Saturday smells like... A DAR Meeting

At our DAR Chapter meetings we usually have snacks or a light lunch to enjoy while socializing after the meeting.  We are broken into groups to provide the snacks and each group decides how to best break down the workload.  I'm in charge of February and decided (a few years ago actually) that my group's workload would be best broken down by putting J in charge and letting the ladies put out trays of his yummy food while taking all the credit.  Or something like that.  Anyhow, it works, and the ladies of my chapter seem to be big fans of this plan.  Today is our chapter meeting, and J started prepping food last night!

We're having our usual standby's: roasted pork loin crostinis, salmon-dill crostinis, bacon-tomato cups, brie kisses, veggies and something sweet.  While he prepped the pork loin and the filling for the bacon-tomato cups last night, I only managed to grab a picture of the pork loin.  Feast your eyes:

Seriously, I wish you could actually smell the yumminess here!  Also, since J gave up meat for lent, I *had* to sample everything to be sure it wasn't poison.  It wasn't. I may have tried a few pieces to be sure.  I'll try to take pictures of the spread today to come back and share!

The best kind of leftovers!

After Saturday's food fest, we had a fair amount of leftovers to get rid of.  While sandwiches may be the standard leftover fare, we had my favorite kind of leftovers on Sunday morning--Thanksgiving Ebelskivers! 

These little Danish filled pancakes can be made with a sweet batter or a savory batter.  On Sunday, I started with the savory batter recipe, then folded chopped leftover turkey and some leeks into the batter.  For the filling, I used leftover cranberry-orange relish.

These were delicious!  (and at 5 points for three, a touch heavy on the WW points, but not nearly as many as Saturday's feast racked up!)

Saturday smells like...Thanksgiving Dinner

J and I spent a quiet Thanksgiving Thursday at home (aside from waking up early to serve breakfast at a place downtown, which was an awesome way to start the day). We postponed our Thanksgiving Dinner extravaganza to today (Saturday) to share with friends who had other plans on Thursday.
We are pretty much sticking to our typical menu (turkey roasted with herbed duck fat, cranberry relish, mashed potatoes, stuffing, pumpkin ice cream) with a few additions (grilled asparagus and vanilla ice cream, too).  I'll be back throughout the day with pictures, because they'll say so much more than I could try to find the words for!
We'll start with my cranberry-orange relish, which is best when made a couple days early and allowed to sit in the refrigerator.  (By the way, this recipe is 2 points per 1/4 cup serving.)

Next up, y'all know that duck fat plays a big role in our Thanksgiving.  The herbed duck fat compound is used to bard the turkey (Basically, you squeeze this concoction between the skin and the meat of the turkey.  As the turkey cooks, the fat melts and drips down through the turkey.  Makes for an incredibly moist bird!).  You start with frozen duck fat:

So you cut off a chunk of duck fat and throw it in the KitchenAid stand mixer.  Then, you add a variety of chopped herbs and blend it all together.  When you scoop it out, the compound looks like this:

 Then, this is the cool part (I think)--you roll the duck fat compound up into a cling wrap tube of yummy goodness and toss it back in the refrigerator.  It stays like this until you're ready to pop your turkey in the oven!  (On it's own--though I don't know why you'd eat it on it's own--the herbed duck fat compound is about 5 WW points per 1 tbsp. serving)

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Okay, as of 11:00 we've added the following:
See how the turkey is kind of green now?  That's all of the herbs in the duck fat compound, smoothed out under the skin!

The legs are in the oven, getting a head start on roasting, and the turkey breast/wings are chilling (literally) waiting for their turn to join the legs.

Since the ice cream base needs to set up a bit before actually turning it into ice cream, I went ahead and made the vanilla and pumpkin (below).  Both are cooling in our rapidly running out of room refrigerator!

Next up--prepping ingredients for the stuffing and asparagus, and boiling potatoes!

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12:30 update:
The turkey legs smell and look amazing!

The breast is now in the oven, and I'm struggling not to compare it to a frog!  With its wings tucked back, they kind of look like legs.  To me, at least...

The pumpkin ice cream is made and hanging out in the freezer.

Next up...hmmm...same as last time--we still need to prep stuffing ingredients and boil those potatoes!

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2:30 update!  Ready for more? We finally got started on our sides by putting the potatoes on to boil and browning the sausage for our stuffing.  J sliced the leeks earlier today, so that means all of the 'parts' are ready to combine for the stuffing.

