Brought to you by The Letter "F"

No, not that "F".......today's words are Freezer, Frittata and Fail.

First the frittata....last night's dinner was from the Epicurious  cookbook that we like so much....it was called "Kitchen Sink Frittata."  In other words....tons of stuff in it.  In anticipation of (hopefully) knocking some things off the Holiday To-Do list, Brian had dinner on the table early.  The kids weren't interested in the slightest so they had leftover pizza.  Sean's got an aversion to pizza lately, but even he had a little and then some yogurt.  Anyway.....it was delicious.  Not the most filling meal in the world but just have two pieces and you're good to go!  It had tomatoes, basil and potatoes, and plenty of cheese.  Brian said that the recipe had called for bacon but he didn't put it in, given his bacon-cooking woes as of late.  (Smoke, smoke smoke!)  And I now know the difference between a frittata and a quiche....quiche has crust.  And either of them would be delicious at breakfast.

Now for Freezer and Fail.  I've got a lot of friends that have super good luck in freezing things.  There's a lot of pins on Pinterest about freezer meals.  Yet.....I don't have much luck in the freezing department.  Either I forget something is IN the freezer and it gets destroyed over time, or it wasn't meant to be in the first place.  We also seem to have a shortage in plastic containers, but obviously that's an easy fix:  get more containers.  The most recent fail was the other day:  Brian had made bone-in chicken breasts with a corn relish, with mashed potatoes sometime in November.  It was more food than we could eat at one meal and we were heading to Philly in a few days.  I hate to throw food out, so I froze the chicken, relish and potatoes separately.  This week being a busy week (HA!  That's an understatement) I defrosted them.  Only to my dismay....the potatoes were soup and the relish had turned brown.  The chicken was probably fine but I'm throwing it out anyway because I have nothing to go with it.  I want to get better at this, if other people can do it so can I!

Taking the Reins

As I've mentioned before, my husband is the cook.  I CAN cook, but he's more of the family chef than I am.  I can certainly feed my family, and I can make good food, but fancy food is not in my reparte.

Except for last night, where I have to say I made a pretty damn good Chicken Marsala.

Chicken Marsala is my favorite meal.  It's what I judge a new (to me) restaurant on, and a favorite at some of my favorites.  So when I saw that Brian had put it on the menu with rice and steamed zucchini, I was excited for a Monday night dinner.  Being excited for anything on a Monday is a stretch, so this was a big deal.

In comes Murphy's Law.  Good Ol' Mr. Murphy likes Mondays.  And a big monkey wrench was thrown into the Chicken Marsala plans.  Huge accident on the MassPike involving a coffee truck overturning and leaking fuel, which naturally brought gridlock and a rotten commute for all.  Even for me, the lady who has nothing to complain about now that she has a itty bitty commute compared to the big honking 35-miles-each-way-through-Hell that I had years ago.  I called Brian on the way home and reported the mess, and told him that it was going to take a while.  He said that we could order sandwiches when he got home, whenever that was going to be.

Upon getting home though, I remembered that driving in that kind of mess just sucks the energy right out of you.  Sometimes Brian would have a hot meal waiting for me and the travel stress would just slide away like water off a duck's back.  So my mind was made up...dammit, I'm going in.....to the kitchen.

Instead of rice, I chose mashed potatoes since potatoes go bad a lot faster than rice.  I pounded chicken breasts, sauteed mushrooms and onions, made sauce from scratch.  All while feeding the kids sliced apples and leftover homemade mac n cheese with ham and fielding math questions from Sean and Minecraft video recaps from Will.  At one point my house grew very smoky, and I had to run around opening doors and windows.  (No fire alarms!)  I was plating the chicken as the garage door opened, and everything was perfect.  Well, truth be told the house was a little chilly because I forgot to close the dining room window.  Usually I'm the chilly one but I was in a camisole and busting my butt in the kitchen!  The chicken was perfectly cooked, soft without a hint of "rubber."  The mushroom and onions didn't burn at all and the sauce was blended nicely.  Awesome, I pulled it off!!!
And Brian?   He loved it.    Not that our local sandwich place doesn't have mighty fine wares, but a homecooked meal from someone that loves you at the end of a stressful day....nothing better than that.

The Art of French Cooking

Brian's birthday was in September and I got him a cookbook that he's wanted for some time:  Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking."  As neither of us have any experience in EATING french cuisine, much less cooking it, it's a new culinary adventure.

He's made two dishes so far....Daube de Boeuf and Pork Sylvie.  Both meals took the better part of a Sunday but were out of the park. The Daube de Boeuf was kind of like a beef stew, only baked in the oven.  We had it with a Parmesan Risotto that was to DIE FOR.  Brian told the kids that it was "steak and cheesy rice."  Will remarked that he'd never had steak like it and Brian just told him that it was a "wet method" of cooking.   He didn't eat it all but certainly didn't complain.

The Pork Sylvie came at a time where I was needing comfort food in a big way, after my kidney surgery.  It was this perfect pork roast, stuffed with swiss cheese.  Normally I'm not a big Swiss cheese fan but this was divine.  Lots of leftovers, which of course made me quite happy.

I think I could get used to eating French food.  Not every day of course, but as often as Brian can cook it.

