I love her face!
Category Archives: Food & Cooking
It’s aliiiive!
Making pizza dough in the stand mixer is always interesting. I’m always surprised that it crawls up the sides…and if I turn it past medium, I think it may walk right off the counter! But it makes decent crust.
Fresh baked dinner
BBQ pork and caramelized onion pizza and jalapeño cheddar bread…both with fresh homemade dough I made today.
The pizza was actually 1/2 BBQ pork for us, 1/4 meatball for Owen, and 1/4 cheese for Katie. I love that one pizza is enough for all of us…plus leftovers. 🙂
I got the idea for the bread here but used a slightly different recipe because I wanted to use the actual pizza dough recipe I had made the other day in order to practice again. And then I put it in the pan instead of a rustic bake. And we are one loaf, froze two, and left one out to eat this week. 🙂
Welcoming Jonas
From Tom on Facebook: Jonas is coming? Good I am grilling steaks and there is plenty of beer!
More proof I’m turning into my mother.
I just couldn’t throw out the shrimp peels. So I’m making a small batch of stock.
Christmas treat success!
Rolos were the key! And I added red sprinkles! Most of these are going to Owen’s teacher. 🙂
Christmas treat fail.
I’m guessing you shouldn’t use old chocolate. (Of course, there were some new chocolates mixed in as well…but only two pieces melted correctly.)
I’ve since learned from others that Rolos work much better than Kisses.
One thing led to another…
I didn’t plan on making a double batch of spaghetti sauce today, but I had onions that needed to be cooked and, well, one thing led to another.
Last of the basil…
We had frost and freeze warnings so I picked ALL of the remaining basil—which ended up to be about eight cups! I made two double batches of pesto for the freezer…then wondered what the hell to do with the rest of it!
I searched my recipes in Evernote…and ended up with Basil Salt! It’s just equal parts basil and kosher salt, ground and then dried in the oven.
The kitchen smelled wonderful!!!
It’s time to freeze the pesto!
I’m finally getting around to harvesting my basil to make pesto for the winter. I picked less than half…so I’ll get to do this again!
SCORE!
I finally found my favorite Biscuits & Gravy chips!
I feel like I’ve surely been somewhere thy had them but I wasn’t interested then. And then I tried them, loved them, wanted them…and didn’t see them anywhere. I’m set for awhile, though I’ll likely end up with more bags before they disappear. (These are the current flavors to vote for a new flavor. Obviously my selection is biscuits and gravy though the Truffle aren’t bad.)
Dinner with new friends!
So last night at our dinner, some new friends (that we’ve technically known all school year—their twin girls were in Owen’s class—but we just never actually got together since we were all busy) said we were welcome at their house any time and to just come over. I said we would never just show up unannounced, but if they invited us, we’d be there. So he said “Great! We’re having people over tomorrow. Come to dinner!!” So we agreed immediately!
The kids had a BLAST. They actually have two sets of twins—the girls (in first grade) and boys, who are one. One of the twin girls is in Owen’s class again this year. Katie loved everyone and kept an eye on the babies! We had an amazingly DELICIOUS authentic Indian meal and met some friends of theirs that were really great. They have a huge back yard (probably three times the size of our Jacksonville yard!) so Owen was running all over. They have a playset, too, which Katie loved.
After dinner, this was happening—the kids all having fun taking pictures with someone’s iPhone:
We hadn’t planned on staying longer than maybe two hours (sleep schedules, you know) but we were all having such a good time and the kids were busybusybusy that we ended up staying until ALMOST 11! Holy wah! (We had prepped Katie by making sure she napped beforehand, but she still did really, really well.)
We look forward to many more fun nights with them!!
Saturday Night Dinner—Tom’s Birthday!
Tonight was our fifth Saturday night dinner—and it happened to be Tom’s birthday as well! We had two new families (and one couple who’ve been to a couple dinners) join us—and it was fun (and crazy—with 8 kids!)!
Also as usual, I didn’t even think to take pictures because we were so busy visiting and doing food prep…so the first picture I took was a quick birthday shot of Tom with the dessert he picked (a caramel tres leches cake from Costco…with Owen’s birthday balloon!):
And then a panoramic of the table at dessert time…where it took me more than a few minutes to realize there’s a bunch of panoramic artifacts—like Tom’s hands reappearing on the other side of Katie and a friend’s squished face!
And Katie enjoying the blue frosting on the cupcakes a guest brought for the kids:
As a sidenote, I posted the invite for the next dinner in six weeks (Tom’s work schedule prevented a 4-week plan) and all RSVPs were filled within 24 hours! 🙂
Dinner party prep!
Boneless pork ribs starting their 20-hour bath in the sous vide…
We don’t mess around—we use a cooler for long cooks!
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Our first overnight sous vide!
Trying sous vide boneless pork ribs overnight! Tom retrofitted the top so we don’t lose water from evaporation!
P.S. They were cooking for about 20 hours and turned out amazing!
If you see this, buy it!
