Friday, August 29, 2008

Listaciousness!

I heart lists. As you all may (or may not) know. Whilst browsing my fellow WCers blogs, I came across this gem: The Omnivore's Hundred! So without further adieu, here goes:

(addition: the instructions for this are "1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.")


1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries

23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl

33. Salted lassi
34. Sauerkraut (I practically live in the sauerkraut capital)
35. Root beer float

36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo

40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut

50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV

59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores

62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis (funny story: ask me about the time hubs confused this with hummus)
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers

89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab

93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox

97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

Thursday, August 28, 2008

Baked Orzo with Fontina and Peas; Blackberry Cobbler

YUM. I actually got to make dinner last night. I'm still amazed at myself. Of course, I didn't do anything else... but at least I was productive! There are leftovers!

First up was Giada's recipe . I did modify it because I didn't have time to get all the ingredients, and wasn't sure about the mushrooms. I don't like them, but hubs is picky about them so next time I'll make it more spot-on.

Baked Orzo with Fontina and Peas

4 cups chicken broth (found out i didn't have any chicken broth... sub #1 = water)
1 pound orzo pasta
3 tablespoons butter, plus more to grease the baking dish
1 onion, chopped
8 ounces mushrooms, sliced (none of these either!)
1 cup Marsala wine
1/2 cup heavy cream
4 ounces shredded fontina cheese (about 1 cup)
4 ounces diced fresh mozzarella cheese (about 1 cup) (i had an italian cheese blend, bag o' shred)
1 cup frozen peas, thawed
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup bread crumbs (ran out of these too! i'm so bad at this.)
1/4 cup grated Parmesan
1 teaspoon dried thyme

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Butter a 9 by 13-inch baking dish.

Bring the chicken broth to a boil over medium-high heat in a medium saucepan. Add the orzo and cook until almost tender, about 7 minutes. Pour the orzo and the broth into a large bowl. Set aside.

Meanwhile, melt the butter over medium heat in a medium skillet. Add the onions and saute until tender, about 3 minutes. Add the mushrooms and continue to saute until the mushrooms are beginning to turn golden around the edges, about 7 minutes. Add the Marsala. Scrape the brown bits off the bottom of the pan and cook until the Marsala has reduced by half, about 5 minutes. Add the mushroom mixture to the orzo in the large bowl. Add the cream, fontina, mozzarella, peas, salt, and pepper. Stir to combine. Pour the mixture into the prepared baking dish.

In a small bowl combine the bread crumbs, Parmesan, and dried thyme. Sprinkle the bread crumb mixture on top of the pasta. Bake until golden, about 25 minutes.

Verdict: pretty darn good! I'll try it the 'real' way next time, but it worked just fine my screwy way so I'm predicting a surefire hit with the true ingredients.


Next: dessert! this was a recipe I gleaned from the website of my (kind-of) local orchard. It was pretty easy... I almost wondered if they left something out! But this is a great quick dessert for hectic nights.

Blackberry Cobbler

Note from the Editor:
A tasty, light dessert, this cobbler has long been a family favorite. It is a great Sunday evening supper or quick dish to prepare for unexpected visitors. The blackberries can be substituted by any other berry or sour cherries. (If using frozen or canned fruit, must drain well!) ENJOY!

Ingredients

1 c. flour
1 c. sugar
2 tsp. baking powder
1 c. milk
1 tsp. vanilla
2 c. fresh fruit
4 Tbs. butter (melted)

Combine flour, sugar, and baking powder in a two quart baking dish. Stir in milk and vanilla to make a thin batter (do not over-mix). Place fruit over batter and drizzle melted butter over top. Do not stir. Bake at 350° for 30-40 minutes.



Fantastic! Loved it. So easy. Not as healthy as some, but it was fast, easy, and mmm mmm good. Hubs tried to tell me what I used were black raspberries...so that led into a 10-minute conversation about berries that really wasn't necessary. Oh well.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

laugh on line

so this morning, i was out of laundry, so i put on the pants-that-are-a-little-bit-small-but-no-one-except-me-notices. except i think maybe people do, and they're just avoiding it...
Hubs: your pants make your butt look small.
Me: (just about to say "that's unpossible")...
Hubs: and toight, toight like a toiger!

I don't know whether to stop eating or flaunt my toiger-butt.

...isn't that vierd?

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Do it again and I'll stab you in the face with a sautering iron...

I heart Christopher Walken.

Anywho... today's post is going to be a plethora of garbled and jumbled stuff. Since I leave for my loverly Disney Cruise on Sunday, packing and preparing have been my life. Well... not really, since work has had to top that recently. But I'll get there! I even have a list of stuff to pack! (Excel, of course)
So today is Shepherd's Pie day at the Dirty Caf (yes, it's dirty... no, that's not its real name). I will be splurging on this, oh yes. I heart me some potatoes & meat in one dish.

Only bad thing about going on this cruise is that I miss the Olympic Taekwondo day. Granted, they wouldn't show it on TV most likely, but I could watch it on my new toy, Mr. Laptop. I was bugging hubs the other night to come downstairs and spend some time with me... and he walks in and starts yelling "you're on the laptop! it's not quality time when you're online!" So, guilty.

But I'm hella excited for the cruise food. And for beachage. I haven't been to a beach since last year. Although one site said to watch out for the jellyfish... so that completely freaked me out. Great, so I won't fall overboard, I'll just die from jellyfish attacks. Oh well at least I have my other new toy, Mr. Camera, to capture these moments. It's one of those nice ones, so now I can be a good food-blogger and capture my baking/cooking mishaps with spectacular digital imagery! I won't do that when I'm out in public though, I'm too much of a wuss for that.

List of things I'm looking forward to on the cruise:
beach
food
giant exercise room
room service
the Pirate party


mmm... lunchtime... to be continued

Monday, August 11, 2008

Lame, party of one

So I'm all excited when I hear on the radio that Coldplay is coming back to the area, around November or some such date. Typical Radio Host Guy announces, "I'll take the 18th caller for tickets, 123-456-WROK!" or some such nonsense. So I get out my new Blackberry, all set to call in and win me some free Coldplayage, and I'm hitting the keys, and I go to type in the numbers for WROK... when I realize that... it's a QWERTY keyboard. I don't have those little letters on my numbers. And I can't remember which numbers correspond to the alphabet. So... I LOSE.