Cooking/Recipes

Cauliflower and Eggs – Yes, it’s tasty!

I ran across this recipe on Chris Kresser’s blog:  Lebanese Cauliflower Omelet.  I was intrigued by the use of cauliflower with eggs and with cinnamon as a spice.  I made it up for breakfast on Saturday, and it turned out quite tasty!  However, I don’t know if it’s because I added ham or if it’s because I misread the directions and cooked the green onions and parsley IN the omelet, but I had to bake mine for 50 minutes instead of the 15-20 minutes specified in the recipe.

I liked the ingredient combo so much that I did a spin-off this morning.  I mixed up 3 eggs, added cauliflower, coconut milk, cinnamon, and some diced onions and added the whole slew to a hot skillet teaming with olive oil.  I scrambled it until cooked.  It was pretty good; however, the cauliflower got cooked better in the omelet, so we both liked that variation better.

It was a busy weekend, cooking wise.  We are trying a new recipe for turkey this Thanksgiving.  Since our dry-brined roasted chicken is so delicious, we decided to take the same tack with turkey.  We’re following this recipe.  Hopefully it will turn out good!

Hope you had a great weekend!

Cooking/Recipes

The Sleepy Choo

My brothers are coming home over Thanksgiving, so just for fun I made up a menu for them of all my favorite things.  It was actually a really fun little project – one of those things you do where you lose track of time and all of the sudden it’s 8:30 and time to go bed!  Here it is, for your perusal.  Sleepy_Choo_Menu_Nov_2013  If any of you win a bazillion dollars and want to kickstart The Sleepy Choo, hit me up in the comments. 😉

I tried another new recipe tonight:  Lamb Sliders with Ginger Cilantro Aioli.  This recipe had a lot of steps.  You have to make the sliders, slice the sweet potatoes whilst trying not to slice off your fingertips with the mandoline, season them, bake them, and then make homemade mayo.  AND then! chop up  jalapeno, grate ginger, chop cilantro and then add it all to the mayo.

Then when everything is done, you have to stack it all up and eat it up yum.  Yes, it’s a lot of work, but it was a pretty delicious meal.  My only complaint is I now have 3/4th cup of aioli that I have to use up within 3 days.  It IS delicious stuff.   We’re just going to have to put aioli on everything for the next 3 days – eggs, salmon, oatmeal, ham, everything.

If you want some aioli, stop on over!

Cooking/Recipes

Cookin’ and home shoppin’

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted anything – sorry about that.  I was in NYC with my bros weekend before last, and then after that I got obsessed with finding a new home and couldn’t really focus on anything productive.  Our current home is a cute little number, almost perfect for Tim, Lucent, and me.  It has tons of character, nice bones, and beautiful hard-wood floors.  However, as you know if you read this blog, I kind of like to cook.  And I rather like having people over to eat my cooking.  Our 791 sq foot house is not very conducive to this, however.  We have a galley kitchen that is a tight fit for Tim and me, much less any company.  We only have 2 bedrooms and one bathroom, which works out fine except for the fact that ALL of our relatives live elsewhere – anywhere from Monticello 1.5 hours away to New York City to Phoenix, AZ.  As a result of our dispersed family, we have visitors staying with us at least 4-6 times per year.  Within about 2 days, it gets to be quite cozy (aka overwhelming).

I added up all these thoughts, tossed in my life-long desire to build my dream home, and decided to meet with a local builder who builds quality, well-built houses.  I’m still not sure if it was a good idea to meet with him or not.  We discovered that we can, in fact, build exactly what we want.  However, it will cost us at least $50,000 more than we really want to spend, and we will have to sacrifice our excellent location in central Davenport (close to the bike path and within walking distance of the grocery store, parks, and restaurants).  So now I’m even more confused about what to do.  Options are my bane.

To further complicate the issue, Tim and I looked at existing houses for sale over the weekend.  In the neighborhoods we like (central or east D, close to the River Drive bike path or Duck Creek bike path), the houses are all either super expensive ($190K for a house from the 1950s that needs new windows, siding, etc.), or smelly (cat pee, anyone??), or oddly put together.

