What to do with all this apple butter??

A quick morning treat that we had along with a ham, cheese, onion and red pepper scramble to give us the energy for a little hike with friends today!

Apple Cinnamon Sweet Rolls

• 1 tube crescent roll sheet (Pillsbury makes crescent roll dough that isn’t cut into triangles because they realized that people like me like to use crescent rolls for EVERYTHING!).  You could also use actual cinnamon roll dough if you were inclined to make such a thing
• 2 heaping tablespoons of apple butter
• 3 Tb AP flour
• 3 Tb brown sugar
• 2 Tb butter
• 1/2 Tb cinnamon
• 1 cup sifted powdered sugar
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 2 Tb orange juice or milk

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Unroll crescent roll dough and spread with apple butter (try to leave a little space at the top of the sheet where your roll will end.
3. Mix flour, brown sugar and cinnamon and cut in cold butter until crumbly.  Spread this on top of the apple butter.
4. Roll either lengthwise or widthwise, depending on how many/how big you want your rolls. 
5. Slice into even rolls and place in ungreased pan (I used a glass pie plate).
6. Bake for 15-20 minutes…keep an eye on them so they don’t burn.
7. While they’re baking, mix powdered sugar, vanilla and juice/milk.  Add more liquid if necessary.
8. Let the rolls cool just a bit before adding glaze.

Sweet and yummy! A great morning treat! The glaze sort of soaked into the rolls a bit while I made the eggs. 

We’re headed out for a mini-hike with our friend Nicki and Santana’s good friend Bonnie.  When I say “good friend”, I mean Bonnie and Santana have had 2 play dates at our apartment.  Once, Bonnie threw up.  Once, Santana peed on the floor.  Neither time did they try to play with each other.  GREAT friends.  I am interested to see them on neutral territory today.  Santana thinks she is too human for other dogs.  If she wasn’t so adorable and sweet, this would be a problem. 

Bonnie inherited Santana’s pink jacket, since it actually fits her.

Santana was skeptical…

Very very skeptical.

We’ll see how they do today and maybe get some adorable pictures of puppies possibly becoming friends???

catching up with Peanuts and Pork

I am super-slacking at the blog lately.  It’s been busy all around, we’re planning lots, friends are in town, and we really haven’t been going crazy with new meals that I can post.  But I have a few things, and a yummy noodle dish!

First, remember the pork chops with rhubarb sauce? We opened up the leftovers to use them for a meal earlier this week, so here’s what the final product of the pork and chutney looked like (after sitting in the fridge for a couple days anyway, and also a little fuzzy…):

Find out what we did with the leftover chop down below.

Second, here are Matt and Santana, viewed from above.  The weather in Seattle has been GORGEOUS, and with our windows open, I heard them walking outside and ran to the balcony to see!

I yelled down for Santana to sit and then threw her a treat from the 2nd floor…SO cute!

Another follow-up picture.  Remember the amazing apple butter also from last weekend? Here it is on some toast!  It is AMAZING! And because it is SO sweet, you only need a tiny bit on the toast.  These slices had a little too much apple butter on them for my taste.  I think you could probably cut down the amount of sugar that goes into the original recipe if you didn’t want it quite as sweet. 

Onto the recipe:

Peanuty Pork Noodles

• canola oil
• 1/2 white onion, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic, grated
• 1/4 cup red bell pepper, chopped
• 1/2 cup frozen edamame
• 1 leftover pork chop, chopped
• 1/4 cup unsalted peanuts
• 1 bunch green onions, chopped
• peanut sauce (I’ve made my own in the past, but this time we just used one we had in the fridge)
• a tiny bit of stir fry sauce (I like this to add a little bit to the peanut sauce)
• Cooked pasta (we used thin spaghetti, but if we had vermicelli or some other kind of noodles, I would have used those instead)

1. Heat oil over medium-high heat until almost smoking.
2. Add onion and garlic and stir fry until just starting to brown on the edges.
3. Add pepper and edamame.  Since the edamame is frozen (and so was our pepper), there will be some liquid released, which will actually help cook the frozen veggies through.  Sauté until liquid has evaporated and veggies start to brown.
4. Remove to a platter
5. Add chopped pork, peanuts and green onion to sizzling hot pan and stir fry for just a couple minutes to heat through.  The pork will get nicely browned edges.
6. Add veggies back in along with peanut and stir fry sauces to your desired sauciness. 
7. Toss with cooked pasta and adjust seasoning. 

