WIAW #4: Disney's Food and Wine Festival

Time for another What I Ate Wednesday! Or rather, What We Ate Wednesday. Clint and I are sharing a lot of food so that we can try more things.

Because we are at Disney's Food and Wine Festival! Yay hooray! I've been coming to Disney World since I was 4, and since high school, my parents and I come nearly every year. In 2008, Clint and I came down in October for a friend's wedding and we got our first taste (haha) of F&W. This was Clint's first exposure to Disney, so of course he loved it. I convinced my parents to switch their September Disney trip to October to take advantage of F&W, and ever since then, we've come in October. (It's really great being off the academic calendar!)

Now, this is an eating trip. I'm not counting calories, and we'll worry about what the scale says and how tight my pants are when I return. Luckily we walk several miles a day (and Clint's trying to squeeze in a daily run) so in the past, the damage hasn't been too bad.

Today I present to you: What We Ate At Our First Day At The Food Festival, Plus Tea Plus Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party. i.e. lots of deliciousness.

We arrived at Epcot around 8:15am- it opened early for resort guests! I love these early opening days (well to be honest, I don't like getting up an hour earlier.... but it's nice to get a lot done before it's very crowded).

 We always eat breakfast at The Land, after we go on Soarin' and before we go on Soarin' a second time. Favorite ride, perhaps? Clint and I shared this: OJ for him, coffee and low fat milk for me, and home fries, bacon and biscuit for him and french toast (with honey, no real maple syrup here! pancake syrup, ew), sausage and eggs for me.

 We eagerly awaited 11:00am, when the World Showcase and the Festival opened. First stop, Craft Beers. Devil's Triangle IPA for Clint, Berry Weiss for mom, dad and me.

 Next stop, Hawaii. Clint got the Kona Porter and the tuna poke, of which I had a sip and a small bite, respectively (I didn't love the tuna). You can see my beautiful pink berry weiss on the right. Who doesn't love a pink beer?!?

 Mom got a pork slider with pineapple chutney from Hawaii.

 Ok, here's the best dish at the F&W: chipotle chicken sausage with sweet corn polenta and onion jam, from Canada. Also apple ice wine. The polenta here is creamy and sweet, and I'm sure this serving is probably like 800 delicious calories. Let's walk more!

 Dad got mead at Ireland, very tasty.

 Clint and I split the coq au vin with mac and cheese and a Pomegranate Kir cocktail at France. Delicious!! This is a very, very close second to the chicken chipotle sausage.

 From Morocco: Amazigh red wine (like a light shiraz, only a little more bitter, very interesting) and beef kefta pocket with a vinegary cabbage slaw. I have a recipe for something similar that we love- I haven't gotten around to blogging it, but it can be found here.

 Jen emailed me a couple days ago to tell me about the new frozen beer in Japan. I was intrigued so we got it! I don't love it, but I'm glad we tried it. It's a regular Kirin Ichiban beer with frozen head. The problem I found with it is that I'm used to frozen/slushy stuff being sweet, so this was a shock to my palette- even though I know beer isn't supposed to be sweet. It was just unexpected. However, the slushy beer on top seemed to keep the liquid beer cool for longer, which is a bonus in Florida.

 Then we got to the Florida Local kiosk, and I left the beer to Clint when I found their lime wine from Florida Orange Groves winer. Lime wine?!? I know! It tastes like a very light key lime juice, although still super limey (i.e. super good, I love lime). I need to check the alcohol content, because as far as I could tell, it wasn't alcoholic at all. But of course it is, since it's wine.

The lime wine is on the right, on the left is their white sangria, which is super sweet- maybe even more so after drinking the lime wine. I liked it, but I took a couple sips and gave the rest to mom, little ms. sweet wine drinker.

 Clint got the beef taco at Mexico, which was very tasty and a little spicy.

 Mom got the flan at Mexico- look how it's caramel colored all the way through! Very unlike what we're used to in flan. It kind of tasted like gjetost, which was awesome because mom and I love gjetost.

 Clint got shrimp on a barbie in Australia, which I actually did not taste at all- I had this last year, and remember it as being good, but VERY salty.

 Then we left Epcot and headed over to the Grand Floridian. After a spot of shopping (new Lilly dress for me!) at the hotel, we sat down for tea.

