Brunch Goodness

Let's move onto a Spinach and Cheese Strata recipe, shall we? I made this for Easter brunch. I made two thinking we would need that much but only needed one. So we've been eating the second one for dinner this whole week. Needless to say, it's pretty darn good and a great brunch staple for when you have guests and need something to prepare the night before. I got this tasty recipe from the lovely Smitten Kitchen and would recommend it to anyone. (You can always add sausage to make it even heartier.) Here's the link to the recipe.

Cabbage for You?

Did you all have a good weekend and St Patrick's Day? Since I completely forgot to wear green on Saturday I decided to make a "green" cabbage dish instead. I had never made anything with cabbage before and can honestly say that I wasn't exactly excited about this first go round. But I went for it and I'm glad I did. It was a cheap and easy meal, if nothing else. I got the recipe from my sister who made it with ham instead of polish sausage. Let me just say that I would have used ham if our grocery store carried normal things. However, this is why I always stock up on "normal" items whenever we go outside the city. But back to the cabbage. Here's all it takes -

Head of green cabbage roughly chopped

Bone-in ham or polish sausage

onion

2 or 3 potatoes

butter

Cute everything up. Saute the onion in butter. Add potatoes and sausage/ham and cover with water. Season with salt, pepper, etc. Add cabbage 15 minutes later. It will be done in another 15-20 minutes. Get all the good stuff with a slotted spoon and enjoy! (Leave some for the leprechaun)

Cinnamon Rolls

After the 360 Dance Company fundraiser on Friday night, I was in need of something sweet Saturday morning. I had found this Easy Cinnamon Roll recipe on Pinterest earlier that week and decided to give it a try. It was by far the easiest homemade cinnamon roll recipe, not to mention fairly quick. (although doesn't even compare to Mrs. Becky's recipe) The only thing I would change is the icing. It called for confectioners sugar icing which made it just overall too sugary. Didn't know that was possible but it was. So next time I would change it to a cream cheese icing to balance out the sugar. This recipe would be great for company or Easter brunch when you don't have tons of time to slave in the kitchen.
Click on the link above for the recipe and much prettier pictures of the process.

Laid Back

Thank you Presidents for a great long weekend! It's so nice to be able to have a low key long weekend with Ben around. The weather in New York has been wonderful this winter and this weekend proved to be the same. If you need a quick weekend getaway, come up to the city since this coming weekend the temperatures might even get to 60 degrees. Not to mention that plane tickets are cheap. And if you make the trip make sure and go see the Broadway play How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying!  We saw it with some friends on Saturday night and it was great! It was surprisingly funny and for all you Jonas Brothers fans out there, Nick Jonas is the main character. (He took over Daniel Radcliffe's role after his few months were up.) There's singing, dancing, romance, and laughter. What more do you want in a play?

Besides getting dressed up for the show, we laid low this weekend. We ran by the Union Square farmer's market and picked up some veggies for a yummy veggie and polenta soup I made, taken from Giada De Laurentiis. I added a couple of ingredients and we haven't stopped eating it since. Here's her recipe. (I added sausage and mushrooms.)

Look at all those veggies! This is taken before the simmering begun so it hadn't thickened yet.

Pinterest and Pasta

Sorry for the brief hiatus but Happy Valentine's Day! After 6 days of battling the stomach bug we're back to our normal lives! During my recovery day, I took some time perusing through pinterest and came across some delicious looking foods. I finally decided to try one last night and boy am I impressed. It's from the ever so popular Smitten Kitchen. It's a goat cheese pasta, which ended up being surprisingly refreshing tasting and easy to make. I added a couple of things - turkey sausage and chopped up cherry tomatoes. So here's her directions for you to try as well.  Maybe even tonight for a Valentine's dinner!

Compost Cookie

If you've lived in NYC more than a week then you have heard of Momofuku Milk Bar.  They've got some serious goods. And when I saw Christina Tosi from Momofuku on Good Morning America I decided I was going to attempt my hand at Momofuku's Compost Cookie for our cookie and beer exchange. Christina made this recipe look so simple but apparently she's had some practice. After reading all the reviews online, I became a bit hesitant but had already bought all the ingredients and was committed. So I gave it a go, refrigerated overnight, baked those crazy concoctions and came out with some different batches. My first batch came out right. The second batch came out a bit overdone, but were in for the same amount of time. The third batch which I timed for 5 minutes less came out even more burnt. How did this happen? Well, I really didn't have time to think about it because people were arriving in just a couple of short hours. So I acted like they were fine and put them out of my mind. But of course, when you make a "famous" cookie people are going to start asking questions. Needless to say, from here on out I'm sticking to my recipe exchange rule; stick to something tried and true and don't vary. So next year I'll be making chocolate chip cookies and in the meantime I'll be practicing on Ben so I perfect them like Christina Tosi.

