Heather Bakes

That’s What She Said…

Hermit November 13, 2009

Filed under: November 2009 — heatherwlu @ 5:09 am
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Did anyone see 30 Rock tonight?? The new cast member? JACK BAKER. It’s a sign, folks… okay, maybe not. But still cool.

Is it sad that the only time I left the house today was to hit up Sonic’s happy hour? Don’t answer that. This morning I decided to tempt the heartburn gods and have a big bowl of yogurt for breakfast:

pear

Plain yogurt with a really juicy pear, cereal, walnuts and honey. And no heartburn!!

Brian calls our garage fridge “The Place Where Leftovers Go To Die.” There are always like 10 takeout boxes shoved in there, and we never end up eating any of it. Well today I remembered that we had part of a roasted chicken hiding in there, so I chopped that up and had it on an Ezekiel bun spread with this awesome cranberry-cinnamon goat cheese from Costco… and pickles on the side.

chicksand

I should remember leftovers more often.

The November issue of Bon Appetit featured a Molly Wizenberg article about vegetarian Thanksgiving meals. She was complaining about the lack of a “central” dish in most meatless holiday dinners (rather than a bunch of random sides) and gave a recipe for Butternut Squash and Cheddar Bread Pudding. As soon as I read the ingredients- butternut squash, kale, wine, sharp cheddar- I knew that I had to try it ASAP.

It’s not exactly a difficult recipe skillwise, but it is pretty labor intensive. And the sink was FULL of dishes afterwards. You have to peel, dice and roast the squash (my least favorite cooking task ever), chop and saute the kale, marinate the bread for a while in an egg mixture, then assemble and bake for the better part of an hour. The result?

squashcas

Pretty good. Not my favorite dish ever (especially given the time involved), but it did have a nice flavor and I loved that it included some of my favorite fall veggies. Next time I would use more cheese and maybe spice up the egg mixture a bit more. A whole grain baguette would have been a good alternative, too. We had it with the leftover tournedos from dinner last weekend, and Brian put together a quick mozzarella & tomato stack. The boy loves fresh mozzarella:

squashcas2

Oh, and fair warning: The recipe makes a TON. I think it serves 6-8.

Hey, guess what? Tomorrow’s FRIDAY!!! Woohoo! I’ve already started compiling our to-do list for the weekend. Mwahahaha.

-SURVEY-

Weekend plans?

Um, not spending money? That’s the goal, at least. We need to get a bunch of random stuff done around the house: raking the 5 billion leaves currently covering our yard, installing the carseat, some thank you note writing… thrilling, I know. Don’t be jealous.

 

Fatty Fat’s Sandwich Ranch October 30, 2009

Filed under: October 2009 — heatherwlu @ 3:10 am
Tags: , , ,

Okay, it was between that and “Bookface.” Both The Office and 30 Rock were awesome. I almost peed my pants when Liz tried to use a candle for deodorant. Resourceful. Now we’re on to Project Runway.

I loved yesterday’s breakfast so much that I decided to do it all over again:

yogrepeat

Plain yogurt mixed with pumpkin, topped with cereal, walnuts, dried cherries and honey. Don’t worry- I’m now out of plain yogurt, pumpkin and cherries so tomorrow will be more creative.

This morning I caught up on blogs, did some (tiny) laundry…

-16

This shirt kills me. Some of Jack’s stuff is so teency that I can’t even figure out how to fold it.

After laundry I *kind of* starting packing for the hospital. EEK. I hit my “35/35″ today: 35 weeks along, 35 days left.

The goal of lunch was to clean out the fridge. The dregs of Sunday’s tortilla soup, plus I found this in the freezer:

dumpling

Chicken and vegetable potstickers. I pan fried them for a few minutes. Kind of a random lunch, but it hit the spot!

soupdumpling

After lunch I headed to Whole Foods… they were out of my crack cereal, but I did score a few more holiday Clif bars, some cashew butter, fresh brussels sprouts, brown rice, beans and chocolate milk. Speaking of, look what I chugged on the way home:

-15

Brian had a happy hour after work, so I thought I’d probably be on my own for dinner. This morning HangryPants featured a recipe for Black Beans and Rice with Pumpkin Vinaigrette (originally from Megan’s Munchies) and it sounded really, really good… and simple to make. Despite that fact, I kept screwing things up- first I burned the rice, then I accidentally doubled the amount of balsamic in the vinaigrette. Even with all of my mess-ups, it turned out great! Probably too tart for most people, but you know how I love my vinegar.

