Baby Shower

My mom and I hosted a baby shower for my sister, Melissa, yesterday. It was a great time with good food!

For starters, I asked my good friend, Brooke, to make the cake. She did an amazing job! It was gorgeous AND it was delicious! The cake was flavored with lemon and the filling was raspberry jam, yum! Thank you so much Brooke for doing that.

My mom came up with some really great ideas for the food. She made really good chicken salad sandwiches and a wonderful fruit salad. The sandwiches were simple. All you need is a rotisserie chicken, mayo, green onion, red bell pepper, celery, salt, pepper, and garlic powder. I think that's what she put in it :). Chop everything up and mix together. Slather it on your favorite bread and there ya go.

Her fruit salad was a hit. Strawberries, bananas, kiwis, pineapple, blueberries, blackberries all cut up and mix together. The fun part was that she got waffle bowls from the store, dipped them in chocolate and then in granola. She spooned the salad in those yummy bowls and the ladies loved it!

Melissa's mother-in-law made a beautiful veggie tray with ranch dip and a spinach dip.

I made cucumber sandwiches (total girl food hehe!) and a pasta salad. I got the recipe idea for the sandwiches on allrecipes.com. A package of cream cheese, about half a cup of mayo (I didn't measure) and an envelope of Italian dressing seasoning was mixed together for the spread. Slice up the cucumbers. Chop up some fresh dill. Spread the cream cheese mixture on dark rye bread, put on your cucumbers and sprinkle with the chopped dill, oh yeah! I bet some red bell pepper would be really good on it as well, and pretty.

The pasta salad is a great one for any time of the year because there's no mayo in it, so you don't have to worry about that spoiling in the heat for summer time. All it is is tricolor spiral pasta, cubed up dry salami, cubed up cheddar cheese, carrots, sliced black olives, diced up roasted red bell peppers, and broccoli. Mix all that together with your favorite Italian bottled salad dressing (I get whatever is on sale) and there ya go!

We had a classic "Shower Punch" made from pineapple juice, diet Sprite, and raspberry sherbet. I added frozen raspberries to it.

I think we ate pretty well yesterday :)

The pictures are Brooke's beautiful cake and Melissa, Mom, and me.

Quick weeknight supper

It's been pretty chilly the past few days and I decided to make soup for dinner. An easy and inexpensive dinner is Pozole. Basically pork and hominy soup. A few months ago I asked one of my patients how to make it. All together I think there are only about 4 ingredients :).

You start with some pork of course. I went to Wally World and found pork stew meat, perfect! Smaller pieces so you don't have to cook it as long. If you don't have that use whatever pork you have, or chicken. If it's a larger piece of the yummy pig, you just have to cook it longer so it gets nice and tender.

So, you have your pork in the pot, throw some salt on it and chicken stock. I like to use the boxed stock from Costo. I think it's about 4 cups. I added about 2 cups of water to it as well. Add one softball sized white onion, chopped up. Cover and bring to a boil. Cook it until the meat is tender.

Once that happens add your hominy. It doesn't matter what kind of hominy you use, this time I got the white hominy cause that's what I found :). I get two of the 29 oz. cans. Drain them in a colander and add to the soup. Let it simmer away for another 10 minutes or so, until the hominy is hot.

Then the last step is adding a whole lot of chili powder. The more you add the spicier it will be. Maybe like a quarter of a cup or so. Add it gradually and taste it. Keep on adding until it's right where you want it to be. You can also add more salt if needed.

I like mine with chopped up cabbage and a corn tortilla torn up and mixed in. Danny likes adding that and Spanish rice. Sometimes if I have them, I'll add some fresh squeezed lime juice to it, yum!

When I made this the other night it took about 30 minutes. It's really good as lunch the next day too :)

Valentine's Day Dinner

Well, I did it. Valentine's Day Dinner was really good. Danny really enjoyed it. He set the table with our china, candle sticks we got as wedding gifts, our nice glasses and TWO forks! This is high class dining :).

Dinner consisted of a bone-in ribeye steak. This thing was a monster! It was a little over two pounds and about 2 inches thick. Simply seasoned with salt and pepper and browned on all sides in olive oil. Then it finished up in the oven for about 45 minutes. We like our meat well done, a little bit of pink is ok. I do think, though, that I could have taken out a few minutes earlier. But it was so tasty. I bought it from Quality Meats on Clinton and Chestnut. I highly recommend that place.