At the Garden View Lounge's afternoon tea, you can order a la carte items (scones, strawberries and cream, pastries, tea sandwiches, cheese, etc) or order a pre fixe kind of thing. I used to always order the Buckingham Palace (a pot of tea of your choice, plate of tea sandwiches, scone and jam tart, and pastries), and when we went a month after my wedding, we ordered the Grand Tea (same as Buckingham but also a glass of champagne). But a couple years ago, I tried pate for the first time with Gal M and Gal R, and fell in love. So now I order pate almost whenever I find it, including here. I get the Prince Edward tea:

Pate with stilton and bleu cheese, a glass of port, and tea (Shanghai Rose tea)... (and I didn't actually eat any crackers, the pate is so filling)

 ...here's a closer shot of the pate platter...

...and scones with devonshire cream, strawberry preserves and lemon curd (and here is a cup of mom's gingerbread tea).

 Mom and Dad both got the Buckingham Tea, and here is the sandwich plate that comes with that (I don't even know what everything is! But that little tart is a caramelized onion tart, and I kind of wish you could order a plate of just those, so yummy).

 Dad ended with strawberries and cream, as did Clint. Very pretty! We had to wait a bit to get these, the waitress said they had to run down to the bakery and we were like, what, why? There's no pastry with these. But probably for the decoration.

 The scones are my favorite part. I actually had 2 helpings of devonshire cream, Clint doesn't care for it, so ignored it on his scone plate and I put it to good use!

 Check out the lemon curd! Have you ever seen lemon curd like this? It was almost like frosting! I'm used to the more translucent kind.

Then it was time to change into our Halloween costumes and go to Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Party at the Magic Kingdom!

We got lots of candy.

 Lots. I'm not kidding. This is my pile.

 This is Clint's pile.

Clint had 107 pieces of candy (including the peanut M&Ms, tootsie roll and Butterfinger that he ate, and the 2 Almond Joys and 2 Peeps that he gave me). I haven't counted up mine yet, but I was good- I only ate 2 tootsie rolls, 2 caramel apple Werthers (seriously, these things are delicious. I may have to buy a bag), and a twizzler. Mom just told me she got 136 pieces- but she told the guy handing out the Werthers that she loves them so he gave her about 15.

I can feel a sugar high coming on for the rest of the week.

Best pulled pork yet

No witty titles on this one, I am getting down to business.

We love pulled pork over here. Pork is our meat of choice, since we are recent converts and need to make up for lost time. Like many others, as children we were introduced to pork as "the other white meat", "other" indicating that it is dry, leathery and either tasteless or weird-tasting, and overall, rather unappetizing. (that being said, chicken was often dry and stringy, so it's a lost cause either way).

My conversion began about 9 years ago, during my 3rd year of grad school. One of my friends was engaged and she and her fiance bought a condo (incidentally, right next door to one of our other friends, which meant we all knew how to find her new place!). This friend happened to be marrying an excellent cook, which was great for her, and also for all of us (although less often). He cooked a few of us dinner one night, and the dinner was salad, pork tenderloin, smashed potatoes, onion cherry compote, and green beans. I am too polite to say, ugh I hate potatoes and pork. Instead, I helped myself to a huge portion of green beans and minimal amounts of pork and potatoes. Then I actually tasted the pork and had to go back for 2nds and 3rds. You see, this was my first introduction to properly cooked pork.

Brian pan seared the pork and then baked it, then used the drippings in the pan to saute onions and make a sauce/compote thing, adding dried cherries. AMAZING. It was so simple, I believe he cooked the entire thing before I finished my glass of wine (and I drank quickly in those days, my friends, as I was only 23). The key was not overcooking it. A slightly, barely pink center is good, that's what you want. If it's white all the way through, it's overdone and will be leathery. But I never knew this! I copied his recipe many times after that, and then started branching out to my own pork recipes.

But ever since, I keep pork tenderloins on hand. They're just so easy! Season, sear, bake til they're around 150, voila! What, like 15 minutes?

So, pork. Today's recipe doesn't use a pork tenderloin though, but tenderloins were the gateway pork for me. Ok I really only buy tenderloins, loins or chops (bone in or boneless), I don't get adventurous with other cuts (mostly because I don't know how to properly cook them, and I don't want to waste a lot of money on meat that I might screw up). I do use a variety of cooking methods for this small selection of cuts.

We're fans of pulled pork (I think the first time I had pulled pork was maybe in 2004 or 2005? Again, anti-pork before that, like, completely and entirely. What was wrong with me?!). Being a recent convert to pulled pork, I don't have any sort of stand-by pulled pork recipe to fall back on, so I have to search for good ones. In the past, I've found decent ones, but the stuff you get at a bbq place is always far better than mine.

Until last night!

