January 23rd, 2015

George Washington Carver: "Nothing is more beautiful than the loveliness of the woods before sunrise."

First, check out this beautiful Winslow sunrise this morning!

So we're still on our process of watching every movie that has ever won an Oscars for best picture.  Now that the holidays are over and we've finished our Christmas movie marathon, we're back at it.  We watched Gigi (1958) which was okay but I'm not sure I got the fascination.  I'm not sure how much of a "classic" the movie is to you but to me, I thought it was long and slow.  It was a good classic "girl loves the bad-boy, bad-boy doesn't want to change his ways" kind of movie and was set in Victorian times but it just wasn't enough to keep me involved.  Then we watch Ben-Hur (1959) which is a classic and if you haven't ever seen it, I don't know what planet you've been living on.   It is a pretty long movie (I think my generation is when the ADD starting kicking in because I don't know how the hell people sat through all these long ass movies!!!) and probably doesn't really need to be, but it is a classic and everyone should watch it.   

Okay let's get down to business!  It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our nineteenth Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's my turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and Damon's turn to cook.  It's about seven o'clock and I'm wandering about the kitchen in search of ingredients for Damon's bag.  In the beginning, when we started doing this challenge, I would think up the starch and the protein and then start to think of things that would be different.  Then once I had a few ideas, I'd do a quick search online to see if anyone else is using the ingredients in the same way.  I did this to make sure I wasn't picking something crazy that didn't go good together. Nowadays, I just pick stuff quite randomly and usually just minutes before we start the challenge!  

Recap: The rules are simple; whoever is cooking has to make dinner using each of the mystery food items that the other has put into the mystery bag.  We can also use other items that we have in the fridge and pantry, but MUST use some of each item from the mystery bag, and MUST be ready to plate-up dinner before 1 hour has passed after seeing the ingredients for the first time.  We agreed to turn it up a notch and start thinking more outside the box for the mandatory ingredients we'd be picking for the other!

And here's what Damon ended up with for tonight!

Ground beef, spicy hot barbecue sauce, red onion, and sweet peppers!  What to do, what to do?  What would you do?

So Damon gets the ball rolling pretty quick, pulling out extra ingredients, preheating the oven, and acting like he has a plan, you know, mise en place, B$5&#!!!

Damon decided to go with two mini meat loaves, using the spicy barbecue sauce on top as a glaze, and he needs to go, go, go, to get this done on time!  He's also making mashed potatoes which can take some time.  Damon gets his loaves in first, which I want so bad to say, "start the potatoes first!!!!" but I don't. He gets the loaves in the oven and then gets his potatoes boiling. Then he hurries up and waits!  Poor Damon, doesn't know what to do in the kitchen when he's just waiting for his food to cook!

Now that Damon's done waiting, waiting, and waiting for the meatloaf to cook, he's mixing up some cheesy potatoes.  Three cheese potatoes and they look yummy! 

the clock is getting dangerously close to running out and he hasn't started plating yet.  He finishes up the potatoes, gets them nice and creamy and finally the meatloaf is done resting!

Damon starts to plate and there goes the timer....... DAMN!!!  But he serves me my dinner and it looks yummy!!

We dig in and everything tastes great!! I don't usually care for peas but they even taste great!!  The mashed potatoes are nice and cheesy and the loaf is nicely seasoned! 

A reminder of our scoring system...  

being done on time = 0-1 point

dish presentation = 0-2 points

dish creativity / originality = 0-3 points

dish flavor = 0-3 points

portion size = 0-1 point. 

We did our scoring and in the end, he ended up with 9 points, losing a point each for not being done on time. 

Damon = 87.5, Christina = 80, and that puts Damon back in the lead, but I'm determined to crush him next week!  Next week will be our twentieth challenge and we're thinking we will again change up the rules a bit for our next ten rounds!

Now that we're done with our challenge we're off to watch The Apartment (1960), it looks promising.  It's about a guy trying to get a promotion at work by lending out his apartment to the high ups at his job to have affairs!  

Next Friday we'll also be bottling our first batch of wine!! 

January 9th, 2015

George S. Patton: "Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration  of victory."

So we're still on our process of watching every movie that has ever won an Oscars for best picture.  Now that the holidays are over and we've finished our Christmas movie marathon, we're back at it.  We watched Around the World in 80 Days (1956) which was one of the better ones we've watched.  It was longer, much longer than it really needed to be, but it was a good story line.   

Okay let's get down to business!  It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our eighteenth Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's Damon's turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and my turn to cook.  As usual, I'm getting nervous as Damon is scurrying about the kitchen in search of his last two ingredients for my bag.

