This week, Lottie is really starting to walk around and talk talk talk. She is also getting into everything. For example, Blake made the most wonderful Negamaki (green onions wrapped in thin beef and grilled in a sweet soy glaze). He set them on the table and came to get me from packing in the bedroom. When we came back, Lottie had pulled the plate off the table and onto the floor and Emma was enjoying the last few licks when we were ready to sit down and enjoy! The other thing that Lottie is doing this week is "reading". She loves to look at books and turn the pages. It is so cute especially since the pages are always upside down.
On Friday, we had a little dinner party with Yas, Jenny and Kelly. We had a great time. We played a lot of games and ate a delicious 5 pound prime rib with a horseradish crust. Jenny made a wonderful chocolate pound cake and a tater tot casserole. Yes, you heard me correctly, a casserole made out of tater tots. Can you imagine anything better? I am so mad at myself for not taking pictures.
Saturday was funny. We planned to make an extravagant dinner with an appetizer of mussels two ways and the veal chop dinner that I have been trying to make for months now. Blake and I spent the day shopping and finding all of the ingredients at the best possible prices. One of the recipes we decided to do was Dark Beer steamed mussels with portabello mushrooms and eggplant from the Flying Pans cookbook. Since I HATE beer, Blake also played it safe by making his white wine, garlic, butter steamer sauce as well. So we had mussels two ways.
I was so glad he made the Italian version. I am sure that the beer ones would have been fabulous for someone, but not me. I would imagine that is because I don't like beer, especially not dark beer.
After we ate the appetizer, we were stuffed. We decided that since veal chops are pretty expensive, we would save it for Sunday. When Sunday rolled around, we were hungry and ready. We used the veal recipe from Flying Pans, and it was awesome! The little disk on top is a Parmesan puff pastry. Oh my my my..... It was served with broccolini and lobster ravioli. Overall, this dish was better than we expected.
I decided that I was going to start sharing our "normal family" meals as well even if they are not beautiful so here goes.
This week we also had a simple and easy open faced fried chicken, tomato with horseradish potato salad and a fried egg. The Foster Family loves eggs. I hear reports that an egg a day is great for the body and others say they are terrible. We are sure hoping that they are good because between Blake and I, we go through about 2 dozen a week.
Something else we had was Classic Chicken Francese. This is one of my favorites. I LOVE fried food, but I really love this dish because it is pan fried in a egg batter covered with a butter sauce. Yikes! Bring on the elastic.
Blake and I love to watch the Food Network. We have been watching the Worst Cooks in America show. We don't like it that much, and we are actually thrilled that it is over. The best thing we got from it was on the finale. The girl who won, we don't even know her name but she looks like she walked out of the year 1983, made a pork cutlet with a poached egg on top. We had to have it. Blake made it, and we threw together a tomato salad. Blake made the most wonderful, delicious, and unhealthy Parmesan potato gratin. The picture didn't do it justice so I decided to make a video so you could hear they butter and cream bubbling together.
I talked to Blake about putting the recipes for his food on the blog. The problem is he doesn't use recipes. I am going to try to start writing down the recipes as he cooks each day. This was, I can include them on the blog and you can enjoy this yumminess at home. Be sure to take pictures!
Until next week.... Happy Eating!
