Last Supper

Keizo's last night in town we decided to stay in and cook together.  We didn't head to the store until about 5, and then I made him do Insanity with me, so I don't think we started cooking until well after 7. 

The menu was pasta with vodka cream sauce, roasted broccoli and garlic toast.  The cream sauce sounds fancy, but I got the recipe off the back of a bag of store brand frozen tortellini and added a ton of extra vegetables.  

Ready to eat!

The sauce was yummy, although next time I don't think I will add all of the liquid called for in the recipe.  All of the extra vegetables meant that I had leftovers too!

On a Roll

Being at home means having a spacious, well-stocked kitchen to work with. While I don't think that Keizo's apartment is lacking anything essential, we certainly don't have one of these:

Neither of us had actually used a slow cooker before, but it seemed like a fun thing to experiment with. We looked through an ancient cookbook of my mom's and settled on a recipe for cabbage rolls to serve to my friend Teri and my parents.

We got started assembling the rolls right after our late breakfast, since the recipe said they needed 7-9 hours to cook. While Keizo prepared the filling; ground beef, cooked rice, onion etc, I did my best to remove the outer leaves from a head of cabbage without shredding them into pieces. Some came out better than others, but we were able to use all of them without much difficulty. Next, the cabbage leaves got a nice hot bath in boiling water for 3 minutes.

Each of the 12 leaves got a 1/4 cup of filling and then I rolled them up and stacked them inside the crock pot.

Then I covered them with a mixture of tomato juice seasoned with Worcestershire sauce, salt, pepper etc, put the lid on and turned it on low heat and let it sit.

As the dinner hour approached, I made a green salad and garlic toast (a dinner staple.)

Our meal:

The rolls were tasty, although next time I think I would add some more seasonings and maybe some garlic to the mix/sauce. I think it would also be interesting to try making them with tofu and maybe some minced roasted vegetables. Oddly the leftovers we ate for lunch the next day tasted even better, as if 8 hours stewing in a pot wasn't long enough for all the flavors to meld. A delicious culinary mystery.

"Spanish Delight"

On Wednesday, we ate quesadillas and ready made sweet potato bisque from Trader Joe's for dinner after subjecting our abdominals to an hour long Pilates class. Unfortunately, this wasn't enough for Keizo, who made a second meal of ramen noodles after dinner. Not wanting to fail him again, I planned Thursday's dinner around his hearty appetite.

Enter Grammy Phelps' "Spanish Delight" casserole recipe. Not sure where the name came from, but it's been a family favorite for years. Easy and filling!!

The original recipe calls for ground beef, but I bought ground turkey instead, which was a fine substitute. After preparing the pasta and leaving it in the colander to drain, we put the turkey, garlic and onion in the pot we used for the pasta. When the meat was cooked, add a can of creamed corn and equal amount of canned tomato soup. Season with chili powder and a bit of salt and pepper. Mix the pasta back in you are ready to eat.

Serve topped with parmesan cheese...

...green salad and more garlic toast. I dressed my salad with a combination of a creamy caesar dressing with some drizzles of balsamic vinegar. Oh how I have missed balsamic vinegar!

Super Bowl Salad

Super Bowl Sunday was me and the guys (Keizo and my Dad) so you can probably guess who got left with the responsibility of making dinner. It's okay though...I met my annual quota of football viewing by watching the half time show and the last quarter, which are the most important parts anyway, right?

No Super Bowl "party" no matter how informal is complete without snacks and beer, so we got some ready made sushi, crackers and artichoke dip at the grocery store. We also picked up some red bell pepper and a red onion to make "Greek Tortellini Salad" for dinner.

After chopping the veggies and putting the frozen cheese tortellini in the pot to boil, I got started on the dressing. Olive oil, red wine vinegar, a splash of sherry and some red pepper flakes look so pretty combined in the measuring cup.

Combine pasta, veggies and feta cheese in large bowl and toss with dressing. If you plan ahead, the salad can be chilled, or if you are more like me, eat it right away.

Rounding out the meal were baby carrots with hummus and fresh garlic toast. Kept dinner on the lighter side after all those snacks.

Plus, there was Samoa Girl Scout cookie ice cream for dessert ;-)