It's been a while

Oh, my! I'd started off 2012 with a new kitchen and plans to get back on board with this blog... and immediately failed.

Here was our kitchen:

Note the very little usable counter space (yep, it's that piece between the sink and the stove -- so your left elbow is effectively resting on the top burner as you prep) and the electric coil stovetop. And yes, the completely bare wall to the left was being used for extra pantry storage and cookbooks.

We'd planned to put in all new counters along that left wall as well as an island (peninsula) eat in option (since there's no room for a full table). After months of planning and meeting with cabinet folk, we had our design. And then we waited. And waited. We had our first piece done mid-May -- replacing the drawer bank and cabinets you see next to the fridge so that (when we had the funds) we could get a larger fridge. And we'd planned to buy a new oven as soon as we could as well.

And then we waited some more. In June we got the rest of the cabinets and the counters were measured. And we waited some more. End of the month, half of the counters were installed. Seemed they cut the sink into the wrong piece so our new countertops would have to wait just a bit longer. At that point we had the sink debacle. The old sink had warped along with the old countertops and could be installed wobbly or we could buy a new sink. Ick.

And there were cabinet reorders to address defects the install team noted. We waited quite some time on those as well. But I kept trucking along as best I could in the in progress kitchen.

By second week of July, we were done!

Or so we thought.

In September, our oven died. In calling the company I discovered it was 12 years old and I while they could send a tech out to identify the problem, the cost of that wouldn't apply to any work to fix said problem. Faced with fixing an oven we wanted to get rid of without even knowing what said repair would cost, we decided that although it wasn't the most convenient timing, we had been planning to buy a new oven. And so we did. Unfortunately the one we wanted was backordered for 6 weeks. Facing not having an oven or a stovetop for that long was really too much for me to handle. Instead, we were sold on a very similar model made by a brand the salesperson swore was tried and true.

A few days later it had arrived and was installed. Just three days after that we noticed it was making a horrendous noise while preheating. So we called the repair folks. Turned out the fan was wobbly. They ordered a new piece, it arrived a week later (this is early Sept now). But they couldn't install the piece until October 8. Oh well, at least we had one small oven and the stovetop to use. So it wasn't total torture.

Oct 8 arrives -- we've now had the oven in our house for just under a month and never been able to use it. The pieces is installed, takes just about 5 minutes to do. Fabulous! A working full-size oven, finally!

And now we have arrived at October 16, last night. I'd used the oven just once since last Monday and was planning to use it this evening to reheat a rotisserie chicken. Preheated the oven just fine, popped the chicken in, and went about my business.

After about 15 minutes I heard what sounded like something falling. We have pets so I didn't really think anything of it except a small niggle about the oven. I brushed that away thinking that surely our newly repaired oven should be working like a charm and there was no reason to believe the noise could possibly related to it.

I was wrong. As the yummy smell of cooked chicken spread throughout the house and my stomach growled with hunger, I approached the kitchen and was greeted by this site:

Yes, our one month old, only used twice bottom oven had apparently imploded. Nice. Now I'm facing not having an oven or stovetop for another indeterminate time. It's clear that this particular one is kaput and I wouldn't trust it even if they did replace the door. I'm trying to stay a bit more level headed than normal but trust me I'm quietly raging inside.

Just in case you needed a close up of the damage.

I heart Zingermans!

I have to thank my dad for introducing me to Zingermans. Were it not for him, I probably would never have heard about their uber fabulousness. They are actually a deli in Michigan, but they have a huge mail order operation for feeding the hungry foodie masses, like me.

Oils, vinegars, honeys, cheeses, and breads are just a few of the yummy items one can order. There are food clubs as well, where you can get a box set of different items each month.

So far, we've had:

Sea Salt & Chipotle Caramels (yum!)