 

Recap: The rules are simple; whoever is cooking has to make dinner using each of the mystery food items that the other has put into the mystery bag.  We can also use other items that we have in the fridge and pantry, but MUST use some of each item from the mystery bag, and MUST be ready to plate-up dinner before 1 hour has passed after seeing the ingredients for the first time.  We agreed to turn it up a notch and start thinking more outside the box for the mandatory ingredients we'd be picking for the other!

And here's what I ended up with for tonight!

Ground beef, shredded colby jack cheese, red onion, and Irish white cheddar!  What to do, what to do?  What would you do?

 

I was in the mood for Mexican and I can totally make this work, so after a minute or two of thinking if this is too simple, or if I'm brilliant, I roll with it.

I start rummaging through the cupboards, fire up the skillet and start warming up the oven.  We both learned pretty early on in this game that it's better to have everything in the kitchen out and ready just in case!

So I'm browning the meat, cutting my vegetables, getting out the tortilla chips, some taco shells, and a few other random containers of left overs from the fridge.  We are really against wasting food so when we have something left over from another dinner or we only used a half a can of something, we put it in a Tupperware and throw it in the fridge and we work it into another one of our meals before it goes bad.

 

I'm making nachos with a nacho-taco, yes a nacho-taco!  In the ground beef, I diced up some chipolte peppers in adobe sauce and the red onion.  With the white cheese, I make a quick bechamel cheese sauce which I will use for the nachos.  The ground beef will go for both the taco and the nachos.  I'm doing pretty good on time but forgot to think up a side so, I quickly grab a can of corn and a can of black beans, drain and rinse and put them together, salt, pepper, and add some chopped green onion on top.  It tastes pretty good so while I contemplate whether or not I want to warm the little side salad or serve it cold, I move on to dicing up some tomatoes and getting all my other miscellaneous condiments from the fridge.  

For the taco, I use a black bean dip to hold a flour tortilla to the outside of a corn taco shell, then fill it up with ground beef, shredded cheese, Greek yogurt (instead of sour cream), tomatoes, and green onion.

 

For the nachos, I use tortilla chips, topped with the ground beef, tomatoes, just a few black beans, green onion, and then cover of that with the cheddar cheese sauce I made, top that with a dollop of Greek yogurt, and sprinkle some green onions on top with a few pickled jalapenos!

I plate up and serve Damon his dinner with four minutes to spare! YEA BITCH!!!!  

I don't know how creative I was being but I am pretty pleased with myself! The bad-ass cook in me, taking another YEA BITCH moment, as she remembers the "magnets" seen from Breaking Bad.  

 

A reminder of our scoring system...  

being done on time = 0-1 point

dish presentation = 0-2 points

dish creativity / originality = 0-3 points

dish flavor = 0-3 points

portion size = 0-1 point. 

We did our scoring and in the end, I ended up with 9.5 points. 

Damon = 78.5, Christina = 80, and that puts me back in the lead, but only by a little!

Now that we're done with our challenge we're off to watch The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), Damon's seen it before and he swears it's not as dreadfully slow as some of the others we've seen so here goes!  

 

Next Friday will be my turn to pick ingredients for Damon!!! I can't wait. 

December 26th, 2014

George Bailey (It's a Wonderful Life): "What is it you want, Mary? What do you want?  You want the moon?  Just say the word and I'll throw a lasso around it and pull it down.  Hey.  That's a pretty good idea.  I'll give you the moon, Mary."

Merry Christmas, again!!!!

Before we headed to Tulsa, we gave each other stockings and a few little gifts just for fun.

We got some fun things like connect four, one of my favorite games when I was a kid!  Damon got me some workout gloves which I have so been needing since we started working out a few months ago!  Anyway, after our Christmas with our families, we went over and visited with our best friends, Chuck, Jenny, and little Rae Rae.  

After a wonderful visit with them, we headed off for our Christmas present to ourselves, a night in a nice hotel; where I saw this sign......

I'm just saying...... After a few glasses of wine, I was just like Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot!?!  And BTW, there was absolutely no phone anywhere!  But I digress.  We went out and had a nice steak dinner at Bluestone Steakhouse and it was yummy!  A little pricey but perfect for a special occasion.   

We had a great Christmas and are so blessed to have gotten to celebrate it more than just once.  Merry Christmas to all of our family and friends, those we could spend time with and those we weren't able to.  We love you!

Once again, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Merry Christmas 2014

Oscar Wilde: "After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one's own relations."

Merry Christmas!!!!

Last night, we gave Strider and Molly Brown their stockings in Tulsa....

