Seven Quick Takes New Year’s Edition

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Amy

2013 was an interesting year here. We had some rough experiences. We had lots of changes, some good, some bad, some amazing. I think I will remember 2013 as a year of change and challenge.

I’m eagerly looking forward to 2014. I don’t make New Year’s resolutions as such, but I do like to think about the past year and the upcoming year. The good, the bad, what I want to modify, what I want to accomplish. I like to look forward to the new year and make goals. Here are a few of mine for 2014 (well, seven to be exact):

1. I haven’t completed any sort of race or other fitness event since running the Disney World Marathon six years ago. I am not sure which event I will do yet, but I will be training and getting back out there for some sort of race/event in 2014 (one thing I am sure of, it will not be a full marathon).

2. Currently, I can do two unassisted pull-ups (unassisted meaning without a resistance band), and eight straight-body (not on my knees) pushups, and I can back squat 135 pounds. By the end of the year my goal is to be able to do ten pull-ups, twenty pushups, and to back squat 185 pounds.

3. I read somewhere around 43 books in 2013. I really don’t need to make a goal to read more. Actually, I probably should make goals to read less and get more other things done in my free time. But that’s not going to happen.

With that in mind, here are some books on my “To-Read” list for 2014:

Catholicism for Dummies – I’m almost halfway through this one.

Divergent – I have a secret love of teen dystopian novels (Hunger Games, anyone?).

10 Gifts of Wisdom: What Every Child Must Know Before They Leave Home

Wool – My husband finished this audiobook recently. It sounds interesting, and when possible, I like reading the same things my husband has read/listened to so we can discuss. We’ve been talking about Screwtape Letters a lot recently, and I really enjoy our conversations (not that I expect this book to be on par with Screwtape, but maybe still fun to talk about)

The Sun Also Rises – This was on my Summer Reading List and I forgot about it. I’ll get to it this year.

Something Other Than God: How I Passionately Sought Happiness and Accidentally Found It – You know how much I enjoy Jennifer Fulwiler’s blog. I’m giddy about her upcoming book.

Ten Ways to Destroy the Imagination of Your Child

He Leadeth Me – Another one from the summer list that I forgot to read.

Things Pondered – I just saw a link to a ton of free Kindle books by this author. This one in particular is interesting to me, but I nabbed all of the free ones and hope to read them all this year.

That’s just a start. I also intend to start reading my Bible more this year now that I’m almost finished with 150 Bible Verses Every Catholic Should Know.

4. I will work on experimenting and using different settings of my camera. I almost always shoot in the “P” mode of my camera, which controls everything but the flash for me. I need to start learning how to shoot in the “A,” “S,” and “M” modes.

At least once a week I’ll be experimenting with different camera settings, lighting, etc. I have tried reading books. I’ve tried taking a class. I need to just do different things with my camera if I really want to learn.

5. I need to pick a Kindergarten curriculum (!!) I also really need to work on being more organized in my homeschool planning and scheduling. I haven’t yet found a system that I’m comfortable with. Suggestions would be welcome.

6. I’m instituting a Family Game Night. We had our first one tonight. I saw the game Cootie on Amazon the other day and remembered how much I loved playing it as a kid. I ordered it.

What was I thinking? It is not fun. But we have lots of other games too, and I think Super Friend has a bajilllion games for her kids, so I’ll ask her for some recommendations as well.

Unfortunately, I suspect my kids will be choosing Cootie as our game for a while.

7. I will be getting back into some cooking adventures. My husband and I used to have fun doing a little version of the Food Network show “Chopped” at home (I even have a whole category in the “Topics” drop-down dedicated to this). Then last year he got me some great books and I started some other fun cooking projects.

I cooked lots of egg recipes one week.

^^Homemade mayo

^^ Shirred eggs (yeah, I didn’t know what that was either) with cream and parmesan-reggiano

^^ Souffle !!

Another week I did Spanish dishes.

I like doing things to make food prep fun, but I’ve gotten away from doing this for a while and have been in a cooking rut (mini meatloaves, lettuce wrap tacos, chicken with mustard/maple sauce, repeat).

So. Back to fun stuff. My husband got me some gorgeous cookbooks for Christmas. Italian and French. I’m going to get closer to my roots and go Italian first. Then I think I’m going to go in depth with onions. Then French. Then, who knows? Sunday I’ll be making gnocchi in tomato butter sauce from scratch. Yum.

