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

The pictures I promised

Alright - the pictures from the turkey. My camera ran out of battery and I lost the charger, so the prep pictures didn't happen, although they would have been fun.

Here's how things turned out...

My turkey...














My turkey and a smoked turkey my friend made... look at those two lovely ladies...














Here are some pics of the other food we had...
Ribs, smothered cabbage, various breads, pies, desserts...yum!
Oh and for the clean up music... Girl Talk

Early Thanksgiving

Hi folks -
I'll post pictures later, but last weekend I did an early thanksgiving with a bunch of friends. It was a delight!
The turkey and dressing recipe is here:
Believe me..."Bacon makes EVERYTHING better"was a phrase uttered around the whole house this weekend. :)

I first had this made for me when I had Thanksgiving with friends in graduate school. I've made it 3 times since then and it's always a hit.

While I was making it, I listened to these guys: The Spring Standards. They are an amazing group I just discovered. Just listening to them doesn't do it justice. You really should see them live. There's no drummer. They've just split up the drum set so each of the other musicians is also playing part of the drum set. Sometimes one will be playing guitar, harmonica and the high hat. Then they'll switch and that guy will play bass guitar. Then the girl will play piano and has a whole set up of other percussion instruments around her and she plays them all. They are fantastic musicians and such a joy to watch and listen to.

Pictures will come tomorrow.

Just a Simple Thursday night

Well, I hadn't planned on my Thursday being my cooking night, but I've had a tough week, and nothing sets me quite right like cooking.

I kept it simple though.

Salad -
Green mixture
red grapes cut in half
granny smith apples in small slices
pecans (from my parent's trees...yum)
and Asiago cheese


Brilliant combination!



Then for the meat, I had some salmon.
add chopped garlic, olive oil, rubbed sage, salt and pepper to taste...
put in the oven at 375 for around 15 minutes.
Add gorogonzola cheese for an additional 5 minutes.
and it comes out like this...

I added those three pecan halves on the salmon just for looks more than anything else.

Yum! (next time I'm going to try broiling it for the last 3 minutes to see how it turns out)

Here are a few more shots...just because I like pictures of food...






















Oh...and for the wine, I chose a reasonably priced Merlot. It's quite tasty. If I knew anything about analyzing wine, I'd tell you more...I'll analyze my next beer pairing better, I promise.

I'm sure you're asking
"What about the music selection for the night?"
Well, I decided to go with Madeleine Peyroux. I'm not sure why. Maybe it was the feeling of something simple, with sweet and savory together that made me think her slightly sultry, yet somehow sweet voice would work. The link is to the album I had playing last night.

For dessert, I walked down to the cafe a block away and picked up a couple scoops of vanilla bean icecream.

What a good mid/late week evening.

The goal...

Hi folks -
I'm not sure who will read this or where this adventure will take us, but here is where it begins...

I'm starting this blog just to see what other folks think about these things I hold very close to my heart. This is a blog that combines my favorite things: food, drinks, and music. Here's what I'm thinking. I'll post about the food I'm cooking and if it involves a paired drink of some sort, I'll include that as well. I LOVE cooking to music, so I'm going to include my music choices for the cooking and for the eating of food.

If you have suggestions for new music or new recipes to check out...let me have them! :)

So, a little about me -
I'm a librarian at an art / design school and I LOVE my job. I'm one of the few people that can honestly say that I love what I do. Sure, there are struggles from time to time, but overall, I get to work with some fantastic colleagues, wonderful students and excellent materials.

When not working, I stay pretty busy somehow. I don't actually read that much. I always say I will, but I just run out of time. I do swing/blues dancing, mostly west coast swing. I grew up knowing how to two step, polka, waltz and all the other country dance hall / german farming family type of dances. I don't think I remember a time when I didn't know how to two step.

I also cook... a lot. I cook for myself. I cook for friend's weddings. I cook for friends. I cook for family. I love it.

I listen to a LOT of music. I'm usually pretty open to new music as well. My tastes vary, so I'm open to your suggestions.

So here we go...my goal is to post one good meal per week with my music pairing. If I post more frequently, then it's just because I had more time. :)

Until next time...