with a Warm Berry Sauce from “The Home Cook” by Alex Guarnachelli. The Husband didn’t like it at all, he thought there were too many textures. There was a not sweet cookie crust. There was candied citron in it and it freaked him right out. My work people loved it though, so it didn’t go to waste.
I think it was too soft, but the flavor was delicious. I like the firmer cheesecakes though, so I don’t know that I would make this again.
We had Nancy Fuller’s Stovetop Mac and Cheese, which had cream cheese in it to make it extra creamy. It was pretty good, not too rich. Quick recipe too. I would use this again.
I attempted to have a Girl’s Night when the Husband was going to be gone, but ended up with a nasty migraine and a ridiculous amount of mini cupcakes with no one to eat them.
They were from the Cupcakes and Cocktails cookbook that I found in a secondhand book store. It has recipes for both and I used three of the cupcake recipes.
Margarita Cupcakes with Lime Buttercream (not the meringue frosting in the book,) Pomegranate Orange Cupcakes, and Chocolate Chili Cupcakes. The Pomegranate ones originally had green tea powder, but I have thrown it out apparently, so I used orange instead.
All three of them were tasty. The chocolate ones were never frosted and the Pomegranate ones had a glaze and were sprinkled with edible glitter. I would definitely make all of them again, but especially the lime buttercream.
I have been trying out some new ideas and will have another cookbook review coming up soon. I want to try one or two more recipes to get a good overall review first. My garden sprouts are coming along well, so I’ll share my gardening plans. For now though, I’m going to go nurse my throat and hope I can actually talk tomorrow. Otherwise, I may be holding sessions via whiteboard!
I’m such a dork. In other news, we’ve been using a lot of spice mixes lately and I thought you might be interested in hearing more about them. Most of them have been from Penzey’s. They have excellent spices and had a super good sale and now my spice cupboard is full of Penzey’s.
I’m using them though and it’s helped me get over my food funk. This isn’t a sponsored post, by the way. I’m just discovering new things to try and cook.
A couple of them have been good enough that the Husband has requested them “on everything.” 😁 The Galena Street rub was one of them. We had that on the chicken drumsticks. The chili powder was in the veggie chili that I made while the Husband was gone.
We had Mural of Flavor on the turkey pot pie for Pi Day. It had a stuffing crust on the bottom and top.
I knew it was a winner when the Husband said, when I walked in the door “We have a problem. You have to stop making such delicious food.”
We also had Cookies and Cream Pie for Pi Day from Icebox Pies by Lauren Chattman.
It was kind of a cheater pie. I mixed vanilla ice cream with crushed Oreos and used a store bought Oreo crust! But it was still delicious!
The Husband suggested this steak seasoning over the weekend. He had tried some as a sample at Costco and it was very good. I didn’t ruin the steak! It was actually very tender and juicy.
There were also roasted potatoes with paprika, garlic, seasoned salt, and pepper and a roasted carrot recipe from the Guarnaschelli book. (Pretty sure you could play a nice drinking game with how much I’ve been referencing that cookbook…) I was surprised the Husband liked the carrots. They had honey, cumin, coriander, and s+p on them. They were pretty good, although I forgot the finish of red wine vinegar, which would have cut through the sweetness nicely.
Fancy was mad that she couldn’t have the steak or the carrots. She drooled on my foot the whole time.
I made some things for our game night too, but of course, forgot to take pictures. We had chocolate covered strawberries, almond flour brownies, and chocolate chip cookies for sweets. Savory things included crab stuffed mushrooms, cheeses and sausage, and Firebreather salsa.
We’ve decided we’re done with winter, so last night had panko crusted shrimp with cilantro rice and homemade peach salsa. I also had a Moscow Mule and some tropical fruit.
I made lemon strawberry muffins (with lemon peel from Penzey’s) this morning too, since I was still craving spring.
I have been doing some sewing too, but not necessarily things I can post. I finally tried a bra pattern, but am quite sure my Dad doesn’t want to see it. 😂 So I’ll figure out a way to update the sewing posts soon.
The latest issue of Food Network included 100 Recipes for Butter Lovers and I got all starry eyed with a pitted patter heartbeat. Possibly from the thought of ingesting all the butter recipes! I can feel it calling my name too, so am going to go pick out some recipes.
