Happy Eating and David’s Facial Hair

Eating First –
Last week we ate pretty well even for our standards! I had Tuesday-Friday off, so I made chicken cordon bleu, which is just fun. I bought a family pack of chicken breasts, ¼ # of Swiss cheese and ham from the deli and made breadcrumbs from leftover bread ends, which was free bread from Le Petit. A quick note on that, make don’t buy your breadcrumbs, the canned ones taste like it, and are too fine in consistency. Instead indulge your inner frugality (I can always feel my grandpa Roy smiling down on me for being so resourceful) and use up the ends of bread! So I stuffed my little chicken breasts, then seasoned flour, egg wash, and bread crumbs. A quick spray with the oil mister and into the oven for 30 minutes they went. We enjoyed them with roasted cauliflower, and green beans steamed with a little o.j. As a starch I made a brown rice salad, which was pretty delicious. I got the idea from a bulgur wheat salad recipe from Real Simple magazine. The rice was cooked and cooled and drizzled with olive oil, and lemon juice, and tossed with flat leaf parsley, dried cherries, and toasted pecans.

I also baked a cinnamon swirl bundt a la my mom. She was still in Ireland, so I searched the interweb for a recipe and I think I found a pretty close one to hers. Here is the link, and enjoy the photo.
http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cinnamon-Swirl-Bundt-Coffee-Cake/Detail.aspx


Saturday we found ourselves again out of food for dinner. I was hungry for something with a lot of spices, so I found a recipe for Moroccan beef roast on foodtv.com. It was a slow cooker recipe so David threw it in the slow cooker in the morning, while I was at work, and he headed for the farmers market. The pot roast was super tender and very flavorful from all the spices and the apricots and parsnips that it had cooked with all day.


Yummy with a little Elizabeth Spencer Pinot which we just received last week!! David decided that a dessert in Gourmet magazine was too interesting to pass up. It is watermelon sorbet on the bottom and a topping of sweetened condensed milk, whipped cream and lime juice and zest. Here is a picture, and again the recipe is in this month’s Gourmet, (with the blackberry dessert on the cover)


Today David and I had the whole day off together. We had grand plans to do some serious hiking, but we woke up to 50 degrees and raining, and I am a fair weather hiker at best. Sooo we decided to go out for lunch at a deli and then came back to make eggplant Parmesan. I talked to my mom today and she requested my eggplant parm recipe, because she enjoys it a lot. The recipe is in my head, so here it goes.

First slice the eggplant. Try to pick small normal egg plants (not the expensive cute Japanese ones) cut them into ¼ inch slices and sprinkle them with salt on both sides. Put them on a cookie sheet on the counter for 15 minutes.

While the eggplant is hanging out, make bread crumbs with 4-6(ish) slices of bread, a few old hamburger/brat buns or whatever you have. Process in the food processor until they look like bread crumbs, pour onto a jelly roll pan and toast in a 350 oven for 7-10 minutes.

Now rinse the eggplant under cold water, and set up a breading station. 3 pie plates, 1 with flour with a little salt and pepper in it, the second with an egg or 2 and some water, and the third with the bread crumbs mixed with some Italian seasoning if you would like and grated parmesan cheese. Coat eggplant slices in flour, then egg, then crumbs, and then pan fry in batches or spray with cooking spray and bake for 10-15 minutes.

Now you could go two ways, you could make a casserole or you could keep all the components separate which is usually what David and I do with stuff that gets soggy because we eat it for a few days and by day 3 the eggplant and sauce will become one soggy breading mess.
Either way, sauce and noodles are needed. If the casserole road is taken mix noodles with pasta sauce and place eggplant slices on top cover with mozzarella cheese and bake until cheese is browned. If the individual road is taken take two servings of eggplant slices that you have baked or pan-fried, and top with mozzarella and place on a cookie sheet in a 450 oven until hot and cheese is brown. Plate on top of pasta and tomato sauce. Yum yum. I hope this does it for you mom, and devoted readers.

Here is a photo of the finished yummy product.




The facial hair part of the title of this post is because David has entered the Big Sky Brewing Co. First Annual Face Off. The boys are seeing who has the best facial hair after one month of growth. They all had to be clean shaven on Sept 17th.
Here is David on the 17th.


Now here is David on the 22nd


He looks, as my brother would say, like a mountain man. 5 days down, 25 to go. I’ll keep you posted. While David is consumed with his facial hair, I have begun the daunting task of scrap booking the wedding festivities. I hope to get it done and off the kitchen table by the time David’s parents Don and Barbara come to visit on October 9th.

Everything else is going well with us, and we hope all is well with you.
Lots of love to one and all
Abby