Days of Christmas: Holy Cannoli!

Happy New Year's Eve everyone! I hope 2011 brings you many blessings and much joy.

Between cooking dinner with my mother in law and running out to take pictures of the last sunset for the year, I have spent the afternoon learning to make cannoli from the recipe my mother in law's Aunt Mary gave her.  Aunt Mary was from Sicily, and quite the chef. When my in law's had moved into their first house, Aunt Mary came for a 5 day visit and went through 25 pounds of flour making pizza crusts, pasta and gnocchi to fill up their chest freezer.

Days of Christmas: Christmas Dinner

So, this will be a shockingly picture free post...for now. My big Christmas present from my husband this year was a Canon 10D digital SLR camera. The body is an older one, but the kit that came was way worth the price he was able to get it for and I finally have what I call my big girl camera. Yay!

Days of Christmas: Caramel Bacon Popcorn

I will be heading out shortly to another holiday sort of party, so this will be a short, sweet, to the point post. It involves bacon, sugar and popcorn, and I don't think you can go wrong with this combination. I love salted caramel, the sharp salty bite against the sweet, creamy caramel backdrop is awesome, so when I came across the blog I found this recipe on, I couldn't wait to try it.

Days of Christmas: Breakfast for the family

Merry, merry Christmas everyone! We've made it through the rush of Christmas, family and food and I am getting the chance to sit, relax and look back at the last 48 hours or so. I'll start with our family breakfast on Christmas morning.

Days of Christmas: Homemade Marshmallows and Hot Chocolate

First off, happy Christmas Eve everyone! I hope you and yours have a wonderful night tonight.

One of those things I've always wanted to try and make but never had were marshmallows. Up until recently, candy making of any type beyond my super easy fudge recipe kinda scared me. Candy sounds messy and easy to ruin, leaving you with a horribly burnt sugary mess to clean up.

Thankfully, I got over that. Making the candy favors for my sister's wedding certainly helped. A really good thermometer helps too, temperature is everything in making candy.

To go along with all the cookies I've made this year, I thought hot chocolate would be awesome. The nights are cooler, even in Southern California, and who doesn't like hot chocolate? And of course, with hot chocolate, you need marshmallows. This was my big chance to try and make my own.

Days of Christmas: Thumb print cookies

When I started digging out recipes for cookies, I found two that I was really excited for. Both involved rolling out very small portions of the cookie dough, refrigeration and other what nots for prep. I may have been able to get them all done if not for some time lost to an extra shift at work and some errand running prolonged by rainy weather.

Days of Christmas: A Chocolate family tradition

My Mom was a crazy baking lady for the holidays when we were kids. Lots and lots of cookies. A lot of work for a working of of 3, I still don't know quite how she did it. Lucky for her, she got three kids who don't mind being in the kitchen and cooking or baking. So as we grew up, we helped out.

Cookies, tamales, candy, we helped with it all. Yup, I said tamales. 2 years we did them. We should do them again, there isn't anything like homemade tamales.

I digress.

My days of Christmas.

I would call this my 12 days of Chrsitmas, but I really don't know how many recipes I will eventually post. This is good and bad. Good because I've used some really good recipes this year and I am excited to talk about them and have someplace where they are recorded for next year; bad because I've been eating a lot of cookies and such. And there is still more eating to be done between now and the new year.

Crash hot.

I know she didn't start it, but that Pioneer Woman certainly added to the internet love for crash hot potatoes. Google puts her right at the top if you do a search for a recipe. Ever since she posted her crash hot potatoes, I've seen recipes for them on many blogs.

And for some reason I resisted. It isn't as though I don't love potatoes, and I've succumbed to internet potato crazes before with excellent results. I just didn't feel the need to try and make potatoes that required a double cooking process. Why boil and then roast? Why not just boil and then mash or just roast them to start with? What could possibly be so special about this damn recipe?

Tis the season for broccoli.

I am sure the holiday season doesn't make you think of broccoli at all, but it is fully in season, and I pulled my first two crowns of broccoli out of my garden yesterday. Add to that the small, tender baby crowns of broccoli I had in my CSA box this week and I was ready for stir fry.

