SAFETY FIRST

I know letting a dog ride in the front seat of your car is not very safe, but isn’t she adorable?

Busy weekend, and I don’t really feel like I accomplished very much, or maybe I just have too much I want to accomplish. Spent Friday evening at the 1 year anniversary party of Lisa’s massage and personal training place, then fell asleep with 2 pages left of a Thousand Splendid Suns. Saturday I had breakfast with Ryan, volunteered at Pet Supplies Plus with the Manchester Dog Owners Group, tart frozen yogurt (yum!) and cruising West Hartford Center with Stefania, and Pizza at Cathy’s with Jenna & Colleen. Today – Michelle’s baby shower, grocery shopping, laundry, cooking, etc, etc, and still so much more I want to do! I guess there is always more to do!

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DAY 48 WITHOUT A MICROWAVE

It’s getting harder. We’re actually talking about when we might be forced to get one. We’re almost fantasizing about it. We’re discussing how we can’t imagine Thanksgiving leftovers without a microwave. So who wants to volunteer to bring their microwave over for Thanksgiving? I know Thanksgiving is 9 months away, but we have to be sure those leftover mashed potatoes will be steaming hot. And I cannot be forced to eat cold stuffing – yuck. So you’ll have to leave it with us for about a week. I think you can do it. We’ve been without for almost 50 days now!

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THREE-CHEESE CHICKEN PENNE FLORENTINE

Hopefully readers (the few that there are) don’t mind that I am posting a lot of recipes lately. I just love to share good recipes with friends! Last week Ryan and I doubled the receipe below so we could make some for us, and some for a good friend who was having surgery. It was delicious, and I’ve been talking about it ever since, so I decided to post the recipe. It was pretty easy to make, even though it did make a lot of dishes. The prep time took a little while, but it could be cut down by buying pre-sliced mushrooms – we used Baby Bellas. We also used a roasted whole chicken from the deli at Big Y. I’m sure you could make this vegetarian by eliminating the chicken, and substituting veggie broth for chicken broth. Enjoy!

Three-Cheese Chicken Penne Florentine

Fresh spinach, chicken, and a combination of cheeses make this dish comforting enough for the last days of winter yet fresh enough for the first days of spring. You also can cook the pasta mixture in individual eight-ounce ramekins; bake for 15 minutes.

Yield:8 servings (serving size: about 1 cup)

Ingredients

  • 1 teaspoon olive oil
  • Cooking spray
  • 3 cups thinly sliced mushrooms
  • 1 cup chopped onion
  • 1 cup chopped red bell pepper
  • 3 cups chopped fresh spinach
  • 1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
  • 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 (16-ounce) carton 2% low-fat cottage cheese
  • 4 cups hot cooked penne (about 8 ounces uncooked tube-shaped pasta)
  • 2 cups shredded roasted skinless, boneless chicken breast
  • 1 cup (4 ounces) shredded reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese, divided
  • 1/2 cup (2 ounces) grated fresh Parmesan cheese, divided
  • 1/2 cup 2% reduced-fat milk
  • 1 (10 3/4-ounce) can condensed reduced-fat, reduced-sodium cream of chicken soup, undiluted

Preparation

Preheat oven to 425°.

Heat olive oil in a large nonstick skillet coated with cooking spray over medium-high heat. Add mushrooms, onion, and bell pepper; sauté 4 minutes or until tender. Add spinach, oregano, and black pepper; sauté 3 minutes or just until spinach wilts.

Place cottage cheese in a food processor; process until very smooth. Combine spinach mixture, cottage cheese, pasta, chicken, 3/4 cup cheddar cheese, 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, milk, and soup in a large bowl. Spoon mixture into a 2-quart baking dish coated with cooking spray. Sprinkle with remaining 1/4 cup cheddar cheese and remaining 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese. Bake at 425° for 25 minutes or until lightly browned and bubbly.

Cooking Light, MARCH 2006

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRETCHEN!