This was a SUPER easy way to use up the pork leftovers as well as some of our frozen vegetables.  And it was really yummy.  It hit the Thai/Chinese noodle craving that I get pretty frequently. 

We had some tender red greens still left in the fridge that would only last a day or so more, so I wanted to make a side salad to go with the noodles.

To cut through the creaminess of the peanut sauce, I went with a vinaigrette that I completely eye-balled.  There was no measuring at all.  Unfortunately, it was a little too vinegar-y for Matt, but I LOVED it.  I basically topped the salad with my noodles and ate the two together. 

In a small plastic container I put the following ingredients, closed the lid, and shook until completely mixed.  Then just tossed with the greens. SIMPLE.

• sesame  oil
• olive oil (about half as much as the sesame oil)
• rice vinegar
• red wine vinegar (about half as much as the rice vinegar)
• soy sauce (just a dash or two)
• honey (a tiny drizzle)
• white pepper
• ground dry ginger

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!

A few kitchen things!

Happy Memorial Day! We’ve spent the extra day getting some chores done and getting ready to make burgers and yam fries for dinner!  Plus, I’m getting my hair chopped off in a couple hours! I don’t have a plan and am trying a new stylist, so hopefully all goes well! Cross your fingers for me 🙂

Check out our new grill for the stovetop! I am really excited about this thing! The other side has a flat griddle, which will be wonderful for PANCAKES!

In the pan next to the grill, there are some onions cooking down for a really fun and delicious new sauce.  We had rhubarb in our CSA box this past week and I have never cooked with it, so I wanted to do something other than just Strawberry Rhubarb pie.  I found this recipe from Gourmet magazine that used golden raisins, onions and rhubarb to make a chutney to go along with some pork.  This turned out really great! I got distracted and forgot to get a picture of the final product, but here’s the chutney as it cooks down:

It worked really well with the pork, and we served it with some parmesan toast and some grilled asparagus (way to go grill pan!!) Also check out my meat thermometer at work…

the pork was cooked perfectly!! I cooked it to 160 degrees, the setting for Pork-Medium.  Then let it rest, wrapped in some foil and it came up to a perfectly moist, thick-cut pork chop. Yum!

Earlier in the week, we used up some ciabatta rolls and made italian garlic croutons to go on a salad with: lettuce mix from Full Circle Farm, frozen popcorn shrimp, random veggies and a parmesan dressing.  A very satisfying and light-ish dinner (the popcorn shrimp was not the healthiest thing we could have chosen, but it hit the spot and is exactly what we were craving!).  The croutons are super easy…tossed in a little olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder and italian seasoning.  Baked in a low oven. The ciabbata bread got nice and crispy on the outside, but kept a tiny bit of chewiness inside.  I almost lost track of them, but managed to pull them out just in time to avoid burning the edges!

As promised, I tried out my mom’s Crockpot apple butter.  Well, it comes from a local newspaper at home, but it was easy and I am excited to try it on some toast!

Slow-Cooker Apple Butter

• 5-6 pounds apples – peeled, cored and chopped
• 4 cups sugar
• 4tsp cinnamon
• 1/4tsp each ground cloves, salt and ground nutmet

1. Mix everything together in a large bowl and add to the crockpot.  You should use enough apples to have your Crockpot heaping full.
2. Cover and cook on high for 1 hour.
3. Reduce to low heat and slow-cook for at least 9 hours. (I planned this poorly and woke up at 4am to turn it onto “warm” so it wouldn’t burn while I finished sleeping).
4. Remove lid and continue to slow cook until thick and brown with no liquid left.
5. Even though the recipe doesn’t call for this, I wanted smooooth apple butter, so a little before there was no liquid left I pureed it with my amazing stick blender and then let it  bubble away for a little longer.
6. Fill containers.  The recipe says you should use sterile jars and boil them in a hot water bath to seal.  Neither my mom or I did this.  A) I don’t have the equipment. B) I don’t have the patience.
7. The butter will thicken a bit when it cools.  I put one container in the fridge and the rest in the freezer.  It made about 7 small containers of apple butter.  And it is GORGEOUS.

