Mac & Cheese!

We are still cooking up some new and creative dinners. We made our first homemade mac and cheese back in May. It wasn't just any ol' mac and cheese - it was butternut squash with kale mac and cheese...and it was good! The picture isn't so great, but at least the food was! :)

I came home from work the other night to an awesome baked whole chicken with a super yummy pasta - who knew I married a chef!! It was so delicious! I am going to try to be better about taking more pictures of our fancier meals...I usually am just too excited to eat it that I don't want to go look for the camera. Ha! Just wanted to let you know that we are still cooking in the kitchen! :)

February

February consisted on more housesitting, resulting in us living at our own home for only 15 days of the month. We enjoy housesitting - I love spending time with the furry critters. :)

I forgot to mention in January we met an old friend at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA). Katherine, a girl I grew up with in Girl Scouts & Confirmation, lived in Boston for a few years before we moved out here. By the time we moved here, she was already back in California. Anyway, she was back visiting with her boyfriend so we met up at the MFA, browsed around and caught up on the past 10 years. It was wonderful to reconnect. Since we didn't see a whole lot of the museum that trip because we were talking so much, Brian and I used our tickets (within 10 days for free) and went back at the beginning of Feb with Brian's classmate, Joe. This was our 3rd time there, but Joe knows a lot about Ancient Egypt and gave us an awesome detailed personal tour of that entire section of the museum.

On the first Friday in Feb, I went to the South End with my co-worker, Roni, to browse around art galleries and vintage shops. Some of the art was very interesting (and odd) and the vintage shops were fun, but almost like a big garage sale. For $5, I bought an old Alice in Wonderland book from 1963.

We met up with Christina (my cousin Ian's girlfriend who is at Boston University) and her roommate Erin for dinner and then came back to our place for some cookie baking. Since it was right before Valentine's day, we decided it would be perfect to use my "L-O-V-E" cookie cutters that I received a few years ago at a bridal shower. The cookies turned out great and ended up making a ton! The girls took a bunch back to their dorm and I ended up taking the rest to work because they were really yummy and I didn't want to eat them all! haha. They were a hit. :)

Also in February, we learned how to make Lefse, a Norwegian flatbread made out of potatoes. Lefse making is a family tradition for our friends Ben & Tara and they taught us how to make it using their new Lefse griddle. It is quite a process, but super fun and they are so tasty with a little butter & sugar! Mmmm!

That just about sums up February (except for our trip to NYC, which will be in the next post)! Another fun-filled month! :)

More Creative Dinners

It's been a while since my last food post, so I thought I would share with you some of the things we've been cooking.

Broccoli, spinach and potato soup


Spinach and green pea rice with chicken


Used the last of my apple picking apples to make Cinnamon Apple Chips


Nothing like homemade pesto! Yummy!!

Walnut & date wild rice and mashed sweet potatoes
(this one started out good, but half way through we were not feeling it anymore. The sweet potatoes were supposed to be a soup, but I decided to not add more water and keep them mashed. The potatoes went nicely mixed with the wild rice, but that rice is just so hard to work with.)

Pretty much every week we try to soak some kind of dry bean that we will use throughout the week. This week we decided to use garbanzo beans (chickpeas), which is definitely different from the usual black or pinto beans. So, to start I made homemade hummus, but it wasn't quite as good as the store bought ones. And then we have tried incorporating the garbanzos into our weekly meals:

Walnut & Raisin Waldorf Salad and a chickpea quinoa with almonds and raisins

Spiced chicken with garbanzo beans along with a yogurt sauce
and some sweet potatoes & peas

Spinach and garbanzo beans with thyme butternut squash
(We ate out for lunch at an Italian place across the street, which was really yummy and then we went out for a few hours running errands. When we got home Brian was craving a huge mound of spinach, so this is what I did with his mound haha)

Making Dinner

Here are some more dinners we have made together recently:

Broccoli, pinto beans and cheese baked potato

Spinach Rice Cakes with Marinara Sauce - YUMMY!

Different (healthy) Vegetable Bean Soup (leek, zucchini, carrot juice, celery, beans, cashews, onions). Took us 3 hours to make and fed us for a week!

Healthy Eggplant Parmesan for my Birthday dinner at home - Very good!

Of course we would be happy to give you the recipes for any of these that you might want to try. Just let me know! All of the ones I have posted have been great, but I will let you know when we come across something we didn't really care too much for. :)

Last Week Dinners

Brian and I have been enjoying making dinner together every night and getting a little creative sometimes. These are some of the meals we ate last week:

"Hoppin' John" (rice, spinach, onion, pinto beans)

Quesadillas - very yummy!

Garden Orzo Salad - we loved this one, so we made it 2 times last week!
(Orzo, tomatoes, cucumber, cannellini beans, olives)

Spaghetti and broccoli - quick & simple :)

Salmon with Quinoa along with...

...a "mess" of Kale greens!

My husband's become quite the chef!!! :D