Spicy Polenta

Last week I didn't plan my groceries too well due to being out of town.  One night I stood staring at the pantry, the fridge, the pantry, the fridge and finally thought of a new polenta dish to try.  I am very happy with the result!  The spice of the cheese was evened out by the subtleness of the polenta.  The sour cream was a nice cooling element to the plate as every other ingredient is hot and spicy.  

Jalapeno cheddar polenta with spicy chicken, and fried avocado

Slacking Off...

Here's a whole mess of things I've made in the past few weeks.  I've been very busy and had a lot on my mind so I have not updated this blog at all.  Hopefully after some vacation and our honeymoon in the next few weeks, I'll be back in good spirits!

Pesto, sundried tomato, chicken and mozzarella pizza

Lazy dinner, only thing mentionable on this plate is the pepper and olive salad I made.

I simply sauteed black olives and the peppers I had in olive oil, salt and pepper; taste was simply and wonderful!

Squash towers.  Sauteed squash and fried onion breaded with panko.  Stacked sqaush with mozz cheese in between each layer with the onion on top!

Spanish rice with chicken enchiladas!

Cooked chicken in the slow cooker in enchilada sauce with peppers. 

Sausage, peppers, potatoes and onion in olive oil and spices

Squash o gratin with ham, celery and onions

Phew.

Jerk Chicken Pizza

Every year we have a SHG BBQ and some awesome friends of ours bring jerk chicken.  I thought to myself, this would be awesome on a pizza.  That idea came last year and I finally got around to making a pizza tonight! I planned most of the ingredients Sunday and then threw in a crazy one today, sweet potato.  This pizza is one of the best foods I have ever made.

A crazy mix of ingredients that resulted in one awesome pizza.

Rhubarb Crisp: The First Attempt by a Terrible Baker

Okay, so let me preface this by saying that my terrible history with baking goes back to my days of cooking class in middle school.  Somehow I was able to mess up the recipes, even if they only had 5 ingredients because my chef self decided to mess with the recipe and then completely messed up the result.
My worst memory of baking was my first attempt at brownies in high school.  My dad soaked his in milk for about 10 minutes for taking a bite because he felt so bad that I tried so hard to make them yummy.  He later admitted they were terrible, threw them outside for the birds and said that he hoped they didn't "break their beaks on the brownies" hahaha.
My best memory associated with baking was an experimental bake also in high school.  I took a beer bread mix and instead of using beer I used ginger ale.  I followed the recipe exactly except the beer and the bread was awesome; I was no longer afraid of mixes.

Baking when you're calorie conscience is challenging.  The predictable combination of a large amount of flour combined with a crazy amount of sugar and some butter thrown in is discouraging.  I tried to take what I knew about flavors and function and make something a little bit less terrible for me.

Tonight I got gutsy, I decided to make up something myself and here is the result:

No recipe is getting posted for this because it needs refining, that being said:

Positives

Crust on bottom crisped up even with less butter

Filling was awesome, sweet enough and good texture, despite only having about half the sugar suggested

Overall good texture after the topping

156 calories a piece

Negatives

Topping did not crisp up 

Bottom didn't have much flavor...needs something

I'll probably make this again next week, tighten up the crust a little bit and get rid of the topping all together.  I am overall happy with my attempt because I was honestly afraid it was going to be terrible and in fact, it is very much edible (just not 100% up to my standards)!  Phew!

Spinach, Sausage and Feta Mini-Quiche with Potato Crust

The owner of my company had an awesome spinach, cilantro and parsley torte a few months ago for lunch...it inspired some new recipes on my part.  This is one of the variations I have come up with; I would post a link to the original recipe but she hand wrote it for me so I don't know who it belonged to first. This recipe is so incredibly different than the original, I'm not sure it's necessary to reference the initial recipe anyway.

This recipe also gave me the opportunity to use one of my favorite kitchen things, my silicone muffin cups from Williams Sonoma!  They work perfectly for this recipe because you can bend the muffin cup away and maintain the shape of the quiche!  Easy to clean and reusable, that's what I love!  Who cares if they're Christmas colors?? I got them for 75% off so as far as I'm concerned it can be Christmas year round!

Fresh out of the oven!

On my breakfast plate this morning

and cut open

Taste was great!  This is probably my favorite mini quiche yet!  The recipe made 12 so I eat 2 every morning for breakfast.  I microwave them for 30 seconds, then put them in the toaster for 4 minutes.  

I have one fan!

Had to post this: one of my supporters with this blog, Clauds, sent me this yesterday.

Another night out in Providence

If you haven't realized it yet, we tend to go out a bit in Providence.  It's only a five minute drive to an awesome city, so we take full advantage.  Our friend Jalal came to visit this weekend so we took him to our favorite spot, Union Station Brewery.  The food is consistently yummy and reasonably, the service is consistently great, and the beer is awesome.  It's a great location, close to the mall and waterfire.  We try different restaurants but we always end up at the brewery because it never lets us down.

Started the meal off with a beer, I chose the buster brown ale and it was exactly as described, very smooth with hints of chocolate and toffee.  I'm not a huge hops fan so this was perfect for me

Next we had nachos with guacamole, I love the fresh salsa they use.

Sorry the picture is sideways...photobucket is being weird but anyways!!  I was debating what to get yesterday, I narrowed it down to Buffalo chicken pizza, BBQ meatloaf and Farfalle.  

1.Buffalo chicken pizza worried me, could see that being too much or making my picky stomach sick

2.Farfalle is something I could easily make at home.

3.I would never make BBQ meatloaf since I usually only buy beef in the form of steak: decision made.

It was very good, the BBQ sauce was a perfect addition.  The mashed potatoes were different than the last time I had them, they had chives mixed in and had a great flavor and texture.  The grilled veggies were a nice addition to the heavy base of the dish.  I wasn't a huge fan of the onion ring but I'm not generally a fried foods person; they use to serve this dish with a series of very thing onion rings that were breaded and lightly fried, those I enjoyed more.

Overall we had an awesome meal as usual.  The rest of my clan ordered different types of burgers: (Info directly take from website) CHIPOTLE BBQ bacon, cheddar cheese, house BBQ 

sauce and SMOKEHOUSE ale-braised onions, smoked gouda cheese, bacon, smoked tomato aioli, crisp onion ring.  Both really enjoyed their burgers and had difficultly eating them due to the size.  Clauds cut his burger in half (fail) and Jalal went all in and made a mess.  

We will continue to go to this place over and over again! One of my favorite shows is How I Met Your Mother, a group of friends live above/frequent a bar called MacLaren's Pub...Union station is our Maclaren's.  We only wish we could live above it.