Just a quick preview of the pie I made that we’re taking to my Aunt’s house in a few minutes.  It’s a green apple, green chili pie and it has brown sugar, cinnamon, chili powder and toasted pine nuts in it.

Here it is before going in the oven.  Looks good, no?

I’m excited to see how it turns out!  That’s the problem with pies.  No way to taste them without giving away that you stole a bite!  E and I did taste test the filling, though, and that was great.  Hope it all melds well.  I am thinking served a la mode with vanilla bean ice cream.  Then again, I like *everything* a la mode.

Merry, merry to all!

As you may remember, a while ago I found myself very frustrated with the lack of good Jewish food here in San Francisco. After sampling multiple duds, I finally got fed up enough to make my own matzoh ball soup. Here is the TR!

I decided to use a recipe from what I deemed an authentic source- Sheila Rosenbaum’s “No Fail Floaters” from my New York Cookbook (I *love* that cookbook, and am determined to attempt just over 300 recipes from it).

This is also where I got the recipe for my soup stock, New York Penicillin, which apparently was served to the NYC Subway Guardian Angels for many years to keep their spirits up and hunger at bay while they were out helping others in the grime and dirt of the five borough subway systems.

New York Penicillin is a little labor intensive, but this “miracle cure” nutrient-loaded soup base helped me through enough colds to think it’s worth it. Give yourself about half a day to get through this baby (and, may I suggest even though we don’t have one- get yourself an immersion blender if you want to save yourself some time and scald burns).

Next I was off to the House of Bagels in the Richmond district and buy some Mazoh Meal. Despite all my kvetching that there is no good Jewish food in this godforsaken city, this place was legit! I learned about House of Bagels on Oy, Bay, where they assured me would have mazoh meal no matter what time of year.

The base of my matzoh balls:

Mixing up the mazoh meal, per Sheila’s directions. I think the biggest reason Sheila’s balls are “no fail” floaters is that her recipe calls for a TON of whipped up, separated eggs.

Forming the balls- delicate hands! Delicate! No “smooshing!” Keep those babies light and fluffy! Soft hands, SOFT HANDS!! Don’t pack ‘em like a meatball. These sentiments were running through my head the entire time, per everyone’s advice on TGR.

Here they are simmering in the pot! I need another big pot. My only other big pot was taken already cooking up the NY Penicillin for the soup base/broth.

Pat those babies down and flip em around so the ones of the top also absorb a bunch of the broth.

I roasted a turkey breast to go in the soup. I got this turkey breast free when I bought $100 worth of groceries at Luckys. I ADORE shopping at Luckys. Going there is like a super fun field trip!! When you are used to crappy, cramped NYC grocery stores with no selection, the wide and variety-filled aisles of Luckys are a DREAM.

Turkey soup base looking good. In it- parsnip, New York Penicillin base, carrots, celery, onions, half a can of leftover corn I had open already and some pasta shells.

Add those matzoh balls to the soup, and let’s eat!

Served with apple cider, makes a scrumptious and perfectly filling fall meal.

Add a little salt and pepper and DANG so good. Not even that hard to make, either! Who would have thought! These are totally going into the frequent file repertoire, to be pulled out whenever anyone I love could benefit from some “love in a bowl.”

iEl fín!

This smells soooo GOOD right now.  Unfortunately, there’s really no way to pre-sample a pie. At least, no way that I can think of.

Think anyone would notice if I sneaked juuuust a teeny piece out of the side?

Step 1: line pie plate with pie crust (note: I had a super hard time with this and was getting VERY frustrated.  In fact, I had planned to make a braided edge along the outside of the crust, like this, but it was really hard and I kept screwing it up and breaking the braid.  I got about 1/5 of the way through braiding the edge and gave up).  Sorry that my crust edge is a little wonky!

Step 2: Heat up maple syrup, corn syrup, brown sugar and a bit of salt. When that boils, let it cool and add 1/4 cup butter, some hazelnut essence and vanilla. Then beat 3 eggs with some Jim Beam and slowly whip in the maple syrup mixture. Administer shots of Jim Beam to chef as needed.

Step 3: Put 2 cups coursely chopped hopped hazelnuts in pie crust. Then pour in maple syrup mixture over hazelnuts.

Step 4: Bake in 350 oven for 1 hour- last 20 minutes cover top of pie with foil to prevent browning. TA DA!!!

Step 5: Give your dog a piece of the leftover pie crust. Make him sit it on his nose for a while first, showing off his “manners.” Take photo for internet.