I love, love, love broccoli beef stir fry. I almost always get it when we eat Chinese food.  Stir frying is just so good for broccoli. It cooks it fast and keeps it crisp, nothing worse than soggy veggies.

A very late Thanksgiving run down.

Due to my work schedule and some technical difficulites, (meaning my laptop picked up a virus, yuck), I wasn't able to access the internet at all for about a week.  Now, my computer is STD free, I am relaxing after some time with friends and some extreme house painting and can finally getting around to talking about my Turkey day.

When I was thinking about how to do a round up of what I made and ate for Thanksgiving, I had a hard time deciding how to go about putting everything up here. Should I go with one post for each recipe? Should I break it down by type of side, like veggies one day, starches the next?

I ultimately decided, one because it is December 8th, and two I didn't manage to get good individual pictures of every. single. item. to just do a catch all type of post. Lots of links to recipes online ahead

Another try at Sweet Potatoes.

When it comes to side dishes that should be on the table on Thanksgiving, in my family, sweet potatoes/yams are one that will only get eaten by 3 people; me, my Mom and my Grandma. My Mom has tried many different incarnations of recipes, sweet, savory, spicy, none of them have gone over as a huge success.

This year, I am trying again to get the rest of the family on board with sweet potatoes. Instead of mashing them, topping with strudel or marshmallows, I am making dumplings. Gnocchi to be exact.

Turkey day cometh! Have you Gravy?

I got caught a bit off guard. It wasn't as if I didn't know it was November. I certainly know what month it is, I just can't believe Thanksgiving is just a couple of days away. I just want to know where the entirety of November vanished to.

I love the holiday season. The cooking, the eating, the family gatherings, the decorating. So even though I have no idea what happened to the rest of November, I have been prepping for dinner on Friday. Yeah, I know Thanksgiving is on the Thursday, but I will be working, as will my mom, so my family is having our dinner on Friday.

Eating and Sleeping.

My husband and I are home again after spending a weekend visiting his family out in the Vegas area. The occasion was his Grandmother's 85th birthday and we spent our extended weekend doing a whole lot of eating and a whole lot of sleeping in. It was glorious. I had pancakes for breakfast 3 out of 4 days, went on a chocolate factory tour and we went out to the Hoover Dam and took the Dam tour. Our last night in town we went out for a fabulous steak dinner.

I got to the point I felt like eating the rest of the week seemed out of the question. Brown sugar banana pancakes will do that to you.

Go forth, conquer, and bring back a great story to share with friends.

I've been doing a lot of thinking, reminiscing, and some crying today. A dear friend lost her very short battle against stomach cancer on Friday night. To say I was shocked would be an understatement; Oyana was young, strong and full of fight. In our few years of friendship, she taught me many things, and the biggest message I take away is to go, conquer, and bring back the stories to share. She was an excellent story teller, and she let nothing hold her back. She wore a hat like no other woman. She told a story like no other. She had even gone back to school and had just finished her first year of law school when she received her diagnosis. Law school! In her mid-thirties! Not many people make the huge decision to go back for a new degree after the first time around, and I bet even fewer go back for something as heavy as a law degree.

Succotash doesn't have to suck.

Ok, so I know that when I say succotash, most people say ew. Especially if you go to that Wikipedia link and see the picture of succotash made with kidney beans. It doesn't look too tasty.

But stay with me, I promise this is good. And colorful.

Grilling In November.

After having a summer full of clouds and cooler weather, summer finally arrived. It took until October/November, but the sun is out and the temps are up.

We grilled on Thursday night, the hottest day of the heat wave. Our house stays pretty cool, but once the temp inside gets up there, it takes along time to cool back down. There was to be no cooking inside, at all, that day. And I have a grill with a side burner for throwing together side dishes as well, so my stove didn't get turned on at all.

There is only one problem with grilling in November: Sunset comes far earlier compared to July. I was grilling in the dark at 6 pm. Well mostly dark, there was still a tiny bit of fading sunlight, but pretty much dark. I am happy to report the weather is cooling back down and rain is on it's way back, which makes much more sense in November. It will make my garden happier too.

