I know, it’s been a long time. Too long. I apologize.
We had a nasty cold run through the house, then it was little man’s birthday, and we had a celebration for that. Plus I’ve just not been feeling great.
Stephanie and I are struggling with summer time constraints, so our posts are spreading out for now, but we hope to get back into a routine soon.
We celebrated my little guy’s second birthday at the lake with family. I don’t do the big parties for little kiddos who don’t really have a bunch of friends. When he gets older and gets it more, then I can do those, but for now, his play group include the dog, and a sweet little girl a sweet behind us.
So, we went to hang with family. I made a couple pizzas, and it wasn’t my best work. The toppings were ok, but the crusts, were just not great. The dough was out of a box (gasp!!!) and it just didn’t work right.
Little man loves pirates right now. His favorite is Captain Hook, and I’m wondering if I should be concerned about that.
Anyway, I made him a pirate ship cake,
My nephew helped me decorate. He very painstakingly made the crabs, but we had fun.
That’s the fun thing about cooking. While the little guy was napping, I got to catch up with my nephew, and I have to say, if my little one grows up to be half the man he is turning out to be, I will be a proud momma.
Enough on that….
I made a few things lately that I will share.
The first was a chicken breast with squash and a chutney over them.
The chicken breast I just cooked off with some olive oil, but you could just as easily grill it.
The squash I sliced and sautéed in some olive oil and a little butter
Now for the chutney, this was an experiment I made in class one day, and it turned out pretty well, so I tweaked it and made it at home.
Take a pepper (in class I used a poblano, at home I wanted something red,) you can use whatever you like here. Even a bell pepper if you’re so inclined. Just FYI, I’m almost never inclined to use a bell pepper. Put it on your burner to char it -this works better if you have a gas stove, but as you can see, and electric burner works ok too.
Then stick it in a bag to sweat.
Meanwhile dice up an onion and about three tomatillos. Those are the ones with the green papery skin on them. Take the skin off and give them a quick rinse.
Take the sweaty pepper, and rub the skin off. Do not do this under water, you will wash all that charred flavor away. If some of the skin is still there, that’s ok.
Dice this up and mix everybody together with the juice from a lime and a dash of salt.
Then sauté in a little butter or olive oil. Not much, this step brings out the juices in your sauce here, so you don’t need to do it for long either.
I even got a couple picky eaters to eat their vegetables with this one, and to be honest, I don’t really like squash, but I will make and eat this again!
Stay tuned, Stephanie and I will be discussing foods that fight cancer soon.
I promise I won’t go MIA for so long again. We discovered that my thyroid has gone on strike, so we are working on getting that fixed, and I’ll be back to my old self very soon!
I also have a final coming up on Tues, and then I will officially be at the half way point in school, and on to my pastry semester!