Alongside was Cashew Ginger Tofu from Eat, Drink and Be Vegan. I’d made this before and for some reason the sauce didn’t thicken up. Tonight I baked it (uncovered) for a bit longer than before, and the sauce went from watery to perfect really fast. This would be GREAT over pasta… though I liked it a lot with the black beans and rice. The creaminess of the cashew sauce was surprisingly good with the tart vinaigrette:

cashew

Aww, Brian just gave me half of his frozen Twix bar. That’s love, people.

Hope everyone has a safe and fun HALLOWEEN!!!

-SURVEY-

Weekend plans?

No idea!! Saturday night we’ll hand out candy, Chloe needs a makeover ASAP (mani/pedi, bath… she’s stinky), and we have a few more baby chores to take care of.

 

Soup x 2 October 27, 2009

Filed under: October 2009,Uncategorized — heatherwlu @ 4:04 am
Tags: ,

It really felt like fall here today… cold and drizzly all day long. I have to admit, though- I kind of like it.

Breakfast was two bowls of THIS.

cereal

My favorite faux Lucky Charms! Whole Foods finally got more in stock!!! I’ve been in the store almost weekly and they’ve been out (at least when I’m there) for months. The cashier was apparently a big fan, too. She was gushing over the cereal as she rung me up. They’re addictive.

Y’all are going to laugh at me. I committed one of the food blogger mortal sins: same meal for lunch and dinner. Tortilla soup. At lunch I heated up last night’s leftover soup, along with a ham sandwich on whole wheat. I don’t even like ham, but a sandwich seemed like a good idea and Brian had picked up the deli meat at Target last night.

leftsoup

And for dessert- a hugeass Honeycrisp apple.

honeycrisp

I’ve never not been able to finish an apple, but this one came close. It was almost the size of a softball.

After lunch I made a trip to the maternity store (gag- I’m ready for real clothes again) then to Wal-Mart. That place can be a pain in the butt to deal with, but you really can’t beat the grocery prices. The goal was to stock up on a bunch of ingredients in order to make a few freezer meals to have on hand once Jack gets here. I looked through some old recipes and came up with three good options: turkey-spinach lasagna, vegetarian chili, and chicken-green chile casserole.

This afternoon I knocked out two of the three- the casserole:

greenchile

And chili:

chili

All packed up and ready for the freezer!

freezer

So is it bad that I spent all afternoon cooking and we ended up going out for dinner? We made a quick trip to Northpark and then I decided that soup sounded good. I mean really- when does soup NOT sound good? Brian was a good sport and took me to Mariano’s:

-9

Yum. And a big squeeze of lime made it 1000x better.

So I’m a big idiot who can’t read a calendar. My doctor’s appointment is actually TOMORROW, not today. Luckily the office calls with appointment confirmations and I got their message before leaving the house today. After this appointment, I have to go back weekly until Jack gets here. It’s getting close… yikes.

-SURVEY-

Daylight savings time ends Sunday morning- what will you do with your “extra” hour?

 

I’m Hongry August 26, 2009

Filed under: August 2009 — heatherwlu @ 2:34 am
Tags: ,

Dinner’s in the oven and it smells SO GOOD. It’s kind of a random, made-up recipe and I hopefully not one of those that smells better than it tastes (This is my problem with chai tea. Smells amazing, but taste? Not so much..). We shall see.

Breakfast this morning was a yogurt mix: plain yogurt with 1/2 a sliced banana, a chopped plum, Quaker Cinnamon Oatmeal Squares, sliced almonds and honey.

quaker

I had to babysit this afternoon and packed a lunch to take along: roasted turkey and cheddar on honey wheat (w/ mayo and Gulden’s mustard), GIANT grapes and my *last* pineapple Chobani. Sniff.

turkey

I ran by Whole Foods on the way home. I think the store had been ransacked by all the parents scrambling for back to school munchies. They were completely out of my beloved Marshmallow Oaties AND the Oikos multi-packs. However, they did have plenty of Peanut Butter & Jelly Larabars!!! I haven’t tried one yet but will report back when I do. Oh, and Chobani is on sale!

