March 13th, 2015

Orson Welles: "My doctor told me I had to stop throwing intimate dinners for four unless there are three other people."

So we're still on watching our Best Picture Oscar winning movies.  This week we watched The Godfather (1972).  How has anyone not seen or not liked The Godfather???  I don't get it, the movies were awesome and we enjoyed watching the first of the trilogy and we are looking forward to finishing that out.  

Okay let's get down to it!  It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our 23rd Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's my turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and Damon's 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 Damon ended up with for tonight!

A pound of ground turkey, zucchini, refrigerated crescent rolls, and a can of pears.  Yeah, I'm pretty damn pleased with myself.  I didn't necessarily think of something that he could make with this but I also had lots of faith that he could make it work!  As you can see, Damon wasn't so happy about his mystery bag!  

Damon says that I didn't totally screw him on this bag but it's a challenge for sure.  We always have a hard time thinking what to do with ground turkey, even when it's not a challenge.  Some thoughts for you, if you don't particularly care for ground turkey; use it in saucy or big flavor dishes (then you don't really know it's turkey), such as chili, spaghetti, or if your whipping up some rotel. Another thing you can do is mix it with ground beef for a large meatloaf.  You can also just add some seasoning and it makes a huge difference, I like to go with some sage, oregano, and crushed pepper flake.

Anyway, while I'm apologizing for the not so inspiring bag I gave Damon, he gets to work.  He puts the meat into a bowl and begins adding some spices along with Parmesan cheese and makes some meatballs.

Next, he begins to chop some vegetables, onions and zucchini.  Then he starts thinking about those damn canned pears and decides to cut some white cheddar.

He decides to do a vegetable medley with the zucchini. He chopped them up with some red onion and does some fancy tossing as he sauteed the vegetables. Then he starts to assemble his crescent rolls, rolling up pieces of the canned pairs with some white cheddar inside the rolls.  He gets them into the oven and then gets some pasta cooking.  Next, I can tell he's in his head thinking about how to plate.

As usual, he pulls it off and with just a few minutes to spare.  He serves me my spaghetti and meatballs topped with a sautéed onion and zucchini medley, served with pear & cheddar stuffed crescent rolls on the side.

We dig in and everything tasted great.  I especially liked the fruit/cheese crescents, but I'm a huge bread and cheese freak!  I think I didn't care as much for the zucchini being in the spaghetti but hey, this is about trying new things!  Damon loved the zucchini in the pasta but I think he's still iffy on the crescents.

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 gave himself a 9, he felt like he lacked creativity and I didn't think that was worth a whole point off so I gave him a 9.5 (I think our first half point off lol) and he ended up with 9.25 points.  

Damon = 106.25, Christina = 99.5, and that puts Damon back in the lead, and the first to break 100 points!

                                   

Happy Friday the 13th everyone!! 

March 6th, 2015

Unknown: "Age and glasses of wine should never be counted."

So we're still binge streaming the t.v shows I told you about before, Sons of Anarchy, we got to the end of season six and found out that the last season isn't yet available on Netflix which really sucks!!! We haven't tried to pick back up on Madmen yet and we still have a few episodes of Sliders to go.  We also realized that we have far too many movies that weren't that good, or that we just don't ever watch because they weren't one of our favorites, so we've been trying to watch those and thin out our collection as much as we can.  It's my "fun Spring cleaning project".

As far as our Oscar winning movies, this week we watched Midnight Cowboy (1969).  It wasn't the best movie in the world but definitely better than some that we've seen on this list, and Dustin Hoffman is always awesome, and it included his famous "I'm walking here" line!  Next we watched Patton (1970), which we actually own because it is one of Damon's very favorite movies of all time.  And, how could you not love this speech from Patton???

Okay let's get down to it!  It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our 22nd Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's Damon's turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and my turn to cook.  It's been forever since we've had a challenge so here's a recap!

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!

A pound of ground beef, parmesean cheese, green chilies, and french loaf bread.  Hmmmm..... It's been awhile since our last challenge so I'm going to need a minute to get my creative juices flowing!  

We've been so busy lately and I don't feel overly creative but after a glass of wine and thinking about it, I decide to go with a cheeseburger sub.

I put the beef, parmesean cheese, some diced onion, crushed pepper flake, and seasoning salt into a bowl and mix it all up.  Then I form two oblong 1/2 pound "patties" and put them to the fire.  I get out some swiss and american cheese, green chilies, lettuce and tomato, jalapenos, and mayo for my toppings and condiments. Then I whip up some of my famous macaroni and cheese and begin to figure out my plating.

I serve Damon his cheeseburger sub, which I thought was terribly creative, doing something normal with a bit of a twist!  During cooking I had a glass or two or three of wine and stopped thinking about plating but here we are:

We dig in and everything tasted great.  I think I probably could have been more creative but 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, I ended up with 10 points.  

Damon = 97, Christina = 99.5, and that puts me back in the lead, but not by much!

Now we're off to watch the next of our best picture Oscar winning movies, The French Connection (1971), and if we have time we'll tear into The Godfather (1972)!

                                   

Happy Friday everyone!! 

February 27th, 2015

Ludwig Van Beethoven: "What you are, you are by accident of birth; what I am, I am by myself.  There are and will be a thousand princes; there is only one Beethoven."

