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Archive for the ‘Holidays’ Category

A Pumpkin-Filled Halloween

Since it is nearly the end of November, I figure it’s about time to get my Halloween post up.  We were very un-halloween-y this year.  The wonderful Dori was in town, and we didn’t eat any Halloween candy at all! We didn’t dress up and we didn’t trick-or-treat (and since we’re in a secure building, no kiddies stopped by for our non-existent candy).  However, we kept the spirit of the holiday alive with lots of pumpkin!

So that is actually a picture from last year’s pumpkin t-shirt.  It is one of the most adorable Santana pictures ever.  But she did wear it this week to celebrate!  This year she was actually a scary scary green monster…

Last year she also attempted to be a bat….this got mixed reviews.

Instead of eating out for Dori’s whole visit, we made a fun asian-inspired dinner one night. It included peanut butter pumpkin curry noodle.  It was…strange. But mostly good.  At first, the flavor of the sauce was very off-putting, but once we thinned it out and added a bit more peanut butter, it was pretty tasty and made a nice side to the coconut shrimp soup we made.  This was a really light, pretty soup that I enjoyed quite a bit and had for leftovers the next day.  In the original version of the soup, the shrimp was cooked perfectly, nice and soft, but of course when reheated it got a tiny bit rubbery. Bleh.

 

We also tried these fancy juices called “First Blush”.  They’re basically grape juices from wine grapes…chardonnay, merlot, etc.  We did a group taste test. Including one that was a juice-tea blend.  I think we all agreed on which one we liked best…but I can’t remember which it was at this point.  Dori, do you remember???

To round out the pumpkin-y-ness of the weekend, Dori had french toast stuffed inside of a pumpkin for breakfast one day. Insanity!

Back to Basics

I’m currently blogging from the lovely Red Roof Inn just outside of Charlotte’s airport.  We spent the long weekend in NC with my aunt, grandma, brother and his girlfriend.  Extremely relaxing and just what I needed.  We did absolutely nothing…sat around, watched tv, made fun of each other, and ate lots of grandma’s delicious food.  Love it.  We’ve been spending lots of time watching the US Open….Matt is a huge tennis fan, and I am catching on. 🙂

Santana spent the weekend at the PetSmart PetsHotel….I felt like a mom dropping my kid off at school for the first time.  It was rough.  I called to check on her once this weekend, and the guy I talked to said she has been having a great time, playing with other dogs, and really enjoying the extra vanilla ice cream treat we paid for.  I can’t wait to see her!

Anyway, before we left, there wasn’t much to blog about food-wise, since we spent the week using up the stuff in our fridge.  Not only did we pull out some of the leftover frozen chili (mostly so that I could make cornbread and make another strata!), we also used a bunch of our fruits and veggies from the CSA in really easy, hearty and satisfying dishes that just got tossed in the oven to bake.  It was nice having things that were so quick and simple.  I love being able to just add a little oil and seasoning (or sugar and cinnamon in the case of fruit), throw the pan in the oven and have a tasty dish that brings out the best qualities of the produce.

Here are a couple pictures of our roast vegetables (pre-roasting and finished product).  We always love these, and I think in the winter we’ll do it a lot more.  It’s hard to justify heating up the apartment with the oven mid-summer.  This batch had freshly dug red potatoes, beautiful striped beets (they lost their stripes while they roasted!), local carrots and a couple green bell peppers.   Tossed with some olive oil, smashed garlic, salt and pepper.  We served it with some butter lettuce dressed with a bit of parmesan herb dressing.  We had some salmon burgers from the store we planned to add on top, but they were not tasty at all, so we just omitted.  It was still delicious and I had the leftover veggies the next day for lunch!

I love the way the veggies get crisp along the edges and all of their sweetness comes pouring out with a little bit of coaxing.  

The second was a fruit crisp.  We got a ton of blueberries in our box (and had some leftover from when Matt’s mom and aunt were in town), so we grabbed some raspberries and peaches from the store.  Tossed with a little sugar, cornstarch, and a couple other things. The mix filled a huge baking dish.

These colors are amazing together.  I didn’t manage to get a picture of the finished crisp…we were too hungry…but it got topped with a streusel-type topping and baked away.  Gooey and warm and perfect for topping some vanilla ice cream.  My coworkers got the leftovers of this one.

A week of delicious reminders that sometimes it just takes a tiny bit of prep to create some wonderful flavors from produce. 

We get home tomorrow afternoon and then head out Thursday morning for a long drive down to Berkeley for a wedding.  Another week with very little cooking.  We’ll see what comes the following week and then I’m on the road for the last week of September and most of October/November as well.  Maybe Matt will have to guest post with all the fun things he is eating while I’m travelling for work. 🙂

Summer!!

