After making the turkey meatballs a couple weeks ago I decided it would be fun to make more meatballs and while I'm at it, experiment with tomato sauce. This week I made these half pork, half ground beef meatballs. They were another one of Martha's recipes. I was surprised that I didn't like these very much. I had four other people test them and they liked them, so I must just be picky! The recipe called for lemon juice & zest, and I just felt it to be overpowering. My sauce, however, was pretty amazing. I was feeling rather "saucy" and wanted to try something new. I chopped up an onion, garlic & used canned whole peeled tomatoes which follows some of Martha's recipe. I then added some dry red wine, basil, parsley and a little bit of parmesan cheese. I let it simmer for about 30 minutes and put it in the food processor till it was more like a sauce and not super super chunky. It was fun. For my next meatballs I want to use ground pork & ground veal and bake them. I'll also be making my own sauce again, but a little different next time.

Happy Wednesday! So this week I was pretty busy in the kitchen. I had one disaster but several successes. I was also lucky enough to attend a knife skills class at The Chopping Block Cooking School. This was a great course and I really enjoyed myself. They taught me a lot about knives and various techniques to speed up cooking time when it comes to dicing, chopping, mincing, etc.

I made several dishes this past week and one was Cream of Asparagus soup. This was my disaster. Everything went well until I pureed in the blender which I then lost about half of my soup because the bottom fell out and it went all over the kitchen! It looked like Slimer from Ghostbusters attacked. Luckily, I have a wonderful boyfriend who cleaned up the majority of it. To save the soup, I added some more chives & parmesan cheese. It ended up complimenting the asparagus pretty well, but on a 10 scale this soup was about a 5.

Later in the week I made a sausage, pepper & arugula fettucine. It was super tasty. This is one of Martha's recipes. It was super easy & fast. I think it would have been better with some sauteed onions. It was just a butter sauce used on the noodles which was perfect because it didn't overpower all the flavors.


Finally, I love huevos rancheros. They're my favorite breakfast dish so on Saturday morning I put this quick fix together which is scrambled eggs, salsa, fat free sour cream & cilantro. I know this is super basic, but it was so good I had to share!

I've still been cooking, just bad about writing. I do have some photos and if you're interested in the recipe I can send it on over.

This is an Asparagus Gruyere tart - Recipe is from Martha Stewart in Everyday food. It was amazing: filo dough, asparagus & my favorite cheese!

I served this with the tart and it is also in Everyday Food. It's a tomato crisp with cherry tomatoes covered in bread crumbs & Parmesan cheese with a little extra virgin olive oil too.

I found the recipe for these shells in my favorite magazine, Real Simple, they're a spinach, ricotta & mozzarella mixture. It was very tasty.

I also found this in Real Simple. These are turkey meatballs in a homemade tomato sauce!

I love pizza! For this i cooked bacon, chopped fresh parsley & used pre-made pizza dough and some Cheddar & Monterrey jack cheese! It was super good.

And finally!

Chicken with parsley, Dijon & Parmesan. I chopped up fresh parsley and added bread to put in my food processor to make bread crumbs. Added the cheese. Coated the chicken with a litte melted butter and dijon mustard & added the other stuff. This is a variation of a Betty Crocker recipe I found.

I will try to be better about updating this, but I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Good morning!

I'm sorry it's been a little while. I moved, so I had no kitchen utensils! Last night, I decided to create a variation of the eggplant sandwich I had at the Birchwood Kitchen. If you're ever in the area, this place is so good. I had this sandwich, apple cider and a cookie and it was all amazing.

I started making this sandwich by chopping up eggplant lengthwise and putting it on the grill. I toasted some bread too. After the bread was toasted, I put goat cheese on one side and a kalamata olive spread on the other. Then I added the eggplant and voila, you have a tasty sandwich that took less than 15 minutes to make!

Good evening,

So I decided that this week I wanted to try two vegetables that I don't typically eat and make different variations of them. I'm going to try to pick 2-3 different food products every week to cook with. Tonight I boiled an artichoke and made hollandaise sauce and roasted some beets. I LOVED the beets. I had never really had them before and they were amazing as well as very easy to make. I felt that the artichoke and hollandaise was good, but the best part of this dish was obviously the hollandaise. The hollandaise was extremely easy to make and tasted restaurant quality. The artichoke part was very good but, in my opinion, I feel there may be better ways to serve artichokes. I think that I will make this dish again if I decide to have an appetizer party or something like that. Now to the recipes:

Roasted Beets - I took this from the "Betty Crocker Cookbook, Everything you need to know to cook today" (Copyright 2006)
2 lb small beets (I found myself wanting more!)
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/4 teaspoon of ground pepper (I used an equal amount of salt and pepper)
2 tablespoonextra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoon of fresh basil (I didn't have access to fresh basil so I just sprinkled about a tablespoon of dry basil)
1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar

1. Heat oven to 425 . Cut off all but 2 inches of beet tops. Wash beets; leave whole with root ends attached
2. Place beets in ungreased 13x9 inch pan, sprinkle salt & pepper. Drizzle with oil.
3. Roast uncovered about 40 minutes or until tender. Let beets cool until easy to handle, about 30 minutes (I waited 15, I was hungry!)Peel beets & cut off root ends; cut into 1/2 inch slices.
4. In medium bowl, toss beets, basil & vinegar. Serve warm or at room temperature.

