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Catch-up

Since it has been almost a month since I posted (yikes), here is a quick catch up as November gets ready to come to a close….

We tried a thick crust, chewy pizza dough recipe that turned out to be pretty tasty. Topped with a basic tomato sauce, Salumi pepperoni and a blend of mozzarella and parmesan cheese. I have half a crust left in the freezer, so that might be making a repeat appearance in the next couple weeks.

 

We also used an Alton Brown recipe for chili and made it work with ground beef and beans rather than cubed beef.  The best part of the chili was the base (pictured above) that starts with lots of fresh peppers and chilies and gets pureed before the meat and beans go back in.  The spice in the final dish had a sweet freshness to it that was so addicting we didn’t even freeze any leftovers.

I had a birthday! Woo! There were presents from Matt and Santana. Somehow, Santana’s wrapping job AND handwriting seem more advanced than Matt’s….hmmm?  Also, they both chose to use my Christmas wrapping paper instead of the birthday wrapping paper.  Fun!

For my birthday (and for the heck of it), we took a road trip to La Conner…a small town north of us about an hour or so.  We did a little shopping (lots of artsy and antique-y shops) and just enjoyed spending the day together away from the chores and errands at home.  We followed it up with a tasty, semi-fancy dinner at a wine bar near home. 

Of course, the big excitement of November is full of food as the holiday season kicks into full gear.  We paired up with a couple friends to make lots and lots of food.  There are probably enough leftovers to last all of us at least a week.  My main assignment for the dinner was the turkey:

The recipe was from the most recent issue of Cook’s Illustrated.  A butterflied, glazed turkey with an Apple Maple glaze.  So so crispy and moist.  The sweetness of the glaze gave a nice twist to the resulting gravy and went well with everything else we had to eat.  Cook’s Illustrated’s recipes are consistently wonderful, so I also used their bread stuffing recipe.  I missed my usual cornbread stuffing, but this was delicious!  I love Thanksgiving! 

And now that Thanksgiving is over, we’re moving right along…the menorah is out and ready for Hanukah and the Christmas tree is up and decorated! We need a tree skirt apparently, but that is on our list for the next batch of errands.  Excitement!

 

Santana is also getting ready for the holidays.  It makes me miss my family in NY a lot, but I’m excited to spend our first married holiday season relaxing with Matt and Santana and not stressing about travel and plans and weather and all of that mess. 

We also embarked on a new food experiment this month, but I’ll save that for a later blog (that will hopefully happen in less than a month). Stay tuned!

waffles and coffee

This is so ridiculously late it’s not funny at all.  For Christmas, part of my present to Matt was some fun kitchen stuff…a waffle maker, coffee grinder and a sampler of Vermont Maple Syrup! This called for a taste test!

I think we preferred one of the middle syrups, but can’t remember which for sure.

Santana was intrigued (as she always is when we’re eating at the table), and was sporting her new holiday sweater & fancy Hawaiian collar that she got in her stocking! 

The coffee was an anniversary surprise from Matt’s favorite coffee place in Seattle…Caffe Vita.  Now two and a half months later, we’ve just finished the first bag (Caffe Luna blend), so we’ll be starting the Holiday Blend in March.

The waffles we made came from AB’s I’m Just Here for More Food, and were spectacular.  Instead of paring down the recipe, we made about 18 waffles and froze the 12 or so that we didn’t eat.  They have been wonderful homemade frozen waffles ever since then.  They were thin and crispy and very very tasty.  Not your typical waffle batter, but very delicious and froze really well.  Here is our gigantic stack.

Matt loves his coffee and waffles!

Santana may or may not have had a bite of waffle.  We’ll never know!

Leftovers, and a look at frozen fish

First up, I have to point out that Santana is loving her new comforter (passed down from our bed after we upgrade for my birthday) now that the cold weather is settling in.  She leads a rough life, as you can tell…

Second, a quick look at what happened to some of our Thanksgiving leftovers last week…

Our mini turkey cutlets on a warm roll, with a smear of cranberry sauce on either side. YUM!  These turkey cutlets were really delicious and actually pretty easy…I may start doing this kind of thing on a more regular basis.  2 turkey tenderloins made a huge amount of turkey bites…spectacular 🙂

This slightly strange picture is a view of the inside of a sweet potato ravioli that was pretty tasty and a big step outside of the box.  We took our leftover sweet potato casserole (minus pecans), seasoned it up a bit, and turned some gyoza wrappers into ravioli.  Boiled them and then tossed in a pan of cranberry glaze made with a bit of leftover cranberry sauce all spiced up.  Strange? Yes, very.  But the tangy sweetness of the cranberry sauce went really well with the smooth creamy flavor of the sweet potato.  And it used up our leftovers pretty wonderfully.

