Missed a week. of posting - not of cooking!

So the December 3rd post was actually food cooked the previous week. That night I cooked a wonderful meal. My camera ran out of battery at one point, but I did get some nice shots in there. Sadly, I don't have my camera with me right now, but I'll post pictures later.

What did I cook -
Pieces of steak cut for kabobs, salad, orzo pasta...

The preparation of the steak -
Pat dry with paper towels. Season with salt and pepper.
in a skillet, saute some onions and then add chopped garlic right before you put the steak in. Sear the steak for about 3 minutes on each side. Then put in a pan and put in the oven for about 10 minutes (more or less, depending on how large your pieces are and how well you'd like them done).
Then put them back in the skillet to get a nice brown sear on each side. Serve with salad or with the orzo.



















For the orzo, I got a multigrain one. Boil per the directions. Then drain. Then I seasoned them with a garlic wine seasoning from The Melting Pot. Then I put in enough tomato sauce to cover the orzo without the orzo drowning in it. Throw in a heap of Parmesan cheese and stir well. Note : if you don't have the garlic wine seasoning, just put garlic, basil and oregano to taste with some salt and pepper.





The salad was a simple baby field green salad with avocado and tomato.
Add a little Asiago cheese. No sauce necessary.











To drink - Dogfish Head Raison D'Etre. YUM! Dark and nutty beer. Delicious.

To listen to - Mika, because I felt just a little silly that night anyway.

I just realized that I didn't have any links to Mika songs...
Love Today
Lollipop
Big Girl (You are Beautiful)

I've also added pics... enjoy!

Thanksgiving with the Family

Well, I didn't get to listen to a lot of music while cooking with the family, but I'll tell you what I did get to make...
Westphalia Noodles

For those of you unfamiliar with Westphalia, TX, it's a small Catholic farming town just east of Temple, TX. The Catholic church hosts it's annual Westphalia Picnic where you can find sausage, fried chicken, slaw, green beans, and Westphalia Noodles (oh and dessert). I'll post pictures from the picnic sometime for you. :)

Well, for Thanksgiving I made the noodles.
You start with butter...
lots...
of...
artery clogging...
butter.
(about a stick and a half)

You basically melt that down. In the mean time, crush up about a sleeve of club crackers...
and then put the butter flavored crackers in the butter...





Then you brown them...
until they are crunchy butter flavored bits of delight...







In the mean time, boil noodles. Here's the key - they are a specific type of noodle that used to be called Ronco something or another. I can't find those in the store, so I used another type that I found last year. I can't find those in the store either, so my mom found Manischewitz noodles and they worked pretty well.

Basically, you boil those and put about another stick of butter in them. and then put the cracker crumbs on top. It's YUMMY and super easy.

But what else did we have? Well, it would take too long to list everything, so I'll just show you a picture...
That table is about 15 feet long and 4-5 feet wide. It wasn't big enough, so we made an L and added on more seating. That still wasn't big enough, so we had TV trays set around the house...
Just so you know, we had a small sampling of pretty much anything you can think of for Thanksgiving -
Turkey, dressing (several types), sausage, ham, chicken fried steak, broccoli casserole, green bean casserole, green beans, salad, mashed potatoes, cornbread, bread, noodles, and desserts to feed an army...and much more...

Then I went to visit more family and was blessed with more wonderful food. Here are a few pics.

Happy Thanksgiving!




Oh and right now I'm listening to "Let the Time Roll By" - Onward Soldiers