Fancy is quite content at the moment, being adorable in her blanket. Any time she gets up, it gets stuck on her tail and she walks it all over the house.
We discovered tonight that she lives up to her name. She will not eat regular oranges or apples, but happily accepts blood oranges and Honeycrisp. Fancy, indeed!
Well, bad jokes aside, I hope this post gave you some ideas to spice up your cooking!
I’m slowly adjusting to regular life again and I may at some point write up a food and craft review for 2018, but it’s much more fun to talk about parties! Although I did completed an astonishing 145 sewing/craft projects! I will probably write about those for sure.
We had our annual Epiphany party on January 5 and it was our most successful one yet! We had about 20- 25 people come and it was lovely to see all of them. There was a mini craft night takeover, when I think four or five of the craft night people were here. I half expected them to break out into boughts of knitting! 🙂 The party is always an interesting mix of people since we tend to invite pretty much everyone we know who is local, and it’s fun to watch and see how much people have in common or what they end up talking about. My favorite time, of course, is when I don’t have to guide any of the conversations; they all just happen naturally! The tablecloth gained many signatures this year and it made my heart full and happy. This year there were several children in attendance and Fancy was super happy. At one point there were children on all sides and she was soaking it all in. She was, of course, exhausted that night and the rest of the next day. Silly girl.
But enough of the guest talk, I’m sure you really are much more interested in the food!
I promised a friend I would share the rulle recipe and was able to get permission from my Dad, although he seemed a bit reluctant… I sweet talked him into it though. 🙂
Ideally, you want a better swirl than this, but I was impatient and scaring the dog while trying to get the flank steak thinner.
So here’s the Arten Family Rulle Recipe- from Great Grandma Asta. Hopefully if I get it too wrong, one of my parents will let me know. 🙂
Ingrediants:
1 flank steak, trimmed and pounded thin, 1-2 pork chops chopped finely, 1 medium onion, chopped finely, salt, pepper, “too much allspice.” Maybe start with a half tablespoon of allspice. I normally make a layer of allspice thick enough that the meat looks dark. Obviously, when I make it, I don’t use pork. My parents used veal this year and it was pretty good, but I think you can safely just use the flank steak and it will be fine.
Method:
Cut a long piece of kitchen twine. (Longer than you think you’ll need, because you really don’t want to be messing around trying to cut kitchen twine covered in steak germs and allspice. Ask me how I know that one. ) After pounding out the flank steak, lay flat and add the pork chops, onions, salt, pepper, and allspice. Starting with the long side, roll the flank steak as tightly as you can around the other ingrediants, attempting to keep as much in as possible. Tie the twine as tightly as possible around the meat tying off the ends. It will shrink while cooking, so you want it extra tight.
Put the meat roll into a large pot of salted water and bring to a boil, then simmer for 2-3 hours until it smells delicous and you really want to eat it all right then. Let it cool and then put it into a bowl of saltwater brine. I figure out the brine ratio by adding salt to my bowl until it is cloudy and won’t absorb more salt. While in the beinw, the meat needs to be completely submerged, so take a jar or something with a cap, fill it with water, and put it on top of a plate or bowl that can compress it underwater. Leave it in the brine for 3-7 days.
There was some debate on this question this year and I made the rulle on New Year’s Day and it was perfect, so around 4 days. The family recipe doesn’t specify brining time, much to our suprise. The day you want to serve it, drain the meat roll and cut off the twine. Using a serrated knife, cut thin slices. Cooks get to “test” all the bits that come off while cutting and you can hoard them from other people if you want. 🙂 Put the rulle on thin sliced, buttered bread. My parents use rye, but I don’t enjoy the little cocktail rye bread, so prefer to use french bread. Let me know if you make it!
We had crab dip and the family meatballs, as well as a cheese and meat tray. I didn’t get to eat the Christmas Eve meatballs at my parents’ house this year and was surprised by how much I missed them. There wasn’t time to make a porkless batch before my parents’ party. Their table looked like this:
Just in case you were wondering where I get my crazy ideas of appropriate amounts of party food from. That’s the family tablecloth, which has been in our family since the 60’s. There was moose on the table, thanks to my younger brother’s girlfriend and her dad. Apparently this moose was trying to stomp on his sled dogs, so he had some extra meat for the winter.
