Apple Wine Taste-off

My husband and I like to travel to Dixon on occasion, especially since we know some cool cats out that direction, and one of our favorite places to stop is the Crystal Cork.  It's a cozy place with beautiful wooden floors, lovely photography and art from local artists, and some dang good wine.  They even let you order food in to enjoy with your wine, from the Thai place next door or the pizza joint down the street.

One of their wines in particular is a favorite of mine, the Washington Hills Sweet Riesling.  I am normally not very impressed by white wines, as dry tannic reds are my choice, but this is Amazing! It has a great, bright green apple like fruity flavor, and while sweet, is not actually sugary.  The best way to describe it is mouth watering, because that's what happens after one little sip.

The downside of this great wine is that it seems to be impossible to find in our local stores. So we picked up another apple wine to do a comparison.  The Illinois Cellars wine is a good runner up, and very drinkable and tasty, but just not the same.  It has a more buttery flavor and texture, perhaps more mineral-ish, and is not nearly as bright.   It is a bit cheaper, which is a perk, but we think we'll head back to the Crystal Cork and stock up!

You may notice that there is a cork floating in the Illinois Cellars Bottle.  That would be because my husband forgot to take the protector off of the pointy part of the wonderfully effective corkscrew that my grandmother gave us for Christmas (see the red shiny thing) so it shoved the cork into the bottle.  We knew something was wrong due to the fountain of wine that erupted from the bottle both times.   The funniest part is that he did this twice, because after the first time the protector got jammed on and he forgot he needed to grab some pliers and take it off. Silly, silly! :D

Tater-tot Surprise

Ok, not so much a surprise, but my husband found this gem of a recipe on Voodoo And Sauce.  It wasn't really a recipe, though, so I'm outlining here what we put together and how we modified the recipe.  Folks may turn their noses up at the tots, but I love me some nice crispy browned hash browns, and I have a heck of a time making them well.  But extra crispy tater tots in the oven? Perfection every time!

3/4 bag extra crispy tater tots
1/2 pound shitake mushrooms (stems removed)
4 shallots
2 cloves garlic, pressed
a few slices of canadian bacon chopped up
a handful of spinach

4 eggs + 2 whites

Need: cast iron skillet or other oven safe pan for the least effort

1.  Brown up those tots nice and crispy!
2.  Saute the shallots, garlic & canadian bacon .  Add the spinach and mushrooms when almost finished, and then spread all veggies evenly in the pan.
3. Top the veggies with the tots

4.  Beat the eggs with a tablespoon of water and pour evenly over the top (the little bit of water helps the fluffiness)

We tried to do the fancy flip, where you flip the whole thing out of the pan onto a plate and cut like a pie since the tots would make a nice bottom "crust", but as much as we wiggled that pan, it was staying in.  So we just cut it in the pan, tater side up, and served it with a little sour cream a some cut chives. Mmmm. I don't normally go ga-ga over breakfast, but I DO love potatoes, so this totally hit the spot!

Wine: Add this to the Yuck list

I will give this wine the benefit of the doubt that we got a crappy bottle, but after we poured us each a glass of this, and we both took a sip and looked at each other thinking "is it just me or does this stink?".  The wine tasted very, very acidic, and was heartburn inducing after about 30 seconds.  We let it sit out for a good half hour to aerate, even though we had run it through our Vinturi (great wine invention, we always think we need a spare to take to restaurants) already. Still yuck. So this post is to remind us when we reach for a Malbec NOT to reach for the San Valencia Malbec.

London Broil... falling down?

One of our resolutions for the new year was to make good use of the food that we have, and our chest freezer.  So a couple of weeks ago I made a pantry list using Out of Milk. (Incidentally I love this app, and it helps my husband and I both carry around and add to our grocery list so we can both see it!)

One of the weird things I found in the depth of the chest freezer was labeled "Steak for London Broil".  I found myself a recipe and decided to try it out.

Marinade Recipe (started with one I found and modified to taste)
1 clove garlic
1 tsp salt
3 Tbsp soy
1 Tbsp HP sauce
2 Tbsp Oil
1/2 tsp pepper
2 tsp oregano
1/2 a lemon, juiced
1 Tbsp ketchup
dash tumeric
splash balsamic

Beef Round is approx 161 calories per 4 oz, so add the marinade amount and you're all set


The good news? The marinade was delicious! But oh boy was I thankful I didn't pick this meal for my husbands romantic Birthday dinner.  I learned that London Broil is how you cut the meat, not the cut OF meat, and we had one tough ass cut of meat.   However, all hope was not lost, after attempting to cook this up the recommended way, we busted out the pressure cooker, threw it in for 20 minutes and had some fantastic pot roast like beef! 

