Tag: recipes

The Spice Must Flow
Recipe Roundup

The Spice Must Flow

LSiehLeave a comment

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 Just Here For The Food
Cookbook Review · Recipe Roundup

I’m Just Here For The Food

LSiehLeave a comment

I have a Cookbook Review for you and a Recipe Roundup tonight. Hopefully my pictures are right side up. I uploaded them from my phone (through the air, Mom!) and they seem to adjust themselves automatically. If not, pretend I meant to put them that way. It’s way too cold and my hip doesn’t like stairs at the moment.

The Husband was gone on a business trip for a couple of days, so I had a vegetarian feast week planned. It didn’t go quite as well as I hoped, as I ended up with no time to shop for the couple of things I couldn’t find. I did use the cookbook enough to be able to review it though, since I have used it before as well, for mac and cheese. I also had so many leftovers that I had to eat up, that I didn’t end up needing to cook as much as I thought I would.

The cookbook I used is called Vegetables! It’s by Pippa Cuthbert & Lindsay Cameron Wilson. It has some extremely fancy recipes in it, some of which are a little intimidating. It’s a very colorful book. Everything has fancy names and some of them are all about the 15 ingredients that you’ll only use once.

This recipe had baked chicken breasts on the side, as the Husband was still home at the beginning of the week and apparently likes regular meals. 😉 It was Linguine with Swiss Chard and Sweet Onions.

The sweet onion part is misleading, because you just caramelize them, not actually use sweeter onions. I was a little disappointed in that, as I think it would have gone well using them. I used rainbow chard for extra happiness and chicken broth instead of wine. I also added baked chicken on the side. I was a rebel!

Really though, we had a seasoning mix from Penzey’s called “Krakow Nights” that I wanted to try. It is a Polish style seasoning and tastes delicious. The Husband also likes meat. I had herb goat cheese crumbles on the top of mine. The recipe was pretty simple though, so I don’t know if I would use a recipe again. You basically caramelize the onions, sauté the chard, take it out of the pan, deglaze with the wine/broth, then add everything back in along with the noodles. The chicken and the onions made it a longer dish, but everything else cooked while the noodles were boiling. I actually made the onions in the morning and just reheated them. We would have this again.

I also made Black Bean And Vegetable Chili. I didn’t bother with the cilantro-lime creme fraiche (see what I mean about the fancy names?) as I knew I wouldn’t actually like it. I had this as a three course meal after work, with frozen popcorn shrimp, and arugula salad.

Mmmm! I love arugula! The Husband does not, so I don’t have to share! This also means I need to eat the entire container of it myself. Hmm.. I should probably have a rather large salad tomorrow.

The chili has chipotle chilis in adobo sauce in it and it makes it have the most delicious and smoky taste. I brought container of it to work and a co-worker tracked me down to find out what the delicious smell was! I would make this again, but was glad I made just half the batch. The Husband is not a fan of chili.

I’m in two minds whether to keep this book or not. I think there are some very good looking recipes in it, but I have had it for quite a few years and have made exactly three things out of it. The Husband’s dislike for vegetables makes it unlikely that I could make many more of them for both of us. It’s too much work to make separate dishes! But if I keep it, I could supervise the Husband’s pork cookery and make these for myself. Decisions, decisions… (Also, there are two book sales on the horizon and the Husband and I may have come home from shopping with three new cookbooks…)

For our other meals, we have had a variety of things.

I had the urge to make a chocolate cake a few weekends ago from the Alex Guarnaschelli book, so I did just that. (I know! But I can’t stop! Too many good recipes!) What the Husband doesn’t know is that it was the Mayonnaise Chocolate Cake recipe. Don’t tell him, or he won’t ever eat it again! I didn’t use the vanilla frosting though. It involved corn syrup. We don’t get along. I made a chocolate cream cheese frosting from the Better Homes book instead.

This was hands down the best chocolate cake I have made. It was super moist, even after a few days and very lovely and rich. It soothed my soul!

My only complaint was my frosting job wasn’t even, but I have not had a lot of practice with actual layer cakes. I will definitely make this again.

