We're Home!

Yes, we are finally back from our wonderful vacation. There is a part of me that is so glad to be home, sleeping in my own bed and eating my own food again; then there is the other part of me that is severely missing the sunshine and carefree schedule! I guess you wouldn't truly appreciate a vacation if your life was always like that. It would certainly take a while for me to get tired of it though!!!

For those of you anxiously awaiting the posting of our trip, with all of our adventures and pictures, I will be getting to it in the next couple of days.  You know how it is when you first get home - you spend the first couple of days just playing catch up. I will be working on getting all of our pictures organized and ready to go and have everything up very soon. We have some great stories to tell for sure.

Chrome Molly and Drunk People

Chrome Molly is the band of some friends of ours. I have posted here and there about performances we have gone to and even played in on. They are an awesome group of people and super fun to be around.

Well, as it turns out, one of their guitar players is quitting and they have asked Aaron to fill the spot. Woot! They only play two gigs a month so it's perfect. Fun people, super fun music (who the heck doesn't like AC/CD?!) and just enough gigs to keep you rockin' without it taking over your life. Win, win! He will start practicing with them on Monday and probably playing with them some time in the next month or two. We'll keep you posted on the performances of course!

Now - the drunk people..... ah, drunk people.  They can be so entertaining: up to a point, then just down right obnoxious. We were out last night, supporting Chrome Molly as usual, and there was a guy two shades to the wind. He was running all over the place dancing and just having a good ol' time.

For some reason he was just fixated on getting Aaron and I to dance. He came over several times trying to talk us out on the dance floor. Now, if you know me you know I LOVE to dance. It's one of my favorite things to do for a date night. I just wasn't feelin' it last night. I had a stomach ache and Aaron was busy talking with the bands sound guy (he's the lead singers husband) just trying to get to know everyone better since he is going to be part of the tribe.

As the night wore on this drunk guy got drunker and more fixated on getting us to dance. At one point he tried to grab Aaron's arm and drag him out there. "Common, you need to get your lady out here", spoken in true drunken slur. At that point I had had enough - Aaron was just being too nice. I grabbed the guy by the shoulders, pushed him at arms length and said "We are not going to dance. I don't feel well and we do not want to be out there right now".  He gave me a look like I was the plague, ran up on the stage and started dancing up there and then promptly got escorted out by the bar bouncer. Classic!

St. Patrick's Day Dinner

Okay, I am here to say that I have never had a traditional St. Patrick's Day dinner before. The tradition in our house has always been to have our green pancakes and scrambled eggs (which we will still be doing this year thank you very much). I have never really been much of a meat person and I will admit that cooked cabbage kind of scares me: but trying to stay in the spirit of my goal to try new recipes, and with St. Patrick's day just around the corner, I wanted to try a traditional St. Patty's meal.

The Menu:

Corned Beef and Cabbage

Irish Soda Bread

The corned beef was good as far as meat goes. I did have to eat each bite mixed in with my veggies instead of just eating it by itself, but it was decent. I would prefer to just have stew though. It doesn't really have a gravy or anything that it's in. You just cook it all day in a kind of brine so it's pretty much just eating stringy meat with boiled vegetables: and it's way to salty for me. I feel like a bloated fish today and like I have a 5 pound brick in my gut (that could just be the meat though, I'm not used to eating like that).

Lastly, the cabbage. It did leave kind of a weird smell in my house, kind of like you just entered a cheap apartment complex (come on, you know what I'm talking about) but once it was cooked it really didn't have much of a flavor. It was mixed with my other veggies, so I didn't mind it. 

Aaron's comment? "It's okay, but if this is how the Irish eat all of the time then that is just pretty bland and sad."

The bread was definitely a step up from the Corned Beef. I made it exactly how the recipe was because I wanted to taste it in it's traditional form: still, just okay. I would probably make this again, but with quite a few changes. First and foremost, I would leave out the caraway seeds. DID NOT LIKE. I would use whole-wheat flour (of course ;o), honey instead of sugar, and then instead of the caraway seeds I might add flax seed or for a more dessert type bread use cinnamon chips. That would be good.

Needless to say I will not be sharing my recipes at this time. I just didn't like either of these well enough to make them again or share. However, the bread definitely has potential, and I may play around with it a little bit. If I hit on something great, then I will share.

That was my culinary experimentation last night.

Strawberry Coffee Cake

I think breakfast is probably my most favorite meal of the day. I am a total carb girl though. I DO NOT like eggs and breakfast meat. Bleck! But, I do love bread. Any kind of bread. Pancakes, muffins, waffles and.... coffee cake - yum! I also LOVE strawberries, so when I saw this strawberry coffee cake it just seemed perfect: and it pretty much was! Of course I modified it to suite my desires, but you know, that's just what I do.

Ingredients:

1 cup whole-wheat flour

1 Tb. gluten

2 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup honey

1 egg

1/2 cup milk

2 Tb. melted butter

1 1/2 cups fresh strawberries

Topping:

1/2 cup whole-wheat flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

3 Tb. soft butter

1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions:

1. In a large bowl combine flour, gluten, baking powder and salt. In another bowl beat the honey, egg, milk, and butter. Stir into dry ingredients until just moistened. Pour into greased 8-inch baking dish. Top with sliced strawberries.

2. For topping, combine flower and sugar in a bowl; cut in butter until crumbly. Stir in pecans and then sprinkle over strawberries.

3. Bake at 375 degrees for 30-35 minutes, or until toothpick comes out clean.

Hash Browns?

Mama Smout is getting ready to retire in three weeks. With retirement comes her moving to Idaho, so we went over to help her clean out some closets and higher cupboards that she couldn't reach. So, here is what we found in the closet....

It looked more like whole-wheat pasta than hash browns. We looked all over the place on the box for a date and couldn't find one. Mom's response? "I think these were made before they were required to put dates on food." I don't know about you, but that has pretty much been my whole life.

Don't worry. We deposited them into the dumpster on the way out.

Sourdough Pancake Breakfast

Alex got a sourdough starter from someone at work that he has been feeding for the last couple of weeks. It was finally ready to do something with, so he and Jess decided to make everyone a big breakfast. They got up early enough to do it before I worked. They made pancakes, bacon, sausage, eggs, hash browns, and then got doughnut holes, chocolate milk and OJ to go with it. It was so nice to have a yummy breakfast that I didn't have to cook. Thanks guys!

Chicken Focaccia Sandwich

I have been a little bad the last week or so about trying my recipes. Heck, I've hardly been able to go grocery shopping let alone plan out a menu. But, I am back on track this week. Here was my first recipe, and it was super yummy!

1 Red bell pepper, sliced

1/2 chicken breast

olive oil

Seasoning Salt

2 8-10 inch Italian Flatbread (focaccia)

3 slices of Provolone cheese

1/2 cups fresh spinach

butter

Grill red pepper in a small amount of olive oil until tender; set aside.

Slice chicken breast in half, thickness wise, so that you have a couple of nice thin pieces of chicken. Sprinkle with seasoning salt and grill in a small amount of olive oil until cooked through.

Butter one side of each flatbread and place one, buttered side down, on electric skillet. Layer on cheese, fresh spinach, cooked chicken, grilled peppers and then top with the other flatbread - butter side up.

Now, just grill like you would a grilled cheese sandwich. When done, cut into quarters and enjoy.