Instead of typing the entire recipe, here is the link...recipe

Apple Bread Galore

Today is the day!! We're leaving for London tonight. We're flying through the night (cross your fingers that we sleep) and this time tomorrow we'll be having tea and scones in foggy London town. I'll be out for a week but will obviously have lots to share once we get back! So I'll leave you with a recipe for apple bread, until we return.

Ingredients

• 3 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 2 cups sugar
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 cups apples - peeled, cored, and coarsely chopped
• 1 cup broken walnuts

Directions

In bowl, combine flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder and salt. In another bowl, place oil, sugar, eggs, vanilla and apples. Stir into flour mixture. Add walnuts and mix. Divided mixture between two greased bread pans. Bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes.

I did one with butterscotch chips and walnuts and one without

I hope you all have a great week!!

Dumplings

My friend, Carla made some delicious apple dumplings for bible study last night and they were so good that I asked her if I could share them. She said yes and I started snapping pictures while she worked. This might just become my next "go to" dessert for when guests come over. I wish we had a fireplace because I could just imagine sitting in front of the fire under a blanket while eating some yummy dumplings. Not sure why I these make me think about fireplaces but yall should give them a go - see what they make you think. :)

 Paula Dean would like this recipe since it uses some butter - but you're by the fire so who cares

 Getting ready to bake

 Golden delicious goodness

 We used more apples than the recipe calls for and the apples we picked which were not granny smith

Get Crackin

Ready for another recipe? This one is so fun and freezer-friendly. They are the siblings to McDonalds Egg and Cheese McMuffins, except a bit better for you! All you need are a dozen eggs, english muffins, and cheddar cheese.  Preheat your oven to 350. Crack your eggs directly into a muffin tin and bake for 20 minutes. While the eggs are baking slice your muffins and toast with the eggs for a about 10 minutes. One these are done, pop them out (butter the muffin if desired) and freeze together on the baking sheet for about an hour. (You need to freeze them before assembling them or they will get soggy when you reheat them.) Take them out and assemble your egg and cheese mcmuffin - I also put salt and pepper and wrap individually in aluminum fold and place in freezer. 

Whenever you decide to eat them just heat them in the oven for about 30 minutes. They can be heating while you're getting ready for work!

(Yes, we have ice trays)

Carrots and Bread??

Remember the pic from yesterday with that slice of bread next to the chowder? That slice was none other than Carrot Bread. Yep, that's right - carrot. I made a loaf and froze half of it so we can pull it out when we need a quick bread to go with a meal or just even a quick breakfast. Alright, here's the recipe...

8 medium carrots

1 1/3 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon kosher salt

6 tablespoons butter, completely softened

1 cup granulated sugar

2 large eggs

1/3 cup buttermilk (or 1/3 cup milk mixed with 1/2 teaspoon lemon juice which is what I did b/c I didn't have buttermilk)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease pan

Peel and slice 3 of the carrots into 1/4-inch rounds. Bring a medium saucepan of salted water to a boil, add the carrots and cook until soft, about 10 minutes. Drain. Let cool, and then puree in the food processor or blender. Coarsely grate the remaining 5 carrots. Set both the pureed carrots and grated carrots aside.

Put the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Set aside.

In a medium bowl, mix the butter and sugar until smooth. Stir in the eggs one at a time until combined. Stir in the buttermilk, carrot puree and grated carrots. Add the flour mixture and mix until well-blended.

Spread the batter in the prepared pan. Bake about 55-65 minutes.

The next few days I'm going to be sharing some recipes that I made over the weekend that are just plain tasty and perfect for this Fall weather! The first is a yummy chicken and corn chowder. You can freeze this as well for those future snowy days where it's too cold to go to the store, but we're not talking about that yet. So here goes...

Ingredients:

• 6 ears of fresh corn or 1-30 ounce can corn and 1-15 ounce can cream corn
• 6 slices bacon, chopped
• 3 medium potatoes (like Idaho potatoes)
• 2 tablespoons flour
• 3 cups milk (I used 1% since that's all we had - worked great)
• 2 cups chicken stock
• 2 teaspoons Old Bay seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 small can chopped green chiles
• 2 cups roasted chicken, shredded 
• Salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:
In a large stock pot, fry the bacon pieces until crisp. Remove from the pan, leaving half of the drippings, and set aside. OR you can microwave the bacon and still use half the drippings which is waaaay easier and faster. This is the method I always use with bacon!