This is what the apples looked like after I woke up in the morning:
 

And the final smooth product:

Use this apple butter in things like my mom’s pork dinner.

Soy Squared Fried Rice

Update: our car is at the body shop and we should have it back next week! I can’t wait to see it all fixed!

Second update: In case you forgot how wonderful Santana is, here are some gorgeous pictures Matt took yesterday while he was working from home.  In the afternoon, the sun comes directly in the sliding glass door and Santana follows the sun for a warm nap place as it moves across the room. 

Food time!

Our somewhat-regular Thai restaurant makes this AMAZING fried tofu. I have tried fried tofu at other places and it is OK, but I haven’t found a restaurant with the same kind and it makes me sad.

So Monday night I took a leap and tried frying up some tofu for fried rice. It turned out GREAT! Next time, I’ll season up the flour mix a little more and fry at a higher temp for a little longer (the second batch turned out better than the first).

  Soy Squared Fried Rice

• Fried tofu squares
  • Extra-firm tofu, cut into squares and pressed between clean towels to remove the extra moisture
  • Dredged in a mixture of flour, salt, pepper, red pepper.
  • Fried on both sides in some vegetable oil until brown (about 10 minutes or so, depending on the heat of your oil)
• Round one: aromatics
  • Chopped Onion
  • Minced Garlic
• Round two: Veggies that need to be cooked a bit
  • Chopped red bell pepper
  • 3 carrots, peeled into long ribbons and roughly chopped
  • Frozen edamame (about 1 cup)
  • I feel like I’m forgetting something—you really can use any veggies you like.
• Round three: Veggies that only hit the heat at the last minute
  • Bean sprouts
  • Sliced green onions
  • (I often use baby bok choy or some cabbage here)
• Sauce options
  • Peanut Sauce
  • A tiny bit of broth or water
  • Soy Sauce (If you use soy sauce, that probably makes this a soy-to-the-third-power fried rice)
  • Hoisin
  • Thai chili sauce (only a tiny tiny bit!!)
  • Cayenne pepper
• 1 heaping cup of leftover rice (you can make fresh rice, but leftover is a little more dry and fries really nicely)
• 2 eggs, beaten

1. Prepare the tofu in a large frying pan, skillet or wok and set aside.  Leave a tablespoon or so of the vegetable oil in the pan.
2. Sauté the aromatics in the oil until translucent.  Using the leftover oil from the tofu works well because there will be a tiny bit of flour from the tofu coating, which will thicken as the sauce cooks.
3. Add in the round two veggies and let them cook until they are just starting to get tender. 
4. Toss the round three veggies in and stir.
5. Add your choice of sauce right after this and toss to coat.  I usually use a mix of the stuff listed above and sometimes try to make my own if I have the ingredients on hand.  You’ll want it to seem just a little more liquid than you like because you still need to add the rice and tofu.
6. Remove the veggies and sauce to a large plate. 
7. Fry the rice (sometimes I hold back the green onions and fry them with the rice instead) until it starts to get crispy.  This is where things can get smoky and burnt if you’re not paying attention!  This is also a good time to add peanuts if you want (an amazingly wonderful addition) or sesame seeds if you have them.
8. Make a well in the middle of the rice and fry the eggs quickly.  Once they cook through, mix with the rice.
9. Add the veggies, sauce, and tofu back into the pan and toss it all together. 

We served with some pot stickers from the freezer and a honey-cayenne-soy dipping sauce that Matt made! SO delicious!  Plus I have leftovers for lunch!

The other night, we also made some drinks with a fresh watermelon puree and some vodka….it was a liiiiittle too strong for us, but the watermelon was delicious (I have a giant bowl in the fridge with watermelon and cantaloupe and it is snacking heaven this week!) and I am mostly SO excited that it is almost summer! Hooray!