Christmas Pounds

I haven't weighed myself lately (in a long time actually) but I am sure I way few pounds more than I did pre-holidays.

Over the past week or so I have eaten 5 large family meals (that I can remember) plus countless candies and cookies plus a couple really great meals at some local reastaurants (hurray for fishbowls). With all of that plus normal meals, you would think I could hibernate till at least February. I might.

But not until after tonight. Tonight we are going out with a friend of mine from work and his wife to one of my favorite restaurants: Kabob International. If you are ever in the STL area and have a chance, I highly recommend it.

Oh, one other thing. Harry and David Chocolate Covered Bing Cherries and Royal Riviera Pears are to die for!

Links - Better-meat with-12-birds with bacon-wrapped potatoes

• Make good meat better? I will have to try this one next spring when we break out the grill again! (I have followed AB's suggestions on brining pork for some time now and it is a key component in one of my favorite dishes ... Grilled Stuffed Porkchops that I will sometime post as a recipe)
• Turducken is sooo last season. 3 different birds just won't cut it any more. Now we need 12! (I would love to try this, but man its crazy!)
• Dates? Check. Bacon? Check. Parmesan cheese? Double Check. Sounds right up Kooz's alley. Maybe I will find time around the holidays to make some of these.
• I found this one a couple months ago, but I still want to try it. Gives me hope that I still might someday get my Reese's Brick. :)
• Em had some interesting spiced mulled wine the other night at a friends house. I wonder what other kinds of goodies could be made.
• Could all of the world's problems be solved by potatoes? Maybe.
  

Chicken Spedini

For Em's birthday, I made one of her favorite dishes ... Chicken Spedini. The dish was more involved than some, but WELL worth the extra effort. This recipe is an approximation of what I did for that meal, inspired by suggestions from Em's mom and random recipes I found online. I didn't measure anything; amounts are my best guesses. This recipe makes 4 pieces (we ate 3 w/ pasta and had one leftover).

Ingredients

• 4 chicken cutlets or thin breasts
• Juice of 3 medium lemons
  
• 1/2 cp seasoned bread crumbs
• 1/2 can diced tomatoes in juice
• 1 egg, hard boiled and diced
  
• 1/3 cp grated parmigiana cheese
• 1 tbsp misc Italian herbs (basil, oregano, etc)
• 1 tbsp sugar
  
• 3+ cloves of garlic diced
• 1/2 small or medium onion diced
  
• 2 tbsp butter
• olive oil
• salt and pepper
  

Steps

1. Pound chicken into thin pieces <1/2">
2. Mix breadcrumbs, cheese, herbs, salt and pepper, sugar together
3. Lightly coat chicken in breadcrumb mixture. Knock off excess.
4. In a small pan sauté the onion and garlic in a small amount of olive oil until softened.
5. Add onion/garlic/oil mixture to remaining breadcrumb mixture along with tomatoes, egg, and a small amount of the lemon juice. Mix adding enough of the tomato juice to form a thick filling
6. In a medium sized baking dish, add just a bit of olive oil and swish to coat the bottom.
7. For each piece of chicken, place a small ball of the filling mixture in the center and fold the ends around, wrapping the filling in the chicken. Place end side down into baking dish.
8. In the same sauté pay you used before, over medium-low heat melt the butter and 2 tablespoons of olive oil along with a another clove (or more) of minced garlic. When the butter and oil start to sizzle, add the remaining lemon juice and stir to combine.
9. Spoon the butter-oil-garlic-lemon mixture over the chicken.
10. Cover the baking dish with foil and bake in a pre-heated 375 degree oven for 20 minutes.
11. Remove foil and bake for 10-15 minutes more.
12. Serve over angel hair pasta w/ the drippings and lemon/oil mixture that is left in the pan

Thoughts

This dish turned much better than I was anticipating. I always have some anxiety when I make a dish that Em has had growing up b/c there is no way it can compare to what her mother and grandmother can make.

The chicken was very moist, the filling (or gonza as Em's family calls it) was delicious, the lemon wasn't overpowering, and the pasta coated in the butter/oil/garlic/lemon mixture was yummy. Admittedly, I ended up making more of the sauce and spooned it over the chicken when I was removing the foil. Also, I finished them for the last 5 minutes or right under the broiler trying to get them to brown up a bit, but they turned out great and not overdone.

I was initially a little skeptical of how the filling was going to turn out (it ends up being very moist) w/ the egg, but the flavor was great. We ended up with extra. If this happens to you, just put it in the baking dish and enjoy. Tonight I am going to try and fry up the last bit of filling we have in a pseudo-meatball which I can't imagine will taste bad.

Photos

Super Simple Cream of Cauliflower Soup

Last night I made a batch Cream of Cauliflower Soup that pretty simple, fairly fast, and very good....

Ingredients:

• 1 head of cauliflower
  
• 1/2 large onion
  
• 1 - 2 cloves garlic
  
• 1 large baking potato
• 1 can chicken broth
• 1 can vegetable broth
• Salt-n-Peppa' to taste
• 1/4 cp. half and half (or more as much as you want ;-) )
• Olive oil
  

Steps:

0. Purchase one of these (or you can use a large blender or food processor, creaming the mixture in batches, but this thing made everything a ton easier)

1. Chop cauliflower and potato into bite size or smaller pieces.
   
2. Chop onion and mash garlic. Put this into a decent sized pot w/ 1-2 tablespoons of Olive oil and a dash of salt. Cook over medium heat until softened and semi-translucent.
   