Il Mongetto Diavola Sauce

Iberico Dry Cured Ham (which we ate with melon and honey)

Corbezzolo Honey (ate with the melon and ham)

French Lavender Honey (heaven)

Boat Street Pickled Figs (paired with the below bread and cheese)

(Better Than) San Francisco Style Sourdough

Bridgewater (cheese)

Wild Mugolio Pine Syrup (also awesome with the sourdough and Bridgewater)

Fig & Walnut Confit (with the sourdough and Bridgewater as well)

And we have a few items we have yet to crack open as well:

Il Mongetto Mushroom Sauce

Saba Balsamic Syrup

Vinaigre de Banyuls

Yeah, you can say it. My dad is awesome! Mike particularly enjoyed the Pine Syrup with homemade banana bread.

Happy New Year!

Being from the south, we stick to the New Year's tradition of pork, black-eyed peas, and cabbage for health, luck, and wealth in the New Year. Until I was out of college, it was up to my parents to put together said meal. My very first on my own was a bit of a scramble -- I can't remember the exact situation, but I wasn't able to go home (work) and so my boyfriend (now husband) and I scrambled to get some pork and cabbage egg rolls and a can of black-eyed peas to hit all the relevant food groups.

I'm too superstitious to let a New Year's dinner slide!

Since then, I've played with variations. I did pork cabbage rolls one year, a black-eyed pea dip another year, and this year I did a sort of black-eyed pea stew with ham and a side of creamed cabbage.

The stew was a variation of Hoppin' John recipes I came across. I soaked dried black-eyed peas overnight. The following morning, I sauteed a chopped onion with half a bell pepper, two sticks of celery and three cloves of garlic. Then I added diced ham leftover from Christmas dinner and added that to the pot along with the beans. Four cups of chicken broth, a bay leaf, a pinch of marjoram, and a pinch of thyme. Seasoned it all with salt, pepper, and Tony's and let it simmer away for the next two and half hours. I do have to say that this is one I would have cooked down much longer, but we were in a bit of a time crunch. If you were to let it cook down long enough for all the beans to be mushy and the liquid pretty much absorbed... yum!

The cabbage was super, super simple. I used Gojee to find this recipe: Five & Spice's Cabbage for Cabbage Haters. I highly recommend it as it was super tasty.

Neither dish was all that pretty, nor was it the healthiest New Year's dinner, but not the worst by far. Though my egg roll idea was inventive, I doubt I'll be returning to that unless I'm in dire straits.

What did we do with all that basil?

We got an aerogrow and recently had our first haul of herbs. It was pretty cool, I have to admit. I am notorious for my black thumb. The only plant I've ever managed to keep alive was a crazy spider plant that I totally ignored.

I have even killed mint. It's ridiculous.

But Mike set up the Aerogarden and things started growing. And growing, and growing. We just cleaned it out and started a fresh batch of seeds. Jalapenos, cubanelles, and cute little grape tomatoes. If it goes as well this time around as it did last, I'd expect plant within the next couple of weeks. Basically it speeds up the growth cycle by keeping a timed light on most of the day.

The last batch of seeds we did were basil, cilantro, dill, and sage. The sage never really took off (there was some chives in there, too, that never did anything at all). The dill got used in pickling mostly. The cilantro in many batches of salsas and various other Mexican inspired dishes. And the basil? We used that in Caprese salads and cracker stacks, Spicy Pasta Salad with Smoked Gouda, Tomatoes, and Basil, and, of course, pesto!

In fact, I was able to use my basil and some of the heavy cream from our local dairy together in Pioneer Woman's Pasta With Pesto Cream Sauce. Super yum! My latest batch was over some Buitoni Wild Mushroom Agnolotti and it came out fantastic. A keeper for sure for nights when I want something tasty with minimum effort.

My Peri Peri Chicken and Peppers

Hello, world! We hit up Austin recently on a short road trip to Texas, and of course I had to stop at Tears of Joy -- the best hot sauce shop ever!