Step 6: Administer another round of shots of Jim Beam to chef as needed.
Step 7: Take the pie to your aunt’s house and serve a la mode with vanilla ice cream! Remember to heat the pie up a bit before serving.
Step 8: Mangia!

This dinner came out too good not to share!

I’ve been craving greek food something fierce (specifically, craving tzatziki!), and sort of like the case with Matzoh ball soup, just decided to cook it for myself instead of wasting $$ chowhounding all around San Francisco and inevitably being disappointed when I reach the conclusion there is no food as good as NYC here.

Inspired by a few people on the internet who talked about how easy it is to make your own tortillas, I set out to make some whole wheat ones. We served them with Greek seasoning-coated chicken and tzatziki to make a sort of gyro type meal.

Holy cow, it came out so incredible!!  I’m not sure if Earl shares my sentiments, but I honestly think this was one of the best things I’ve ever cooked!!  Earl’s opinion doesn’t really count, anyways- the man likes EVERYTHING… you could liken him to having the palate of a famished midwestern 15-year old boy after a day working on Dad’s farm and then a 4-hour basketball practice.  It’s funny when I have him taste test stuff- “how is this?”  “It’s GOOD.”  Everything is always GOOD.  It’s never too salty, too cold, too hot, too little spices… everything is “good” followed with “yum, can I have some more?”    Very amusing… I love my boyfriend, but a food critic he is not; I might as well ask the dog to taste test things.

So yeah- this meal was a little more complicated than your standard weeknight “whip it up” but for a Sunday night or special occasion- IT WAS GREAT!!

Making homemade tortillas was super easy, too.  I didn’t use a tortilla press or any other fancy stuff.  In fact, I don’t even have a rolling pin (a rolling pin is on my Christmas wish list).
I used this recipe for the tortillas:
knead:

knead:

form into pre-made balls

roll em out:

like i said, no rolling pan here, so i used a floured can of Pam

fry em up for about 30 seconds on each side:

meanwhile make your tzatziki, which I snagged from this recipe (it was one of the more simple tzatziki recipes I found out there- a few I saw were REALLY complex, this was was easy and tasted great).

and also season up and bake your chicken. the chicken is coated in a bunch of spices- marjoram, ground rosemary, dried mint, onion powder, to name a few. You can check out the recipe I used here. Btw- this chicken came out DELISH. I’d even just make that again and skip tortillas and tzatziki. It was that good just as a stand-alone.

when chicken is done, cut into strip slices. serve with condiments (onions, heirloom tomatoes, tzatziki and seasoned chicken):

and….. nosh!

as you can see, my tortillas came out WAY too big.  if anyone attempts- I would recommend to make your balls smaller- think almost the size of a golf ball when you are shaping them.

still, super easy and GOOOOOOOOOD.  in fact, this meal was stupendous.  thumbs up, would eat again! :p In fact… maybe I should make this again this week… lol. We literally *just* ate dinner an hour ago, but doing this write up has jonesing!

ps- tonight we went to a cocktail party at Earl’s boss’ house. Her place was beautiful and had a stupendous panoramic view of the Bay Bridge (and balcony… :::drool:::). It was nice meeting all his coworkers, especially because I’ll be seeing them all again at his office Christmas Party in about two weeks… so now at least I’ve met them once already. Anyways, I thought my hair looked really pretty tonight- just haphazardly threw it up in a clip and was so happy at how cute it came out! Sometimes with those bear-trap clips you just nail it looking really nice. Not bad for a 5-second updo! Dress is the snuggly cashmere sweater dress that I snagged on an amazing sale from Bloomingdales for last year’s office Christmas party.

pps- lol, I just checked to see if that link to where the dress was sold was still valid… not only is it still valid, but the same dress is still on sale again, and even cheaper this year! HA!

For the record, we live squarely in “you’re just going to get mugged.”

Nothing terrifying about our day- making slow cooker brisket! This is a grass-fed brisket we got from Chaffin Farms earlier this fall that has been sitting our freezer waiting for a lazy, cold day.

I was catching up with my sister Kelly yesterday after my final, and she was telling me how she spent all day roasting a stew in her crockpot. I was inspired by her fall recipe to break out the brisket.
The B side

Now it’s in the crock pot stewing with some rootbeer, soy sauce, tabasco sauce, brown sugar, garlic, onions, dijon mustard, white wine vinegar, bay leaves, a can of diced tomatoes, cayenne pepper and paprika. A bastardization of this recipe (based on what we had in the house). Also, our crock pot is on the small side, so the potatoes, carrots and celery are going to get cooked separately. Some days I wish I had a MASSIVE crock pot. The bummer of having a small one is that it’s hard to make food for the whole week in it. Ours barely fit this brisket, the sauce and some onions!

