Pass The Sushi!

I’m lov­ing my new lay­out. I wanted a throw back to my orig­i­nal idea but some­thing that also tied in with Sil­hou­ette Graph­ics (not to men­tion, I’m a sucker for red). Check out the adorable image that Kit­ti­fied­meow did for my about page!

There’s more to come with the new design, I just jumped the gun a lit­tle by launch­ing this ver­sion soon. I couldn’t help myself. >.<!

My “Two New” for this week is a cheat, kind of. I didn’t get to make two new recipes this week because of an over­abun­dance of work — at both my 9–5 and my per­sonal web­site design ser­vices (of which I am not com­plain­ing). How­ever, what I did make was tough and it took two peo­ple in the kitchen to make. So — ha! That’s how I’m jus­ti­fy­ing my per­sonal fail­ure this week.

Hand­some and I made pot stick­ers last night. I acci­den­tally pulled ground pork the other night to thaw and rather then let­ting it go to waste, though, we both worked long and hard days, we decided to give pot stick­ers a whirl. So at 8:30 last night we started peel­ing gin­ger, chop­ping scal­lions, and joy­fully play­ing with my food proces­sor. Well, he joy­fully played with my food proces­sor. I am a lit­tle con­cerned that he enjoyed it to much and I will come home tonight to find that every thing in the kitchen has been processed.

I have only made pot stick­ers once before with my friend and her mom but the lit­tle tips and tricks I got from that expe­ri­ence really helped. We used a com­bi­na­tion of his moms recipe and Ming Tsai’s. We def­i­nitely need to improve our fill­ing por­tion con­trol.  Goldilocks would have been very dis­ap­pointed if she’d stopped by last night. Over­all, though, for out first time mak­ing pot stick­ers and it tak­ing til 10 to eat din­ner, it was pretty darn close to perfect.

Today’s blog breaks the Pass the Sushi rules. There’s no food — just ram­blings from myself about the crazi­ness that is my life.

A few weeks ago my cats moved into my boyfriends house (which was a per­sonal melt­down for another day as I gen­er­ally don’t believe in liv­ing together). He (the bf) has a 70 lb lov­able mutt. I have two 7lb adorable kit­tens. They have got to find some com­mon ground. The dog gets jeal­ous, herds the cats, and makes it very dif­fi­cult to sit and cud­dle with them, leav­ing me with gap­ing wounds from said scared kit­ten. The cats smack him around, get to sleep in bed, and are pretty much where my cud­dle atten­tion is eaten up 99% of the time. So really, I can’t blame either of them.

How­ever, cats in a new envi­ron­ment — hi-lar-ious. Kiori (the black and white girl) likes to play in water bowls. A 70lb dogs water bowl can spill water every where, come crush­ing down a flight of stairs in sec­onds and seep under the hard­wood leav­ing you jump­ing up and down like an idiot try­ing to squeeze the water out.… Kiori, the curi­ous kit­ten, likes to climb as high as she can, only to find that drop ceil­ings do just that — drop. Twice. Mad­dox has got­ten his head stuck in between a chair and the wall and has chewed the plants, that my boyfriends mother just recently took the time to trim, to unrec­og­niz­able stumps ( and he’s work­ing his way through the fake one).  And one of them is appar­ently steal­ing the butter…

I just real­ized this is the first Valentine’s Day in a very long time that I was excited. We had noth­ing excit­ing planned, heck I didn’t even get a gift for my boyfriend. Even bet­ter — I couldn’t even find a Valentine’s card I liked — so he got a Birth­day card with edits. Lol… Ah, that kinda makes me sound like a jerk. It was a cute card — I promise.

I actu­ally didn’t get excited until my daddy stopped by my store bring­ing me flow­ers and a cute stuffed ani­mal. He is so awe­some. I have the best dad in the world. As a lit­tle girl he would always give me car­na­tions on Valentine’s day and, I guess, some­things never change. I got all teary-eyed at his awe­some­ness and then the curi­ous­ness of whether or not my boyfriend would do any­thing kicked in.

When I got home he pre­pared din­ner ( even turn­ing the lights to low and light­ing some can­dles — which was down­right adorable to watch) and gave me my present — motor­cy­cle gloves. They are super cool. I don’t have the same knowl­edge as him about motor­cy­cle stuff but they were neat and thick and seem like they are going to save me hands should we crash and burn. At this point I felt like a jerk for assum­ing that he wasn’t going to get me any­thing.… >.< But I did make him cook­ies! A day late due to work — but cook­ies nonetheless.

