Cold Weather Food

for a WARM night! Well, the menus were planned last weekend so we will eat! One of our favorite winter dishes is a spicy Kale Soup with White Beans - L. loves an egg on top, I do not like eggs on things that they should not be on .... pizza, soup, etc... I have been dying to make some dishes from my French Cooking weekend so I tossed together this super yummy watercress and celery root salad. Dessert, we had some Roasted Pumpkin Ice Cream left over. I found it not as sweet as I would had liked so I made a warm caramel sauce for the top - okay, after sitting in the freezer for a day and a half the pumpkin has really combined in flavor and with the caramel sauce on top, can you say "Thanksgiving"?

Fall was almost in the air .....

Last week, definitely felt like fall ... crisp air filled with the aroma of crunching leaves and even rain, that left us cold, damp and turning on the heat. This inspired me to grocery shop thinking along the lines of comfort foods - lots of apples, squash, whole wheat pastas, that sort of thing; warm cozy food! Well, the weather turned, the day was hot and the evening was romantically warm. Which was good as it gave us a chance to put away the patio heater, the deck umbrella and clean up the garden.

Tonight's dinner started out as a cozy warm evening in (due to what we thought was a early fall/winter arrival), but came around as a nice evening at home, together! Linguine and Clams served over whole wheat pasta! A glass of crisp buttery white wine! A loaf of warm Crusty Bread! Homemade Roasted Pumpkin Ice Cream for dessert - which, was inspired by my step-mother's pumpkin pie recipe, she makes the best pie I have ever had!

As well this dinner was part of a special event GYO -Grow Your Own. Our hostess, Andrea, over at Andrea's Recipes initiated it. Thanks to the insane weather we have been having ... rain on & off the past couple of weeks, upper 70's and low 80's this week, our herb garden is doing outstanding! All the peppers we thought would die are turning vibrant red and the basil and thyme are growing like crazy again! For this dish we used our Portuguese Peppers and Basil from our garden.

As good as Chez Panisse (almost)

Well ... the next best thing! Poached Egg with Curly Endive Salad, courtesy of Alice Waters and the Art of Simple Food. The salad was delicious - simply delicious! I love this style of salad and always forget just how much until I have it. This recipe will or has become a staple in our house!

Dessert was the last of the Mascarpone Ice Cream with the last of the season Blue Organic Strawberries which I roasted and we will have for another couple months - slurpy yummy!

Ratatouille and not the movie!

I use to make this all the time; but, it has been awhile, such awhile that I forgot the recipe, so I had to wing it. I put layers of Italian eggplant, zucchini, sweet Italian peppers, shallots and garlic and heirloom tomatoes in a roasting pan. Each layer I sprinkled with herbs de Provence and drizzled with olive oil and then baked long and slow. It was delicious and L. gobbled it up. Dessert was more of that wonderful vanilla ice cream with Scharffenberger Ganache on top - L. hate it so fast we never got a photo and our Ratatouille photo came out blurred ... but it was good!

Sea Beans? Roasted Strawberries?

Went to the Ferry Plaza today, with my little friends, M., E., & M. and we played the game, "pick out something new, exciting and fun for me to cook for L. for dinner. They found Sea Beans! Sea Beans are also known as Glassworts. They are crunchy and salty - the kidlets LOVED them! So we picked up a 1/2 pint of Sea Beans! Dinner was left over Portabella Stroganoff, sauteed Sea Beans, and a wonderful Heirloom Tomato Salad with shaved Parmesan. For dessert I served what I had hoped to bring to the Festa Al Fresco but it was not ready ... Vanilla Ice Cream using my favorite recipe by David of The Perfect Scoop (a must for any ice cream lover)& we topped it with Roasted Strawberries! Can you say, "Heaven"??? These roasted little morsels are to die for - caramelly (is that a word), lightly sweet and ever so yummy!!!

Super Sexy ...

We had a long day at the office yesterday, a long night at the gym and were starving! What to do! Why Mambo!! We opened up a GREAT bottle of bistro style wine - the only way to describe this find "Sexy"! Smoky on the nose and smooth on the palate. I had a feeling when I saw the label that they may be the guys behind another favorite of mine, Plungerhead Zin, which is fantastic - super spicy and loaded with nice jammy flavors, a must for your b-b-q! Anyhow, Mambo is about to become a staple in our house & we are hoping we can grab a case later today! Now, we could not live on wine alone, so we tossed together some cherry tomatoes, fresh basil, sliced garlic, Spanish olive oil and pasta to chow on. For dessert, homemade Fig ice cream from "The Perfect Scoop"! By the way, the ice cream gave the wine a soft vanilla taste ... long flavorful finish! Can not wait to get home tonight and drink more!

Asian Inspired Sunday Night Dinner

Lucky for us I purchased an issue of Gourmet magazine at the Newark Airport when we were trying to get home from NY a couple weeks ago. I never buy Gourmet; but, I was intrigued when I saw on the front cover that there was a bit on sliders. We had just had some at the Little Owl so I was very excited! Anyhow, I was inspired by a couple recipes in this issue and I made the following for dinner! Soba noodles sauteed with a cabbage and shitake mushroom sauce. I also sauteed some fresh paprika peppers to serve along side it .... to give it some heat! Was delicious! For dessert I served a homemade plum and red wine sorbet! (recipes, to come ...)

Who SCREAMS for cookies & cream .......

Ice Cream? Why you will! This is the best ice cream we have made all year - not kidding! Let's get churning .....

Meat & Potatoes kind of night

Had my special little friend, M. over for dinner tonight. He is a meat & potato kind of boy, so we sauteed some lean and mean hamburgers with simple browned garlic and salt and pepper. Can not have a mean burger without super crunchy Alphatatos from Ian's! For dessert we made homemade ice cream together. This was the BEST one I have made all year - cookies and cream! I am not kidding when I say the best, I will have to post the recipe later as well as photos (can not get our new camera to download to my computer). Come on back though, you will not be disappointed!

Roasted Peach Ice Cream

I love roasted banana ice cream so I took some peaches I had, roasted them with a little brown sugar and fresh lavender and then added to a basic vanilla ice cream - wonderful!!

U-Pick Berries

We went to Webb Ranch to pick berries .... logan berries, blackberries, raspberries, boysenberries - tons of fun and tons of berries! Made homemade ice cream with some of them. Used David Lebovitz basic Vanilla recipe & then swirled some mixed berries that I had crushed and let sit for awhile, into the soft ice cream during the last couple minutes in the ice cream freezer! YUMMY!

This Week .................

....... is all about creating a flavor explosion in your mouth from what we have on hand - I won't be able to get to the grocery for a few more days this week!

Steak & French Fries

I had a special dinner with a special 4 year old and forgot to take photos - we were in such deep conversation about nail polish! We did dine on a petite cut of grass fed beef & Ian's alphabet french fries as well as some oven roasted asparagus - served with Lemonade. For dessert we had left over vanilla ice cream from the other night!