My BFF's

The fun thing about this time of the year is that my life long friends come into town, and we always try to get together. This year I had the girls (and their families) up to my place for dinner. Originally, I had visions of this great "martha stewart-esque" fancy pants dinner party. With all the skiing and playing we have done over the holidays, I couldn't even get my house clean! (you can faintly see my unmade bed in the upper left corner of the picture, I tried to cut it out as much as possible). So I went with one of my one pot wonders and a great salad, and had someone else bring a dessert. These are the girls I have known since the beginning and I love them to death! I made Bon Jon, which is a Iranian dish passed down from my Grandma who learned it as a young mother when she lived in Iran. It is one of my favorite dishes. Unfortunately for all of you, I am going to share the recipe next time. Today, I will share the recipe for the salad, which is all I have the energy for, when do the kids go back to school again?

Strawberry and Goat Cheese Salad w/ balsamic vinaigrette

This is a salad I invented after having a similar salad in Washington DC. 

Salad Ingredients:

Baby Spinach

Arugula

Romaine lettuce

Strawberries

Red Onions

Pomegranates

Sliced almonds

Soft Goat Cheese

Salad Dressing:

1/3 c balsamic vinegar

1/3 c sugar or honey

3/4 c olive oil

1/2 lemon squeezed

1 shallot

1 t salt

In your blender, combine shallot, honey, vinegar, salt. Blend until the shallot is fine blended. Add lemon juice. While blender is running, slowly add oil till emulsified. 

Putting together the salad. Slice the strawberries and onions as pretty as your little hands can do them, make them thin. Crumble the goat cheese (which can be messy, so crumble it right out of the fridge, it kind of has the consistency of cream cheese but a little harder) . Seed the pomegranates. Combine romaine, spinach and arugula (buy the pre-made mix bag).Toss with dressing, top with the rest of the ingredients. 

So pretty, so yummy.

This is Bon Jon, stay tuned I make it all the time!

Plenty to blog about, no pictures

Picture taken from my new Mac

So it was a great Christmas. and I have so much to blog about!  The biggest surprise was Fairb got me a new Mac for Christmas! Every time I sat down on his computer (to do my blog usually) he would complain and tell me to use my own computer. Well my computer is always having problems and when its not having problems, little Evie is on there playing scooby-doo on it. So when he complains, I would respond, "I'll get off, when you get me a Mac!" So he actually did it, and surprised me Christmas morning. I was shocked, we have a long standing tradition of NOT getting each other anything for Christmas, so if was definitely a surprise. What was more shocking, he actually wrapped it! What a sweetheart. So I am excited to explore my new Mac. I have always been a PC user, but the mac has been calling my name for the last couple of years. So I still have some learning to do.

I can not blog about food until I get a memory card reader for my computer. I have to live up to my promise and not sit on Fairb's computer. So I will put that on the to do list. Because the recipes are overflowing!

Will I ever recover?

I am pooped! Way too much playing over this holiday season! I need to get back to cooking, just let me take a nap and I will recap this holiday food season . . .

scones for sledding

Yesterday we had the crew up for a sledding party. It was 18 degrees outside and the children stayed outside for hours, riding the hill just off our deck. My son's cheeks were so rosy for hours after he came inside, I checked his temperature just to see if it was because of a fever! However, we did lure the kids inside with hot chocolate, chili and scones.

This is a buttermilk scone taught to me by my dear friend Becky. It is easy and it is good!

Buttermilk scones (fry bread, sopapia whatever you want to call it!)

4 c buttermilk

8 c flour

3 T oil

7 T sugar

1/2 t baking soda

3 t baking powder

2 T yeast

3/4 c warm water

So my friend Becky is old school, she is all about the glass bowl and wooden spoon when she does dough. She has a kitchen aid that still sits in the box in her basement. So she would do all this by hand, but I however am a slave to the dough hook. So I will post how I did it in the kitchen aid.

Dissolve the yeast and 1 T of the sugar in the warm water. Combine the remaining sugar, baking soda, and baking powder with half of the flour. Mix together. Next add oil, yeast mixture and buttermilk and combine with the paddle attachment. Switch to the dough hook and begin adding the remaining flour, one cup at a time until all the flour is added and continue to knead until the dough is smooth. As always, I like to do the final kneading with my hands. Doing the final hand knead lets you get familiar with what good dough is supposed to be like, and will improve you bread making skills. Plus, it is so fun to put your hands in dough, I can't resist it! Spray your bowl with pam and return the to dough to it. Cover it and let it rise in a warm spot. Let it rise till almost triple if you can wait that long.It should get huge. Now Becky rolls hers out cuts them into perfect shapes, lets them rise a little and then fries them. I did that the first time, but last night, I just tore a piece off, stretched it out and fried it. Either way is good, the first producing a nicer scone, but not by much. It should also be noted that it is not a mistake that salt is not in the recipe, the buttermilk compensates for that.

I have a deep fat fryer, but you can heat about 4 inches of vegetable oil on the stove. It hot enough when you drop your dough in the oil it sinks to the bottom then floats to the top, if its really slow to float to the top, not hot enough, floats up really really fast, too hot.

