Bill made us another melt with apple and onion!  This time with Bison from the farm down the road.  We are loving this apple and onion thing.

A FEAST was had with friends over the weekend.  15 folks, everyone brought Indian food.  We had it all, even the accoutrement.  I could eat that lime pickle all day.

Beautiful relishes, raitas, and condiments.

Remember those samosas I put into the freezer?  Perfect timing.

And here are some of the highlights; Cauliflower, lamb, shrimp, wonderful flatbreads, and of course Tandoori Chicken.

Yummy cream scones on Sunday morning for Meet the Press, with backyard raspberries and mini chocolate chips.

I hammered out a whole chicken breast from Beaver Creek Ranch, then caked it in bread crumbs and a little parmesan cheese:

After it is cold, I cut half of it for sandwiches tomorrow, and the other half for Caeser Salad tonight.

Here’s the Salad: Romaine, egg, olive oil, lemon, Lea and perrin’s, homemade croutons, and parmesan cheese.  And LOTS of garlic and anchovy.

Sandwiches for tomorrow have Sundried Tomato Pesto, basil, lettuce, chicken, and a little mayo.

Sad to take out the LAST homemade stuffing from Thanksgiving out of the freezer.  I save homemade stale bread all year, use way more butter than you should, and sage from the garden.  Easy to make mushroom gravy with some dried mushrooms I had laying around.

Cowboy pasta—I take my spaghetti sauce from the garden and add what seems like too much balsamic- somehow it ends up tasting just like BBQ!  I dunno.

My favorite way to eat.  Just take everything out of the fridge!

And finally, I have some weekend time to be in my kitchen.  Remember the potato salad that I brought up to the cabin?  I was trying to do too much at once when I was making that, and overcooked my first batch of potatoes.  So I threw them in the freezer and started over.  Now I took them out and a friend and I shot the breeze and made samosas for our freezers.  Here is the filling; potatoes, peas, kale, curry, onion, garlic, ginger.

And here is more future food in my freezer!

Out with friends to celebrate a birthday on Saturday night.  The Jerk Lavosh at Zanzibar in Menomonie—the sauce is really good.

Some leftover samosa filling is perfect from one of my favorite, simple-but-good recipies from mark Bittman.  1 cup flour, 1 tsp salt, and 1 can coconut milk.  Oil in a very hot pan, pour it in, fill with anything, cook until a crust forms on the bottom, and then bake for 45 minutes.  Yummy, rich bread.

Good hot or cold.

Made some energy bars for my husband’s lunches.  Coconut, flax, prunes, raisins, almonds, orange juice, chocolate chips.  All wrapped and ready in the freezer, otherwise we’d eat the whole pan.  That’s how we do cookies too- I mix up a batch, portion them out using an ice cream scoop, and put them in the freezer.  We can bake up two cookies in our little toaster oven, and not feel guilty!

And FINALLY I’ve had some time to make bread.  Although when I sprayed the inside of my oven to get a good steam in there, I hit the very hot oven bulb in there and exploded it.  I would prefer that bread baking be CALMING instead of DANGEROUS…

I continue my long week-plus away from home with one last homemade meal at my sisters before I go to Tucson, Az.  Four year old Parker picks TACOS!!!  Vegetarian Taco Filling from Fantastic Foods is one of my favorite "I can't believe it's not really meat" products.

Then I’m off to Tucson for a National Cooperative Grocer’s Association meeting.  All-you-can-eat conference food three times a day.  Here are some samples:

BBQ:

Asian:

Italian:

Soup and salad:

Mexican:

And now I fly back to Madison to stay with my sister again and see a hockey game.  Although all I want is my kitchen, we have a few days to go.  Here’s Friday Night Fish Fry at a great little bar in Middleton call the Village Green.  If you order a burger, they slide it off of a tray onto your table; no baskets, no plates.

After this week of overeating, you couldn’t PAY me to have nachos or a chilidog at the hockey game, so here was my 11pm dinner at my sister’s:

And home, finally, too late to cook in time to watch the SuperBowl, so a sandwich.  I can’t wait to go to the grocery store!

Monday night, homemade beef barley soup with smoked pulled beef from a great bbq joint in Eau Claire, and bison broth from the freezer.  Barley makes even the simplest soup hearty.

Next night, more soup and my favorite parsnips recipe: Parsnips, a roux with milk, mustard, and ham. YUM.  And salad.

,

Another clean-out-the-fridge meal.  Tortillas, corn, and beans from the freezer, and whatever veggies we have from the fridge.  The inspiration was the lonely avocado on the countertop that looked pretty iffy.  Layer it all up and throw it in the toaster oven.

Friends over for dinner and a movie.  Used up the rest of the tomato sauce from last week’s pasta party, and friends brought a lovely salad with cranberries, tangerines, pistachios, scallions, feta, and sesame dressing.  And Bill made garlic bread with way more butter than I would have used—just how I like it!

AND NOW… I’m on the road for more than a week, so no kitchen time!  We’ll see how this goes.  First, to my fabulous sister’s for the weekend.  Took the picture at the very end of the meal, but we havd a lovely visit to Ginza’s of Tokyo in Madison, WI.  Sushi, hibachi, and tempura. 

Then lasagna at home, with carrots, zucchini, corn, cottage cheese, sauce, parmesan.  And delicious homemade bread. 

More sandwich leftovers from the weekend at the cabin; here’s a cheese melt sandwich with those fab roasted tomatoes and lots of red onion.

Bill made this great pasta with kalamata olives for zip.

Friday night date night with Bill.  We started out with one of my FAVORITE cheeses, Castle Rock Smokey Blue Cheese.  Made in Osseo, WI.

And a special meal—shrimp scampi with olive oil, garlic, rosemary, and lemon.  Baked potato and broccoli.

Pancakes, Coffee, and Meet the Press on Sunday morning  My favorite way to use local maple syrup.

And off to our friends Dana and Noah’s for a traditional Italian dinner with homemade pasta.  Here we are crankin’ it out!

Our meal was herbed squash ravioli, tomato sauce from my garden tomatoes, Caesar salad, and a citrus/salami/bean/celery/olive salad.  Everything was fantastic, and we have lots of leftover homemade fettuccini to dry for another day.

And what’s an Italian dinner without tiramisu?  Espresso-soaked ladyfingers, ricotta, cream, chocolate, and egg. 

Sort of slacked off on the pictures this week.

And the food.  The theme this week would be convenience and comfort food, as Bill and I both had a busy and away from home week.  Here’s a pizza we pulled out of the freezer; whenever we decide to make pizza, we make three or four all at once and throw the extras in the freezer, for nights like these.  Our homemade pizza sauce from the garden, and the three packs of organic pizza crusts from the co-op make it an easy project.

And nachos the next night, under the broiler.  Can of refried beans, and clean-out-the-fridge.

Here’s a creamy risotto made with turkey stock from Thanksgiving, and a blend of Italian cheeses.

And then it’s off to Birchwood, WI for a weekend getaway at a cabin with eleven of us friends.  I love to eat this way—everybody brought something, and we shared our food all weekend.  Here’s a sandwich  and salad board so folks could pack up a lunch and head out to their winter activity of choice—remember those roasted tomatoes I made and didn’t know how I would use them?  They were great on these sandwiches.

Potato salad and quinoa salad.

Delicious Bloody Mary anyone?

We had “buck balls” made from venison, a great casserole with Chanterelles found by a guest earlier in the year, and lots of wonderful food.

Your typical cabin breakfast.

I finished off the weekend of eating with a bowl of homemade soup from the Birchwood Café.