Lemony Goodness

This week's new recipe: Lemon Penne with Ham and Escarole

Yummo (and I'm not just saying that because I think the recipe came from Rachael Ray)! This may be one of the best pasta dishes I've ever made, and that's saying a lot considering how much I love pasta. The sauce was made with eggs, parmesan cheese, and lemon juice/rind. So creamy and lemony. And even though the escarole was pretty much just wilted lettuce, it was great. Next time I might try it with broccoli or spinach instead. But there will definitely be a next time!

The Root of the Matter

This (last) week's new recipe: Roasted Root Vegetables

Never before have I had to buy fresh beets or a rutabaga. Never again will I buy a rutabaga. Overall, it was OK. I roasted carrots, turnips, beets, potatoes, rutabaga, and onion with garlic, olive oil, and rosemary from our garden. Turnips were my favorite, beets were delicious (but seriously staining), and the rutabaga just didn't cook. If you're a vegetable and you can't cook in 45 minutes in a blazing hot oven even when you're cut into small pieces, you do not have a place in my kitchen. (Maybe this is why everyone I talked to has always had boiled rutabaga?) In sum, it was a heck of a lot of chopping, a heck of a lot of trying to change my hand color from fuchsia to skin-colored again, a seriously delicious smell, and a so-so dish. I think next time will involve more olive oil and salt and less weird hard-to-spell vegetables in the mix.

Squashtastic

This Week's New Recipe: Whipped Butternut Squash

From: All Recipes (with some tweaking)

Result: This was great. It's basically mashed potatoes but with squash (so better for you, right?). I just roasted the squash and then mashed it and whipped it with butter, sour cream, and salt and pepper. Delish! We ate it with roasted brussel sprouts and chicken tenders. Right...chicken tenders. They said "chicken cutlets" on the package, but the package lied. So I just dusted them with a little flour and seasoning and cooked them in a skillet with a little olive oil and butter, then squeezed a lemon over them at the last minute. Yum!!

Dessert-o-rama

This Week's New Recipe: Peanut Butter Cup Pie

From: Kraft Food & Family

Result: As Mark's grandmother said, "It's sinful." Kraft, you may have redeemed yourself. The pie was fantastic! And it looked professional, too...always a plus. The pie certainly claimed it's place next to my chocolate trifle, pumpkin bread, and spiced cider, and Mark's mini pumpkin cheesecakes. Yea, Thanksgiving!

Another Crock Pot Dish

This week's new recipe: Slow Cooked Tex-Mex Chicken & Beans

From: MarthaStewart.com

Result: Delish. I know I've said before how much I love crock pots, but I totally love crock pots. It deserves saying at least twice. And, a new fave...chipotle peppers in adobo sauce..sooooo good. Although the recipe called for chicken thighs, I don't cook with chicken thighs as a rule (bad experience in the past), so I made it with chicken breasts. And actually, used yellow onion and green pepper rather than red onion and red pepper. (Why are red/yellow peppers like twice the cost of green peppers anyway???) So it turned out like a thick stew of shredded chicken and pinto beans in a spicy sauce. Really good. And today we'll be eating the leftovers wrapped in tortillas while we watch Alabama win!

Garlic Overload

This week's new recipe: Pasta Primavera Alfredo and Garlic Bread

From: Kraft Food & Family

Result: There is a reason that pasta alfredo is good. And there is a reason that pasta alfredo-ish is not as good. This recipe was mostly light cream cheese and skim milk, rather than mostly cream and real cheese. As a side note, I don't remember ever eating so much garlic in a meal that the next morning, all I can taste in my mouth when I wake up is garlic, even after brushing my teeth twice and downing a bunch of water and iced tea. (But this was due mainly to my homemade garlic bread rather than the extra garlic I added to the recipe.) Anyway, decent pasta with good vegetables, but didn't quite live up to it's promising title. No thanks, Kraft.

Slow Cooking Saturday

This week's new recipe: Italian Sausage and Zucchini Soup

From: All Recipes

Result: Delicious! Mark actually drank the broth in his bowl...and he never drinks soup (as a personal rule for himself)! I think there are 2 kinds of crock pot dishes...the kind that you can do on a work day (where you just toss everything in the pot in the morning) and the kind that are best on weekends (where you actually have to do stuff to the ingredients before you toss it in). This one was the latter kind, but perfect to make before kickoff and eat after Alabama clinches the division! I totally heart crock pots (and husbands who clean them).

And so it begins.

This week's first new recipe: Beef & Bok Choy Stir Fry
From: Real Simple
Result: Pretty good, but I've figured out that the whole stir-fry technique isn't my cup of tea. The combination of super high heat and quick timing of everything stresses me out a little too much. But I do love bok choy!