Vegetables for breakfast for dinner.

There is no doubt that my favorite meal of the day is breakfast. I will always choose breakfast given the option, whether it is lunch or dinner time.

One of my favorite local restaurants has a breakfast menu I adore, and now they offer it pretty much all the time. I went for lunch just a couple of weeks ago and had french toast while my Mom and Grandmother had an actual lunch.

A few night later, breakfast was in order again at dinner time
Despite the Santa Ana weather here pushing my local temps up into the 90's and 100's, the rest of the country has acknowledged fall is here and seasonal veggies are popping up all over.

I got beets and turnips in my CSA box two weeks (maybe three?) ago when I made this recipe, and I will be completely honest, I'd never cooked with either before.Never ever. I've tried canned beets, and didn't really like the taste. Turnips, when I've had them, likely were overcooked and under seasoned, because I wasn't a big fan of them either.

My Halloween in pictures.

One should always start ones Halloween day with Voodoo.

My two favorites.

In Oregon at least.






















My niece, Eva.
Also known as Evers and Goob.

And her dog Bowser.

Blogging in flight no less

I am currently on a flight to Oregon to visit my sister, brother in law and niece for an extended weekend away. And if Alaska Airlines didn't want 10 bucks from me in order to get completely online and post this, it'd be an even better success for in flight blogging, but for now, typing up and posting later will have to do.

I didn't intend for there to be such a gap in postings lately. Truthfully, I've been so busy the last couple of weeks between work and home projects, blogging kind of had to fall by the wayside.

Hamburger, hamburger!

I am sad to report the last meal from my week of planning is a hamburger, filled with onion and blue cheese. The hamburger itself was delicious, but I am sad that I didn't get to the other two meals I had planned for the week, a potato soup and a hash topped with a poached egg. I came down with a bug in the middle of the week and was even sick enough to go to the doctor to be sure whatever it was wasn't turning into strep throat. Even the doctor wasn't sure and gave me a prescription of antibiotics to hole on to if I wasn't feeling better in 24 hours. Bleh. Thankfully, I ended up feeling progressively better and didn't need the antibiotics.

The first night I felt sick  last week my Mom fed us and the next night my husband brought me home pho, and come Friday, we had burgers, which isn't a bad way at all to end the week.

The inspiration for having hamburgers came, again from the Farmer's Market. One of the stalls had several varieties of sprouts, including onion sprouts. I had the chance to taste them, and they had such a yummy, fresh oniony bite to them, I grabbed some to bring home.

Pears become a cake.

I brought this on myself really. I bought pears at Costco earlier in the week. The season of pears is here and they are a favorite of both myself and my husband. Then I went to the farmer's market...and bought more, locally grown pears.

So, with a bushel of pears in the house, I set out to find something to do with them.

Enter cake.

I don't think anyone who knows me is surprised that I love cake, I also love fruit with my cake, take for example pineapple upside down cake. Last week, I found a recipe for an apple upside down cake and knew a quick substitution of pears for the apples was in order.

A meal my husband can make.

This is another meal I pulled last week for my meal planning. This was Tuesday night's dinner, a night where my husband would have to be responsible for cooking if we were going to eat anytime before 9 pm. He's a great helper in the kitchen, but not often responsible for the whole meal.

An easy meal to start him off with was a quick stir fry, one with heat from chili paste and a nice bite from lemon grass.

The chopping part was easy for him, and the whole dish came together really quickly and easily. I really don't have too much to say about this one, since I had nothing really to do with it except choose the recipe and buy the ingredients. I came home from work and dinner was ready about 10 minutes later. This is something I hope becomes a trend, a delicious dinner made by my husband.

Dinner tonight:

Corned Beef with red potatoes, sweet potatoes and carrots. The corned beef has been in deep freeze since just after St. Patrick's' Day. I finally pulled it out last night to defrost and cook in the Crockpot today. I am limited to Crockpot cookery right now as we've temporarily moved out of our kitchen to paint our cabinets. So right now, the majority of my kitchen is in the dining room and/or pool room and/or back yard, depending on what it is and where I decided it needed to be. The doors and main framing are all primed and ready for their chosen color, which we will be applying over the weekend. I cannot wait to get it all done, it should make the whole room feel brighter and lighter and make me feel like cooking and baking a lot more.