Gretchen, Graham, Ryan and I took a quick getaway to NYC this weekend to celebrate Gretchen’s birthday. We stayed at Hotel 17, which was much nicer than our previous shared bathroom hotel stay at West End Studios. This time Ryan actually agreed to put his jammies on and get under the covers to sleep, instead of staying fully clothed and sleeping above the covers so as not to get bed bugs! The beds were pretty comfy, the room was roomy, had beautiful woodwork and an old fireplace. The windows actually opened and the bathrooms were very clean. We arrived Saturday morning to meet up with G & G, who arrived Friday night. We walked around the Union Square area, drank cider, bought purses (only Gretchen and I), drank raspberry vodka tonics and ate Korean food. I dream that heaven for me will be a place like Veniero’s on 11th Street, and I will be able to eat whatever I want and never gain weight or have to get another root canal. We had cannoli, tiramisu and eclairs – it was absolutely wonderful. We met up with Sharon and Sarmad at the oldest continuously operating saloon in NYC, McSorley’s Old Ale House. The place was a little rowdy for us to start out the night. Graham likened it to jumping on a treadmill going 8 miles an hour, we needed to warm up somewhere else first. So we hit a few other bars, drank some raspberry beer and Brooklyn Brown Ale and eventually ended up at this little dive that has hotdogs with really weird toppings, like Sarmad’s choice of the night – avocado and cream cheese. This place also had a secret bar, accessible only through a pay phone in the wall of the hotdog place. We didn’t have the secret code, so didn’t attempt to go in. We were in bed by 1am, which was just fine with me. We scrapped plans to go out to Queens to meet S & S for brunch after waking up to snow. It was a great little getaway. It was so nice to hang with friends, and to get out of dodge for a night.

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DAY 38 WITHOUT A MICROWAVE

It feels like it’s been longer than (a little over) a month. I guess 38 days does sound like a long time. I think we’re doing ok though. I do use the microwave at work to heat up leftovers sometimes – hey, we don’t have a stove at work!

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GRILLED CHEESE & GREAT FRIENDS

Book Club is always evolving, and after a brief run of downed attendance, we are back, in full force. At Colleen’s on Wednesday, we had 9 people attend! The book, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, was a great book and most people really liked it. I wish it didn’t have such an unfortunate name. It’s so hard to even tell someone about it without stumbling over the name, that’s if you can even remember the name at all, so I’ll probably never recommend it to anyone. Authors should think of those kinds of things when they are giving their books titles! Dinner was perfect for a cold, rainy/snowy February evening. We had grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. This was no American cheese, wonder bread and Campbell’s Soup meal. This was fancy bread, muenster cheese and homemade tomato soup. I ate twice what I should of. And I don’t say that because I am dieting, but because I was about to burst after going back for seconds! She also made a fabulous salad with goat cheese and beets! We celebrated Stefania’s birthday with a yummy chocolate cake. All in all, the meal was fantastic and the company was wonderful.

Posted in Birthdays, Book Club, Eating Out, Friends | 1 Comment

ANNIVERSARY ROAD TRIP

On Monday, Ryan and I celebrated our 1-year wedding anniversary. I took the day off of work, we drove down to the shoreline, tasted wine, bought lots of food goodies at Bishop’s Orchard, enjoyed quality time together, fantasized about winning Powerball, played a lot of “what were we doing at exactly this time one year ago?” and forgot about any worries we might have. It was so great. In my opinion, every weekend needs a third day. Even though we said no presents, just cards, I got him some wonderful dark chocolate from Divine Treasures and he got me a beautiful bracelet. I can’t believe it’s been an entire year already.

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ANNIVERSARY PRESENT FROM IZZIE

Let me preface this story by saying, my dog is not a chewer, thank goodness. However, she is a gummer. If you leave your clothes, belt, paper towel, plush toy, etc on the ground, she will suck on it and gum it until it’s soaking wet. And I mean dripping wet. She was spending more time on the cat’s bed than her own when we first got her, so we bought her a blanket. She now gums that too. It’s her baby. She gets a corner of it between her little paws and just sucks on it. She carries it around the living room by that corner. It’s so gross. She has a plush toy in the shape of a bone, and we’ll often find her asleep with one side of it shoved into her mouth.