3. Add cauliflower, potato, and broth to pot. Bring liquid to a boil and then turn down and keep simmering until potato and cauliflower chunks are soft (10-15 minutes).
4. Take off the heat and use your immersion blender to blend until smooth and creamy.
5. Add half and half, mix, and heat through

Thoughts:

• This was way easy and tasted really good ... perfect for a cold night.
  
• It could just as easily be done with other vegetables (potato, leaks, broccoli, etc). You will probably need some starchy vegetable or more cream depending on what your using.
• Some different seasoning or add-ins at then end would make it even more interesting.
• The immersion blender made creaming the mixture a snap. Just a few seconds and 90% was done. Another few seconds fishing around for any larger clumps and I was finished. Great consistency and no mess since I could put the thing into the dish washer.
  

Photos:

I was very hungry when it was done and anxious to try it so I forgot to take a picture ... imagine a bowl full of white creamy goodness with small flecks of black pepper showing.

Interesting Links

• What is a triangle with no sides equal!? Don't worry, Subway has problems with their triangles too. I will admit, I have thought the exact same thing as the layer on the pepperjack cheese on my BMT.
• I wonder if this is where Alton Brown got his. "mixer-customizing subculture"? That is a whole level beyond any kitchen-nerd-ness I have achieved. So far.
• Chistopher Walken Cooking Videos. Need I say more?
• This would look great until it got full of crumbs. A simple design for a simple food.
• Say it ain't so! Em says that she heard that some were closing in STL too!

I am going to get fat at this rate

I am not fat yet, but this past week is certainly pushing me in that direction.

Last weekend I took in the the Festival of Nations with my parents. They had small booths setup with food from all over the world, plus entertainment and things to buy.

Tuesday was free pizza lunch put on by the design patterns group (dependency injection and pepperoni!) plus a ice cream social to celebrate fiscal year '07 at work.

Wednesday was free doughnuts and bagels at a morning meeting, lunch in the cafeteria where large sandwiches plus inhouse made chips are $4.00, and cake for someone's birthday (I didn't partake, but it was offered) To top it all off Em made a wonderful batch of sauce.

Today we had a multi-team picnic offsite (that the contractors get to bill for since it was work related ;-) ) where they had Bandana's BBQ, and cookies/cake.

This weekend is Labor Day Weekend, so I am sure there will be BBQs galore, plus there is a Greek festival in town and possibly a Japanese one. And there is a Scotish one around October.

Hurray for Tums!

Kolache Friday!

Did you know that today was Kolache Friday? As it turns out, the past 3 Fridays have been Kolache Fridays at my work (although I was only here for 2 of them).

What is a Kolache? you ask ... Simply, yummyness wrapped in a bun.

According the wikipedia (don't freak out mom), Kolaches are originally an eastern European dish. They are small sweet rolls filled with any number of sweet and/or savory ingredients. Today, I was lucky enough to have an egg+potato+cheese kolache as well as a sausage+cheese+jalepeno kolache. Other options were various egg mixes, spinache and cheese, and a few fruit ones.

You may ask, Are they only a breakfast food? No. According to the KolacheFactory.com website, they are not. They have many that are filled with traditional breakfast fillings (cheeses, eggs, fruits, etc) but they also have ones that are much more lunch/dinner type fillings (e.g. chicken and vegtables). I can only suspect that they would be yummy at any time of day.

My bosses boss is in love with the things and is quickly making sure that everyone else in our wing of the building is as well. The wednesday before Emily and I went to Chicago, he stopped by our team room to inform everyone that we were in for a Kolache Friday coming up and that we should all be prepared and get in early. When he realized I knew nothing of their traditions, he proceeded to describe these lovely pillows of goodness as best he could (as if words can describe them) and informed us all that no matter what we are doing, when you see the email come out saying they are here, tell whoever you are on the phone with you will call them back and RUN. Don't walk, RUN .... and get them while they are hot.

Good advice in my book.

Well, the last 3 weeks have all turned out to be Kolache Fridays and I am all for it. They are delicious. According to wikipedia several random small towns across the midwest lay claim as being Kolache capitals of ____. One may need to be added to the yet to be finalized BBQ tour of America.

If you in an area that happens to have a Kolache Factory bakery, or ever see them on the menu ... I highly recommend picking a few dozen up. Think hot pocket without the artificial flavors, texture and preservatives. Don't get me wrong, I love hot pockets, but these things got them beat.

[picture taken from the Kolache Factory website]

The Uncrusting of America: Mallow Fries

Em and I found these gems at our local Kwik-E Mart (Walgreens). For $0.59 I was sucked into buying them ... purely for their blogg-ability and absurdity-factor.

Now, to be fair, I have seen similar candies before in my life. Hell, my grandfather loved to eat the chewy marshmallow circus peanuts which I am pretty sure had 0 peanut, marshmallow, or chew in them and were in fact surplus government rubber from WWII. But I digress.

These wonderful joys of a snack came in a small plastic bag touting their exception flavor and left me wondering if alarms went off and confetti shot into the air when they added the millionth ingredient.

I have to say, the fries themselves were not all that bad. Same surplus rubber as the peanuts. The problem was the "Kandy Ketchup". It was Horrible! I guess you get what you pay for. :-p

This last pic is from a recent trip to Ted Drewes here in STL. Oh, how its good to be back home. (The massive lines, which actually move very quickly, are nothing compared to the site that is TDs after a Cards game lets out). :-D If you ever have the opportunity, there are few things better in this world than a TD's banana and peanut butter cup concrete.