Posts Tagged ‘beans’

Birthdays, and post-guilt

Saturday, November 21st, 2009

Hello all! Coming to you from recently employed land! I’ve been so stressed lately that rather than take advantage of my free time, I became even less productive than usual- as a result posting has taken the back burner. Below is a stock pile of awesome photos and tales of the last 2 weeks in my kitchen in Oakland.

Billy and I both celebrated our birthdays this month (1st and 9th, respectively) and so much delicious food came out of the two weeks of birthday celebration. For his b-day I made the standard Beer Fondue! On my birthday I was supposed to be cooked a delectable eggplant parm, but silly billy didn’t realise that eggplants are hard to come by this time of year. 3 grocery stores later, he admitted defeat and had to re-think his plans. Below is the delicious result!

Spinach, Feta and Pine Nut Sausage with Smoked Oyster Potato Cakes & Beans

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Check out this little friend we found living in one of our greenbeans!

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DSC00246and the happy kitty who ate him

The part the was truely amazing about this years birthday festivities was that I got 3 nights of man-cooking. 1 night of delicious salad, 1 night of bangers & mash billy style, and 1 night of eggplant parm, which came about thanks to Trader Joes ability to have out-of-season produce when even Safeway does not.

Here is proof of the rare sighting of man-in-kitchen-and not getting beer- or orange juice….

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A special thanks goes to my sister for getting me some much needed new pans for my birthday!

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Colorful Salad

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

Monday night I got to hang out with a good friend that I rarely get to see. We made pinhole cameras (or rather started to make pinhole cameras), and made a retro typewriter work in a build up to a delicious diner. Here are some action shots!

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For the main bit I made Mo’s Sauce-y Vodka Sauce- although I had no heavy cream so I improvised with a  whole milk/cream cheese combo that did the trick less a few cream cheese lumpules. So good! I have never been able to master the thick/richness of a store bought sauce, but this one didn’t need it. It was especially good as leftovers the next day as the liquid had soaked into my al dente noodles.

I had no lettuce, but a good array of fresh salad veggies- plus an avacado to boot! Along came the inspiration for this delicious summer side salad that rounded the meal out perfectly.

Bright Summer Salad

1 cup blanced sugar snap peas

2 inches paper thin sliced English Cucumber

1 shaved carrot (done with the veggie peeler)

1 can cannellini beans rinsed, drained

1 small red gypsy pepper

paper thin sliced onion, to your liking

1 very large yellow heirloom tomato, cubed

Avacado- Cilantro Sauce

1 whole avacado

the top part of a cilantro bunch (about 1/4 cup)

1 clove garlic

juice from 1 lemon

Salt & Pepper

a few T Olive Oil

Milk- as needed

In a blender (or it fits perfectly in 1 of the cup shaped parts to the magic bullet) combine all the ingredients minus the milk. Blend until smooth. Open, taste for further seasoning. If you want a more watery sauce use milk to thin it out.  Toss with veggies and serve immediately.

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