I found this recipe on tastespotting (as usual). Clint voted for pulled pork because we had an ancient, freezer-burned 3lb pork loin in the freezer dated 2009. I'm sure some people would not have eaten it, but maybe it's my Yankee upbringing that turns wasting food into a mortal sin, I decided pulled pork would be a good way to use it. Braising is often the cooking style of choice for tougher meats, and the medium/low, slow cooking made me more confident that it would be thoroughly cooked and safe to eat. I did not time this ideally, I started thawing it in room temp water around 11am, and I kind of forgot about it until 2, so by the time I started looking for recipes, I had about 4 hours in which to prepare this. Most of the recipes I found wanted 8-10 hours in the crock pot, but I didn't have 8-10 hours. I'm still not good at converting crock pot times to oven times, but the recipe I found had all of the above, including 3 hours in the oven at 300F. Due to sewing machine malfunctions, it braised for 3.5 hours.

Not only was it thoroughly cooked and safe (18 hours later, I'm still fine), it was delicious. This, my friends, is my go-to recipe for pulled pork. The sauce is a very simple but flavorful affair of maple (be still, my heart!), bourbon (even better!) and other deliciousness. It takes about 2 minutes to put the sauce together, then you plop the pork in an oven-safe pot, pour the sauce over, and bake/braise. Then you pull it, reduce the sauce, and serve. It took us a total of 4 hours, but in the end, the hardest part was pulling the pork (it was hard to get it out of the pot because it kept falling apart, but when pulling it, it keeps sticking to the forks and is annoying. I always nominate Clint to do that part.)

Oh yeah, and I recommend keeping track of what's in your freezer, so you don't end up with 3 year old pork loins like we did.

Maple Bourbon Pulled Pork
recipe from I Adore Food.

1 pork loin, about 2-3 lbs, trimmed of fat and connective tissue
1/2 cup maple syrup
3T bourbon
3T cider vinegar
3T whole grain mustard
2T soy sauce
1/4t cloves
a few grinds of black pepper
1 onion, cut into slices
3 garlic cloves, minced (I actually just smashed these and tossed them in, I'm a little lazy when it comes to mincing garlic)

Note: I omitted the salt, since I was using regular sodium soy sauce and it was fairly salty in the end.

In a bowl (or the pot you're going to use), whisk together the liquids and spices. Put the pork in the pot, and if the sauce is in a separate bowl, pour over the pork. Otherwise, roll the pork around in the sauce to coat on all sides.

Cover the pot and stick in a 300F oven. Braise for 3hours (or more, if you get distracted by the feed dogs on your sewing machine not working), turning the pork over every 45-60 minutes or so.

Remove from oven. Place pork into a bowl, let it cool a bit, then start shredding with two forks. It should be tender enough that it starts falling apart while you're trying to move it (this makes moving it difficult, but it's a sign that it's nicely done). Meanwhile, reduce the sauce (this part is very easy if your baking pot is something like Le Creuset or another stovetop-to-oven material) over medium-high heat until it's nicely thickened.

Mix some or all of the sauce with the shredded pork.

Serve the pork on a roll with some extra sauce over the meat (what I do), or mix all the sauce with the pork and serve on a roll or just on your plate.

I used a 2lb pork loin and got 8 generous helpings for approximately
308 calories, 9.4g fat, 15.4g carbs, 0.3g fiber and 34g protein per serving. Nooot great, but delicious enough to justify it.

But wait, there's more!

I've also been on the hunt for a good slaw recipe. I'm an even more recent convert to cole slaw. I'm not big on mayo, so up til about a year ago, I always avoided cole slaw. But then I had some really delicious cole slaw at The Publick House in Sturbridge, MA (I think they add pineapple) and I started eating cole slaw if it was an option. Clint, however, won't do mayo, so I keep looking for mayo-free slaw recipes, with little luck til now. One interesting version was an asian slaw using fish sauce, which was good the first day, but.... kind of rotten-fishy after that.

Yesterday I was in luck, because I found this delicious apple slaw. I also finally cut the cabbage properly so it's not impossible to chew.

Apple-Cabbage Slaw
recipe from Food Opera

1/2 head of red cabbage
2-3 apples, grated or thinly sliced

Dressing:
1 apple, peeled and cored and quartered
3T rice vinegar
1.5T olive oil
1T lime juice
1/2t brown sugar

Remove the core from the bottom of the cabbage. Slice on a mandoline, and slice to that the core side is flat on the mandoline, to get nice, thin strips. Add the grated/sliced apple.