Mike laughs at me about the hot sauce thing and frequently blames any ailment I might complain about on my penchant for eating spicy food. Since I couldn't go crazy, though, I limited myself to five bottles (plus Mike's bottle of Susie's, which was at one point too hot for even me).

One of my haul was a Peri Peri sauce made by Zulu Zulu. The shop usually has a handful of sauces out to try, and they had a similar Peri Peri out, but Zulu Zulu's bottle was larger and my idea was to make something in the sauce rather than using it as a condiment. Plus the guy in the store said the two brands tasted pretty similar.

Using a Jamie Oliver recipe as inspiration, I seasoned two chicken breasts with salt and pepper and sliced them into thin, two-inch long strips and sauteed them in some oil until they were cooked through. I then removed the chicken breasts and tossed some sliced onion and bell pepper in the skillet, cooking them through.

Meanwhile, I poured a layer of the Peri Peri sauce into the bottom of a casserole dish. Once the onions and peppers were done, I threw all of it (cooked chicken strips, onions, and peppers) into the casserole with the sauce and tossed it together. Then I baked it the oven (preheated) at 400 for about twenty minutes so that the chicken and peppers could really absorb the flavors of the sauce.

Jamie's recipe has a homemade piri piri -- and is from his 30-Minute Meals show in the UK, so I like the way the recipe is laid out telling you exactly what to do when for the time conscious cook. Also keeping his recipe in mind, I roasted off some potatoes (sweet and red) and tossed them with some olive oil, Mexican cheese and red chilies.

The sauce had a bit of a kick, but not too much. Probably a bit hot for mom, but I thought it made a great summer-time meal. It wasn't terribly heavy and the heat was enough to cool me off (funny how that works, right?). I found some coconut soda water and mixed a bit with some mango nectar (thicker than a standard juice) to go alongside. Yum!

I Swear I've Been Cooking!

I do, I swear it. It's been a long few weeks, but I have been in the kitchen.

I can't remember if I've mentioned it yet, but one of the best gifts I got last year, and one of the most useful, is my new foodsaver. For a while, I'd been buying bulk and freezing (meat, I mean) for those evenings when I really didn't want to head out to the grocery store and found myself scratching my head as to what to make for dinner.

Now that I have the foodsaver, I don't feel so bad about using so many ziplocs, for one, and an individual chicken breast defrosts a lot easier than two stuck together in the same bag. Never mind the fact that the meat doesn't get all freezerburned as easy (they tend not to stay in there long enough for that in the ziplocs anyway, but it is a plus for the foodsaver).

So I was in this spot a few weeks back. What to make, no desire to head to the store, and just staples in the kitchen. So I defrosted two chicken breasts and headed to my collection of saved recipes (yes, I hoard. I see something that sounds good, I bookmark it, and eons later I've yet to try it).

I picked Rachel Ray's Latin Chicken and Rice Pot -- a one pot meal with a bell pepper and green olive salsa and avocado sour cream. Plus the weather was nasty and this seemed like the right thing to warm me up. Throw on some Wallander and I made a weekend out of it with leftovers, too.

The recipe was super easy to put together. I don't know that I'd consider it a favorite, but if you're used to jambalaya, this is sort of a variation on that. Same basic cooking technique. The only real problem I had, though, was in cooking the rice. Rice tends to take longer here in Colorado anyway, and nowhere in the recipe does it say to cover the rice while cooking, which resulted (as I'd suspected it would) in a dry pot with raw rice. No big deal, I added more stock, brought it back to a boil, and covered it to cook longer.

This Dessert is So Wrong, But So Good!

So Saturday rolled around nice and sunny and pretty warm out. Mike bough grass seed to patch the yard and I found an unabeled container of something in the freezer. I decided to be brave and let it thaw so we could see what it was (it could have been any number of things ranging from homemade spaghetti sauce to chili).

Turned out it was Mike's homemade spaghetti sauce after all. We had spaghetti and meatballs and watched Friday's Fringe.

