Pi Day!

For the last two years we've joined geeks around the world and celebrated Pi Day.  Pi Day is March 14th, or Pi 3.14.

This year's Pi Day almost didn't happen, until Brian whipped up some apple hand pies.  We had leftover phyllo dough in the fridge and it made for a pretty good crust.  They didn't last long.


To add to our celebration:  pound cake.  Will adores pound cake, and he and Brian made this one together.  It was a strange recipe--you put it in a cold oven and turn it on.  Came out nicely so I guess it's a keeper!

"two great tastes that taste great together"

Valentine Treats

This is how we celebrate Valentine's Day....no gifts.  No outings.  Just cards, a little candy for the boys, and food.  Awesome food.  Because, why go to a restaurant, wait in line for an hour WITH RESERVATIONS and come home completely ticked off that the food was so-so?  Making our own is so much more fun.  This year, Brian made a day of it.  The day was bitterly cold and no one wanted to leave the house.  The comfort foods made the house feel pleasant and we didn't mind being stuck inside.

Breakfast:  Homemade waffles with caramel coulis.  Homemade caramel, even.  AWESOME.

Lunch:  Squash soup and cheese toasts.  The soup was from Epicurious I think, and featured both butternut and acorn squash.  The toasts were just baguette with a little asiago on top, but it complimented the soup nicely.

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Dinner was a stuffed pork loin wrapped in bacon.  I don't have any photos because it was a bit frustrating for Brian to cook.  There's reason to believe that our oven is on it's last legs, as it takes FOREVER for things to bake/roast.  It was delicious, despite the issues.


Dessert:  Chocolate Almond Mousse with fresh whipped cream.  It was supposed to be hazelnut, but you need to change gameplans when the hazelnuts are rancid.  This was good, a little heavy for any other night of the year.

So that was our day of delightfulness.  Until next year....

Naturally, There's Cake

Happy New Year!!!  Hubby made this gorgeous, sinful chocolate cake, since we always celebrate NYE with cake.  Wow.....it's so good!

Hope 2015 brings lots of good things.

Valentine's Day

Hubby and I aren't big on celebrating Valentine's Day.  It's a simple affair, really.  We exchange cards between ourselves and the kids, and we always get them a little box of chocolates.  Haven't gone out to dinner in years, between the crowds and reservations and (often subpar food) we just gave it up.

Besides, when your significant other can cook like THIS, why would you want to go out?  Especially if this masterpiece is followed up by Marscapone and Fudge brownies??

 Steak with a mushroom wine sauce, baked potato, crab legs and asparagus.  

Leftover Pizza Day

What's better than Make Your Own Pizza for a birthday celebration on Sunday, complete with red velvet and chocolate mini cupcakes?

Going home for lunch on Monday, just for the sheer reason of using a toaster oven to warm up the pizza instead of getting it all rubber-y in the microwave.  Seriously delicious.  Bacon, peppers, onion, mushroom and garlic is a good combo.

"Sexy."

Yesterday was Hubby and I's 13th anniversary.  Lucky number 13!  Since we're going to the Cape this weekend to celebrate, it was a pretty low-key Monday.  With the exception of dinner, of course.  At least, that's what was on the social calendar of the evening.

Brian chose a Rachael Ray recipe online, for "Sexy Surf and Turf."  How can you not like a recipe with a name like that?  It called for sweet vermouth, so I stopped at the liquor store to buy some.  Not being much of a drinker, I didn't know that there was a difference between "sweet" and "dry" vermouth so I'm glad that the recipe was specific.  The steak had a rich sauce with shallots and vermouth, aptly called "Manhattan Sauce."  Let me tell you, it was to DIE FOR.  The three perfectly-cooked sea scallops on top were excellent as well.  I had also purchased a bottle of prosecco, which neither of us had ever tried.  It was very nice, sweeter than the usual champagne.  I guess I DO like champagne, when it's cold and fresh.  The little sip that you get at a wedding toast is usually flat and warm.