That being said, I cannot wait to get my kitchen put back together, new paint color or not. This whole Crockpot cooking on the bar set up won't be manageable for too long.

Lots of pasta!

Over the weekend, armed with a few copies of recent cooking magazines, I did something I've never done before; I meal planned for the week. I was scheduled to work on Tuesday and Wednesday and I didn't want us to fall into the trap of "What do you want to do for dinner? I don't know what do you want to do?" We tend to have that happen more so on the days I work, I'm not home until 8 pm, and by that time, it's either we go out or scrounge in the fridge for something that sounds good.

I did not want to scrounge this week.

The secret is the sauce in the sauce.

I love bourbon, it's good stuff. I think I have my father to blame for the constant presence of bourbon in our home. Also, the lack of bourbon as he tends to drink my bourbon when my parents are over for dinner.

Tonight, the weather is cooler, so we are going to sit in the backyard and grill some chicken. Which necessitates a sauce to baste the chicken with. I felt like a good barbecue sauce and pulled one out I had bookmarked earlier in the summer and just hadn't pulled out to use yet.

Heat wave, coming through.

I worked over the weekend, so I wasn't privy to the temps during the day here. I was inside an air conditioned environment from 7 am to 7:30 pm both Saturday and Sunday. I mocked my husband some as he talked about how warm both days were.


Karma has caught me my friends, and today is the hottest day yet of this heat wave. I am off work, at home, where we don't have whole house AC, while my husband is at his office with nice cool air flowing.


I have the fans going, curtains drawn, blinds closed and the temp inside the house is holding at about 83 degrees, which is likely about 15 degrees cooler than it is outside. Still not cool enough to make me want to cook anything, any where. I don't even feel like going out back to grill.

Magic mole.

Not mole, the small blind, below ground dwelling mammal or mole the unit of measurement, but mole, the really yummy, chili and chocolate based sauce.

I swear the stuff is magic. Chili and chocolate on top of turkey or chicken or pork? Sounds good to me.

My local Mexican market carries their own blend of mole paste. Very convenient for when you want mole but don't have the time to make your own. Which I don't personally.

So, being that today is the first day of fall, and for today and today only, we are having slightly cooler weather, I decided chili was in order. Also, I am fighting a head cold and I think my sinuses could benefit from the spiciness.  I discovered an absolutely yummy sounding chili featuring mole recipe over at Epicurious.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.

I continued on in the garden and house today.

My garden is partially winterized, I have broccoli, cauliflower and brussel sprouts in. And my pepper plants are powering forward still, so they stayed. I cannot tell you how exciting it is to actually have hot peppers this year. Last year, my pepper plants kept getting eaten. Horn worms apparently don't discriminate and only eat tomatoes.

When the cat is away...

...this mouse gets out and does some gardening. I put my husband on a plane to Chicago this morning for a work trip. So I got outside and played in the dirt some.

We have two garden beds in our front yard. When we moved into our home, both had newly planted palm trees. Not long after, despite my best efforts to keep the palms alive, the very front ones died. We pulled those out, leaving us with this:

Lovely isn't it? I especially love the weeds. Let's pull back for a better look:

New additions.

This is Eddie.

This is Tess.

Born July 14th at my Vet's office, we brought these two home on Wednesday. Our old man and old lady cats don't approve of them just yet, but the babies as we are prone to calling them don't give a damn. the dogs are still not sure what the situation is.

They are super active as kittens are and little loves when they are spazzing around the house like they are right now.

Comfort food for my husband.

My husbad has had a really busy last couple of weeks at work, filled with late nights and some work on the weekends trying to get his company's tax returns for this year completed and sent to the IRS. Everything wrapped up today and he came home early, completely wiped out, and promptly fell into bed for a nap before dinner.

I had some time to pull dinner together and his final words to me involved grilled cheese and tomato soup.

Dessert last night...