I love the feeling of beginning a new year. Reflecting and anticipating. 2014 is gonna to be good.

What are your goals for 2014?

See more quick takes here. Happy New Year!

A Blizzard Named Draco and Other Random Stuff

Posted on December 20, 2012December 20, 2012 by Amy

I’ve been spending lots of nap and bedtime breaks this week addressing Christmas cards and wrapping presents, so I’m trying to catch up with a big post full of a bunch of random happenings from the week.

As I type this post, a big winter storm is raging outside my window. Snow is flying sideways. Wind is howling. My power keeps flickering out. It’s a blizzard called “Winter Storm Draco.” We woke this morning to a winter wonderland. The girls are thrilled, as this is the first big snow of the year.

I love that they are naming winter storms now. I think it gives some street cred to the hassles, and sometimes perils, of living in the north country. We’ve had snow falling for about 16 hours, but Draco is just starting to pick up steam now, so we’ll see how it turns out. Hopefully we don’t lose power before I get this post done…

Meanwhile, we’re just staying in and trying to keep busy. We’re preparing for Christmas (I still have a ton of wrapping to do before the weekend) and reading lots of Christmas books. “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” “Mr. Willowby’s Christmas Tree,” and “Christmas in the Big Woods” are the Christmas favorites right now. Other popular reads this week have been “The Snowy Day,” “The Gruffalo,” and “Interrupting Chicken.”

The girls are finding cozy spots to hang out, to hide from monsters, and to play peek-a-boo.

We got a fun and thoughtful gift from a friend of my Mom’s last week. She came across this Cinderella’s Castle gingerbread house kit, thought of my girls, and got it for them! What a sweet thing to do.

The girls were so eager to get it out and start working on it. I struggled with putting the frame of the house together on Monday and then had to put it away for a while to let it dry (and let myself recover from the frustration of getting it to stay up). We finally finished it today, and they had a blast!

They were so proud of the finished product.

They’re already begging me to take it apart and eat it. Thanks Mrs. P!

I drew my last Chopped ingredients a few weeks ago. They were Crab, Pineapple, and Black Licorice. Holy crazy combination.

I decided to make Crab Tacos with a corn, roasted red pepper, and pineapple relish and some black licorice and lime mayo.

I roasted some peppers and then chopped them up and put them in a pan with some corn and chopped up pineapple. I seasoned this with salt, cumin, and a little bit of chili powder and threw in some minced cilantro when the cooking was done.

I cooked the crab with minced garlic and chopped onion that had been sautéed in butter. I used cumin, salt and pepper for seasoning.

The ingredient that I had the hardest time with during the cooking was the licorice. I wanted to melt it to add it into some lime mayo, but couldn’t figure out how to get it to melt. I tried just putting it in a pan over medium heat, but it started to burn.

I got some new licorice pieces, added some water, and put it over low heat to avoid burning. The licorice was melting very slowly and the water just kept evaporating. After a long time messing with this, I ended up getting enough licorice-y liquid to add to the mayo and the licorice was soft enough that when I strained the liquid, I could mash little pieces of licorice through the strainer to get more of the flavor in the mayo.

Sound gross?

I know, my Chopped experiments probably always sound kind of gross.

This one turned out pretty well though.

The girls helped me with the cooking and learned about always tasting your food before serving it.

We decided it needed more salt

The finished product was good. Though the licorice was the trickiest ingredient during the cooking, the thing that caused the biggest problem in the taste of the finished dish was the pineapple. I used a little too much and didn’t chop it finely enough, so it was pretty overpowering. The licorice got lost under the lime in the mayo, so it wasn’t easily detected in the dish.

Weird as it sounds, and in spite of the problems, it really was quite good. I might even make this one again (with less pineapple).

Haven’t picked my next ingredients yet.

The week has been packed with Christmas readying and savoring. Last night I took the girls for a drive through a local park to see the Christmas lights. They called out through the whole drive, “Look Mama! More! Look, I see more!” over and over.

We got out to see the live reindeer they had on display. Lass would go anywhere near them, but Miss was pretty excited.

She really wanted to see Santa, but he’s only at this display on Friday and Saturday nights. I’m going to try to brave the mall to see him tomorrow if the roads aren’t too bad.