This banana bread was also from A.G’s cookbook. It was a spectacular failure in that I accidentally froze the butter while mixing it, by using partially frozen bananas. I had to put the metal mixer bowl in the preheating oven and it was a mess. Tasted delicious, but was sooooooo dense and wet at the same time.

There was a small mishap when I tried to turn the first loaf over. Half of it came off, so I had to eat it. I ended up throwing it away though. It was not good after a day or two. I may try it again with ripe bananas, not frozen, and halve the recipe.

Another failure this week was on Sunday, when I attempted to make quesadillas and had four fall apart on me for unknown reasons. I was mystified, as I make these all the time with leftover taco meat!

These were the “good” ones. I cooked up hamburger and added green chilis, onions, and some of our Fire-Breather salsa. Then I added it to the tortillas and that’s when it all fell apart. I was a little mortified, but we ate the evidence, so no one needs to know.

Something that did work out well, was the drumsticks.

I used another Penzey’s spice mix, the Galena Street Rub. I swear they didn’t sponsor this post, but they probably should have. Sometime soon, I might write a post about my spice cabinet contents, as it has grown exponentially and deliciously. I also had canned peaches with mine. The Husband has requested this spice rub on everything. 🙂

We also had venison and beef Christmas/Swedish meatballs and noodles at the beginning of the week last week. They were delicious as usual. Fancy was extra excited as she got a tiny bit of the raw venison. No pictures, as we ate them too fast.

Last, but not least, I made Pannukakku, or Finnish pancake this morning and had lingonberry jam on it. Sadly, my thimbleberry dealer is slacking and I am out of it again. 😉

It made my little Finnish heart all warm and cozy this morning. If the dog weren’t pinning me to the couch, I would post the recipe. Although I may have posted it before.

So that’s what we’ve eaten lately. With the exception of the two missteps, which both still tasted delicious, I think it was a pretty good couple of weeks. Now to pick the next cookbook to focus on! And find room for the new cookbooks…

Life Posts · Monthly Review · Recipe Roundup · Sewing

Monthly Review

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I’ve got something up my sleeve for Monday or Tuesday (heh, heh, sewing pun) but wanted to get back on track with my reviews. It helps me keep accountable and on track with my goals. February has been kind of a slower month. I have had a bit of trouble with some motivation and some of the ever present scheduling concerns. Also, sudden dental issues, which always complicate things. Fancy hasn’t been helping either. She’s been very snuggly.

Overall, I have been pretty good at trying to really think through my sewing projects. I have put a 6 month fabric buying ban on myself until June. Gifts obviously don’t count. 😉 The other caveat is that if I need a specific fabric to finish a specific project, I can buy the fabric for that project. Otherwise some things would just pile up more until June.

My organization adventures for the month have made me aware of just how much fabric I have. Most of it has a plan for it, but there is no reason I need that much! It was quite a sobering thing. I’ve been re-evaluating my wardrobe too and have decided to repurpose or remake some of the things that really don’t fit quite how I want them to. I have already taken apart a couple of skirts that don’t fit well and added the fabric back to my stash. I have also started a list of all the things in my project box, with notes about what is needed to finish them.

So far for sewing this month, I have mended a long sleeved sweater and added buttons to a bag and a 3/4 sleeved sweater. All of these have been in my UFO or mending box for quite some time. I also learned that my sewing machine will gather fabric for my if my bobbin and top thread are at different tensions. This made sewing some gathered doll clothes a bit easier.

There have been a lot of doll clothes made in the last two months, but as I have recently acquired two more dolls from a friend’s daughter, I will need to make some more.

Can’t have naked dolls sitting around my office! Speaking of my office, I switched offices with a colleague into a bit of a bigger office and it was amazing how much stuff I had ended up squeezing in my littler one. It took me about 4-5 hours to reorganize and I need a couple of small things, like a game storage unit and a little table for next to my chair. It will be fun to see the kid client reactions to it. The adults will take it in stride, I’m sure. So the next time I take a picture of doll wardrobe at work, it will be on a different chair. 🙂

I have made some more leggings for myself this month, because you can never have enough comfy pants! One of them, the polar bears didn’t quite work, due to the stretch, but I can fix the waistband and it should be fine.