It’s been forever since I cooked chicken- or any meat, for that matter- around here. For dinner I grabbed a few chicken breasts with the intent of making some type of oven-fried dish. I dipped them in a mixture of mayo, Dijon mustard and Annie’s Goddess Dressing, then coated in half whole wheat panko/half whole wheat bread crumbs (with some Old Bay, garlic salt and onion powder sprinkled in) and baked at 375 for 45 minutes. But here’s the clincher: I flipped halfway through cooking, which was a MISTAKE. It just ripped off half the breading and left them looking all sad and ugly. I should have just left them alone and would have ended up with pretty chicken. Oh well.

sadchick

Wah-wahhhh.

Served with red kale chips and a side of roasted garlic couscous:

chickdin

Actually, the chicken tasted pretty good. Not too dry, and the mayo/dijon/Goddess combo added a nice flavor. And we may have gone to TCBY after dinner, where I might have gotten a kid-sized Shiver with peanut butter chips and M&M’s.

I’ve been so bad about procrastinating lately. I have a pile of writing projects to work on, 2 loads of laundry to fold and emails to return. However, I checked out a new book today (More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin) and am thinking that I might just climb into bed and read instead.

-SURVEY-

Best book you’ve read lately?

Time Traveler’s Wife, for sure. I keep almost buying The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo- anyone read it yet?

 

Wet Weekend May 4, 2009

Filed under: May 2009 — heatherwlu @ 3:44 am
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I just tried to make up for an entire weekend’s worth of crap eating by whipping up a batch of gazpacho. That works, right? But truthfully, I love gazpacho. It involves so many of my favorite things: cucumbers, tomatoes, red onions, vinegar, soup. The new issue of Bon Appetit showed up in the mail on Friday and that’s where I found the recipe. This one is a little different that gazpachos I’ve made in the past; it doesn’t contain any bell peppers, and you add a couple tablespoons of mayo which gives it a nice creaminess.

gazpacho

This is one of those recipes that Brian won’t eat. Which is fine. More for me.

Back to the weekend…

-FRIDAY-

My practical exam went well. I prepared entricot with bordelaise, couscous, and sauteed swiss chard. The hard part was the sauce, and luckily it turned out fine. It involves a lot of reducing (“by 90%”, “by 50%”) and sometimes I’m really bad at eyeballing that. My instructor thought that the couscous and chard were a little underseasoned- which is interesting because I sauteed crushed red pepper and garlic in olive oil before adding the chard, and my mouth was on FIRE. Just goes to show you…

After class I met my mom at Subway for lunch then headed out to Firewheel for a little Old Navy (and Pier 1, and Barnes & Noble) shopping. Not too much damage- just a couple of tank tops, a tray and a magazine. For dinner we met Lauren and Robert and a few of their friends at Matt’s in Lakewood. No photo, but I had chicken enchiladas with verde sauce. Then we came home and watched the Sex and the City movie. Brian is a saint.

-SATURDAY-

I woke up kind of early, which was weird. We headed to Barbec’s for breakfast. In case you don’t live around here, Barbec’s is kind of a dive near White Rock Lake- but they serve the world’s most amazing beer biscuits. Seriously, it’s like eating cake.

biscuit

I used to hate going there, but since Dallas went smoke-free it’s been a MUCH better experience. I ordered the Garden Platter with egg beaters. Basically just a pile of hashbrowns with chopped onions, bell peppers, tomatoes and cheese and a side of eggs.

barbec1

The rest of the day was spent visiting Home Depot to price plantation shutters, Target, doing yard work (Brian), and the Jillian Michael’s Shred video (me). Late in the afternoon we got the most intense storm, and it rained off and on all night long. Brian’s sister and brother-in-law had tickets to the Dave Matthews concert, and they brought over our nieces to hang out while they attended the show. We ended up taking them to Buca di Beppo for dinner. Kind of random, but we had a coupon. That place is so kitsch. They take you through the kitchen before seating, which Kara loved. The food is, ummm, okay. Huge portions so you have to share everything.