So we're still binge streaming the t.v shows I told you about before and have recently started Madmen (which we got bored with during the first season and haven't given it a second chance yet) and Sons of Anarchy (which is surprisingly interesting, I thought I wouldn't like it at all, but we've watched two season and I must admit, I'm involved now).  As far as our Oscar winning movies, this week we watched In the Heat of the Night (1967).  It was definitely one of the better movies we've watched recently.  Next we watched Oliver! (1968), I literally couldn't finish the damn thing.  I know how the story goes and I didn't need to watch it with singing!!  I only skipped out on a little bit of it and I know I didn't miss much.  

Unfortunately, we're skipping our mystery bag challenge for tonight. We are heading to Tulsa tomorrow to have a birthday celebration with Damon's family.  So, we're just going to throw something together for dinner and then finish packing.   

We have several birthdays all close together, Damon's mom, brother, and nephew, along with Damon and me, so we're getting together to celebrate all of us together.  We're doing a potluck dinner. Damon's brother and his wife are bringing chili, Mom and Dad are on deserts galore, and we will be making some cornbread and a salad.  On Sunday we'll have some lunch with my family before heading home, oh and we aren't leaving until we play a few games of Uno Robot, a game we got from our Dirty Santa game for Christmas last year!

Happy birthday to all of us!!!  

                                   

Next week we'll get back on track with our challenge! 

Damon's Birthday Weekend, 2015

Albert Einstein: "Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death."

So we're still binge streaming the t.v shows I told you about before but we've finally finished Dexter.  I didn't care for the ending but I won't ruin it for any of you in case you haven't watched it.  As far as our Best Picture Oscar winning movies, this week we watched A Man for All Seasons (1966). It felt more like a stage play than a feature film, so if your interested in watching something about King Henry VIII and Thomas Moore, I suggest the series, The Tudors, instead.  

Okay let's get down to it!  Damon's birthday is March 2nd but we're planning on going to Tulsa next weekend so I'm proclaiming this weekend, Damon's birthday weekend!    

Damon met me in town and we headed to Tavola (again, thank you Brandi for the gift certificate).  The place is nice and the food was good but it's a bit pricey for sure!  We had a good dinner, drove around the downtown square a bit and headed back home to Winslow!

We drove separate cars and on the way home..... We both slid on the ice and got stuck in a ditch!  We made it almost all the way home, but both slid into ditches only about a half mile from home, which I think makes it worse.  Our little hill was a solid sheet of ice and we both got about half way up and then started sliding back down it and lost control.  Damon could have gotten his car out but with my car being high centered so close to him, we didn't want to risk it.  Thank God for great neighbors who came and helped us out of the ditch and even let us park my car at their house until the next day.

So that whole ordeal took a couple hours out of our night. We were freezing our butts off so we headed home, had a few cocktails, warmed up and just hung out.

Saturday, I took Damon back out to Bentonville and we had lunch at Table Mesa.  The food was awesome!  We tore into our food before I could snap a picture but Damon had a green chile burger and I had a Chicken Chimi.  Both were really, really good!!!  Better than and cheaper than their sister restaurant, Tavola (where we ate dinner last night).  After lunch, we headed over to Peal Mansion to take a tour, the house is really beautiful.  I love old houses, especially big, victorian-ish ones!

After, we head home to watch a marathon of one of Damon's favorite miniseries,  Hornblower, an A&E miniseries starring Ioan Gruffudd.  After a few hours of that, we start getting hungry and I let Damon watch his show and I got to cooking!  I started his dinner out with a nice glass of wine and a Cesar salad.

Then I finished that off with a nice filet mingon steak and homemade deep fried macaroni and cheese balls!  Dinner was yummy if I say so myself!

Sunday, we finished up Hornblower while eating our leftover steak with fried egg and biscuits, YUM!!!  Sunday night, for dinner, we had pop in the oven frozen junk food while we watched The Walking Dead.  

Happy birthday to my hubby, I love you sweety and I had a wonderful weekend celebrating you!  

                                   

Next week we'll be heading to Tulsa to celebrate birthdays with Damon's family weather dependent!! 

Valentine's Day 2015

Lord of The Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring: "I would rather spend one lifetime with you than face all the ages of this world alone."

 

So we're still watching all the Best Picture Oscar winning movies of all time, and this week we watched, The Sound of Music (1965), a really good movie but the singing!!!!  Julie Andrews can sing and I get that its a musical, but breaking out into song every few minutes is just too much for us to deal with.  

We've had a full Valentine's Day planned.  We started out with lunch at Mama Fu's.  The food was pretty good but I might like P.F. Chang's better. Thanks to our good friend Brandi for the gift certificate!! 

   

I can't use chopsticks for shit, by the way, but I did try!!  Damon did much better than I did but gave up and moved on to a fork pretty quickly!  Next up, we headed out to Monte Ne, a vast complex of ruins of a very fancy 1920's era lake resort.  Pretty cool ruins, we'll definitely want to look up some more history on this!

Next, we head to the Native American Museum in Bentonville...

 

Next, we ran over and visited the Daisy Airgun Museum in Rogers.    

    

Next we went and shot some pool and had a couple drinks at an Irish Pub in Bentonville before going out for some dinner!

And finally dinner.... 

 

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!!! Next Friday we'll be celebrating Damon's birthday a little early!