After, we had Christmas Eve dinner with Damon's family, hung out, and opened presents out in Mannford.

Then this morning, mom popped in a breakfast casserole Damon and I made last night, and while everyone was getting around we had some breakfast and then tore into the presents!

Then we got started on Christmas lunch; turkey, sausage stuffing, sweet potatoes, ham, dinner rolls and biscuits, and mashed potatoes.  Later, we tried my first attempt at homemade apple pie, and we had candy galore, chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies, and pumpkin pie = food coma, day two!

Later on, we played dirty Santa for the first time with my family. We were all too stuffed for the appetizers I planned on serving, but we all shared in a simple champagne cocktail I made for the game.  Needless to say, we had a very Merry Christmas!!  Thanks to all our family and friends!

After dinner, Damon and cuddled up on the couch and watched another one of our Christmas classics, Scrooged!!!  Maybe not a classic in the typical sense of the word, but definitely a must for us at Christmas time! 

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

December 19th, 2014

Erma Bombeck: "Seize the moment.  Remember all those women on the Titanic that waved off the dessert cart."

So we're still on our process of watching every movie that has ever won an Oscars for best picture.  We watched Marty (1955) which was one of the best ones I think we've watched.  It was a kind of romantic comedy but it was cute and I didn't almost fall asleep once! 

Okay let's get down to business!  It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our seventeenth Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's my turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and Damon's turn to cook.  This will probably be the last challenge of 2014 since the holidays are so quickly approaching!!

Recap: The rules are simple; whoever is cooking has to make dinner using each of the mystery food items that the other has put into the mystery bag.  We can also use other items that we have in the fridge and pantry, but MUST use some of each item from the mystery bag, and MUST be ready to plate-up dinner before 1 hour has passed after seeing the ingredients for the first time.  We agreed to turn it up a notch and start thinking more outside the box for the mandatory ingredients we'd be picking for the other!

And here's what Damon ended up with for tonight!

Potatoes, a jar of queso, green onion, and chorizo sausage!  I have never used chorizo in anything before, and I might not have ever even eaten it before.  I chose it to switch things up a bit and I figured that they are always using it on all the cooking shows we watch so how hard could it be to work with?

Now, we only have an hour to have our dish plated, so anytime you get potatoes you really need to get a plan together quick.  Sure you could nuke them if you had to but it's so much easier just to get a plan together and get them started first.

Damon promptly gets his potatoes sliced and his chorizo in the skillet.  I don't know why but I was expecting a different consistency on the chorizo. It seems like on tv when they use it, it's more of a link or a ground sausage consistency, like you could cut or crumble it up, but this stuff was like toothpaste!  Poor Damon!

   

Damon decides to go with a type of au gratin potato casarole.  He's making a cheese sauce with of course the jarred queso, shredded colby jack, and cheddar cheese.  He's also using the chorizo in the cheese sauce.  He's layering everything in, cheese sauce, potato, more shredded cheese, and repeat.  

Damon is at the halfway mark and is about to pop the casserole dish into the oven.  He keeps an eye on the dish as he thinks how in the world he's going to plate his dish.  He won't have much time at all to let it set after he pulls it from the oven and you know if you don't let something like this set, it will fall apart when you go to take it out of the dish.

   

Here it is, potato, cheesy, yummy goodness and Damon lets it sit as long as he can while he gets his plating together in his mind.  The timer is close to going off and he goes ahead and get ready to plate.  He chops some lettuce and tomato, and gets some toast going. Quickly, he plates and serves, as the timer is going off!

Damon wasn't overly pleased with his plating, like I said, making anything out of a casserole dish is hard to make look very elegant, but a very valiant effort.  Adding the salad around it made it look great and it went really well together.  It tasted great, but visually it didn't help that Damon kept saying it looked like dog food while he was making the chorizo/cheese mixture lol.  Still, it tasted great!

A reminder of our scoring system...  

being done on time = 0-1 point

dish presentation = 0-2 points

dish creativity / originality = 0-3 points

dish flavor = 0-3 points

portion size = 0-1 point. 

We did our scoring and in the end, Damon ended up with 8 points. 

Damon = 78.5, Christina = 70.5, and that puts us back to a tie, damn!!!

Now that were done with dinner, we're off to do some more of our classic Christmas marathon.  Tonight we're going to watch National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, everyone should watch this every Christmas, it never gets old!!!  

Next Friday will be the Friday after Christmas and we plan on getting a hotel, going out for a nice steak dinner and popping some champagne, Merry Christmas to us!!  Don't worry, we'll pick up the challenge in the new year!