We split a salad:

bucasalad

And the chicken parmesan with a side of pasta:

bucachick

Afterwards Kara wanted to go to Pokey O’s. I’m not sure if I’ve written about this place or not, but it’s an ice cream shop near SMU that serves homemade cookies and Blue Bell ice cream- so you can make your own ice cream sandwiches. The sandwiches are a little too intense for me… I usually end up with a sugar cookie alongside a scoop of rainbow sherbet.

pokeyo

Then we went home. Brian and Kara played Mario Kart:

brikara

We tried to watch some show on Disney featuring the Jonas Brothers, but the storm was raging and our satellite kept going out. We did manage to get a few smiles out of Samantha:

sam

She and Chloe were BFF’s. Samantha kept reaching for Chloe and patting her, and Chloe kept sticking her nose in Samantha’s ear. It was a nice little arrangement they had going on.

-SUNDAY-

Here was our entire day: Slept entirely too late, Brian made chocolate chip pancakes, laid on the couch and watched two hours of Cribs, switched over to the Mavs (Brian watched, I worked on an assignment), stayed in our PJ’s until 6, changed out of PJ’s, headed to Newflower for groceries (where we ran into my brother and Laura) and dinner fixings, changed our minds on the way home and grabbed burgers at Fat Daddy’s instead.

Pancakes:

pancake

And turkey burger:

fatdaddy

We’re going to try to get up early for a walk, so I’m off to bed! Hope you guys had a great weekend. The semester is coming to a close (woohoo) and I have a feeling this could be an exciting week!

-SURVEY-

What do you consider the most annoying song ever?

I should probably explain… we’re currently watching Family Guy and it’s the Bird is the Word episode. Last time this was on I couldn’t get that song out of my head for a week. If You Seek Amy and that new Black Eyed Peas song (the one with wailing Fergie) are climbing that list, too.

 

Cholesterol Bomb January 27, 2009

Filed under: January 2009 — heatherwlu @ 4:30 am
Tags: , , ,

Hope you guys are staying warm, wherever you are… we have an ice storm warning! I feel like a little kid- maybe they’ll call off school tomorrow?? That’s wishful thinking. I just don’t want to get up at 6 :)

This morning I threw together a bowl of fruity oats before class:

oats2

There’s a little almond butter mixed in, plus that honey-pecan creme, blueberries, ground flax and my last pearapple on top.

In class today we assembled Creme Brulee- it’ll chill tonight and then we blowtorch the top in class tomorrow. They look great so far. I can’t wait to EAT it… and post photos, of course. I’d just like to point out that our pastry book refers to creme brulee as “little cholesterol bombs.” Nice.

It looks like that Mondays will be prep days and Tuesdays will be pretty-it-up days. We also cooked up a batch of Bavarian Cream:

bavarian

Which, with the addition of tomorrow’s raspberry coulis, will eventually become a Fruit Bavarian.

And finally, Chocolate Mousse. We had some problems with this one. Behold our second batch, which still didn’t turn out correctly. I don’t know what happened but we might try yet another redo tomorrow.

mousse

tray

It’s so gross out that we needed something cheerful for dinner. I’ve blogged about Giada’s Whole Wheat Spaghetti with Lemon, Basil and Salmon before and it sounded good tonight:

salmon1

You just boil some pasta and toss in olive oil, lemon juice and zest, garlic, and capers. The pasta is served over raw baby spinach, which is then topped with a seared salmon filet. Very easy, flavorful and healthy. Which means that I don’t feel bad about my giant goblet of wine and bag of Figamajigs.

Speaking of snacks, Foodbuzz recently introduced a “Tastemakers” program where they send publishers product samples (WOOHOOO). This afternoon I was super excited to find a variety of Quaker’s new True Delights bars. There are three flavors: Dark Chocolate Raspberry Almond, Honey Roasted Cashew Mixed Berry, and Toasted Coconut Banana Macadamia Nut. According to the brochure, these bars contain “Enticing pieces of fruit… nestled together with large macadamia nuts, cashews or toasted almonds and chunks of 45 percent cacao premium dark chocolate.” Each flavor is 140 calories and contains 3 g of fiber and zero trans-fats.