So that was the "sexy" part of the evening.  The rest of the anniversary was decidedly un-sexy.  Pre-dinner, the sauce smoked a bit and set off the smoke detector.  In this house, if one goes off they all go off, and that really startled the kids.  Every window and door had to be opened, and a fan put on "exhaust" in the living room window.  Sean cried while Will hung out on the front stoop to get away from the noise.  Did I also mention the rain and potential thunderstorms?  After that was over, we sat down for a nice dinner.  The kids enjoyed their plain steak and rice.  No sooner were we all on our last bite, the power went out.  Apparently, it doesn't take much for that to happen around here!  With no TV, I read the boys stories from Will's school bag, and we all snuggled up on the couch and loveseat in the living room, by candlelight.  We got the boys situated in sleeping bags on their bedroom floor.  Many thanks to Papa, for getting them light sabers at a yard sale.  They make for great "glow sticks" in a power outage!

Breakfast Birthday Party

My parents have the luck to have their birthdays four days apart (but my Dad is a year older.)  We always celebrate them together.  This year, we had a Breakfast Birthday Party one Saturday morning to celebrate!

It was a big hit, with fruit, juice, waffles, 2 kinds of quiche, bacon AND sausage and the piece de resistance....a birthday cake made from caramel-iced cinnamon rolls!  Everyone loved the food, and I'll bet NO ONE was hungry for lunch!

Happy Birthday Mom and Dad!

A Brownie Preview

I've never been really "into" Valentine's Day."  As a whole, I find it to be commercial and forced.  Plus, I still remember being single on Valentines Day and just wishing the day to be over.  Sure, we used to go out to dinner on Valentine's Day, or get flowers or gifts.   Restaurants on V day are for suckers....and the last time I made a reservation on Valentine's Day and STILL waited an hour for a table, well that was the end of THAT!  In short, it's become a very simple affair, cards and a little treat for the boys, and cards for Hubby and I.

But when Hubby suggested we make ourselves a really nice meal, I couldn't say no.  It's a well-known fact, neither of us can say no to good food!  He decided on the menu (filet and lobster tails) and I decided to make a chocolate dessert.  Nothing too crazy, after all, it was going to be a weeknight so there wasn't enough prep time.  I posed the question to my friends on Google Plus, and my (real life) friend Alisha came to the rescue with her Lindt Chocolate Brownies.

I had never made brownies from scratch before, and that's a damn shame.  After all, there's nothing wrong with a dessert recipe that starts with this:

Chop 'em up, and melt 'em.  Luckily, I had Alton Brown's final episode of Good Eats, entitled "Turn on the Dark" to help with all of that.  And thanks to him, I know to chop and microwave.  Smooooooooth.

Look at all that chocolatey goodness!  

Now they're baked, Hubby is still at school and the house smells like a chocolate factory.  I texted him to give him a preview and he said "We have to wait til TOMORROW??  But I'm starving."  

And I'm weak.  If he comes home and wants to cut into them, I won't be able to say no.

After all, from-scratch brownies that look like that can't be anything short of amazing, right?  :)

Birthday Fiesta!

Tomorrow is Sean's second birthday, so yesterday we had the family over for a little Tex-Mex birthday party!  The boys love flour tortillas, cheese and meat so it was a meal enjoyed by everyone.  Plus, a casual birthday party with family is perfect for when your little boy is turning two.

Brian making Alton Brown's "Man Nachos."  I loved his (Alton's, that is) making of "spacers" (i.e. big balls of crunched-up foil) to sit between the nachos.  These nachos were special!  Plus homemade guacamole, soooooo good!

Taco station in the kitchen.  Everyone plates their own meal and then finds a spot to eat.  Love it  :)

Followed by...dessert and our Happy Birthday song stylings.  Vanilla buttercream cupcakes with ice cream.  As usual...Cake Doctor recipe.  Something strange happened when we went to put the sprinkles on the cupcakes...the buttercream had set and the sprinkles would HIT the cupcake, bounce off and land on the floor.  It really was pretty funny.