We also whipped up an apple pie at the end of Thanksgiving weekend.  I think we loved it so much I failed to get a picture.  It was huge.  I used my grandma’s recipe, substituting the Pillsbury dough I had in the fridge for her homemade crust and crumb topping, but the filling was all her.  yummm….we ate this with vanilla ice cream for a few days and now we are pie-less.  It was a good couple of weeks full of pie and it will be missed.

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A couple weeks ago we tried two different types of halibut.  There was a buy-one-get-one-free sale on the frozen packs of halibut at our grocery.  They’re pretty decent quality, frozen pretty quickly after being caught, and simple to prepare.

The first preparation was a spicy seasoning on a simply grilled filet, served with my carrot perfection (a little too much honey on this batch) and some creamy parmesan risotto. 

Because we didn’t give the fish enough time to defrost in the fridge (8 hours, as noted on the package, was NOT enough), the fish stuck a little to the grill.  Also, because the fish was thick on one edge and thin along the other, not all was as moist as it should have been.  However, pretty tasty, and ridiculously easy on our stovetop grill pan.

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The second was an almost-easier foil packet of halibut, zucchini, yellow pepper, onion, leftover kale pesto that had been hanging out in the freezer, seasoning and white wine baked in the oven.  Served with a boxed mix of lentil something or other that made a pretty tasty side.  Again the first fell apart a little bit, but it was SO moist and the sauce formed by the wine, veggies and pesto was unbelievable.  I can’t remember if we had bread to soak up this sauce, but if I made this again I would be sure to include it.

I would definitely recommend these frozen fish packs.  These particular packages were each individually vacuum-sealed, with two coming to a pack.  They’re really easy to work with and relatively affordable.   With just a little seasoning and some veggies, they make for a light and filling meal.

Bacon, Two Ways

Bacon was on sale…good, center cut bacon. What can I say…I had to take advantage.  Instead of having an insane amount of bacon in one meal, we broke it up into a couple co-starring roles.  The first was an accompaniment to a really interesting concoction. 

We had (still have) a ton of lentil tomato soup in the freezer.  A really hearty, yummy soup that we happened to make four thousand gallons of the first time around.  Instead of just eating as soup again, I rubbed down a couple chicken thighs with a spice rub and let it sit while we were at work, then tossed it in a casserole with the soup.  It looked like a big dish full of…well…nothing good.
I baked it at 350 or 400 degrees along with some roasting root vegetables, using my wonderful meat thermometer to know when to pull the chicken for maximum moistness. When it came out of the oven, it looked…well…like a big dish full of baked nothing good.

Where’s the bacon!?! That is what you may be asking.  Well…here it comes!

Chop up some bacon, crisp it up and drain almost all of the fat.  I had that amazing center cut bacon, so there wasn’t all that much fat in the pan anyway. 

Chopped onion gets sautéed in a thin layer of bacon grease, and then frozen peas (a little too frozen apparently) get added with a little chicken broth and cooked down.  I usually make this dish with a little bit of cream or half and half at the end (and usually with Brussels Sprouts), but I had some plain yogurt on hand, so that went in.  Not quite as creamy, but added a little tang and a lighter feel to the side dish.

 

Add the bacon back in at the end and serve with the meal.  Bacon in side dishes! Hooray! 

Bacon made another appearance at breakfast.  This was a huge success.  Take note.

Repeat the bacon cooking and onion sautéing above.  Fry some tiny diced potatoes in with the onions and toss in a chopped tomato.  Take this all out of the pan and lightly scramble eggs to your preference.  For a soft scramble, just before the eggs are completely cooked, fold in the veggies and some shredded cheddar cheese.  AMAZING breakfast.  Thinking about it to write this post makes me want it again!