I split the Dark Chocolate Raspberry Almond flavor with Brian for a post-workout, pre-dinner snack:

granola2

granola1

Verdict? These are great! My complaint with a lot of granola bars is that the chocolate tastes like wax. This one contains big chunks of dark chocolate that taste like the real deal (which it is, apparently). I don’t think I’ve tried dried raspberries before. They were tart- a lot like dried cherries. All in all, very good! I’m excited to try the other 2 flavors and I’ll let you guys know how they taste.

Okay- off to fold laundry. And to pray for winter weather. Hee hee.

*Survey Time*

What chore do you absolutely HATE and put off as long as humanly possible?

Me- putting away laundry. I’ll wash it, fold it, get it into the bedroom… and there it will sit for days and days. It’s ridiculous.

 

SouperBowl January 13, 2009

Filed under: January 2009 — heatherwlu @ 4:59 am
Tags: ,

You know how I love trashy television? Well, I have yet another embarrassing program to add to my repertoire: True Beauty. Has anyone watched this? The concept is that all of these attractive people are grouped in a house and given fake challenges. The contestants think that they’re competing to see who is the hottest, but they’re really being judged on their “inner beauty” (ex: will they donate money to a cancer fund if given the opportunity, will they help a cyclist who crashes next to them, etc.). Very entertaining, especially when the person being kicked off is filled in on the concept. Which poses the question: Why the hell are people still auditioning for reality tv???

Okay, enough with my obvious classiness. For breakfast this morning I tried out the Honey-Almond Oatmeal recipe in the latest issue of Clean Eating. It seemed a little boring (flavored only with almond butter and honey) so I added some fresh blackberries:

oats1

I took advantage of last night’s leftover BBQ salmon filet for lunch and put together a ginormous salad: chopped baby spinach, mini peppers (red, orange, yellow), goat cheese, salmon, ½ a chopped pearapple (interesting), sliced red onion and Annie’s Roasted Red Pepper Vinaigrette:

salmonsalad

That’s the other half of the pearapple you see around the edge of the plate. Has anyone else tried these? I love the super-crunchy texture, but they don’t have a lot going on in the flavor department.

Dinner was kind of a random combo. A couple weeks ago I received an email from the Young Chef Association at El Centro about an amateur soup competition taking place at Northpark later this month. It’s only $25/recipe to enter and the proceeds benefit several children’s charities- all of you Dallas people should think about entering (info here). Anyway, tonight seemed like a good opportunity to work on a recipe… I don’t want to reveal too much and jinx myself, but it was kind of Thai-inspired and wintery. Yum.

soup

We had a package of gnocchi in the pantry and a big container of baby spinach in the fridge, so I decided to try the Gnocchi with Fresh Chicken Sausage and Broccoli Rabe recipe from Rachael Ray’s Big Orange Book (subbing spinach for the rabe).

gnocchi

This was one of those recipes that doesn’t contain very many ingredients (gnocchi, spinach, sausage, onion, red pepper, garlic and lemon) but tastes really complicated. I loved the lemon juice/zest. Will definitely be making this one again!

*Survey Time*

How do you organize your recipes?

My friend Carolyn recently tipped me off on YummySoup (online recipe storage for Mac) so I’ve been playing around with the free trial. My recipes are such a disaster of torn clippings that it’s going to take forever to get them in any sort of electronic format.

 

Rain, Rain, Go Away January 6, 2009

Filed under: January 2009 — heatherwlu @ 4:54 pm
Tags: , , ,

Hola from rainy, gross Dallas. We even lost power for a while today. But no worries- right after I called Brian wailing about how I couldn’t use the hairdryer, the lights miraculously came back on.

But my hair still looks like crap.

Decided to surprise Bri with a birthday breakfast this morning. He loves french toast, but I’ve never actually made that before (isn’t that sad?) and we’re trying to eat healthier- so I found this recipe in my Ellie Krieger cookbook for Peach French Toast Bake. The only change I made to the recipe was adding 2 tsp of Penzey’s Baker’s Spice to the egg mixture. Although not nearly as good as standard french toast, I was able to assemble the dish last night (score), dragged myself to the kitchen at 6 this morning to toss it in the oven, went back to sleep for an hour, and then hopped up again at 7 to pull it out of the oven and serve…

Minus one piece:

wholefr

Oh, there it is. Along with some Morningstar Farms veggie breakfast sausage and blackberries.

