Week One

Sunday-Hot Buttered Rum and homemade meat sauce. After a day of sledding and playing in    the snow we drank Spencer's amazing hot buttered rum and ed made us some fabulous, chunky meat sauce. yum.


Monday-Calzones. Using this crust, stuffed with veggies, cheeses and meat. I changed the flour on the crust to be 2 cups bread flour, 1 cup wheat flour, and 1 cup all purpose flour. A perfect combination. I also glazed the top with oil and salt before baking. It was delish. Another perfect ending for a snowy day.


Tuesday-Baked chicken, rice pilaf, canned spinach. The chicken was baked with italian spices and was super tasty. I long for the day when I make my own rice pilaf. I think that would be a good move. But, i won't give up the canned spinach-so tasty! We watched Antiques Roadshow while we ate and someone had a statue worth $100,000.00 CRAZY!


Wednesday-Dinner with a good friend at McMenamins on Monroe. I really enjoy the set up in this particular venue. I need to not order burgers there any more though, i am never satisfied, and this restaurant does not offer some of the other fun McMenamin dishes that I like, like the chicken/blue cheese/bacon yummy something. But, i did have a big basket of delicious tots-making it all worth while. The company was best though, it was fulfilling in multiple ways
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Thursday-Flooded in Pea soup and biscuits. The biscuits didn't rise well, mostly due to my hurried mixing and not being diligent about the order of adding ingredients. But, they turned out yummy and charlotte seems to enjoy them lots!


Friday-Still flooded in garden burgers and home fries. The burgers were good. Smothered in pickles and mayo. But, what was especially pleasing were the homefries. A recipe from this past Cooks Illustrated. This link only takes you to the page where you can subscribe to the online recipe. So i will just tell you what makes it amazing. Par-cooking the potato cubes with a 1/2-1 teaspoon (depending on how much potato) of baking soda. Next, mixing it with your desired spices and oil then cooking them at 500 with regular flipping. The recipe also calls for cooking them with onions (towards the end) but we didn't do that and they were still very good. The baking soda breaks down the sides of the potato cubes making for perfect crisping in the oven. They are spot on!


Saturday-First, pepperoni pizza. Second, deliciousness from Market of Choice Bakery. Joan is in town from PA and it was her birthday. We ate our pizza, mostly to create a good landing spot for the cake. I will describe each one (6, 3 inch x 3 inch square, cakes). A chocolate, peanut butter layered dream. Each layer full of flavor, small in size so that each bite might contain multiple layers. A carrot cake, simple only in title. The flavors were rich but the cake was light. The frosting was sweet and buttery, only glazed on, with a perfect dusting of cinnamon. yum. Lemon. Pure lemon. Purely perfect. A pink champagne. It was a definite party cake. The color was a light pink and the flavor was bursting, like uncorking a champagne bottle, i pictured confetti...in my mouth. German chocolate. The only one I passed, but it received rave reviews. It looked decadent, with the frosting drooping over the sides, as though each bite would be almost fudgy. Lastly, but most importantly, a poppyseed with marionberry. Wow. The hint of almond was addicting, for those who love almond. I snuck a second sliver, it was too good.