Asparagus Pizza

So, we are back from a long, life altering trip to Chicago.  We found our new home for the next year, anyway (more on this later).  We made this a while ago, and it was so good, I wanted to share.  This pizza recipe was in the most recent Eating Well magazine.  As you can see, our pizza was not as artfully put together as the picture in the magazine , but it was delicious.  We blanched the asparagus briefly and cut into thin pieces because we we thought it might be a bit tough otherwise.  The flavors were great and it warmed up well the next day for lunch.

On the Chicago news.....we will be renting a condo in the South Loop neighborhood.  It is on the 26th floor and has views of the city, lake and Grant park.  It's smaller than our current house so we will have to trim down our possessions greatly.  We have not decided on the final move in date - but somewhere near the end of May.  

Veggie Nights

We didn't do it on purpose, we didn't even try.  I suppose it probably had something to do with the refrigerator full of fresh vegetables from our CSA and our garden.  Last week, we ate vegetarian fare for four nights in a row.  I wanted to share two of the meals that we made.  There was a taco salad that I wanted to try and also stuffed peppers that we have made before and enjoyed.  Both were delicious and also created enough leftovers for several lunches.

The "lime" green colored peppers were from our CSA and were delicious.  As you can see we upped the nutritional ante by serving broccoli as a side dish. 

The next night, we made a vegetarian taco salad.  Other Blonde girl - I think you would really like this one.  This salad was incredibly filling and we didn't really miss the meat.  We even ate it again the next night (it makes a lot) and added more fresh lettuce.  It was still great.  

By Thursday night I was a bit tired and irritable and craving meat.  Last night we went to La Provence and I ordered the Filet Mignon (yes it was wrapped in bacon).  It was delicious!

Slumps and Sour Cherries

So we seem to be having a continued blogging slump (summer slump maybe?) and an economic slump as well.  Seemed fitting to make a slump for dessert tonight.  We had a pound or so of fresh sour cherries from Los Poblanos (our CSA) and I didn't want them to end up as fertilizer for our garden.

I found a recipe on Eating Well for a sour cherry slump  Perfect!  I added blackberries and blueberries, both, and it was really delicious.  The whole family enjoyed it thoroughly. 

Leaping Lemurs



Noah's 8th birthday cake!

 Just wanted to share a picutre of the birthday cake (and the Lemur was edible!)  We had a wonderful party in the park last weekend.

A new day/year!

Black Bean Salmon Tostadas. Sounds a bit strange. Trust me, these are delicious! Easy and a great meal for fast weeknight fare. We have made this recipe many times since discovering it in the January 2010 EatingWell. Blonde girl's husband enjoys these with a dash of Sriracha chili sauce and maybe some mango slices with a dash of chili powder and squeeze of lime.

It seems that during the dark nights of winter our family of bloggers retreated into their respective caves for a proper hibernation. Now that the days are longer and the weather is warmer, I hope to hear of new and delicious adventures from everyone.  I'm sure everyone was just storing up cooking and eating experiences to blossom come spring!

Oven Project

This summer in addition to having a great garden which will provide food for lots of winter dishes, we built a clay, wood fired oven. The project took most of the summer. In addition to preparing the site to make the oven frost proof, Subduck built a shelter to protect the clay (and the cooks) from inclement weather. The preparations were done by mid August. A group of interested friends and neighbors then stopped by to help shape the actual oven. We made a pile of dampened sand into the shape and size of the oven interior. This sand was then covered with a 4" layer of a clay/sand mix. In a couple of days, Subduck could scoop out the sand and build a drying fire in the oven. Once the first layer was dry, we added a second 4" of clay and sand, this time with wood shavings added for insulation. Another drying fire was used for this layer.

A week or so later, we fired the oven in earnest to cook Pizza. It takes about three hours of a constant hot burn to get to cooking temp. (in this case 7-800 degrees) We cooked the crust a bit before adding the toppings. The crust took about 45 sec to brown, the pizza another minute to minuet and a half. The Pizzas were great. We have since done bread and focaccia with similar success. To do bread, the oven is cooled to temps in the 4-500 degree range.

The oven really holds the heat once you get the mass warmed up. We baked in it at 450 for a party at 6 PM. At 9:30 PM it was still 400 degrees. At 8AM next morning it was 150 degrees.

This project was a lot of fun and we look forward to sharing what we do with it in future posts. And,yes, we will be cooking out there through the winter!

Plumble

This year, the plum tree in our backyard has hundreds of plums.  When my sister came to visit, we decided we had to use some plums in our dinner.  We found a recipe for pork loin with poached plums (from Walla Walla!).  Somehow this recipe calls for 6 plums (for a total weight of 2 pounds.)  If any of you have seen such large plums, I'd like to know what they look like.  We had to use at least 20 plums to make 2 pounds - and that was a lot (see exhibit A.)  We served the pork with brown rice and green beans - as shown in Exhibit B. 

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

This recipe resulted in lots of yummy leftovers, which we enjoyed for several days.  This would be a great meal to make for 8 people.

For dessert, we made a plum crumble (we called it plumble) that also called for 2 pounds of plums.  It was tart and delicious with vanilla ice cream.