Thanksgiving 2016 (On the West Coast)

This year we celebrated Thanksgiving in California, with a turkey porchetta, lots of stuffing, mac & cheese, pumpkin ravioli, pureed cauliflower (that successfully fooled some into thinking the dish was mashed potatoes), and of course, our traditional apple pie

Prep Work:

Egg-washed apple pie ready to go into the oven

 Turkey Porchetta and Pumpkin Ravioli

The next day we used turkey leftovers to make turkey sage ravioli

Now it's time to go Christmas shopping!

Valentine's Day Dinner

Happy belated Valentine's Day! To celebrate, my boyfriend and I stayed in and cooked:

 Lamb osso bucco, garlic shrimp, and goat cheese couscous with prosecco

We also made chocolate souffles - my first time!

One of them came out more beautiful than the rest:

Hope you all had lovely weekends!

Chicken Thighs with Clementines, Limes & Onions

This weekend I tried this recipe from this Buzzfeed post:

I made some alterations, adding lime and reducing the amount of onions and clementines in favor of more chicken

Since I had to use white wine in the recipe, I fixed myself a glass while waiting for the chicken

Have a great weekend!

HelloFresh Review

Hello! A friend of mine sent me a free week of HelloFresh and the package arrived yesterday. Since I had previously used Blue Apron as well, I naturally compared the two and thought it might be worth posting about. I have not been sponsored by either company and these are my own opinions.


Pros of Blue Apron

I think the ingredients are more interesting, and are not ones that I might normally think to get myself while grocery shopping

Refrigeration of the meat products is better with Blue Apron - the insulated bag inside the box is actually sealed - the HelloFresh insulated bag was not sealed and as a result, the meat had started to leak juices while waiting for me outside my door

Below is the gyros recipe that was one of the three meals I received. I forgot to take pictures of the others (oops).

Pros of HelloFresh

Recipes come as a booklet, which I preferred to three loose sheets (but this may be a con for others, depending on preferences)

With Blue Apron, I had to run an entire dishwasher load of just the dishes/utensils, but with HelloFresh, I found myself only washing probably 1/3 to 1/2 the amount of kitchen supplies

 

 

 

I think I completely missed the mark on this cooking - my salmon skin wasn't at all crispy and my sauce was too runny - but it still ended up tasting pretty good

Also there was supposed to be bok choi in this recipe but I do not like the taste of bok choi so I chose to exclude it

Cooking with a Cast Iron Skillet

Hello! I recently moved and bought a cast iron skillet because I heard those things are all-around great, so today was my first time cooking with it. I had a bunch of chicken breasts and some tomatoes I had to finish, so I just threw in some garlic and made this quick, simple recipe:

Step 1: Cut up tomatoes and garlic

Step 2: Heat up oil and garlic

Step 3: Cook chicken breasts (add salt and pepper)

Step 4: Add in the tomatoes

Step 5: Enjoy!

Shiitake Mushrooms

Hello! It's been a while... I saw a good deal on shiitake mushrooms at my local grocery store and so I decided to make some mushroom miso soup and mushroom risotto.

I've never cooked mushrooms before, so I learned a lot. For example, you want to separate the cap from the stem:

 I froze the stems so that I could use them in a soup base later

I boiled the mushrooms with my rice cooker

Used half of the mushrooms + water for a miso soup base

Used the other half of the mushrooms + water for a risotto
 

Milk Chicken

A good recipe if you can never finish your milk (like me)

A nice bed for the chicken

Sitting in his milk bath

The finished product - pretty yummy and the house smells so good

Quiche Florentine!

I had a lot of leftover spinach, so I made my first spinach quiche, inspired by the delicious quiche florentines at La Madeleine

Simple Foods

My boyfriend and I now live across the country from one another, so I've had to fend (cook) for myself these days. 

I am not a great cook, so the food I make has been pretty simple:

Clam Chowder - My Dad's Recipe

Scrambled Eggs / Omelette

Leftover Clam Chowder, Cucumber Mango Salad with Lime, Riesling

MZ Feeds Herself!

It isn't as pretty as when my boyfriend cooks, but I made garlic chicken with lime today

 

mmmm