Lemon Theme Night!

Yes! Lemon was my surprise theme for my first official theme night! Now, at first, the theme lemon might not sound that exciting - but ohhh, it is. On the menu: Homemade lemon pasta with a rosemary vodka lemon cream sauce, a mixed green salad with lemon mustard vinaigrette, all served with a limoncello and orange cocktail. For dessert, we have a low fat/calorie homemade lemon ice cream! A little more exciting, right? On top of it all, I dressed up in my most yellow 50's party dress and had a big pouffy flower in my hair! Theme night was awesome!

So, the first thing I actually made was the lemon pasta, which you can read all about here. The next thing I made was my ice cream. I have been making banana ice cream a lot lately, so I decided to change it up. In the fridge, we had tons of lemons, so I went for it. Making lemon ice cream is tricky though, especially if you are using all non-fat ingredients. Lemon and cream can curdle real easy, especially when there isn't enough fat. Somehow, I got really lucky. I was very diligent about my whisking and it all creamed together, so wonderfully.

I used a lot of lemons, as pictured above, both their juice and their zest. I strained the zest out, before letting my mixture cool. The next day, I added a little more non-fat half and half, then into the ice cream maker it went.

Once it was thick enough, I packed up my ice cream and got started on the next lemon dish.

I started off chopping all of my ingredients, washing the salad, and basically making a big mess. Luckily, I made a lemon mustard salad dressing the night before, so the salad was ready to go.

I really wanted to surprise Brian, but I had less than an hour to get everything done! I started on my sauce, by sweating some sweet red onions and shallots, with a little bit of rosemary.

I added a few shots of vodka, a few squirts of lemon, and my cream. Since I used lots of fat free ingredients (low cal butter and fat free cream), I noticed a little bit of curdling. Gross, I know. To fix that, I just added a big piece of fatty, glorious, wonderful butter, which totally saved the day.

Did I mention I was making my pasta at the same time? Excuse the dark, somewhat blurry photos below. Making pasta, taking pictures, and being in a hurry all add up!

Making the pasta wasn't bad. Sure, I had to start over on a few pieces, but overall, it was a decent first time, for doing it by myself.

For some reason, the pasta machine didn't fully cut the fettuccine, so a few of them clumped together when I boiled them. I think I might need more flour, next time.

And finally, the last thing I did was make the cocktail.

Our friend, Michael, gave us a bottle of his homemade Limoncello - so delicious. I made a little cocktail that was 3 parts orange juice, 1 part Limoncello. It was so light and tasty! And finally, dinner was served.

Again, I apologize for the dark pictures!

We finished the night off with our homemade lemon ice cream.

It was dreamy.

All in all, everything was good. The lemon pasta was very subtle and it was cooked really perfectly. The sauce was yummy - though, I might cheat next time and use some real, whole fat cream. The cocktail? Amazing. The salad? Totally good. The ice cream was delicious, though, I might use 1-2 less lemons next time -the flavor was good, but it was strong. I wouldn't say too strong - but it was more strong than I'd like it to be.

Lemon day was awesome. Now, what shall I do for my next theme night? Hmm...

Zucchini Four Ways

I love working in libraries. Besides my duties of helping people, solving book-related mysteries, organizing, and my shameless love of librarian fashion - library people love food. I've been very fortunate to work in libraries where people love bringing in snacks, freshly baked goodies, and fresh produce grown in their own back yards! Did I just convert some of you to librarians? Last week, I was lucky enough to be here when my coworker, Steve, brought in some Zucchinis from his garden. Gorgeous zucchinis that I cut into so quickly, that this is the only picture I have of them in their natural state:

I took that zucchini home with a mission, but I had no idea on the culinary adventure I was about to embark. My first dish was the obvious choice, zucchini bread (see recipe here). I love me some zucchini bread. The other half of the zucchini pictured above is here, pictured below.

There's more to zucchini bread than just zucchini! There's a fluffy, yummy batter that must be made.

And when you add the shredded Zucchini to the creamy, sweet, batter, you get a really crowded bowl.

After it's in the oven for a while, you get something so delicious, it's hard to share.

But, being the public servant of a librarian that I am, I convinced Mr. B to let me take half of the loaf to work.