Then the sweet tooth craving hit.

I don't actually make a whole lot of desserts. We're not a desserts every night couple. It's more of a desserts on special occasions. Or if I happen to be walking the baked aisle at Whole Foods (because they usually have tasty looking treats).

I wasn't feeling too hot on Saturday either, a combination of allergies and a sinus infection, so whatever I came up with had to be completely on hand and very easy to make. I started to reach for the apple crisp recipe I mentioned last, when I remembered Banoffee Pie!

I few months back, Saveur posted this classic Banoffee Pie recipe and I'd stored it until I had the ingredients. But my bananas were always overripe, or Mike had eaten them all, or there was no sweetened condensed milk in the house. You get the picture.

It all fell into place on Saturday. Not only did I have everything on hand, I even had heavy cream from the local dairy!

Banoffee, if you don't know, is a banana toffee pie. A cream pie. No baking required. You assemble your crust (we used graham crackers). You cook your sugar, butter, and sweetened condensed milk (you know, I don't know how my grandmother felt about bananas, but I can't believe I didn't find this recipe in time to make it for her). You pour your filling into your crust and one full Fringe episode later, you slice your bananas on top and cover it all with freshly whipped cream -- as I said, I used the heavy cream from our local dairy, no sweetener added. It cut the toffee pudding quite a bit, which was nice.

And since I did two small individual ramekins, we have toffee leftover for dipping!

So wrong on so many levels. I mean, if you spend all day at the gym, you can probably not feel guilty about eating a dessert that's the equivalent of bananas smothered in sweetened condensed milk, but man, it tastes so good!

Sorry no pics. We ate it all.

Easy Apple Crisp

So Easter was going a last minute affair in our house this year. Up until just two days before, I had been planning to do a small pork roast for just the two of us. I'd debated about a ham, but the only ones I'd been able to find were 10lbs or more -- way too much for just two people, although we probably would have made a valiant effort.

But it just so happened that we made plans with company at the last minute. I got one of those spiral sliced jobs with a sweet glaze (because I love sweet glaze on my ham) and I made the on-again-off-again hashbrown casserole (on-again-off-again because it only seems to come out the way I like it about half the time), as well as a creamy broccoli cauliflower soup that was a first time recipe for me.

I wasn't sure about dessert, though. I actually tried to make my grocery trip as short and sweet as possible due to the crowds and I didn't grab anything sweet. I think my initial thought was just that we're always so stuffed, dessert gets left over for us to gorge on later. Something I definitely didn't need.

But we had a ton of apples. A TON! And I had all the basics, including a refrigerated pie crust (just one, though). So very, very last minute (morning of, while the ham was reheating) I searched for quick apple crisp recipes and found this one from the Neelys.

It's a keeper and will be my go to for last minute desserts from now on. So quick and simple to put together! We even had some Boulder Ice Cream brand Sweet Cream ice cream in the fridge (which makes a much yummier topping than simple vanilla or whipped cream!). It was probably the most perfect, inexpensive and tasty dessert I could have found for that day. In truth, I waffled between it and an apple cake recipe that I really want to try, but decided that the oven adventures were not something I wanted to wrestle with considering the rest of the meal I was trying to put together.

Homemade Tomato Soup

I made tomato soup last night. This in spite of the fact that I spent all day looking and pictures of hamburgers and onion rings! Actually, it was to be a meal of tomato soup and burgers, but the meat didn't defrost in time and I really didn't want to go grocery shopping. So it was tomato soup and grilled cheese. Yum!

The best tomato soup ever is one that I've had many times at Cafe Foods in Boulder. Dennis makes a Tomato and Cream Cheese Soup that is absolutely to die for. I highly recommend it if you're out Boulder way at lunch time during the week (they have a killer egg salad, excellent sandwiches, and usually five daily soup options).