All things Pumpkin

Last night we attended our very first "Trunk or Treat."  Don't know what that is?  It's this really cool way of doing "Trick or Treating" in a parking lot with candy in people's trunks.  Also, it's safer so yu don't worry about your kids walking by themselves.

The party also featured "Glow Chucks" (it was at Will's karate school) and the kids had a great time!  Also a costume contest and the purpose of this blog, a pumpkin cooking contest.

Brian was originally going to make individual pumpkin creme brulees, but we didn't have enough time since we were also preparing for Will's birthday party this weekend.  So I found a recipe for pumpkin cupcakes with caramel cream cheese frosting.  They were an awesome Pinterest find and really easy.  Any recipe that lets you use a box mix and a jar of caramel ice cream topping is aces in my book.  After the cupcakes are baked you take a straw and poke holes in them, then put caramel topping in the holes.  It makes for a really moist, sweet cake.  And the frosting was incredible too!  We had said that we were going to bring cookies, which I had planned on just buying.  I never got to the store though, so Brian baked pumpkin chocolate chip cookies for the potluck table.  They were really good too, chewy and just enough pumpkin flavor.

We didn't win the contest...a pumpkin-maple bar with bacon took the prize.  And who can argue with that....it's BACON!  We did get a lot of compliments, though.  There's always next year.  And stupidly....I didn't get a picture.  Use your imaginations this time.  :)

A Chicken in Every Pot

When I wrote the menu last week, I decided to give something a try...

I go home for lunch most days, it's a nifty benefit of living and working in the same town.  So...why not put together a crockpot meal while I'm there?  I chose something easy, Crockpot Chicken Teriyaki.    This way, there wasn't chopping of a million ingredients or having to pre-cook anything.  And hey, if it didn't come out well, there's always pizza.  (my standard answer to bad dinners everywhere)

It came out better than well.  It was great!  Imagine coming home from work after picking up the kids at school/preschool, to the smell of dinner already cooking.  All that was left to do was make rice, steam broccoli and thicken the sauce with a little cornstarch.  (We were out so Brian used a tiny amount of flour while I was folding laundry.)  Bang!  Dinner on the table at 6pm, leaving time for Will and I to finish watching "Goonies."

Hmmm...."Crockpot Monday" may just become a thing!

Mixed Reviews

Two meals from last week:  cheesy ravioli bake and meatloaf "cakes."  I thought that they were pretty kid-friendly.  I was apparently wrong.

The first one, cheesy ravioli bake, seemed like a slam-dunk.  Both kids adore cheese ravioli, especially Will.  I figured this was cheese ravioli with a little bit of veggies and some cheese on top, for the win.  Brian and I loved it!  The kids?  Notsomuch.  Will picked at the ravioli and Sean cried that it looked "terrible."  Later on Sean told me that he likes ravioli, but next time don't make it with the "leaves" and tomatoes if I want him to eat it.  Leaves are baby spinach, by the way.

Then on Tuesday or Thursday (all my nights run together after a while) Brian made a "meatloaf cake" recipe that I had found on Pinterest.  Now, I am not a big meatloaf person.  I have never had a meatloaf at home that I've really liked.  A bread pan with a "loaf of meat" with a big fat slick on top just isn't delicious.  Not so with these.  They were perfectly cooked and didn't resemble martian food, very flavorful.  And the slick of fat?  Nowhere to be seen.  We served it with egg noodles and canned green beans.  (aka STILL the only vegetable these two will eat without a fight)  The meatloaf was a big old No Go.  I threw in the towel and acquiesced to their request for peanut butter and jelly.

All this meant that there was more leftovers for us.  Later on in the week Brian made loaded mashed potatoes to go with the meatloaf cakes when we ran out of noodles.  We had a lot of potatoes in the house, and these were awesome.  Obviously, we will continue to soldier on, to get these boys to eat new things.

If you're interested in the meatloaf "cakes" recipe:  here it is.  We omitted the sriracha to make it more "kid friendly."  Hahahahahahaha!  :)

Summer Wrap-Up

Look at that!  A whole month went by with no posts.

That's not to say that we haven't been eating.  Obviously, we ate, or I wouldn't be here to write this!  We had a lot of good stuff, not that I can remember all of it for this post.  I found a bangin' recipe for chicken caprese that was out of this world good.  I'd post a pic, but every since I replaced my phone a couple of months ago when my youngest dropped it at Disney World, I can't auto-update photos from my phone.  So here's the recipe:  Chicken Caprese.  Normally I'm not a fan of grape tomatoes, but they really worked in this dish.

Another Pinterest recipe that I tried this summer:  Nectarine and Basil Pizza.    I substituted peaches which was a mistake, because the peach crop this year was abysmal.  Well, at least in the grocery stores it was, I have YET to go peach picking!  Another tip....don't try to make it a quicker dinner by using a Boboli crust.  It just didn't work.  Eating weird-textured peaches on a boboli feels like you are eating a very sad cracker.

Now we're starting to get towards fall, and tonight I made chili.  It wasn't quite "chili weather" but it still tasted good.  oh, and meatballs for the freezer.  Now THOSE came out well!

Tomorrow night we're having a chicken ginger stir-fry, and trying a new recipe on Tuesday.  It's chicken with artichokes and red potatoes.  Looking forward to it.  And though I don't update often, I'm glad to be back!