The start of something small

I just finished reading "Julie & Julia" by Julie Powell. Steering clear of how I felt about the book (since I haven't completely made up my mind yet), I want to jump right to my latest inspiration. If nothing else (the jury is still out), Powell made me see the power of the blog, in particular, the power of accountability, which I decided to harness.

In our house, I usually make dinner every night, or at least every night during the week. (OK, so maybe sometimes me "making" dinner is actually me dumping canned soup in bowls, or me turning to the lovely blue box of dried pasta and yellow cheese powder, or at my worst, me running by Krystals...) One of the things I've been wanting to do for a long time is try to make something new every week. But like most of my endeavors, this attempt has, in the past, joined the ranks of learning to knit, adopting a grandmother, and quitting smoking (these three are yet to be completed). So, I'm hoping this blog will help me out. I mean, let's face it...I only blog once in a blue moon anyway, and it just makes me frustrated to see the same tired blog entry title facing me day after day on my iGoogle homepage.

From now on (what a ridiculously hopeful open-ended phrase), I will post at least once a week. The post may be short and sweet, with a quick recipe title and a 5-star rating, or it may go on for days if the culinary result is good enough. Like Powell, I'm using this blog to motivate me. Unlike Powell, I will try not to bore my 3 readers with unneeded/unwanted stories about my husband's friend whose wife can't stand to be around us, or about how many Republicans exist in my office. I'm not setting any time limits or goals of any sort other than to try new things. And if the accountability factor works, I might extend this to other aspects of my life, and finally get that scarf knitted. But I doubt it.

Vacation...Had To Get Away

Prebeach Day: Berry, sweet Berry, how I have missed you. So beautiful and so memory-filled! But, really, with all the construction?? And then meeting perfect little 5 pound 6 ounce Callie…how can anything be so small and so precious?! Topping it all off: Happy Birthday dinner to Dad with the Birthday Boy, Mom, and brothers…which Dad paid for because all of his children
are broke. Still. Found out Mark has always thought crepe paper was cray paper. Yep.

Day 1, “Arrival”: Oh, so nice to get to the beach when there is still some daylight left (we usually arrive late at night). You gotta love a man that will make you pull over just before the bay bridge so he can drive and you can hang your head out of the car like a dog and ooh and aah and scream with delight while he just laughs at you. Lovely walk down to the beach with my hubs and some pina coladas.

Day 2, “Mistakes”: Thought I lost a finger. Jammed it while putting up my brand new pop-up tent (a birthday present from Mark). Couldn’t speak for several minutes. Really disliked the tent for a while. Turns out I may just lose the finger nail. Also, learned that apparently spray-sunscreen doesn’t work at ALL on a windy beach…burned the crap out of myself the very first day. Laughed HYSTERICALLY at my husband when he thought he’d get smart with the wagon containing ALL of our beach supplies (2 chairs, the tent, a camping table, a cooler, beach towels, football, etc.) and just roll it down the stairs rather than picking it up. Not only did half of our stuff fall out along the ride down the stairs, but towards the bottom step, the sides of the wagon itself fell off.

Day 3, “Achoo!”: Woke up with a head cold/sinus infection. Fantastic for the beach. Luckily, it rained, so we went to a movie. FYI: “Transformers” is awesome, no matter how lame it actually is, if you are an 80’s baby. Woke up in the middle of the night with cramps. Yippee.

Days 4 – 6, “Beachy”: I love the ocean! Despite the lack of dolphins coming to greet me, we had a great time at the beach. Sandy, sunny, beery,deliciously awesome. Found out that 1 pound of crab legs is just about my limit. Finished reading “Wicked” in 3 days…can’t wait for the musical

(thanks, babe, for the birthday book!). Hung out with Scottie T. Scottie fell out of his chair at the restaurant. Mark tried to take a picture of Scottie throwing a pack of crackers at him...over and over and over. Not successful. Had a fishbowl-sized drink at Harry T’s while laughing at my husband who apparently has wanted to go to this restaurant since all the “cool kids” he grew up with had Harry T’s t-shirts…picture a 5-year-old on Christmas morning and you may get an idea of how excited he was. Maybe. We were so close to the ocean that I thought we could probably spit in it (hypothetically). To Mark, it wasn't a hypothetical...and yes, you (he) could spit in the water from our table. Ended our stay with a romantic night beach walk, during which we convinced ourselves that if a shark were to just walk up out of the ocean onto the shore and attack us, we could get really rich from selling it to a museum.

Day 7, “Departure”: As I blow good-bye kisses to the ocean (and the dolphins who must’ve gotten the days that I was visiting mixed up on their calendar, or else they surely would’ve shown up), I look forward to 8 hilarious hours in the car with Mark and a certain perfectly perfect black puppy waiting for me at the end of the drive.