Food Gawker

A friend from work recently told me about www.foodgawker.com It is a great website that brings together food blogs and has the most beautiful pictures of each recipe. Food is art.

The Blog of a Young Woman

Over the past three days I power read Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl and highly recommend it. I am humbled by this teenager's ability to clearly express the adolescent experience while in confinement. This book blatantly shows that our current attention spans have dwindled along with our composition skills. Even as I type this I am unable to express the awe I have of this young girl and will have to revisit this topic at a later time after I have mulled it over some more...

Potatoes... YUM!

I sort of adapted a scalloped potato recipe from Joy of cooking...
3 lbs (or more if you are feeding a lot of people) of potatoes, peeled and sliced
butter
2 tablespoons flour
white onion (1/2 cup???) finely chopped and sauteed briefly
1 1/4 cup of cream
1 1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 paprika
Parmesan cheese, shredded (the more, the merrier)

Parboil the potatoes after they have been sliced for ~ 8 minutes.
warm the cream, salt and paprika in a sauce pan for a few minutes until it is warm, it doesn't have to boil.
butter a casserole pan, layer the potatoes, butter, onion, flour and most of the cheese in a nice way. pour the cream mixture over the top and sprinkle the rest of the cheese over the whole thing.
Cook at 350~ 35 minutes. add more cream if it looks like it is drying up. Add more cheese because it tastes good. then, add some more. :)

Repeats

Last week I made some recipes that I have tried before: pizza and eggplant parmesan. You can find the recipes here in the archives.

































































Changes from previous recipes:
on the pizza we had spinach, caramelized onions and Italian sausage. We used a Milk Stout for the crust
I used pre-sauce w/ the eggplant and threw in a little leftover Italian sausage from the pizza... waste not, want not.


Matt and I have also been making big breakfasts.. here is one from Sunday:
scrabbled eggs w/ a little milk and green Tabasco
Hash browns w/ cheddar and mozzarella
topped w/ some medium salsa... MMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

Keego Photos

Since we have been trying to figure out the new camera a little bit, Keego has been our prime model for photos. It helps that she is so damn cute!!!




































Posing for sure!











?!?!

































































































Somehow this is comfortable?

























SNUGGLING!







































































Nibbling on Matt












Wanna play?












More Mullet.













What a goof










Wrestling

Food w/ the New Camera

Here are some red potatoes and parsnips that went into some chicken stew with curried dumplings that my mom made. I hadn't quite figured out the zoom yet on the manual mode, but thought the angle was good on this one.



A BBQ sandwich at The Sink for a friend's birthday. The texture of the fries came out really well. On a side note, the fries there have some sort of spice that is sort of sweet - not cinnamon, but similar to that. I think much more research is needed to find out!


Pirate Mac & Cheese. The Sobel's gave us some pirate pasta and this was the end product. I more or less made the recipe up for the Mac and Cheese and it definitely needed more milk or creamy/gooey cheese. It was just a little dry.
Basically: Milk, Sharp and Extra Sharp Cheddar, an egg and some yellow onion that I sauteed before adding it to the pasta...



Curly fries from Beef O'Brady's - now you might be asking why would you go to a place called Beef O'Brady's? Purely because of the name. It was awful. The curly fries were the best part of the meal. My sandwich was dry, Matt's regular fries were undercooked ... Dan's wings were actually edible, so if you must go, get the wings.


My standard dish at Casa Alegre - The green chili. The website is actually pretty funny to check out b/c they obviously used a template and are not that internet savvy, which is just fine w/ me b/c they are food savvy and that is what really matters.



Matt took this picture on Seth's 21st birthday. He found the Corona's frozen in a cooler in my mom's backyard. Message to the people at Corona: You can buy this image from us for several hundred dollars!










Saunder's Bumpy Cake on Seth's Birthday. If you ever are in Michigan, find this cake and eat it. The caramel cake is also wonderful, as are the hot fudge and caramel sauces.
The smaller item to the left is a mint chocolate chip Dib, which are surprisingly addictive.



My mom took me out to Bloom for a wonderful meal..
Here is her appetizer - a Grilled Artichoke.



I started with braised duck egg rolls. The sweet and sour sauce at the bottom was the best I have ever had.





Mom's main course was Scallops with 'forbidden rice'. Very, very tasty.






As you all know, I love lamb. So of course I ordered it. Matt was lucky enough to have my leftovers, as I somehow stopped myself from eating the entire serving at the restaurant.






For dessert, we shared Creme Brulee. I liked the angle of this shot.







The texture and colors of the fruit came out better in this shot...









I had my mom over for dinner a few days later (with Dave working out of town during the week, and Matt not getting home until 8:30, mom and I eat a lot together)...
and made steak with way too many crushed peppercorns, that's what I get for trying to be a steakhouse.


The grilled vegetables I made were excellent. Marinated in a little EVOO, lemon juice & garlic salt.





I met up with a friend from Grad School for lunch at Abbondanza in Longmont. My slice had a ton of pepperocini's. Yikes!


Sarah's was pepperoni, sausage and spinach.








Our friend Brent came over to help fix our toilet and we payed him with pork tenderloin wrapped in bacon, sweet potato fries and green beans.




Another trip to The Sink. This time w/ the Hennings - the boys shared "The Slaughterhouse V" pizza with additional jalapenos.







I went to snag a bite of Matt's pizza and it fell into the beer. Gross!















Matt made a Mashed Potato Casserole with Bacon and Gouda when his parents came over for dinner. You know you love bacon and cheese!!!










Close up of the casserole (+asparagus, salad and flank steak)











After a drive with Matt's parents, we all had some hot chocolate. We used Gheradelli mix and shot some whipped cream on top with my new iSi whipper that mom gave me for Christmas. It's a fun toy!