 The birthday boy is very serious about his chocolate ice cream....not a drop was wasted.

Happy Birthday, Sean!

Made with Love

First breakfast of 2012:  Homemade Eggs Benedict.  I suspect that Brian picked this so he could cross off one thing on his own "Day Zero" list on the first day of the new year!

A labor of love, indeed.  Hollandaise sauce is a bit of a pain to make, but it's creamy deliciousness is worth the work.  The cookbook said that you should be able to mix it up in about 15 minutes....it took Brian 35 minutes.  Probably because it was his first time.

Poached eggs, crispy strips of Canadian bacon, whole-wheat English muffins and a little hollandaise.  What better way to start the year?

New Year's Cake

We have a little tradition around here of having a New Year's Cake.  On New Year's Eve we pick out a cake recipe, and make it to have while ushering out the old and bringing in the new.  It's usually not too fancy, just a recipe that's simple and delicious.

This year's cake is from the original Cake Doctor Book:  Maryann's Simple Chocolate Cake.  Instead of the called-for homemade chocolate syrup frosting, we opted to use a cannister of chocolate fudge Duncan Hines in the pantry.

Happy New Year from our family to yours, and Best Wishes in 2012!

Creamy Chicken and Asparagus Over Toast

Last Friday was a flurry of activity:  getting out of work early and then preparing for the weekend's Christmas festivities.  But we took some time to make something really, truly fantastic out of one of my Rachael Ray Cookbooks:  Creamy Chicken and Asparagus over Toast.  I chose this recipe based on the awesome-sounding title and didn't even read it.

The recipe was a little misleading.  I was picturing something like a creamed chicken with bits of asparagus, over some regular sandwich bread toast.  WRONG!

Chicken breast, shredded gruyere cheese, fresh asparagus, ham strips and caramelized onion.  Served atop buttered baguette, broiled.  How could this be anything short of amazing??  It did not disappoint.  Dinner was a silent affair for the most part, as we hungrily enjoyed every bite.  Upon telling my mother about the recipe, she said what I think every time I make a RR recipe:  "She really doesn't pay any attention to calories."  No, no she doesn't.  But we were also in agreement that if you eat just a small portion, you're good to go.  We cut this meal into four portions, and had one for dinner and one for lunch the next day.   A perfect meal, for when you are wrapping and running around!

Birthday Treats

Tomorrow is my birthday, but my family got together today, being the weekend and all.  Nothing is better than having my family over for my birthday, I love family dinners.

Today's dinner was ALL. ABOUT. ME!!!  A nice dinner at home, and I got to pick everything that went in it.  So Italian it is....with both chicken and eggplant parmesan!  Good Lord I love both of those things.  To have them both on the same plate is just about as perfect as it gets!

For dessert I chose a Cake Doctor Recipe...one that resembles one of my favorite childhood treats.  Hostess Cupcakes!!  Devils' food cake, creamy filling and if they spell out "Happy Birthday Ginny," well, that is just sweet.

Potluck Party

Last night was the Fourth Annual Hook and Needler Potluck and Holiday Swap!  It was the third year that I hosted, and I really love hosting this party.  Somewhere between 10 and 15 people congregate at my house, bringing food to share and gifts to swap.  We have lots of great food, and gather around my dining room table to knit/crochet, laugh and chat, and swap gifts.  It's low-key and casual, and I love it.

Brian loves it too, because he loves to entertain.  He had some vacation time to burn before the end of the year, so he took a half-day to clean up and make sure that the house was festive, and to make an appetizer:  Buttermilk Chicken Tenders with dipping sauces.  You know us...anything fried is delicious and we don't have it that often.  The sauces were pretty awesome too, fresh peanut sauce, feta and chive and Brian's new favorite, "molasses gravy."  Other foods that were here were chocolate cake shaped like a snowman with a coconut frosting, homemade custard flan (wow!) and authentic Italian Cookies.  Mmmmm.