I don’t remember if I mentioned this amazing cutting mat that the Husband got me for Christmas, but it’s making cutting things out so much easier when I’m upstairs. I love it!

I have also made a pair of black pants, but apparently this month, have a tendency to want to write about the pants I currently have on! These ones are soft, black, French Terry, and will pass for work pants, even though I feel like I’m wearing pjs. Instead, how about a picture of my bright pink joggers? I was wearing them the last time I wanted to write about them. They are quite obnoxious, but I love them. The Husband won’t give me his opinion, as he is a smart man.

They are made from my beloved Linen Lounger pattern for Patterns for Pirates and are cotton blend french terry from Girl Charlee. I’m not really enthused about trying new pants patterns, when I like the fit of this one so well. Since my blue jean leggings need to be mended though, I have plans to make a skinnier, actual pant pattern to replace them if needed. I also do need a couple of different pairs of nicer work type pants.

One other thing I needed was a couple of nicer sweaters to wear with my pants and pretty skirts. I went through my sweaters and gave a bunch away, but now needed replacements. I like to dress up a little for intakes and not wear the dino leggings until a couple sessions in. 🙂 Enter this pattern; the Fall In Love Sweater by Ellie and Mac.

I quite enjoy it and it makes me feel super pretty and polished. For future versions, I may size up about a half, as it occasionally feels a little tight. It doesn’t accentuate all my bumps and lumps too much though, so I may not if the fabric is stretchy.

I made this second version as a short sleeved version. It needs bands, as the fabric likes to misbehave and the bottom hem is a little short, but it looks lovely on me. At least I think it does. This pattern fits me better than my normal go to short sleeve pattern, so I will definitely be making more. It has set in sleeves, not raglan or baseball style, so it looks a little more professional.

I’ve also made a very long and cozy fleece sweater to work in the basement in, but it’s come in very handy for our recent cold snap. I think my sewing was more intentional this month. I tried to focus on the gaps in my wardrobe. My drawer is still very full, so I need to do another clear out soon. I have a horror of giving away the “perfect” shirt, but there are a bunch that I just don’t wear!

My Sewing goals for this month include a neutral grey Cocoon Cardigan to fill that gap and to try the fancier pants pattern. I also want to continue to organize and purge my stash, as well as work on some quilts and UFO’s. I have a pattern for a “Fairy Sweater” which is a cascade type sweater that I have a lighter watercolor print to try to use up, but that may wait until closer to summer.

Now to switch gears to food. We had a lot of new food this month, due to the party. I think that I missed a bunch of pictures of meals that were not party food. We did have a lot of Chinese food this month, so you may not see it for a little while. Not that we don’t like it, but there’s only so much stir fry type things I can eat. Here were some of our favorites:

Lion’s Head meatballs

West Lake Beef Soup

Chicken Marsala

Wonton Soup

Fried Dessert Wontons! They were from this website: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/03/cinnamon-sugar-cream-cheese-wonton-nutella-dulce-de-leche.html

They were so good! I didn’t make a dipping sauce for them. We never have Nutella in the house and I have both spoons and no will power.

The Husband had the play auditions and production meetings this week, so we had leftovers from last week, including a new recipe from The Wooden Spoon cookbook. It was not our favorite. Basically hamburger, tomato sauce, and taco seasoning with shell noodles. The Husband added a lot of cheese, but I still think it was a little bland.

One thing we did like this week was Nancy Fuller’s Creamy Stovetop Mac and Cheese from this month’s Food Network. I was hungry after work on Thursday and ended up making it at 10 pm. It was good late night snacking food though. I used a little of the dragon pepper hot sauce in it. Mmmm!

Misses for the month were the fried pork ribs and the clementine cakes. The ribs were just super annoying to fry and frustrating as I couldn’t taste them to adjust any seasoning. The cakes were a little dense for me, even remembering they were supposed to be a pound cake recipe. I need to practice cupcakes more. I’m sure no one will object to trying them. 🙂

Food goals this month are to use my spiralizer attachment and the Instant Pot at least once. Also, be more creative with lunches and get the Husband more involved in planning. His choices were very good ones this month.

