I Won A Cooking Contest!

Our friends Christina & Mikey hosted a great Super Bowl party this week and the festivities included an Ultimate Recipe Showdown. Since Lee was gone this weekend, I spent Saturday night making a double-batch of Pumpkin Whoopie Pies. I found the recipe last year in Every Day with Rachel Ray and have made it once before, but baking is always a challenge – especially baking large quantities. But, I was very excited that everything turned out as planned and I was able to win over a few voters and claim the title by one vote. My theory: there is just something wonderful about pumpkin desserts at a time other than the holidays. They are unexpected and wonderful!    

The prize couldn’t have been more perfect: an orange monkey peeler. I think this blog now officially has a mascot. Thanks Christina & Mikey!

In case you’d like to try, here’s the recipe (Note that it is meant to be baked on parchment paper. I didn’t have any, which I think made the cakes much stickier, but they still tasted great!):

Ingredients

  1 1/2 sticks (6 ounces) unsalted butter, 1 stick melted, 1/2 stick softened
   1 cup packed light brown sugar
   2 large eggs, at room temperature, lightly beaten
   1 cup canned pure pumpkin puree
   1 tablespoon pumpkin pie spice
   1 1/2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
    1 teaspoon baking powder
   1 teaspoon baking soda
   3/4 teaspoon plus 2 pinches salt
   1 2/3 cups flour
   4 ounces cream cheese, chilled
   1 cup confectioners’ sugar

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350°. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
2. In a large bowl, whisk together the melted butter and brown sugar until smooth. Whisk in the eggs, pumpkin puree, pumpkin pie spice, 1 teaspoon vanilla, the baking powder, the baking soda and 3/4 teaspoon salt. Using a rubber spatula, fold in the flour.
3. Using an ice cream scoop or tablespoon, drop 12 generous mounds of batter, spaced evenly, onto each baking sheet. Bake until springy to the touch, about 10 minutes. Transfer to a rack to cool completely.
4. Meanwhile, using an electric mixer, cream the softened butter with the cream cheese. Add the confectioners’ sugar and the remaining 2 pinches salt and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla; mix on low speed until blended, then beat on medium-high speed until fluffy, about 2 minutes.
5. Spread the flat side of 12 cakes with the cream cheese frosting. Top each with another cake.

Lobster Ravioli & Week 3 Recap

Semi-success this week. I did make 4 meals at home (hooray!) but I am still lacking some creativity. Not to throw around excuses, but Lee was gone on a business trip for 5 days, so it was really easy to just default to quick, simple meals when I was the only one eating it.

The night before Lee left we made lobster ravioli with tomato vodka sauce – both from Trader Joe’s. The sauce is one of my favorites and this pasta caught my eye while shopping last week. Since it was only $2.99 (I love Trader Joe’s!) I thought we’d give it a try. Overall, this was a good, relatively light meal especially considering the way we usually eat ravioli… fried. It’s bad for you, but oh so delicious! I will probably buy the pasta again, but next time I’d pair it with a different sauce – something a little bolder.   

Meals this week: poppyseed chicken, lobster ravioli, grilled cheese, and a repeat - baked potato with chili. 

Poppyseed Chicken

This is one of my favorite comfort foods – perfect for this freezing weather. I had Poppyseed Chicken for the first time in Arkansas when one of my college professors invited our class over for dinner. It’s easy to make and great for groups, but Lee and I love it because there are always plenty of leftovers for lunch. Usually Lee takes care of cooking the chicken, but since cooking meat is one of the things I’m trying to get more comfortable with, I cooked this batch. (Admittedly, Lee did the prep work – the thawing, the cutting, etc. – but I did the actual cooking. Baby steps.)

Tonight I served this dish over rice (the quick kind) with a salad on the side. Here’s the recipe in case you’re interested in trying it out. Thanks Kelly for passing it along to me a few years ago. Poppyseed Chicken is also a favorite in the Jensen house – although as you might notice below, Kelly doesn’t actually use any poppyseeds in her recipe. I usually just add a few sprinkles before topping with the crumbled crackers.  

1 can cream of chicken
1 can cream of mushroom or celery
1 sm carton sour cream
1-2 cups cooked and cubed chicken
1 package Ritz crackers
1 stick butter (I rarely use a whole stick)
Mix 1st 4 items together. Put in casserole dish then crumble Ritz crackers and sprinkle on top. Last, melt butter and drizzle all over. Bake at 350, 20-25 mins or until it gets bubbly.

Week 2: The Recap

The good news: we’ve been pretty good about the cooking this week.

The bad news: I’ve been bad about the blogging.