So Scadinavian tradition says you should have 7 different kinds of cookies and a filled cake, but I was short on the cake part. I did have 8 kinds of cookies though, so I figured it worked. A lot of the cookies on our table this year were not the traditional ones from my childhood. We decided that on the years we go up to visit for Christmas, I maybe don’t need to make as many. This year, there were three cookie recipes that were repeated and the rest were new.
Chewy Chocolate Chip, Chocolate Peppermint Cookies, and Apple Pie Tassies
The Husband enjoys chewy chocolate chip cookies the most, so these have been the best recipe we have found so far. It’s from a Food Network instert book of 50 Chocolate Chip Cookies. I have no idea which edition it came from.
The Chocolate Peppermint Cookies were awful. Dry as a dessert, not enough mint flavor and I ended up throwing probably half the dough away. Far too many unladylike words were coming out of my mouth. The directions were confusing too and the dough would not roll out evenly no matter what I did. I actually think you need an industrial asphalt roller to make it work. They were from this year’s Christmas Cookie Edition of Food Network- December 2018.
The Apple Pie Tassies were from December 2017. They were definitely a hit. I accidentally used the whole block of cream cheese, instead of just 6 oz, but I think it made it better. The dough starts with cream cheese and two sticks of butter, so hard to mess up. I would make these again, but make the shells smaller, so that the filling to shell ratio was more even.
Brownie Cookies, Maple Snickerdoodles
These were both from December 2018 FN too. The maple snickerdoodles were from a gift idea page in the front. I was a bit disappointed in the lack of aple flavor. It called for maple sugar and I probably should have used the maple syrup substitution instead. We have the delicious syrup from our friends’ Sugarbush that I would like to try. They tasted good though, just not enough maple.
The Brownie cookies are fantastic! I made a different recipe in the UP and that one was not as fudgy and delicious. This one tastes pretty much like the middle of a brownie, which is my very favorite part. The Husband might like these almost as much as the chocolate chip ones, so they will definitely go on my rotation. It makes a smaller batch too, so less chance of leftovers. Not that you’ll have leftovers.
We had to have PB balls, of course. They were one of the traditional things on the table and I think have ruined me for Reese’s! I mean, these aren’t that complicated and are sooooo much better!
One of our friends brought us a Japanese cheesecake to try and it was really good. I was especially excited to try it, as I had wanted to make one for the cheesecake battle. It was a bit more like cake in texture than cheesecake, but was still delicious. There is a possibility that I ate it for breakfast.
We had a pickle tray with many homemade pickles on it, including some of the squash pickles that made my Dad eat zucchini. Apparently besides using it as a bazooka, pickles are the only way to eat that particular squash. 🙂 My Mom graciously gave me a bigger pickle tray this year, so we used that and it made them look even prettier.
Storebought gherkins, Garlic Hot Pickles, and Squash pickles. The hot ones made my Dad hiccup and surpised quite a few other people as well.
These lemon cookies were dairy and gluten free and were suprisingly good. I’ve not had a lot of luck with gluten free cookies that aren’t grainy, but these were fluffy and light. They are from this website: https://www.noshtastic.com/easy-lemon-cookies-gluten-dairy-free/
Everyone enjoyed them, especially the people with some dietary restrictions. Made with margarine, they end up being vegan too, I believe.
We had so many people at the party that when our close friends came later in the party, I cornered K and reported that I was almost out of cheese and there were only three brownie cookies left. She talked me down and we enjoyed the rest of the party, but let’s assume I had some pretty crazy eyes going on there.
In exciting, non-party culinary adventures, we had friends over for pjs, Pixar movies, and fancy foods on New Year’s eve. I made Scallops, but they were not pretty, so no pictures. We had lobster Mac and Cheese from the October 2018 FN, I think. It’s a Pioneer Woman recipe, if you want to look it up on the FN website. We enjoyed it and used lobster tails so I wouldn’t freak out as much about cooking a whole lobster.