I have been wildly delinquent in posting because we have been enjoying lots of sunshine and just generally staying pretty busy.  I have a few really yummy recipes to post.  Today, just a couple quickies.  For 4th of July lunch, we grilled up some bbq chicken on our stovetop grill pan and got some wonderful char marks!

We had this with thin-sliced grilled potatoes and grilled corn succotash.  The succotash was really simple and delicious with our chicken and potatoes.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the leftovers, but I made a ton of it, so I ate it a couple more times for lunch and snack.

Grilled Corn and Edamame Succotash

• 4 ears shucked corn
• 1 cup frozen edamame
• 2 cups green beans, washed and trimmed
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 1 clove minced garlic
• 1.5 Tb butter
• 1 cup cherry tomatoes
• 1.5 Tb lemon juice
• 1 Tb balsamic vinegar
• Salt & Vinegar

1. Grill corn for about 10 minutes, turning often to get lots of grill marks all the way around.
2. Boil 4 cups water and cook edamame and beans for about 3 minutes to par cook.
3. Drain and rinse with cold water to stop the cooking process.
4. Melt butter in a pan and sauté onion and garlic until lightly brown.
5. Add the corn and cook for a couple minutes.  Add bean/edamame mixture and cook for another couple minutes.
6. Remove from the pan to a large bowl and add tomatoes, lemon juice, balsamic, salt and pepper.  

Super easy and really fresh!

 

Matt and I don’t eat a lot of fresh fruit as snacks, so when our CSA box comes with new fruits that we’re not used to eating out of hand, I try to come up with somewhat healthy ways to use them and get as much fruit into our diet as possible. 

This past week I made another pie.  The last pie I made was a bit fancier, much prettier, and probably quite a bit healthier.  This pie, however, was amazingly wonderful and we finished it by Thursday night.  I didn’t get many pictures of the actual pie-making process, and the slice of pie that I have a picture of is a mushy mess, but this is what made it so delicious. 

Cherry Pluot Custard Pie Heaven

• 1 pie crust (Pillsbury for this one)
• 1 box Jell-O Pudding custard mix (I should have used two…it was a pretty thin layer of custard.  And the next time I make a pie like this, my plan is to actually make the custard.)
• ~1 cup fresh cherries, pitted and cut in quarters (I never liked fresh cherries when I was growing up, but now that I’m in Seattle, I’m finding that fresh cherries in Washington—which they offer up as samples while you walk around farmer’s markets—are a really wonderful summer snack)
• 4 pluots, peeled, pitted and chopped
• Cool whip galore

1. Prepare custard according to directions for thick pie filling.
2. Cook fruit over medium heat until it gets nice and juicy and wonderful.  I added a tiny bit of sugar to the mix.
3. Line pie plate with pie and blind bake until it is nice and brown.  You’ll notice in one of my pictures there is a big glob of white chocolate in one slice of pie…this is where I poked a hole in the baked crust.  I mended it with white chocolate chips melted into the space to prevent the custard filling from oozing out.  Matt did not object to a giant piece of white chocolate with his pie.
4. After the fruit has cooked down quite a bit, strain mostly solid parts from the liquid sweetness.  Save this! (I drizzled a bit over our first piece of pie, and the rest I shook up with some limeade for a sweet summer drink)
5. Mix the strained solids with the prepared custard (after it has rested like the package says).
6. Spread the custard mix evenly in the pie crust and top with cool whip.

Is there any question that this was delicious??? The tangy tart bite of the fruit mixed spectacularly with the thick rich custard, and a giant serving of whipped cream never made anything worse.  So satisfying!

 

Comfort Food Guest Post from Mom

 

I have more recipes and things to post, but haven’t gotten myself organized enough to find time for them.  I am expecting a pile of editing work this weekend, so hopefully next week I’ll get back on track.  Until then, here’s another one from my mom!! This is pretty much top secret information I’m about to share, so be grateful.  My grandma makes something we have always called Easter Bread…it has very little to do with Easter for me, since I remember eating it all the time.  She used to send it to me in college and one of my roommates and I would devour an entire loaf…it’s amazing. Super simple, but somehow you have to get it just right otherwise it won’t be the same.  My mom has been working hard trying to get it to be as good as grandma’s, and she is pretty close…there’s just something about grandma food, right?? 