In a blender or food processor, combine all the dressing ingredients. Blend til you get a nice puree (look below, it's kind of like applesauce). Adjust flavorings if necessary (it wasn't for us), then add to the cabbage and apple and toss.

you can see the dressing in the middle, very applesauce-like!

This is so crisp and delicious! I love the sweet, vinegary appleyness of it. We each had 2 servings last night- 2 big servings.

This makes 8 generous servings, 92 calories, 2.8g fat, 17.6g sugar, 3.3g fiber and 1.1g protein (approx) per serving.

WIAW #3: Date Night

For my third What I Ate Wednesday post, I bring you... date night!

We don't have date night very often. We used to, back when we were a double income household, but it was one of the first things to go. However, it's important to relax and have an enjoyable evening every once in a while, and when I worked all 3 days of Columbus Day weekend and made Saturday-like tips each day, I felt I'd earned a night out.

It was last Thursday, and it was the one day that week I didn't have rehearsal, but I worked 1-5:30, so I spent my morning trying to catch up on packing for my upcoming trip (which promises super exciting WIAW posts!!), emails and other things. I started out with my normal breakfast. My egg was a double yolk one (this dozen actually had 3 double yolks in it... a record?). I had raisin toast with cinnamon sugar, coffee, water, and my usual slew of vitamins (thank you, CVS, for having them buy one get one free).

As usual, I lost track of time so I quickly scarfed down 2 laughing cow wedges, a giant Mutsu, and some Cape Cod crackers before heading off to work.

I tried to avoid snacking since we were going out for dinner, but I was hungry when I got home and Clint was still at work. Also, I was dumb and had made caramel corn, and I just can't resist, especially when it's pumpkin spice caramel corn (recipe coming soon!). Seriously, this is probably the main reason I can't fit into my size 8 jeans yet.

And at 7, we decided it was about time to head to dinner! We went to a small Italian/Lebanese restaurant around the corner from our house, called Le Mirage. It's a 7-8 minute walk (at my speed, more like 10 min at a normal person's pace), and it was chilly, but the parking around there isn't great and walking would make us feel less guilty for getting an app AND dessert. Also, this is a BYOB restaurant (part of why we went, knowing we can still drink but not get charged an arm and a leg for it), and if the two of us finished a bottle over an average-length dinner, neither one of us would be in great shape to drive.

We started with baba ganoush dip, which was delicious and smokey from the "fire roasted" eggplants.

I got pasta, which is downright strange for me. I rarely eat pasta, so much so that I bought 2 boxes of spaghetti 3 years ago when a friend came to visit (knowing she likes pasta, and tends to eat much early than I do, so I wanted a quick dinner so she wasn't starving) and one box is still unopened in the pantry. But this penne had a gorgonzola cream sauce and walnuts, so I couldn't resist. I'll get the kibbe next time.

You can see this dish is quite enormous. I had it for leftovers for lunch AND dinner the following day. note: pasta with cream sauce doesn't reheat well. I never remember this.

This was our wine, Lost Acres Vineyard Rock Wall Red.

Lost Acres is in North Granby, CT, very near my family's home- this home, I mean:

We've been to Lost Acres twice now for a tasting, and the Rock Wall Red was the one I liked best out of the ones we tried, but I didn't loooove it. Well, last night I kind of loved it. It might be that I'm becoming more accustomed to New England reds, which are lighter than their California counterparts, or maybe it was just perfect with the baba ganoush (it was, actually). We really enjoyed this one last night. The reason we selected it from our sizeable wine collection (we get comments from nearly every person who comes to our house) is because we have 2 bottles. Also, my parents go there often so could easily get us more. We really hoard our bottles, always "saving them for a special occasion". Which is silly and we know it, so we're trying to drink up. It's just too bad we came to this conclusion after I decided I wanted to lose weight.

Then we had dessert: chocolate hazelnut cake. This restaurant has lots of cheesecakes, but I can't do cheesecake. For me, it was this or the cannoli, since I have a real weakness for cannoli. Clint, on the other hand, does not. I can't remember what his other choice was, but this was delicious.

 Then we waddled home, warmed by the sugar, fat and alcohol. When we arrived at the restaurant (which is small, maybe 10 tables in the front room and I'm not sure how many in the back room), there were 2 tables. When we left, I think we were it. We weren't there all that long though, we just got a relatively late start.

I wish we could do date night more often. This whole dinner, including tip, was $59, and I think the bottle was $15 from the winery (but my dad bought it for us). It's not a huge amount, and we don't need an app *and* a dessert, so it'd be under $50 that way. And it provides us (me) with a meal the next day. So it's not that bad, but it definitely adds up. If we can revive date night, this place and Joey's will be our regular spots.

