Scraps for dinner!

I like to play a game called "What's in the fridge?"  Sometimes, this game overlaps with another one, called "What's in the freezer?"  I played a mix of the two this weekend!  I didn't take any pictures, since it was super ugly, but it was also super delicious!  Here's what I used:

Fridge:
1/2 a head of cabbage
1/2 a can of tomato paste

Freezer:
Cooked ground beef, crumbled (about a cup or 1/2 pound?)
Cooked italian sausage, diced (2 links?)
Super salty leftover stir fried egg plant (1/2 cup?)

Countertop:
1 onion
2 red potatoes

Instrucciones:

1. Chop onion, place in bottom of casserole or crock pot.
2. Dice potatoes, same.
3. Chop cabbage, same.  Mix the 3 together a bit.
4. Season with oregano, mrs. dash, herbes de provence, or whatever herby stuff you might have.
5. Salt and pepper too (unless you have super salty eggplant coming, like i did)
6. Spread around sausage, ground beef and eggplant
7. Mix tomato paste with water (about 1 cup total liquid) and pour over.
8. Put on lid, and bake at 350 for an hour or two, checking to make sure concoction doesn't dry out.  If it does dry out (like mine did after more than 90 minutes, husband neglected instructions to turn off oven when timer went off), rescue with tomato-y liquid!  I used a can of tomato soup.  

It was delicious, I win!  I like this game! Would also work just fine with uncooked meats, just make sure to cook long enough for them to come to a safe temperature.  Instead of tomato-y liquid, I bet broth would work... and instead of eggplant I imagine mushrooms would work well.  Maybe I'll try those substitutions next time I play!

Pretty Cookies!

Roughly 2 and a half years ago, I went to my cousins bridal shower.  Someone got her a pizzelle press, and I exclaimed, "ooh, I love pizzelles!"  My grandma overheard, so when my bridal shower came around... guess what I got?  Thanks Grandma!  But with all the moving we've done in the past few years it's been neglected. Today I finally opened the box!  It came with a couple of easy to follow recipes, so here I am all ready to go:

 

The press is pretty easy to use, there's a little indicator light that signals when the cookies are done!  How great is that!  Unfortunately you can only make 2 at a time and need to stand around while they cook, but it's pretty great not having to worry about burning the entire batch of cookies!  Here are the first few beauties, below.  Also convenient is that you can refrigerate the batter (or so the recipe book says), so timing is pretty flexible.  I stopped half-way through, I'll finish making cookies some other time!  Like maybe in a few hours when I've eaten all of these? And maybe I'll dip them in chocolate... like Mike's!

I actually made the batter yesterday night, planning to cook them and just didn't get around to it, so I've already tried refrigerating the batter.  The texture changed enough that you could probably use the dough as regular cookie dough, rolling it flat and skipping the press... maybe just baking on a sheet like regular sugar cookies?  Feel free to experiment!    Here's the recipe I used, courtesy of Cuisinart:

1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 stick unsalted butter, melted (i used salted... that's what i had!)
1 tablespoon anise extract (or vanilla, I did 1/2 and 1/2)

mix liquids and sugar, then add dry.  If using the press, rounded spoonfulls... if making without a press... who knows!  Experiment!  Makes 35-40 pizzelle.

Fresh Snow!

Guess what we got yesterday?
That's right... MORE SNOW!!  Good thing I like making snowmen.

(photos not shown, yesterday's snow"wo"man belongs in an adult magazine) 

We shoveled and shoveled and shoveled, then shoveled some more.

Thank goodness it was a beautiful day!!

 

We took a break by doing this:

 Unfortunately, we did not take this picture when Husband got up, only when I did:

We think that if we had, we might have seen his cell phone taking an extended rest. 

It's ok, he needed a new one anyway.

Turkey Sandwich for Breakfast!

I made bread on sunday night! I love my mixer! I more or less followed this recipe from the book that came with ol' red, and made them into a variety of sandwich shapes. I didn't know how much they would rise, they turned out pretty enormous!

So... I made a giant turkey sandwich on homemade bread for lunch. Yay! When I got to work, it looked so much better than my yogurt that I ate half for breakfast! I'm eating the other half now... haaaaaalf a sandwich! (sung as only the best-roomate-ever-other-than-your-husband can sing it, tune of hallelujah choir). They're so much better in halfs!

And beyond the bread, my sandwich gets even better! Fresh fixins from Costco! I bought 12 tomatoes. Giant ones. I really only wanted 3 or 4, but hey, it's Costco. Also, a bajillion pounds of lunchmeat and cheese! Freezer is stocked, and now we don't have to wait in the line at the stop&shop deli! Yaaay! One hour of costco-suffering may have saved us hours of stop&shop suffering. Or maybe not... that's the tricky thing about costco... you're never sure if it was worth it.