Our side dishes were creamed spinach and Gratin potatoes. The creamed spinach was wonderful. Very simple, consisting of heavy cream, Parmesano Regiano, and topped with a little sharp cheddar. But I do think I had more cream than spinach :)

The Gratin potatoes were rich and creamy. These babies are not for the person who is strictly watching their calories. I do watch them, but I do allow myself some fun every once in a while :). Lots of heavy cream and egg yolks, oh yeah and Gruyere cheese. Wow, that stuff is dangerous, in a good way.

Dessert is my chocolate cake. It's a flour free chocolate cake with a chocolate swirl meringue. I did make it again after my mishap this morning. And it's lookin' a lot better with the butter in it.

Happy Valentine's Day Danny! I love with all my heart. I'm so thankful that God made us for each other. I'm looking forward to so many more special days with you.

Oops!

Boy did I mess up this morning.

I've been planning our Valentine's Day dinner for about a week now. Got my menu down, purchased all my groceries for it, I even bought candles :). We decided to celebrate it today because Danny has to work late on the actual day. So, this morning I started by baking the chocolate cake for dessert. It came together so well, baked perfectly, smelled divine.

As I'm in the shower this morning I suddenly realized.... I didn't put the butter in the cake!! I cubed up a cup and a half of butter for this wonderfully sinful chocolate cake and I forgot to put it in!

Well, we're off to the store again :).

I'm gonna get it right this time! There's no calories on Valentine's Day anyway, right?

Yum

I usually start thinking about what I'm going to make for dinner in the morning. Sometimes I'm good and remember to take something out of the freezer before I head off to work. Luckily, I work across the street from where I live. So that means I go home for lunch and am able to take something out at lunch time.

My wheels were turning this morning as I was calling patients to confirm their appointments for the next day. I decided, "Something with chicken." Wheels turning some more, Chicken Parmesan, that's always good. I went home for lunch and took out my HUGE chicken breast from Costco. (I like how one breast can feed the both of us). Proceeded to look in my refrigerator and what else I could do and remembered that we got an eggplant when we went shopping this weekend. "That's it! Eggplant Parmesan with grilled chicken!" Good protein and a veggie (smothered in cheese and sauce).

It's pretty easy dinner to prepare. Somewhat time consuming, but not difficult. I start out by dredging my eggplant slices in flour seasoned with salt, pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, and oregano. A really light dredge. Brown them up in some olive oil and set them aside. Once all those bad boys are done layer them in a 9x9 with slices of mozzarella cheese and your favorite spaghetti sauce. We like Renaldi brand here. Sprinkle the top with fresh grated Parmesan cheese and bake at 400 degrees until bubbly and browned on top.

While the eggplant is in the oven, cut up the massive chicken breast into strips and slather them with olive oil and season with salt, pepper, and garlic. I have a cast iron grill pan that I love using for this. Get it nice and hot and grill up the chicken strips. I cook them until they are just shy of being done and then wrap them up in foil. They continue to cook in the foil and stay nice and moist.

Serve it all up with a salad and there ya go! It's not greasy at all and full of flavor.

Heart Warming Breakfast

I found this great recipe yesterday on allrecipes.com, Carrot Cake Oatmeal. It's really easy and very tasty. Basically, it's steel cut oats (I suggest getting them at WinCo in the bulk section. If you buy the prepackaged oats in the oatmeal isle you'll pay about $6! In the bulk section I do believe it's about 84 cents a pound), apple, raisins, carrots, nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon. I changed it up a bit by using raisins and dried cranberries (had them on hand). Then, once it was off the heat I added some vanilla and brown Sugar Twin. You toast up some pecans with a bit of butter and then add some brown sugar to sweeten those little puppies up. Bowl it up and add the warm pecans and then a dollop of plain yogurt. Oh my, sweet, crunchy, spicy and smooth all at the same time!

share

share

Just ordered this apron. I've had my eye on this baby for months now and it finally went on sale!!!

In the beginning...

I decided to start a blog at the advice of my Aunt Pam. I'm always talking about food, taking pictures of food, making food, eating food (not as much as I used to), and just enjoying everything about food/the kitchen.

I do suppose I could give a little background on myself. I'm 30 years old, married, no children yet. I started my love affair with my kitchen after my husband, Danny, and I got married in 2005. I'm not much of a baker. I love cooking on the stove top and make savory dishes mostly. I have quite a few cookbooks. My husband thinks I have too many, but he's OK with it. Shoot, he got me a new one for Christmas this year. I like following the recipes to the letter, but I do also enjoy tweaking them. I really get excited when I can pull something off straight from my imagination.

I'm not going to be making dinner tonight though. Danny is taking me out on a date. This weekend I am making Chili Verde. It's Super Bowl Sunday and my dad's birthday. Looking forward to cooking away with a big pork shoulder and tomatillos.