Brick oven pizza has come to Jersey City in fine, fine form.
Razza is a new vegetarian (without bragging about it) BOP restaurant down the street from us.
Kale Caesar Salad.
What??
I am not a kale fan, but with the Caesar dressing, freshly grated Parmesan and home made croutons it was actually quite tasty. Jason thought it might have been marinated in the dressing. Hmmm...these are deep thoughts. I am definitely going to be trying this out at home. I need more ways to love this dark green magical veggie.
Pizza of the night? Pumpkin Pie Pizza. You had me at pumpkin pie. Pizza.
Ingredients: roasted garlic, butternut squash, mozzarella and basil. Heaven.
Sorry for the picture quality, and quantity of food. You can see my husband's eager fingers...half the pizza was gone before I got a chance to take a pic of it whole. yum yum in my tum tum.
I am always incredibly impressed when I see my friends take matters into their own hands, think outside the box, and creating something from nothing. That's the definition of creativity right?
The Webster definition is:
"The use of the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work."
Ooh that's pretty. Let's go with that.
Today's feature friend? Newly published author, Jessica Lynne Curtis. Last spring we had the honor and pleasure of taking her photograph for the interior of the children's book she has written.
The title of the book is "Papa's New Home", and it is a perfect story to give hope for a child experiencing the loss of a loved one.
My friend, power blogger Kristy Glass, interviewed Jessica about the book, and the inspiration behind it. Check out her post here. I adoredPapa's New Home. Whatever your faith is, the book's essence is purely about love, family and hope.
As you can see I was quite moved, especially having recently gone through a loss myself. My only complaint is that it was hard to read with tears welled up in my eyes! So my advice is, if you purchase this book to help a child dealing with a loss, (which I strongly recommend you do) read it through so you can thoroughly experience the emotions you may have first!
I have been teased mercilessly for years by anyone and everyone who knew about my addiction to Easy Mac. At the time I ate this delicacy with regularity I never worried about my weight. It may have just been the metabolism of my early 20's, or what I like to call easy mac-tabolism. Definition: the rejection of most food groups and the desire to make food preparation as easy or non-existent as possible so I could go back to working on that audition piece.
The plus side of my metabolism is catching up with me, is that I am fully accepting... of rejecting....easy mac-tabolism.
So the other title of this post could be
"what to do with all those leftover veggies in the fridge?"
A bit wordy, so let's make it the sub-title.
This post maybe a bit of a no-brainer, but in the past if I saw a bunch of leftover random veggies about to take their last breath in the fridge, they would pretty much get dumped. Well not now! Not with real metabolism setting in! and not when you have a couple tortillas laying around!
Take the leftover veggies:
Chop them all up and throw 'em down:
Add some black beans for protein, and low fat feta for, well, just because it's delicious:
and voila. The easy wrap. Veggie edition.
Just consider this option the next time you think, well it's not enough to really make...anything.
Just wrap it up! Done.
This one is a little gem. I happen to consider it to be one of the the greatest recipes on the planet but I might be slightly biased. It makes my mouth water just thinking about it, so without further ado, here is Baba's secret recipe for perogies otherwise known as...pyrohy.
This is somewhat a toughie, so if you are new to cooking, I would start with the most important ingredient. Patience. You must also immediately lose your fear of making dough. If you are a seasoned chef you will find this pretty simple, and as long as you have some time to commit to refining your "pinching" skills. You will love the result.
With a food processor such as this one,
the entire experience is shortened and much less grueling. Because making dumplings is a long process I like to split the task into two days. It's convenient to make the filling one day while cooking a whole other meal, and then the next day you put the dumplings together, serve, and save. Depending how big you make them, this recipe should make approximately 50-60 pyrohy. It makes about six solid meals for the cost of...oh... $10.
Day One.
Making the filling.
Ingredients for the filling:
4 Large Potoatoes
1 Large Onion
1 package of farmer's cheese
Pepper
Peel and boil the potatoes, (15-20min-check softness with a fork) and mash. Saute one large onion and add to potatoes. Pepper to taste. Let potatos cool. Add the farmers cheese when cool and mash up everything very well. I have tried using a food processor here and I wouldn't not recommend it. The consistency needs not me tougher so this part takes a bit of elbow grease to make sure everything is nicely mixed with few lumps.
Day Two.
Making the Dough and Assembling. Oh yeah and eating.
Ingredients for Dough:
3 Cups Flour
1 Egg
2 tablespoons Vegetable Oil
3/4 cup COLD water
Put a large pot of water on the stove to boil. That was easy right? Ok now the complicated part...
Add all the ingredients into the food processor but the water. Make sure you are using the dough blade and dough setting. Add water slowly through the feeder until you have a beautiful ball of dough! Have plenty of flour spread out on a baking mat and on your hands because the dough will be sticky. Reach in and split the dough in two. Make sure you cover the processor with a wet cloth to keep the other half moist. Roll the working dough out in one long dough "snake" and then cut the "snake" into 2inch pieces. Roll out each individual piece so you have little flat, round circles of dough. Take a melon baller and scoop individual balls of filling into each circle of dough. Fold the dough over and pinch in a half circle. Set aside and do it again to the next and the next and the next. When you have assembled about 10-15 of them, gently put them in the pot of water that should be at this point at a rolling boil for about 5 min. Remove, cool in a colander, add butter and repeat.
Repeat the entire assembling process with the second half of the dough and filling!
This video kills me. I love the Babas in this clip, and they are not messing around in a factory like setting. The main difference from my instructions and the video is that they roll out all the dough first and then cut circles with a cookie cutter. This is definitely another option, I have just felt like unless you work really quickly the dough dries more this way. They work quickly. ;)
My favorite part of this is when she says "No blowin your nose and then pinchin. We don't like that."
Now I just need to go find myself a "perogie-making" bonnet.
Please write to me with any questions you may have. Good luck and enjoy!!
We have been spared here in Jersey City, but the damage in my neighborhood is still extensive. One week later we still have no transportation into Manhattan. Sirens are still going off outside my window as I write this. We were unbelievably lucky to have had electricity for all but 36 hours of the whole experience. Puts it all in perspective, and I swear the once hardened Jerseyites are acting slightly softer. New Yorkers are tough and there isn't any tragedy we can't overcome. We pray for all of those who are still struggling and piecing their lives back together.
This little bridge connected us to Liberty State park. It has been blown off where it used to be attached right next to the sign.
This webpage: http://printaidnyc.com/posters/
is selling some beautiful posters and %100 of the proceeds go to Hurricane Sandy victims.
I love this one:
Beautiful images from a beautiful weekend in a beautiful place. If you ever just so happen to be traveling though NY, check out this wonderful little city. http://www.visitithaca.com/
Jason Campbell Photography is back up and running with a really fun photo shoot that goes into the category of "satirical boudoir". My girl Shannon along with my brilliant vocal coach Andrew Byrne have created a hilarious cabaret telling stories of her sordid dating life in NYC. Think Sex and The City meets music sung by Julie Andrews and Heart. I know you are already intrigued. We wanted to create a scene where a classy girl just looking for love in all the wrong places finds herself stuck in the most ridiculous and maybe not so classy environment. These are a few examples of the results. I don't think I have laughed so hard doing a photoshoot ever.
by Scott Brown which pretty much sums it up perfectly.
I have been cooking a lot and getting really excited about creativity in the kitchen! Just in time to make a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow for my Canadian husband that I am very thankful for. ;)