It’s hard to see, but it’s Christmas pas
K brought a Pioneer Woman Twice Baked Potato that was divine! She also brought veggies and a cheese and cracker selection. You know, because the four of us became an army overnight and needed additional foodstuffs… That’s probably a big reason we’re such good friends.
For New Year’s Day breakfast, we had homemade Sour Cream Doughnuts from Voracious by Cara Nicoletti. They were delicious and mostly had hearts in the middle. We made cinnamon sugar and glazed doughnuts. The glaze in the book was a terrible one and just soaked into the doughnuts and made them soggy. We ended up just making our own with milk and powdered sugar. We had eggs and chicken apple sausages too to counteract the sugar.
But even before our exciting New Year foods, we did something even crazier. I made a molten lava cake in the Instant Pot to go along with a very nicely grilled steak. It was all the Husband’s fault because he looked so shocked that you could make a lava cake in the Instant Pot. I would use a bittersweet chocolate next time. The semi sweet was not decadent enough.
Look at those grill marks!
I think I finally decided what to do with the food portion of the blog this year. The Husband got me Alex Guarnaschelli’s The Home Cook for Christmas and there are so many good recipes that it made me think I should take some time and really focus individually on my cookbooks. I made it through most of them, but there are still a bunch of recipes in each I would like to try. So for the next little while, I will be taking a closer look at each book. I’m still not sure how my posts will be structured, but hopefully it will be interesting.
Not surprisingly, the first one will be the Guarnaschelli cookbook. I have several dishes from it planned for this week, along with some old favorites too.
For now though, I should probably go to bed, before the thought of all those recipes makes me hungry again! Have a good night!
I blame not having power on Saturday for why this Recipe Roundup is late. Well, no power and this:
This would be what it looks like when a safety glass desk explodes with no warning. Specifically what it looks like when it shatters at 6:30 AM and you’ve already picked up three bags worth of glass. Luckily, no one was in the room at the time, so no injuries, other than glass cuts while cleaning up.
Fancy is sad and doesn’t understand why she isn’t allowed in the Husband’s office any more. We keep finding bits of glass though, so we can’t risk it. We’ve got a gate up for her and she’s been good about not trying to get over it. The Husband has a new desk, but it took most of Friday to get it cleaned and all of Saturday to get the new desk here and put together. Then we lost power in the evening for a bit. It was a rough end to the week. We’re hoping this week is better.
My throat has finally healed enough so I can eat normally. It still hurts a little bit if I eat something too hard, or too big of a bite, but it no longer feels like knives regularly. I also managed to get pictures of meals this week, even the ones we had before.
We had Instant Pot Korean Beef from Damn Delicious and it lived up to the website’s name. 🙂
The Husband would like this sauce on everything. It was a very easy and quick recipe. I used full sodium soy sauce though, not reduced sodium, and stew meat instead of cut chuck roast. It came out super tender. We had basmati rice with it.
I went on a baking spree as well on Sunday and used lemon thyme in shortbread and made homemade chewy chocolate chip cookies.
The shortbreads were from the Better Homes and Garden book and the chocolate chips were from the May 2018 issue of Food Network. The little insert cookbook was 50 chocolate chip cookie recipes. The Husband likes his cookies chewy and these were his favorite so far.
I have a picture of the cookies in my new favorite way to eat them, in ice cream. Hudsonville Sea Salt Caramel ice cream, to be specific.
Mmm… I don’t have a picture of the shortbreads. It needed more lemon to compliment the herbs, but they were pretty good.
We were going to grill these burgers, but it was still over 80, so we broiled them instead. They have Chophouse seasoning, onions, and cheese in the burger patty. I made nice thick burgers this time.
We also had fruit and I had cucumbers. Still need to work on getting the whole dinner in the picture.
A quick mushroom cream sauce also made it on our menu. I could eat noodles again, so was very excited.
Because we are so classy, I made garlic toast with a hamburger bun. Hey, when carbs are needed, any bread will do in a pinch. 🙂
Did you notice new colors? I finally found some on sale dishes and bought new colors of the Fiesta. Really, just the three colors in the featured picture, but we now have 13 dinner plates!
The chicken divan looked divine in the new turquoise bowl. 🙂
I pulled some basil from the garden today to make Caprese salad for lunch. It was fun to use the purple basil too!