We’re embracing winter and the holidays this week. My girls are begging me to go out and play in the snow. They’re pretty persistent, but I have insisted that we wait until the blizzard stops, party pooper that I am. They are eager to make a snowman (Miss says it will be a Snow Queen, complete with a crown) and snow angels, and get into all sorts of other snowy fun. Wish me luck with this in our two feet of snow!

Granola Just Doesn’t Go Well With Salmon

Posted on November 18, 2012November 18, 2012 by Amy

Remember these little guys?

My husband went to Iowa this weekend and one of these yummy fellas is now in our freezer. I love that we are fully stocked with venison and pork for the year (and beyond).

We missed him while he was off butchering our pig, but the girls were happy to have plenty of Daddy time when he got home this morning.

Since my husband was home I felt like I could spend a little extra time cooking dinner tonight. I mentioned I’m my last post that we would be resuming our at-home Chopped Challenge soon. I picked my ingredients a few days ago and decided tonight would be a good night to work my magic with them. The ingredients?

1. Salmon. Not too bad.

2. Lentils. Not too good.

3. Granola. Oh dear.

I managed to pull together a decent dish, though it certainly wasn’t anything to write home about.

Presenting Salmon Granola Cakes with Lentils Three Ways:

Now doesn’t that sound yummy?

It ended up looking pretty good, but was not the most tasty food I’ve served. Lass looked at it and said, “That’s yucky.” I can sum up the dish in two sentences.

1. Lentils are gross.

2. Granola does not belong in a salmon cake.

In all seriousness, the dish wasn’t that awful. I made the salmon cake with pureed lentils and crushed granola as the binding (other ingredients were egg, dill, garlic, scallions, salt, and melted butter). The idea was pretty good, but I used too much granola, which made the cakes too sweet and too dry.

The best part of the dish was the sauce. I pureed lentils with melted butter, lemon juice, and salt. It was quite good and the lemon was a needed touch of acid to cut the sweetness of the granola when paired with the salmon cake. My husband pulled out some dijon mustard for his, and that actually ended up being the perfect complement. I should have added some mustard (or lemon juice or some other acidic flavor) to the salmon cake itself and it would have been much less overwhelmed by the granola.

The third preparation of lentils was an afterthought. I had cooked way more lentils than I needed for the cakes and sauce, so I added lemon juice, olive oil, and salt to the left over lentils and served them on the side of the cakes, just because I had them. The flavor wasn’t too bad, but I couldn’t get past the texture. I have never liked lentils for that reason.

Overall, I’d say the dish was a C+.

Although my dinner wasn’t stellar tonight, it was really fun to get back to this cooking tradition that my husband and I enjoy. It’s so fun to debrief the dish once I complete it. I don’t like to talk about what I’m planning to do before hand. That feels like cheating to me. But after it’s done, we talk through the whole process from the idea to the execution – what was good? what went wrong? etc. We talk about other ideas I had but didn’t pursue. He doesn’t care that the food I serve might be kind of bad and most certainly will be odd. I don’t care that he gives his honest opinions about what wasn’t good in the dish or what he would have done differently. I’ve learned a ton about cooking each time we’ve done this challenge. It’s a really fun family activity. The girls helped me cook a bit tonight, and I hope when they’re old enough they’ll want to do their own Chopped challenges.

During the Commercials…

Posted on October 31, 2011 by Amy

It’s been a great weekend.

Quality time was plentiful.

Daddy’s girls.

To top it off, tonight is the premier of “The Next Iron Chef.” I’m typing this during the commercials. It’s an awesome show. You should watch it.

I managed to finish working on Miss’s ballerina costume just before the show started. I had to make the best ballerina costume ever to convince her that she wants to wear it instead of her sister’s bear costume. Hopefully she’ll love it. A little sneak peek.

A while ago a drew my Chopped ingredients of canned tuna, panko breadcrumbs, and tomato paste. I made dinner with them tonight. Panko-crusted tuna cakes with roasted red pepper and corn relish (the tomato paste was in the cakes and in the relish). It was yummy. I only have a few minutes during the commercials, so I’ll post the recipe later. Here’s the dish.

Halloween tomorrow. Miss’s school party and trick or treating with both girls. Can’t wait!

