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Celebrations!

I went a little crazy last week baking all day on the President’s Day holiday…the prettiest creation? Mardi Gras cupcakes!! The frosting is wonderful cream cheese frosting from a can, but I made the cupcakes from scratch! Fun! It was a simple yellow cake recipe from my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook.  Fairly easy (would have been easier with a stand mixer!) and very tasty.   I went a little crazy with the frosting colors and played around for a bit…the batch made two dozen, so by the time Matt got home from work, the kitchen was covered in cupcakes and the other food I’d been working on (chili, mac & cheese, apple bars). Very exciting!

Why all the excitement??? Big huge enormous wonderful news!

Matt proposed!!!! AHHH!! So, it’s been almost 2 weeks since then, but it happened on 2/13 and I am still sort of reeling.  We aren’t in any hurry to start planning, but are really enjoying the love….lots of love to go around.  Plus, Santana is so happy! Look at her excitement:

Of course, we put the ring on the pup…she was not very happy about this, but it made for a funny picture: 

Here’s the ring on me 🙂

 

I LOVE it! The diamond was a gift from my grandmother for my undergrad graduation and it means a lot to me that we could take that diamond and get it set in the perfect ring.  Especially with someone I’m so crazy about. LOVELOVELOVE 🙂

Meat-Free Mal & Matt?

Matt and I are experimenting.  Our lunches are pretty much the same thing throughout the week—he takes a sandwich or a wrap with deli meat along with a snack of some sort, I take leftovers from the weekend.  On the weekends we like to indulge in lots of meat…for example, this past weekend we managed to eat two meats that come from a pig, one that comes from a cow, and one that comes from a bird.  It was delicious, but also very overwhelming.  It will make for wonderful leftover lunches throughout the week, and I had a wonderful time cooking up some new recipes and some old favorites.  However, meat can be expensive…especially if you are trying to purchase meat of any decent quality…and I find that the more meat we put in a dish, the less veggies we end up consuming during the meal. 

With our CSA box coming every other week and random cravings for vegetables lately, we came to the conclusion that we’d try to take our Monday-Friday dinners meat-free.  We made it through week one and are just starting week two.  The first week was pretty easy, since we had a crockpot full of sweet potato soup leftover to start us off on Monday, and we went out for Thai on Tuesday (Thai is one of the easiest cuisines to go meat free with).  Thursday, our planned risotto was a bust when I was off my feet with a lingering back pain and really just wanted a big plate of stir fried veggies…Buddhist Tofu from the Chinese place across the street it was (so delicious and simple!). 

However, I imagine it will get a little more challenging in the coming weeks.  To prepare for this, we started a list of things that we love that can easily be meat free. We have a long list already…and most of the things so far didn’t even come off of that list! One stipulation: we aren’t going to make meaty things with meat-like products….the point of this experiment is for us to eat more veggies, not to eat more fake meat.

This is a dish we actually made a couple weeks ago, but I just realized that it’s not one that’s on our list…adding it now!  I first made this before Christmas for a couple friends and it might be the new favorite Italian dish in my repertoire.   Special thanks to our Kentucky friends Bob & Shannon, who sent us two jars of homemade marinara sauce.  AMAZING.  We still have one left because I want to save it as long as possible.  We shot through the first one with this dish and then a mini-meatball sub and salad dinner a couple nights later. 

Zucchini Parm for Two

• 1 large zucchini sliced lengthwise into four strips
• 2 Tb flour
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1/2 cup seasoned breadcrumbs
• marinara sauce
• a handful of your favorite italian cheese

1. Heat 1/4 inch vegetable oil in a deep pot over medium heat
2. Bread each slice of zucchini by dusting in flour, dipping in egg white and then dredging in breadcrumbs (you could also use cornmeal and it would probably be amazing)
3. Fry in hot oil, about 2-4 minutes per side, depending on heat of oil and thickness of zucchini.  Flip when crust in deep brown in color.
4. Drain on paper towels.
5. Place zucchini slices in a small baking dish in one layer.
6. Top with marinara and cheese.
7. Broil or bake until sauce and cheese are hot and bubbly.

I served with roasted broccoli and shallots and some orzo tossed in some additional marinara (which I was eating right out of the pan while waiting for the zucchini to fry…very classy).

This is ridiculously easy and made a fun and easy dish to serve to company.

Love it.

Lots of Yum

So we are still around…I know I have been way off schedule with this blog, but there has been a lot going on and I have been putting way too much energy into watching football lately (how did that happen!?).  

Anyway, we’ve had lots of delicious things going on.  I’ve got a few recipes and more detailed things to post, but for now, here’s a breakdown of some really wonderful things we’ve been eating.

Root Vegetable Chowder, thanks to Emeril (with lots of additional veggies tossed in)

Cheddar Garlic Chive Scones topped with pan-fried ham and sunny side up eggs for breakfast:

Cuban-inspired panini: ham, turkey, thin-sliced pickles, onion, tomato mustard—all on garlic bread.

