I think Beef Stroganoff is kind of a wintery meal for most people.  For Mandi, she craves it when she is sick.  I know in the afternoon when she isn’t feeling too well.  She says to me, “can you make me something yummy and eggy noodley tonight?”  I hadn’t made her stroganoff in awhile so I decided to go a different way with it which was a real risk because if Mandi is in the mood for something, it can be very specific.  I wanted to make a Jamie Oliver recipe I saw him make on the mushroom episode of Jamie at Home.  I usually make this sans mushrooms but I wanted to add some today.  I did not have the fresh mushrooms or venison he uses, but I was looking more for a method anyways.

(Note about the recipe.  It is really lame that this recipe is only available in the US.  It doesn’t even make sense to me.  I just had my friend who lives there get it and email it to me.  I was going to post it on here but I don’t want the food network or Jamie to get mad at me!!)

Ever go to a BYOF BBQ?  Ya know, when your friend says “Hey man, come by tonight, we’re gonna fire up the grill and you can bring some meats or whatever you want to throw on there."  When this happens what do you end up bringing?  I bet the answer is a burger or hot dog.  Now not that those things aren’t delicious but I think it is much more fun to bring something like this.  This particular day we weren’t going to one of those BBQ’s, we were going to the beach, but this is a great recipe for one of those situations.

Mandi and I had been wanting to make mac and cheese for a week or 2.  We knew we didn’t want to go out on the weekend but rather keep it low key so we decided to make the macaroni and cheese on Friday night and watch the top chef I had downloaded.  On Thursday while shopping for tacos, I was minding my own business in the store when what did I see but a pack of beautiful slabs of pork belly!  This is a rare find in Bermuda so I snatched it up without even thinking of what we would do with it.  After brainstorming for a bit, we decided to incorporate it into the mac and cheese we had been craving.  We decided that a BBQ Sauce flavor would help bring the pork belly and mac and cheese together as one.  It is hard for me to do this post today because now I am craving this again! It was one of the best things we have made in a very long time and now im starving for a huge scoop of pork belly mac and cheese! Click below, you will be glad you did

Since there was a public outcry after my last healthy post (apparently 2 slices of bacon makes you a fatty) I decided to post another one today.  Sometimes when I am trying to be healthy, I ruin it because I crave pasta all the time.  I generally do not like whole wheat and whole grain pastas.  For some reason however, when I put a pesto on a whole grain pasta, I really enjoy it.

This recipe is a combination of Giada’s Swordfish and Spaghetti with Citrus Pesto, Heidi’s Pesto techniques, and some tweaks of our own (putting the citrus in the fish instead of the pasta, using whole grain pasta, fish selections).  I find it important to cite my sources so that I don’t pull a Cindy McCain.  I’m so Topical!

Click below for the recipe and pictures.

We had another failure last weekend.  I am on a quest to do something with pasta that has not been done before but that actually tastes good!  I feel that I will have many failures along the way.  This was a failure for 3 reasons: first, the final dish looked gross and we all know we eat with our eyes first.  Second, the things were way too hard to make.  And third, after all that effort they were still only just "OK".   I mean they tasted good, fresh sauce, homemade pasta, and cured Italian meats, how could it be bad?  But the meats were a little too much, it would have been better if they were smaller, thinner tubes with less filling.  Also the goodness to amount of effort ratio was not a good one.  I’m sure if we adjusted this recipe, it could be more delicious, and even look pretty good, but that would take even MORE work and they were already a lot.  I just never think they would be worth the effort.  Because this was a failure, I will not be putting the exact recipes, but they are fairly self explanatory anyways.

I have decided that yesterday and today’s posts may be a bit confusing to people who might want to make some of these dishes for themselves.  Because of that, over the weekend I will be writing the individual recipes down for each dish and posting them on 5 separate pages in the recipe section.  So you should just look at these posts as a view of a fun night and come back next week for the recipes if you so desire.

We continue where we left off, just as the guests were arriving...

Since we decided to house sit for our friends, we knew we needed to have a dinner party.  We have people over for food all of the time, but it is very casual.  It is also hard because we don’t have a table to eat on.  We usually end up having pizza or cheesesteaks.  We knew we would have a really nice kitchen and dining table for a week and we knew we would need to use them.  We decided to go OTT with this party because who knows when we would next have such an opportunity.  The more over the top we started thinking, the crazier it became.

One great application of chicken stock is making risotto.  Because of the effort involved in making it, I like to throw a lot of veggies and meat in and have it as a meal instead of a side.  Not that it is hard, it’s just time consuming and needs attention.  Like all the things we make, we made a ton and had lunches for work the next day.  It kept great and possibly even tasted better the next day!  This recipe is similar to a Giada recipe you can check out here.
Click below for more

These last two days of "happy chicken week" are just to show a couple different, interesting uses for the stored up chicken stock.  Our idea this past weekend was to cook something that looked like a totally different food than it actually was.

A few weeks ago at the Grillin and Chillin event we had a dish by Chef Shaker Estephane where the Mango was cut into what looked like stringy little noodles. This gave Mandi the idea that she wanted to make an entire dish where everything was shaped like noodles. I had also been thinking about it when reading Morimoto’s cookbook that I got for Christmas. He loves what he calls “visual food puns”.  So we first thought of a food we have often, spaghetti and meatballs. It got us thinking... what if the meat was the noodles, and the pasta was the meatballs? What we ended up with was pretty awesome. Click below for more.

Note- This is the second pasta recipe in a short period of time.  I have 3 comments:

1.  We love pasta and make it all the time
2.  I am trying to clear out pictures taken with my old camera
3.  Next week has a theme – “Happy Chicken Week” – no pasta there

Anyways, there are a ton of pictures here, but I couldn’t narrow them down any further cause this was an awesome night and a great meal.  We cooked for almost 4 hours then watched a foodie movie.  What more can you ask for?

This is a direct recipe from Giada De Laurentiis.  You can find it here on the food network website and in her cookbook “Everyday Pasta.”  I am going to explain the recipe as we go today.

This past Sunday afternoon I had a big plan to make stock. Unfortunately I hadn’t checked my bank account in a few days and when I was about to leave to buy the supplies I realized there was no chance. I quickly flipped through Mandi’s new Jamie Oliver cookbook thinking pasta would be delicious and knowing we had eggs and flour so the actual noodle part would be free. I found an extremely simple recipe for pasta with meatballs and tomato sauce. This intrigued me because I suddenly realized that I follow all sorts of recipes for all types of food, but when I make spaghetti and meatballs I always just do my same variation on my mother / grandmother’s recipe. Something new might be fun. Click below for recipe.