What did you do for your last date?

Pumpkin maple beer... cookies!!! (And What's Baking?: October)

Oh get excited, people!!

I mentioned last week I had a growler of beer. Of course, growlers need to be drunk within a few days, or the beer will go flat. When beer goes flat... well, there's not much to do with it but cook with it. And it'd been quite a long time since I last made beer cookies.

I'm also killing two birds with one stone here. Normally I wait til the end of the month to post my What's Baking? monthly bake-along post, but I'm going to be traveling between two days from now and the submission due date, so I'm doing it early. But also, this way you get the recipe sooner, and I know I have several people just itching for it!

 These cookies are heavily inspired by the above link, which was made by Sean LaFond from IL. He was on a cookie bake-off on the food network, back when they actually cooked/baked (I have to say, now that the Hallmark Channel lined up is completely messed up changed with the Martha Stewart Empire moving elsewhere (no, I'm not bitter), I'm watching a lot more Food Network, and they actually COOK during the day. Amazing! The resurgence of cooking interesting food in this house is probably due to this). Mr. LaFond, 4 years ago when this was on, was a guy who looked around my age (but according to my coworkers, I look 7 years younger than I am, so who knows) and he was a food scientist. Of course, when I heard this, never having heard of a food scientist before (but the bio-to-biochem switch back in college was earth-shattering enough for me), I was like OOOH SCIENTIST WHO WORKS WITH FOOD AWESOME. Because seriously, it is. Now if only I could find a way to make this switch myself! Maybe I should take some nutrition classes at the community college.

Anyway. Mr. LaFond liked beer and he liked cookies, so he thought of an ingenious way to combine them. I was intrigued when I saw him make them, and they were good enough to get him on the show (he came in 3rd place out of the 3, though), and when I made them myself I felt they should have been at least 2nd place (the 2nd place spice cookies were quite amazing). I have made these cookies quite a few times, since they're delicious and different and no one can really figure them out unless I spill the beans.

So of course, now that I work at a winery and I have easy access to beer... it just made sense. Especially after the news came out that we had a pumpkin maple beer debuting soon. It got the wheels turning.

I modified Sean's original recipe by reducing the butter, adding pumpkin, subbing maple syrup for honey and changing the spices. I had to add additional flour to make up for the pumpkin. The texture is slightly different, they don't spread as much (from the butter reduction?) and they're cakier/fluffier (from the pumpkin). My next attempt might be using apple sauce instead of pumpkin for apple beer cookies. Or maybe using hard cider instead of beer. You see how my mind works

In any case, I'm not sure if I've modified these enough to make it an original recipe, so I will call it a "wamozart12 pseudo-original". It sounds fancier than "I changed a bunch of things but you can tell where it came from".

Maple Pumpkin Beer cookies
a wamozart12 pseudo-original
inspired by Sean LaFond's beer cookies

3 cups of beer (or 2 bottles, if you're the type to buy bottles). For my test batch I used our Oaktoberfest, for the batch pictured above I used our Heron Ale, which is a lightly hoppy, refreshing ale. I'm definitely trying this with a pumpkin beer once I get my hands on some.
5T maple syrup
10T butter, at room temp
1.25 cup powdered sugar
1 egg
1/4 cup + 2T pumpkin puree
1t vanilla
1t cinnamon
1/2t ginger
1/2t allspice
1/2t nutmeg
2.5 cups flour
1/2t baking soda

In a medium saucepan, combine the beer and honey. Boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until it reduces down to about 1/2 cup. This takes about an hour, be patient. It's almost done when the boiling changes to look more like when you make candy, which is because the sugar has started boiling, instead of just the water. Set aside an let cool, but note that you might need to briefly heat it up again to get it out of the pan, since it will be very thick and caramel-y.

In a mixing bowl, beat the butter and sugar til fluffy. Add the egg, pumpkin, beer reduction, vanilla and spices (you can use 2t pumpkin pie spice instead of the individuals. I just never have any on hand). Beat til well-combined. Whisk together the flour and baking soda, then add to the batter.

Drop tablespoonfuls on a parchment-lined cookie sheet and at 350F for about 20 minutes, until they are just golden brown on the bottom edges. Cool and add an optional icing.

Optional icing
note: I had trouble with the ratio here. These amounts are starting points, add more liquid if the consistency isn't drizzly enough.

1 cup powdered sugar
2T milk
1T maple syrup

Whisk it all together, adjust liquid or sugar if the consistency is too thick or too thin (respectively). Drizzle over cookies.

