Trent is having drinks after work with a college friend, so the girls and I are on our own for the night. I keep it pretty simple when it’s just us girls.
Olive oil, garlic, sage, butter, salt, and pepper.
Simmer in a small skillet until it makes a super yummy sauce.
To toss together with gnocchi. Super fast and super delicious.
Enjoying it in your finest princess frocks is completely optional.
Whenever I get chilly, which is 95% of the time during January, I like to do a roasting meal to get the kitchen nice and warm. Kevin and I are going to see Kings Speech tonight, so I did all my roasting the afternoon, which means the kitchen is nice and warm while I get things done.
I had all kinds of various vegetables in the frig, so I roasted the whole lot. It took 2 cookie sheets to roast, but once they are done, they shrink up on you. I season with garlic salt (using actual chopped garlic for a long roast will cause it to burn) and pepper, roast at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes for these veggies. I also take a whole head of garlic, cut off the top third of it, put in foil, and roast that too. I then pureed the roasted garlic with chives, parsley, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and pepper to make a vinaigrette.
Tossed everything together with some barley I cooked on the stove.
Dinner! Oh, and King’s Speech was incredible! Loved it! Looking back the only thing that bothers me is this.
Okay, so Helen Bonham Carter looks all period peace-ish put together as the doting king’s wife.
Then wears this bad 80’s inspired wanna be Madonna dress with mismatched Christmas themed shoes to the Golden Globes? Sydney said it best when she said “look mom, Lady Gaga’s on the red carpet!”
I just had to go onto all my 2011 posts thus far and change them from “2010” to “2011.” Apparently my fingers just want to keep on typing 2010 for a bit longer, which does make it confusing, so I am now properly titling things. Keeping on with my slow cooker good recipe search I found this one in Family Circle (they do a section on slow cooking recipes every month in their magazine). It was an Indian Spiced Chicken recipe.
Ingredients
Combine chicken, onions, garlic, raisins, 1 teaspoon of the garam masala, 1/4 teaspoon of the salt, the pepper and broth in slow cooker bowl. Cover and cook for 3 hours on HIGH or 5 hours on LOW.
In a small bowl, stir together the remaining 3/4 teaspoon garam masala, remaining 1/4 teaspoon salt, the yogurt and cornstarch. Remove chicken to a platter and keep warm.
Whisk yogurt mixture into slow cooker bowl and cover; cook an additional 15 minutes or until sauce has thickened. Stir in almonds and serve sauce with chicken over rice, if desired.
I swapped out 1 lb. boneless skinless chicken breasts for the 3 lbs of chicken thighs, added a little more of the garam masala, and a can of chick peas.
Girls dinner. They loved the rice and toasted almonds, but not so much the stew.
Trent’s dinner, he didn’t like the raisins.
Mine (I do love me some chives as a garnish). I loved it, but no point in making a big meal like this just for myself while watching my family sulk at the first sight of their plate, so unfortunately, the recipe’s new home is the recycling container. But I would recommend the recipe to someone who likes indian inspired fare.
7 ingredient night! I invited Ryan, Kevin, and Bethanie over to be my official judges, albeit my friends who aren’t in the habit of saying negative things (well maybe Ryan if he’s in a snarky mood….but that’s why I love him).
The 7 ingredients:
1. Peppadews
2. Grapefruit
3. Steak
4. Bacon
5. Ginger
6. Pears
7. Heavy Cream
So I decided to make a ginger and soy marinated flank steak and serve that with wasabi mashed potatoes. It was a Rachel Ray recipe and I highly recommend. I followed the recipe completely and plan to make it again. Good twist on steak and potatoes. So now that takes care of steak, ginger, and heavy cream.
We started the meal off with Ina Garten’s Pink Grapefruit Margaritas.
That takes care of grapefruit. Now to the peppadews, which I had to google.
I love pickled or roasted peppers, however Trent HATES all peppers and won’t eat anything a pepper has touched. It’s a deal breaker for him. Then I found this recipe from Guy Fieri for a peppadew aioli. Now I have never made an aioli from scratch before, but the chefs on TV make it look easy. I thought this might be a good use for the peppadews (although an aioli is a mayonnaise, which Trent doesn’t like either, so not sure why I think this will go over well).