Peel and chop the potatoes into bite sized chunks.Place the potatoes into the stock pot and cook over medium heat for 2 or 3 minutes.


Sprinkle in the flour and cook, stirring constantly, for about 1 minute.

Pour in the milk, chicken stock, Old Bay, thyme, cayenne, salt, and pepper, stirring well. Bring to a boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally.

Reduce heat to low and simmer for 12-15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Add corn, chicken, bacon, and green chiles. Cook over low heat until heated through, about 5 minutes. If you want to top it off with some cheddar cheese be my guest!

Football and Food

If you looked through the mass of pictures in yesterday's blog post you probably wouldn't think we did anything this past weekend besides walk and around and take pictures. However, we did take some time to fit some football in on Saturday! We are quite the football fans and create quite the setup - well Hubs creates quite the setup with his IT skills. So after we had watched the most important SEC games we thought it would be fun to have some friends come over for the night games. However, I didn't have time to cook dinner but still wanted to have enough finger foods to replace a big dinner. I looked on Pinterest and found an easy fast ham and cheese crescent roll sandwich. I figured these sandwiches with a few other dips would do the part. These would also be great for toddlers to help with.

Our three "tvs" with 3 different games

A couple of packages of Pillsbury crescent rolls, Ham sandwich meat, slices of cheese - your choice

Roll those puppies up with the point down

And of course a blueberry pie

Light and Fresh

I've had a lot of time on my hands since last Thursday when Hubs left and Irene came. (Hubs finally was able to make it back to the city yesterday) So during the stormy weekend I decided to make up a "light" recipe since it was just for my liking. It is quite Summery and fresh. Whole Foods was having a sale on wild bay scallops so I picked up 1/2 a pound. I also picked up a tomato at the farmer market earlier that day. Then I already had spinach, linguine, and garlic at home. I combined all those ingredients plus some seasonings and got this pretty little dish...

Here is how it really goes:

Take above ingredients plus olive oil (you can add some butter as well) salt, pepper, and basil. Saute minced garlic in oil/butter in a skillet while cooking pasta. Wash and dry scallops and season generously. Add scallops and tomato to the garlic and cook on both sides approximately 2-3 minutes each. Let simmer for about 8-10 mins. Now add the spinach to the pasta and pour sauce over so the spinach wilts. Again, this is a light meal!!

What's for Dinner

Last week while I was watching my two favorite little boys I needed an easy quick but yummy dinner. I found this Chicken Tostadas recipe and tweaked it a bit. Last night I needed a fast recipe and went back to this yummy now staple.

Ingredients:

Jar of your favorite salsa

Can of Corn

cilantro

1lb of Chicken

Monterey Jack Cheese

Red onion

corn tortillas

salt, pepper, chili powder, and cumin (chili powder and cumin are optional)

Avocado optional

Directions:

Season chicken and cook in skillet while cutting up in small pieces. Add onion and corn to cook with chicken. Add cilantro and salsa to mixture. While the mixture is cooking broil your corn tortillas 1-2 mins on each side. Top tortilla with mixture and then finally top with desired amount of cheese. Place under broiler until cheese is melted, approximately 1 minute. Then eat! (I think tonight we'll have a side of rice to finish it off.)

Meatless Meal

I'm back after our anniversary celebrations (thank you for all the sweet comments) with a meatless recipe. Don't be too quick to judge. This one is good!

I'm known for trying to sneak meatless recipes passed Hubs (a meat lover) and only half have actually pasted. However, this one passed and we're now having it for the second time this week! So I figured it was worth passing along. It's a Grilled Portobello Quesadilla! The Portobelllo mushroom has a meaty flavor and is also filling so you or the man in your life won't walk away feeling hungry. Here it is...

Ingredients:

4 Portobello mushrooms

1 tbls oil

salt/pepper

8 8inch tortilla

red onion

spinach

2 cups of your choice of cheese

Directions:

Heat the oil over medium in pan. Brush mushrooms with oil and season with salt/pepper. Grill mushrooms and onions, covered (since we don't have a grill this works great stove-top) 8-10 mins each side. Thinly slice. Lightly brush 1 side of tortilla with oil and form sandwich with all the ingredients, covering with other tortilla. Grill covered, until cheese is melted and tortilla is crispy, 1-3 mins per side.

Corn salsa:

can of corn

red onion

avocado

salsa

Mix all together and place on top of quesadilla! (if you want to get fancy then saute the corn)