New Year's Eve Menu

I think I have finally come to a decision ... until I go shopping:)

Shrimp cocktail
Alouetta (a family recipe of little rolls of beef with a thin red sauce)
Mac n' cheese (for the kids;)
Endive salad w garlic vinaigrette
Cheese platter
Pate
Champagne

And for tomorrow:

Sarmale (cabbage rolls)
Kielbasa with Sauerkraut
Sauerkraut and Meatball Ciorba (a sour soup)

Call Me Crazy ...

And I am. I already have my baguettes rising for my little New Year's Eve "party" I'm having at home for the family tonight. I will throw them into the oven while I shower before I head off to work. I'll post a pic once they are done!

Dinner With Friends

Tonight I asked some friends to stop over to have dinner with us, as well as my mother-in-law, so I wanted to make sure I had enough food to go around. I picked up a really beautiful beef roast at the meat counter today and put it in the slow cooker to serve with some mashed potatoes. I also served some broccoli, and a beet-greens salad with garlic vinaigrette.

Effortless Sunday Roast w. Horseradish Sauce

Ingredients:

For the roast
3-4 lb beef roast
1-2 cloves of garlic
2-3 cups beef stock
1 small pkg button mushrooms
1 pkg pearl onions
2 bay leaves
Salt & pepper, to taste
A sprinkling of paprika

For the horseradish sauce
A spoonful of good prepared horseradish
A good sized dollop of mayonnaise

Place the roast into the slow cooker and sprinkle with salt, pepper, chopped garlic, and paprika. Clean and slice the mushrooms and place in the pot. Peel ** and drop in the pearl onions then drop in the bay leaves and pour the beef stock into the pot. Make sure you don't completely cover the roast with liquid -- you don't want to boil the roast here. Cover the meat about 3/4 of the way. Turn the slow cooker to either high (for about a 4 hour timeline) or low (for a 6-8 hour timeline). Now, forget about it. Serve with rice, mashed potatoes, bread and butter, maybe a green salad ... whatever sounds good or you have on-hand.

Stir the prepared horseradish and mayonnaise together to serve with the roast. This comes together so nicely with the broth from the roast once it is on your plate. Be sure you have some bread to sop it all up!

**A note about pearl onions: If you can find frozen pearl onions, go ahead and use them here. They are already peeled. Otherwise, blanch the onions in boiling water for about 3 minutes then place them in cold water to shock them for easy peeling. The skins will come off very easily. Of course, feel free to chop a regular onion or two into large pieces instead;)

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Random Thoughts ...

Have you ever started to follow a recipe and thought to yourself, "That's not going to work" :/

I'm there now. And it's not that the recipe seems wrong, it's that I think I did something to screw it up.

We'll see how it goes!

New Year's Plans

For last few months of the year I do a LOT of entertaining. Open house, my daughter's birthday, Thanksgiving (usually), getting together with friends, Christmas Eve ... I love it but am definitely ready to have a quiet celebration for the New Year.

In years past, I would have my family's stuffed cabbage rolls and pork roast with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes at midnight. This year, I am going to do something a little different. I am going to make all of the stuffed cabbage rolls and pork roast for New Year's Day, but I am going to go a little bit French for New Year's Eve.

My husband has family in France and they are a great resource for me. I asked his cousin for some advice on what to make and she told me about everything she made for Christmas and said it would be the same for the 31st. It is lots of seafood and other very rich foods like foie gras and pate, several different types of cheese, a few different types of wine ...

I am going to make another Buche de Noel. I made a chocolate version for Christmas but will make a vanilla cake with chocolate icing for the New Year celebration. I am going to get good Champagne -- Veuve Clicquot ... I think I can splurge to celebrate this year:) Maybe some oysters, some pate, a lobster bisque, and some cheese. I'll post pics of what I end up with but I am very excited! My husband loves anything suggested by his cousin, so I'm sure he will be happy as well. Bonne Annee!

In the meantime, I have a roast in the slow cooker for diner and am working on cleaning up the dishes from lunch. I think I will make some mulled wine to go with dinner as well ...

Quick and Easy Sunday Lunch

For us, Church days are very long. We have a "Coffee and Doughnuts" Social after Liturgy most Sundays, but this usually includes sugar and other sweets. I let my children have some, which is a big part of the reason I don't keep any of that sort of thing at home -- at least this way it is a real treat.  Anyway, everyone is absolutely "starving" by the time we get home, so life is much easier if we can walk in the door and I have something substantial ready for lunch.

Today, as I mentioned in my last post, I made the soup during breakfast so that it would be ready when we got home. The soup I made is a carrot and root vegetable soup because everyone has been recovering from the stomach flu over the last week or so. Carrots are very good for digestion, as are potatoes. So I decided to make a soup including both. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients:

7-8 medium sized carrots
3 good size red potatoes
1 medium-large parsnip
Water
Salt & pepper, to taste
A pinch of dried tarragon
2 Cardamom pods (optional)
2 Bay leaves
Chopped parsley stalks or leaves (or both!)

I roughly chopped all the cleaned veggies (I left the skins on the potatoes) and put them into a medium-large pot then covered with water. I dropped in the tarragon, salt, pepper, bay leaves, cardamom, and chopped parsley stalks then brought everything to the boil. I then lowered the heat and allowed the soup to simmer until everything was tender. Using my stick blender (though you could use a regular blender) I whirred it all up so that it was partially creamy but still had some larger pieces for texture.