Exciting news: Yesterday I found out that I passed both my finals! YAY Graduation ceremony (and of course, a big party) is next Thursday. Then, for a while I am going to just concentrate on just doing a good job at my new job and volunteering at the ER. No more juggling work and student, at least for a few months. My next plan is to take a phlebotomy and EKG tech class, but probably around February… I want to get my new work schedule a little more dialed in before trying to juggle. Very very happy school is over and I did well

May not look that great in the photo, but man o man does this SMELL SO GOOD.

Recipe found by E, courtesy of here. I am such a sucker for anything with rosemary in it (for that matter, anything with cheese in it!).

Sorry all I do lately is post about what we’re having for dinner. Frankly, it’s all I have the time (and inclination) to write about these days… classes rolling into finals, work, processing the new job, getting started at SFGH… I feel a tad overwrought. I do have about 12,000 photos to take off my camera and share with you, including a bunch from Halloween [yes Amy I am working on it!]. I’ll be happy when school is over (my last final is TOMORROW! woot!) after this weekend and I’ll have my Saturdays back again. I’ll also be happy when I have a set, predetermined, fleshed out schedule at my new job and know what my hours will be like. It’s hard for me when things are so up in the air. Working best on a set schedule, I tend to let everything go to pot when I can’t plan out my days.

In the meantime, I should just re-name this website whatwe’rehavingfordinner.com and call it a night.

Oh! Real quick- today I had a bunch of stuff to get done for my new job. I took a physical fitness test, agility test, drug test, auto-injector for nerve agent and organophosphate poisoning tutorial and exam, got fitted for and learned how to don and doff my PAPR suit with respirator, fitted for my N-95 mask and verified all of my immunizations.

After all that rigmarole (passed everything, phew), I took Linus on a nice little 4 mile trail run at Skyline Ridge Open Space Preserve. The dog is now COVERED in TICKS!! He was wearing his tick collar and I also put flea and tick powder on him, but… to no avail. I’ve already taken SIX ticks off of him. Earl is going to kill me (he absolutely *hates* ticks). Hopefully smell of yummy soup will distract nerd from new tick infestation at our apartment.

Guess I should get Linus his own PAPR suit before I take him hiking. :-/

The PAPR I was fitted for looks just like this, only with bigger rubber gloves over the latex gloves and also in a very skin-tone flattering BRIGHT UGLY YELLOW:

You know, it was surprisingly hard to move around in it. I believe this was due to wearing shoes inside the big rubber boots and also having a double layer of latex gloves *inside* giant rubber gloves. Also, the chemtape was horrendously hard to manipulate without having it stick to your gloves. In the event of a HAZMAT incident I think you’d really need a partner to help each other get in and out of the suit.

The doctor did a test on me where he TURNED OFF MY RESPIRATOR while I was in the PAPR suit and let me stand there for a few minutes. This was to demonstrate how quickly 1.) the eye visor becomes steamed up and 2.) run out of oxygen in the case the respirator battery runs out of power or somehow gets disconnected. Basically, if that happens you must leave the scene because you’re of no use to any patient. Honestly at this point I am dubious how helpful I can be to any patient while wearing the freaking suit even if everything is hunky dory. It was *that* hard to maneuver in it. Well… I guess any time you’d be wearing a PAPR would probably be a load-and-go anyways, so all you really need to wear it for is to get in, get the patient, and GTFO; there wouldn’t be much need to dink around on scene in the suit…thankfully.

Frankly, if I was a patient and a bunch of EMS professionals showed up to help me donning PAPR suits I would be freaking terrified!! They should put flowers or peace signs on them or something.

We’ll see how this comes out. I’m making roasted tomatillo salsa for dinner tonight (to put on turkey & green chili tacos… aka: leftovers ) and sort of “winging it” with the recipe. Using an amalgamation of these two recipes.

And yes, I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, but this is a case of “So, we bought these tomatillos at the farmers market and now what the heck do we do with them”-itis.

Btw: best way I’ve found to roast garlic and tomatoes? In a muffin pan, as such:

^^ still have to be drizzled in olive oil & salt & pepper

Manga! (or… er… ¡Come!)

Man, o man do I just LOOOOVE this dish.

