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. 

November 27th, 2014 - Happy Thanksgiving

President Bartlett (The West Wing): "Butterball has a hotline?"

You absolutely have to click on the link above, it's hilarious!

We were super busy this week so the only Oscar winner we got in was An American in Paris (1951) and it was another musical. Enough said.  

Oh, but we did have some unannounced guests swing by last week.... 2 beautiful runaway horses showed up out of the blue in the front yard!  I was getting into my car to drive, yes I said drive, down to the mailbox to check the mail and I look up to see these beauties trotting down the driveway!!

They trotted back and forth around the front yard for a few minutes, but then their owner appeared at the end of the driveway with food for them, so they moseyed back home.  After that we got our tree put up... This year the color scheme I went with is what I call the Grinch lime green, red, and white! 

And here's us last night, we went to Fridays like the good old days!

YUM!!!

Anyway, we had a busy day of cooking and then eating and of course eating some more.  We of course will not be doing our mystery bag challenge tomorrow but come back next week to see what we cook up!

I was thankful to get to spend time with our families and we had a great time in Tulsa.  We are truly blessed! 

Next week the challenge continues and it's my turn to cook!

November 21st, 2014

Lewis Black: "All food is comfort food.  Maybe I just like to chew."

So we're still on our process of watching every movie that has ever won an Oscars for best picture.  We watched Hamlet (1948) and I love Shakespeare but my God that movie was pretty slow.  Probably worse to read though I'm sure.  Next we watched All the Kings Men (1949), I know they made a remake and I remember liking it but again, this movie was pretty slow!  Still they are classics and Oscar winners, you should give them a try! 

Oh and it was a particularly cloudy day today... I say cloudy because we live at about 2,000 feet elevation, so this stuff isn't fog, it's actual clouds!

Okay let's get down to business!  It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our fifteenth Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's my turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and Damon's turn to cook.  I had a few drinks last night and pulled my protein, little smokies, from the deep freeze.  I didn't think through anything, I just pulled them so I wouldn't forget to get something out in the morning.  Today was my last day of work before I go on vacation for a full week so I've been a little all over the place!

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!

Little smokies, shredded cheese, green onion, and Serrano peppers. I thought I was totally screwing him with the protein so I felt like I should go a little easier on him with the additional ingredients. Maybe I'm crazy but little smokies aren't usually a main dish so I didn't want to be too hard on him.

I look down and start typing and by the time I look back up again, Damon has all kinds of stuff out of the fridge and pantry.  Green beans, Feta cheese, half & half (which we basically use for any milk source), salsa, Parmesan cheese, bread crumbs, flour, butter, and pasta, oh my! 

Okay, Damon seems to have made up his mind pretty quickly!  He's going with a penne pasta, cheese, peppers, and little smokie casserole, topped with toasted bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese.  On the side he's doing a green bean dish with red onion and pepper flake, and he is going to serve all of that with a toasted croissant on the side.  I cannot wait!!  My first thought was making school cafeteria food upscale; tell me you remember getting the macaroni and cheese with little smokies on top, I thought they were awesome but maybe that's just me. Macaroni and cheese has to be my absolute favorite food!

 

Damon is making his cheese sauce from scratch, using butter, flour, half and half, and shredded cheese. he's got his pasta in to boil, his pepper diced for the cheese sauce and his little smokies chopped! 

Damon is doing awesome, I'm starting to smell the smokies and the cheese and he's still got over twenty minutes to go.  Now he's pacing the floor about his plating, how to make a casserole look nice on a plate.......

Damon has just over fifteen minutes to go, his base sauce is almost to a boil so he's taking it off the heat and is adding in his cheese and diced peppers.  It's coming together nicely, cheese, cheese, cheese, and more cheese, what could possibly go wrong?  The pasta is done and he's getting ready to put everything in the baking dish.  The penne pasta, the little smokies, the cheese sauce all get mixed together and put into the casserole dish, then he tops it off with panko bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese, and just a touch of some left over feta cheese crumbles, and throws it in the oven. He's finishing off his green beans, which he added some bacon bits to and he's prepping his plates.  He checks the oven and decides to go from 450 degrees to hi broil to get some brown on top of his casserole.  He pulls the casserole out at just over six minutes to let it rest and set-up a minute.  He puts his crusants into the toaster and he's got four minutes to go! 