Quick and easy dessert last night. Figs with goat cheese warmed in the oven at 375 for 15 minutes, then topped with a drizzle of honey. I am so excited figs are coming back into season, they are excellent with cheese and wine which are two of my most favorite things. Last nights wine was Ventana 2008 Orange Muscat.

Might as well face it.

I have an addiction and I think I am ready to admit it here.

Hi, my name is Jo, and I have an addiction to dry rubs.

Whew! I feel better getting that out.

Peanut butter, oatmeal and chocolate, oh my!

A trifecta. Holy trinity. Darn good stuff.

Oh, how I love some oatmeal in my cookies. Peanut butter too. Chocolate chips, of course.

I have two special folks in my life that have birthdays this week, my grandmother turned 87, my best friend turns 30.

As such, I am a cheater, cheater, pastry eater.

Do you like chocolate?

I do.

How about pastry?

Me too.

What is your opinion on a combo of the two for breakfast?

I concur.

Want to know what I do when I want chocolate croissants? And don't feel like driving around to find them?

1 sheet of puff pastry, cut into equal pieces of your chosen size (I myself made 8).

1 bar of bittersweet chocolate broken into equal sized pieces.

Egg wash.

Wrap up chocolate with pastry, fold ends over, brush with egg wash, bake until toasty in 350 degree oven.

Add some powdered sugar if you would like.

Nom.

Canning part 2: Electric Boogaloo

I absolutely love bread. I could eat good bread all day and all night. I really shouldn't, but I could.

Good bread deserves a good topper. Sometimes it is cheese, other times I want something sweet. Fruit preserves are a big favorite of mine.

Growing up, my Grandpa had fruit trees that my Grandma often used to make jam. I still remember the plum jam she made, nothing store made matches my memory of course.

Adventures in Canning: Part 1

The last two days, my kitchen has been a small batch canning factory. I've done some canning before, last year it was tomatoes from the garden and blueberry preserves. This year, my tomatoes haven't been too plentiful and I haven't been able to find blueberries for the same low price I them for last year.

Instead, I have a ton of zucchini and found peaches on sale. And I have a fair amount of cucumbers this year as well.

Yesterday and today, I put all of the above into jars of some form and processed them to store up for the long winter ahead. Or not so long winter ahead, whatever.

Crockpot Carnitas

My friend Deanna recently had a beautiful baby girl and will soon be returning to work. She asked me yesterday if I had any crockpot recipes.

Yes, yes I do!

I used our Crockpot quite a bit while I was in school, it made us many a meal during my winter semester time.

Unfortunately, I found that in warmer months, I tend to put the Crockpot up and seemingly forget about it. Warm weather and Crockpot just haven't seemed to jive in my mind.

Deep fried goodness.

We moved into our house about 5 months after we were married.

As we planned, married, honeymooned, house hunted, packed and moved there was one thing my husband really wanted: A deep fryer.

And lo and behold, with a suggestion from his loving wife to her parents, for our first Christmas in our new home, he got one.

I would like to preface the following with this: We don't fry a lot.

This weekend, we had friends over for a game day/afternoon and we fried. We were plotting what could be fried. We ended up being to full to try deep frying pickles, but they were there. Next time.

Saturday morning pancakes

I've taken a bye week from Weight Watchers this week. My middle of the week was the suck and cookies and donut at work got me, so I decided to skip a weigh in and points counting this week. Which meant a Frosty at lunch today. It also meant pancakes for breakfast.

I had blueberries in the fridge which obviously necessitated making blueberry pancakes.

The internet gave me a recipe that I tinkered with to work with what I had in the fridge.

I am so far behind

At least in terms of updating here. I have been cooking, in fact I have a couple of recipes to get pulled together and posted. I tried out a couple of recipes that aren't quite ready for prime time posting just yet, I need to tweak them.

Here's what I have been working on:

Mark yesterday on the calender...

My husband willingly ate a portion of fish. More on that later.

Yesterday was a really productive day for me. Now that school is out and life is settling into a normal routine of me just working and not working, studying, going to clinicals, studying some more, etc. etc. I am getting projects done around the house.