He also prepped the asparagus, and since he cooked the bacon and sliced the onions earlier, that dish is ready to put together just before we eat, too!

I also made the vanilla ice cream, so it is setting up in the freezer with the pumpkin ice cream I made earlier.

What's next?  Chantilly cream for the pumpkin ice cream and mashed potatoes are the last of the 'make-ahead' items.  When the turkey comes out of the oven, we can put the stuffing in.  Then, we're just waiting until closer to meal time to make the gravy and the asparagus.  Oh, and I need to set the table...
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Okay, I failed to get back with another cooking update before dinner, so this part of the post will probably be even heavier on pictures (and since it's nearly ten and I'm exhausted, lighter on words!).  The turkey breast came out:

...and the stuffing went in.

The Chantilly cream was whipped...

(but I forgot to take a picture)

...and the potatoes were mashed.

The stuffing baked...

...and the gravy was made.

And somehow, I forgot to take a picture of the food table (we did buffet style).  Believe me, though, everything tasted just as great as it smelled today!

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Saturday smells like...Chicken and Waffles

So last Monday, I woke up wanting waffles.  Unfortunately, after trips to Bob Evans, IHoP and a local breakfast place, we determined that everyone else in Lexington wanted to eat breakfast out, too and gave up.  So last night, when I realized I still wanted waffles, I gave J a heads up and asked if we had the ingredients already.

This morning, he woke and and told me that he wanted chicken and waffles.  Now, the Parasite doesn't appear to be a fan of chicken, so this morning, neither was I.  But, the whole recipe included waffles, so I was game.

While I found a waffle recipe online, J mixed up chicken breading and started the fryer.  I've no idea what he used in the breading, but the tenders looked just like what you'd buy in a restaurant.  I was incredibly impressed!

I ate my waffles with butter and honey, while J ate his with chicken and maple syrup.  Even I had to agree--they looked pretty good!

Melton Point Garden 2.0

So like I said last week, we've replanted our container gardens.  Last year, we set it up like this: two Better Boy tomatoes in one together with a jalapeno and a poblano pepper plant, as well as a few herbs; in the other we put the Rutgers heirloom tomato with the third Better Boy and a few more herbs.  We felt that the tomatoes were crowded last year, so this year's garden looks more like this:

Container One will hold all of the herbs:  basil, tri-colored sage, rosemary, lemon thyme, and oregano.  In the middle of this container (the herbs are around the outside) will be two pepper plants: a Tequila Bell Pepper (I think we'll name her Tila.  Bonus points if you can tell me why.) and a Jalapeno.

Container Two will be the Tomato Container.  We've purchased two heirloom varieties this year (from a Franklin County farmer I met at the Farmers Market!):  Old German, a variety noted as great for slices, and Grandma Mary, a small meaty variety that is supposed to be good for salsa and sauces.  Having my own Grandma Mary, I'm particularly partial to that one, and I'm hopeful that it will do well.

Saturday smells like...Elbow grease...and bananas

J and I are enjoying one of those incredibly rare weekends when nothing is on our calendar.  Since J's knee prevents my typical response to this kind of weekend (let's go adventuring!!), we decided to stay home and see what trouble we could get into around the house.
Considering that it is just now mid-afternoon (and that we slept until late morning), we've found a lot to get into!  I finished off the back door project (the one I started back in March), and J did the necessary 'Spring start-up' work to get our container gardens ready for the summer growing season.  J made us banana smoothies for breakfast (brunch? lunch?  It was after 12:30 when we had them...and anyway, Zeppelin had most of J's after he set it down on the deck for a minute.), and I started laundry (currently washing the fourth load of, I'm just guessing here, seven to be done).  We found the smoothie recipe in my new WW Fruits and Veggies cookbook.  Incredibly easy, I've put the recipe at the bottom of this post.  I gave J a much-needed haircut, and he's currently in the kitchen working on stock for something.
Still to do today?  Finish the laundry before it rains (and puts a stop to laundry-doing so the sump pump can do its job) and grocery shopping.  I am absolutely delighted at much we've gotten done today!

Mine is on the left, J's on the right.  Both glasses were filled to the brim with one serving.

