I had good intentions to write this post for the last couple days and then had very bad news at work and a couple of migraines. I’m feeling better today, luckily.
Our Lunar New Year Party was lots of fun! We had planned to watch Crazy Rich Asians, but I went a little large on the guest list and we just don’t have comfy seating for 13 people! So we’ll have to watch it another time.
We had a Dim Sum theme this year and didn’t have a big main dish, just a bunch of smaller ones. But there was still lots of food. I went to the Asian market and got huge bags of produce, which we are now eating in everything to use up. I foisted some off on my in-laws today though, so hopefully we can finish off the rest of it.
We did have some store bought things this year. I’ve given up trying to make egg rolls or spring rolls. They just aren’t worth the work for me and never seem to come out right. We bought veggie spring rolls from Costco this time.
I also used these rice packet things from the Asian market. We get these for Dim Sum, but I can’t eat them because of the pork sausage that is in them. These ones just had dried shrimp, so I picked them up. They have some lovely spices too and were nice for lunch. They are wrapped in tea leaves, so you only eat the inside.
Another Dim Sum favorite of mine is the steamed Chinese Broccoli, or Gai Lan. It’s very much like broccoli in taste, but has leaves instead of the the florets. I’m sure I was the only one to eat it, but it made my heart happy. š
I did make two kinds of bao, although these are just the pork ones. I had 5 spice chicken bao as well, but they got eaten up quick. These were both made up recipes, although I did use a recipe for the Bao dough from The Food of China. I think I posted the recipe last year in the party post, but can repost it if you’d like it.
I roasted a whole pork loin in thinned out char sai sauce (Chinese bbq sauce) and chopped that for the pork filling. The chicken filling was ground chicken, sauces, bamboo shoots, garlic, and scallions in them.
We had pork shao mai, which was from the Husband’s family recipe book! According to the Husband, his mom and dad may have collected the recipes from his paternal grandma. Most of them are typed, but there are a couple that are handwritten. The shao mai were eaten before I started taking pictures.
The crab stuffed mushrooms were also from the book and were delicious! They called for a “creamy white sauce” so I made one to go in it. Fake crab was used. We’ve discovered that we don’t always need real crab. It was exciting to use it and there will certainly be some dinners from there as well.
The lettuce wraps look a little sad in this picture, as we had eaten most of them. These were made with ground turkey. These were my own recipe, meaning I threw a bunch of sauces and sauce ingredients at them until the filling tasted good. š
A new recipe, that I may not make again, was fried pork ribs. I texted the Husband from the Asian Market and he was very enthusiastic. I was, of course, thinking I didn’t have enough pork and would need one more dish. I was told they were good, but only fried half of them. They spit at me a lot and burned me.
The Husband baked the rest of them for dinner during the week and said that worked too. They marinated for a long time in a 5 spice based marinade and were then battered and fried, or baked. These were from the Food of China.
I highly recommend this website, as it has so many recipes and information on it for all your Asian culinary dreams. Someday I’ll get brave enough to make the coconut buns!
Back to the cakes though. I used blood oranges. The clementines were hard to find and I didn’t want to use them. I also didn’t glaze them and intended to make a frosting, but they didn’t get frosted. I did use super cute silicone cupcake molds though that had fortunes on the bottom!
Traditional almond cookies were also served. I used the recipe from my Food of China book and didn’t have blanched almonds and just left them off the tops. These didn’t brown, except on the bottoms, so be aware of that if you make them.
I think that was all the food! We didn’t manage a picture of the whole table, but I do have a picture of a table to share!
I found this Lego version of a Lunar New Year Dinner on Amazon really randomly while looking for the lucky coins we gave as favors this year. It was only available in Malaysia, but was somehow being sold by a toy company in New Jersey. I had no idea of any of this, the Husband found out after I gave it to him. š One of his superpowers is research. It was perfect for us though! It even has the Chinese broccoli!!
Here’s a close up of the table.
We also have started collecting the Lego zodiac sets, so here’s last year’s dog and this year’s pig.