Mental health related, I also want to get back to reading before bed this month. I’m having a lot of trouble shutting my brain down to sleep and I know that will help. I went through a rough patch of not wanting to actually do anything and I am working on not getting to that point again.

Of course, taking Fancy to interesting places is another goal. We went to an informational meeting on therapy dog training today and the information is good, but she definitely needs more training first. I’m sure she won’t mind.

These goals should be pretty manageable, I think. Hopefully once the play starts getting going, we can get somewhat of a schedule going. Wish us luck!

Cookbook Review · Recipe Roundup

Food, Glorious Food!

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I think it was pretty glorious at least. You can let me know what you think after the post. Not surprisingly, we ate a lot of Chinese food after the party. 

The Husband happily ate the shao mai the next day. We also had a fried rice dish that was an experiment and actually worked out! The Husband ate pork slices too.

This one is a meatball dish called Lion’s Head Meatballs from The Food of China. These were very good! They were browned and then braised for an hour and a half. Deliciously tender meatballs were the result. They get their name from the bok choy that they are cooked with that looks like a lion’s man. We did sub chicken for pork.

I had them with rice and sautéed Chinese greens- gai lan and bok choy, with mushrooms, green onions, and garlic. I used sesame oil for the saute oil. I’ve wanted to make these for a while. The Husband had just plain rice with his.

Another Chinese dish was West Lake Beef Soup from The Joy of Chinese Cooking by Lo Mei Hing. We have a similar dish when we go out for fancy Chinese food at Christmas with the Husband’s family and I was excited to find a recipe for it.

One interesting thing about this cookbook, which we found at a booksale last year, is that every single recipe, except desserts, calls for MSG. We omitted that, for obvious reasons, but it tells you how old it is.

After the soup, we got a little tired of Chinese food, so we had a creamy pasta and mushroom dish and a creamy shrimp dish. I only have a picture of the mushroom pasta dish because we were too hungry and devoured the shrimp dish.

The Husband also requested Chicken Marsala and it turned out delicious! We enjoyed it a lot. We had it with a salad and fruit.

I posted a naked pizza picture on Instagram because it was just too pretty to not document. 🙂

The crust is the Pioneer Woman recipe, which I believe is linked here already. It makes a very nice friendly dough. You can also freeze it, but I have not had good luck with that.

Here’s a picture of the finished pizza. We used diced ham, mushrooms, and onions. It had homemade roasted garlic pizza sauce on it too and mozzarella cheese too.

I tried to give Fancy some cheese while making the pizza, but she moved and it all ended up on her back instead of her mouth. Silly girl! Don’t worry, she found it all and snarfed it all up.

I’ve also made waffles and muffins for breakfast and we had grilled cheese and canned soup tonight.

I’m still debating the next book. I kind of went through Food of China by Deh-Ta Hiusing and Nina Simmonds, pretty quickly, but have used a lot of it in before as well. I will do a little bit of a review for it here.

First off, the pictures are gorgeous! It’s a huge book, more of a coffee table book rather than a regular cookbook. The instructions are pretty clear. They requesting using light soy sauce a lot, which tastes horrible, so I generally just reduce the amount and add broth or water instead.

It’s a pretty extensive book, covering everything from appetizers, dim sum, main dishes, and desserts. We’ve used a lot of the recipes from it and they’ve turned out well. If you can find the book, I would get it. It’s definitely worth it. We got it as a gift, so I don’t know where it came from.

Fancy’s latest culinary adventure involved getting her Wobble open to cheat and eat the treats faster. Apparently sweet potatoes are a high value treat option.

She’s a smart dog, but we think it might have been by accident. Hopefully. We need her to not know how to do this regularly, thank you!

This week, I hope to pick a new cookbook to focus on for meals. We had a busy week coming up, so it may be a little interesting schedule wise. The Husband has another play starting soon. Auditions are next week. If anyone wants to come snuggle Fancy, I’m sure she’d be more than happy to accept any and all belly rubs. 😉

I always have trouble knowing how to end my blog posts, so I guess I’ll just say “have a good night!”

Catching Up- Lunar New Year Party
Party Posts · Recipe Roundup

Catching Up- Lunar New Year Party

LSiehLeave a comment

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. 🙂

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. 🙂

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.