I don't have any pictures of the event, really.  That's because we were all busy eating and enjoying.  This get-together is always a fabulous way to start of the Holiday Season.  :)

Father's Day Feast

It's a tradition to spend Father's Day down at my parent's cottage in Connecticut.  We usually have a big cookout, gifts and summer activities.  This year's put every previous year's to shame:  we had ribs! 

Mmmm.....ribs.  Mom got the Lloyd's ribs that come pre-basted with barbecue sauce, all you have to do is wrap them in foil and cook them on low.  Ribs from scratch are quite a production, they take like three hours on the grill.  You also have to be careful with what you use for seasoning, too much spice will render them inedible.  So this was the perfect, easy meal for our growing family.  Rounded out by potato packets, salad, coleslaw and fresh corn on the cob.  Dessert was blueberry or apple pie, and cupcakes for the kids.  (And my brother, a kid at heart.) 

Happy Father's Day to my dad, my husband, and the dad-to-be, my brother! 

Mother's Day Treats

My Mother's Day was filled with delectable treats.  First up:

Buttermilk Pancakes and Fresh Strawberry Syrup.  We've made this syrup for years, it's a recipe out of Cooking Light but you'd never know it.  So good....someday I'm going to serve it over ice cream.

Spiced Squash Muffins with Dried Cranberries and Golden Raisins.  I bought butternut squash last week and it sat in the fridge with no plans....so I went to allrecipes.com and found this recipe.  Loved it!  (and so did the kids, and they're packed with good stuff.  So there.)

Chicken Pasta with homemade sauce, fresh italian bread, and salad for supper.  Not to mention my parents and my brother and sister-in-law coming over for a big family dinner.  :)

And the best for last:  Melted Ice Cream Cake with Chocolate Marshmallow Frosting!  Yes, another Cake Doctor creation!!  A tub of melted ice cream replaces all the liquid in the recipe.  Our ice cream choice:  Central Market brand Caramel Caribou.  Left on the counter to melt for the morning.  Brian then scooped out all the caramel choco-cups with a slotted spoon and added them to the cake batter.  Wow.  That is some fine cake.  :)

Happy Mother's Day, everyone!

Sweet!

Our friends Michael and Tracy are getting married tomorrow, and Hubby and I are the bridal party.  That's it, just me the maid of honor (I refuse to say "matron" as it sounds so frumpy!) and him as best man.  We went out to dinner to celebrate last night.

First we went to Via Italian Table in the Woo.  I'd been there for lunch, and it's always been good.  Dinner was even better, fancier and delicious!  We ordered prosciutto-wrapped shrimp as an appetizer, they were the BIGGEST shrimp that I have ever seen!  P.s.  "Biggest Shrimp" is a fun oxymoron.  Hubby surprised me by ordering Atlantic Salmon with white bean ragu because he hates beans.  He's got a real problem with "mishy" texture, shunning foods such as beans and (gulp!) cheesecake.  I ordered a spit-roasted beef tenderloin florentine with parmesano-reggiano risotto.  God, that was good!

For dessert, we headed to a dessert bar on "restaurant row" called Sweet.  I've driven past this place many times and it just looks like a bakery from the window.  However, we pulled up the website at work the other day and WOW!  It's a lot more than that!  Michael had caramel bread pudding, Brian had bananas foster, Tracy had peanut butter donuts dipped in chocolate and I had s'mores.  Not your typical s'mores mind you.  They make their marshmallows from scratch in-house, and I am forever ruined for commercial marshmallows.  (Not that I will stop eating them.  I mean....really.)  They bring you a little hibachi to toast your mashmallows and instead of graham crackers, they give you fresh cookies to sandwich it all together.  This thing was the real deal.  I've never had s'mores like that, they were out of this world.  There was nothing typical about the donuts either.  Right by the bar they have a cooking station.  After we ordered, the pastry chef got busy frying something.  The smell was pure heaven, and imagine the delight when we realized that they were frying Tracy some fresh donuts.  They do have some things for the calorie-conscious....which clearly the four of us were NOT last night.  (Live it up, live it up.) They had a dessert called "I'm on a Diet" which was homemade sorbet and fresh fruit.  And from the bar you could order a "SWB" (Skinny White Bitch) which is just Stoli Vanil with Diet Coke.  Think about it.....appropriately named, no?  :)

Good friends, lots of laughs, lots of good food.  Two places I would go to again in a heartbeat!!

