Weekend Eats

I'm going to give a quick summary of the food I gorged on this weekend and, I do mean gorged. Right now I feel like an overstuffed pillow.....ugh.

So Saturday morning I got to sleep late and so I skipped breakfast. We went out to eat for lunch and I had two slices of cheese pizza. Not very exciting. Later on, we dropped the kids of with my parents for a sleepover and went crazy! Oh, it was so invigorating to be out and about without worrying about whether everyone's needs were being met. Sean took me from store to store helping me try to find things for me to use in my quest to become a cooler food photographer. You will see in a moment an embarrassingly bad shot I took trying to be all artsy but hold onto your britches, it's be here soon enough. So we went to Garden Ridge, Tuesday Morning, TJ Maxx, all on a quest for cool plates and kitchen items. Sean did try to get me to test drive a car but I wasn't having it. It starts with a test drive and 12 hours later your eyeball deep in a 72 year car loan. No thanks! After we wore ourselves out with shopping, we wanted to go somewhere hip to eat. You know, somewhere cooler than Ronald's Maison de boeuf. (mcdonalds for those who don't parlez francais) We settled on a brand new restaurant downtown called Rim. The name alone caused Sean to go into fits of 12 year old toilet humor. It was really good though! A tapas place, the offerings were not innumerable but they were absolutely divine. We started out with Marcona Almonds (peeled and roasted in sunflower oil) and Flash Fried Calamari. Next we ordered Tuna Tartare, Curried Lamb Meatloaf, and Hoisin Haricots Verts. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Everything is sized to share and perfect for two people. Next we ordered pork, cabbage and ginger potstickers. God, they were so good, I thought I was going to embarrass myself in the restaurant while exclaiming my satisfaction with the meal. Here are the things I remembered to take pictures of:


Hoisin Haricots Verts..see the black and white sesame seeds?



Curried Lamb Meatloaf with a cucumber sauce, oh god this was too good.


Tuna Tartare, this was spicy and mustardy, just plain delicious. It was served with a pickled tomato watermelon relish. Sounds weird but it was damn good!

After dinner, we ventured on down to Ganache Bakery for our over the top dessert of the night. Here is where the embarrassing photo comes in. See, when we got home had all these cool plates and cake stands that I'd bought and I wanted to get a cool, fantabulous shot of my cake to post here. Well, I overthought it just a tad. Here is the best shot I got and you'll see that's not saying much:



That picture is so terrible and I wouldn't share it with just anybody! LOL

We came home, watched a movie, went to bed. When we got up, we wanted to take advantage of the peace and quiet and grabbed some reading material and went out for breakfast. It was a major decision trying to figure out if we should go somewhere and get a big breakfast or just go somewhere small for pastry and coffee. Small won. We headed over to Panera and I had a Turkey Sausage and Potato Souffle with a Chai Latte. Chai Latte is my favorite! It was great too because we were able to sit outside. Sean read the paper, I read my cookbooks and Sur la Table catalog. For an hour. It was glorious!!



We picked up the kids and then headed home to get some things done before the beginning of the week kicked us in the ass. For lunch I had Shepherd's Pie leftovers which I won't bore you with another picture of that. Then my sister called and offered to buy us dinner in honor of my b-day. Cool, I can get down with that. We ended up ordering appetizers from a local place and I had some wings, some chips and dip, and some nachos. The only thing I got a picture of though was the wings. Here you go:



No cake tonight, baby! I was full after eating all that and here I sit feeling like a complete glutton but happy at the same time. It was a really nice weekend. I hope you all had a nice weekend too!

Yesterday's Eats - Birthday!

One might think that celebrating a birthday without a cake is a bad thing but I'm here to tell you that you can recognize your birthday without a cake and live to talk about it!

Yesterday morning I got up and opened my gifts which included some new camera and computer gear. I also received a birthday present I ordered for myself which was a book on digital photography. I've been incredibly inspired by some of the photos over at Flickr and really want to improve my skills so I tried something new when shooting my breakfast images. I couldn't really tell a difference but I'm trying! Breakfast was quite simple, two buttermilk biscuits with a touch of Bonne Maman cherry preserves. I adore cherry jelly, especially on biscuits...



This held me over for a long time, surprisingly and later I had some leftover Shepherd's Pie for lunch.