I’ll leave you with some other pretty pictures of our decor. I nerded out a little and made the bookshelf display Firefly themed. I couldn’t help myself!
It was very fun and next year we’ll have to do some experimenting with how we want to run it. I made all of the fillings ahead of time, which helped, but I still need to rethink how we do this party. I end up making everyone feel awkward, I think, while I’m racing around trying to finish things. When I suggested a potluck idea to the Husband, he said “I’m surprised you can even say those words!” Ha.. Ha.. Ha..
I’ll let you know how it turns out. š Have a great weekend!
Iām slowly adjusting to regular life again and I may at some point write up a food and craft review for 2018, but itās 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! š The party is always an interesting mix of people since we tend to invite pretty much everyone we know who is local, and itās 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 donāt 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, Iām 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. š
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 hereās the Arten Family Rulle Recipe- from Great Grandma Asta. Hopefully if I get it too wrong, one of my parents will let me know. š
Ingrediants:
1 flank steak, trimmed and pounded thin, 1-2 pork chops chopped finely, 1 medium onion, chopped finely, salt, pepper, ātoo much allspice.ā 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 donāt 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 youāll need, because you really donāt 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 wonāt 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 Yearās Day and it was perfect, so around 4 days. The family recipe doesnāt 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 ātestā all the bits that come off while cutting and you can hoard them from other people if you want. š Put the rulle on thin sliced, buttered bread. My parents use rye, but I donāt 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 didnāt get to eat the Christmas Eve meatballs at my parentsā house this year and was surprised by how much I missed them. There wasnāt time to make a porkless batch before my parentsā 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. Thatās the family tablecloth, which has been in our family since the 60ās. There was moose on the table, thanks to my younger brotherās 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 donāt 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. Itās 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 yearās 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 friendsā 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 youāll 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 Reeseās! I mean, these arenāt 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. š 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. Iāve not had a lot of luck with gluten free cookies that arenāt 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 letās 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 Yearās 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. Itās a Pioneer Woman recipe, if you want to look it up on the FN website. We enjoyed it and used lobster tails so I wouldnāt freak out as much about cooking a whole lobster.
Itās hard to see, but itās 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… Thatās probably a big reason weāre such good friends.
For New Yearās 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 Husbandās 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 Guarnaschelliās 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. Iām 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!
Itās a little weird to be writing about food while I am sick and donāt actually want to eat food, but a bloggerās got to do what a bloggerās got to do, I guess. I picked up the cold that everyone seems to have and am not happy about it at all. Before I was sick, we did have some good food, so Iāll give hou a rundown of that.
I had this delicious pumpkin bread from the Pilsbury cookbook. The tea is a black tea from Tea Runners and the tea cup is from a sale at my dance place. It was only $5! Itās so brilliant and pretty with the color. It inspired me to want to try a tea cup photo shoot. I bought a pretty piece of tea themed fabric to be a backdrop or table cloth, so maybe youāll see that on a future Wordless Wednesday. The bread was a cider pumpkin bread and it was very moist. It fell apart a little, but it tasted delicious!
These were double chocolate muffins for a day when I didnāt want to get out of bed. The Husband had one too, despite not being a chocolate for breakfast kind of person. He also enjoyed them. I used my TNT muffin recipe.
I made these Eggnog Snowballs for our game night, along with brownie cookies and garam masala chocolate gingerbread cookies and they were all excellent. All the recipes were from Food Network. The brownie cookies were a huge hit. I got the tin on Monday to take them into work and discovered that there were only three left! I donāt have pictures of the other two. We were too busy eating them!
The Snowballs were very creamy, definitely tasted of eggnogg, despite having no eggnog in them, just nutmeg. The chocolate gingerbread were also delicious and I made snowflake shapes and then got my friends to finish frosting them for me. I was quite sneaky, if I do say so myself! š I have half the dough in the freezer for our Epiphany party, so that will be good. The royal icing recipe from Food Network was surprisingly easy.
