Foodie update

We've been having a lot of good meals lately aside from all the wonderful holiday food.  A few weeks back Nick and I made this roasted chicken.  This is a good alternative to the rosemary-sage roasted chicken we made back in October.  The rosemary-sage butter chicken was probably one of my family's favorite meals, but there is just so much butter that we can't do it all the time.  At this point I can't remember if this recipe was off the top of our heads or a recipe I saw.  I've put a recipe below of pretty much what we did.  I do remember that we shoved garlic and red onions under the skin, which made it very tasty.  We tossed it in EVOO before shoving it into the oven.  We also made garlic noodles and my own concoction of anchovy broccoli.  Now, I know a lot of people are squeamish about anchovies, but they give such a nutty, full flavor to whatever you put it in.  I highly suggest trying them.  I've used the paste in spaghetti sauce before and it made such a difference.  This time I minced up whole fillets until it was practically a paste and threw it in with the broccoli.  It was soo good.  Since I'm not a fish lover I haven't tried whole fillets, but minced up for flavoring is amazing.

Roasted Chicken with Red Onions

5-7 chicken thighs and drumsticks, separated

2 red onions, eighthed

1 bulb garlic, whole cloves

Thyme sprigs

Salt and Pepper

EVOO

Directions

Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  Liberally salt and pepper chicken parts.  (I try to use more pepper than salt for my Dad's blood pressure.) Pull apart two pieces of onion so that you have a bunch of separate thin layers.  Gently lift the skin away from the chicken and slide one to two onion pieces and a piece of garlic in between the skin and flesh.  Place chicken, onions, remaining garlic cloves and thyme in a foil covered roaster pan.  Coat with EVOO and toss with hands so that they are all evenly coated.  Place chicken so that skin is facing up.  Roast in oven for 45 min to 1 hour or until juices run clear.  

Anchovy Broccoli

1 can anchovies in EVOO, pasted

4 cloves garlic, minced

3-4 bunches of broccoli, bite sized pieces

5-6 Tbsp water

Salt and Pepper to taste

Directions:

Mince anchovy filets into a course paste, reserving EVOO in can.  Sautee anchovies in regular EVOO until fragrant and then add garlic and reserved EVOO stirring constantly.  Add raw broccoli, toss in anchovy mixture.  Add water and cover for 3-4 minutes to steam.  Salt and pepper to taste.    

A couple of weekends ago we also had a crab night.  Yum yum!  My favorite thing ever!  Briana and I had gone to have Pho and then popped over to Ranch 99 to get crabs for my dad to cook up that night.  It was a pretty fun day.   Christopher had helped me get out all of our Christmas stuff, so I started decorating the tree while Briana did her homework.  I can't remember where the rest of the family was, but it was just the two of us listening to Glee Christmas in front of the fire while I got sentimental about all of our ornaments.  I'm turning into my mother.







I didn't think that crab would be enough to fill us so I made a soup too.  It was good, but we had way to much, as always.  If you want to cut back on the salt use less bouillon.

Soup Noodles

1 onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

3 jalapenos, sliced

1 32oz box chicken stock

4 cups water

5 tbsp chicken bouillon 

1 pack fresh Korean noodles (found in the refrigerator section of Ranch 99)

Baby bok choy, cut in half

Directions

Par boil noodles and set aside, strained.  In same pot sauté onions, garlic, and jalapenos.  (I didn't deseed the jalapenos.)  Once vegetables are soft, add chicken stock, water, and bouillon.  Bring to a boil and add bok choy.  Cook bok choy until they are bright green.  Portion strained noodles into bowls and ladle soup over noodles.  

Note:  If you have left over noodles, don't add them to your soup to store.  Keep them separate until you go to eat it otherwise the noodles will absorb all the soup and be gummy.  

Some Emmy pictures:






She wasn't very happy about this picture, but she knows to listen to her mommy when she's stuck like this.





A couple of weekends ago Nick and I went to a disco themed birthday dinner and roller skating for one of his coworker's birthday.  We got her a nice scarf and this is the card that I made.  Nick borrowed my Dad's shirt that he bought for canoeing.  We were all surprised that he could fit it since he is so much bigger than my dad.  In my Dad's defense, he needed something bright that wasn't cotton so that if he he got lost he would be easier to find.