For dinner, Sean asked the boys where they wanted to take me and they, of course, wanted Mario's Pizza. However I wasn't in the mood for a big greasy slice of pizza so instead I had a big greasy burger at Fincastle's, a diner downtown. LOL



It wasn't greasy actually. We hadn't eaten there before but the menu looked like fun, Cherry Crush, baby cokes with peanuts, fried pickles. I didn't have any of that, though I was sorry I didn't order a Cherry Crush because I loved those when I was a little girl. The burger was really tasty. A lot of places do not season their burgers and this one had a great combination of pepper and salt. Really good. I ordered onion rings as my side because I'm a total sucker for them:



These were good, too but they could have used a touch of salt. It's hard to beat the flavor of a salty onion ring dredged in ketchup. Mmmmmm, that's tasty!!

After dinner, Sean wanted to take me to our most decadent local bakery called Ganache. They have the most incredible cakes and are the only game in town to go to when you have a special occasion and you want to get something other than the standard cavity-inducing fare offered at the grocery store. They made our wedding cake and that was to die for! Anyway, I was so full after dinner though I decided to wait until tonight to get some cake. The kids are spending the night with my parents so maybe Sean and I will head over to Ganache later and enjoy something gorgeous with a cup of coffee. Here's what my plate looked like at the end of dinner by the way:



After dinner, we headed over to my favorite book store and there I was able to buy $250 worth of books for $84. I love the used book store! I picked up The Joy of Cooking, How to Bake, and The New Basics Cookbook. Also got a couple of books on parties, a Celtic activity book for kids (super cool), a Marvel Encyclopedia and a photography book. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

I didn't miss the cake one bit. It was a great birthday!

Yesterday's Eats

An exercise in junky eating! Ryan had to go to the dentist yesterday to get some fillings and couldn't eat before he went so, in solidarity, I decided to abstain as well. His appointment wasn't until noon either so we both got there hungry. After the appointment, I promised I would take him to MCDonalds for a Happy Meal. Well, my resistance was low due to the fact that I was starving. I ordered this and told myself I'd only eat half:



That didn't happen...I ate the whole thing. At least I ordered an unsweetened tea and saved myself some agony on that score.

Later on, when it was time for dinner I began making Shepherd's Pie and it was late, probably around 7:30, and I still hadn't heard from Sean what time he was planning to get home. While I cooked I snacked on a couple of cookies, a handful of peanuts and a couple of spoonfuls of mashed potatoes. Then Sean got home around 9:30 and I just didn't feel like having dinner! So this is what I made:



But this it what I had around 10:00...



Good stuff, huh? Well, today is my birthday and I plan to celebrate by treating myself well. Check back later for an update on today's eats.

Today's Eats

Woke up this mornin' and had a hankerin' for some biscuits. Hot, soft, fluffy biscuits. My mom used to make homemade biscuits every weekend when we were little and I would pile mine up with butter and cherry jelly. Cherry is still my favorite today. So when I was roaming around a website called www.pinchmysalt.com and saw a recipe for buttermilk biscuits, I knew then that a plate of these were in my future. My very near future. So, am I repeating myself too much when I say that baking isn't my thing? Baking and my laissez-faire attitude just don't mix because baking requires precision and many times I just don't have the patience for that. The biscuits turned out great it's just that I added too much buttermilk to the dough so they were too sticky to roll and cut out so I had to make drop biscuits. It didn't affect the flavor at all though. Check this out:



I'm going to be honest. I had two of these lovelies because it had been a long, long time since I'd had a homemade biscuit that was any good, and these were GOOD. The biscuits along with a small glass of creamery fresh whole milk held me over until 3:00 today.

Lunch was light. I decided to have a salad and topped it with some black beans, tomatoes, salsa and sour cream mixed together with some salt and cumin. Along with that I fixed myself some more of the olive cheese bread but I fixed it on rounds instead of the loaf halves. It was really good!



Here is the salad.



Here are the toasts.

I think for dinner tonight we're going to have breakfast: eggs, sausage, and biscuits. Sean will be home shortly and I'll be sure to update after we eat!