I made fancy Chicken Milanese from Pioneer Woman on Food Network for a weekend dinner. It was fun to try a new thing. The Husband had buttered carrots for his veggie side and we both had mashed potatoes. What you canāt see in this picture is Fancy sitting at the bottom of the picture drooling over chicken. Poor girl!
I did make chocolate peppermint cookies, however, I only have a very unappetizing picture that makes them look like poo. Literally. I decided no one wanted to see that! š They were a very soft cookie, from the back of the Ghiradelli peppermint chunk bag. The recipe said to cook them for 9 minites, but they were just an underdone mess at that point, so I baked the rest of the batch for 11 minites. They got rave reviews at work.
Weāve also had shrimp stirfry using the same lettuce wrap sauce ingredients. It turned out to be a delicious plan. Iāve been at work for a lot of dinner times too, so the Husband has had pork and various other things. Itās hard to tell what else Iāve missed, since I lost pictures.
One cool thing we have finally tried out was our Pixar character popcorn maker. It has an arm and is an oil popper. It didnāt come with instructions, so I had to Youtube it and guess. It seeemed to work out though.
It was cool to watch how the arm scooped up the popcorn when they had popped so it wouldnāt burn. Weāre still experiementing with it. Itās fun to use. Our previous air popper started getting deformed and the plastic was bubbling, so we thought maybe we should stop using it.
Thatās all the pictures I have of our recent food adventures. This post should probably have been sponsored by Food Network, considering how many of their recipes Iāve used so far. š The featured picture is all my Costco ingredients. Iām particularly fod of my butter tower. š
I hope your weekend up to the holiday is fun and not too stressful. Weāre going on an adventure so my Dad can tell me all his blog comments in person this time. š
So I was at a bellydance workshop all weekend and Fancy was excited to see me until the heat went on. Then she abandoned me for the heat vent. Silly dog! She’s currently snuggled under an extra sheet on the couch. The past couple of evenings, she’s been a brat until I’ve taken it down and made her a nest with it. š
But on to the party! It was super fun and we, of course, had lots of food. I didn’t go to overboard though. We also didn’t have too many sweets, as we had a Honeydukes section with a ridiculous amount of candy. Honeydukes is the name of the candy shop in the wizard village. š
Side note, I finally got carded again for buying hard cider. The last couple of times I bought some kind of alcohol, I haven’t gotten carded and it’s a little weird for me… š This time, I was also buying about 10 pounds of candy, so maybe that’s why.
So I read the first book again and looked up recipes to make themed party foods. It’s not like The Hobbit, where there’s focus on foods, so there’s only a couple of things that are pretty regular. The Husband requested a large pile of chicken legs, as Ron, one of the main characters, is frequently seen two fisting chicken. š
They were alright, but I would bump the spices next time.
Butterbeer is the main drink in the HP universe. I forgot to get a picture of it, but the recipe is pretty simple. Use heated apple cider, bourbon, rum, or brandy, ginger beer, and butterscotch sauce. Mix them to taste and top with whipped cream if desired. I got the recipe from a Buzzfeed round up of Harry Potter themed cocktails. There are definitely some more that I would like to try on the list.
I used a homemade butterscotch sauce too, because I couldn’t help myself… The recipe is linked in the butterbeer recipe, I can’t get the link to embed in the post. It’s a popsugar article.
For other drinks, we had spiced pumpkin cider, which I found at Aldi, pop, tea, and hot chocolate. The pumpkin cider was a little weird, but not unpleasant. It tasted more like spices than actual pumpkin. Pretty sure it was apple cider with spices.
I attempted to make butterbeer macarons, but they were a total disaster. I couldn’t even serve them! No pictures because when I tried to take them off the pans, they crumbled and looked a mess. I will try them again though! They were from Sensible Sara.
I looked at some recipes and then just made my own up. I used pumpkin puree, goat cheese with honey, honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. They were wrapped in puff pastry and brushed with egg, cinnamon and sugar. They were delicious warm.
We had Bacon Mac and Cheese cups for a dinner snack. I overbaked them a little, but was told they were still alright. They do not reheat well, according to the Husband. And yes, it’s kraft mac and cheese. š
We had egg cups, partially for brunch, but also to test as a recipe for the Husband to take for breakfast. They turned out to be pretty good and they will work for breakfasts.