With the Cookbooker Smitten Kitchen Challenge, I decided to see of she might have a tomato soup recipe hiding in her archives. Sure enough, there was. You can find the recipes here.

I actually had everything on hand for once. I had in mind that I wanted tomato soup last time I went to the store, so I bought two large cans of canned tomatoes specifically for that purpose. The most time consuming portion of this recipe (and oddly somewhat relaxing and meditative) was seeding the canned tomatoes. After that, it was pretty smooth sailing. The soup was, as the title of the recipe promised, creamy, and the perfect complement to the grilled cheese (Mike's addition to dinner).

I've got leftovers for lunch as well. Nice considering it's been raining all week! Next time I may Dennis it up by adding some cream cheese or a little swirl of pesto instead.

Pickles!

We've got pickles going, folks. I'm trying this Homesick Texan recipe for refrigerator dills. They still have 2-3 days to go, so I'll update you then.

I've attempted pickles before. My uncle had a super easy sweets recipe that actually involved adding stuff to grocery store sliced dills. They're sweet and tangy, but not from scratch pickles.

Ages ago, I attempted various bread and butter recipes that didn't quite work out. I've not given them ago since.

Recently, though, I did have luck with Glass Onion's fabulous overnights (you can find the recipe here). They're fantastic, you can cut the recipe very easily, and they're awesome in the GO Cole Slaw (I'll have to try them in deviled eggs now).

We're pickle fans here, there's no question. In the dill world, Claussen's are second to none for us. I love bread and butters in my potato salad and I will use just about any pickle on a sandwich, depending on the various other fillers.

I've always wanted to make my own, though. One day, I'll find a good fit that I can adapt and twist around -- I would love an excellent SPICY bread and butter. And deli dills knock Vlasic out of the water any day.

Two more days till we get to see if Homesick Texan comes through for me (it was a good way to use up our jungle of dill in the Aerogrow at any rate!).

I Didn't Know Shortbread Was Supposed to Be Difficult

I attempted shortbread for the first time this weekend. I have my grandmother's old recipe, which is very similar to the recipe in Jael McHenry's The Kitchen Daughter. And given that she said you could put the dough together in the food processor, I thought it would be a quick and easy set of cookies to bake (that wouldn't be affected by our stupid altitude issues).

What I wasn't counting on was discovering that our ovens are both a POS. Yes, surprise, surprise. The ovens in the house that we're renting are about a thousand years old and now bake unevenly. Which means that in addition to all the issues I have trying to bake at high altitude (flat cookies), I now have to account for the fact that anything on the back of the pan will be cooking at a higher temp than the front.

But, I didn't discover that until after I fought with the first batch. See, what my recipes don't tell you and what this recipe does tell you, is that you need to chill your dough. You're working with COLD butter. As the warmth of your hands and the working over of the dough heats up that butter, the dough becomes more sticky and hard to work with.

So, chill your dough. Other than that, a test throwaway batch to see how your oven is working might be a given. My grandmother's recipe actually says bake 40-45 minutes at 275. Yikes! I found that the 25 minutes at 350 from the other recipe was still too long in my oven. About 15 minutes at 350 yielded half a batch of ok cookies (because the back ones burned). And 15 minutes at 325 gave me a chance to remove some pretty back cookies and set the front ones back in for 2 more minutes.

Agh. Baking is really not supposed to be this difficult!

Biscuits and Gravy

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of reading Jael McHenry's debut, The Kitchen Daughter. It's fiction, but it does include a handful of recipes (the main character can see ghosts when she prepares a dish from a handwritten recipe card). It's a sweet read and seeing as how McHenry is a foodie herself (she has recipes at her Simmer blog) so I decided to give a few of The Kitchen Daughter recipes a try.

First off, I've never made homemade biscuits. I think I rolled mine too flat, though, because while they weren't dense, they weren't fluffy and flaky either. Well... that's not entirely true. The first batch were rolled out thinner than the next and those second batch biscuits were more what I'd hoped the whole batch would be. So now I know.