This isn’t my aioli. I forgot to take a picture of it (which I do EVER SINGLE TIME I have people over!), but this is what it looked like. I promise. It was crazy fun to make, I felt like a scientist making a thick sauce out of thin ingredients. Now an aioli needs something to go on top of. Guy Fieri made cauliflower croquettes for the aioli, but I didn’t think it would go with everything and to have cauliflower and potatoes is alot of white food. I had bacon left and a great Ina Garten recipe for zucchini pancakes. I put the bacon in them.
And of course no picture of everything all plated together, which I intended to do. That takes care of everything but pears.
We started with a pear salad with toasted walnuts, prosciutto, blue cheese, and mixed greens.
So there it is. I had such a great time doing this I think I’m going to do the 7 ingredient challenge once a month or so. Thank you to everyone who left an ingredient as a comment!
So Trent, Ryan, and Kevin all agreed to do an honest review.
This is what Trent said (and yes, it’s my husband….):
I must say - I really thought the meal was delicious!* I was very surprised how well the 7 ingredients were incorporated to make a complete meal. The dishes that were created were certainly well beyond my creative mind. I was especially impressed with the how the pears were used to make a walnut and blue cheese salad - fantastic! I was also really impressed with the use of the peppadews. I think everyone going in thought that this ingredient might give you the most trouble given that you hadn't ever heard of them and once you learned what they are you realized there was a good chance that (at least) I wouldn't like them. Actually, I thought they added a great flavor to the aioli! The surprise hit of the night, in my opinion, was probably the wasabi mashed potatoes - just the right amount of wasabi to keep you coming back for more!
Trent
*for journalistic integrity purposes I should point out that I am married to the chef.
This is Kevin’s review (and to be honest if I served Kevin raw ramen noodles with frozen fish eyes he would say the saltiness of the eyes brought out the crunchy earthly texture of the noodles, he’s that kind).
Jenny’s use of 7 seemingly “uncombinable” ingredients resulted in a truly fabulous dinner. Two of my favorite dishes were Jenny’s ginger-glazed steak (ginger being one of the 7 ingredients) and her zucchini/bacon cakes (bacon being another of the 7 ingredients). The steak was done to perfection, and the ginger brought out a sweetness and zestiness that reminded me of an Asian beef dish. The combination of zucchini and bacon was incredibly delicious; the bacon brought out the zucchini’s earthiness in a way I never would have expected. The star of the show, in my opinion, were the wasabi-infused mashed potatoes. Wasabi can be a difficult one to balance. Jenny’s use of it in the potatoes, however, resulted in a fantastic complement of flavors. Overall, Jenny used great creativity in pulling together 7 rogue ingredients to create a fun, flavorful, memorable meal.
Kevin
Ryan emailed me the morning of the meal and was sick and couldn’t make it. I sent him a doggie bag via Kevin that he had a couple days later when he was feeling better. He did not have the salad or margarita.
So it was a total home run! I had mine as leftovers since I was home sick :( The wasabi mashed potatoes were perfect. I'm not a fan of wasabi in general, but this was a subtle hint of kick that made them perfect.
The steak was tender, perfectly seasoned. I also greatly enjoyed the yummy zucchini cakes with the fun aioli. I assume that was peppadew and i liked it--had a real kick.
Everything turned out incredible and I'm, as always, beyond impressed with jenny's talents!
Yay!
Attempting another slow cooker meal. It also is basically meat free (I put in 2 slices of bacon that were already in the frig from another meal into it), so it seemed like a perfect recipe to try with both goals in the back of my mind.
Betty Crocker's Potato and Double Corn Chowder
While it was cooking, I could tell it wasn’t going to be added to my successful slow cooker recipe list. It looked and smelled pretty bland, hence why I put a gazillion chives on top. I served it with mini corn muffins. The corn muffins were a hit and there was an abundance of leftover chowder. Another thing is I think my slow cooker meals are starting to have a metal aftertaste to them. What causes that? Is it my slow cooker or something to do with cooking time and temps? If anyone has any tried and true slow cooker recipes, I’m definitely interested!