We had another dragon cake, because it’s a magical world, so of course, there needed to be a dragon! https://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/chai-spiced-pound-cake-recipe This was amazingly delicious! I will probably make it again, as I forgot the baking soda and the cinnamon exploded all over the batter. I apparently also forgot to take a picture of the cake. I decorated it with a maple glaze, edible gold glitter, and green dust. It was cute. I have requested a regular bundt pan for Christmas, as not every occasion needs a dragon cake. š
We had chocolate frogs for part of Honeydukes. It’s something that comes up all the time in the books. My friend Kim sent me a mold to borrow for the frogs and I used Ghiradelli and Baker melting chocolate. These also had green dust on them. http://www.justticklethepear.com/2010/12/chocolate-frogs.html
They were a big hit, even if they didn’t jump around like the ones in the movies and books. š
I made up a recipe for a mushroom tart, mainly because I really wanted it. I used marscapone and Boursin cheese mixed together and then spread on puff pastry. It was topped with sauteed mushrooms- baby bella and white, and caramelized onions.
Kayla brought dragon spiced nuts, which were sweet and spicy. She also brought a large cooler full of sandwich fixings to go with the French Onino Soup. I also made nuts, but mine were weird, so we’ll just ignore them… š
Here’s some Honeydukes pictures.
We had Dementor Recovery chocolates, caramels, gummy worms/frogs/bears, PB eyeballs, Golden Snitches, jellybeans (but not the gross ones from the movies!), ginger candies, Ton Tongue Taffy, Acid Pops (Tootsie Rolls,) and Lemon drops. There was a lot of candy, but luckily, people took some home.
I’ll post the decor pictures tomorrow for Wordless Wednesday. You’ve probably had enough Potter pictures today. š
I have canned all the things! Well, not quite all, I still have a list. I was determined to make a few things for our party this weekend, so those definitely got done, along with some others. I’ll add the jams to the Recipe Roundup, but the savory ones will get their own post. I had lots of extra time this week, so ended up making lots of new recipes as well. Seeing my low numbers for recipes last review didn’t hurt either.
I’ll start with the jams. š Several of the canned things have garden or local produce.
Pineapple Sage Preserves from Southern Living Little Jars, Big Flavors. The sage was garden grown.
I have another jar in the fridge, as there wasn’t quite enough headspace to safely can it. It’s delicious! I’m hoping the sage come out more as it sits. It will be going in a cake for our Big Summer Blowout Party. The book includes a vanilla bean layer cake with this in the middle which I think will be wonderful and summery.
This one is a very lovely orange color and has just a hint of the wine. I’m looking forward to this on toast. I think it would be lovely on ice cream.
I’ve made this one before, but it’s been a few years. I love it because it does taste exactly like strawberry lemonade. It uses Myer lemons, which are slightly sweeter than regular lemons.
This batch turned very dark red and I forgot to mash up the strawberries, as I had them in the freezer first. They are from last year and I had forgotten that I had them. There’s still a bag and a half left for my next strawberry jam endeavor. I have an Instant Pot freezer jam recipe and a strawberry basil that both want to be made.
There are more delicious jams and jellies on my list, but I need to regroup and figure out what I need. I ran out of single rings, but have tons of new lids. I may have to start storing them without the rings.
On to the recipes!
The Husband got special cookies for picking up the puppers from the dog sitter and letting me stay home. Chocolate Chips and M&Ms!
These were from the cookbook 101 Things To Do With Chocolate by Stephanie Ashcraft.
He liked these, but he likes the chewy ones better.
I got bored with breakfast this week and couldn’t sleep on top of it, so I made strawberry doughnuts. They were supposed to be mini muffins, but I couldn’t find the mini muffin tins.
These are from the Pillsbury: Best Muffins and Quick Breads.Ā
I was hosting craft night the same day, so I made meringues Ā with leftover egg whites from ice cream. These are super crumbly, but they taste okay.