A goal for the summer or fall is to try to make my own mozzarella cheese. Supposedly it’s not that hard and I do have a “cheese cookery” book. Think of it, Caprese salad made completely by me… I could win the whole summer.
Speaking of winning, my friend and I are having a “Battle Cheesecake” at the end of July… Her husband said something jokingly about how if we were to ever face off in the kitchen, that everyone would win. So of course, we ran with it. Not surprisingly, we had several volunteers to be judges. We’re keeping it small, both in people numbers, and cheesecake categories. 3 cheesecakes each isn’t too much, is it? 😜 We’re having a fruit, chocolate, and an “out of the box” flavor category.
I asked the Husband if I should be practicing and he said “Do you want to win?” Ha! He’s much more serious about cheesecake than I am.
So although I did try a cheesecake recipe, I can’t give it away yet. I’ll put my recipes in a party post after the fact. My friend reads the blog, so I’ve got to be cagey… Feel free to link your favorite recipe in the comments. Maybe we’ll both end up trying it!
On that note, I’m off to dream up more cheesecake combos! Have sweet dreams! 😉
My coworkers got me an assortment of tea infusers and a huge tumbler, as well as a Joann’s gift card for my birthday. They know me so well. 🙂 I’m excited to use all of them, but especially the shark one.
One of the books we found at the library book sale was this gem: The Gallery of Regrettable Food by James Lileke.
It has pictures and commentary on old foods and recipes from the late 50’s – 70s. The author wrote the book after finding some of the old cookbooks that had been given to his mom after they moved into their new neighborhood. The chapters are titled things like “It’s 10 P.M. – Do You Know Where Your Wieners Are?, Moldorama, Glop in a Pot!, Dreck from Foreign Shores, and So You’re Going to Serve…a Salad.” Also, my absolute favorite “Eat Brains and Whip Hitler!” Not surprisingly, that last one has wartime recipes for offal and rarely eaten parts of animals. It’s fairly horrifying.
This description is from one of the party sections.
The pictures of hotdogs in jello do not seem appropriate for a family blog… They are also black and white, so seem vaguely sinister. The writing is excellent. At some points, I was laughing too hard to share with the Husband. I would highly recommend reading this if you get the chance. It’s too funny to pass up.
Now, on to serious food talk. 🙂 I made crockpot beef stew, and homemade mushroom alfredo this week, in addition to some new recipes.
I tried another muffin recipe from the Food Network Jan/Feb 2018 issue. This one was definitely pretty much a cupcake, although it was a little less sweet. It was a Double-Chocolate Salted Caramel muffin.
They were delicious. Since I had leftover dulche de leche, I made Dulche De Leche ice cream from Laylita.
This was also delicious and has received the Mom seal of approval. 🙂 She stayed with us overnight while waiting to fly to visit my sister in law. Fancy was ridiculously excited for someone else to pet her.
It’s a little less sweet than I expected, but it’s lovely and smooth. I was surprised that it didn’t turn icy, since it doesn’t have eggs in it. It does have three cups of cream and a cup of whole milk. I used half and half instead, which may have helped. 🙂 I’m planning to eat it with my coconut cake from my birthday. 🙂
I made one of the husband’s recipe picks. Prosciutto Wrapped Chicken from Food Network May 2016.
I made homemade pasta and sautéed chard, cherry tomatoes, mushrooms, and garlic in olive oil. The Husband tried the veggies and did eat them, although they were not his favorite. He likes the chard better in things than by itself.
So those were our dinners. This week starts my week with more late evenings, so it will be interesting. We did go to Costco and stocked up on a huge pile of meat, so we do have a lot for slow cooker and freezer meals as needed.
Now, I need to go sew something. Fancy kept me from doing that by laying on my lap all day. Pets were more important. 🙂 Have a great night!
We’re dogless for the night. It’s weird without having dog trying to eat our food and giving us sad sighs when we won’t share the chocolate ice cream. She is having a trial run with our friend who will be watching her on future vacations. Apparently, she is doing very well and has stopped trying to make the cat play with her.