So, last night we decided we’d let Izzie sleep on her bed in our room, instead of the crate, since I am skipping work today. At about 4:30am or so, she is practically on the bed in my face wining and barking a little. Of course, I make Ryan get up and put her in her crate. Then, at about 7am, she’s barking and wining in her crate. She is also not a barker, at all. So I go in there, and she’s pooped in her crate (I realize now that it didn’t smell at all). I immediately let her out, and she runs out and squats all over the yard for at least 10 minutes. This is probably due to the many treats we fed her this weekend when her dog mom was here. But I digress. Back to the crate. I go to clean up the “mess” and I realize it’s actually a black sock in the shape of a poop. I have no idea which end of my dog this came out of, but it most definitely has been ingested. I can’t believe my dog actually eats socks now. In my mind, I am trying to remember what socks I am missing – I know there are some! I hope I would have noticed before now if my dog was eating socks. What a weird dog. We speculate she was sucking on the sock, and things just got out of control. Poor Izzie seems to be back in high spirits this morning. I feared we’d be spending our 1 year anniversary at the vet, but she’s eating and playing with her rope, so hopefully all is well.

Other than that, she/we had a great weekend with Libby, Izzie’s dog mom, visiting. We made sure to take lots of pictures.

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HAPPY DATING ANNIVERSARY

Today is our dating anniversary – 13 years together. I guess since our 1st anniversary of marriage is coming up, this is probably the last year we’ll be celebrating our dating anniversary. We’ve decided that even though the economy is tough we’re still going to make the most of our weekend of anniversaries (oh and V-day, which we don’t celebrate). We decided not to go out of town, because Ryan would have had to miss a gig, but we’re going to eat lots of yummy food and enjoy some quality time together. Last night, we started out our anniversary weekend a little early with a trip to Abyssinian Ethiopian Restaurant for dinner. It is so so so good. We finished off the night with Mayan Hot Chocolate at Tisane. We went to the Mayan Riviera for our honeymoon, so it was only fitting.

I promise Ethiopian food is SO GOOD!

Band Banquet, 1996

Posted in Eating Out, Honeymoon, Life, Wedding | 2 Comments

THIRD TIME’S A CHARM

I was very anxious that our third attempt at a new meal this week was not going to turn out well. Monday and Tuesday were such successes that Wednesday had to stink. I got a late start because I went to a late spinning class (but SO glad I did). Ryan was a little busy, so I was pretty much on my own cooking this one. Then I realized we were out of soy sauce so we substituted some teriyaki stir fry sauce. To my surprise, it was pretty yummy!

Sesame Broccoli Pasta

_pageAD.getCmAd(142, 70, “article”, “text”).writePrep and Cook Time: about 20 minutes.

Yield: Makes 4 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 pound broccoli crowns
  • 8 ounces dried regular or whole-wheat rigatoni pasta
  • 2 teaspoons minced garlic
  • 2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
  • 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
  • 1 tablespoon peanut or other vegetable oil
  • 2/3 cup canned coconut milk
  • 1/4 cup tahini (sesame paste) or old fashioned-style peanut butter
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon toasted sesame oil
  • Hot sauce
  • Lime wedges
  • Salt

Preparation

1. Rinse broccoli. Trim off leaves and stem ends. Cut crowns into 1- to 1 1/2-inch florets, and thinly slice stalks crosswise.

2. In a 5- to 6-quart pan over high heat, bring about 3 quarts water to a boil. Add pasta and cook, uncovered, stirring occasionally, until barely tender to bite, 7 to 10 minutes.

3. Meanwhile, in an 11- to 12-inch frying pan over medium-low heat, stir garlic, ginger, and cumin in peanut oil until garlic is soft, 3 to 5 minutes. Increase heat to medium. Add broccoli and 1/4 cup water. Cover and cook just until broccoli is tender-crisp to bite, about 2 minutes.

4. In a small bowl, mix coconut milk, tahini, soy sauce, and sesame oil. Add to broccoli mixture; stir often just until simmering.

5. Drain pasta and return to pan. Gently stir in broccoli mixture. Spoon into a serving bowl. Serve with hot sauce, lime wedges, and salt to add to taste.

Jennifer Stein Barker, Canyon City, OR, Sunset, MAY 2005

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