Grilling in Snow Shoes

My dad makes claims of being a grill afficionado, and while I do give him props I think he's just a guy who likes to relax outside, occasionally flipping a steak or a burger. Don't get me wrong-he's a great cook (when he's not being lazy) and he was probably the person who's taught me most in the kitchen. Despite the fact that it's December and here in New England it's 30 degrees and snowing outside he wanted to grill this week. I met him halfway and decided to grill some food (indoors) in our cast iron grill pan the other night. I started out with plain grilled chicken breast and made a sun-dried tomato cream sauce to drizzle over the top, which came out so good I swear I could have just eaten the sauce and been happy. But as someone who has to cook a full rounded meal each night, I also grilled some polenta and vegetables, both of which came out great.


For the Sauce:
1 tablespoon olive oil
4 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 cup roughly chopped sun-dried tomatoes (drained if packed in oil)
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup heavy cream
1/4 cup chopped parsley

1.Saute the garlic in oil and deglaze pan with wine.
2.When alcohol has burned off, add tomatoes along with salt and pepper. Heat through.
3.Add cream and bring to a simmer. Add parsley, leaving about 1 Tbsp for garnish.
4.Put sauce in a blender and pulsate to incorporate the ingredients to your desired texture. (I pureed mine until there were only little flecks of red from the tomatoes.)
5.Serve over chicken, pasta, or be inventive and try something different!


For the polenta I took the lazy route and started with the store bought, tube (the package looks a little like a roll of sausage meat). I sliced it into 1/4 inch slices, lightly brushed it with olive oil and grilled away. Polenta takes on a nutty flavor when it's grilled and the crunchy outside crust creates a nice texture.



So, if you're feeling boredom that comes with eating the same hearty, warming, winter-friendly food every night, pull out your grill pan, throw on some summer tunes and have yourself an "indoor" grilling party.

Sagitarius is in the Hizz-ouse!

Finally, December is here. Lots of stuff this year. Christmas, Hannukah, out-of-town family, my birthday. It's a big one. A nice round 10 number. I'll leave it at that. Best of all, we're getting another kitten. Astrid so needs a friend to keep her company and romp with during the day. Hopefully it will help with her skiddishness a bit. Right now, we're checking out animal shelters and have found a few kittens. I'm smitten with the tiger striped tabbies with white bellies right now. I think that would look cute with Astrid's moo-cow coloring. Now we just need to decide on a name. Mabel, Stella, Hazel, Mildred, Gertrude, Miri...the list could go on and on and on.

Danks-giving

I stole that from my brother. I'm not a person who uses the word "dank" to describe a seriously good thing, but in this case, I will use it. Because that's what our Thanksgiving dinner was- DANK. Ha!

I got this recipe for roasted butternut squash and shallots from Real Simple. While I do love sweet potatoes, I hate the traditional American version with baked marshmallows on top, so I tend to strike that item from the menu altogether. Mostly because I know that if I do serve it, Keith, with his affinity for sweets, will beg for the over-processed, sickeningly sweet marshmallows on top. Have I ever mentioned his favorite candies are Peeps and candycorn? He's gone so far as to order boxes of candy corn on the internet when it's not "in season". That said, he does appreciate "foodie" food, having worked in restaurants all his life, and this dish was a fine alternative to the sweet potatoes. It was sweet and salty and had a very earthy taste from the squash and the roasting process. And I love shallots. I think this recipe called for 10 or so shallots. Mmmm.


This is a cranberry chutney I saw on Martha Stewart on demand. It raised many eyebrows as I cooked that morning, mainly because the house stunk of onion and fruit and strange spices, but the result was so satisfying. I would make this dish a hundred times more, Thanksgiving or not. It would go great with an Indian spiced pork loin or chicken.



The turkey breast was simple-just rubbed with fresh sage, rosemary, thyme and my dad made a stellar gravy to go with it.


And last, but not least, broccoli gratin. My favorite. I got the recipe here. I love broccoli and cheese is definitely in my top five. Gruyere is so good, I just couldn't resist, even though it's not a traditional holiday side dish.

Pushing the Holidays

I'm starting to look online for Christmas and other holiday goodies (although I rarely see many Chanukah themed cards out there) and I'm not entirely sure where to start. My etsy searches have led me in circles, so I've resorted to checking blogs I read to see what was posted and linked to last year. Ah. I do love Christmas time-my birthday is 5 days before, so that time of year has all the excitement rolled into one, plus being a Christmas baby, I think I have an extremely fond attachment to the holiday.

I've been getting Black Apple postcards for the past few years, but I haven't seen anything holidayish in the shop lately. I know--it's not even Halloween yet! Stop me! I can't help it, though. There are already Christmas displays in department stores around here! Capitalism is sick. Thank goodness I don't have cause to shop in department stores all that much.

Having both of Keith's siblings getting married this year is really causing a strain on our finances (especially since we're both in both weddings!), so I'm looking for cheap options. Any suggestions?

Family

My brother is home for a short visit (a stop along the way on his trip from Cape Cod to Colorado). He's moving to Vail this fall to become a full time ski bum. Well, I believe there will be more to it, but that's the main impetus for the move.
Keith and I are considering getting a friend for Astrid to play with. We find that she's sometimes lonely when we get home from work and school at the end of the day. Lots of ankle biting, hard play, etc.

Showering with the Family

Not literally, of course! By that I mean, throwing a bridal shower for Keith's sister.

Despite the frenetic energy that comes with being a bridesmaid for the first time, and having to take man this position from home base while the bride lives in Tenessee, my other "future sister-in-law" and I decided to throw a last minute shower. We were joined by the groom's mother, who thankfully catered the event, as she and her husband own a gourmet food and deli in town. But as always, I had to go above and beyond and make everything I was bringing from scratch. This included a few gallons of butternut squash bisque and over 250 cookies to give as favors at the end of the party. Meredith, said "future sister-in-law", and I went way overboard as we tried to tackle three different cookie recipes (all of which were virgins in my kitchen). Oh, and did I mention they were Martha recipes? We all know what that entails. Oh yeah-and one of the cookies even called for food color stamping? Yup. We stamped over 100 sugar cookies with monogrammed letters for the bride and groom.

Meredith and I had some "Lucy and Ethel" moments, the first being when we tried filling the portable soup carrier with water (measuring to see how many gallons it took) without first checking to see if the spout was closed. It wasn't. And it's hard to believe, but even after our jeans and shoes were soaked and we were standing out in the dark for 10 minutes trying to empty the container and start again, we actually repeated our mistake.

Fortunately, I had baked the sugar cookies and even iced them earlier in the day, but the stamping project proved to be way more difficult than we expected. Then again, with a Martha project, shouldn't I have learned that lesson a while ago? She makes everything look so damn easy. Needless to say, the icing hadn't completely dried, so when we started stamping the letters, the letters were making impressions into the icing (cracking it as we went) instead of sitting nicely on top. We managed to get a few good ones in before stopping to let the icing dry.


Our next cookie, which eventually became my favorite, was a maple leaf cookie that received a wash of locally harvested maple syrup and a splash of dusting sugar.

The final cookie was a soft pumpkin spice cookie with a maple glaze. Also, delicious, even though we didn't have time to ice the cookies that morning of the shower.

Chimmicuri