Rainy Day Ride and a Recipe

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Amy

Today was rainy. The girls were a little stir crazy after dinner tonight, so the Daddy brought in their wagon for a little ride.

They thought this was just about the coolest thing. Then it broke, and they had fits. But we colored and read books and did puzzles the rest of the night, and all was well.

On a totally unrelated note, several weeks ago I posted about my last “Chopped” ingredients. If you recall, these were Duck breast, Avocado, and Gouda cheese. I used the ingredients to make dinner a couple of weeks ago and have forgotten to post about it. I made Duck and Gouda Hoagies with Avocado Spread. I didn’t write down the recipe, thinking I would post about it while it was still fresh in my memory. I have a pretty good memory, but this one might be a little fuzzy.

My ingredients:
4 duck breasts, skin removed
1 avocado
Gouda cheese, sliced
Salt and Pepper
Flour
Vegetable oil
1 Shallot, finely chopped
Maybe one or two cloves of garlic?
About a half cup of dry white wine
Mayonnaise
Hoagie Buns
One apple (optional)

I started by slicing the duck breasts crossways into about 1/2 inch-thick pieces. Then I dried these, sprinkled them with salt and pepper on both sides, and coated them with flour. I heated my pan over medium high heat, added about a tablespoon of oil, and put in the first batch of duck pieces.

I browned the duck pieces on both sides, then removed to a plate and continued with the other pieces in batches (adding a bit of oil with each batch).

After I got all the duck pieces cooked and set aside, I put the shallot in the pan to soften. I can’t remember if I added a couple of pressed cloves of garlic after the shallot was soft. I think I did. If so, I would have waited until the shallot was soft, then added the pressed garlic and stirred it around until fragrant, about 30 seconds. Then I added the wine and scraped all the browned bits from the bottom of the pan. I let this reduce a few minutes. Then I put this mixture into the blender with the avocado, some mayo and some salt and pepper and tried to puree it to a really smooth texture. I should have used my Magic Bullet, because the blender didn’t do a very good job of pureeing the small pieces of shallot. So, the final outcome of this avocado-mayo spread was a little lumpy. While I was working on this spread, I preheated the broiler, put some duck meat into a each of two hoagie buns, topped it with slices of gouda, and put it in the oven. Once the cheese was melted, I pulled them out, put the avocado spread on the top of the bun, and it was done. I should have used a lower heat to melt the cheese, because my buns ended up getting burned, but the result was still good. I also should have toasted the buns beforehand, because the bottom bun was a bit soft relative to the super crispy top bun. Oh well. I was in a hurry…

On my hoagie I put slices of apple, which I thought added a crunch and sweetness that was very yummy. My husband is not a fan of apples on sandwiches, so I left them off his.

This was a successful meal, if not the most dazzling thing I’ve created. The best part was the way I cooked the duck. I relied on a strategy learned partly from my dad and partly from my cooking class in coating the duck with flour. This really helped to hold in some of the moisture and the result was very flavorful, tender, and moist duck meat. Score. The least successful part of the dish was the avocado spread. It ended up a little bland, and the chunks of shallot didn’t do anything for it. If I made this again I would probably skip the shallots and pan deglazing all together and just use the avocado, some mayo, and some fresh herbs, maybe a little lemon or lime juice to brighten the flavor of the spread and keep it smooth. My apologies for the haphazard “recipe.” This is the best I can recall, several weeks later.

My husband has been working nights for the past two weeks, so we have been neglecting to select the ingredients for my next challenge. Tonight is his last night to work (hooray!!), and we finally remembered to choose the goodies. What did I end up with? Tuna (canned), Panko bread crumbs, and Tomato paste. I already have a good idea what I’m going to do. If it works, I’ll try to bring you that recipe with a bit more precision.

Spaghetti Squash with Spinach Meat Sauce

Posted on September 17, 2011 by Amy

I tackled my latest Chopped ingredients the other night: Spaghetti Squash, Spinach, and Merguez Sausage. My husband made the merguez, and it was delicious. I was correct in my belief that the sausage would be smoky, sweet, and have a little heat. Honestly, it was probably the best sausage I’ve ever eaten. I was pretty excited to create a yummy dish with these more reasonable, normal ingredients. I decided to make a sort of “Spaghetti” with Meat Sauce, of course using the squash as the spaghetti and making the sauce using spinach instead of tomatoes. It turned out great.