For the sausage gravy, I bought some breakfast sausage at Herbs (so yummy!). I ate too much. Probably not the healthiest meal I've had all week, but it was a pretty tasty one!

You can find the recipe and an excerpt of The Kitchen Daughter here at Scribd.

Oh, my goodness! Dr Pepper Pork!

To continue with the pork madness we had last week... I'd planned to make Pioneer Woman's Spicy Dr. Pepper Shredded Pork the day she posted the recipe. I mean, what could be more enticing than a pork shoulder slow cooked in Dr. Pepper?!

I made a run to Herb's and they cut me a 4lb+ pork shoulder roast. Fortunately there was no bone so I chopped it in half and vacuum packed a portion for later. That was the hardest part of the recipe (by which I mean this is the simplest recipe in the world!). We ate it with flatbread (no tortillas on hand that night), roasted potatoes, and green beans. Yum! Mike had leftover sandwiches and we even did some nachos with it one day.

Note to Mom: the sauce is a bit spicy. I'm sure it would be just as tasty without the peppers or with less peppers. Maybe. I actually used a smaller can of chipotles, just because it was what I had on hand.

Ohh, and to Texas it all out, we can finally get Blue Bell here :)

Jamie Oliver's Goulash

I got a foodsaver for Christmas and I love it. For a while, I've been buying meat in bulk so that I'm prepared on days that I don't want to run to the grocery store for dinner. Course, it means planning that morning for dinner that night to allow defrosting time, but it's come in handy always having chicken breasts or pork chops on hand.

Monday was definitely a clean your fridge night. My method of late has been to find a couple of on hand ingredients -- in this case pork chops and bell peppers -- and search for a recipe that works with what I've got in the fridge, freezer, and pantry.

I chose Jamie Oliver's Spicy Pork and Pepper Goulash even though it called for pork shoulder when all I had on hand were pork chops (got one in the freezer now, though). I figured it was a decent substitute, especially in terms of making a three hour dish in a little less time, and I was right. So the only changes I really made were to trim and cut the chops into pieces and saute where the recipe calls for rendering the fat from the roast.

I cooked it for about an hour and a half, knowing that the three hour shoulder roast cook time might be overkill for my little chops, and the meat turned out nice and tender. Barring the fact that the flavors would obviously have more time to develop and that a shredded, tender roast is much different from chops, this was definitely a keeper dish either way. (And we ate it over egg noodles tossed with a little butter and parsley rather than the rice in this case.)

Here's the link to the recipe on Food Network, it can also be found in Oliver's Jamie At Home.

My Yellow Curry Mistake

So I do some shopping at our international stores and a while back I bought two cans each of the red, green, and yellow curry pastes. By now I've used all of the red and green as I frequently come across recipes that call for one or the other, but I'd not done anything with the yellow just yet.

One cold day two weeks ago, I decided I wanted some lentil soup. Lentil with curry and coconut and veggies. But all I had was yellow. No big deal, I thought. Yes, sort of a big deal.

I opened the yellow curry and spooned a massive spoonful into my soup when I realized it smelled fishily familiar. Fishy. Yep. 34% fish paste. I'm not sure if all yellow curry pastes are the same, but I definitely was not expecting it (hey, you gotta try new stuff, but maybe I'd be better off checking those ingredients before experimenting, right?).

Note to self: keep more green curry on hand and don't substitute yellow when you really want green. The soup turned out ok -- not the flavor I was looking for obviously (also tried to hurry the lentils, which never works). Not a big hit, but not a total flub.

Hello again!

First off, if you're reading this, big thanks!

Now, my dilemma with this blog since day one has been this: I don't have pretty pictures. I have a good camera, but I'm not a good photographer. I take food pics for the blog (because all the food blogs I read have such great pics) and then agonize over how bleh they are.

