French Toast With Orange Butter

Okay so today was a cheat day (every now and then you just gotta!), that began with French toast.  I never really had French toast growing up (my mother has an aversion to anything "eggy"), so I love to make it now and experiment with different flavors. This morning we made French toast with orange zest and topped with an orange butter.  

Start by making the butter the night before. Allow 1/2 stick of unsalted butter to come to room temperature. Put in a small bowl along with 1 tsp orange zest and 1 tsp fresh orange juice.  Stir to combine and then place in plastic wrap to harden in the fridge.  It's easiest to do it the night before so you don't have to wait for the butter to get cold and hard.

When you're ready to start making the French toast, crack 4 eggs in a large, shallow bowl along with 1 tsp orange zest, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 3 tablespoons sugar, and 1 cup half and half.  Whisk to break yokes and combine.  Meanwhile, slice 1/2 inch thick slices of challah bread and soak in custard.

Heat butter over a hot skillet (did I mention Ryan got me a really nice Calphalon skillet for Christmas?!) and add custard-soaked bread slices. Cook for a few minutes on each side until they're golden brown.

Serve French toast with orange butter and maple syrup.  Even Carter got in on the French toast action.  (Apologies for the paper plates, all the regular ones are in the dishwasher!)

We try to not to splurge on breakfast very often, but when you do, this is the way to do it!!

Shrimp Scampi With Spinach

While I love traditional Americanized shrimp scampi with lots of butter and pasta, this version is healthier and still has the flavor of scampi (minus the butter). While nothing really replaces the deliciousness that is pasta, sauteed spinach does make a good substitute.

Start by heating a large clove of garlic (smashed) in 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium heat.  When garlic starts to get fragrant (about 5 minutes or less), remove from pan but leave the oil. Keep the garlic and mince. 

Next, add a dozen (or more) peeled and deveined shrimp to the same saute pan, still over medium heat, and season with salt and red pepper flakes.  Cook until shrimp and almost cooked through (their shape will become like "C's" and turn pink.  

Add the juice of 2 lemons to that pan.

Then, add 12 oz of baby spinach to the pan (it'll look like a ton, but it'll wilt down a lot) and the minced garlic used to flavor the oil earlier. 

Continue cooking and stirring until the spinach is wilted.  Check for seasoning and add more salt and red pepper flake if needed.  

Serve as is, or over rice and enjoy!

Bowtie Pasta With Sausage & Broccoli Rabe

In an effort to eat a little bit healthier (and to counteract the leftover birthday cake) we made this pasta dish.  It'd probably be even better with turkey or chicken sausage, but none of the selection at the store today looked that tasty.  We'd never tried broccoli rabe before, but thought it was pretty good, like a cross between spinach and broccoli.

For this dish, start by heating 2 tablespoon of olive oil in a dutch oven over medium-high heat.  When the oil is heated, add 5 sliced links of hot Italian sausages.

Cook until sausage starts to brown (don't worry about them cooking all the way through), then add 1 heaping tablespoon of chopped garlic.

Cook for 1 minute, stirring constantly so the garlic doesn't burn. Then add 1/2 cup of red wine and 1 can of crushed tomatoes (1 large can or 2 smaller ones), along with a handful of freshly chopped Italian parsley and basil.

When liquid starts to bubble, turn heat down to low.  Continue to cook until ready to eat (the longer the better!). It should reduce and thicken the sauce.  Taste to seasoning.  

Meanwhile, wash and de-stem the broccoli rabe.

In a large stockpot, boil some salted water.  Add the broccoli rabe and cook for 2-3 minutes, or until starting to wilt.

Then using a pasta scooper, add the broccoli rabe to the sauce (it's ok if some of the cooking liquid gets in the sauce too).

In the same stock pot, cook 1/2 box of Barilla Plus bowtie until al dente.  When pasta is cooked, strain and add to the same pot as the sauce (it allows the pasta to absorb the sauce better than just scooping it on top).

Serve with fresh herbs and grated parmesan.

What To Do With All Those Leftovers??

Like most people who throw a party, one of the perks (or negatives depending on how you look at it) is leftovers.  Thank goodness we have a huge fridge that we were able to store everything! We've since discovered that Carter loves chicken meatballs, so that takes care of those.  We were trying to decide what to do with the pulled pork leftovers (there's only so many sandwiches you can make!) and came up with the idea of quesadillas.  They came out so good!

Ingredients for Pulled Pork Quesadillas:

4 cups of bbq pulled pork
2 medium onions, sliced thinly
1 cup sauteed mushrooms
1/2 cup whatever your favorite bbq sauce
Whole wheat tortillas (2 per quesadilla)
1 tablespoon butter, plus more
1 tablespoon olive oil
Salt and pepper
2 cups shredded mozzarella

In a small frying pan, over medium heat, add 1 tablespoon butter and olive oil. Once the butter has melted, add the onions and season.  Cook for 20 minutes, stirring often, or until caramelized.  Add the cooked pulled pork and mushrooms and the bbq sauce.  Turn heat down to low. Meanwhile in a skillet or a flat-top cooker, melt some butter and heat over medium heat.  To make the quesadilla, put one tortilla, then sprinkle with cheese, then a layer of the pulled pork/onion/mushroom mixture, then one more layer of cheese, and then top with another tortilla.  Heat as is for 5-8 minutes until cheese begins to melt, then flip so the top side of the tortilla can get heated through and browned.  Let quesadilla cool on a cutting board for a few minutes before cutting.  Serve with extra bbq sauce.  