Here are my little sous chefs.

Spaghetti (Squash) with Spinach Meat Sauce
1 Large spaghetti squash
2 Merguez sausages (if you can’t find this type of sausage, you could use chorizo or Italian sausage)
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, pressed or minced
Salt
1/2 cup dry white wine
4 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 11-oz pkg spinach
1/2 cup heavy cream

Pierce the squash several times with a knife. Put it in the microwave on high for 6 minutes. Turn it over and microwave it for another six minutes. Let it sit for a while to continue steaming.

Remove the sausage from the casing, crumble and brown it over medium high heat. When it’s nice and browned, remove it to a paper-towel-lined plate. Leave the drippings and browned bits of sausage stuck to the bottom in the pan. Cover it with foil to keep it warm.

Return the pan with drippings to medium high heat. Add the onion and about 1/2 tsp of salt to the pan and cook until onion softens, about 5 minutes. Add garlic and stir until fragrant, about 1 minute. Add wine. If there are any browned bits of sausage or onion left on the bottom of the pan, scrape them up into the sauce. Let the wine reduce for a minute or two. Add 2 Tbsp butter and stir until it melts. Add spinach and stir to coat with sauce. Cook until it is nicely wilted (photo below is only partially wilted).

While spinach is cooking, slice open squash (you’ll probably need an oven mitt), scoop out seeds, and then pull out strands of squash with a fork or spoon and set aside.

Once spinach is wilted, put the entire contents of your pan into the blender. When pan is empty, return it to medium low heat, add the remaining two Tbsp butter, let it melt, and put the squash strands in the pan. Add about 1/2 Tsp salt. Stir to coat with butter and cook for several minutes. The main purpose of this is to try to evaporate some of the water that comes out with the squash so it’s not super wet when you put it on your plate, as well as adding a bit more flavor to it. Puree the spinach mixture. Add cream and continue to blend until smooth. Add S&P to taste. Put sauce, “spaghetti” and sausage on the plate!

This dish turned out really well. The sauce was delicious. The only thing I might have done differently was to use one more sausage, because there wasn’t quite enough for two servings plus what we gave to the girls.

Next up: Gouda Cheese, Avocado, and Duck Breast!

Chopped – Back in Action

Posted on September 8, 2011June 28, 2015 by Amy

I haven’t posted anything about my latest Chopped at home adventures in a while. Initially this was because it took me forever to get plantains. You might remember that my last three ingredients were plantains, tofu, and bacon bits. Well, my grocery store didn’t have plantains, so I ordered them from an online produce vendor. Then I waited. And waited. As time passed and we were coming up on our trip to Florida (yes, a month ago), I called the vendor and asked what the deal was. He said it had been too hot to ship the plantains, but they were planning to do so that weekend. I said, “Thanks, but no thanks,” since that weekend was when we would be leaving for Florida for a week. Anyway, to make a long story short, we went to Florida, came home, and I ended up finding plantains at a local grocery store where I prefer not to shop. Ingredients in hand, I proceeded to the cooking part.

And that’s where the second delay in my writing about the experience come in. It has been over a week since I created dinner from the above listed ingredients. I have just been too ashamed to tell about it. Okay, I’m not really that melodramatic, but I was bummed by how my meal turned out, especially on the heels of The Pickled Herring Disaster. Here was my plan – Slice the plantains, pan fry them in some oil with garlic and chopped bacon bits, then mash them with butter and put them back in the pan for a second fry. I still think this was an excellent idea, I just didn’t execute it well. For the tofu, I got the extra firm variety, planning to coat it with seasoned flour, dip in egg, then coat with panko bread crumbs and more chopped bacon bits and pan fry. I figured the panko would give some good texture to contrast the mushiness of tofu and the S&P and bacon bits would add flavor to the blandness of it. This was executed just fine, but the idea wasn’t so excellent.

I got my pan way too hot while struggling with getting the peels off the plantains. I thought they would peel off easily like a regular banana. Not so much. It took me forever to peel the darn things. Especially with two screaming children getting into all sorts of mischief under my feet. So, as I mentioned, my pan got way too hot. My garlic got burned. I was distracted and did not tend to my plantains as I should have. The plantains got burned. They were then hard and dry and would not mash. And they tasted burned. The tofu on the other hand was nicely coated, had a nice crunchy exterior, and absolutely no flavor whatsoever. Grade? D- I’d say.