My other issue has been the fact that while I cook a lot, I rarely have original recipes of my own and just linking kind of seemed like a cop out.

I've decided I don't care. I don't, not anymore.

Here's the thing, I have come to realize that I'm losing track of where my recipes come from and when I cook them. Then I sit, scratching my head, trying to figure out what that chicken dish from last month was and where I found the recipe.

That said, I'm also sending recipe recs to family and friends and then trying to track down the sent email and resend to someone new.

So, from now on, regardless of whether I've got a pretty pic or an original recipe, I'm going to use this as a log of meals. I'll link to recipes online or tell what cookbook I got them from if there is no recipe online. I'll also have any tweaks or changes I've made (so that mom can see if she tries it at home).

I'm turning over a new leaf and getting back on track, starting now.

The Glass Onion, And I Do Love It!

I spent last week visiting the work folks in Charleston. Let me tell you, Charleston is a huge foodie place. Either that, or they all flock to work at the same company I do! My coworkers know all the great spots in town.

This is why I didn't even try to figure out places to eat. I don't know my way around Charleston and I figured I'd rely on the experts to recommend meals. Funny thing was, they all suggested Glass Onion for lunch one afternoon and then felt bad that I'd eaten there three times on my training trip.

Oh, man. You can't ever feel bad about eating at the Glass Onion. There's a reason I ate there three times and it's more than just the fact that it was convenient to the hotel : )

In fact, I'm friends with them on Facebook and check their website frequently to see if I can try and recreate dishes here in Colorado. I need Glass Onion love every once in a while (psst, they post recipes on their blog).

So far, I've had the Country Captain, the Crispy Braised Pork Belly with Grits and Greens (my first taste of greens and they were amazing!), the Crispy Pork (a different dish from the pork belly) with Grits and Local Beets, and one of their fish entrees that came with green beans and oyster mushrooms. And that's just the main dishes! I've also had their bibb wedge with homemade buttermilk dressing, the fries with bearnaise sauce, the best pickles ever, boatloads of their sweet tea, and some kind of amazing pie my first night there last December that was heaven in a slice.

Glass Onion is a local favorite in Charleston and they've been praised far and wide. I'm glad my HP folks brought me there again. I'd happily go stuff my face at the Onion every time I return to town, too!

I don't have any pics, but you'll have to trust me that this place is freaking fabulous!

Cake and pie. Oh, my!

I've been terribly bad about updating this blog. Truth is, though I've been cooking, I've been distracted. Life seems to be going back to normal now that the wedding is over. My friend took some great pics at the wedding, including some shots of the wedding cake and the groom's pies from the fabulous Shamane over at Shamane's Bake Shoppe in Boulder.

Mike, a total pie fanatic, was super excited about the prospect of having his favorite pastry in place of a traditional groom's cake. He ended up choosing cherry, apple, and maple pecan. I didn't get to have any at the reception, but the folks at Spice of Life sent us home with leftovers (awesome!).

Our cake was chocolate candied orange on the bottom (with buttercream and chocolate ganache -- if I'm not mistaken) and the top two tiers were citron raspberry (lemon curd and raspberry with white cake). Sooo awesome!

We made it home with the top of the cake and Shamane's actually gives you a cake for your anniversary, so we won't need to freeze the top. Instead, we had champagne and cake yesterday and vegged out with some Fringe.

Everything turned out amazing and I think (I hope) everyone had as great a time as Mike and I did.

Grilled Pizza

We've been playing with pizza lately. I'm a total pizza junkie, by the way, and while delivery is convenient, it gets pricey.

Our first pizza making attempt was actually to replicate one from back home. I miss Deano's and Bisbano's! Anyway, the one I'd been feigning for that particular week was a spicy shrimp pizza -- no one puts shrimp on pizza out here, and if they do, it's not in the combination that we used to get back home -- so we made it ourselves. And it turned out pretty good.