I am serving this with some good crackers, an herb omelet, and some good sliced salami (a Hungarian Csabai), and some Brie. We might have a little fruit as a "dessert".

"Banana Cream Pie" for Breakfast!

One way I get my family to eat my homemade yogurt is to make it something fun and not even tell them they are eating it. This is one recipe I use to do this: Banana Cream Pie adapted from a recipe by Mireille Guiliano, which can be found here.

Ingredients:

Plain yogurt (try Fage 2% if you are a newbie)
Bananas
Ground nuts (of your choice)
Honey

Layer banana slices on the bottom of a bowl then layer some yogurt on top (Greek yogurt stands really well and looks beautiful!). Then layer the ground nuts on top of the yogurt and add a drizzle of honey.

Meanwhile, I am eating some Magical Breakfast Cream, drinking some coffee, and I have soup on the stove so that when we get home from church we have lunch!

Post-Holiday Detox

I have a tendency to start my holiday over-eating (and drinking!) around October. So, by the time Christmas rolls around I've put on more than enough of my winter weight and I've also gotten to the point where I really feel the need to cut back and start fresh.

If you know me, you are probably well aware of how much I love Mireille Guiliano's book, French Women Don't Get Fat. If you don't know me, you will find out just how much I love her and her books. After my daughter was born, I went to buy a pair of jeans and had to buy the biggest I have ever had to buy in my life ... and they were still a little too snug. I decided it was time to really do something.

I had read FWDGF a few years prior and had some success but had not yet quite figured out how to adapt my lifestyle for lasting success. I knew it was zee best though, so I decided to start fresh. If you want to know what I did, read the book. It is very different from the way we look at weight loss, and life and food, in America, but it has changed my life altogether. All in all, I have lost 130 lbs and maintained this weight (give or take a couple of pounds) for the last 3 years. To do this, I follow her advice about compensations and occasional detox rituals.

I'm at that point now again where I needed to reset. I did my 36 hour leek soup ritual, increased my simple fish and steamed veggie routine, started eating her Magical Breakfast Cream again, and am feeling much better. I don't know what my weight is right now, but as I learned from her, I pay attention to how I feel and how my clothes fit. Even though my weight fluctuates quite a bit at times, I will not buy the next size bigger. It's a mental trick I use to keep myself within range and it works. When I feel like I'm about to burst I kick in and recalibrate.

So what am I eating now? A pretty normal diet, but I have cut out a few of my "offenders": beer, cookies, chips, and, sadly, scotch. I won't go without them entirely, but for 5 or so days, I think I can stand to go without.

I've picked up my favorite herbal teas -- Tazo Zen, Refresh, and Wild Sweet Orange (which I drink with just a little honey). Lunch just now was a little leek soup, steamed tilapia with lemon and olive oil, steamed red potatoes with the same lemon and olive oil mixture, steamed broccoli, leek salad, and half a banana. Boring? No. It was delicious, but the flavors are delicate so I had to eat slowly to pick them up. Now, I am enjoying a little Tazo Zen and studying for my insurance licensing.

It really doesn't take much to take care of yourself. A little extra effort in terms of planning and adapting can make such a difference in how we feel. I know I need to remind myself of this often.

It's a Start

I have had so many people ask me when I am writing a cookbook, and despite my best efforts I have, as yet, been unable to get my thoughts consolidated enough to put together a book. So, I decided to start a blog in the hopes that I can later collect everything and put it into book form. In the meantime, I thought this would be a way to get the ideas and recipes to people that they have been asking for.

My first entry (this one;) is about chicken soup. Mostly just because I am making some right now and made some a few days ago. I cannot keep it around long enough to last more than one day because everyone eats it up so fast. The version I am making right now is made from leftover roasted chicken bones that I had frozen. This is very open to adaptation, so be sure to use what you have laying around.

Ingredients:

Leftover chicken carcasses
Water
Carrots, cleaned and cut into pieces
Egg noodles
Salt and pepper, to taste
Chopped fresh parsley (optional)

Directions:

In a large pot, place your chicken scraps -- frozen or from a chicken you just roasted. Cover with water (you could probably just fill the pot) and bring to the boil. Simmer for an hour or two. ** DO NOT be put off by this length of time! You do not need to do anything to it; in fact, it is BETTER if you do nothing. No stirring, no adding anything, NOTHING. Do not even add salt at this stage, because you probably salted your chicken when you roasted it. You can always add some later.

After an hour and a half or so, taste the broth. If you feel like it needs some salt and pepper you can add it now if you wish. Also, if you feel like it is not flavorful enough, let it cook another 30-45 minutes. This will allow more water to evaporate and give you more flavor. If it seems too flavorful, add some water.

When you feel that the stock is in good shape, strain out the chicken bits. I use a pot with a strainer that sits inside the pot so that all I have to do is lift out the strainer and toss the pieces into the trash can. Feel free to grab pieces of chicken out of this though if you see some good pieces. I know I do not always get all the meat off the bones when I carve my chicken.

Now, drop in your carrots and return your stock to the boil. When they are a little tender add your noodles. Or, you can do what I do and add the noodles and carrots all at once. The noodles end up more cooked but I'm ok with that and my family doesn't seem to mind.