frenchtoast

The rest of the day was spent staring at a hole in our bathroom wall with a contractor (don’t ask), hitting the gym, and taking Chloe to the vet (eye infection… yucky). Had a quick lunch of last night’s kale and potato soup, along with a sandwich- veggie chicken patty on an Ezekiel english muffin with field greens, jalapenos and miracle whip:

kale

For the big birthday dinner I decided on another foray into the world of red meat. And what goes better with beef than coffee and beer? What, no? Well, this Guy Fieri (not usually a huge fan) recipe for Java Crusted New York Steak with Stout Glaze sounded good. It’s really easy. You just combine ground espresso beans with brown sugar, salt, pepper, paprika and garlic powder and use it as a rub. Sear the meat (I used sirloin) on both sides in a cast iron skillet and then throw it in the oven, skillet and all, for a few minutes.

For the sauce I found this Stone Smoked Porter at Central Market. If you make this recipe, be forewarned: the sauce is thin and doesn’t taste that great on its own… but it works really well on the meat.

porter

For the first time since our wedding 3 1/2 YEARS ago, we actually used our china/crystal:

table

The steak, along with a baked potato (rubbed with olive oil and sea salt- NO FOIL!!!) and some microwaved asparagus. That’s right. I’m not too proud to zap my veggies.

steak

Dessert? Cupcakes, bien sur! Once again Ms. Krieger came to the rescue with Carrot Cake Cupcakes with Lemony Cream Cheese Frosting:

carrot1

The birthday boy approved.

carrot2

And so did the pug. We let her lick the icing off of one of the cupcakes…

chloecup

But then she pushed it too far away with her pug tongue. And then she had to reaaaaaaaaacch (notice how clean the top of that cupcake is):

chloecup2

Don’t worry, she got it eventually.

*Survey Time!*

This one’s from Brian (movie trivia boy-genius):

What’s the best movie you saw in 2008?

 

I Turn My Camera On December 30, 2008

Filed under: December 2008 — heatherwlu @ 4:08 pm
Tags: , , ,

Spoon is one of the greatest bands ever, but sadly I cannot follow their instructions at the moment. Because my camera is GONE. At some point between lunch and dinner yesterday it disappeared. I don’t know if I’ve misplaced it or if someone took it- both possible, unfortunately- but I’ve torn the house apart and come up with nada. So I’ll keep looking, but until the camera turns up or we get a new one, bear with me on the crappy photos.

The camera had my breakfast and lunch photos, so you’ll just have to visualize…

BREAKFAST: Blueberry Chobani with Kashi Cinnamon Harvest, Chopped Apple and Almonds

LUNCH: Black Beans and Brown Rice with Chopped Roasted Red Peppers, Jalapenos, Cheese, Salsa and Guacamole.

The brown rice was from one of those Bird’s Eye Steamfresh Bags. Four minutes in the microwave and you have perfectly cooked brown rice- and no scraping burned rice from the bottom of a pot. Love it!

I’d been itching to test out my new pasta roller attachment for the KitchenAid, so yesterday afternoon I whipped up some pasta dough in the food processor. So easy- just add 3 beaten eggs to 2 cups of all-purpose flour and run for about 30 seconds. Then remove dough from machine, knead for about 2 minutes, and let the dough rest for a half-hour or so.

This process is going to be really hard to describe without photos but I’ll give it a shot. At some point I’ll do it again with pictures! Once the dough rests, you just divide it into smaller portions (4-6) and flatten each portion into a disk. Set the pasta roller onto the widest setting and run dough through. Then you fold the dough into 3rds by bringing the outside edges into the middle. Run through roller again. Repeat folding technique with alternate edges. Run through roller again twice.

After this you just keep running the dough sheet through the roller, increasing the setting (making it more narrow) each time you run it through the machine. On the KitchenAid, I went up to about a level 4. Repeat with the rest of the portioned dough, and keep rolled dough under a damp towel so it doesn’t dry out.

Apparently my next purchase needs to be a pasta CUTTER. I tried cutting noodles with a pizza cutter, but it was a big disaster. We had spaghetti, linguini, fettucini, something like egg noodles… not very consistent. Oh well, who am I trying to impress??

