Chomp & Gulp

This is an excellent hint as to my birthday meal:

More…

Supplies: 2 slices hard salami, oil to coat frying pan, 1 bag fresh spinach, 2 cups shrimp de-tailed, 1/2 box large shell pasta, gorgonzola cheese, optional lemon juice & minced garlic.

Dave and I saw a shell pasta salad with spinach in a local market and instead of buying some decided we could make a much better version ourselves.

While waiting for the water to boil for the pasta, heat up oil in a large frying pan. Once hot add sliced or diced salami and a bit of garlic. This gets the flavor of the salami into the oil.

If the shrimp is frozen you should defrost it during this time by running it under warm water. Then take the tails off.

Cook the pasta and don’t burn the salami.

Add the bag of spinach, shrimp and juice of half a lemon to the frying pan and cover when the pasta is about 4 minutes from being cooked.

Drain the pasta and add a small handful of gorgonzola cheese. Toss with the wilted spinach, shrimp and salami.

The shrimp seem to be hiding in this pic but I swear they’re in there.

If you wanna make a veg version of this I think it’d be good with halved cherry or grape tomatoes!

Abby and I were planning a fancy Sunday dinner last weekend. Here’s a hint!

More…

The very best way to eat slightly old challah is to have N come to your house and use it to make french toast. She dips it in egg with a little vanilla and cooks it in a cast-iron skillet until it’s golden brown and delicious.  The secret to delicious challah french toast is the toppings you provide. A few suggestions:  Syrup- just like pancakes, a high quality syrup makes all the difference. Remember that Grade B syrup is actually better than Grade A syrup if you like a dark, hearty flavor. Grade A is generally lighter in both color and flavor. For this morning’s creation we included cottage cheese as a topping option since it paired so well with the central topping: cranberry sauce made with brandy. It’s an N family recipe with raw or frozen cranberries cooked with brandy, sugar, and citrus zest.  If we cook a pound of cranberries we can’t eat them all at one meal. They keep in the freezer very well, although they don’t freeze solid. We heated them before adding on the french toast.  The other suggested topping is fresh fruit. Usually I like banana slices with walnuts on french toast. The week we made this challah there was a sale on mangoes at the grocery store and the co-op had some good looking kiwis available. They were cut the night before and sprinkled with lime juice before they were covered and refrigerated.     A delicious combination with a little bit of powdered sugar on top: 

N and I made homemade pizza a few weeks ago. The dough recipe was from the cookbook “The Enchanted Broccoli Forest” so I won’t reproduce it here. I will tell you that the recipe is dough for two pizzas and I used it all for one to get a delicious, thick crust. I upped the baking time about half an hour and it all worked out. The crust was great- done in the middle and thick as breadsticks on the outer rim. I used Muir Glen canned crushed tomatoes, which are my favorite canned tomatoes. We’re able to order cases of them from the Pocatello co-op for a very reasonable price. Cheese was mozzarella simply sliced, not shredded. You can buy better quality mozzarella whole and shred it yourself or save time and just slice it thinly. After it’s been cooked: 

What happens when I am asked to help AB make dinner for the next night (chicken enchiladas! Yay!) when I’m halfawake? Well. Invariably, I mess something up… This time, I dumped enchilada sauce in with the chicken. SO AB, with her usual calm and aplomb, decided to invent lasagnchiladas!… Which have all the same ingredients as enchiladas, just layered instead of rolled. It’s easier for us than regular enchiladas, and seriously tasty.
Lasagnchiladas in the pan
See my deliciously bubbly corner?
Plated, with brussel sprouts and a bit of sour cream!

Delicious wine drunk during a reflective conversation at sunset in Dead Horse Point State Park the night before starting the White Rim Trail in Moab, Utah. An evening of beautiful moments.

N makes the best pumpkin pies in the world. She makes the crust herself, using techniques passed down through the generations. She uses pumpkin that she’s carved out of a real-live pumpkin and then cooked. She makes fun pastry decorations to sit on the top of the pie. She doesn’t over-flavor with cinnamon or all-spice so you can still taste the pumpkin.

OK tonight’s dinner was pretty much amazing. It started simply enough:


Followed by just a little bit of pan frying

which probably isn’t the best plan, healthwise, but seriously genius because then we buffalo’d the chikkie bits


Which is genius. It made AB really happy.

Told you! Then we wrapped these little chikkie biteys up in tortillas with some blue cheese, lettuce, and tomatoes from the patio…


Yummie!

I’m sure you’re all jealous, mmm buffalo salads tomorrow.

I know there hasn’t been much activity lately, and I also know I haven’t cooked too much lately. But if there is one thing I do and enjoy, that thing would be eating. This past Sunday, I had been watching Barefoot Contessa making croques monsieur and realized that I had pretty close to the right ingredients. The night before, I had made some fromage fort, and AB had made garlic bread… I’m sure you can see where this is heading.

The first step was carving off a sizeable (sandwich-size) chunk of garlic bread, and applying the fromage fort.

Obviously, for a ham and cheese sandwich, the ham is necessary (I also threw in a layer of swiss, because the ham seemed lonely)

Next, I slapped the sammy together and placed it in a pan. (I smushed it down a little bit to try and get it to stick together)

I baked it for about 10 minutes, sprinkled some mozzarella on the top, and shmelted that slightly.

And then, I ate it.