And there it is, my dinner served to me with the timer going off!

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 a perfect 10 points.  Damon did great, everything tasted great and looked great too!  I so want seconds but turkey day is coming up so I need to do my dieting beforehand!

Damon = 70.5, Christina = 60.5, and that puts Damon back in the lead, damn.....

Now that were done with dinner, we're off to watch one more best picture movie, All About Eve (1950).  This ones got Betty Davis, so I'm expecting a little more out of it, here's hoping!!  I'm so glad I'm on vacation and so happy that in a few days it's Thanksgiving, bring me the turkey, the stuffing, mashed potatoes, homemade (by me) rolls and biscuits, and most importantly, the pumpkin pie!  I cannot wait!!!

Next week I think we'll take a little break since we will likely be in food coma's from Thanksgiving!

November 14th, 2014

Edward De Bono: "Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way."

This week we continued our process of watching every movie that has ever won an Oscars for best picture in history.  We watched Going My Way (1944) and The Lost Weekend (1945), which was basically about this guy who is dealing with PTSD, from his service in World War 2, and his drunken weekend.  Movies around this time are pretty slow but most of them have still been pretty good movies.  

Okay let's get down to business!  It's Friday Night in Winslow and time for our fourteenth Mystery Bag Challenge!  It's Damon's turn to pick the mandatory ingredients and my turn to cook.  I can tell you, I'm a little nervous after last time I cooked!

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!

Hamburger meat, shredded cheese, red onion, and siracha (a very spicy Asian hot sauce), I open my bag and don't really know what to go for.  I had a couple of ideas (because I was looking through a cookbook earlier in the evening and that's not cheating, I was just looking for inspiration) but I'm worried about going one way because of the cheese and the other because of the siracha.  Hmmmmmm....

I decide that I want to use potatoes as my side dish, so I  get those cut and decide to marinate them a little in the siracha, add some seasoning salt, and some canola oil, and let them sit a minute.  

Okay, what in the world to do next.  One of my first ideas was to make some little meatball sliders with white gravy but I was too much in my head, worrying about using two starches, whether or not it would be enough food, if I could even make a white gravy from scratch (because I never have).  Anyway, after all of that, I decide to go for it.  I put my meat into a bowl, dice up some red onion, add Italian seasoned breadcrumbs, and an egg, and mix it all up.

I get my meatballs formed and throw them into a hot skillet to brown them before I put them into the oven to finish cooking.  Next I throw my potatoes into the oven to roast.

 

Next up, I start my gravy.  I paid attention last time we made something that started with a roux, so I was hopeful it would turn out ok.  For those of you who don't know what a roux is, it's equal parts flour and butter, the basis of any kind of gravy, sauce, or dip that you want to make.  I was going for a classic white gravy so I added milk (otherwise known in french cooking as a bechamel sauce or the white sauce), brought it to a simmer and it wasn't as thick as I wanted it to be but, not bad for my first time making gravy from scratch!

Everything is looking pretty good and I throw the meatballs into the oven to finish cooking and turn the heat up on the potatoes just a bit because I'd like them a little crispier than they've gotten so far. 

My time is running out and I start getting my plates together, toast my bread, trim the crust and cut them into four pieces.  I pull out my roasted potatoes and get them on the plate and begin assembling my meatball sliders.  Damon gives me a four minute warning and I start to hustle.  I'm going to present Damon with his dinner and he get's busy watching what I'm doing that he didn't count me down and the timer goes off!  I realize I didn't put my cheese on top of the potatoes (a mandatory ingredient), so I grab the cheese, put them on top of the potatoes on his plate and give it to him. 

We agreed to not count me off on the time because Damon got sidetracked and didn't count me down like we usually do for each other.  Anyway, I provided ranch for dipping the potatoes as well as some extra gravy, which after it set a minute started to thicken up to where I wanted it, 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 and in the end, I ended up with a perfect 10 points.  Damon was impressed and I was just happy I was able to think of something!

Damon = 60.5, Christina = 60.5, and that puts us at a tie!!!

Now that were done with dinner, we're off for one more best picture movie, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946).  You guessed it, another after war, PTSD, unable to deal with regular life after coming back from the war movie.  Still, I'd have to say it's one of the better movies we've watched so far.

Next week is Damon's turn to cook and my turn to pick what he has to cook!  Until next time.....