Yes, I did make a second batch of the chocolate version of my favorite ice cream. And even better, I remembered to put the custard base in the fridge! Whoa. The Husband was very impressed.
I chopped up some Oreos for something different. Apparently, I hold the “Best Wife” title for the idea. It was good. Slightly eggy, but so smooth and creamy! I’m definitely going to make more in other flavors. The Husband has requested strawberry next.
We had a delicious pasta dish tonight, Rigatoni with Sausage and Fennel by Ina Garten from Food Network Magazine, Jan/Feb 2018.
The tomato paste made it turn Kraft dinner orange. It was a little weird, but delicious. We’ll make it again. The fennel was quite mild.
I made Steak Soup from Plain Chicken for Wednesday. http://www.plainchicken.com/2015/11/slow-cooker-steak-soup.html?m=1
It was my long day, so the Husband normally gets a slow cooker meal, pork, or leftovers. He said it was good. I forgot to have him take pictures though and didn’t eat any yet myself. I added carrots.
I also left Asian spiced chicken thighs and drumsticks for dinner one night and that was tasty! I used boneless, skinless packs from Costco. Still no pictures though. 🙁
We had kind of an international week this week, food wise. Asian chicken, Italian pasta, and these beef meatpies that were recipe from the first preschool I worked at. We had an international week there and got to try all sorts of foods and had a cookbook of sorts at the end.
I used the french bread dough, instead of pizza dough. They have ground beef, curry powder, and onions in them. The recipe is pretty simple, so I’ll share it. You can use whatever type of bread dough you’d like.
Meat Pies
Filling:
1 lb ground beef
2 large onions (I only used one medium, 2 would have been way too much)
1 T curry powder
Salt and pepper to taste
Pizza dough, or bread dough
Directions:
Cook beef for 10-12 minutes. Add onions to beef, add salt/pepper and curry powder. Cook for an additional 15 minutes, or until onions and beef are done. Set aside to cool completely (I totally ignored this step.) Divide dough into 1 1/2 – 2 inch balls. Roll dough balls into 3-4 inch circles. Fill center of circles with one full tablespoon beef mixture. Fold into half circles. Seal edges with water or egg wash. Bake until golden brown. (I baked them at 400 for about 20-25 minutes, I think.)
Apparently they freeze well, but we scarfed them all too fast to check on that. The Husband was nervous about the currry. He thinks he doesn’t like it, but his favorite dish has lots of curry powder, so I generally ignore that.
Two batches of this french bread dough were made this week. The second was made when we were talking about ordering pizza and I realized that we had all the things we would be ordering on pizza. Plus, my first person of the day cancelled. I had some extra time at home.
So I made ham, mushroom, and onion pizza. It had a big fluffy crust and was delicious. There’s something very satisfying about making bread. This dough sat in the fridge while I was at work and turned out perfectly. It’s the featured picture today because it made me happy. 🙂
I think we’re getting back to the swing of things fairly well. We are going to be visiting some friends next week, so our meals will be smaller, but I’m hoping to make some good ones. One of the other ladies in my supervision group is getting her full license, so will only have one more group. I’m going to make her cookies! We also have enough ingredients to make one more batch of ice cream too.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a nice glass of wine to finish, on our dog free night. There’s also a quilt waiting for me to pin it, but that will probably get done in the morning.
I’m embarrassed about how much I didn’t get done this month… I had a lot of goals and got some of them done, but not as much as I would like. Knowing I was going to write this post did motivate me to get a few things done right under the wire. In fact, I waited to post until I had posted some flowers on Etsy, so I could cross off one more goal. 🙂
The garden was a big accomplishment too. It wasn’t actually written down as a goal, but should have been. It is going well so far. I have blooms on a few strawberry plants and my zucchini plant got bigger while I was at work yesterday. The Husband is helping me water the plants after he gets home from work, so they are staying nice. Fancy hasn’t shown any interest in digging in the containers, so that’s good.
I did make a few new recipes this week, but not really enough to write a full post, so I thought I would just combine them with the review. This week we had taco salad and mac and cheese with butternut squash and homemade sun-dried tomatoes for old recipes.