Now that we're homeowners with storage space, we often ask ourselves: Should we man up and pay the membership fee at Costco? And so far, our answer keeps being "eh...", ie, indecisive. So this past weekend, I convinced Husband to accompany me to Costco under Mom's supervision and membership, this time through the eyes of potential members for the first time. Our theory was, it can't hurt (and if it so happens that they have snow blowers, bonus! Alas, they did not).

What a zoo! I'm so proud of Husband for not losing his temper while we were there, I know I came very, very close! Especially when I picked up the package of a bajillion individually frozen chicken breasts and got chicken juice all over me! Ewwww! And no purel or napkins or anything of the sort in sight! (Don't worry, I still bought the chicken, what a deal! Though obviously a different package...)

What's with the men buying weird things? We saw a man with a cart full of nothing but mountains of Coca Cola! And another buying trays and trays of Lysol wipes (where was he when I was covered in chicken juice??), and yet another with several BAGS of avocados! (aguacate! my second favorite spanish word!)

$260 later, no cookies, covered in chicken goo, and full of questions about what that man would do with all those avocados, we loaded up the car and headed home. How did we spend that much and not even come out with a package of cookies??!??!!! The jury's still out on whether or not we'll join... but we've at least postponed the decision until we run out of granola bars, which will be several months from now judging by the size of the box!

Blow, blow, blow your snow?

When we bought a house, we knew that there would be a lot of homeowner maintenance, but we didn't realized that would mean we could quit the gym (technically I quit several months ago, but lately I don't feel too guilty about it). Shoveling! Grrr! I have one of those "back saver" shovels, but it's all a lie. They don't save anything if you have to lift the snow 4 or 5 feet in the air to the top of the piles of snow lining the driveway! My waist is getting nice and trim though, all that twisting to launch the snow up and over the pile. Only one side of my waist though... I can't turn left! (haha, actually I can't turn right, left I can do).

Latest rumor is there's another snowstorm heading our way... so we decided yesterday we should consider getting a snow blower. We live in an area that usually only gets a few inches at a time, close to the salt water stays warmer and there's all that salt in the air... so nobody has a snow blower... in a normal year that would just be silly! But so far this year we've had several feet! 18", 6", 14", 4", 5"... it all adds up! With this latest storm I've even heard "feet" rolled into possible storm scenarios. So husband and I were thinking...

You know how if you bring an umbrella it doesn't rain, but if you forget the umbrella it pours?

How much would YOU pay to make it stop snowing? Does that amount happen to equal the price of a snow blower???

We decided that yes, we would buy a snow blower if it meant no more snow. But apparently everyone else in New England came to the same conclusion a week earlier than us... there are none to be had! They're sold out everywhere!

Anyone want to come shovel my driveway this week? I'll pay you!

De-Christmasing

I finally took down Christmas on Sunday... later than most I know, but I felt like we deserved an extension since the decorations went up late because of the move and all.

The decorations look so sad waiting for their turn to be blanketed in paper towels and newspaper before being shoved into a box until next year...

In need of Christmas cheer

Apparently it was past due time to take the tree down, check out all the needles that fell down while pulling off the decorations:

Our new green carpet

Luckily for my spirits, there are a few decorations that will be keeping us company for a while. This cheery red table cloth, candy canes from the tree (I'm thinking cookies???) and mini ornaments that provide some decoration for my lonely orchid year round :)

Yes, that is a recliner playing "head chair" at our folding dining room table. We moved in less than a month ago! It's super duper comfortable... and makes a great "temporary office" chair!!

But now what do we do with that gaping corner of the living room where the tree used to live??? To cheer myself up, I tried my hand at a 2nd batch of homemade pasta (mixed the ingredients in the right order this time... muuuuuch easier! Also, added some pistachio oil, we'll see how that turns out). Then I made bread! It turned out great! For the first time ever I tried the "roll it out, then roll it up" method (like this), and the texture of the inside came out very nice. Success! Yaaay! Between all the bread and meringues and leftover whipped cream and cake mess, i think i gained about 5 pounds this weekend... mmmMMMmmm!

Lesson Learned

Ah... weekends. Two more days to play with my new mixer! Husband and I went on a fun Friday night date to the supermarket, so I was all ready to continue with my experimentations.

Alas, did you know that you cannot make meringues with store bought egg whites? I didn't! Turns out it says so on the carton, in tiny writing. Who has time to read tiny writing in the grocery store? I didn't have time to read it until after my failure had become obvious. At this point my plans fell apart and I threw some flour into the frothy not whipped egg whites and sugar... and called it a cake? (more like guessed it a cake). Actually, I think almost accidentally created an angel food cake, it puffed up huge in the oven, but then deflated to the thickness of a pancake (which is pretty much exactly what happened the time I tried to make an angel food cake for real). This "cake" tasted great, but was impossible to eat, it was like chewing gum with a crunchy layer on top... I salvaged a few crunchy bits (husband declared them a delicious breakfast the next morning) and started over with REAL, HAND SEPARATED egg whites. Finally, SUCCESS! All these, from just 2 egg whites:

They look kind of like peeps, don't they?