What would I do differently if I had even the slightest desire to ever cook plantains or tofu again (I’m only sort of joking here)? I’d not get my pan so hot and would cook the plantains more slowly. Then I would follow my original plan and I think it would turn out well. I would probably do something entirely different with the tofu, like buy the soft version (what I used in the delicious Tofu Chocolate Pudding I made) and make a sauce or something with it and just pick a different protein entirely on which to put it. Or, I would marinate it. I learned this past weekend from my husband’s cousin that this is crucial when preparing tofu. Like, marinate the heck out of it. Who knew?

I drew my next ingredients the other night and was relieved to get some more normal foods. Spaghetti squash, spinach, and merguez sausage. The only ingredient here that might give me a little bit of trouble is the sausage, because I’ve never had it before. It is a North African sausage made with lamb, which I think will have a bit of a smoky, spicy, slightly sweet flavor. My husband is making it as I type this. I am excited for this round, and am looking forward to hopefully cooking up another home run. I’m due, I think.

So It Turns Out I’m Not a Cooking Goddess

Posted on July 19, 2011 by Amy

Damn. I was really hoping that I would be able to transform pickled herring into something delicious. If I’m honest, I was fairly confident in the plan I had come up with for using the herring, sweet pickles, and bran cereal for this week’s home “Chopped” challenge. Unfortunately the plan was no match for pickled herring. Who knew that its taste was so strong? So persistent? So… pickley? Part of the problem was probably that I didn’t even taste the herring until I was getting ready to cook it tonight. Remember how I said I wouldn’t even be able to come up with a plan for it until I tasted it, since I had no idea what the taste and texture would be like? Well, I threw that out the window and came up with a plan, sans tasting, to make a Bran-Cereal Crusted Pickled Herring Po’ Boy with Sweet Pickle and Onion Puree. I’m going to spare you the recipe, because it’s not worth typing out, but here’s what happened:

I was so confident in my plan. I thought for sure if I rinsed off the herring to get some of the pickled flavor off, and then coated it with crushed brand cereal seasoned with some strong flavors (I used chili powder and a bit of cayenne pepper), and then pan fried it to give it a nice crispy crust it would be fabulous on a nice baguette with a caramelized sweet pickle and onion puree sauce. Unfortunately, this plan was based on my expectation that the herring would be salty and maybe a little sour, rather than sweet. Imagine my surprise when I tasted it and discovered the herring tasted like sweet-pickle fish! I had sweet-pickle fish and sweet pickles to put in one dish. This gave me pause, but I decided to push ahead with my original plan and make a few seasoning changes rather than taking the time to change things entirely (two small children fussing for dinner helped with this decision).

Like I said, I pulverized the bran cereal and added chili powder and cayenne pepper, rinsed and patted the herring dry, then coated the herring in the bran powder and put it in a hot pan with some oil to get crispy. For some reason instead of getting crispy, the bran “crust” just fell off in the pan. A few pieces did get a little crunch to them where the crust stayed on, but most just ended up kind of soggy. I’m not really sure where I went wrong here. Maybe my pan wasn’t hot enough or I had a little too much oil. Maybe I should have used some egg to dip the fish into first to get the crust to stick better? If I had any desire to try this recipe again ever, I’d try that next time. . .

The sauce ended up okay. I did the usual, sliced the onions and put them in the pan with the chopped sweet pickles to get soft and caramelize a bit. I used a little bit of wine to get all the crust from the fish off the bottom of the pan. I added a diced ancho chile to try to cut the sweetness of the pickle. Then I pureed it. It was tasty by itself, but added to the still-sweet-pickley tasting herring, it was too much. Oh yeah, and I didn’t have a chance to get a nice crusty baguette for my po’ boys so I ended up using regular hot dog buns, which I didn’t even remember to toast a little. Mush on top of mush on top of mush. . . It wasn’t pretty (served with roasted Brussels sprouts).

I did have a small victory though. My husband actually ate all of his po’ boy, as did I. It wasn’t super delicious, but it wasn’t awful either, and he did say that my pickled herring was more palatable than any other he has ever had. That’s saying something, right? Right?