Enjoy!

Makes about 50 cookies.

I love the odd texture of these, they're just so fluffy and light. Straight from the oven they had a nice crisp crust and are soft inside. This fades over time and they become just soft all over. They definitely have a hoppy-bitter aftertaste to them. The maple flavor isn't really noticeable (probably I need maple extract for both the icing and instead of vanilla in the cookie) and the pumpkin is very gentle but I can taste it.

And the best news: 74 calories and 2.9g fat per cookie (NOT counting the icing- although that's no fat, since I use skim milk). 10.3g carbs, 0.2g fiber, 0.9g protein.

Note on choosing a beer: by all means, use whatever you have, they'll be good! But they do have different flavors with different beers. I think I prefer the Oaktoberfest, which is a darker beer, but not hoppy and somewhat malty- probably my limit for maltiness. The Heron Ale definitely gives the cookie a bitter flavor, which isn't bad, it's just... bitter. If you love IPAs and the like you'll like that. I'm really interested in trying this with a stout, after knowing how much I like the maltiness in a cookie. The original recipe called for a witbeer and I've used that and hefeweizens, which are good in these, but perhaps a little too light for my preference. But then again, if you have non-beer drinkers to serve these two, the witbeer might be the best route for you.

Annnnnd I kind of want to try these with wine sometime. Crazy? Quite possibly.

WIAW #2: Chilly October Day

My second What I Ate Wednesday post!

Yesterday, a chilly October day, was a recovery day. I worked 4 days this weekend, the first day was a half day and the other 3 were full days. Back when I worked full time, I often worked 5 or 6 full days, followed by 1 or 2 half days, and it was no big deal. However, working in a lab means scurrying about like mad for a little while, the sitting down and waiting for your experiment. It's not exactly relaxing... but compared to retail, it really is. So my 4 day work weekend was brutal.

Enjoyable, though. I really do continue to love my job, and I feel very, very lucky. Even if it doesn't pay enough to cover my bills and isn't a career, it's something and I look forward to going in every day- so much so that I'm usually a few minutes early! Gasp! I know!

Anyway, yesterday I was beat. I did the bare minimum of what I absolutely had to do all day, no sewing, no cleaning beyond cleaning up after cooking. Just reading, eating and catching up on emails. And shivering... I swear, our house is colder inside than outside! Clint turned the heat on the day before, but it's on a timer so the afternoon is just frigid. It was really a warm food kind of day, the days of yogurt for lunch are over! (except for work, since I need something quick then)

I had my normal breakfast. I'm currently working on a loaf of La Panciata cinnamon raisin bread, which I always have Clint buy when he's in NH. This is one of the only store-brought breads I will eat (Pittsfield and Berkshire bakeries are the other exception, as well as anything from the bread lady at the farmer's market or anything from Mrs. Putnam's/Blossoming Acres in Southwick, MA, since they're all homemade). I love my raisin bread with salted butter and cinnamon sugar, a throwback to when I was a little kid and my mom would make this for me. White bread with cinnamon sugar is still my meal of choice when recovering from an illness. Right now I'm using a cinnamon sugar from Penzey's- normally I'd never buy cinnamon sugar, I just mix it myself, but I had a coupon. BTW, if you live near a Penzey's, you MUST sign up for their catalogue. They send you coupons every other month for free stuff, and I'm talking like a $8 jar of spices for free, no purchase necessary!

 For lunch I had pumpkin tomatillo soup, which might be a new favorite- I just need to figure out how to find tomatillos in the dead of winter, because I do love hot, spicy soups when it's cold out. Maybe canned would work? This soup is a delicious blend of pumpkin (the original recipe called for roasted acorn squash but I used pumpkin puree), tomatillos, coconut milk and spices. It has such an unusual flavor and, even though I added far too many peppers and made it super spicy, is really, really delicious. And the best part: it's super fast. Puree a bunch of stuff and then heat it. I think even with  roasting my peppers, it was about 25 minutes from starting to serving. Wonderful! I wanted to serve it with a swirl of my chipotle lime sour cream, but that's spicy and the soup didn't need any extra spice, so I used plain low fat sour cream.

I had my soup with 1.25 oz of whole wheat ciabatta (also store bought, it's Clint's sandwich bread), each topped with a wedge of laughing cow. Next time I'll split one wedge in half to spread. The Laughing Cow didn't really go with the soup, but it was still tasty.

