In the last post I talked about where we went to eat on Valentine’s Day. Now I want to tell you about what I did for Jasper leading up to V-Day. I saw a really cute idea online to get 14 small presents to give to him each day of February leading up to V-Day, along with notes that had cute puns about the gifts. I’m not sure if he thought it was as cute as I did, but here they are:
1 – orange crush soda with “I’ve got a “Crush” on you!”
2 – gummy bears with “Life would be un”bear”able without you!”
Yes, yes – I know I am way late in posting this, sorry. This year for V-Day we went to Sushi Taro for their special tasting menu. It’s what we did for our first Valentine’s together in DC 3 years ago and I wanted to go back. I loved the whole meal, but Jasper was a little disappointed. I think he wanted more sushi, but I liked the combination of hot dishes and raw fish. Anyway, here’s what we had:
Taro’s signature tofu with uni. I love this stuff, it has the best texture. I always look forward to this dish at Taro.
This was a mixture of different raw and pickled vegetables with some gelees and monkfish liver. I thought it was playful and interesting; I think this is one of the ones Jasper was disappointed with. (more…)
Happy Easter, everybody! I am actually doing a holiday post in a timely manner, who woulda thunk it? Last Easter I focused on eggs, this time I wanted to go on the theme of ham and peas.
Ham and peas, it is! Unlike at Christmas, when I accidentally made a pork roast instead of a ham, I got it right this time and did a Dr Pepper glazed ham. Yes, I said a Dr Pepper glazed ham – awesome.
Take a fully cooked smoked ham (I went with an 8 lb, spiral sliced, partial bone) and place it cut side down on the rack of a roasting pan (or on a cookie rack set inside a rimmed baking sheet). Pour 2 cups of Dr Pepper (not diet) and 2 cups of water into the bottom of the pan. Cover with foil and cook for 15 minutes per pound at 325 degrees – 2 hours, in my case.
About half an hour before the cooking time is up, start to make your glaze. Boil some pitted prunes in Dr Pepper until they are plump. Set the prunes aside and whisk in mustard, brown sugar, and cider vinegar. Remove the ham from the oven and raise the oven temp to 425 degrees. Remove the foil, and drizzle the glaze over the ham, then return it to the oven for about half an hour to cook the glaze.
It will be so gorgeous when it comes out! Let it rest, loosely covered on a cutting board (this photo is before I turned it on its side for slicing). Meanwhile, pour all the pan drippings into the saucepan you cooked the glaze in. Bring to a boil, skimming off the fat, and add in the prunes and a cornstarch slurry to thicken. Serve the prune sauce with the ham. (more…)
Back again with another vegetarian lunch team-up with Smells Like Brownies. This healthy enchiladas are made with whole wheat tortillas and packed with tons of veggies. There is plenty of protein from black beans, but you could always add some shredded chicken if you want. The sauce couldn’t be easier – it’s just a jar of salsa! Fresh, bright, and super filling – these are awesome and sure to please the whole family.
Step 1 – place a mixture of black beans, spinach, corn, and cheese onto a tortilla. We added in some diced zucchini, too! (more…)
Here’s a simple one – 6 ingredients, 1 crockpot, 4 hours, 1 amazing and addictive soup. So easy, so delicious and creamy, and pretty healthy if you use low-fat cream cheese and turkey sausage. Try to get bulk sausage from your butcher, if you can. The big name/pre-packaged stuff (Jimmy Dean, I’m looking at you) has high fructose corn syrup – yuck! Jasper is not a big fan of soups, unfortunately – which means that I got to eat this every day for lunch for a week and never got sick of it. In fact, I was still craving it after it was gone!
Creamy Tortellini Soup
You can thank Pinterest for this one. You need frozen tortellini to stand up to the long cooking time. If you can’t find it, reduce the cooking time by half for dried and even more for refrigerated. Also, if you are not using “Italian Style” tomatoes, you will need to add some spices.
adapted from Little Fellows
serves 4-6
1 lb ground sausage, preferably turkey
1 (8 oz) block cream cheese or neufchatel (less fat), I use cream cheese made from Greek yogurt which is as low fat as neufchatel but has more protein
1 (19oz) bag frozen cheese tortellini
1 bag fresh spinach (5 oz is common, but use as much as you want)
2 (14.5 oz) cans Italian style diced tomatoes
4 cups low sodium chicken broth
Brown the sausage and put into the crockpot with the cream cheese. Stir around a bit to break up the cream cheese and get it to start melting (this will help prevent lumps). Add in the rest of the ingredients. Set temp to low and cook for 3-4 hours (check pasta texture at 3 hours).
Curry. Banana. Ice Cream. When I found this recipe, I flipped. It sounded AMAZING. One of the best truffles I’ve ever had was a curry banana flavor.