We had Clementine Cakes from The Woks of Life. https://thewoksoflife.com/2014/10/clementine-cakes/

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. 🙂 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. 🙂 Have a great weekend!

Food Review
Recipe Roundup

Food Review

LSiehLeave a comment

It’s a little weird to be writing about food while I am sick and don’t actually want to eat food, but a blogger’s got to do what a blogger’s 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 I’ll 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! It’s 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 you’ll 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 didn’t 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 don’t 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! 🙂 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 can’t 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! 😂 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.

We’ve also had shrimp stirfry using the same lettuce wrap sauce ingredients. It turned out to be a delicious plan. I’ve been at work for a lot of dinner times too, so the Husband has had pork and various other things. It’s hard to tell what else I’ve 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 didn’t 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 wouldn’t burn. We’re still experiementing with it. It’s fun to use. Our previous air popper started getting deformed and the plastic was bubbling, so we thought maybe we should stop using it.

That’s 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 I’ve used so far. 🙂 The featured picture is all my Costco ingredients. I’m particularly fod of my butter tower. 🙂

I hope your weekend up to the holiday is fun and not too stressful. We’re going on an adventure so my Dad can tell me all his blog comments in person this time. 🙂

Cooking Adventures Of The Delicious Kind
Canning and Preserving · Recipe Roundup

Cooking Adventures Of The Delicious Kind

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We’ve started to get some snow. So much for the yard clean up, I guess. The tree pictures I posted for my picture post were all taken a week or so before the first snow. I suddenly have dog attached anytime I sit down and feel the need for three layers everywhere. Most of my sweater fabric has arrived, so I plan to do a bunch of sewing this Friday to make sure I can actually stay warm this winter. My circulation must be off, because once I get cold, my skin stays cold and I feel cold forever. This winter, space heaters down in my sewing area are a must. That or fingerless gloves and a hat. Brrr… 

Chai spiced chocolate chip muffins with Siamo Spring Tips tea from Tea Runners

In an attempt to stay warm, I have been cooking up some delicious things lately. Fancy got some sweet potato pieces dried. She gets all excited when she sees the bag in the fridge. My dad laughed when I said I made her sweet potatoes with olive oil and cinnamon, but she can’t eat the sweet potatoes raw and both of those things are good for her coat. 

Part of my fun cooking day was on Sunday. The Husband was at his play and I made green tomato mincemeat and the tiniest bit of cardamom plum jam. The jam only made two and half jars. I’m not posting more pictures of it because 1. I didn’t get finished pictures and 2. You all might want it if I post it! I’m finding it very hard to part with. 😉 

I tasted a little of the extra mincemeat and it’s interesting. Vinegary, but not too much, with delicious spices and a little sweetness. Not having had it before, I’m not sure how it’s supposed to taste. 

I used this recipe from The Spruce Eats. 

https://www.thespruceeats.com/green-tomato-mincemeat-3057088

It will be interesting to try it in tarts. It felt super weird with the combination of things that were in my cook pot. There was quite an old fashioned homesteader vibe going on too. Here’s what it looked like in the pot. All those fall spices made it smell delicious!  

Some of the pile of chopped green tomatoes! I did cut the batch in half. 

Here is what it looked like after cooking down for a bit. 

And then the deliciousness after being canned. It got so dark!  

I have made a couple of other things too. More chocolate pudding, this time with my Mom’s homemade kahlua. It was delicious.

We have had Chinese food twice this week. We found these mini wontons at Costco (hooray for sample day!). They are chicken and cilantro based and don’t have any ginger in them. The Husband doesn’t like ginger, much to my dismay. They made a delicious broth with some veggies, garlic powder, white pepper, sesame oil, and soy sauce. 

Our new bowl color- Slate. Kind of like a blueish grey.

Today we had a noodle stir fry with some ground chicken and veggies. I added hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, garlic, sweet chili sauce, soy sauce, water, and a cornstarch slurry. 

My younger brother came for dinner, which was nice. I had texted him earlier in the day to say that the original recipe I had planned wasn’t going to work, but that there would be some kind of dinner. He sent back a text saying “I’m sure whatever there is will be lovely.” Isn’t he sweet? My mother trained him well, I think. 🙂 For the record, both the boys liked the stir fry. 