For the sauce I tried out the Broccoli-Mushroom-Walnut Sauce from Vive le Vegan. The original recipe actually calls for this to be used as a filling within a phyllo crust, but she does give a variation for how to use it on top of pasta. Very yummy- pretty close to a pesto. The toasted walnuts give it heft and a great smoky flavor. But be forewarned, the final product does not LOOK pretty at all. I won’t tell you what it  brought to mind. You can use your own imagination for that.

Here’s a cameraphone shot of the final product, courtesy of Brian:

pasta1

God I miss my camera.

*SURVEY TIME*

New Year’s Eve/Day plans?

We’re actually headed to an Old 97′s concert at the House of Blues tonight, so that’s probably our big night out. Tomorrow night we might just hang out at home, make dinner (or order takeout) and play Guitar Hero. Is that sad?? Eh, oh well. We’re so geriatric.

 

Oh, This Is Not Good… December 9, 2008

Filed under: December 2008 — heatherwlu @ 4:42 am
Tags: , ,

No Internet, Day 3: Heather begins to decorate.

I’m having to get resourceful here. Like creating holiday table settings from pinecones and adorning the chandelier with Christmas ornaments.

dining1

Yikes.

This morning I took the day off from running and enjoyed a mug of cereal for breakfast. I’m actually not nuts about cold cereal, but I spotted a box of Nature’s Path FlaxPlus Pumpkin Raisin Crunch (now there’s a mouthful) at the store and was intrigued by the pumpkin mention.

cereal

Apparently I need to be better about reading labels, because the “pumpkin” is actually pumpkin seeds. Not nearly as exciting as I’d hoped. The cereal is just okay. It contains the tiniest raisins I’ve ever seen in my life… like something you would feed your Barbie. I mean, if you still had Barbies, of course. Which would be ridiculous. Oh, hahaha. Now that’s just silly.

Moving on. I had my last class of the semester today! No more classes until Jan. 20. We took our final exam and I was outta there by 4:30. Not too shabby.

A few weeks ago I was shopping at Sur La Table and they offered a free subscription to Bon Appetit. The first issue arrived a few days ago and featured a bunch of “value recipes”. Tonight I tried the Beer- and Onion-Braised Chicken Carbonnade, described as “… a Belgian beef stew flavored with beer, onions, and brown sugar.” But obviously prepared with chicken thighs instead of beef. Although not the hugest fan of drinking beer- cooking with it is another story.

It’s an easy recipe to put together. You just brown some chicken thighs and onions in butter, add beef broth, dark beer (I used Saint Arnold Christmas Ale), brown sugar, Dijon mustard, red wine vinegar and bay leaves, and let simmer for a while.  Served over whole wheat noodles:

stew

Not terribly pretty- but it tastes good! More like a gravy than a stew.  Lots of leftovers, too!  Hey, look- here’s the recipe.

Remember those Nigella “moonblush tomatoes” I made last week? Well tonight I threw together an impromptu appetizer (see?? I need the internet): whole grain French bread, sliced, toasted and spread with goat cheese. Then I drizzled on a little balsamic vinegar and topped each crostini with a couple of the dried tomato halves:

crostini

Maybe I misjudged the little guys. The tomatoes are super sweet and worked well with the goat cheese… I bet they would be good on salads, too.

So tomorrow is the big day- Chloe’s surgery. I’m dreading it. It sucks that she’s so happy and playful tonight, and tomorrow she’s going to be hurting. But I guess it’s better to know what we’re dealing with and get it out of there ASAP.  So send some good vibes this way…

And on a happier note, the Dallas Morning News finally released Chloe’s Pet of the Week E-Card!! You can view it here, and even customize the font and background color. And then send it to all your friends, of course. 

Also, THANK YOU to Joy for the Scottish Rite donation! Don’t forget- the marathon is only 6 days away… which means that you can still donate.

SURVEY TIME!

What’s your favorite cereal (healthy or not)?

I really love Grape Nut O’s, but I can’t find them ANYWHERE anymore. Maybe they stopped making them? That would be sad. And I’m going to bet you 5 million dollars that Brian answers Cinnamon Toast Crunch. If he says anything else, he’s lying. There’s a box in our pantry right now. He sneaks it into the grocery cart.