Taco night at Cambrook is always a happy night because it’s one of the meals I know everyone likes. I tried something new and did bean taco night to see if it would go over as well thinking it wouldn’t make much difference. Over the last year or two I’ve been trying to cook with less meat and it’s tricky because Trent hasn’t really signed that petition. I’m down to 2-3 meatless nights/week, but don’t tell Trent, because I try not to point it out. I think mexican/southwest food is pretty easy to do meatless with all the spices, cheese, and veggies. Lauren was a little skeptical. Her favorite meal is tacos, so I think she wasn’t too fond of me messing with it.
Chips and Guacamole for appetizer!
The beans! I made it just like I would make taco meat with onions, seasonings, garlic, salsa, cilantro, lime zest, and lime juice.
Corn and black bean southwest salad, my standard “a salad that has to go with mexicany food” salad.
Lauren making her taco.
All in all it turned out fine. Lauren had one taco and said she’d rather do bean tacos with crunchy shells. But she did have one for a snack the next day without discussing crunchy vs. soft shells. I think I’m going to alternate between ground meat and bean tacos (with crunchy shells) and call that a compromise without having a big Tacogate scandal.
Side note that has absolutely nothing to do with tacos: Sydney had her first haircut the day before and it was pretty darn cute watching her in the chair. Lauren also had her hair cut too and was excited to get it “cut really short” which I interpreted as chin length. We then celebrated with a cookie from Missouri Bakery.
I feel like I put much effort into 2010 and it was a good year. I was fairly diligent about my resolutions which is crazy rare. So now as I look to 2011 I figure I might as well up the ante. I had 8 resolutions in 2010 and have 12 for this year. I already know which one is going to be the hardest, to catch up on putting pictures in photo albums. I’m 2 years behind and it’s becoming so overwhelming that I have no idea where to start. How do people do this? If anyone has a good system and willing to share, please fill me in on your wisdom. For the last 3 years, Trent and I have spent New Years Eve at home and we I fall asleep asleep before midnight. I try, this year I made it to 11:15, which was a record. We put the girls to bed and then we I make dinner. Actually, I take that back. 3 years ago Trent made dinner on New Years Eve. He made an herbed scallop gratin and it was beyond delicious. That was the last time he made dinner. I think he secretly wanted to go out on a high note. This year we I decided shrimp cocktail and steak salad.
I hope 2011 brings no snow, sight to our blind dog, calorie free wine, no boo boos, accessible free fashion, and a dirt less house. I think that’s realistic.
I am trying to do more slow cooker meals this year. My goal is to do about one a week. I don’t know what the deal is, but I think slow cooker meals either turn out yummy or yucky. I have about 5 that I’m a huge fan of and then about 25 I’ve tried and thought they turned out bland or mushy.
I had high hopes for this one, it was a beef and gnocchi stew with vegetables, beef broth, and red wine. All good ingredients that seem to go together well right? Not up my alley. Oh well, another one bites the dust.
Trent said he liked it. I hope he wasn’t just being nice, because I packed all the leftovers for his lunches for 3 days.
From hosting Christmas and the ornament exchange dinner, our refrigerator was busting at the seams with leftovers. Not a good night to add to the mayhem, so hodge podge clean out the frig meal commence!
The girls meal: leftover pasta, leftover bread, leftover fruit from Christmas morning, and my standing effort of including veggies in the meal.
Trent’s meal: leftover garlic bread, leftover braciole, leftover macaroni and cheese from ornament exchange dinner, and more standing attempts to get veggies into Trent’s diet.
My meal: Leftover tomato bruschetta that Erin made, leftover rosemary and honey mustard roasted pork tenderloin, caramelized onions (all from ornament exchange dinner), and baby spinach.
Happy random meal night. The refrigerator looks a lot less angry.
Trent took the day off of work and we decided to head to the Zoo for inside fun at the various animal houses there.
The girls favorite by far is the reptile house. They are fascinated with the kamodo dragon. I don’t know why.
I haven’t been to the zoo since September and apparently they have been busy. They are building this crazy new home for the sea lions with an observation tunnel to walk under them. So the sea lions have been evicted for the time being. How in the world do you move sea lions and ship them?
The night ended with Erin reading books to the girls. Between the zoo and bedtime we hosted Markham, Dennis, Kaleb, Kinsley, and Erin for our annual Christmas Ornament Exchange dinner. But I pulled a Jenny and completely forgot to take any pictures of the meal. I even asked Trent to remind me thinking it would actually remind myself. I might have to spray-paint our serving trays with reminders….or something.