Here are the two new recipes I used:
1- Mushroom Pork Loin from the Taste of Home Slow Cooker Cookbook. Section: Pork, Lamb, and Seafood
Modifications: I was only making one pork loin, so I only used one can of cream of mushroom soup and about 2 cups of broth. I used a pre-seasoned Italian pork loin, so didn’t add much additional seasoning. I also added onions and chopped mushrooms to the bottom of the crockpot to make sure it was full enough and for additional flavor. The Husband had it over noodles and said it was good, but a little salty.
2- Asian Cucumber Salad from Food Network Magazine, June 2015, V. 8, N.5.
Modifications: I think I accidentally got a Fresno pepper instead of a red jalepeno. It was hotter than I expected, but was still delicious. My in-laws enjoyed it as well. We had beef franks with sautéed mushrooms and onions and a side of peaches as well. I will be making this again.
Food wise, I did alright with my goals. I used 2 new recipes each week, I think, if not more, and we did do some more meal planning. I was a little bit better at taking pictures of new meals, but have to remember to take pictures of the other meals too. Plating needs to be worked on too, since you eat first with your eyes.
I didn’t even start on sorting my recipes, but have been remembering to put the cookbooks away after meal planning. Sometimes it seems like the tables sprout piles of books when I’m not looking.
I used 13 of my old recipes, 7 new cookbooks or recipes, and 4 repeat cookbooks. I think my totals are shrinking. Maybe I need to throw another party to bump them up again. 🙂
Hits for the month were the dog treat recipes, the roasted garlic parmesan mashed potatoes, and the shrimp albondigas soup.
Misses were a pork chop dinner that was too dry, and the rosemary flank steak, which had no flavor.
The Italian Turkey/Chicken meatballs were sort of in the midway point. They were good, but needed extra seasoning. I would still make them again, just bump up the seasoning a lot.
My craft goals didn’t go so well. I did iron the Rainbow Snowball quilt, but still haven’t washed the backing or finished it yet. I also didn’t finish anything from the UFO bin. The basement is still a disaster. The area around my sewing area is slightly less of a disaster, but that’s it.
I just listed 3 of my fabric flowers on Etsy (http://Etsy.com/shop/twinflowerfancies) and finally managed to take pictures of them. I promoted the listing as well, which is something I always forget to do. They are a great hand sewing project, so I plan to make more.
I did finish my inspirational chair pillow for my office and managed to remember to take a picture of the candle jar I made.
The pillow is definitely helping me not sit cross legged all day, which hurts my back, but it does tend to fall on me when I get up.
I did have one vending event which I made a small profit at this month and remembered to take pictures of the table. I used one of the close up pictures for my Etsy cover picture and made sure to get my business cards in it.
I found myself doing things that weren’t on my list instead of focussing on things I had wanted to do, such as making these fabric trays for vending and the ones for my office. I do need some more storage options for my office and it was fun to make them, but it wasn’t exactly what I needed or had planned to do. The small ones work perfectly for pencils and my smaller fidget toys.
Another highlight for the month was getting to take Fancy to the lake. She did so well and she seemed to really enjoy herself. It was a relaxing weekend, for sure.
Food goals for the next month:
*Meal Planning: use more of what we have, spices, pantry foods, etc.-Ongoing
*2-3 new recipes per week.
*Make good lunches. Use my lunches to try vegetarian recipes.
*Sort recipe binder and loose recipes.-Ongoing
*Find a good biscuit recipe for Fancy. We go through biscuits quickly.
Craft goals for the month:
*Finish Rainbow Snowball quilt so it can go to its new home.
*Make a container for Legos at work.
*List at least one new item per week on Etsy.
*Sew one item of clothing.
*Make a new purse. I shredded my current music purse bottom yesterday while running through the kitchen on my way to work.
*Organize the basement.
Garden goals:
*Don’t kill anything!
I’m going to write these goals in my project book too, so I can have another reminder without having to go back to this post. Hopefully remembering how it feels to not achieve many of them will help me stay motivated. Feel free to check in on them throughout the month. I’m sure the extra push will be helpful.
Now I’m off to take a certain puppers for a walk, if I can get her to move out of the sunny spot in the yard. She had a big morning with lots of barking and chasing of the squirrel that lives in the yard. Hopefully your day is as happy as hers!