It’s got:
- turkey leftover from this weekend’s matzoh ball soup
- cream of mushroom soup
- egg noodles
- broccoli
- celery
- mushrooms
- a bit of green onions
- 2 hard boiled eggs
- some cheddar cheese

To be topped with crushed up potato chips and cheese. It’s in the fridge now ready to go in the oven, but I can barely wait for dinner.

Did you know this is just about my favorite meal EVER?! I always used to request it from my mom as my Birthday Dinner. Anyways, back to studying FEMA protocols. I am taking my SFFD exam tomorrow morning. *fingers crossed*

Friday night we had our lovely friend Kathleen over for mini dinner party and to carve up some pumpkins.
Now- let me tell you about this recipe I cooked- Woah doggy! It was CRAY-ZAY. Insane. Tedious. Expensive to make. Gourmet. Challenging. ¡Muy difícil! Laborious.  Should I go on…?

Friday and Sundays are my two days off this fall. In that respect, I was lucky to have ALL DAY on Friday to devote to slaving in the kitchen, because that is what this recipe required. Here it is, in all its arduous glory.  Seems so simple, right?  It’s macaroni and freaking cheese, for Pete’s sake!!  Did the recipe’s creator not get the memo??  Mac and cheese is a COMFORT FOOD!  It’s supposed to be easy, cheesy, simple, yummy goodness.  Stuff yer face, feelin full, no worries, down home chow.  But- no, no- Unassuming Beginner Chef… this is Food Network CHALLENGE mac & cheese.  That means complex.  And challenging.  WINNING effort required!  No room for amateurs here!  Let’s take a look, shall we:

The Recipe that Will Break Your Soul… aka: Goat Cheese Mac & Cheese, stuffed in Artichokes

Step 1: prep, cut and clean 9 artichokes

Having never cleaned artichokes before, I was unaware of what a pain in the butt this would be.

Ta-da!  Several artichoke-leave pricks later (egads, those things are spiky!), these suckers are ready for the pot

Step 2: Simmer artichokes in a mixture of white wine, water, garlic, lemon juice, coriander (yum!- one of my favorite spices, needs to be used more often), bay leaves, peppercorns, and AN ENTIRE FREAKING CUP OF OLIVE OIL.  Really?!  A whole cup of olive oil???  Do you people not realize how pricey olive oil is these days…. also… by this point it is striking me that this is probably not the healthiest recipe in the world.

Step 3:  Realize that, as the recipe called for two and a half cups of wine, you still have a goodly amount of white wine leftover in the bottle.  Rejoice!  Contemplating the daunting afternoon ahead, go ahead and pour yourself a glass.     Note: as you see here, I am *not* a wine snob and in fact have an ice cube in my glass (*sheepish*)… enough to get one automatically evicted from the state of CA?

Step 4: cook artichokes in mixture for about an hour or until soft.  since they keep floating to the top of the solution, use baster to continually soak their insides and smoosh them down to the bottom of the pot

Step 5: while artichokes are cooking, prepare bread crumbs.  this is a major pain in and of itself, involving blending up a loaf of bread, then toasting breadcrumbs in a pan of olive oil.  once these are done being toasted, let them cool and then add zest of three lemons, blended up fresh parsley, ground pink peppercorns, salt and parm cheese

Step 6: meanwhile, you gotta make some mac and cheese to stuff in the artichokes.  get out your goat cheese!  (btw- the midnight moon goat cheese was AWESOME, would totally recommend that for just plain noshing)

Step 7: Also in the meantime, start your dessert.  I was making miniature individual strawberry pies.   Started out by making this all-butter pie crust.  Cool thing about this recipe is that it made enough for two pie crusts, which means I have one left over in the freezer now for Thanksgiving.

Step 8: A-ha!  An hour later your artichokes are done cooking.  Take them out, let them cool, put em in a pan.  Then you have to remove the hearts and saute them SEPARATELY in another pan for another 5-10 minutes while doctoring them up with all kind of spices.  Meanwhile, you’re supposed to take three of the other cooked artichokes and blend them up in a blender and add some different spices.  I didn’t (and still don’t) really get this part, because the recipe at this point stops differentiating between the sauteed hearts and blended ‘chokes and never specifies what you’re supposed to do with each.  I wing’ed it and just sort of stuffed the bottoms of the ‘chokes with both mixtures.  Consult recipe if you seek more specific clarification.

Step 9:  How’s that mac and cheese coming?  I used regular milk instead of three cups of heavy cream as called for in hopes of making this a smidge healthier.  Btw: mac and cheese on its own was CRAZY good.  Might make this again just doing the goat cheese mac & cheese part, completely skipping the ‘chokes.

