A Beautiful Day for Bluegrass! 8/13

Real BBQ Chicken 8/9

The amazing grill-top again at work! The best kept chicken secret is the boneless, skinless chicken thigh. (This is not health food!) They are inexpensive, always tender and juicy and make some really yummy BBQ chicken!

The zucchini plants did well this summer, as you can see. There is nothing better than smoky grilled vegetables fresh from Dad's house on a summer evening. We have been talking about having a winter BBQ - maybe so!

Tofu Stir Fry

Minus the wok!

Blueberry Milk Shake 8/7

Here is a taste of summer... 7/31/11

It is snow, changing over to sleet outside and I am baking as much as I can during this cozy snow day! Since I am refilling the camera with new photos - I realized that it is time to bite the bullet and catch up on this blogging. Unfortunately I am really late and so the food that I am posting will make you long for a warm evening in July or August. Sorry about that!

This past Sunday, I bought our "Christmas tree" and it is sitting on the table in front of me. Trader Joe's did it again! They easily delivered Christmas to this little apartment when there was never a hope for holiday decorations.

It is an amazing little Rosemary tree! I LOVE IT! It smells great, tastes great and you can plant it outside in the spring or you can keep it in the house. It came with a little booklet of care instructions and the history and lore. I learned that Rosemary is latin for "Dew of the Sea." It has a strong association with lovers fidelity and memory, so it was used in wedding ceremonies. (That is what the booklet said.)

Anyway - back on topic! Dad's zucchini and Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate. I don't have to say anything else. When these muffins bake, they usually rise very little. I should adjust the soda or powder, but in a way, it makes the muffin a little more cake-like.

The batter is creamy and smooth. With the bitter chocolate, you feel like you are eating dessert. This is an amazing feat for this particular batter.

Eggs, olive oil, honey, vanilla, flour, wheat germ, wheat bran and zucchini. Sounds to me like health food! Another great thing about this recipe is that you can substitute just about any "mix-ins" that you can dream up.

Brian's Spicy Thai Sweet Potato Pile 7/26/11

Bacon...again...sweet potato fries from the freezer section, homemade thai chili sauce, fresh cilantro and green onion. I grabbed my fork and crammed as many as I could fit, into my mouth.

Delightfully tasty, tangy, salty, sour, sweet, spicy, crunchy, chewy, warm and mushy! Everything possible all on one plate - made by Brian!!!!

My First Carbonara

Sounds pretty fancy doesn't it? Also creamy and buttery too right? Somehow NO! This is the lactose-intolerant-girl's creamy pasta recipe dream. We started with some pancetta and green onion - just as Rachel Ray recommends.

The sauce is amazing - lemon juice, egg yolks, olive oil, white wine and spices. It is quite rich and tasty but doesn't take much time to prepare.

It is tangy and creamy - also, since you add the hard cheese at the end, you can make pretend it is Alfredo sauce...

To finish off the dish, we added italian sausage and broccoli. It is truly necessary to eat 2 pork products in one meal sometimes. It makes sense that when you are making a sauce with egg yolks, you kind of need to add pancetta and sausage. Adding the broccoli must balance the fat content...I think!