Lots of Cooking!

In a nutshell, the rest of Belgium was amazing. We ate great fries in Brugge (and Antwerp), great waffles, and had an INCREDIBLE meal at a lovely restaurant in Brussels. We are SO sad to be home.

But, since I haven't started classes yet, we've had some opportunity for cooking. Here's what we've made:

SOUPS

It's the time of year where soup is divine. Plus, I find it an excellent lunch. So we've made the following soups:

• Vegetable Soup - a big, big pot. I used it as a basis for a really lovely minestrone soup (which is quickly becoming something I'm REALLY good at)
  
• Egg Drop Soup - with lots of spinach. Really, a lovely treat
• Alma's Cooked Water Soup - From a Lidia Bastianich cook book. Basically, water and chard. Then, you use the broth to poach eggs for a great meal. It's a keeper, and will likely be better at the end of summer when chard is actually in season...

STIR FRY

Along with the egg drop soup we made a stir fry of our own creation, with lots of veg. Super tasty and really simple

COUSCOUS

I tried a Vegetarian Times Israeli Couscous salad that turned out great. It had couscous, saffron, tomatoes, leeks, fennel, arugula and a sauce from veg broth. Again, might have been better when leeks are in season (although I LOVE winter, I hate the lack of great produce), but still, a real winner. We might make it with less couscous and more veg (or a protein source? Chickpeas!!) in the future.

CHILI

Last night we made another VT recipe for chili with dark ale. I guess Belgium got to us?? It was simple - black beans, corn, tomatoes, chipotle peppers, cumin, onion, garlic, red pepper and beer (we used Brooklyn Brewery's Dark Chocolate Stout, since we have it) and let it get super thick. It was good, but a bit too bitter for me. (Darn sweet tooth!)

PIZZA

Last weekend my sister was in town and we invited our cousin to join us and her boyfriend for dinner. We had 2 bottles of wine, really good bread and cheese (thanks cus!), salad (thanks again cus!), minestrone and "make your own pizza." That was a hit! We had sauteed veg (mushrooms, onions, peppers), lots of seasonings and cheese. It was a hit! A really great thing to do for dinner.

Tonight is a bean casserole. The beans have been soaking and I'm excited to start cooking it. Next week, food prep will be mostly on the weekends since I start class again.

Finally Back!

I spent this weekend celebrating my grandfather's 90th birthday and it was lovely!! The only downside is that several family members asked how my blogging was going. I sheepishly admitted I have been lazy. So no more. New goal: posting at least 2 times per week. I will continue to debate about putting pictures up - at least about cooking (The Pedant and I hate taking pictures of food at restaurants: it's rude).

OK - a small update since August: We've been cooking a lot! Not much terribly new - we did make some great meals but nothing really out of the ordinary. I am excited that the weather is FINALLY cooling down and I can make more wintry foods like soups, casseroles, roasted vegetables, etc.

Last week I made a black bean and butternut squash chili. the recipe came from NPR's The Splendid Table's weekly newsletter. It came out really well. I personally love chilis. I also love sweet and spicy foods.

Also, I have a new project one day. My Aunt M. is an EXCELLENT baker. There is a cake from HER Aunt, that is a chocolate cake. It is a really rich chocolate cake with freshly made whipped cream and a chocolate "frosting." My mom makes the cake also and it is incredibly tasty. It has always intimidated me since it is a 2 step process and you have to add the chocolate sauce on top of the whipped cream. I really enjoy baking and have always wanted to have the time and space to bake (and the willpower to not eat everything as it comes out of the oven). When I was home this weekend Aunt M. showed me how to make this cake (well, the chocolate sauce that is the hardest part) and has now t

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old me it's time for me to bake it. She also chastised me for not owning a 9x13 metal baking pan. So now i have a project. Anyone want a tasty chocolate cake??

Sunday Night Cooking!

Since our lives are busy and we are a) cheap, b) health conscious and c) much prefer to eat our own cooking than buy lunches/dinners because of reasons a) and b), Sundays have been spent cooking food for the week. This is what we made:

Vegetable Pizza

During the snow storm, I made some whole wheat pizza dough to freeze. Last night, I made a pizza with some of this dough and it came out really well. The dough was a bit sticky and I needed to add a lot of extra flour and it was on the thinner side on some parts. The Pedant made pizza last week for dinner so we had some extra sauce and cheese. I sauteed up a shallot, a bunch of asparagus and mushrooms in some balsamic and let it get really well cooked. (Mostly because I spent more time fussing with the pizza, but it turned out great!) The pizza came out really well.

Farnase Salad

Another winner from the best salad cookbook. Also eaten for dinner last night. It was fennel, red onion, oranges and parsley in a salad dressing of lemon juice, olive oil and honey. It was really good. We had that with the pizza for dinner.

Red Bean and Sweet Potato Chili

I love sweet potatoes and have read recently that sweet potatoes are good for runners. So, I decided to make this slow cooker chili. It looked okay when I took it out of the slow cooker this morning. I usually like my chili thicker, but it smelled really good because I put in a lot of chili powder and chipotle powder.

Wild Rice and Barley Salad

Dinner tonight from the best salad book. It has wild rice, barley, LOTS of shallots, celery, golden raisins and almonds. Should be tasty.

And now, a movie plug. We watched Word Play last night. It was great!

Sunday = Food Day!

Sunday was filled with tasty, tasty food.

First, my grandfather and sort-of-grandmother came for a visit - well sort of. They were about an hour away and wanted to see our new "crib" and take us to lunch. (Apparently, a football game was being played which diminished our hanging out time, oh well.) We went for lunch at a local place, Bebo Trattoria, which has some sort of famous chef. The Pedant and I pass by it every so often and think, "Hm, this might be a really fancy place if it wasn't so 'hip' and casual inside, since the prices are the kind that you wait for a relative to take you to dinner." Regardless, they had a nice lunch menu and we all got pizzas or calzones and shared a few salads. It was tasty. TP had a calzone with assortments of meats, I had one with lots of garlic and onions, GP had one with anchovies (?! gross!!), and SOG had the calzone with cheeses and olives. We all enjoyed.

After a quick trip to Costco (because the only person in the world who likes Costco more than me and TP is my grandfather), we parted ways and TP and I went to Ikea to buy furniture (coming this weekend! Yay! Now we have a fancy TV (thanks GP!) and will have new couches! and soon: CABLE!!! And Food Network!!) and TP had a snack of cheap Swedish Meatballs. I ate a salad, and sang the Swedish Chef song from the Muppets.

The Chili experiment was for dinner and was quite good. It probably only needed 8-12 hours to really get good: towards the end it got a bit burned and the corn went from lovely yellow to mellow yellow. Yet, it worked perfectly and the apartment smelled like chili for the next 24 hours.