Now, the side dish for this meat was actually much more successful.  I love garlic mashed potatoes, but they are a little high in calories and carbs, so I found a recipe for garlic mashed cauliflower.    It was delicious, the only thing I would modify is to get frozen cauliflower to cut down on mess and trimming time, and to  food process the cauliflower first before I added the rest, as the small bowl turned out to be too small in my Kitchenaid and the large bowl too big.

Garlic Mashed Cauliflower
1 cauliflower
1 Tbsp cream cheese
 1/4 cup parmesean
1/2 tsp minced garlic (better with roasted, or we substituted powdered)
1/8 Tsp chicken base (better than bouillon works well)
1/8 tsp black pepper

Cut cauliflower and boil 6 minutes, drain and dry but do not cool.  Puree hot cauliflower with the rest of the ingredients.  Garnish with butter and chives.

Assembled Tastiness

Today's dinner was basically assembled, but tasted as good or better than if I had seasoned up everything myself.  We had a bbq marinaded pork tenderloin for our meat, and then cooked up three bags of Archer Farms steamable veggies in the microwave.

The cauliflower with "cheese sauce" was ok, but I'd rather have plain that I can dump a bunch of garlic on.  The butternut squash had great flavor (this is the only thing I spruced up with some lime juice, cinnamon, nutmeg, chili powder, and ginger) but was kind of watery from the steaming.

The szechuan greenbeans were AWESOME! Not too hot, but really flavorful.  We're going to head back to Target and buy quite a few more bags of those!   I like this brand, the turkey breast we cooked the other day was Archer Farms and they really know how to season!

Tonight's picnic.

Homemade Orange Spice Gelato

The original recipe in my kitchen aid mixer recipe book (which I have already lost... see this keeping track was a good idea!) calls for the following:

2 cups reduced fat (2%) milk
4 strips orange peel
4 strips lemon peel
6 coffee beans
5 egg yolks
3/4 cup sugar


It sounded good, but not quite what I wanted to go with our turkey dinner, so I made some modifications:


2 cups reduced fat (2%) milk
6 strips orange peel
a pinch of clove and cinnamon to taste
some fresh grated nutmeg
5 egg yolks
1/4 cup light brown sugar
1/2 cup splenda


It was a traditional "scald the milk first" recipe where you add part to the eggs and then dump it all in with the rest of the milk.  I got the pan a little too hot and got some custardy like egg chunk.  ( Sounds gross, but actually once I strained them out, they were delicious! Wish I could recreate that as a true custard recipe!)

 The ratios then were a little off, so the texture was not as consistent as I would have liked, and it doesn't look that great, but the flavor was phenomenal. If I didn't love my husband so much I would have told him it was terrible and ate the whole thing myself.   :D

Fiesta in a Bowl

Dinner for one tonight, as the man was off doing martial arty things at the gym.  I tried out another of our dry soup mixes, this time the tortilla chicken soup.  The box called for mixing up the chicken and water, which was tasty, but seemed to be lacking texture.  So I spruced it up a bit.

Included:
Dry soup mix
4 cups water
can tomatoes diced (with liquid)
black beans (rinsed)

Calories: 150 per cup

The recipe made about 9 cups.   Adding some garnish (listed below) brought my bowlful up to about 550 calories of delicious.  Turns out a serving of tortilla chips is actually quite small, too!



 1oz cheese (110 cal)
1 tablespoon of sour cream (60 cal)
  1oz tortilla chips (140 cal)

I have been skeptical of dry soup mixes at times, but with some additions, these have been very good! I'm going to have to ask my aunt where she found them so we can re-stock. 




I served the goodies up to myself with some sugar free margarita drink mix, in my fancy toxic wine glass.  Would have been better blended with ice (and probably with tequila) but it was tasty!

Not just for Thanksgiving!

For the first day of our new meal plan (i.e. meals that we actually plan out ahead of time instead of staring at each other wondering what to eat) we had Target's Market Pantry frozen turkey breast, which was seasoned wonderfully and so easy to throw in the oven, along with homemade garlic mashed potatoes and green beans.

The potatoes were made with :

5lb golden yukon gold potatoes (I like my skins on!) boiled until fork tender
about 1 cup skim milk (called for cream, but we improvised)
2 heads of roasted garlic (we like more garlic and added powder)
7tblsp butter

all mashed up together!  It was all served up with green beans and our favorite dry apple cider.  It was delicious, and lasted us through 2 meals each, plus leftovers for the man tomorrow.

Our favorite cider is the Aspall on the left. It is probably the driest we have tried.  But a close second is the Woodchuck Hard Cider in the Crisp variety, which seems to be pretty hard to find!

The last bottle is some Strawberry beer that I tried, because I love strawberries! It was actually not that impressive, but I DO love the bottle with the pinup girl!