The Meyer Sale. Ah, the Meyer Sale.  Meyer is an umbrella company for some well known kitchen retailers like Anolon, FarberWare, Circulon, Kitchen Aid, SilverStone, and Bonjour.  They also had a lot of Rachel Ray and Paula Deen stuff there too.  On Saturday Nick drove my mom and me up to Fairfield to have brunch and go to the Meyer Sale.  He had gone last weekend with his cousin and sister.  Mrs. Ryan usually tells us about it every year, but since she changed jobs and is now working for Lowe's and not Meyer, she forgot. When we reminded her she jumped at the opportunity and met us up there.  I made away like a bandit.  Not only was this their year end sale so everything was already marked down, but we also had a 30% off coupon.  I got myself new two cookie sheets, two cake pans, a pasta fork, slotted spatula, ladle, and new cutting board.  My mom got herself the rest of what you see below including some of the same tools as me.  We also picked up quite a few gifts too.




Size comparison for board.  It's 15x15 raised cutting board.  I love it.



Since I had gotten new cake pans I wanted to test them out.  I just used a box mix, but it was still fun to do.  I've never seen a bake pull away from the pan like this before.  I also made my own frosting out of powdered sugar.  I gave the cake to Nick since I don't really like sweets.  He said that the cake was kind of oily.  I guess I will have to do it from scratch next time.  I was just trying to take the easy way out and practice my decorating skills.







On Sunday I had an urge to try out my new cookie sheets.  I made butter cookies from allrecipes.  I can't find the link right now.  The cookies themselves are okay and didn't take that long to make the dough, but the press I used was the biggest hassel ever.  I won't be using it anymore.  I've been developing a little bit of carpel tunnel in my right hand from using my mouse and chopping so much garlic so this didn't help it at all.  I had to press so hard on the handle that both of my forearms were sore the next day.  It took me a total of 3.5 hours to make about three dozen cookies.  It's back to round cookies for me.  I think even rolling out the dough and using a cookie cutter is easier than this and I think cookie cutters are a lot of work!  But all in all, I loved the pans!  I was in a rush to finish the last few batches so unfortunately they weren't cooked all the way through my mom said.  I had to get to Nick's house so that we could go to Oakland for his grandma's birthday dinner.  Oh, that was yummy.  So much seafood.  Family!  Listen to this, Nick's family all fits at one big table!  Including his little cousins!  When was the last time our family was able to do that?










After all that baking I had to rejuvenate myself by doing a lot of cooking.  On Monday I made a shrimp scampi with garlic noodles, which was good as always.  Last night I tried something different.  I've been craving fish for some reason even though I don't like fish so I planned to make fish tacos.  The problem was that I ended up going to sushi with Nick's family the night before so I was all fished out.  I didn't think the fish that I made was that great and it was cold by the time I got everything on the table so no one else liked it that much either.  I did make my own Spanish rice and a stewed zucchini dish.  Those turned out really well.  The rice was so much better than the boxed Spanish rice.  I will definitely be making both again.


I did have a picture with my dad smiling but it was really blurry.



In other news, it's going to get really hectic around here.  Well, it already is, but it will become more so.  This year Christopher and I will be hosting Christmas dinner with my mom's side of the family.  I have everything planned out down to the half hour starting Christmas Eve.  I was originally planning to work a half day on Christmas Eve, but after looking at all of the stuff I have to prepare for I decided that I need to take it off.  The day after Christmas Jen Jen is having a baby shower for Josie, which I'm very involved in.  We've been planning for the last two weeks to figure out what we're doing.  Now that the time is getting closer we're both starting to feel the stress, but I think we have a handle on it now.  So for Christmas weekend I'm going to be very busy.  It's a good thing Christopher is helping me and Nick said that he would come and help with the cooking for Josie's shower and then take off before all the ladies come.  I probably would be broken out in pimples and have no hair if I didn't have their help.

Happy Holidays

Happy holidays everyone!  Not much to report this week since I saw most of you just a few days ago.  Well I guess there are a few things.  The Big Game was terrible.  The tailgate was as good as ever, but Cal lost sooo terribly that we were debating leaving early.  We did stay until the end though because I wanted to follow the band through the tunnel since this was the only game I went to this year. Nick was unable to go because he had a wedding to shoot in Santa Clara so Linda came with me instead.  Besides the fact that we were freezing and the Bears got creamed, we had a pretty good time.  We were really worried about rain, but it didn't start pouring until we were about to go home so my dad drove us down to the Bart station.  I was also a little worried that Emmy would have a freakout attack when Pierce was doggy sitting her, but he said that after she got over us all leaving she fell asleep and he watched Disney movies all day.  Not bad at all.