After lunch my willpower failed and I dove into the bowl of candy corn. I'd had trouble finding Brach's candy corn, and I was sad but not too sad (since it's really hard to stop myself with candy corn), but then my husband went to the store and came back with both Brach's and some Big Y brand candy corn for $1 a bag. Surprisingly, we prefered the cheap stuff.

Dinner was our new favorite chicken with honey-beer sauce recipe, with chipotle lime sweet potatoes. I think this was like the 5th night in a row of this meal? It's just too delicious. Yesterday I did not have a glass of beer though, I just forgot to take a new picture, so this is from the first time we made this recipe, last week. Last night's version also had mushrooms with the chicken.

Part of why I wanted to make this recipe was to give me a good excuse to get a growler of our new Oaktoberfest beer. This is our pretty growler. We got 4 almost-pints of beer out of this and enough beer to make 2.5 recipes of the beer honey chicken, and have 12 oz left. Unfortunately, I didn't tell Clint to drink it, so he was leaving it for me, so now it's flat. I think I need to make beer cookies again (and maybe find a way to add some pumpkin to that recipe...)

After dinner, I had to run to a choir rehearsal, where I drank water to stay hydrated. My voice was a little scratchy last night, which worries me, since our concert is on Saturday. I'm just glad I'm not in the solo chorus this time! Auditions happened when I was still recovering from my cold in September, so I decided to pass.

When I got home from rehearsal, dessert was leftover apple crisp. I need a new apple crisp recipe, this one has a topping of 1 cup oats, 2/3 cup flour, 3/4 cup brown sugar, 6T butter and some spices. It doesn't crisp up nicely, it just stays kind of mushy. I baked it for 1.5hrs, the last 15 minutes covered because the apples were drying out too much. I didn't sweeten the apples at all, which I think I should have, so this is served with a little (about 1/2T) drizzle of maple syrup.

 I started in on my usual Soder Te at lunchtime and drank it throughout the day.

I did go over my calories for the day, thanks to the candy corn and apple crisp, but.... oh well. The candy corn is 100% worth it. I've also maintained this weight for 6 days now, which suggests that my candy corn consumption is not as out-of-control as I might think, and also that I'm doing well on my reduced-salt diet. And I feel great! Maybe my job is making up for not increasing my exercise since I started trying to lose weight.

Pumpkin time!

It's pumpkin time! I've now had 3 pumpkin spice lattes, made pumpkin bread and pumpkin cookies. Today was chilly (my husband turned the heat on yesterday) and my schedule was off as I tried to recover from working 4 days in a row at the winery (i.e. I fell asleep at 9:30pm and got up at 10, and had breakfast at 11) so I felt it was a soup kind of day.

I recently came across a mind-blowing blog- The Pumpkin Project: A Year of Pumpkins. AMAZING, right? She has a complete variety of recipes on there, using everything from puree to roasted pumpkins to pepitas to pumpkin pie spice. I love it. She doesn't weed out recipes to only share the good ones and is honest about the results.

The morning after Gal A blessed my inbox with the url to this blog, I practically blew up my pinterest page with all the delicious-looking recipes I wanted to make. (side note: I've been on pinterest since January 2011, and I never really found a use for it... until now.) One recipe that really caught my eye was the pumpkin tomatillo soup, because one of my knitting buddies had brought her tomatillo harvest to knitting one night to share, and I still had a bunch in my fridge, sitting around because I have no idea what to do with them. (after I started making this soup today, Clint was like, ooh are you making posole? duh! Why did I not think of posole before?! We love posole)

Pumpkin Tomatillo Soup
Recipe from Hello Giggles, by way of The Pumpkin Project
with my modifications!

1 and 3/4 cup pumpkin puree
8 tomatillos, quartered
1 roasted poblano pepper (we used 3 mystery peppers from the farmer's market. I should have used one or two)
1 can of light coconut milk
3/4 cup water (or broth/stock)
2t paprika
1/2t cumin
1/2t coriander
1/4t chipotle
1/4t sea salt
1/4t freshly ground black pepper

Did I mention this is really easy?
Combine everything in a blender and puree til smooth. Pour into a pot and boil for a few minutes to heat thoroughly.

Makes 5 cups. Per 1 cup serving (assuming my calorie calculator has the right coconut milk; there was only one option): 77 calories, 2.6g fat, 132g sodium, 13g carbs, 3.8g fiber, 3.2g protein. And 270% of your daily Vitamin A, bam!

I served with a spoonful of low fat sour cream. I'd originally planned to swirl in my chipotle sour cream (1/4cup low fat sour cream, a couple spoonfuls of adobo sauce from a can of chipotles, a small spoonful of lime juice and a tiny pinch of salt), but the mystery peppers were super duper hot, so I used plain sour cream. Next time I will use a pepper I can identify and avoid this little surprise.