Hollandaise Sauce - I took this from Julia Child's, Louisette Bertholle's & Simone Beck's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (I LOVE French food!) Copyright 1961
1 cup & 1 tablespoon of butter
3 egg yolks
1 tablespoon cold water
1 Tablespoon lemon juice
Pinch of salt

1. Cut about 2 sticks of butter into pieces and melt it in a saucepan over moderate heat & set aside.
2. Beat the egg yolks with a wire whisk for about 1 minute in a saucepan until they become thick & sticky.
3. Add the water, lemon juice & salt and beat for a half minute more
4. Add the tablespoon of butter but do no beat it in. Place saucepan on low heat and beat with the wire whisk until the yolks slowly thicken for about 1-2 minutes. When the yolks have thickened enough that you see the bottom of the pan when you stir remove from heat.
5. Beat in the cold butter.
6. Slowly add in the melted butter stiring as you pour in small amouts.
7. Season to taste!

Artichoke - I took this from Julia Child's, Louisette Bertholle's & Simone Beck's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" Copyright 1961
1 artichoke
1 tablespoon of vinegar
water
Washed cheesecloth
dash of salt
Colander

1. Cut or break off the stem & the small leaves at the base making it so the artichoke can stand on it's own
2. Lay the artichoke on it's side and cut 3/4 inch off the top of the center cone of leaves. Trim off the points of the rest of the leaves with scissors & run under cold water.
3. Rub lemon juice around the artichoke as soon as you cut the leaves off to prevent browning & place in cold water with 1 tables of vinegar
4. Bring water with a dash of salt to a boil & place the artichoke in placing the cheesecloth on top to keep it moist
5. Bring the water back to a boil & let it sit for 35-45 minutes. When they're done the bottom leaves are tender when pierced with a knife
6. Remove from the colander & drain
7. These can be served hot, warm or cold. - Some suggest removing the choke before serving

As I mentioned before, I've always enjoyed reading about food and diet. Recently, there was an episode of Oprah where she featured author Michael Pollan. He just wrote a book called Food Rules, that I bought and read in one night. I really enjoyed this book. I can't say that I necessarily agree or would be willing to follow everything he says, but I definitely appreciate his message.

He emphasizes that we should focus on eating more plants and instead of having meats or grains be the focus, have them act as supplements to the meal. This is something I couldn't agree more with. So often we forget about the wealth of nutrients that we're missing out on with fruits and vegetables. We also forget about the various flavors they add to a meal. This is also a way for those of us looking to lose weight to cut down on calories, but still keep the things we love as a part of the meal.

Another point that he makes is that we should think about what really goes into our food. This is a hard one because so much of the food we it is processed. It makes the food last longer, which in turn makes it cheaper and adds more taste. I know when I thought about it and went to the grocery store and looked at labels, I was mildly freaked out about everything that is put into our food. Obviously, I know this can't and won't be followed 100%, but it is some food for thought when you're making choices at the grocery store.

The last point that I really agreed with were his thoughts on meat. I am not a huge meat eater, but I'm certainly far from a vegetarian. He makes a point about making sure the meat that you're eating has eaten well. I completely agree with this. I did some further reading about how chickens are raised and slaughtered in half the time they were 50 years ago. They're also twice as big as they were then. It's scary because you don't know exactly what type of hormones they were given, which is now going into your body. I have been trying to switch to eating free range chicken since learning about this. It's slightly more expensive, but I think it tastes great, especially if you brine the chicken.

Those were probably the main points that I took in, but there were definitely some others that I also enjoyed. If you know of any literature having to do with our food choices, I'd certainly love to hear from you!

I've been lucky enough to travel to Italy several times with my family and one of the things I noticed was that they ate a lot of grilled vegetables with cheese on them so I made my own variation below.

1) Preheat the oven to 450 degrees
2) Gather a bunch of vegetables that you like and chop them up! - I used onions, portabella mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, red & yellow peppers and garlic cloves
3) Place in the oven for 30 minutes, stirring them up after 15 minutes
4) Grate a bunch of cheese, I chose Fontina cheese because of it's strong taste
5) When the vegetables are done sprinkle the cheese over the vegetables
6) I put two teaspoons of white truffle oil on them too (I LOVE truffle oil)

and you have a vegetable roast!



This week I plan to experiment with artichokes & beets so check back later