Table flowers

Chocolate stuffed cookies that I saw on Giada at Home.  I can't find the link to the recipe, but I won't be making these anymore because they were way too sweet and more work than I usually spend on cookies.

Linda keeping warm with a cookie and some wine.

Josie is having a baby!  She announced it at Thanksgiving dinner via Google chat and Jen Jen's phone.   I already talked to Jen Jen and I will be helping with her  baby shower.  How exciting!  Our family is growing in leaps and bounds.

In other news, I will no longer be going to Paris and Dubai with Nick's family.  We weren't sure when the exact dates that we were going were, but just found out that it's the exact same time as my parents' Panama cruise.  Originally Nick thought that it was going to be at the end of March to the beginning of April, which would have been perfect since my parents' trip is at the end of April to May.  We were having dinner with his sister when she set us straight.  That was the end of that.  All these months of looking forward to going abroad were squashed with one phone call to Kuwait.  Since Emmy is living with me now I can't just leave her here or dump her on Christopher when he has school.  We don't know what Christopher's school schedule is or if Emmy will be trained well enough to be left home while he's gone by the time I need to get my plane tickets, which is very soon.  She's making progress, but I'm not sure if she will be 100% okay to be left at home for hours while Christopher is at school.  I guess sometimes you have to make sacrifices for the ones you love.  I'm much more willing to miss a trip than Emmy not having a loving home.  There will always be other exciting trips to go on.

At first I was really disappointed because I really, really wanted to go to Dubai, but it was a pretty big financial burden that was lifted off of my shoulders.  I was already having difficulty saving for a plane ticket, but once Emmy came fully back into the picture I was really beginning to worry about what I was going to do.  I was planning on taking money out of savings so that I could go on the trip, but wasn't really to keen on the idea.  Now I don't have to worry about that.  Nick was very disappointed also, but he's still going and has been to both places multiple times so I told him he couldn't be more disappointed than me.  I've been to Paris before, but only for two nights and a day so it would have been nice to be able to see more of the city and do some shopping.  We just keep reminding ourselves that we'll have the rest of our lives to travel together and I'm sure there will be other opportunities.  Nick has been wanting to go to New Orleans so maybe when he has some time off we can go there.  I've also been wanting to visit Shanna in North Carolina so this might be a good thing for us.  With the big trip I didn't think I'd have any money or time off to do anything.  I'm feeling much better about it now, especially since Christmas is coming and I worried that I'd send myself into debt with shopping, training, and the plane ticket.

Just a few additional pictures that I took with my phone.  I really need to get a phone with a better camera.  Whenever I try to take pictures of Emmy I have to be stealthy and pulling out a camera usually makes her turn the other way.  She doesn't seem to mind the phone as much, probably because I'm always texting on it and she doesn't associate it with a giant eye being pointed at her.  Maybe it's time to invest in a smart phone with a good camera.  I also use it a lot just because it's close by and I'm too lazy to go get my camera in my room.  Hehe.


It's a "Where's Waldo" Emmy





I've realized that Emmy prefers going to play frisbee more than our 3 milers (as if I should have been surprised) so I've been lazy and driving her to the park to throw the frisbee with her.  We did do a walk today since it wasn't that cold, but I've been really lazy about walking this week.  The park that we walk around has huge fields so she has plenty of room to run.  This one is in an area that isn't very open and fewer people and bikers go by.  When we walked by it this morning she really wanted to go play but realized that I didn't bring her frisbee along.  Having this field makes it easy for when I don't feel like walking but she needs some good running in.


Belly rubbing by Uncle Christophee


I got up one night to go to the bathroom and Emmy was sleeping belly up on her bed.



Spending some quality time with Nick


My mom's new fridge.  She's been wanting one for a long time and finally broke down and got a bigger one.  



Emmy and I also have started Clicker Training (I actually bought this lady's book and clickers) this week.  We've only been doing it for a couple of days, but she's responding really well.  I have a book on how to train different things, but so far we're just working on her being okay with me taking my keys out of the drawer.  She's getting the hang of it. When I take my keys out her tail starts wagging.  Good enough for me!