Birthday Pizza and Cupcakes

We hosted a small family get-together for Sean's first birthday last weekend.  Since it was about ten people, we had "make-your-own" mini pizzas.  BJ's sells a big pack of personal-size Boboli pizza crusts and individual sauce packets.  They came out great!  Everyone got to have exactly what they wanted for toppings, how much cheese, etc.  Brian put them directly on the oven grates so they would crisp up nicely.  Mmm.....

The birthday cupcakes were out-of-this-world!!!  We went back and forth about whether to make them or buy them, and I'm so glad we made them.  They're from the Cake Doctor's second cake book, and they were the cookie-dough cupcakes.  Yellow cake mix with Tollhouse Cookie Dough in the centers, then frosted with a homemade chocolate buttercream frosting.  The frosting was perfect, perfectly chocolate and not at all sickly-sweet.  We served them as is, I'm glad I didn't add ice cream to the plate because then it would have been just too much and taken away from the goodness of the cupcake.  Everyone loved them!  Sean especially enjoyed his:

Thinking Outside of the Can

Pie time!! We'll be bringing two pies to Thanksgiving dinner at my Mom and Dad's house, a pumpkin pie and a coconut custard pie.  I've been making pumpkin pie for years, and I've always relied on a can of Libby's pumpkin puree.  However, I really despise that said can of pumpkin puree shoots up to $5 per can at Thanksgiving time.  (Highway robbery, outrage!)  So when Brian watched an episode of (what else?) Good Eats and AB processed his own sugar pumpkins for puree, we figured why not?  Plus I've heard pumpkin pie with fresh pumpkin is out of this world flavor-wise.

BTW, you can't just pick up any pumpkin and make puree for pie and expect it to taste good.  Sugar pumpkins are smaller and more round, and yield a superior puree.  I expected sugar pumpkins to be more difficult to find but there they were, sitting at the front of our new grocery store.  I was also pleasantly surprised by their price tag of 2 for $3.00.  Yes, it's going to take a little bit of elbow grease, more than it takes to wield a can opener.

The first step is cutting off the tops and scooping out the flesh and seeds.  (We're reserving the seeds for toasting. I've never had toasted pumpkin seeds but Brian assures me that they're delicious.)  Next, each pumpkin gets cut in half and baked in a 400-degree oven for 35 minutes.  After they cool for an hour, it's time to scoop out all the flesh, and use a food processor to turn it into puree.

Yield:  enough pumpkin for approximately four pies.  Or, for one Thanksgiving pie, some for the freezer, some for the baby (who loved it with a little cinnamon) and for these:

Pumpkin Pie Creme Brulee!

As expected, out of this world.  I don't think we'll ever used canned pumpkin again!

Perfect Party

I'm very proud of myself.  Sean was baptized over the weekend, and we had the reception at the house afterwards for about 25 people.  Usually I stress to the gills over parties, rushing around cooking like a madwoman and cleaning my house.  (Yeah, because my party guests are going to critique our cleaning skills.)  I didn't freak out, and I didn't cook.  That's right, I didn't cook.  I ordered deli platters, a cookie tray, a small sheet cake and enough soda, beer and wine to fill two coolers in my kitchen.  I didn't agonize over what to make, and I didn't end up with tons of leftovers, just a small bag of leftover sandwiches and a little cake.  It was perfect, and I had as good a time as everyone else without obsession.  Hooray!