While all of this was happening, I had some ropa vieja in the crockpot, getting ready for our dinner guests from Thundermoon Farm (not the animals of course!). But I still needed to make dessert! I had some leftover pound cake that was tasty but dry, and strawberries were on sale this week... so my plan was to try out my mixer on some home made whipped cream to tie those two together! I though to myself, if I succeeded in whipping egg whites, cream will be easy, right? WRONG! I don't know what I did wrong, but my whipped cream wouldn't get whippy enough! Tasted fabulous though... especially with a little sugar and vanilla thrown in... mmm. Unfortunately I only ended up with about half as much whipped cream as estimated... so my trifle was more like an ugly single layer mess that tasted great.

Dinner was a success, I taught our guests how to play Scattergories (which, as I discovered thanks to college roomies is 2nd only to trivial pursuit, and muuuuch easier to play), and we had a great night! Fun was had by all (I hope)!

Birthday Presents!

It's not even my birthday yet, but so far I've gotten the best presents possible! I found out this morning that I passed my professional engineering exam, woohooo! And Husband got me this awesome kitchen aid stand mixer for my birthday! It's so pretty!

So, what's the first thing you have to do when you get a stand mixer?

Whip!

I didn't have any cream, so I whipped egg whites and made my first ever meringue cookies! I screwed up the recipe (added a 1/2 cup of cocoa instead of a 1/4 cup... woops!) but I corrected for it (added enough water to make it moist...) and they turned out reasonably delicious, and super duper chocolatey. Here's a picture!

But then what do you do with all those leftover egg yolks? I searched and searched... and settled on another first: homemade pasta! Again, I screwed up the recipe. I reversed the order of dry/wet, and got a whole lot of dry mess! I again added a little extra water to hold it together, and gave myself the ab workout of a lifetime trying to roll out the pasta dough. But it might have worked! I haven't had a chance to make dinner yet since I made the pasta, so I have no verdict on my rescue efforts. Maybe we'll find out tonight!

I'm pretty sure this is not what pasta dough is supposed to look like...

...but maybe it worked anyway?

2011, a year of deliciousness?

So it's been a while. Maybe 2011 will be a year of better blogging? We'll see. Hopefully I won't have to resit the PE exam (i should find out in a few weeks... the anticipation is killing me!) And hopefully I won't have to spend all my internet time browsing real estate, because we finally bought a house! We moved in right before Christmas, and set up a tree before we'd even begun to unpack! 2 years in a row of Christmas moves taught me to get my priorities straight.

We even hosted my family Christmas dinner! We still did Christmas morning at Mom's, but we packed up the refrigerator and commenced the cooking at nuestra nueva casa.

Sister and mom practically kicked me out of my kitchen (which i dont even know my way around yet) and made a delicious dinner! I helped here and there, but they definitely deserve all the credit. We started out with some baked brie and shrimp cocktail, but graduated onto roast pork with stuffed apples (amaaaazing stuffed apples), cauliflower and fennil gratin, simple greens with a mustard vinagrette, carmelized onion mashed potatoes, and pan blackened (with butter?) brussel sprouts. Look, here we are:

To top it all off we dined on peanut butter brownies, everything oatmeal cookies, and a pineapple layered cheesecake that was to die for. mom gave me the recipe, i can't wait to experiment with other fillings! I lived on leftovers all week, expanding my belly in preparation for new years eve's banquet.

For new years, mom and dad returned to nuestra nueva casa for more snacks, cuban food, sangria, and chocolate fondue and games. I've oversimplified... let me try again. Cheese and crackers. Mom's shrimp dip (one of my favorite things in the world), chips and guacamole, veggies and dip, cuban lobster, ropa vieja, cuban black beans (the husband cooks!), rice, Toblerone fondue, scategories, and wii sports. Thank god husband's friend joined us or we would have died of overindulgence. As it was, we all went to bed with belly aches, though the sangria helped dull the pain of over expanded stomach's (until the heartburn kicked in of course!).

Hopefully all that delicious food means that there will plenty more where that came from in 2011 (though perhaps without the belly aches?)

Easy Recipe for Mom's Shrimp Dip

• 1 jar of cocktail sauce
• 1 small tub of cream cheese (light is ok, but fat free is gross)
• 1 can of tiny shrimp (same size as a normal tuna fish can)
• 1 box of Triscuits
• pie dish or other shallow serving dish

The combo of ingredients sound weird, but it's delicious!

1. Spread the cream cheese in an even layer covering the bottom of the serving dish. Aim for 1/4 inch, doesn't have to be perfect, you can use as much or as little as you want.
2. Pour half the jar of cocktail sauce over the cream cheese.
3. Rinse the can of tiny shrimp and dump into the center of the dish, on top of the cocktail sauce.
4. Pour remaining sauce over shrimp.
5. Gently, using the back of a spoon, distribute the saucy shrimp mess evenly over the cream cheese layer.
6. Serve with Triscuits! Mmm mmm!