All American Snacks

Here are some delish treats I've made in the last few months. I figured thinking about snacks would be a good way to pass the time until my flight. When I travel I like to be early, really early. It's turned out very important in the past. Like the time I got on the train to North Trento instead of the airport. That was exciting. Anyway, we've had a fun year so far and I'm looking forward to ending 2011 with family and friends. But first! Homemade Graham crackers, cookie dough dip, and homemade root beer syrup.

Adventures with Pork Belly

A few weeks ago, we started thinking about Christmas Eve. Actually, what we were going to make for Christmas Eve. Something festive and unique. Comforting, but non-traditional. We came up with pork belly. We both love pork belly. It's pretty much eating huge cubes of crisped, delicious bacon. So, with our dinner plans in mind we had some shopping to do. But first, we had to make the rounds at an Ugly Sweater Christmas party. I love this sweater, it has bedazzled Christmas kitties, a giant sparkly tree, and a rocking horse with a yarn mane. Fantastic!

 

My first attempt to hunt down the elusive slab of uncured pork belly went badly... VERY badly. We headed to Reading Terminal Market and stopped by a butcher stand that will remain nameless. I asked if they had any pork belly. The butcher looked at me a little funny, fished around in the case for a moment, then plopped a big frozen bags of something roughly the right size and shape down in front of me. He rang the frozen pile up and it only came to about $3.00. I was so excited as I had expected pork belly to cost a small fortune.

 

I took my prize home and prepared the curing mixture while the meat thawed. I jiggled the bag and the "pork belly" fell into my perfectly prepared roasting pan with a loud "splech." Instead of a beautiful, fatty, chunk of bacon, this is what I got:

 

A stomach. A pork maw. Menudo. I'm all up for trying unique foods and recipes, but when you want bacon, you want BACON. After taking some pictures, looking up a thousand menudo or stomach taco recipes, I gave up. The next day I headed to Chinatown and came home with a perfect pink slab of pork belly. I covered it entirely in my pickling/curing spice and shoved it in the fridge for 36 hours.

 

After curing for a day and a half, the meat was roasted at about 250 F for 3 hours with leeks, carrots, celery, onion, bay leaves and some chicken stock. Then, you compress the meat (I used old law school text books) in the fridge for another 36 hours. Finally, when you are ready to eat, crisp the skin and fat in a skillet.

 

We enjoyed our belly with a brandy cherry glaze, mashed potatoes and some coleslaw. Merry Christmas!

 

Oatmeal and Ceiling Tiles

A few weeks ago I decided to decorate the apartment for Christmas. To give myself some energy I made a huge bowl of cinnamon roll oatmeal. You can see our live mini tree in some of the photos. The tree is potted so I can keep it all year long!

 

 

We've also been scoping out some unique ceiling tiles to spruce up our apartment. They are usually salvaged from old buildings and are meant to be used as wall hangings. What do you think?

 

 

 

A Weekend Trip to New York

 

 

 

 

 

 

First Snow and some French Toast

Sweet Potato Biscuits

It's a nice, crisp fall Sunday here... There's no better way to start off a weekend morning than fresh sweet potato biscuits with some plum butter. I whipped these up in about 20 minutes with some leftover mashed sweet potatoes. We ate them right out of the oven with dill scrambled eggs... Yum!

The Rest of September

Well, I haven't blogged in about a month... Oops! I've been busy running off to weddings and anniversaries all over the place! Here is a quick and dirty catch up on the wonderful people (and food!) I've seen in the last month.


On September 10th, my best friend got married in Springdale, UT. Springdale is the gateway to beautiful Zion National Park. Right above, you can see her INCREDIBLE funfetti wedding cake with the incredible red rock background of southern Utah. Her wedding was so wonderful and so moving. The reception was great too! They had it in a gorgeous apple orchard. Also, this was hands down the best wedding cake I've ever had.

When I got home, my fiance made this UH-mazing steak with blue cheese mashed potatoes and bell pepper puree. Mmmm. I'm a lucky girl!

Next, I headed off to St. Louis, MO to surprise my Dad and sister for my parents 40th wedding anniversary. That's a picture of my parents from the 70's... Love it!

I made them the butter, butter, butter cake I made back in July. It's dyed pink/red in honor of their ruby anniversary. Love you guys!

Then, we had couples night with some good friends from law school. That jello rainbow may have been prepared with some adult beverages!

Finally, I made an incredible homemade root beer syrup with sassafrass roots I pullled out of my uncle's backyard... Recipe to follow soon!

Hurricane Irene

We made it back home after a quick trip to Ohio just a few short hours before Hurricane Irene was due to hit. I enjoyed using the storm as an excuse to stock up on lots of goodies to get us through the storm and the "inevitable" power outages that were sure to follow. We had been told that if the power went out in our city, it would be out for at least a week because the power grid was so old.

City Hall in the Pre-Irene gloom

Coincidentally, this was also the week I decided to try and avoid meat.

I stocked up on as many fresh veggies and no-prep needed foods as I could carry. We also stashed all our water bottles in the fridge.

Before the storm, I noticed that we had a gallon of milk that was close to its sell-by date. Rather than dumping it down the drain, I decided to give some homemade ricotta a shot. I'd tried it once before but it didn't turn out well. My mom was very sweet and pretended to like the results.

The next day, to celebrate our survival, intact water-mains and functioning power grid, I made a cheese plate, baked acorn squash (leftover emergency supplies), and crostini with figs, honey, and homemade ricotta. The ricotta was good but a little weird so I'm not putting up the recipe. We decided to walk off our post-storm celebration with a walk around the city to survey the damage.

We made it!

Bring on the next Snowpocalypse!

Blueberry Pie

We've just headed back to the East Coast. To kick off our job hunt festivities, I decided we needed to start with something sweet. A week or so ago, we headed down to Italian Market for the first time. While we were down there, I picked up a few pints of blueberries that may have 'fallen off the back of the truck." (We've been watching a lot of The Sopranos).

I decided a blueberry pie would be the perfect pick-me-up! I used my mom's perfect pie crust recipe and improvised for the filling.

Ingredients:

2 9-inch pie crusts

2 pints blueberries

1 cup sugar

1/4 cup lemon juice

1/4 cup cornstarch

Directions:

1) Pre-Bake pie crust at 425 for 15 minutes or until lightly browned

2) While crust is baking, mix together all of the ingredients for the filling.

3) Remove crust from oven and pour in the blueberry filling. Top with second crust in a lattice or other design. No matter what you do, be sure to leave vents to let steam escape!

4) Bake for 1 hour at 350. Let cool on wire rack. Let the pie sit for at least 30 minutes before trying to slice.

5) Top with a huge scoop of vanilla ice cream.