Banana Smoothie--We started with the WW recipe, but y'all know J tweaked it a bit!
Peel & slice a banana; wrap in plastic wrap freeze 30 minutes
Put in blender (J used our food processor) with 1/2 cup fat free milk (J used 2%, which we had on hand), 2 ice cubes (or three...), and a few drops vanilla extract (J used our Nielsen-Massey Madagascar Bourbon Pure Vanilla Extract from Williams-Sonoma--yum!!)  (also, J added a pinch of sea salt)
WW suggested sprinkling with unsweetened cocoa powder, but we don't have any of that on hand, so I drank mine plain.  It tasted like a great banana milkshake.  J added a dollop of peanut butter, a drizzle of honey, and a little nutmeg to his, and it tasted like a peanut butter milkshake.
As printed in the book, this recipe has 4 WW PointsPlus.  The way J made mine added up to 5 WW PointsPlus.  Since I didn't watch him make his smoothie, I'm hesitant to estimate the points in his version, but I'm sure it added at least two or three points to my total.

Saturday Smells Like...omelets and hamburgers

J's mom is in town this weekend, which makes it a perfect time for me to hassle him about cooking for us--both a way to show off his skills for his mom and for me to get a great Saturday Smells post!




We started the morning with omelets.  I wanted a WW friendly omelet, so mine was one egg, one slice of maple bacon and 1/4 cup shredded cheese with some green onions for color.  While I waited for my omelet, I munched on an apple that he sliced thin for me (and garnished with sea salt--yum!!). J made a huge 2 egg omelet with grilled chicken, maple bacon, toasted garlic and salsa on top for himself.  He made something in between for his mom (2 eggs, maple bacon and cheese).





As soon as we finished cleaning up the breakfast dishes, J started in on lunch.  It's been a while since he made us hamburgers out of fresh ground beef, but we had a couple pieces of manager's special beef that needed to be used.  The chuck steak and filet had been marinated in olive oil, rice wine vinegar, and soy sauce with red pepper flakes, garlic, S&P.  J cubed both pieces of meat, trimming as he went, and ground them together with butter.  Y'all.  I cannot begin to describe what fresh ground beef tastes like.  It's amazing.  And if you like your hamburgers medium-rare, like I do, you get to taste every bit of that freshness while you eat your burger.  After grinding the meat, J added homemade breadcrumbs, Worcestershire sauce,  diced bacon, liquid smoke, minced onion, one whole egg and another egg yolk, S&P and blended together with his hands.  The nice thing about the way our kitchen is set up is that his mom and I can hang out at the kitchen table and watch him like our own personal cooking show.  He's been adding great commentary for us this morning!


I'll post pics of the finished burgers later.  Happy Eating this weekend!

Saturday smells like...Table Three Ten

So I wrote a long post last night at the Opera (yeah, I totally had to say it that way) about Table Three Ten, where J and I had dinner before walking over to see Falstaff at the Lexington Opera House.  Then, just when I was ready to post, my finger apparently hit the wrong area of the screen and the whole post disappeared.  I hit back, I hit forward, I tried everything.  It hadn't saved, and my post was gone.  And y'all, it was a good post.  I was incredibly bummed.  On a positive note, there is one benefit to the loss.  I got J to install Chrome for me, which allows me to post from my laptop again.  And that allows me to include pictures from our meal last night!

J had the mussels with chorizo in a Nicaraguan lager broth.

I had a strip steak with mashed potatoes and smoked Kentucky shiitake mushrooms.  The smoked mushrooms absolutely made the meal.

For our appetizer, we had a charcuterie plate of chorizo, prosciutto, and Broadbent Country Ham (from down in my part of the world!).  Now, I'm not typically a fan of country ham, but this preparation (sliced very thinly) was so creamy and delicious!

We turned down the dessert options (though the sorghum gelato sounded delicious!) and instead took a walk around the block with a stop at Starbucks for hot chocolates.

Saturday smells like...steak and eggs

I woke up this morning to the sizzle of a frying pan.  Unsure of what J might be doing, but happy as long as the smoke detector wasn't going off, I snuggled back down under the covers.  A few minutes later, J appeared with breakfast in bed:  an egg over medium (cooked by splashing a bit of bacon grease over the top of the egg so you never actually have to flip it/risk breaking the yolk) and filet mignon.  We didn't catch a picture of the eggs, but J did manage to take a picture of the 'spare' steak--