That being said, this was perfect for a chilly day like today. The combination of the pumpkin, coconut milk and tomatillos is really unexpected and different, and really really tasty. It's also super quick and convenient. I think I need to rebuild my stock of coconut milk now!

I ate it with 2 pieces (1.25oz) of whole wheat ciabatta bread, each spread with one wedge of Laughing Cow cheese (one original, one sundried tomato basil,  my new fave). The LC didn't really go with the soup, but oh well, it was still tasty.

beer + chicken = yum

That's kind of exciting, right?

I recently renewed my subscription to Cooking Light. Gal A (thanks to Gal M for our new monikers) gave me a subscription a few years ago for my birthday, and I kept it up until maybe 6 months ago, when I decided to let all my subscriptions lapse in an effort to save money. Now my etsy shop is doing better, so I took my hard-earned sewing money and renewed. 2 weeks ago, 2 issues arrived together- October, with a cover full of enticing quick breads, and September, full of chicken recipes.

Now, I'm weird about chicken. I like it, technically, but I don't often experiment with it. Don't get me wrong, we have chicken all the time here (mostly because I need chicken stock for so many recipes, so we always have a lot of bone-in chicken in the freezer to make more stock), but it's always chicken soup, tacos, etc. But when I'm presented with a bunch of quick, easy and healthy chicken recipes for dinner... well, who can resist that?

The Beer and Honey Chicken was the main one that caught my eye. And beer... I can get that at work! It's very easy, just saute chicken breasts and then saute onions (supposed to be shallots) and whisk together beer, honey, mustard and soy sauce. For this recipe, I used our Oaktoberfest, which was just recently put on tap. I brought a growler home, since it's $6.50 for the equivalent of almost 6 bottles. Yesss, we could have just opened up a bottle, but I like this beer.

We had this with a CL sweet potato recipe (idea) and it was a great combination. Actually, we liked this so much that after dinner last night (the leftovers), we discussed how sad we were that it was all gone, and decided I needed to make it again tonight. So with tonight's leftovers to eat tomorrow (since I'm working all day), it'll be 4 dinners in a row of beer and honey chicken. This big run of leftovers isn't for everyone, but this recipe is delicious enough that it's great for us!

Beer and Honey Chicken
recipe from Cooking Light

2 chicken breasts, cut into 2 super thin pieces, a horizontal slice
1T oil
salt and pepper
2 shallots, minced (or I used one onion and 2 garlic cloves instead)
6 mushrooms, sliced (my addition)
1/2 cup beer, I used our new Oaktoberfest from the winery, CL recommends something like Blue Moon but I would go with something a little fuller.
1T whole grain mustard
1T honey
2T soy sauce (preferably low sodium)
2T fresh parsley

In a large pan/skillet (I used my Le Creuset braiser, love that thing), heat the oil. Season the chicken with salt and pepper, then place in pan. Cook on both sides until cooked through (about 6 min total). Meanwhile, whisk together the beer, honey, mustard and soy sauce. Remove the chicken from pan and add the shallots, onion, garlic, mushrooms, whatever you're using. Cook a couple minutes, then pour in the beer mixture. Bring to a boil and simmer for 5 minutes, until the liquid is reduced almost by half. Put the chicken back in, turn to coat with the sauce all over every so often, for a couple minutes. Top with parsley, and it's ready to eat!

We served it with a mashed sweet potato idea/recipe from the same issue.

Chipotle Lime Sweet Potatoes
recipe from Cooking Light, this link actually takes you to a variation but it's pretty much the same, just different flavors
(this is a halved recipe, which makes 4 servings)

2 sweet potatoes
1.5t lime juice
1T milk (we used apple cider the first time)
1.5t brown sugar
1/2t minced chipotle in adobo
1/2t adobo sauce
pinch of salt

Prick the sweet potatoes a few times with a fork, then wrap each in a damp paper towel and microwave on high for 8 minutes, turning each over halfway through (it should be soft, if not, cook longer). Cut in half and scoop the insides and place in a bowl with the rest of the ingredients and mash together.

This is our favorite, and was also (fortunately!) the healthiest option in the "Sweet Potatoes 4 Ways" article. The other ways were brown sugar pecan, sage parmesean and something with bacon. I want to try them all!

It took about 30 minutes from pulling out the ingredients to sitting down to eat, which is just lovely. And it's tasty!

I'm considering a pork version of this, although our growler is almost empty.