I want to make Cousin Jack cookies this week, probably on Friday, because I have currants from the mincemeat. Also, pannukaku. I’m out of thimbleberry jam though (hint, hint, mom and dad). My dealer of jam hasn’t been keeping up with the demand. 

In the morning, I plan to try one of these new teas from Tea Runners. I don’t get any money from showing them off, but do have a referral code if you want to try it (disclaimer: I get money off if you use my referral code). It’s a tea club that sends four samples out each month. So far, I have loved it! It’s definitely making me drink more tea and I’m excited to try these. I was especially intrigued by the Carrot Cake Rooibos and the Nutcracker black.  

The fact that it’s run by one of my favorite actresses and her husband, Jewel Staite (Kaylee from Firefly,) makes it even cooler. 🙂 I’m a dork. I’ll admit it. 

Anyway, there is a dog suggesting strongly that I go to bed, or at least cuddle her and share my couch blanket. Since I’m freezing again, I think I’ll join her. Have a wonderful, hopefully warm, night! 

Canning and Preserving · Monthly Review · Recipe Roundup

Not So Simple Sunday

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Well, it has been a long time since I posted a review! I have made a lot of things lately. I pulled the tomatoes from the garden and still have some green ones left. I’m researching ways to use them up. I have green tomatoe salsa in the freezer already. My Dad keeps hinting about green tomato mincemeat, so maybe if he’s nice to me, he’ll get some. 😉 

I did end up buying some tomatoes to round out my recipes, but there’s a good portion of garden tomatoes in each recipe. I was pretty happy with how the garden performed this year. Next year we will be putting it in earlier though, I don’t want to end up with as many unripe peppers as I did this year. 

For canned items, I made little jars of hot sauce and some homemade Rotel style tomatoes and peppers. The hot sauce recipe was from the Ball Canning magazine and called “Red Hot Sauce.” The Rotel was from this recipe: https://amp.thekitchn.com/recipe-rotel-style-tomatoes-recipes-from-the-kitchn-206851

I forgot the lemon juice in the Rotel and had to recan a couple days later, so went from 11 jars to 9, after reboiling. The hot sauce was canned in little tiny jars and I got five out of the batch. I used all of my homemade garden peppers, so I know it will be spicy. I also found out why gloves are necessary for cutting that many peppers. My hands burned off an on all through the next day.

Speaking of peppers, we have used our homemade salsa in a couple of dishes including, chicken tortilla soup- no pictures, and tacos! The tacos also have homemade pico on them. 


I haven’t made any more jams, but do have some jellies planned, including a pomegranate one and a cider whiskey one. But those can be all done at any time.

I know I haven’t been talking a lot about food lately. I think my original purpose for starting the blog was fulfilled, at least in theory. I didn’t use all of my cookbooks, I don’t think, but I was more successful in making more new recipes and such. I’ll continue to use them, but I have also been able to think more about which ones are useful for us. 

I have been trying to use new cooking techniques and equipment as well. I made lentil soup in the Instantpot for dinner last night and the house is still standing. That recipe is here: https://www.cookwithmanali.com/instant-pot-mediterranean-lentil-soup/

It was pretty good. I used brown lentils instead of red, so pressure cooked for 16 minutes instead of the 8. I also replaced the garlic with granulated garlic as I had run out of fresh. I used a Za’tar spice mix to replace everything except the parsley, salt, and pepper. I left out the mint because I didn’t think it would go well with the Za’tar. I had some garlic bread with it. 

I made chocolate peanut butter pudding one night. The Husband is not a fan of pudding in general and especially peanut butter, so I had a lovely bowl for dessert for several nights. The recipe is here: https://www.smartnutrition.ca/recipes/chocolate-peanut-butter-pudding/

It was pretty good, although I think it needed a bit more peanut butter. 

I also made these chocolaty muffins from garden zucchini. They were extremely good and you definitely couldn’t tell they had zucchini in them. Recipe:https://www.mybakingaddiction.com/chocolate-zucchini-muffins/

We had General Tsao’s chicken from “The Chew” cookbook. It was pretty nice, but needed a bit more sauce.

