* If there was any doubt about us being bona fide home owners, it can now be put to rest. We spent our Friday night at Home Depot and Menards, looking for a new bathroom light fixture and mirror.
* We went to see Children of Men last Tuesday evening, and wound up being the only two people in the theater. That made us wonder if they even bother starting the movie if no one shows up. We decided they must, because someone could always come a little late, and if the movie hadn't started, that would make the next showing start late. Anyway, the movie was very intense, but very good.
* On Friday the temperature hit 40°, the first time we'd been above freezing in two weeks. It was but a brief respite, however. Highs for the next 10 days range from 7 to 25 degrees.
* As you can imagine, people are very excited about the Bears being in the Super Bowl. There's a billboard somewhere in Chicago that we saw once, which said "Baseball will divide Chicago, but the Bears shall unite it."
* The past few weeks I've been working on replacing the old light switches and electrical outlets in our house. I'm very pleased, because not only did I successfully replace two 3-way switches, but I fixed two 3-way switches that had been installed incorrectly! Woo!
* We've been trying a few new recipes lately, with great success. Last week we made pasta with olive pesto, and it was INSANELY GOOD! Wendy got the idea from an event at work, where a restaurant catered the food and brought olive pesto pasta. They said it was their best-seller, and I now believe it.
* We also tried homemade pretzels, which were good. Ditto for a chocolate mint cake we had right after New Years. Also, Wendy used an Amazon gift certificate to buy a Muffin-Top Pan. I had never heard of these before, but I was blown away when she told me about it. Basically they let you just make muffin tops, ala Seinfeld. Today we had chocolate chocolate-chip muffin tops. Very, very tasty.
* Lest you think we gorge ourselves on decadent desserts, we've also been trying some recipes from The Mediterranean Vegan Kitchen. I found it on Amazon, and was intrigued because it had over 50 reviews with an average rating of 5 stars. Everyone says that the recipes are great, even for non-vegans, and so far, yeah, we agree. Spaghettini with Walnut-Garlic Sauce and Herbed Scalloped Potatoes, Provencal Style are a few of the tasty dishes we've tried.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
Tasty Morsels
by Randy
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8 comments:
Wendy - I'd love the pasta with olive pesto recipe!
Randy - I'm very impressed with your switch/outlet repairs!
Light fixtures seems like a much more pleasant home owning story than ruben's sewer woes.
Yum.
We just went up to Chicago Sunday to see the new David Lynch movie--I'd recommend trying to catch it while it's there. It is, I should warn, extremely scary if unsurprisingly difficult to follow. Laura Dern is pretty fantastic.
I had no idea there was a new David Lynch movie. Cool!
I also had no idea Ruben was having sewer woes. That sounds unpleasant.
The olive pesto is super easy. The recipe just calls for 8 oz of black olives, 8 oz of green olives, 2 garlic cloves, 1/2 cup of olive oil and a handful of parsley (maybe 1/3 cup?). You put it all in the food processor and blitz it together and it makes enough for 16 oz of pasta.
I actually cut the olive oil down to about 1/4 cup or maybe even a little less and used some pasta water to help thin it out. I also tossed a little bit of parmesan cheese in there, and added some green onions (chopped separately, not food processed) to the pasta. And even though the recipe called for fancier olives, I have to say that I just used a can of black olives and a jar of green olives, and it still turned out very tasty.
OK, so I am coming to this blog (and certainly this post) a little on the late side. This is Debbie Benjamin from OU Daily days -- not sure if you remember me, Wendy, but if you do, "Hello." (To explain my tardiness, I recently found a slip of paper with Jill's blog site address on it that I saved from quite some time ago -- I guess I saved it for future reference -- and noticed a link to this site.)
But, as a true Seinfeld fan, I was intrigued by the muffin top pan; I would love to know if it works. Recently, someone alerted me to a "more edges to a brownie" pan, which looks like a maze. And if your initials are "M" or (by inverting it) "W," I suppose you actually can have a cool customized cake pan. I don't know if it works or is worth the money, though, but it is a strange culinary invention. Here 'tis: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000MMK448?ie=UTF8&tag=hitschec-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B000MMK448 -- DB
Hi Debbie! It's good to hear from you.
That's an interesting brownie pan - I actually like the squishy middle pieces more than the edges, but I guess to each his own. I've never seen one like that before.
I think the muffin top pan works pretty well. It does take more patience to do muffin tops since the pan only does 6 at a time - I usually end up making a pan or two of muffin tops and then just doing the rest of the dough in a regular muffin tin. It's also taken me a little bit of fiddling with temperatures and cooking times to get them to come out right, since they're bigger but thinner than regular muffins. When they turn out well, though, they are really tasty!
Thanks for the info. I am thinking about getting a muffin top pan. I do love the tops. This invention may be one small step for man (and woman), but it's one giant leap for muffin top lovers. As for the brownie pan, I, too, favor the chewy centers, so I'm not so sure about baking a pan full of edges. Thanks for the baking suggestions. -- Deb
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