Anyway, here it is.  Can you really go wrong with bread, cheese, pepperoni and ham?? Nope! I actually like it better when it is leftover in the fridge after a day or two (if it lasts that long).  The bread is nice and chewy and soft and because it’s all rolled up, you get a bit of cheese, pepperoni and ham in each bite and it’s one of the most comforting snacks for me 🙂 Take it away mom!

Easter Bread à la Grandma, via Mom

Or as mom calls it: “For the girls that need to add a couple inches to the waistline.” Of course that’s not me and I really don’t know any.  Never as good as  hers but we keep trying cause it is so yummy.

• Bread dough rolled thin (Mallory note: mom has a bread maker, which makes this part wonderfully easy…I have no bread maker and have not yet attempted to make this for that exact reason.)
• Ham, Pepperoni and cheese  -  sharp please
• Dad and I started adding some pizza seasoning too

1. roll…seal with cold water
2. 350 for 30 minutes…

MISTAKES	HINTS
I love my cheese but too much will make it burst…	When some bursts out of the badly sealed edges  -  YOU get to eat it….
forgetting the seasoning on the 2nd loaf	Great for me to take to work for breakfast
I can get flour all over the kitchen in 2 seconds..	Wonderful heated slightly with some tomato or marinara sauce for dipping (Mallory note: AGREED!)

 

Memorial Day Feasting!

Santana gets grumpy if we sit down to dinner and she hasn’t eaten yet.  She also gets grumpy if we do anything throughout the day that doesn’t involve feeding her or laying on the couch with her, but especially grumpy if she thinks we’re forgetting her dinner! In fact, if we say the word “Dinner” her ears perk up and she runs towards her food/water mat.  It’s adorable.  Matt got some cute shots of her wolfing down her dinner in celebration of Memorial Day. 

To celebrate the holiday and the extra day together at home, we got lots of chores done, had a bagel topped with scrambled eggs for breakfast (along with Daniel’s Banana Latte…SO good and super easy.  You have to try it!), grabbed soup from the market across the street for lunch, and tested our new grill pan on some burgers for dinner!

The burgers were made from:

• Ground Beef
• Finely chopped red onion and red bell pepper
• Cayenne
• Ground sage
• Ground thyme
• Salt & Pepper
• Paprika
• Cumin

We topped our burgers with bacon, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, cheese and condiments.  Yum!  We had some onion rolls from the store that were perfect and complimented the spicy, flavorful kick of the burgers! As you can see, I’m a fan of pickles 🙂

On the side we had Grandma Brown’s Baked Beans (who else has had these?? I can only get them when my mom sends them from home!), corn on the cob (from the freezer, sub par, but fitting for the occasion), and sweet potato shoestrings.  Our CSA box called these “yams”, but "yam shoestrings” sounds funny, so we’re going with sweet potato! Julienne, toss with a tiny bit of olive oil, bake and then salt! SO tasty!

Matt had a Red Hook Slim Chance and I went with a Berry Nectar + Vodka to wrap up the day.  I love long weekends…and this one was much much needed!

In other news, our car is ready to pick up this week AND take a look at my new hair cut! Matt likes the flash on the camera that makes me look like my chest is exploding with an energy ball and says he needs to look at me some more to get used to the hair. Hopefully he will recognize me tomorrow 🙂

 

Ooh ooh! I meant to direct you over to Erin at I Walk In This World.  She won some nut butter cups a while ago and I was SUPER delinquent in getting them to her because of some crazy life things.  However, they arrived across the country in pretty good shape (better than the ones I sent to Angelea for sure) and she seems to love my experimental flavors:

• Puppy Love Cups (I have actually made a version of these before): Carob heart-shaped cups with peanut butter filling.  Carob is the puppy’s friend…if you’re doing special baking for your pup, carob is a safe alternative to chocolate! And what pup doesn’t love peanut butter??
• Peanut Butter Scotchies: Butterscotch Cups filled with Peanut Butter
• Nutty Nut Butters: Peanut Butter Candy Coating filled with Almond Butter
• Dark Chocolate Cashew Bites: Pretty self-explanatory. Some yummy Whole Foods Dark chocolate filled with cashew butter. 

These turn my entire kitchen into a sticky mess for at least a couple days anytime I make them, so it is usually not a super-common occurrence.  However, I have some white chocolate chips looming in the cupboard and am tempted to take them for a test drive with some nut butters.  I love sending yummy treats to excited bake sale winners, but these babies are easy to make for yourself too!

Ok, Santana just started making adorable half-wimpering/half-growling dreaming noises on the couch behind me (I’m hoping she never grows out of this), so I have to go squeeze her and head to bed!  Hope everyone had a wonderful long weekend and is excited that tomorrow is Tuesday already!