But last night we decided to try grilled pizza. My aunt sent me a dough recipe for grilling and it might be my imagination, but I think it was slightly different than the dough we'd used for our shrimp pizza. I could be wrong, but it seemed less doughy. You can see that we still used one of those foil grill sheets, just in case. (Regular dough recipe came from Food Network Magazine's pizza insert a few months back. The recipe can be found here. I can't find the grilled dough recipe, but suspect that decreasing the water slightly will work to get the same result with any standard pizza dough.)

I rolled mine out really thin -- Mike made his a little thicker, but the crust charred on the bottom, so for grilling, thin seems to be the better way to go. We then topped the pizzas on the foil sheets to make for easier transport to the grill. With the burners on low and the lid down, it took about 5 minutes or so to cook.

All in all, I think our dough needs a little adjustment. The pizza kind of tasted like frozen grocery store pizza and I think adding some flavor to the dough itself may fix that a bit. We've also yet to come up with a sauce recipe so that could be a reason as well. Another note is that while the dough did cook through, I prefer my toppings a bit more cooked than five minutes allowed. Any longer, though, and you end up with blackened crust. Remember to go thin!

Next step in my homemade pizza making process will be making my own giardienara since I've discovered that it's pretty amazing on pizza!

And if you want to add shrimp Deano's style: Buy 1 lb of peeled, deveined popcorn or slightly larger shrimp -- you won't need the whole pound, but you can use the rest on a salad or something. Boil in Zatarain's Crab Boil (comes in a small concentrate bottle -- follow bottle instructions carefully!).

For shrimp pizza, I like pepperoni, onion, spicy Italian sausage, and bell pepper. For regular pizza, I love fresh jalapeno with pepperoni and/or pineapple. But hey, it's pizza! You can do whatever you want with it! I would also recommend trying chicken cooked in crab boil. That would be fantastic on a pizza as well.

Carrot Hummus

Last fall, Mike and I ate at a local restaurant that boasted a vegetarian/non vegetarian menu. The idea was that there were entrees that were totally vegetarian (or even vegan) that you could have as is, or you could add a protein to. I thought it was a really great concept, especially since Mike and I are not vegetarian but have friends who are. That particular night, we also had friends who kept Kosher eating with us (not a lot of acceptable restaurants once you throw both those aspects into the mix, although Boulder is better than other places).

The restaurant, sadly, closed not long after we ate there -- and I didn't even have a chance to go back and try to figure out some of the dishes I wanted to replicate in my kitchen. We ordered an appetizer of various spreads with cheese, veggies, and breads. The restaurant also had a house dip that they served as well. I had thought that there were two variations of hummus, but now I'm not so sure. I do know that they served a carrot hummus that had a distinct cumin flavor.

Having never made hummus on my own, and with great local brands at the stores here, there's really no need to, but I thought that the carrot hummus would have to be my first shot. I found this recipe at a fat free vegan blog and set it aside.

Today, with my sparkly new engagement ring, my various OTC beauty products in hopes of avoiding more expensive actual procedures (teeth whitening!), and very aware that both Mike and I need to eat better (i.e. less cream and cheese!) so that I can lose some weight before trying on wedding dresses, I whipped out the carrot hummus recipe for a healthy attempt at lunch.

Now, the two major changes I made to the recipe were these:

No fresh ginger -- not a bit of it on hand

Cumin, cumin, cumin!

In the end, after fighting with a blender and a magic bullet to get the smooth hummus texture I wanted (note there is no oil in this recipe -- I have a sneaking suspicion that might have helped the blending situation, but not my waistline. I added more lemon and a bit more water to try and help the fight in the end), I spread the mixture over some whole wheat bread, cut up a tomato, added some lettuce and mozzarella and made a hopefully lowfat and healthy sandwich that will tide me over 'til supper.

What that meal will be, I'm not sure. But I can tell you it will include butternut squash and chicken breasts!