Chili Mac Casserole, made with ground turkey and topped with a corn tortilla chip crust (plus cheese, sour cream and salsa, obviously).

Roast chicken with kale pesto rubbed under the skin, with green beans and potatoes and a Caesar salad.

  Amazing breakfast scramble with bacon, spinach, potatoes and onions….plus Beecher’s flagship cheddar. This was our treat breakfast for the week and was so so spectacular.

Spinach, onion and garlic english muffin pizzas with italian and feta cheeses. Plus a side of broccoli.

And I’m still celebrating this amazing Christmas present from Matt:

Love <3

Baby Baby Shepherd’s Pie

Right before Thanksgiving, Matt and I had some extra pie crust on hand, so we indulged ourselves and had some shepherd’s pie.  Baby Baby Shepherd’s Pie, in fact.  You could also call it Double Baby Shepherd’s pie.  Baby Squared Shepherd’s pie….etc.  Why are we calling it this? It is deliciously filled with both lamb and veal! So so delicious.  Whole Foods had gorgeous looking ground lamb and veal, so we bypassed the ground chuck and used 1/4 pound of each.  Along with some frozen and fresh veggies, tomatoes, some yummy seasoning, it all came together for a really tasty meal that we got a lot of comfort out of.  Don’t forget the mashed potatoes on top.  Pretty, huh??  To get it all nice and brown, I used our spray butter (when did we get this???) that was in the back of the fridge.  Love it.

Shepherd’s pie is one of my favorites.  One of the first real dishes I made from a recipe and figured out how to just make it work on my own.  So this was just a hodge podge of what we had and a sauce made around that, and thus I have no actual recipe to give you.  It’s pretty easy…some semblance of a meaty, vegetable-filled stew type deliciousness, in a crust (or not), topped with mashed potatoes.  If you don’t have the patience to pipe steaming hot potatoes on top (I was impatient, and really wanting browned peaks and thus burnt my hands in the process of this whole thing), you can just spread them on in a flat layer.  It will still be tasty.  Really, when you call something “Baby Baby Shepherd’s Pie,” people aren’t so concerned with whether you have browned peaks of potato on top.

Yes, we are absurd.  Yes, if you love adorable baby animals and don’t appreciate the meat-eating-ness of some people, it might be slightly offensive to reference the babies in the title of the meal.  I apologize.  For real.

Also, we served it with a salad….that makes up for some of the absurdity, right?

November Has Been Good To Us

As November wraps up, I’m realizing that amid some craziness, stress and worry, there has been a lot to be thankful for.  Matthew and I have had a really great month.  We got our holiday flight for Christmas nailed down, watched the Yankees win the World Series and got a brand new comforter for our bed…we are easily impressed 🙂

Mid-month, around my birthday, we flew to Hawaii (a  partial work trip) and took full advantage of the sun, relaxing atmosphere, tourist-y goodness, and amazing food.   Here are some pictures to share: 

Love 🙂

    

Some of the food….

Sampler (for lunch) at the Kona Brewing Restaurant. Lots of pineapple at the Dole Plantation…where we tried to refrain from chomping them right of the stems :)   

   

Fancy dinner at Roy’s, where we had an AMAZING meal:

Free spicy edamame appetizer. Pineapple martini (that piece of fruit had been soaking in vodka for days).

Macadamia-crusted Mahi Mahi w/ lobster butter sauce.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Caramelized scallops with a blueberry vinaigrette and some bacon-wrapped sweet potatoes I think. The scallops were cooked to perfection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finally, pineapple upside down cake, which you give them 30 minutes to prepare because they make each one fresh.  They sliced the pineapples thinly so there were juicy amazing layers of pineapple on top of the cake.  On the side: vanilla bean ice cream in a burnt sugar cup.  All in a caramel sauce.  Unbelievable.

———-

To wrap up our wonderful November, we are in the middle of a spectacularly relaxing Thanksgiving weekend.  We’ve been together almost 3 years and this is the first time we’ve spent Thanksgiving together.  It was wonderful.  We went with turkey tenderloins, sliced into medallions, marinated in Annie’s Natural Tuscany Italian dressing, breaded with Panko breadcrumbs and pan fried.  Really yummy.  With some comforting sides and homemade stuffing/dressing….yum! We went with a nice mix of new/more-involved things and easy standbys. Matt was in charge of the traditional green bean casserole and did a great job!  I made some dinner rolls from a Cooking Light recipe, and my favorite was the turkey knot…

Here are the rest of our pictures, including pumpkin pie that we were so excited about we made 4 days earlier, and some gorgeous orange flowers we got for $5 on sale!

 

Thankfulness all around!  Happy Thanksgiving!  Let’s cross our fingers for a December that is full of pleasant surprises, healthy families, lots of love and new adventures.