Saturday smells like... lettuce wrapped echiladas

It was late last night before I took the time to let myself be hungry.  Too late, really.  Well, too late to have gone without a snack.With this whole point counting thing, I'm hesitant to just randomly snack on any stray cookie.  Even though I've not come close to using up the "extra" points they give you, I'm still all about being careful.  Until I'm starving.  Then I'm still careful, but I'm also a little grumpy and snappy.  There was a recipe for enchiladas in my weight watchers cookbook that interested me, but we didn't have tortillas.  And in my hungry state, I wasn't about to let J embark on tortilla making.  Instead, we decided to use romaine heart leaves instead.  So the recipe (our recipe; not exactly the one in the book after J got involved):

1 pound ground beef, browned
1 onion, diced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 pkt taco seasoning
2/3 cup water
2 8oz. cans of tomato sauce
1 cup shredded Mexican blend cheese
green onion for garnish
lettuce leaves

Brown the ground beef, drain, add the taco seasoning and 2/3 cup water and simmer.  Add in the onions and garlic.  Simmer a little more.  Add tomato sauce, bring to boil, then simmer for five minutes.  While simmering, add in some random herbs and spices you think might add something.  Seriously, I'm not sure what J was adding, but he promised it wouldn't add points.  After five minutes, remove from heat and stir in cheese.  Dish into lettuce leaves.  Garnish with green onion.

One serving is about one cup.  In the picture above, there are two servings (I was seriously hungry and thought I needed that much.  I didn't.  I barely finished it.).

Oh, and then discover that your lettuce leaves weren't quite right and attack the dish with a fork and knife.  J didn't even try; he just tore his lettuce and served it like a naked taco salad (below).  But I'm certain that the lettuce wrap idea is still possible.

Freestyle Sausage

Happy New Year!!

We finished up the sausage so late on Saturday that I figured I'd swing the pictures into their own blog post.  So I left off yesterday with a picture of the food grinder grinding out some fresh ground beef.  Today's picks up loking much the same, except with cubed, seasoned pork.  Here's a shot of the chorizo in progress:

and the chorizo all bagged up and ready for weigh-in on our new scale:

J plans to use the chorizo in dishes so this turned out to be the much easier of the two types of sausage we made.  I plan to use the breakfast sausage as a side for our breakfasts, and I prefer it as links, so of course we had to try out the sausage stuffing attachment and the sausage casings I got J for Christmas.

Now, let me insert here that there are any number of totally inappropriate jokes or comments that could be made in this post.  That said, my folks read this blog, so I'm going to leave out the one or two that J and I came up with.  Feel free to make up your own and laugh on the inside.  So, moving on.

The breakfast sausage starts much like the chorizo, but after the pork was ground into sausage, we ran it back through the food grinder with the sausage stuffing attachment attached.  Before you can turn the machine on, though, you have to measure out a length of casement, tie a knot in one end, and slide the casing entirely onto the attachment.  Then you turn the machine on and procede to fill the casing, like this:

Actually, I found it easier to twist off links as the casing filled, so our second and third casings didn't coil up neatly like in the picture above.  I didn't realize until we started that this was going to be a two person, four hand kind of job, so there aren't nearly as many pictures as I'd hoped to take.  I did manage to take one of the second and third casings on the scale.  We ended up with about a pound and a half of breakfast links between all three casings.

Aren't they cute??  We cooked the extra that didn't fit into the third casing and were very pleased with it, too.

Between the sausage making and the Big Bang Theory marathon on TBS, J and I had a pretty boring but thoroughly enjoyable New Year's Eve.  While it wasn't the weekend we had planned, it was a nice way to close out 2011.

Saturday smells like...Ground meat and sausage

So one of J's Christmas gifts from me this year was the food grinder attachment for our KitchenAid stand mixer.  I also got him the sausage stuffing attachment and a bag of sausage casings from our local butcher. 
J quickly went off in search of meat soon after we got back from our Christmas travels, and he came home with chuck roast (beef shoulder) and Boston Butt (pork shoulder...J Googled the name so I'd understand why the shoulder is named for the rear; it's a long story so I'd suggest you go here if you'd like to learn).  He got right to work on the beef, as seen here:

Clearly, this week we've been eating lots of fresh ground chuck.  I have to say, there's something particularly amazing about a hamburger made this way.  J cut most of the fat out so that it was particularly lean, then he added in butter for fat.  Later in the week, he diced and marinated more of the chuck before grinding.  Either way, both made a great burger.