Meal #1: This week was another busy one (story of our lives lately). We enjoyed a wonderful 4-day weekend and took advantage of the time off by having friends over for Farkle and big crock-pot full of chili. Lee gets full credit for the chili — no recipe, he just makes it up as he goes — and it’s always great. It is also one of the only ways I’ll eat venison. He does a great job of making it full of flavor by dumping in a little bit of everything and letting it simmer all day. I’ve set aside a recipe for chicken chili that I want to try at some point this winter, but for now I’m very content to enjoy his version. 

Meal #2: Breakfast for dinner. One of my favorite meals growing up, this version of it turned out really well. We made french toast using cinnamon swirl bread, with a side of eggs and a few slices of beef sausage. Simple, but delicious!

Meal #3: Apparently creativity fades as the week continues (or perhaps as the hours at work increase) because by Wednesday we were back to pasta. I posted about making pasta for dinner in my Facebook status and my colleague Josie asked me if I made pasta from scratch. Uh, no. And, according to my mom, homemade pasta is never worth the effort. It takes forever and at its best, people compare it to store bought. (You remember that story Mom?)  But, we did try a new type of pasta – mini fusilli. Very cute – I’ll be buying it again. We added artichokes and sauteed baby portabellos to a jar of store bought sauce. It was good, but my friend Christina tells me I need to start making my own sauce and freezing it. Her sauce is great and I’d like to try, but I’m not convinced that I’ll be giving up store-bought sauce any time soon. The other great thing about this meal: tons of leftovers. We took leftovers for lunch several times and I also ate it for dinner on Friday.

Okay, so I’m just realizing we’re one meal short again. Shoot, I thought we made it to 4 meals this week… evidently not. And, I also realize that so far this blog isn’t interesting AT ALL because I haven’t shared any recipes or gotten even remotely creative. We’re starting off slowly, but stick with me, I promise it will get better! Who knows, maybe the final week of January will be my week…

Three Out Of Four Ain’t Bad

Several events this week - Georgetown basketball game, Metallica concert, and poker night - meant we ended up one meal short of our goal. (Actually, maybe two meals short since one of our three meals at home was a lazy Monday night when we just ate cereal.) Oh well – three meals cooked at home is better than none. 

Important lesson learned this week: I need to be better about pre-planning on Sunday. We would have a much better chance of success if I already had recipes picked out and the ingredients on hand.

Our one other home-cooked meal of the week was entirely courtesy of Lee. (Thank you Lee!) I had to work late and when I got home he had dinner ready. We had grilled steak and asparagus with a side of potato pancakes. We bought the potato pancake mix last week when we went to Harris Teeter hungry (never a great time to grocery shop). They were okay, but we both said we wouldn’t buy them again. The steak was great, but putting the asparagus directly on the grill made it a little too tough and dry. I think we’ll put it in foil next time.

By the way, that other item on the plate is the biggest roll I’ve ever seen. Lee bought those at Giant.

I’m Not Sure If This Counts As Cooking

I love that on day one I didn’t actually cook anything. Cutting corners from the beginning – lovely. But, nonetheless, dinner tonight was, according to Lee, the perfect meal for a lazy Sunday.

After being tempted to have Lee stop for food on his way home from Target, I settled on something easy: baked potatoes with chili and a salad. I cheated on the chili – all I did was open a jar of Hormel’s new Chili Masters Chicken Chipotle. We hadn’t tried this before but the commercial intrigued me and it was on sale, so we thought we’d give it a chance. It had a nice flavor, but was pretty mellow, even for me (and I don’t like things spicy). Lee added Tabasco Habanero Sauce to his and said that made it much better.   

Sadly, I had a few ridiculous questions about making baked potatoes in the microwave. Lee told me to wrap them in plastic wrap (which I ended up doing), but my mom suggested substituting paper towels in the microwave because she thinks it’s not healthy to heat in plastic. I chose to ignore this advice since I have worked on way too many parts per billion projects at work. : )

Note: I included our kitchen iPod set-up in this first photo, an awesome Christmas gift from Lee’s parents, because it will play a key role in every meal I make. Seriously, without it, I might not even try.

You Have To Start Somewhere

This is a New Year’s resolution I’m really excited about. Heading home over the holidays to spend time with our family in Missouri and Colorado was wonderful, but it also made me wish that I felt a little more comfortable in the kitchen. Both my mother and mother-in-law can whip up a meal for 10+ at a moments notice. My sister and sisters-in-law all know the basics and prepare meals from their own families (or roommates) easily and often. Watch any of them in the kitchen and you can just tell that they have a pretty good idea what they’re doing. I wish I could say the same thing for myself.  Not for my sweet mother’s lack of trying, I am missing a lot of basic cooking knowledge. (Apparently I spent too many years opting for football watching over observing in kitchen.)

But in 2009, that will change. I’m not trying to be a great chef, just someone who has a few go-to easy, creative meals in my head… and enough basic know-how to avoid speed dialing my mom before microwaving baked potatoes. I look forward to feedback, thoughts, recipe suggestions, and a little encouragement to keep me on track. 

Here we go…