DINNER

I'm embarrassed to post this picture because it's terrible but it's a record of dinner so it's going on here anyway:



It's a biscuit with a tiny bit of butter, a fresh sausage patty, and a scrambled egg. It was a good dinner just not exciting! Sometimes breakfast for dinner is soooo good! Just overlook the really dark part on top of the biscuit. My oven cooks really hot and I forgot to check on them. LOL

See you tomorrow. Have a great night!

Today's Eats - Leftovers and Repeats

Still dragging my ass outta bed every day I suppose because I'm still recovering from the weekend. Or could it be because Friday I'm officially one year older? Hmmmm. At any rate I got up and puttered around a little bit and then, since the weather was so lovely and cool this morning, I thought it would be nice to break my fast outside.



This is not a great picture. It took me a while to get into picture-taking today. French Vanilla Yogurt and homemade granola.

For lunch the boys wanted to go on a picnic so we invited my sister and her daughter to go and we were off to the park. I had an egg salad sandwich, some grapes, and a few wheat thins that I had brought for the boys.







After snacking on at least 5 of the pioneer woman's deadly oatmeal crispies this afternoon, I prepared dinner. It was really tough. I had to walk over to the fridge, pull out two containers and reheat the shrimp and grits from last night. Whew! Can't you see the perspiration on my brow?!



Except for going a little crazy on the cookies, it felt like a good day.

Today's Eats

Today I am beat. After being up late every night this weekend and then eating a bunch of crap on Saturday, I just feel run down. But I still got up this morning and ate a wonderful breakfast of scrambled eggs and sausage:



Iain is my scrambled egg buddy. Ryan doesn't like them so Iain and I always eat them together. I cooked two eggs for Iain and I to split and I cooked two small sausage patties that I formed from freshly made sausage at a local grocery store. It was really good sausage. I'm usually a little wary of buying it there because the first time I got it someone was quite heavy-handed with the salt but the past two times it's been great.

Anyway, that breakfast kept me feeling full for a long time and I didn't eat lunch until around 3pm. I had an egg salad sandwich and a granny smith apple and until just now, as I was typing the words, I didn't think about the fact that I had an egg for two meals today. Hopefully I'll have something else at dinner! Anyway, here's a photo of lunch:



My plan for dinner was to make the most fabulous Shrimp and Grits you have ever seen and, depending on when Sean's planning to get home, I still have every intention of making it. Also, I will post the recipe later and request that you make it ASAP. It is that damn good!

Come back tonight for the update!

*********CLANG CLANG CLANG******* DINNER BELL'S RINGING

Well, I did it. I fixed my go-to dish. You know, we all have at least one that we came up with and feel so good about sharing. This is mine. Barbeque Shrimp and Grits. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of eating grits, please do me a favor. DO NOT get instant grits or I will have to personally come to your house and whomp you upside the head with my beautifully seasoned iron skillet. And I don't want to do that 'cause I like y'all! Bear with me, because the photos are going to look like one of my kids has a stomach bug and threw up in our family barf bowl but trust me. This smack is GOOD! A restaurant here, called Lucky 32, served this forever and it was what I ordered every time we went. Then they up and changed it to regular old shrimp and grits with sausage. I like that, too but this was so different that I wanted it instead and I was forced to try and find my own recipe.

You will need:

1 or 2lbs of shrimp (i usually get the peeled, frozen variety, no tail thank you)
1 bottle of Heinz Chili sauce- Don't you dare use ketchup
2 or 3 cups combined of onion and peppers
1/4 lb of bacon OR olive oil for a healthier version
a handful of brown sugar
chicken broth (3/4 cup)
heavy cream (1/4-1/2 cup)
half and half (2 cups)
water (2 cups)
1/2 stick of butter
salt to taste
1 cup Old fashioned grits

First, boil the half and half and water adding the butter and turn the heat down. Add the grits and stir so they don't get lumpy. Cook over low heat for 20 minutes. They will thicken with time. Stir occasionally. I added a couple of generous pinches of kosher salt as well.

Second, heat the olive oil in a medium sized skillet. If you're using the bacon instead, dice and cook until crisp, reserving the grease. Add your peppers and onions to the oil and cook over medium heat until soft and slightly caramelly. Is that a word?! Once the peppers and onions are cooked, add the entire bottle of chili sauce, the handful of brown sugar, and chicken broth, allowing this to simmer as the grits cook. Taste to see how much salt is needed. This is a sweetish dish so don't be shocked by that when you taste it. Add your cream here. Don't use milk or it will curdle. Cream is a requirement and there's not enough in here to cause the calorie conscious too much trouble. In fact, when I was doing weight watchers, a serving of this was 8 points. Carrying on......