The ice cream is Amaretto Ice Cream from The Cookie Writer.Ā
I had it with leftover peaches and it was delicious! The amaretto is very light, but you can definitely still taste it. There’s only two tablespoons in the whole recipe, but it doesn’t get cooked out, so bear that in mind.
We used the new Food Network magazine already. It’s the September issue. The Hoisin Meatballs were good.
I thought they needed more seasoning in the meatballs themselves, but the Husband thought they were just fine. We used Udon noodles, mushrooms, and carrots as the substitutions. It was nice to find another use for ground beef.
We had Macaroni and Many Cheeses from the 2014 Food and Wine.
We had to have it because of the name. š I had Gouda, triple cheddar, and a Monterey jack mix. It was quite soupy at first, but firmed up over time. It had parmesan cheese crusted on top. It was pretty tasty.
We had grilled steak for dinner on our anniversary, after going to the shooting range and going to the chocolate factory for a tour. We weren’t allowed to take pictures at the factory.
Mashed potatoes and grilled zucchini completed the meal. The Husband is an excellent grill master, so everything was great. We had Ā fun chocolate from the factory for dessert. I had a peanut butter block and he had cookies and cream clusters.
The range trip was fun, but both of our pistols broke towards the end. My back sight fell off my revolver and Eric’s 22 was not having it at all. They definitely both need to be cleaned and we have the name of a good gunsmith. It was a little disappointing but the rest of the day was fun. š
We had Margarita Shrimp for Saturday. We intended to grill, but had an unexpected rain shower, so they were broiled instead. They were from A Farm Girl’s Dabble.Ā
We used jasmine rice and it was delicious. This rice will definitely be staying in the recipe collection for a nice side dish. The Husband approves as well, which is surprising, as he doesn’t like a lot of Mexican based dishes. This one is lightly flavored though. It heats up great as it has butter and olive oil in it to keep it soft instead of dried out.
We had it tonight as a side with Tequilla Lime Chicken and pico with the leftovers from salsa making.
The purple plate was awarded for my enormous amounts of canning completed this weekend.
Those are just the jams!
The featured picture is the second set of zucchini and the others as well. I used the peppers in the salsa and the zucchini in squash pickles.
So there’s the update so far. I’ll have a savory canning post shortly. I figured it would be too long, considering how many pickles I made. š
It’s been so much fun to use things from the garden while canning. I’ve tried to use local produce as well, as much as I can. Somehow I don’t think I can find Michigan pineapples…
Stay tuned for more canning! Sewing too, hopefully, but I have been a little busy. š Have a great night!
I’m sitting on the couch, watching sharks of course, with a dog who is quite certain that she needs pets on her head to help her sleep. š It makes typing quite difficult. The Husband got me a fancy keyboard for my IPad that’s bluetooth enabled, so the typing part isn’t as bad, but the constant nose nudges under my hands do make it more difficult. Dropping my IPad face down without the cover on the screen didn’t really help the other screen issues I was having. It’s kind of interesting to watch the spiderweb cracks spread across the screen. :\
We just came back from what was about a 3 mile walk on the river. That’s where the featured picture comes from. It was just sunny enough that I wore my shark shorts and a tank top, but there was a nice breeze, so it was a very pleasant, shady walk. Fancy is snoring away. We’re hoping to have her mind less that we’re in and out all weekend.
I have not made any new recipes this week! We had delicious food, but we hadn’t meal planned, so we didn’t really have new ones.
I had grilled cheese one night with chips and veggies. Probably an apple or something too, but I don’t remember.
We had Taco Salad with garden lettuce and fritos on top.
It was delicious! I used my taco meat recipe which is a pound of ground beef, half a jar of salsa, about a tsp or so of ground cumin, salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder. I also used chili powder this time, but not all the time. It was a little spicy from the salsa and we had pepper jack cheese too.