So we are back to square one – spend $50K more than we want (but can technically afford) or stay in our little house that is perfect for us pretty much 80% of the time.  My www.mrmoneymustache.com-reading self says this is a no brainer.  Stay here, pay off this house in 7-10 years and enjoy decades of NO HOUSE PAYMENTS.  My recent philosophical readings of The Power of Now and A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy both dictate that instead of focusing on how nice it would be to have a bigger, better, more functional house, I focus on how much I love our current house, how cute it is, what a great location it is, how comfy it is.  I recognize this with my brain, but my stupid heart still wants its 3 bedroom, 2 bath, open floor plan house painted in lovely shades of chocolate and grey with cedar shake siding.  It would be all kinds of adorable and awesome.  So, which Heather will win??  I’m thinking the brainy one, because Tim is more on her side.  Maybe some day a long-lost relative will leave me a bazillion dollars, and then I can have my perfect little house.  If there’s one thing Stoicism has taught me, it’s if you just get the one, last perfect thing that you really, really want, you will be happy. 😉

In between looking at janky expensive houses and trying to figure out how frugal I could really be if it meant Hlo getting a new house, I tried a couple of new recipes.

Buffalo chicken egg muffins:  These little bastards were all sorts of delicious and easy.  Make them post haste.  This recipe will definitely stay in my repertoire.  My only note on this recipe – I added 2 full chicken breasts, and I ended up with 10 muffins instead of 6.  So be prepared.

Everyday Paleo Chile Verde:  I made this yesterday, and Tim was a huge fan!  He really liked the flavor.  It was very limey.  I thought it was good, but it didn’t blow me away.  It seemed to be a lot of work too!  The kitchen (the small, galley kitchen with very little work space, remember??) was a disaster, and I literally got a blister on my finger from cutting up the pork. I think I need sharper knives.  It also gave us verde poop.  All in all, though, I would make this again.  I’ll just make Tim cut up the pork next time.

And that’s been our past week or two.  Exciting stuff, eh??  Well, I better sign off so I can start doing some internet research about how to start making money on the internet in my spare time.  🙂

Cooking/Recipes, Health & Fitness, Paleo, Uncategorized

Fall Cookin’

It’s Fall.  That means:

1.  I want to bake all the time.  I made these pumpkin muffins again on Saturday, and by Sunday evening they were goners.  I found this article with 33 recipes that all sound fantastic.  I think I’m going to have to make this one tonight.  I’m in love with pumpkin.

2. It’s dark.  Like all the time.  I packed up my backpack last night with every intention of hitting the pool this morning before work. But, I woke up, and it’s cold and dark outside, and I decided that shopping for boots was a better use of my time.  I saved $80 by shopping this morning!  Amazon is offering 25% off boot purchases over $100, so I ordered these. If they end up working out, they will be my 4th pair of Fryes.  I have their Carson Oxfords, their Carson Ballet Flats, and the Campus Boot.  Yes, they are expensive, but I have yet to actually wear out a pair of their footwear!!  We’ll see how these boots work out.  I’m going to NYC on Thursday to visit my bros, and I NEED some awesome boots with which to impress them.

3.  I want to eat all the stuffs.  Our office is rife with leftover Halloween candy.  It’s horrible.  Fortunately this insatiable desire to eat has motivated me to try some new recipes.  I made this Primal Ham Bone Soup on Sunday.  My mom got us some beautiful, unique squash (squashes??), so I chopped some of those up and put them into the soup.  I also added some smoked ham hocks.  I put the works in the Nesco at about 7AM Sunday morning, and by 2PM, we had delicious soup.  The squash completely disappeared!  I think it melded with the broth.

I wanted to make buns to go with the soup because there isn’t anything better than buttered buns and ham soup.  This Paleo Dinner Rolls recipe sounded delicious, and the picture of the rolls made my mouth water.  Well, I broke our 1 cup Pyrex measuring cup, so I had to use our 2 cup measuring cup.  The measurement indicators are, to say the least, confusing.  I think I ended up adding twice as much water & oil as required.  The dough was not doughy AT ALL.  It was barely the consistency of go-gurt.  I tried to salvage the concoction by pouring the batter into a loaf pan and baking it. I baked it for 60 minutes.  The top and bottom paper-thin layers were salty & delicious, and the middle was just straight up gelatinous.  Gross.  I will have to try these again with the proper measurements next time.

Hopefully we’ll have an easy winter this year, so that we can still get outside and exercise and see the sun.  I’m already getting depressed, and it’s only November 4.  I’m doubling up on my Vitamin D supplements to see if that helps.  I think a contributing factor to my downsies is the fact that I just finished a huge project at work and am feeling rather listless.  It was nice, albeit stressful, to have something all consuming in your life for awhile.  It relieved me of the need to think about and plan out how to spend my time.  Now I have no excuses!  Maybe I’ll take my new-found mental freedom and watch seasons 2 and 3 of Downtown Abbey.  I do have an afgan that needs crocheted!

And that’s it for the evening.  I’m taking my boot-shopping, TV-watching, dessert-baking self to bed.  Adios!