While the sauce is simmering, take your thawed shrimp and cook them quickly in another skillet but don't overcook them. In fact, if your husband calls and is going to be later than you thought he was because he's stopping at the store to buy this GINORMOUS box of crackers:



then please, in the name of all that's holy, under-cook the shrimp and add it to the sauce to let it finish cooking until he gets home. Once he arrives, fix him a lovely bowl of these gorgeous, creamy grits:



and then top them with the BBQ Shrimp Sauce. This is where it looks ugly as a mud fence but tastes incredible:



This recipe will easily serve 6 people nicely. If you make it, please let me know what you think, or what changes you made to the recipe to make it your own.

Weekend Eats

Holy Moly! I can't believe I didn't post a single thing ALL weekend. That's really crazy. Well, it reflects the weekend I had at any rate. Saturday morning we all slept really late because we were up until 2 or 2:30 the night before. I ate a ham sandwich for brunch then took the boys to a birthday party for one of their friends. There was pizza and soda but I abstained and it felt good! After the party, the boys were hungry. They didn't eat much there because they wanted to play so I took them by a drive-thru on the way home. Lord, it was so hard not to order fries for myself, but I didn't! When I got home my sister and brother-in-law invited us over for dinner. I was exhausted from being out in the hot sun at the party so I was more than happy to let someone else cook dinner! We had rib-eye, Caesar salad, mashed potatoes, and some kind of frozen bread appetizer. Did I mention the jalapeño cheddar cheese dip with tortilla chips before dinner? Woo! It was a lot of food and all of it was processed in one form or another. Let me tell you, yesterday I was regretting that meal.

Sunday morning, my sister and I went to the grocery store together. We do this a lot and I often wonder if people think we're a lesbian couple with 3 kids. Not that it matters, I just wonder because it makes me laugh to myself when I think about it. Anyway, my stomach was really hurting while we were there but it calmed down. When I got home, it got upset again and I really think it was because of the food we ate the night before. I didn't eat much yesterday but I did make a couple of the Pioneer Woman's recipes. One thing on her site that I've been eying for a while is the Olive Cheese Bread. I goofed up and bought olives with pits in them so it took me a long time to chop the green olives, and then I had to open a can of roasted red pepper in order to supplement the pimientos that I was missing in the olives but once I got through that it was o-kay!

Here is what it looked like:



This was actually our dinner plate but for lunch I had 3 slices of this bread. It was yummy but there are a couple of things I would do differently. First, she has you mix up the ingredients and then cut a french baguette in half, piling the mixture thickly on both halves and baking it in the oven. An easier and less messy way to do this is to cut the bread into round slices. You will have a lot but this way you can just put a teaspoon or so on each slice and they are much more manageable. Second, instead of the monterey jack cheese she calls for in her recipe, I would use pepper jack. You could leave the olives out or in, your choice. I'm sure it would be great either way. All in all, this is a great party food but it would be better for people to eat if you cut the round slices I suggested. My sister and I actually make the peppr jack version all the time because our local grocery store makes their own pepper jack pimiento cheese and suggested it be served on the rounds. It is fabulous and I recommend you try it ASAP.

For the wings I just baked some drumettes that I bought at the store that I seasoned with a little garlic salt and pepper. In the meantime, I took 2 Tbs butter and melted it in a saucepan and added to that 3 Tbs of Texas Pete hot sauce and 2 Tbs of honey. Once the wings were pretty much done, I tossed them in the sauce and then popped them back in the oven for a few minutes to get them nice and crispy. For dinner, I had 3 wings and 2 slices of cheese bread. Here's another picture of our plate:



After dinner, I wanted to make the Pioneer Woman's Oatmeal Crispies. They were pretty easy and the only change I made to these was to add chocolate chips. Yum! These are really tasty! I wanted the boys to have a homemade snack for this week. Take a look:



Hey, Stephanie! Sometimes I make cookies and they actually turn out! LOL

I've already taken a picture of my breakfast so later today there will be a post with today's eats. Sorry for not posting over the weekend!