We also had Shepherd’s Pie with ground lamb and garlic mashed potatoes. No recipe, just cooked up a pound of lamb, threw in some Worcestershire sauce, chicken broth, salt, and pepper. I used half a bag of frozen veggies and cooked off some of the liquid. The potatoes were smaller yellow potatoes, mashed with cream, butter, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.
Bake it for 20 or so minutes at 400 until the potatoes get a little brown. We had this on a cooler day that had been pretty grey and rainy. A garden lettuce salad went with it.
I made blueberry muffins too, but ate them all! I remembered to take pictures of our waffles this morning that we had with maple syrup made by our friends in their own sugar shack. ItĀ was delicious! I don’t typically like maple syrup because I find it too sweet. This is slightly thinner and has a smoky taste. It’s sweet, but not sickly sweet.
MMMMMMM! I enjoyed breakfast very much. We have bottle for my parents too, but it’s going to be hard to keep it for them until we see them. They’ll have to be very nice to us! I think we’ll get two bottles next year, if we can.
The garden is still growing very well. I was a little concerned because we’ve had some really hot days and have a soaker hose in only one of the beds. The tomatoes are so big, it will be tricky to thread the hoses in there.
Speaking of tomatoes, we have a tomato that is orange! Which means soon I can eat a garden tomato!
It might be a Roma, or an Early Girl. These four are definitely on one of the Early Girl plants. š
And Mr. Stripey has a tomato started, as well as blossoms.
No stripes yet, but they will come. I’m so excited to start using the tomatoes. The hot peppers are growing well. They look about the same, so no pictures. The red peppers may be fighting a losing battle with the giant zucchini plant.
This is the view from the front of the garden. You cannot see the back, but the plant now covers the entire box… Maybe next year, I’ll see if there’s a smaller variety. š
We still have some lettuce growing and the marigolds are hiding, but still there.
Well, I should probably go do some meal planning for the week. Have a good day!
I was so mixed up on all my days this week and spent all of yesterday making cheesecakes for Battle Cheesecake. So this is a little belated recipe post and a garden update. I will post the party pics and recipes tomorrow, I think. We all had a lot of fun!
The garden is growing very well! We had the lettuce from it in a salad with meatballs after the cheesecake tonight. Everyone liked it and there’s so much left. We may deliver some to my in-laws, as they weren’t able to plant a garden this year.
These are the three buttercrunch. We had romaine as well, but I forgot a picture. It was a proud moment to share our homegrown produce. I’m looking forward to sharing more.
We have peppers of both the hot and sweet variety starting. This is the small Thai chilies.
The spicy peppers both have actual peppers on the vines and the sweets have just flowers. The sweets are getting kind of taken over by the zucchini plant, but they are fighting the good fight.
I believe this is the Jalefuego pepper. The dragon cayenne is harder to take pictures of, as the peppers are still small.
Here’s the mutant zucchini, you can see some pepper plants coming through the leaves.
I have no idea how many squash we are going to get, if we get as many as the flowers, I may be looking for recruits to take them. After I make lots of zucchini things, of course. I’ve read that you can shred it and freeze it too, so I might do that.
The herbs are going well for the most part. I’ve accidentally murdered a few, but they seem to be hardy and coming back.
And, of course, the tomatoes continue to expand. Mr. Stripey is doing well.
Almost all the plants have tomatoes started.
They are growing a little close to each other, so it’s hard to tell sometimes which plant is which.
It will be fun when they start turning colors. I’ll know for sure then.
So now that we’ve seen the food growing, here’s what we ate!
Turkey cutlets looked good at Trader Joe’s, so I made Turkey Parmesan on Sunday. No recipe, just breaded the cutlets with seasoned panko and fried them up. Regular homemade marinara and fettuccine.
I made this after we had walked around the zoo for the photo safari for multiple hours, so didn’t use fresh herbs. They had been a little wiltedĀ too. It was good anyway though. It was fun to try something new. The Husband was very complimentary and wants to have it again.
We had sandwiches a couple of the nights. The Husband got the sandwich maker back from his parents’ house and was very excited. It’s a Betty Crocker “Stuff and Munch.” It makes little sandwich pockets and is his favorite way to eat sandwiches.
