Happy Holidays!

Happy holidays! I know we're enjoying our little tree, and christmas movies and I hope you are too!

See you next Tuesday!

Carrot Tomato Coconut Soup

So this winter Sarah and I are getting a CSA half share (which is so much more than enough for the two of us, it's kind of amazing) and have more carrots then we would've ever considered getting on our own (and some are fun looking like the one above). We searched the internet for a particular recipe for Sarah since it was a soup she apparently loved getting from some-place-i-dont-remember-where once upon a time. We ended finding and I used this one (though I didn't make the corn ceviche, but that looks like an ever so good addition). But seriously, who's ever heard of carrot tomato coconut soup? Apparently Sarah, but moving along...

While I was making this soup is actually when Sarah hijacked my camera to take all those cat photos I shared a few weeks ago. She was kind enough to take this photo of me chopping up a carrot. But this also meant I took few pictures of the whole affair since my camera was wandering around the apartment taking cat photos. 

So surprisingly enough there is a kitchen appliance neither Sarah nor I own - and immersion blender. (which I say it this way because between the two of us when we moved in we had three waffle irons, two stand mixers & at least one hand mixer, and two bullet blenders plus this bad boy). So I used a regular old blender to blend the soup, which wasn't ideal, but it was alright. 

Honestly, I'm not a big fan of this soup. It's too rich or something for me, I don't know, I don't mind the flavor, but it's one of those things I want a bite or two of, but then am pretty much done with. Sarah on the other hand really enjoys this soup. Which is good cause we had a fair amount of it, so she got to eat all of it! This winter has definitely been a soup heavy season for us, but it's been pretty great. 

See you next Tuesday!

Apple Shallot Grilled Cheese

So this is a pretty simple sandwich. I sort of made it on a whim cause it was what we had in the house that lent itself to something resembling a grilled cheese and the only reason I'm really writing about it is because Sarah liked it so much, that she interrupted me in such a way that I thought she was going to yell at me for some reason or another, but really she just wanted to tell me how good the sandwich I made for lunch was. So I ended up making it again the next day for lunch. 

It starts with cream cheese and shallots. I used shallots because we joined a winter CSA and have a bunch of them. Next I made a layer of apple slices.

Then on top of the apples went some sharp cheddar. I used shredded since it's all we had in the house, but I'm sure it would be easier with slices. Either way though really I guess. On the buttered pan I sprinkled garlic powder.

Then the normal grilled cheese cooking, nothing too special here.

Yum, yum, yum, look at all that ooey gooey-ness. Maybe I'm not as fevorant about this sandwich as Sarah is, but it is a damn good sandwich (if I do say so myself). Enjoy the cold weather and the holiday season's cheer and I'll see you next Tuesday!

Cats, cats, cats

Maybe it's because I just volunteered last week to check in on my friends five, yes five cats. Or maybe it's because Sarah hijacked my camera a couple of weeks ago to take pictures of our two cats. But either way I thought I'd share some kitten cheer with you on this fine December day. But really this post is about last August. When a cat followed Sarah and I home to where I was living in Providence at the time one night. Sarah started calling her Zorro because she came out of the night. I knew at that moment we were doomed, she had named it, it was ours. The thing was that Zorro had five kittens. Living under a porch. That were nearly impossible to get at and just as hard to coax out. But one summer night with the help of some friends, we did just that. It took almost a week, but we adopted them all to friends and friends of friends, and we kept momma cat. She lived with my nana for a while while we moved back to the granite state, but she's now happily cohabiting with Sarah and I and Sarah's cat Zoe.

Seriously, what cat sits like that?

Zoe.

Zorro's favorite past times are reminding us she wants to go out and can't open the door herself, eating and waking me up hella early in the morning.

So there you have it, a selection of the photos Sarah took when she decided to stalk the cats around our apartment with one of my cameras. See you next Tuesday!

Corn Chowder

Since joining a CSA Sarah and I have made a lot of soup. To be fair I made this the day before we got our first lot of winter veggies to make room in our kitchen/pantry for them, but either way. Soup for days. Actually between all the different soups, more like soup for weeks. But moving along!

Butter! Melt it in a pot.

Onions and garlic! One onion. However many cloves of garlic make you happy. Because if there's anything you've learned about me thus far it's that almost every food should apparently have garlic and onions.

Stir occasionally until the onions start to get a little more translucent. 

Dust it with a little salt and a wee bit of cumin or curry or whatever you feel like would taste good in your corn chowder.

Dust it all with a bit of flour and stir.

Potatoes. Two or three big ones. Peeled. Diced.

Some milk. Some cream. 

CORN! Now in real life I'd just use frozen. BUT. I was making this so that I could use those five ears of corn that were sitting around. (side note: I do not love cutting corn off the cob)

I mixed 6 cups worth of Better than Bouillon with three cups worth of water and dumped it in. You could use this, actual bullion, or actual vegetable stock. I just used what I had. The other three cups of water I beat two eggs into well as seen below before dumping that in too. (I like putting eggs in corn chowder, it may give it a weird texture, but otherwise it's totally delightful).

Cook til the potatoes are soft and that's it! I stored ours in mason jars as pre-made lunches. Cause, you know the mason jar lunch is something we've been really into these days. Maybe Providence put a little hipster in us. Who knows. It's hella convenient though, I'll tell you that much. See you next Tuesday!

Peanut Tofu

And now back to what this blog (and my life) is really all: food. (Not really, but really). The other night I wanted to make something for dinner to accompany an acorn squash I had gotten, and I settled on using a block of tofu that had been sitting in the fridge since I was back in Providence (...so a while). I used my bff google to look up tofu recipes and settled on this one, because we had (or so I thought) everything on hand to make it, and quite frankly, it looked awesome. While it turns out I maybe didn't have exactly what I needed (including the time to prepare it correctly) it came out pretty great!

The tofu. So it wasn't until I started googling tofu while making this that I realized I actually didn't want silken tofu at all for this. Who knew? Apparently silken tofu falls apart/breaks much easier than regular tofu. I did end up with some odd shapes and had to be careful, but it all worked out alright. 

I didn't have quite the proper amount of time to devote to draining the tofu (also since it was silken tofu it also wasn't packaged in quite as much liquid. But hooray paper towels!

Surprise! We were just about out of parchment paper. But I suppose in true Tim Gunn fashion, I made it work.

The sauce was the reason I was actually excited that we had all the things, cause we had bought sweet chili sauce for some home made cup 'o noodle lunches a few weeks ago. so there are all the ingredients for the sauce (I don't really believe in buying soy sauce when I'm always given far more than I use to eat at one time with my asian take out). 

I left the tofu in the sauce to marinate on the counter while we went out so Sarah could vote and we could go to the library.

 When we returned home I put it in a skillet with some sesame oil, and fried it up! Then lets not be silly, we didn't have cauliflower in the house, so I made a mix of brown basmati rice and quinoa to put it on top of. I was worried that it for various reasons it didn't come out good, but turns out it was real good. Especially as left overs a week later (which I had with some peanut sesame soba noodles instead of rice). It also got Sarah's approval. All in all, I'd make this again, correct tofu, or not (if we're being honest...which I almost always am). yummmm. See you next Tuesday!