I used the Pampered Chef Stoneware book to make a Corned Beef Philly Cheesesteak ring. I used the crescent roll dough and then pretty much followed the recipe, except using cheedar instead of American cheese.

I wouldn’t make this again. It wasn’t the best and the meat got a little weird after baking it. 

We had Mac and Cheese from the “Vegetables!” Cookbook. It made me giggle, since it was called “Grown-up Mac and Cheese.”

It was super rich and we had to eat small servings at a time. I used different cheeses, since it called for blue type cheeses. I decided breathing was more important than recipe following. 🙂

I’m going to write a separate sewing review. I don’t want to overwhelm you all. 

I’m still trying to decide what to focus on with food, now that the cookbooks aren’t my main focus. The Husband has had several good suggestions including having themed weeks/months, using recipes from movies and books. Or focusing on a series for specific techniques or ingrediants. I also plan to try to write out some of my personal recipes. And, of course, the 25 days of cookies is coming. I think this year I will spread it out and make it the 25 kinds of cookies instead. Then I won’t be so rushed or frazzled in December. 

So let me know what you’d be more interested in reading about food-wise. I’d hate for you all to get bored!

Harry Potter Party
Party Posts · Recipe Roundup

Harry Potter Party

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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. 🙂

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. 🙂

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… 🙂 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. 🙂

 I used this recipe: https://juliasalbum.com/buttermilk-roast-chicken-with-garlic/

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. 

https://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelysanders/harry-potter-and-the-night-he-wont-remember?utm_term=.lid7Yxa9&sub=3654265_4940588#.ov03Z1WV

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. 

https://sensiblysara.com/2017/08/butterbeer-macarons-recipe/

One recipe that did go right was Pumpkin Pasties. 

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. 🙂

The recipe is here: https://www.thegunnysack.com/bacon-mac-and-cheese-bites/

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.

https://www.makeaheadmealmom.com/easy-egg-muffins/

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. 🙂

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. 🙂

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… 🙂

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. 🙂

Have a magical day!

Gardening · Recipe Roundup

Things We’ve Eaten

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I’m still not sure what I want to do with the food portion of the blog. It’s a little hard to write about it when you don’t actually want to make food most of the time. Here’s some pictures of our meals lately and some food puns, because they are hilarious!

We had fried chicken and “velvety mashed potatoes” for dinner tonight from Fried and True. It was a Tyler Florence recipe, so we watched Food Network while eating. 🙂

I think we’ve decided we don’t like the texture of purees. They end up feeling funny. This one tasted good, but not enough for me to make them again. The chicken had a little bite to it and was delicious. 

We had lo mein last night. I tried to use a recipe, but ended up just making one up. The sauce from the recipe wasn’t good, so I made my own with soy sauce, a little sugar, sesame oil, rice wine, and garlic powder. Oh, and a little water. It was enjoyed by all. Fancy freaked out and then napped, since we had a friend over for dinner. 

We had caramel or macaroon brownie cupcakes. Okay, now, I have a super secret here… The brownies are the triple chocolate Ghiradeli box mix! I love them. The macaroon recipe was on the side of the box and I have been meaning to try it forever. The Husband doesn’t like coconut, so I added caramel bits to half of them instead. The brownies separated in the wrapper, but still tasted good.

Spaghetti and lasagna made an appearance as well. There were garden tomatoes, oregano, and basil in the sauce this time. 🙂

This was my tomato haul today, so I had plenty of them for the sauce too. I’m contemplating the multiple ways to use up the tomatoes. 

I think this is a 2 or 3 quart bowl? Mr Stripey has give us a few,  you can see one at the edge. They are very pretty!

We had herbed french bread to go with the spaghetti. 

Carbs on top of carbs! 

The Husband had pork this week and I made an alfredo sauce with mushrooms, garden tomatoes, fresh parsley and garlic to go over noodles. Mine looks much prettier! I picked out all the tomatoes for the Husband. 

I made a roux and then added the veggies, cooked them all down, added the cream and cooked it until it was all bubbly. Added grated parm too, for extra fanciness!

One last pun, just because… 🙂 Have a great night!