Guinness for Dinner

Have a taste for Guinness, and maybe some brats, Wal-Mart has the goods for you! I saw these in the cooler section and immediately grabbed them up.  I admit I was skeptical but these are THE best brats I have ever had.  I decided to make us a beer themed dinner, so we cooked up some of these brats, as well as beer cheese soup (made with Guinness of course) all served with pretzel rolls, and of course, Guinness.  The cheese soup was a little overcooked so its texture was a little more foofy than creamy, but it was all still delicious!

My parents also went to a pickle tasting (how awesome is THAT!) and brought us back some kraut that was pre-market.  Gramps (of Gramps Gourmet Foods) was looking for feedback, and I really liked it, especially with all the beer themed goodness!

New Years Chinese Food

My family always say that eating Chinese food on New Years Day is good luck.  I don't know if it is true, but I'm just not willing to risk it after all this time! My husband and I went to Yen Ching in Dekalb, and enjoyed a flaming virgin, some garlicy Yen Ching Beef, Twice Cooked Pork, noodles, and potstickers.  I wish we still had leftovers, it was great!  The people at this restaurant are also awesome, and we love that they have pictures of their daughter (and cousins, friends, etc) all over the entry way. They are proud!

Low-fat Cannoli Parfait

I've only seen a few episodes of "The Chew" and while I am not at all a day time TV fan, I thought it was actually really entertaining and had some great ideas!  Daphne Oz struck me as someone who I would make food I'd turn my nose up at a lot (she loves tofu, I so do not) but she took Mario Batali's Cannoli recipe and tried to make it a little more diet friendly. 


I tried it out, and it was actually quite yummy! 





• 1/2 cup cookies (I used homemade spice cookies, but she recommends almond cookies, which are a favorite of mine) 
• Slivered almonds
• 1/2 cup Ricotta cheese
• 2 tablespoons of Honey (I used a little less honey and some splenda) 
• Chocolate chips (to preference)
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla
• cinnamon


I also had some dried cherries in the house, so I layered those in with my parfait as well.   I served them up to me and my hubby in some recycled ball jars, so it was cute too! (He even said so :D ) 

Kicked Up Apple Pie Drink

Our apple pie drinks were such a big hit at Christmas time last year, we decided to recreate them again.  This time around, I added some fresh cut ginger and 2 honey crisp apples to the simmering apple mix, as well as a bunch of fresh grated nutmeg and some cloves. Everyone actually commented how they liked this version better, so I figured I needed to write it down!

1 gallon each of apple cider and apple juice (powdered mix will work)
6 or > 3inch cinnamon sticks
1 1/2 cups sugar (we used splenda)
1 liter 190 proof grain alcohol (Everclear)

We used the sugar free apple juice and cider mix, but then decided there needed to be more apple flavor and a little more sugar for the proportions to taste right.  Some recipes say that you can use vodka instead of everclear, but when we added just a little to try it, I could taste the vodka over everything else, so it would not be my recommendation! This stuff is great warm or over ice, and is delicious mixed with gingerale!

Spiced Cashews and Cranberries

I saw this recipe on the Food Network, and tried it with almonds. It was really tasty, but my mom is a bigger fan of cashews, so I tried it again with those instead, and with a little clove and nutmeg added to the spice mix. Fantastic and rather addictive!!

 Ingredients

• 3/4 stick unsalted butter 
• 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
•  1 tablespoon maple syrup 
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 
• 2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice 
• 2 cups dried cranberries 
• 3 cups almonds 
• 1/2 cup unsweetened coconut flakes 

Directions Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Melt butter, brown sugar, and maple syrup in large pot over medium heat. Stir in cinnamon and pumpkin pie spice. Add cranberries, almonds, and coconut flakes and stir to combine. Spread mixture on greased cookie sheet. Bake 20 minutes or until mixture is crunchy and lightly browned. Transfer to a bowl when cooled and serve.

Oatmeal Cookie and a Minty Kiss

We headed over to our favorite pub, PJ's in Sycamore, the other day to have some garlic cheeseburgers, and decided to start off our date with some hot drinks. I had a delicious "oatmeal cookie" drink that tasted surprising just like an oatmeal cookie! My husband had a minty kiss, which we thought was going to be chocolate based, but was more coffee flavored. Tasty, but nowhere as tasty as mine!

Picnics in the Living Room

After one too many conversations that sound like "last time we made this, did we...?" or "is this the wine we DID like, or the one that was just ok...?" we have decided to attempt to keep track of our culinary pursuits, both in creations we make and those we appreciate by others. One of our favorite places to have our favorite food and drink is right at home! We love to lay out our spread where we can be nice and close to it and each other, so in the traditional Asian style, we like nothing better than sitting around some lovely homemade grub, sipping some good (though usually cheap!) red wine, and having "picnics in the living room".