This Weekend!

Nick and I have been busy driving around the desert and eating crackers and cheese.  Of course we broke our camera but there will be food pictures soon!  In the mean time join us for yet another Shop Party!  We will have baked mac n' cheese and roast carrot and citrus salad to fill your happy bellies!

Something Is Fishy

It seems to me almost every dinner in the winter is kale and potatoes.  I never get tired of it.  It comforts me in a profound way and I feel okay about it because of the piles of kale I'm consuming.  It makes posting meals boring though.  Oh well!

Dinner tonight: braised kale and mashed potatoes!
I treated us with glazed salmon and crispy caramelized onions to go with our kale and potatoes.  I love salmon with only salt and pepper, but I was craving intense flavor and this glaze is amazing.
 2 tablespoons maple syrup (or brown sugar)
1 tablespoon honey
2 tablespoons butter
1/4 cup Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon finely grated ginger (we were out of ginger because Nick had just made an incredible ginger beet syrup so I just used a tablespoon of that)

Melt the syrup, honey and butter in a small saute pan over medium-high heat. Remove from the heat and whisk in the mustard, soy sauce, olive oil and ginger. Let cool.

Heat the oven to 400 F

Drizzle and brush your salmon with the glaze (you could probably even marinate  the fish if you wanted to).  Roast until the salmon is cooked through and flakes easily with a fork, 8 to 10 minutes.

 

Enjoy!

Teleme

I love Teleme cheese.  I love it.  Soft, creamy, slightly tangy.  It's unpretentious and approachable it's really a cheese for everyone (only if the price tag reflected as much).  I treat myself with it.

I couldn't decide what to do for dinner, and the sky was gray, and I was under the weather and I wanted a treat.  Grilled cheese!  Grilled cheese!  I couldn't resist.

Gussied up Grilled Cheese

Preheat oven to 400
Start with your favorite crusty bread, I used a ciabatta style.  Make a spread of chopped garlic, a few table spoons of olive oil, a spoon of honey, a spoon of good mustard.  Dress the bread.

I dry sauteed onions and added some spinach at the last minuet, just to wilt.  Pile on to the bread.

Quickly saute asparagus (first of the season!) until they are tender and bright green, but still crunchy.
Slice Teleme cheese and add it to your bread, asparagus goes on top of that, then into the over for 20 minuets or until cheese is gooey and bread is toasted.

Yum!
If you have a salad too you wont feel so guilty.

Vegan Treats

After I started eating meat two and a half years ago, I felt a sense of food liberation- I could eat anything! It made me a snob and I turned my nose up at vegetarians and especially vegans. Those poor limited saps, I thought while nibbling on sausages.
The truth is there is a lot of food I choose not to eat, for health reasons as well as ethical reasons. We try to avoid meat from CAFOs (we always buy local and responsibly raised while at the market, and try to avoid meat in restaurants unless we know where it comes from). We try to buy local and organic produce. We never eat fast food, though we frequent our neighborhood taqueria. We eat very few processed foods, many of which we process ourselves... and so on.
These days I have nothing against my vegetarian and vegan brothers and sisters, in fact we try to cater to them at food events. Cooking that way is pretty easy, and (aside from loving to add butter and cheese to everything) we cook that way most of the time.

Baking is another can of worms altogether.

Homemade applesauce!

Vegan baking is so scary! No eggs? No butter? It's not natural! In fact my biggest complaint/ concern when it comes to vegan baking is the use of highly processed substitutes. I wanted to bring some muffins to my sweet vegan friend Ash, so I did some searching, I found a recipe that looked pretty good, and I adapted it to fit my needs (no way was I going to buy margarine).

As it turned out these were some of the best muffins I've ever made! So moist and delicious.

Vegan Blueberry Muffins
2 cups all purpose flour, (1 C whole wheat)
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup applesauce
1/2 cup melted coconut oil
1 cup soy buttermilk, (soy milk combined with 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar)
2/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 cups blueberries (fresh if they are in season, I used frozen not thawed)

Crumble Topping:
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup chopped nuts (I used hazel nuts)
1/4 cup flour
1/4 cup melted coconut oil

Heat oven to 350.
Mix crumble topping ingredients and set aside.
Mix dry ingredients (flour, baking powder, baking soda and salt) in a large bowl.
In a separate bowl, mix applesauce, soy buttermilk, sugar, melted coconut oil and vanilla.
Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and stir until the dry ingredients are just moistened. Add the berries. Don't over mix.
Pour the batter into muffin tin, sprinkle with the crumble topping and bake for about 17-20 minutes. Let cool before serving. Yum!

Commitment

It's been two months sense we've posted anything here.  I'm so embarrassed.  I have so many excuses... Shop Party kept us busy, and it was a great success!

Shop Party.  Photo by Zohn Mandel

Photo by Zohn Mandel

Holiday festivities made us dizzy, what with all the fancy cocktail parties, Cioppino feeds, our open house, NYE candlelit dinner, and our annual New Years Day brunch.  Unfortunately this out of focus picture is the only thing to show of it.

This year I went against tradition and made some new year resolutions, one of which is to take more pictures.

Then we made hundreds of cookies a dozen cakes for a dreamy Descry event in San Francisco. 

We Dream in the Daytime Too event at Photobooth.  Photo By Photobooth

Devoured dreamy cakes and cookies.  Photo by Photobooth

All of a sudden I came to- and it was February!

Nick and I celebrated Valentines day early and went to Sea View for the weekend.  I prepared a dream lovers menu for us.

Day 1

Mimosa

New Mexican Pinon coffee

Real Belgian Waffles with maple syrup, strawberries, and pancetta

Oeufs en Cocotte

Cheese plate

Roasted fennel & pancetta salad

(this is where the camera battery died)

Roasted balsamic cinnamon pears with vanilla ice cream

Day 2

Broiled grapefruit

Coffee
Toast

Valentines Day has me thinking about commitment... I'm prepared to re-commit myself to this blog.  I'm prepared to share what I'm eating and cooking with greater success.  I hope we haven't lost you for good.  

LOVE

b&r