And there aren’t just plain old bananas in here, either. No – they are roasted bananas. And not only that, but roasted with brown sugar and butter. Is anyone else drooling right now?
These smell incredible when they come out of the oven, covered in sticky brown sugar goodness. You scrape all that sweet stuff into a blender with whole milk and your favorite sweet curry powder, then into the ice cream maker – simple as that. I am seriously in love with this ice cream.
I am also in love with this milkshake that I made with it, chocolate syrup, and Bailey’s. Boozy milkshake for the win!
3 medium-sized ripe bananas, sliced into 1/2 inch pieces
1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
1 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces
1 1/2 cups whole milk
2 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 1/2 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/4 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp sweet curry powder (I used this one)
Preheat oven to 400 degrees F.
Prepare bananas and toss them with the brown sugar and butter in a small (2-quart) baking dish. Bake for 40 minutes, stirring once during baking, until the bananas are browned and cooked through.
Scrape contents of the dish (bananas and the thick sugar syrup) into a blender or food processor. Add the milk, sugar, vanilla, lemon juice, salt, and curry powder, and puree until smooth.
Chill mixture thoroughly in the refrigerator (4 hours). Pour into your ice cream maker and churn according to manufacturer’s instructions. Transfer to a plastic container, press wax paper onto surface, and freeze until firm (about 4 hours).
My junior year of college I studied abroad in Galway, Ireland. Well – not so much studied as occasionally stopped by classes. It was an amazing semester and really cemented my love of everything Irish – culture, music, food, beer. So even though St Paddy’s isn’t as big a deal in Ireland as it is here, I wanted to celebrate it in honor of the time I spent there. And how do I celebrate holidays? Dinner party! So I loaded up a playlist with Flogging Molly, Young Dubliners, and The Corrs, and prepared to have some good craic.
For the main course – Corned Beef with Colcannon (mashed potatoes with cabbage). The great thing about this is that you can throw all the veg into the pot with the beef and let it all cook together – easy! So I started by putting carrots, celery, potatoes, and an onion into the bottom of the pot.
Mmm – veggies. They can be rough chopped in big pieces because they will be discarded (except for the potatoes). Since I was having people over I ended up doing two briskets – one in the slow cooker and one in a cast iron Dutch oven. Same process, different cooking times.
I laid the corned beef on top of the veggies, pickling spices included. You should be able to find corned beef vacuum packed with pickling spices in your grocery store, especially around St Paddy’s. I cut the cabbage into wedges and put them on top/to the side of the beef. That is half of a head in the picture, the other half went into the Dutch oven with the other brisket. (more…)
We are finally getting into some Spring weather here but I am way behind on my posts, so I’m sorry if the cold weather stuff drags on a bit! I actually made this Pumpkin Cream Cheese Loaf all the way back in October – yikes! Put it uses canned pumpkin, so you can make it whenever that is available. I found this recipe through Pinterest which advertized only 500 calories for a WHOLE LOAF!(!!!) Oh-em-gee! Can it be true? Delicious and healthy? The unicorn of pumpkin loafs?! EDIT – Well, no in short – it is not. It actually has more than 1000 calories per loaf and it doesn’t taste that great. But I will leave it on here in case someone has a use for it. EDIT
Okay, I wouldn’t really call it healthy. It’s low calorie and low fat due to the use of low-fat cream cheese, egg whites vs whole eggs, and applesauce vs oil. And it uses half fake sugar and half real sugar, but I’d still call that a sugary snack.
As for deliciousness? I’d call it okay. You can definitely taste the fake sugar and it isn’t as dense and luxurious as the real thing, but it’s a pretty good substitute. So all-in-all I’m going to call this decent but not amazeballs. (more…)
Okay – it is really hard to get an attractive picture of a shepherd’s pie. The blogger I got this recipe from did cute little individual dishes and I thought “Ain’t nobody got time for that!” and just did one big casserole. But after posting a very unattractive photo on facebook (that sparked a crazy battle between two friends, no joke) I know why she did it that way!
Photography aside, this dish is great. Lean but satisfying ground turkey mixed with a ton of veggies make a hearty filling.
Topped with delicious super-food sweet potatoes, this version of shepherd’s pie is super healthy and super delicious.
Baking it in individual dishes is definitely cuter and neater, but if you don’t care whether the topping gets mixed into the filling on the plate – you can totally do one big dish. (more…)
I don’t know about you, but I am not a huge fan of raw carrots. Warm spiced carrot soup with tahini on a cold day, though? Yeah, I’m a big fan of that.
This is another dish brought to you by my vegetarian lunches with Melissa at Smells Like Brownies. She pulled together a couple of recipes to come up with this one.
Carrots, onion, garlic, coriander, and cumin all go into the pot with vegetable stock. (more…)