Last night, J chopped up the Boston Butt and split it into two bowls. The first he seasoned using Williams-Sonoma's Chorizo spice blend, and the second he seasoned using Williams-Sonoma's Breakfast Sausage spice blend.  Today, he'll be grinding the pork, and hopefully I'll get a picture of the sausage stuffing attachment in action. 

Tuesday smells like...

Okay, so this post is totally going to read like a Saturday smells like... blog post.  The thing is, I'm praising J's talent for cooking (and I'm afraid I'll forget it by Satuday), so I figure it works for a Tuesday's Talent post, too.

Over the weekend (or maybe last week?  When I'm sick it all runs together.), J roasted a whole chicken.  He's really just started doing this kind of thing and we've learned that the 'low and slow' method works best.  We've also learned that slow roasting doesn't work for supper on a weeknight (my mom can attest to that one), but it works great as a prepare ahead kind of thing.  So that night (whenever it was) J roasted the chicken.  Then another day this weekend he boiled down the stock into a great broth.  Now, typically, he'll take this stock and turn it into a chicken tortilla soup or something like that.  He's pretty good at it.

He's also getting pretty good at listening to his wife.  Sometimes, especially when I'm sick, I prefer bland food.  I don't know if you've ever eaten chicken tortilla soup, but bland isn't a word you'd use to describe it.  I expressed to J that if I was going to eat his soup, he needed to leave it as it was--plain chicken broth.  And you know what?  He listened!  A little salt and pepper, and I think that's it (that's all I can taste anyway).

But here's where the talent really comes in:  He knew that I'd be getting better soon and might be ready to add something to the soup.  So he diced green onions and chopped up some of the roasted chicken.  He put it all together in the fridge and let me know about it.  Yesterday, when I came in from W-S (where I'd worked an hour longer than planned and missed lunch), the soup was my first stop (after letting Zep out, of course).  J is amazing.  A cup of chicken broth, heated up in the microwave, a handful of chicken and a spoonful of green onions later.  That's it.  And it was the best cup of homemade soup ever!

So there you go:  J's talent for cooking as shared through chicken soup!

Saturday smells like...sausage and eggs with salsa

This morning was a rare gem when it comes to Saturday mornings at the MP.  Neither of us had morning plans, so we enjoyed a quiet morning on the couch with the Food Network and our computers.  J was inspired by something (Micheal Symon, I think) and headed upstairs to make breakfast.  The proverbial cupboard is almost bare as we've not been grocery shopping since before Thanksgiving last week, so it took a little digging.  What did we end up with?  Scrambled eggs with some italian sausage and garlic mixed in, topped with parmesan cheese and Ale-8-One salsa.  Yum!

Saturday smells like...Turkey and all the fixings

Y'all knew what to expect for this week's "Saturday smells like...", didn't you?  Well, in case it's a surprise, I've got a post chock-full of pictures to take you through our Thanksgiving dinner.  The smell, and taste, of everything was amazing.  I hope your Thanksgiving Dinner was half as good!

We started with the Turkey.  I shared the brining picture in Wednesday's post.  That was followed up by coating the skin in a combination of Olive Oil Mayonnaise and herbed duck fat.  The duck fat was also squeezed under the skin of the breasts so that it would drip through the meat while cooking.  Here is the pre-cooking picture:

And the post-cooking picture:

In addition to turkey, we had roasted parsnip puree (in process here):

and the potatoes romanoff I mentioned Monday.  Six potatoes, an entire block of Vermont white cheddar and a large container of sour cream.  Yum.

We also had W-S focaccia stuffing, made with italian sausage, onions, and turkey stock.  So savory!  I don't seem to have taken a picture of it put together, but here is one of the onions sweating (on the left burner) and the turkey stock warming (on the right burner):

And stir-fried roasted-chili garlic broccoli. 

Here is everything on the table we set up as a buffet (obviously there was way more food than room on the table!):

From left to right:  The parsnips puree, W-S Apple-Organge Cranberry Relish, the broccoli, gravy, potatoes romanoff, focaccia stuffing, the awesome apple-cranberry sweet potatoes our friends B & D brought, and the turkey.

And here's where we ate:

After we ate, we had the best dessert.  While I've typically gone the more traditional pecan or pumpkin pie route, this year we decided to try something diferent--pumpkin ice cream.  J made a fabulous cinnamon chantilly cream to top the ice cream, and we accessorized the ice cream with gingersnap cookies and a drizzle of Applecreek Orchards' Bourbon Caramel sauce.