This Website is Hilarious.

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

Funny thing is, I actually ate something very similar to "The Meatlog" this weekend at the Florida Eggfest. And it was....interesting.

I Still Love My Food Processor...

Nothing beats fresh salsa....except maybe fresh salsa with homemade tortilla chips!

Valentine's Day Dinner

We kicked Nils out of the house for the night and took a special trip to the Fresh Market for some free-range beef, salad greens, and herbed yeast rolls. We've been so busy lately that it was nice just to go shopping and make dinner together.

The final product: steaks cooked on the Big Green Egg, mashed potatoes, salad, and those yummy yeast rolls!


For dessert I made Homemade Chocolate Pudding, a Taste of Home recipe that I've been meaning to try for a loooong time. It was good with the strawberries and whipped cream on top, but since it was a lower-fat recipe it wasn't very good the next day.

It made for a pretty picture, though! And we enjoyed the time spent together. Hope you had a nice Valentine's Day!

New Year's Eve Sushi

I have tried and tried to post these pictures, and for some reason Blogger has NOT been cooperating with these particular pics. But, 24 days later, it looks like it has decided to not make them all wonky, so now I can finally share my beautiful pictures with you! I had so much fun playing with my new camera, and Nils was a good sport about me sticking my camera in his personal space while he was making the sushi.



We got our hands on some sashimi-grade sushi, thanks to our new Fresh Market!!

Sophie became very interested in what Nils was doing once she caught a whiff of the fish...

One thing I never realized about sushi is what beautiful pictures it makes! It was almost like art, what with the vibrant colors and contrasts!

Nils vs. Wasabi

A little red-faced, but otherwise no worse for the wear!

Christmas Food

Christmas is always a big time for food, no matter where you are! This year featured a few old favorites, as well as a few new recipes.

First up, Christmas morning breakfast. We had Sausage Balls, Alton Brown's Overnight Cinnamon Rolls, and fruit. The Sausage Balls are a Cook family traditional Christmas recipe, but Mike loves them so much he would revolt if I didn't make them!

Next up was a new recipe that I've been wanting to make forever: Alton Brown's Overnight Cinnamon Rolls. Alton Brown always has such excellent recipes, but this one is so involved that it's definitely a special-occasion type of recipe!

These were unbelievable! Definitely worth the calories and time, especially since it's shaping up to be a Christmas recipe (hence once a year!)

The only other thing I actually remembered to take a picture of was the poached garlic I made for the relish tray my mom asked me to bring to Christmas dinner. This was the first time I've ever had to make a relish tray, and to be honest I didn't exactly know what it was at first. Apparently it's made up of pickles and pickled peppers and other gross stuff. I decided to try poached garlic because it sounded like an addition that I'd actually like, and it was delicious! The smell as it was cooking was fantastic!

It's cooked in white wine, olive oil, and a little fresh thyme. The smells melding together were enough to tempt me to dunk my hand in the hot oil and try one!

Gingerbread

When I think gingerbread, I think store-bought, hard cookies in the shape of little men, not soft, moist,wonderfully spicy cake, but that's exactly what this is! And lemme tell ya, I've discovered that there is nothing better than the smell of gingerbread in the oven to get you in a holiday mood! The great thing about this recipe is that it can be made with white-whole wheat flour and it still tastes delicious. I decided to add about half a teaspoon of the optional fresh-ground black pepper to this recipe, and I think it complimented the ginger-y flavor perfectly.

It came together easily, although I did take the extra time to grate the fresh ginger and crush the black pepper in my mortar and pestle - totally worth it!

Fresh out of the oven!

I highly recommend you serve it with some real whipped cream on top. The simple-ness of this dessert is refreshingly comforting. I definitely plan on making this recipe again!

Cinnamon-Streusel Coffee Cake

Coffee cake is one of those things that I really enjoy, but rarely make. For starters, I don't drink coffee, and secondly, it doesn't have the allure of a real cake or a rich brownie. However, I have yet to find a King Arthur recipe that didn't come out delicious, so I gave this coffee cake a try.

Even though coffee cake isn't the most flashy of treats, it is incredibly easy and satisfying to make. It pulls together quickly and comes out beautifully - especially with the glossy glaze that this recipe calls for.
I didn't use quite enough of the streusel for the middle, so I had a LOT for the top. But the cake was very tender, cinnamon-y, and yummy. I definitely plan on making this coffee cake again!

French Onion-Pork Chop Skillet

I don't make pork chops very often, mainly because I'm very picky about them - I think that they are often dry and tasteless. But when I saw this recipe in a Kraft magazine, I thought I'd give it a try. I liked that the recipe cooks up quickly, keeping the chops from getting dry, plus the use of onions is always a plus, now that I have two onion lovers in the house. Topping off the dish with mozzarella cheese is a plus, too!

This recipe was really good! It was quick and easy - give it a try!

Orange Chicken

I know this practically makes me un-American, but I never really tried Chinese food* until I met Mike. I was turned off by a very bad experience at a Chinese buffet as a fourth grader, so since my parents hate fast food in all forms, I had never tried it. I never knew what I was missing until my dear husband turned me on to the wonders of cheap Chinese food - BUT it was enjoyed only occasionally, because really, there's nothing nutritionally redeeming about the kind of Chinese food I like. I love Chinese food partially because it's something I never thought I could re-create at home, but that all changed when Mike decided to try this Orange Chicken recipe from Annie's Eats.

