My little helper!

Anna has decided that she really likes to help me in the kitchen. For her birthday a friend gave her a Williams Sonoma cookbook. She has spent a lot of time pouring over the recipes and deciding what she wants to make. This weekend we had friends over for dinner. I made Pioneer Womens Pot Roast. This was such an amazing recipe. I have made a few pot roasts in the last 12 years and this one topped all of them. I think it might be caramelizing the veggies and cooking at such a low temp for such a long time. If you haven't it then I would highly recommend this recipe! I served it with PW's spinach salad, roasted green beans, cheesey bread and salty caramel brownies with ice-cream and espresso.

French Onion Soup Round 4

My husband loves French Onion Soup and I love my husband so I have been trying different recipes to find the "perfect recipe".  It is all just a matter of preference to what you really want in your soup. After using 1/4 of a cup of chopped garlic in todays recipe, I am not sure if anyone will want to be close to me at the gym tomorrow. Todays recipe was really good! It had the right balance of wine, caramelized onions, garlic and broth. I think one of the keys is to really cook the onion over low for40 minutes. They should be a dark, rich color. I found the recipe from Cuisine at Home Splendid Soups.

Sweat in Olive Oil and butter then caramelize:

2 yellow onions and 2 red onions sliced thin

1/4 cup chopped garlic

2 TBS Olive Oil

1/4 cup butter

Add And Reduce:

1 cup dry wine

1/3 cup dry sherry

Stir In: Add and Simmer

3TBS flour

3 Cups Beef  Broth

3 Cups Chicken Broth

1 TBS thyme

salt and pepper to taste

8 slice french bread

1 cup gruyere cheese

1/2 cup parmesan

Sweat onion and garlic in oil and butter for 40 minutes. Add wine and sherry, cook until wine evaporates, stirring often.

Stir in flour and cook 1 minute. Add broths, thyme, salt and pepper: bring to simmer and cook another 10 minutes.

Toast bread under broiler. Ladle soup into bowls, arrange on baking sheet and then top with bread and then cheese. Broil another 1-2 minutes or until cheese melts. Enjoy!

Our New Kitchen

Mark spent the last few days tiling a backsplash in our  kitchen! I love how it turned out.  I am so glad that I married such a "handy" man. He has big plans for the rest of our house as well. I will post pictures later of our bathroom that he tiled.  It has been a crazy week in Ohio. We have only had school 2 of the 5 days. We took the kids to COSI today. What an amazing childrens museum it is! We would highly recommend a day at this fun Science Museum! 

Our big snowstorm!

We have had so much snow! It is always so much fun the first time it snows. The kids want to play outside, build snow forts and go sledding. The favorite way to warm up is with hot coco and lots of marshmallows. Anna also celebrated her 8th birthday at Barnes and Nobles with a book party. She had allot of fun picking out books and doing a craft with her friends.

Shrimp Bisque

Jennifer of Blessed Home chose this months recipe from Barefoot Bloggers for Shrimp Bisque. I am in great need of a new camera. I don't think you are supposed to have to hit the camera for it to turn on?! Please ignore the fuzzy photo! This was such a wonderfully delightful soup. I had a little problem assembling all of the ingredients’. We went to the store twice for tomato paste. It was one of those days that nothing seemed to go as planned. I served this with crusty French bread and roasted garlic. Between my husband and self we consumed an entire head of the roasted garlic. I bet that is why the treadmills on both side of me were empty at the gym the next day... Definitely a hit in our household and we will be making this again in the near future. I don't think I enjoyed peeling all the shrimp but it really did add allot of flavor to the stock.

Tuesday is the new Thursday for me....

I am supposed to post for Barefoot Bloggers on Thursdays but for some reason I can't seem to get it together and make it on time. I have decided that Tuesday will be my new Thursday that way I am always ahead instead of behind....  Todd of A Cooking Dad has chosen Indonesian Ginger Chicken. This is the kind of recipe that 75% of my family will eat. All I needed to do was add some brown rice and a fresh salad and dinner was served. I enjoyed the flavours of the ginger, soy, garlic and honey. I also used a little brown sugar in my marinade. My husband and I both love spicey food. We always have chili oil made ahead of time to add to our food. It was a definite "must" for this dish. I would say that this recipe is a keeper. How can you go wrong on a 5 ingrediant meal? I chose to use thighs since it was the only chicken that I had in the freezer with the bone in it. I will go for the white meat next time. I would also add some gingered carrots from Trader Joes for some extra vegies. Thanks Todd for the great choice!

Learning how to make Curry Chicken...

 We have friends/neighbors living here from Australia.  I have been wanting Thili to show me how to make her famous Chicken Curry. She showed me how to prepare three of her special dishes and then we enjoyed a great dinner together. Our dinner consisted of Thai beef salad, Chicken Curry with steamed rice and Dahl (red lentils with chilis, garlic and tumeric).  The combination of flavours and spices were amazing. She has promised to show me how to make Butter Chicken next! It was a fun evening enjoying there company and eating wonderful food! Thanks for the cooking lesson Thili!