Step 10: Stuff those artichokes!  You can see next to it, I had enough mac & cheese left over to make a separate dish of plain baked mac and cheese which was AWESOME.

Mac & Cheese filled artichokes

Pie filling, bread crumb topping, mini-pie filling and ‘chokes

Step 11: Line pie crusts in buttered muffin pan and fill with pie filling.  I didn’t use anything special for the pie filling than just a simple strawberry pie filling I made and marinated while artichokes were cooking.  It was sliced strawberries, marinated for about an hour in sugar with their juices, a bit of corn starch, some lavender and a tad of lemon zest.  At this point I left the pie crust TOPS off the mini pies so that we could each carve out our own individual designs for our separate pies.  What did I tell ya, it was a crafty night! 

Step 12: prepare appetizer of Persimmon chips.  These are sliced up persimmons, with a dash of cinnamon, baked per recipe taken from Andrea’s blog.  these were SO SIMPLE and amazingly good- would totally recommend them if you’re looking for an easy, quick and scrumptious appetizer, snack, or dessert.

Step 13: Take artichokes out of oven and plate on simple arugula salad.  Ta-da!!

A few more photos of final result:

Step 14: Most essential step: CHEERS!   We toasted to: Earl’s new job, my passing my midterms, and Kathleen surviving a rough week at work

The persimmon flowers hardly lasted long enough for me to snap a photo

Before dessert we decided to have at our pumpkins and carve away

I set up a bunch of newspapers on the floor.  Kathleen gets first choice of pumpkin seeing as she is the honored guest!

I face down my foe

Lucy came over to be part of the action

She even batted at some pumpkin gunk

One of our pumkins ended up being ROTTED and Earl volunteered to take the rotted one.  So he got to relax while Kathleen and I carved.  Linus came and helped too.

Not only carving pumpkins, we all also carved our own pie-tops.  Not sure how well you can see these, but I carved a C and a heart, Earl carved… a triangle and a blob?  I dunno… he wasn’t feeling all that crafty i guess…  And Kathleen carved a K and a pi symbol.

WHOOO DONE!!! Pumpkin-y goodness!  Mine was the goblin and Kathleen’s was the Trick or Treat.

This was Earls… the big rotted out circle

hurrah!

meanwhile, pies were done!

oh- you know what i forgot to mention before- remember to brush with egg whites before you put the tops on, so the tops don’t pop off after baking.

mini pies are AWESOME, would totally recommend this recipe again.  we ate them a la mode

look at my decorative gourds!!

we went outside to check out our pumpkins “in action” on our windowsill 

ps- I am still over the moon about my new hair color and cut!

All in all, a super fun night. Heck of a lot of work, but worth it for some good times with a great friend. ¡Fin!

*whenever I say “egg in the hole,” I always think of my father yelling, “FIRE IN THE HOLE!!” If I remember correctly, he used to yell that before doing a cannonball or watermelon off the diving board of our old house in Niantic.  Pretty great expression to yell before attempting radical feats of any nature.

Here’s our lazy Sunday morning breakfast.  These are so excellent.  I’m using a “rustic 5-grain sourdough loaf” from the farmer’s market.  I don’t think I’d use this shape of bread again for Egg in the Hole… I think the best egg-to-bread ratio lends itself to traditionally shaped sliced bread- with this kind you end up with a little too much bread on each end.  Also, these are harder to flip in the frying pan because you get less leverage.  At least in my experience- I am a novice fried egg cook/flipper, but I get a little bit better each time.

One of the best parts of Egg in the Hole is making toast and jam out of the center hole.  Man, this is just so scrumptious.  I can’t believe I lived 28 years and had never heard of Eggs in the Hole.  If you’ve never tried this recipe, I implore you to MAKE THEM TODAY!!!

Earl and I both slept over TWELVE HOURS last night!  Both of us were just exhausted, and I can tell I’m fighting off a cold.  Twelve plus hours and I am still a little groggy!  Uuhh.

We are about to head off with the woofer to get coffees and bop around the neighborhood.  I’ve got neat-o stuff in the ‘hood that I’ve discovered on my jogs that I want to show Earl.  One is Pat Montandon’s angel tree which I ran by a while ago and was just amazed at.  It’s this 12 foot high carving out of a cypress tree, with the trunk still attached into the ground.  It’s stunning.  Also, we are gonna walk up to the top of Tank Hill and see what there is to see.  Probably while we’re at the top we will play some fetch, have a sit, drink coffees and read the paper.  Happy, happy Sunday!