Home Run

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Amy

Raisins and cherry tomatoes were my at-home-“Chopped” ingredients this week. I thought and thought for a week about what to do with them. Initially I was going to cook them with some onions and broth and spices and then puree them into a sauce for some pork tenderloin medallions. Then I realized that the skin and seeds of the tomatoes would probably not work well in a pureed sauce, so I scratched that idea. I finally settled on making a pan sauce for pork tenderloin using the raisins and then doing a side dish by caramelizing some fennel bulb (my new favorite vegetable since I learned how to cook it in my cooking class) with some raisins and then adding in the tomatoes. I wanted to use caramelized onions and raisins in a sauce (topping might be a better word than sauce, because the raisins and onion made it chunky) for the pork but add in just a bit of heat to compliment, brighten, and balance the sweetness of these ingredients. Similarly, I thought the tomatoes would balance the sweetness of the caramelized fennel and raisins in the side dish. Yeah. I hit a home run with this one. Here are both of the recipes.

Pork Tenderloin with Spicy Raisins and Onions

1 Pork Tenderloin (about 1 lb)

Salt and Pepper

1 Tbsp Vegetable oil

1 Onion, halved and sliced thinly

1/4 cup raisins

1/4 cup white wine

1/4 tsp cayenne pepper

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 cup chicken broth

3 Tbsp unsalted butter, cold and cut into 1 Tbsp pieces

Trim fat and silvery skin from the tenderloin. Slice it into 1-inch-thick medallions. Season with S&P on both sides. Then press the tenderloins (with your hands or the flat side of a knife) until it’s about 3/4 inch thick. Heat your pan over medium high heat. Put in the oil. When the oil is shimmering, add half of the pork pieces. Sear them on one side for 2 minutes, then flip them using tongs and sear the other side for about 2 minutes more (they should be firm around the sides). Remove to plate and cover with foil. Repeat with the rest of the pork. Add the onion and cook until it starts to get soft, stirring occasionally. Add the raisins. Let the onions and raisins cook together for a while so the onions get nicely caramelized. Add wine, cayenne and paprika. If you don’t like spicy, you can reduce the amounts of these, but I would recommend still adding them, maybe at about 1/2 of the amount I used. Let the wine reduce by about half. Pour in the chicken broth and any juice from the tenderloin pieces that has accumulated on the plate and continue to simmer for a few minutes longer. Off the heat, add the butter, 1 Tbsp at a time, swirling each Tbsp piece around until it melts. Serve the sauce over the pork medallions.

Fennel with Raisins and Cherry Tomatoes

1 tsp Vegetable oil

2 Fennel bulbs, julienned

1 Tbsp sugar

1/4 cup raisins, chopped

1 pint cherry tomatoes, quartered

Sprinkle of salt

Heat a pan over medium high heat. Add oil, then fennel. Stir fennel to coat with oil and add sugar. Stir, then add raisins. Cook for several minutes, stirring occasionally, to let the fennel soften and start to caramelize. I can’t remember how long this took, but the fennel will start to darken and get soft, but still have a little bit of bite to it. Add the tomatoes and stir them in. cook for a few more minutes to let the tomatoes start to soften, but don’t let them get too mushy. Sprinkle a little salt on, stir, serve.

I was so happy with the way these dishes turned out. Lots of flavor and great textures. The only thing I might have done differently would be to add more wine, chicken broth and butter to the pan sauce to have more of the liquid part of the sauce. It was yummy.

We have already decided to go to 3 ingredients this next week and I drew them from our spreadsheet. I do it like the old game Battleship, picking coordinates that my husband matches up the the spaces on his spreadsheet. The one way that we limit what comes up is that he makes sure at least one of the ingredients is a protein. So, next week? Sweet pickles. Bran cereal. And Pickled Herring. Yes, you read that right. Pickled Herring. My husband told me this and then said, “I hate pickled herring.” What?! This freaked me out a little, because I thought I was doomed from the start if he hates it (I’ve never had it, so I have no idea, though I can imagine, how vile it is). I was prepared to go ahead with it, but I think he felt bad for including such a horrendous ingredient on his list. He suggested we draw a different protein, and we did. The next one that came up was Canned tuna. But after thinking about it for a bit, I told him that I wanted to go ahead with the herring. That’s the challenge, right? Taking something crazy, and potentially kind of gross, and making it fabulous? *gulp* Hubby did point out that it’s actually a win-win situation for me though. If the dish I make is horrible, I can blame it on the herring. If it’s delicious, I become a cooking goddess. Score. I told him I can’t even begin to plan what I’m going to make though until I go to the store and get some herring and taste it. I have no idea what it’s texture or consistency or taste is like, so I can’t figure out what I’ll do until I know that. Wish me luck!!