We bought it on a lark at Marshall’s…and it’s amazing.
I’m drinking my dessert tonight.
We went to a friends’ new house for dinner and brought some of the delicious Not Your Father’s Root Beer that Timmy introduced us to. We also happened to being vanilla ice cream… The float was delicious…but a few sips was enough for me!
All the pics from my day at once.
She always wants to comb my hair but I only let her on days that I wash and condition it.
He said it was costume day so we did this (he can’t get in/out of his costumes by himself).
ABCs while shopping.
This is what she was busy doing while I wasn’t watching. And this is her pout when I tell her she needs to pick them all up.
She tried a ham and cheese (no condiment) sandwich—and actually ate most of it!
I decided to make my all-time favorite garlic toast today because the bread was on sale B1G1 at the store.
“Mama, I want to put the water in please.” Except 98% of it didn’t make it in.
Outdoor lap selfie!
The little stink beat me!!
This time I made a roasted sauce.
Since we’re not eating as much as we used to (plus Tom is gone for work this week), we can’t keep up with all of our tomatoes…so I made roasted tomato sauce today.
I forgot the onions (doh!) so I had to do another tray. And then it all went in the blender with some fresh basil and whole milk.
Yum!
Anniversary dinner…outside the box!
Tom and I were celebrating early since he will be out of town on our anniversary. Fourteen years. Holy wah.
First, my obligatory pre-dinner selfies since I’m dressed up (and wearing a dress I haven’t worn in who knows how many years!). 🙂
Love.
We didn’t take our traditional pre-event selfie because we were running late and then of course the traffic was horrible and it took 45 minutes (instead of 25) to get there so as it was, we were 15 minutes late for our reservation.
So, as you may remember, we have a tradition of eating Chinese on our anniversary. And I’m sure there are many über delicious Chinese places in the area, but we decided to go outside our box and have a Greek dinner at Mike Isabella’s (from Top Chef) Kapnos Taverna (recommended by a friend). Delish. Three “small plates” was too much food and we each left a few bites (we did technically eat too much but it was seriously a quarter of what we’d normally have eaten!). We splurged and shared a chocolate dessert, too. 🙂
Then we got back to the parking garage and saw this:
How funny is that? You know they saw this car and parked next to it on purpose!
And then we finally took our anniversary selfie! 🙂
Post-Christmas Bratfest
The family came back for lunch today, and Timmy graced us with about 15 different varieties of brats from his store, Beson’s Market (Bay City). Talk about yum. 🙂
The leftovers after 15 people were in a meat coma:
Maggie getting some love from the cousins.
Gramma Jean got out the water balloons and BOY did the kids have fun!
Nick is 11 and Owen is 6—and Nick has maybe a half inch on Owen. This is what they did when we told them to stand next to each other. 🙂
Tomatoes aplenty!
I picked tomatoes today.
Then added them to what we had left from previous days (on the right). Holy wah.
I had to do something with them before vacation…so I did my first crock pot tomato sauce! With our basil, too!
Then blended the crap out of it with the stick blender because I didn’t skin the tomatoes…and it’s really tasty!
I think that’s Owen’s.
Tom grabbed the first apron he saw. 🙂
Saturday Dinner #4
We’re still doing our approximately monthly dinners—and tonight was #4! We had two sets of friends on their second appearance…and one newbie couple (neighbors)! It was a bit crazy as the kids outnumbered the adults (just barely) but it was fun as usual!
Another day, another BBQ.
As soon as we got there, Katie and her friend were two peas in a pod. (They know each other from t-ball games.)
Half of the kids:
We met some more great people, the kids all got along (who doesn’t love a bounce house?!), and the food was amazing! The kids stayed awake until we got home after 10 and even though they looked tired they didn’t want to go to bed!
I can taste the bruschetta already!
My first harvest of the season!
Saturday Night Dinner
I finally remembered to take a picture of our group at dinner. Tonight we had my good friend Ruth (and her daughter Emily) who came down from Maryland, Frank and Beth (and their two girls) who have attended before, and a t-ball mom Kate (and her daughter) that I befriended recently (unfortunately, her husband had to stay home with their three boys because their behavior had been lacking).
Owen was at our table because we had extra seats and the kids table was filled with four girls. 🙂
Of course, it had started storming terribly at the exact moment Tom needed to be out grilling, but I had the foresight to have him put up our old umbrella so he didn’t get completely soaked. 🙂
We all had an amazing time with lots of laughs and can’t wait to do it again!!
What happens when Katie doesn’t nap.
I so wanted to shut her in.
Saturday Night Spaghetti #2
Our second dinner went just as well as the first—even with a last-minute guest switch up! One family couldn’t come because of a sick kid, so we invited Owen’s coach and his family and they were excited to come! (They’ve recently moved here as well and understand how hard it is to make friends!)
Katie had a friend she knew and Owen made a new friend (only four years old but they got along great).
Here, Tom was rescuing Lambie from the kids’ table so she didn’t get dunked in spaghetti sauce. 🙂