These were not really Loft House Sugar Cook­ies. More like sugar cook­ies that needed lots more sugar to be like the great Loft House ones my boyfriend and I guiltily enjoy. You can check out the recipe here.  I rec­om­mend adding more sugar. They just weren’t sweet enough to be like the loft house cook­ies. And LOTS AND LOTS of flour. This recipe is sooo sticky. Mar­ble enjoyed the mess and has since crashed from his sugar-high.

We’re snowed in again today as another bliz­zard is blan­ket­ing the area. I’m not exactly sure how much we’re sup­posed to get this time but I think peo­ple are pretty much over the ‘ohh and ahh pretty snow’ stage — mainly because I don’t have 38 face­book posts announc­ing the snow. Wal­mart was so picked over that they were even out of frozen spinach. Peo­ple had moved past milk and bread and the heavy cream and tor­tillas were gone as well.

I got what I needed as was able to get out in a rea­son­able time to come home and wait for the snow to start. My two new this week were accom­plished in very short time but I’m hop­ing to knock another out this week if I have a few extra bucks for the gro­cery store.

Chicken Enchi­ladas : from a friend of the BF.

• 3 /4 chicken breasts
• 8 tor­tillas
• 4 oz cream cheese
• 2 tbs tabasco sauce
• 2 cups shred­ded Mex­i­can blend cheese or cheddar
• 1 10oz can enchi­lada sauce

Throw 3 or 4 chicken breasts in the crock-pot with onion and other desired sea­son­ings until they are able to be shred­ded. Pull the chicken, add 4 oz. cream cheese, chopped onion (or the onion you cooked the chicken in) and a table­spoon of tabasco sauce. Fold tor­tillas together in a bak­ing dish and put a small amount of shred­ded cheese on the bot­tom. Spoon the chicken mix­ture evenly into the tor­tillas and wrap them up against one another. Top with enchi­lada sauce and cheese.

I would totally stuff these with refried beans or sea­soned black beans, pep­pers, onions, and rice if my boyfriend wasn’t so picky. Next time Im doing a few just for me with these addi­tions because they would really be awe­some then.

Apple­bees Blondies from Food Net­work Mag­a­zine (these looked too good not to try!)

For the Blondies:

• 10 table­spoons unsalted but­ter, at room temperature,
• plus more for the pan
• 1 cup wal­nut pieces
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tea­spoon bak­ing powder
• 1/2 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
• 1 tea­spoon salt
• 1 1/2 cups packed light brown sugar
• 3 large eggs
• 2 table­spoons vanilla extract
• 6 ounces white choco­late, cut into chunks

For the Topping:

• 1/3 cup maple syrup
• 6 table­spoons unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup heavy cream
• Vanilla ice cream, for serving
• 1/2 cup wal­nut pieces

Direc­tions

Make the blondies: Pre­heat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a 9-by-13-inch bak­ing pan with foil, leav­ing an over­hang on two sides; but­ter the foil. Pulse 1/2 cup wal­nuts in a food proces­sor until almost fine (do not over­process). Whisk the ground nuts, flour, bak­ing pow­der, bak­ing soda and salt in a medium bowl.

Beat 10 table­spoons but­ter and the brown sugar with a mixer on medium speed until fluffy, about 2 min­utes. Beat in the eggs, one at a time, scrap­ing down the bowl with a rub­ber spat­ula. Beat in the vanilla. Grad­u­ally beat in the dry ingre­di­ents until just com­bined. Fold in the white choco­late and the remain­ing 1/2 cup walnuts.

Spread the bat­ter in the pre­pared pan and bake until the blondies are light brown around the edges and spring back when pressed, about 30 min­utes. Cool slightly on a rack.

Mean­while, make the top­ping: Place the maple syrup and but­ter in a small saucepan over medium heat and cook until the mix­ture bub­bles and thick­ens, swirling the pan, about 6 min­utes. Add the cream and con­tinue to cook until the mix­ture is the con­sis­tency of caramel.

Use the foil to lift the blondies out of the pan, then cut into large bars. Serve warm topped with ice cream, the maple-butter sauce and the walnuts.

These were yummy — but not 100% Apple­bees. I think microwav­ing the blondie for a few sec­onds to reheat it and actu­ally hav­ing ice cream to kinda make it mushy would def­i­nitely improve it. Our oven is also still cook­ing a lit­tle hot so I pulled them out at 22 min­utes and they were done, but a lit­tle too dry.