One of them was cleaning and organizing the fridge, freezer and pantry. I finished up the fridge and freezer today, including these guys belonging to my husband. Have I ever mentioned my husband is a nerd? And plays miniature games? And as such paints them? Occasionally he also uses clay to alter them and leaves them in the fridge overnight to cure. And for me to find the next day when looking for the cottage cheese for breakfast.

An ode to goat cheese.

I love goat cheese. Creamy, delicious, goes well in sweet or savory dishes, it is just all around good stuff.

I also love quesadillas. Comes from living in a border city, I suppose. Cheese stuffed in a tortilla and cooked until melty and crispy? Yes please!

And even though I am technically dieting, you can only have my cheese when you take it from my cold, dead hands. It is one thing I refuse to give up.

Garlic and chops.

Oh, how I love simple, flavorful meals. In all honesty, I can be damn lazy. On those days, a simple meal is always best, otherwise we head out for dinner. Most likely for Pho from our favorite place that happens to be only a few minutes from our house. And is next door to the frozen yogurt place we frequent. We actually stopped at both last night after I came home from a hellacious day at work. I believe my husband remarked at one point we spend more money at these two places then we do on our mortgage, but I couldn't hear him clearly. Too busy slurping noodles.

But I digress.

For dinner tonight

New York steaks with alder smoked sea salt. I found the sea salt in Oregon and brought a small container home with me. Given how delicious it's been with my morning eggs, I can safely say the steaks will be incredible.

On the side, baked sweet potato and salad with some tomatoes out of our garden, finally! Our cooler and cloudier than normal weather over the last month has likely delayed them. Hopefully the tomato ripening trend continues. Tonight's wine is Chateau Lorane's Pinot Gris.

Boards, Oregon, and a dessert to celebrate

This morning, I drove myself to a testing center and sat in front of a computer for an hour and twenty minutes to prove myself capable to practice as a midwife. 175 questions later, I walked out as a Certified Nurse Midwife, thank goodness for instant results! I don't know that I could have handled a longer wait, studying over the last two days especially has been nerve wracking.

For dinner tonight

Japanese eggplant, yellow zucchini and crimini mushrooms tossed with salt, fresh ground pepper and minced rosemary. Roasted at 425 for about 20 minutes. Eggplant and zucchini straight out of my garden.

Tomorrow I take my Midwifery Board exam. I have two recipes to be posted after all is said and done, including one with farm fresh Oregon produce.

A few things I've learned recently.

1. The dogs haven't been interested in digging in the garden, they were trying to clue my husband and I in to the fact something was paying us a visit.

2. Skunks like green tomatoes. And leaving scat on our driveway.

3. Skunks don't seem to like cayenne pepper, so the internet didn't lie to me.

4. I need more cayenne pepper.

5. My garden is otherwise doing fine:

My favorite things

Tuesday I had folks over for food, a keg and and watching a couple of newlyweds open wedding gifts.

It gave me a chance to fling my diet to the wind for a night and make some of my favorite foods that Weight Watchers thinks are high calorie. And they make me use up all my points for the day for like 2 bites. It makes me sad. Then I remember I've already lost a bit of my grad school weight and I stop bitching for a bit.

4 flavors of candy and a wedding

My sister joined the ranks of the happily wedded yesterday, many blessings for her new family! And of course, with weddings comes all the planning and preparations, from the venue to the dress to the seating chart and favors. I know she is very happy to say it is all done and went off without a hitch.

I am a little tired today, okay, really I am exhausted, but I wanted to show off what fews pictures I have of our candy making last week.

Father's Day and cutthroat Croquet

Yesterday we celebrated our dads with barbecue and a lazy day in the backyard. My Dad, my brother in law's Dad and my brother in law were our guests of honor and the day was just a lot of fun.

Now that the sod is set, we pulled out the croquet set my Mom had when she was in high school.

On the hunt

I have been trying to find and master the perfect oregano-lemon chicken marinade. I've got an oregano plant in the herb garden that is growing like crazy and a lemon tree that always has lemons waiting for me to use them, sometimes I can't use them fast enough.

I was happy to stumble across this recipe from Chow via Saveur and I tried it out earlier this week.