In other exciting news from the weekend (and to get on to the cute pics), we got our swing set delivered on Friday! The Hubby and I started putting it together during nap time yesterday.

Naturally we couldn’t get it all done while the girls were sleeping, so they joined us outside while we continued to work on it.

We had to put in some more time this morning, though it was mostly the hubby getting it done today because the girls were awake the whole time. Finished product:

We have to trim up the landscaping and the dead stuff underneath a bit and put down some soft mulch, but the girls didn’t care about that. They went right to it after they woke from naps.

This one continues to amaze me with her climbing. My mom says she gets it from me.

And no, she didn’t actually climb all the way onto the platform by herself, but she did climb the ladder all the way to the top, until her hands reached the platform and she wasn’t sure what to do with them to keep climbing. I don’t have photos of that part of her performance, because I was hovering around her as spotter just in case. She never even faltered though!

I love this swing set and I know the girls will get so much fun out of it. According to my husband, who had to deal with most of the inevitable frustrations of putting such a contraption together, they’d better!

As a last note, please excuse the status of my header right now. I thought it was about time to change up the photos, but for some reason could not get the far left photo to fit in the header correctly. Also, some of the photos in this post have a bit of a foggy look to them. It’s because my camera lens fogged up when I took it from inside the air conditioning to the muggy outside. Sorry!

Full

Posted on July 7, 2011 by Amy

Starting swimming lessons and gymnastics class and three forensic cases to do and trying to get in my 20 days of exercise this month and watching Chopped last night. . . and this week is quickly getting away from me. So I realized, “What happened to my Independence Day post?” Well, it got combined with my Wednesday July 6th post, that’s what. Here you go!

As I predicted, our 4th of July celebration consisted of more of the same festivities that filled the rest of our holiday weekend.

Well hello there Hunk.

Celebrating the birth of our country with my sunscreened babies, splashing and loving the water. Cherishing family. Perfect.

That and great outdoor food. We had grilled kielbasa, veggie kabobs, potato salad, the works. Even ice cream!

Miss loves her “Chocolate ice cream on a stick” – otherwise known as a Dove Bar.

And this little one had her first taste of the sweet stuff.

The brat making continued. Here’s my hubby making sausage.

My hubby after I pointed out to him that he’s wearing his “Wiener Shop” T Shirt.

Wieners.

We ate some for dinner tonight. Fantastic. There’s nothing like fresh, homemade sausage. He also made chorizo, which I love to cook with. I can’t wait to try out a new recipe using it.

Speaking of new recipes, my “Chopped” ingredients this week are cherry tomatoes and raisins. I wasn’t able to get to the grocery store until today, but I got my ingredients and have something of a plan for my dish. I need to refine it in my head before I dive in to make it, so it’ll be Friday or so before I do it. Stay tuned.

I think I’ve written about how I have ordered some new big girl outdoor toys for Miss so that the push-behind lion can be passed down to Lass now. We are still waiting for her trike, but her roller skates arrived yesterday. And so did these:

We had to try them on today to make sure they fit. I ordered them with the intention that they would fit her now and also be gear she can grow into, so they look a little big but they do fit. Naturally she didn’t want to take them off and had to dance around in them until I had to nearly pry them off her for nap time.

Soon to come will be photos of this ensemble, outside, with little Barbie roller skates. I love it.

Right now we’re busy in a great way. Miss loves her gymnastics class and seems to be enjoying her new swimming class so far. We’re having play dates.

I’m enjoying work. Being a professional. Sorting out the intricacies of psychiatric diagnosis when a case is a little unusual. It helps me to be well-rounded. To be challenged and stretch my brain in a different grown up way. Then I come home and get back to my real job. And it’s good. My life is full. In the best possible way.