Thank goodness winter is here, but scones and chili just aren't as good without snow and sledding.

note: my husband and children made it the whole night in the tent on the deck. I couldn't believe it, I woke up with no children next to me and I hod to go outside and make sure they weren't all frozen to death. They were all cozy warm curled around their dad like little puppies.

New Christmas tradition

So my husband fairb who normally is the resident "bah humbug" has been a little more in holiday spirit this year, he hasn't bemoaned Christmas music and has even turned it on without me even asking. Tonight he stated he wanted to start his own "Christmas Tradition".

"From now on, 6 days before Christmas, we are going to sleep outside in a tent!"

I tried to talk him out of it, I really did. Why put yourself through that
misery. The children were sold instantly. So I allowed it, but I warned them
that I would not pity their misery, and I would not nurse their grumpy spirits
in the morning. I'll let you know how long they make it tomorrow!

Need something to go with you Christmas Prime Rib?

Twice Baked Potatoes

So for the big Christmas Party I am going to make twice baked potatoes to go with the prime rib(I'll talk about about Prime Rib tomorrow, but here's a heads up, kitchen tool of the week is a digital thermometer) . What is great about a twice baked potato is that first, it is fancier than a regular baked potato. Second, imagine for my sister-in-law Krista or my sister Lisa who both have a million children, them not having to help all of the children " fix" their potato because it is already done. Third, it can be done in advance, and that my friends is a great thing.

Step one: Bake the potatoes, but first do the math. For every 2 potatoes (I am talking the big bakers, costco style, because you know that's the only way I roll) , you will get 3 twice bakers. So you have twelve people coming to dinner? Ask your son to do the math for you. (Man, I had to pull out the pen and paper for this one, you have to do 8 potatoes) Scrub the potatoes good, and just place them right on the rack at 400 degrees till you can puncture them with a fork easily, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.

Step two: Pull them out of the oven, and while they are still hot, hold them with a hot pad and cut them in half

Step three: scoop out the insides carefully to leave a nice potato skin boat, and run the potatoes through your ricer (or you can just mash them if you don't have a ricer) and into a big mixing bowl.

Step four: Time to add more ingredients. Now the amounts of ingredients, depends on how many potatoes you are doing. Just imagine you are fixing a ginormous potato. The ingredients are, sour cream, cheese, season salt (I use lowrys) and course ground pepper, also a little milk. Be liberal on the cheese and sour cream, start conservative on the salt and pepper, mix, taste and decide if it needs more. When I made them the other night, I didn't have chives, but if I had them on hand I would add fresh chives as well. You could add other spices as well, but I don't think you need anything else, this way is simple and pleasing. You could add fresh garlic if you are a big garlic fan, but it would be easy to go over board. Don't want to screw anything up? Stick to the s and p. You want the consistency to be thick and drier than classic mashed potatoes, so keep that in mind when you are adding milk.

Step five: Spoon the mixture back into the potato skins, like I said before, you will not use all of the skins, so you want to make your skins over flowing. Sprinkle a little paprika over the top.

Step six: Bake again at 350 degrees for about 20-30 minutes. They should be browned, but when you touch them you can tell that the insides are soft and creamy.

You can prep the potatoes up to a day before and keep them in the refrigerator until you are ready to bake them, if you put them straight in the oven from the fridge, they will take about 10-15 minutes longer to re-bake.

fancy pants dessert

Creme brulee is one of my favorite desserts of all time. So for the big Pope family Christmas party I decided to make it. However, I have only made it once or twice before, so I wanted to do a little run through today. So like the past times I have made creme brulee, I have just googled "creme brulee recipe" and took the recipe at the top of the list. Today that was Alton Brown's recipe (I have learned a lot watching Alton Brown, he is however kind of annoying, but I like him). A creme brulee is a baked custard that you give a hard, caramelized top to by "bruleeing" (I don't think that is word). However, now that I have used his recipe a couple times this is how I altered it to get the best results for me, however I recommend reading through his recipe.

Ingredient list

1 quart heavy cream

7 egg yolks

2/3 c sugar (plus more to top the custard and caramelize)

1 vanilla bean split and scraped (or you could used 1 1/2 t vanilla extract)

Mixing the eggs and sugar together so it looks like the prettiest yellow.

Meanwhile place the vanilla "scrapes" into the cream and heat the cream on the stove till bubbles form around the edges. Time to temper the egg mixture. Add one ladle full of hot cream into the eggs SLOWLY while violently whisking. Continue to slowly add the cream till it is all incorporated. Before dividing among the ramekins, run through a sieve to make sure there are no scrambles. Divide among 7 ramekins. Meanwhile get some water boiling.

Because you have to bake them in water, this is where the deeper ramekins prove useful. Notice my pan has handles, very very useful. The boiling water should go half way up the sides of the dishes.

This is what it looks like after its been baked.

Add a thin layer of sugar.

This is my torch, its not one of those torches from Bed Bath and Beyond that are a rip off, this is what I use to light my fireplace and I got it at home depot for like 20 bucks and it lasts forever!

Begin torching, don't get too close, and remember the ramekin will be hot, don't burn yourself!

Impress your relatives this Christmas, or charge them 7 bucks a piece, that's what Carrabba's does right?