Oh. My. Goodness.

This was SO good! It tasted even better than the stuff you can buy! Mike actually used Clementines instead of oranges, but since he used fresh-squeezed juice, the taste was unbelievable. There are quite a few steps in this recipe, but they are all pretty easy to follow. this is definitely a "worth the splurge" meal!!


*In this post, "Chinese food" will refer to the hole-in-the-wall type of take-out restaurants that are always next to a grocery store in strip malls. I realize that this does not even closely resemble authentic Chinese food, but that's another post. Bear with me, here!

Pumpkin-Craisin Muffins

Continuing on the pumpkin theme, I decided to try these Pumpkin-Craisin Muffins for breakfast. Don't look too closely at the picture below, or you can see how much I was in need of a good breakfast that morning - sheesh, I've never seen such a messy muffin tin!

These muffins were delicious - I've discovered that they're good plain (or with butter!) in the morning, and yummy with cream cheese as a snack. They seem like they would freeze well, but they didn't last that long in this house!

Pumpkin Waffles With Maple-Cream Cheese Sauce


One of the things I love about cooking is changing with the seasons. Even though we don't get much change in the weather here in Florida, I find that my cooking style definitely changes!

Fall has definitely come to Florida - I'm sitting on my couch, watching the Gator game, while a breeze from outside tickles my toes. When the weather reaches this point, I get the urge to make everything pumpkin. When I checked out How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (a great book by the way) from the library back in June, I just had to set this recipe aside to try when it cools off! I made breakfast for dinner recently, and these Pumpkin Waffles were the main dish - they were light and fluffy and WONDERFUL! They were definitely different from the traditional waffle recipe I usually go for, but they were a nice change. And they came out such a beautiful, golden-orange color!


The recipe was a little fussy - you have to prepare the dry and wet ingredients seperately, which is par for the course, but you also have to whip egg whites (below) to add to the batter at the last minute. This really makes them fluffy, but it's also an extra step. But with my Cuisinart Smart Stick Hand Blender, it was no problem.




The last step - making the cream cheese-maple sauce! I let the cream cheese sit on the counter while I made the waffles so it could get to room temperature, then used the tiny food processor attachment on my Smart Stick to whip it up in a jiffy. By the way, I'm not getting paid to advertise for Cuisinart or anything - I just love my hand blender!! The maple-cream cheese sauce really completes the waffles. Yummy!

I Still Cook....

But not as much as I used to. Now that I work full-time as a first-grade teacher, my cooking has changed a lot. I use my crock-pot a lot more now:


This is a really good chicken recipe, and it couldn't be easier! All you do is take a whole chicken, dump it in the crock pot, and pour some Hoisin sauce on top*. You can get more complicated if you'd like by marinating it overnight and pouring some of the sauce in the cavity, along with a few garlic cloves, but that's optional. Then let it cook all day on low in your crock pot, and when you walk in the door exhausted (or is that just me?!?), dinner's done! Lately, that's the type of dinners I like!!

My cooking style has definitely changed, and it's taken some getting used to. I used to almost never buy convenience foods, but now I buy things like refrigerated pasta and frozen skillet meals. At first I felt guilty buying those things...but then I realized that something had to give. As a first-year teacher, I just plain don't have time to make bread from scratch anymore or spend hours crafting a meal. Yeah, the bread from the tube isn't quite as good, but it's better than eating out every night - which is what we were doing until I realized we needed to change. I still like to cook when I can, but I had to make some allowances! Mike has been great helping out with cooking - I have a list of meal options on the side of the fridge, and there have been nights when I'm pulling out of the school at dinnertime, and he's glad to step up and help out. Lucky me!


*Hoisin can be found in the Asian section of your local supermarket. I really like Soy Vay's Hoisin Garlic sauce.

Pan-Fried Flounder with Squash Saute and Roasted Potatoes





I was in the mood for some seafood this week, and while we usually go for salmon (because we all like it and it's on sale often), the local grocery store surprised me by having flounder that looked relatively decent at a relatively low price. Plus, it was wild caught - bonus!!



I actually had very little to do with this meal, but it was so good I just had to share. Plus, I haven't been doing much cooking at all lately, what with my new job and all. Mike decided to pan-fry the flounder with panko breadcrumbs (I finally found some!) and roast some new potatoes, while Nils did the Squash Saute. That squash recipe is excellent - I like zucchini, but it had to be done right - it can NOT be slimy or squishy!! I highly recommend that you try this recipe!
On top of the fish is minced garlic and parsley - a great way to give it a little more flavor! The fish was crispy and delicious. I think Nils enjoyed dinner, because I caught him doing this with the leftovers:

Sour Cream Chocolate Cake

I saved this recipe from a Taste of Home magazine a while back and finally decided to give it a try when my mom asked me to bring a dessert to a family dinner. I made sure the butter was room temperature before I started - I'm always glad when I do that! It makes the batter even lighter and more fluffy. Adding the sour cream only makes it more so!


I used dark chocolate cocoa powder for the cake - go big or go home, right?!?

I almost decided to make a cream cheese icing (my favorite!), but since this cake has three layers I was concerned about having enough to cover the whole cake. I made the icing that the recipe called for and had just enough. It was mild, which went well with the rich taste of the cake.
I thought that the icing went on beautifully - I covered it first with a very thin layer, then let it harden in the fridge. This seals in all the crumbs so the second layer goes on nicely.

Three layers of chocolate-y goodness!