This was a pastrami provolone sandwich. It was pretty good.
We also had manicotti, but I don’t have a picture, as I was at work.
It says that you don’t have to cook the noodles, but it’s a lie. Cook them at least halfway. The Husband left it in for over an hour after checking it and it finally got soft. It tasted okay.
The cheesecakes were my other new recipes this week, but that will be in the party post.
I hope you’re enjoying seeing the garden. I know I’m very excited that it’s going so well. Have a great night and stay tuned for my party post for Battle Cheesecake!
My week got all thrown off by a concert and being still sick. I did go to the doc yesterday and don’t have bronchitis, just really severe asthma flares. I have a stronger version of my meds, so hopefully that will help me kick this. In the meantime, I have been trying to get through it.
We saw Evanescence and Lindsey Stirling with a full orchestra and they were both amazing! Here are a couple of pictures.
It was really hot, but definitely worth it.
I haven’t been wanting to cook or eat, but we did have a couple new recipes this week.
We had chef’s salad with lettuce from the garden! We have so much lettuce right now. It’s been very hot, so the saladĀ was nice and cool. Today it’s already 75 and I’m going to stay hiding inside. My lungs aren’t handling anything well.
We also had a new brand of all beef hotdogs.
They were the Teton brand from Costco and were pretty good. I have to be careful with hot dogs. One of the all beef brands was still in natural pork casings, which wouldn’t have helped me.
I had a friend’s kids over for Lego time and made tacos with homemade tortillas. We had taco meat leftover, so I made a beef taco soup.
I roasted peppers, onions, garlic, and tomatoes and threw everything in the crockpot while I was at work. It turned out good. I like using the leftovers.
We had baked chicken with garden herbs on Thursday, but ate separately, so I have no pictures.
Speaking of the garden, it is growing very well. I do need to water the herbs a little more, but I have lots of tomatoes started!
The zucchini plant won’t even fit in a picture. š I keep seeing new blossoms on it too, so we’ll have to see how many squash we get.
Here’s the lettuce:
A bunch of the pepper plants have flowers and buds too, so I’m Excited about that. Everything is growing much better than it was in pots!
Well, I’m going to see if I can sleep some more. Hopefully I’ll feel up to doing some sewing, baking, or canning today. For now, I’m content with not coughing quite as much.
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 weekĀ 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. š
TheĀ 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. š
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. š
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? šĀ 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! š
Hello! I hope your weekend is going better than mine. I started to get sick yesterday and it’s much worse today. I’ve slept for a lot of today. Fancy has been napping with me. She’s a good dog. š I’m hoping it’s just a cold, but my throat hurts a lot, so if it is worse tomorrow, I’ll go get checked out. I’ve been hydrating and taking it easy.
We had some friends over for dinner last night and grilled for the first time this summer. It was very good.
We had grilled boneless/skinless chicken thighs in gyro seasoning that a family friend gave us. Salad, pita breads, and hummus were also present. We had sweet potatoes too. We’ll definitely be grilling more.
The Husband made his own dinner tonight! Seared pork chops with apples and a pasta side. He seasoned them with the Chophouse seasoning from The Pepper Palace.
The Husband was very proud of himself for learning how to sear them and finishing them off in the oven. We may have cooking lessons on Saturday nights. š
I had potato salad, which I made yesterday for lunch.
It was pretty good. I had a craving for it, but the Husband doesn’t enjoy it. I made it for my sewing lunch.
I made Blueberry Muffins from Gordon Ramsey’s In The Heat Of The Kitchen.
They were a little dense. Not sure why as I actually followed the recipe. My parents enjoyed them for breakfast while they were here.
Speaking of my parents, they really need to come visit more often. My mother went into low kitchen orbit and we had 2 loaves of french bread, a lasagna, and two loves of nissu in the kitchen. It was beautiful. I didn’t have to make anything for craft night at all.
So that’s this past week. We’re having French Onion soup tomorrow with some garlic bread made from my Mom’s bread. Sorry for the short post! My cold meds are making me quite sleepy.
