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! 

December 12th, 2014

Aristotle: "Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies."

Five years ago today, Damon popped the question.  Sorry folks, no mystery bag challenge tonight!  For those of you who don't know, he did it at The Christmas Train in Dry Gulch.  Damon apparently had more than a train ride up his sleeve!!  On the way there we stopped and grabbed some dinner, then we stopped to get gas. Damon called my mom and asked her permission for my hand. Thinking back, I think my mom was like "who the hell is this???" lol.  Not that she didn't know Damon, she could just barely hear him.  Anyway, from there we went on to Dry Gulch.  We rode the train, sipped hot chocolate, and then we went to the Schantz & Co. General Merchandise store (inside Dry Gulch).  Damon was looking around kinda crazy and I was just looking for some type of souvenir.  I finally found a pretty red bulb, I got one for his mom, my mom, and one for us.  Meanwhile, Damon is still casing the joint, seriously, he was twitchy and looking around like he was about to rob the place.  Then all of a sudden, I hear him say, "Can I have your attention everyone" and then I got nervous.  It was hot as hell in that store with all the Christmas lights so I thought Damon was announcing that building was on fire.  I'm startled and looking around and then next thing I know is Damon is down on one knee and the rest is history!  

 

It was super special and I love that Damon cared so much to put so much thought into it.  He knows how much I love Christmas so he picked the perfect place.  After I said yes, we got lots of applauding and on our way out of the building one old man even asked Damon what he would have done if she said no.  Ah, what treasured memories!  

So, we have so many anniversaries now, there starting to run together!  Anyway, no plans to go out or anything like that.  Just a nice dinner and a quiet evening at home!  We're still on our process of watching every movie that has ever won an Oscars for best picture.  Before dinner, we watched On the Waterfront (1954) and it was probably one of the best, if not the best movie we've seen so far.  It had a very young Marlon Brando and he was really good in it. 

After that we poured ourselves a glass of Cabernet Sauvignon and I started making jo jo's.  For those of you are not familiar, they aren't potatoes, they aren't wedges, they are jo jo's.  I found a recipe online from someone who is from Oregon (where I first had jo jo's and because it appears people in Oklahoma/Arkansas don't know what the hell a jo jo is).  I'm hoping her recipe is similar to what I remember eating as kids in Oregon.  I think jo jo's should typically be deep fried but that often can make a mess in our fryer and we thought baking them would make them a little healthier. 

I cut the potatoes and then Damon helped me coat them in the flour/cheese/seasoning mixture and we got them in the oven.  We figured they'd take close to an hour so we just chatted a bit before getting our steaks on.  After just hanging out in the kitchen listening to Dean Martin for a bit, Damon went ahead and started to get the steaks trimmed and ready to fire.  We really enjoy cooking and who doesn't love steak and potatoes, a perfect way to spend our engagement anniversary night!

Damon likes his steaks medium rare and was pleased that he was able to cook his steak to just the right temperature for that, but I like mine a little more done, and Damon did a great job of getting my steak cooked to a good medium well, just the way I like mine!

Damon's steak...

My steak....

Dinner turned out delicious and we had a great "5 year engagement anniversary!", and it was a perfect excuse to have a nice steak dinner!

Next week is Damon's turn to cook, I can't wait to think up something crazy for his bag!

December 5th, 2014

Paul Prudhomme: "You don't need a silver fork to eat good food."

So we're still on our process of watching every movie that has ever won an Oscars for best picture.  We watched The Greatest Show on Earth (1952) and I love Jimmy Stewart and while he was only in a supporting role, he made an entire movie about the circus tolerable. Next up was From Here to Eternity (1953) which was suppose to be the steamiest love scene ever, it was a little kissing and rolling around on the beach as waves of water rushed over them.  Again, I wasn't that impressed and I think I need to stop watching these movies when I'm tired because some of them are literally so slow that about half way through I can't keep my eyes open anymore! 

Okay let's get down to business!  It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our sixteenth Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's Damon's turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and my turn to cook.  

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!

Potato chips, pork cutlets, crushed red pepper flake and some fancy Irish cheddar cheese (that we just got because it was on sale at Sams!)  I think this one might take me a minute but I start to formulate a vague idea.  I've already done stuffed chicken and pork, nothing new and exciting about that, so I decide that I cannot go that route tonight.  I start thinking through a yummy pork melt but that's still just a sandwich of sorts.... Hmmmmm

So, I decide (not knowing exactly what the hell I'm going to make), to fire the skillet and pre-heat the oven, just in case!  Next, I'm going to dice up the pork, but I hated to do it, it was a fine looking piece of meat!!  

I'm about fifteen minutes down and I decide to make a kind of pork empanada.  I'm not making any dough because I don't have time for that but we do have canned biscuits!  I  get the pork in the skillet to cook and start dicing up some jarred jalapeno, the cheese, and cherry tomatoes, mostly because they were on our "to use" shelf but I figured there was no way that the combo wouldn't be yummy together!

   

Okay,  i got my filling all tossed together, I didn't want to put it in the pan with the diced pork because I want my cheese to melt inside the empanada while the dough is cooking.  Now I'm debating if I need a sauce of some kind or if I should go straight to making the side.  I'm flattening out the biscuit, putting the filling in, fold it up, then I brush it with an egg wash and dip it in the crushed up potato chips.  About fifteen minutes to go and they are in the oven!

Now, quickly on to my side dish.  I want to go with a simple apple cheese crumble.  I dice up an an apple and pull three kinds of cheese out.  Feta, Blue Cheese, and of course the Irish Cheddar to tie it into my main dish. 

After taking a quick look in the oven and seeing that my main dish is coming along nicely, I fire the apples, warming them up just a bit and then toss in my three cheeses..... Yummy!!  Who doesn't like apple and cheese????

Anyway, I'm down to the wire but I start my plating as Damon gives me my countdown and with only seconds left, I serve it up!

I was a little iffy about doing a sauce or not but Damon thought everything tasted great.  He was even impressed with my creativity for thinking up the dish because he so didn't think anything like that when he picked my ingredients.  Yea me!!!

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, after having seconds of dinner, and in the end, I ended up with a perfect 10 points. 

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

Now that were done with dinner, we're off to start our classic Christmas marathon.  We're a little late  getting started this year but we've been pretty busy!  Anyway, we were debating why A Christmas Story was a classic, neither of us have seen it in forever so we decided we would watch it to kick off our marathon!  

Next Friday is the 5 year anniversary of when Damon proposed so we're thinking of a nice quiet steak dinner at home instead of our challenge.