Carter's First Birthday Party

On January 4th, Carter turned one year old.  I still can't believe it's been a whole year since he was born.  It's been the best year in my life.  Since it was such a momentous year, we wanted to celebrate and that's why we threw a birthday party for Carter and our close friends and family.  It was a great afternoon and Carter had a great time.  He got to crawl around with all his friends and get icing and cake in every crevice of his body!  To save money on catering, and plus I enjoyed cooking, we made the food for the party.  Everything was easy to prepare and able to be made ahead of time, so I could enjoy the party instead of cooking the whole time.  We made bbq pulled pork, chicken meatballs with marinara, cheddar and cayenne macaroni and cheese, kielbasa, and an assortment of crudities (my wonderful mother helped with those).  We have tons of leftovers, but they've all been delicious!  I had so much fun planning his party, I wish I could help out other people!  

Our birthday boy

Crudities

Iced Tea and Lemonade

Guest book

Party favors ("C" shaped cookies)

First taste of cake

Even daddy got in on the action

Vacation with Carter

Over Christmas we took Carter on his second vacation ever and first big road trip. The furthest we've gone with him before in the car was to Tampa, so driving all the way to Northern Georgia was a bit daunting of a task.  We left at 7 in the morning and the first few hours of the trip were a breeze, but when we got to the Valdosta area, Carter started to get fed up.  But after stopping for awhile, he was good to go until we got to just south of Atlanta.  Right around when Carter was reaching full crankiness, we hit a huge traffic jam.  Because we didn't want to drive on our cabin's crazy mountain dirt road at night and we couldn't make Carter sit in the carseat any longer (it was so tempting to take him out of the seat and hold him, but we didn't risk it), we decided to stay the night in Atlanta.  We got a good deal at a hotel downtown and ended up having a nice night sitting in the lounge at the Ruth Chris's and walking around Centennial park.  In the morning we took our time and arrived at our cabin in Blue Ridge, GA a little before lunch time.  My parents had arrived the day before with the dogs.  We had a great time on our week's stay there, complete with a little snow too! One of the most fun things we did was take a train ride up to Tennessee through the gorgeous  Northern Georgian countryside and rivers.  We also really enjoyed walking around downtown Blue Ridge.  If you're ever in the area, you must eat at Harvest on Main. It held it's own to some of the meals we've had in Vegas, New York, etc.   The ride home was a little rough with more traffic jams and Carter getting fed up, but we made it without staying the night somewhere.  It was really great spending Christmas in the mountains with my parents and Carter, made for a great memory of his first Christmas.  It was a lot different than our past vacations (pre-baby).  We've always gone to big cities and done a million things during our trips.  This time it was all about relaxing and spending time with family.  We're looking forward to future trips with Carter (and even Sadie too).  We hope everyone had a great holiday and a happy new year!

Carter playing with a measuring cup, who needs toys?!

Christmas morning with Grandpa, and Sadie keeping a close eye on all the presents

What's in here?

Crawling around on the deck

Brrr, Christmas day

Family time!

Grandpa, Ryan, and Carter getting the fire pit ready for hot dogs and smores, yum!

Ryan and Carter posing in front of the mountains, the top of which is covered in snow 

New Years Eve Dinner/ New Years Day brunch

For the past few years now, Ryan and I have stayed home, cooked an amazing dinner, drank champagne (except last year when it was sparkling grape juice), rented movies, and avoided the chaos of amateur hour that is NYE.  I feel like there's always so much pressure to have "the best night ever" on New Years, and it never lives up to the hype.  Our relaxing celebration was even more fun this year with Carter here (although the fireworks around did wake him up once...seriously when did it become like 4th of July?!).  We splurged and went to Whole Foods to get the ingredients for our dinner.  Our menu was grilled dry-aged NY strip steak, lemon poached lobster tail, risotto, marsala mushrooms, and of course champagne! We hope everyone had a terrific start to 2013.

The poaching liquid for the lobster tails, 2 sliced onions, bunch of fresh thyme, and 8 cups of seafood stock

2 pints of button mushrooms, simmered in butter and marsala wine along with fresh thyme (so good, especially because they were simmered for 3 hours)

2 spiny lobster tails

Grilled to perfection to medium-rare thanks to Ryan

Not a bad way to spend a NYE!

For breakfast/brunch this morning we had paprika and sweet onions home fries with scrambled eggs. For the potatoes, we sauteed 1 large, sliced sweet onion in 2 tablespoons of olive and 1 tablespoon butter and season with salt and pepper over medium heat for 10 minutes, until they were just turning brown. 

Browned onions

 After the onions were browned, we added the diced Yukon gold potatoes (4 of them)

Add the potatoes to the same frying pan, and add 1 more tablespoon each of butter and olive oil.  Add 1 tablespoon smoked paprika and season with salt and pepper.  Cook over medium heat with a lid on for 10 minutes.  When potatoes have started to get soft, add the onions back in the pan, and continue to cook (with a lid) for another 10 minutes, stirring every 2-3 minutes so that the potatoes/onions on the bottom of the pan don't get burnt.

After adding the onions back in the frying pan

Continue cooking until potatoes are crispy around the edges and easily pierced with a fork.  Serve with some soft-scrambled eggs (whisk 4 eggs with 1 tablespoon half and half and cook over low heat until softly curdled).