My favorite thing to make with zucchini bread are sandwiches. The bread itself is so moist and flavorful, that all I had to provide was a slice of cheese and some turkey - and it was perfect. Especially toasted! Now, what to do with all of that leftover zucchini? Well, I still had lots of fancy cheeses from last week's fancy pasta, so why not make another fancy baked pasta, with zucchini, right? And that's what I did.

Is anyone else as obsessed with micro graters as I am?

I have been using my daily! I sauteed my zucchinis with some basil, garlic, pepper, and butter.

I then added some cream, ricotta, my grated parmesan and fontinella.

It was fabulous.

I made this same dish 2 days later, that's how fabulous - and easy! Can you believe I still had zucchini left over after this, still? What's even more amazing is that after a few days, I still had leftover zucchini bread! It was at that moment, I remembered a recipe that Mr. B's cousin, Josh, had been raving about for shirred eggs. I wondered. Then I went to it.

I buttered my ramekin, nice and plenty. Remember this guy?

Yep. That's the zucchini bread! Josh's original recipe did not call for any bread (rather, meats like prosciutto, bacon, etc..), but I thought why not? Though, I still didn't skimp on his orders, I added some cut up sausage.

Then the real star of the recipe, eggs.

Brian's egg yolks broke, but he didn't seem to mind. Me? I like my egg yolks nice and runny. I then transferred the ramekins to a baking dish and baked them for approximately 10 minutes at 350.

I added a splash or two of cream, some salt and pepper, and a basil leaf. This is where Josh usually adds tomatoes or peppers - which we had none of. But we did have cheese. Glorious cheese. Grated using my favorite micro grater, of course! Then, back in the oven until golden.

Don't these look fancy?

I felt really fancy, just eating one!

I especially love the way the basil leaf is peeking at you, from under all of the cheeses.

I guess I could have thrown in a few zucchini slivers too! Then again, what would I have left to grill then?

Grilled zucchini with a little olive oil, garlic salt, and paprika. A delicious compliment to our meal of yellow rice and crispy BBQ chicken...

See! A culinary adventure! One that all started withe a zucchini! Needless to say, no leftovers this time. Instead, four very fun dishes and two very full bellies.

Conchiglie al Forno with Mushrooms and Radicchio (or Fancy Baked Pasta)

The other night, Brian was ohhhhing and ahhhhing at something Ina Garten was cooking up, on tv. I was intrigued. So, I made the dish. Not really a diet friendly dish, but it was tasty alright. The dish is called Conchiglie al Forno with Mushrooms and Radicchio and the recipe can be found here. It starts off with lots of cheeses. I'm not a gorgonzola fan, so I only added a few crumbles, and I just eyeballed the Parmesan and Fontina.

I cut the radicchio, then added my ricotta. The ricotta was great, because it really glued everything together.

On the side, I had some delicious Shitake Mushroom caps, sliced.

Did I mention the butter? Butter and light heat make the mushrooms real good.

I added the rest of my ingredients to the radicchio bowl, including sage, salt, and heavy cream (though, I didn't use as much cream as the recipe called for), then added my Shitake Mushrooms, and the lovely butter sauce that they produced (not sure if that was part of the recipe or not, but that butter was amazing).

Once my final ingredient of partially cooked pasta shells was ready, I added those to the mix too.

Then stirred and stirred.

The pasta should be baked at 500 degrees, in a shallow baking dish. I accidentally made enough for two dishes!

I thought it was a lot, but Brian didn't seem to mind.

After about 15 minutes in the oven, until the top noodles are nice and golden, take the dish out and let it rest for a few minutes. I added a few dabs of butter on top of my noodles, to give them that extra golden brown color.

It was delicious. The sage and radicchio gave it a unique bitterness that was a nice contrast to the pasta we usually eat.

The recipe calls this an appetizer dish, although I served it as our main course. I now see why it's an appetizer - it's ridiculously rich and creamy. Too heavy for a main course, but that didn't stop us from eating it. Or, from me eating it again for lunch today.

Whole Wheat Biscuits & My Mom's Harisah

Because my current job is only a block away from my parent's house, I'll occasionally get a call from my mom offering me some dinner or leftovers. It's always a treat to get some of my mom's home cooking, especially when she makes Harisah. The best way for me to describe Harisah is an Armenian Chicken Porridge. It has wheat, chicken (or turkey), butter, salt, and it's amazing. A bowl full of Harisah is a meal in itself, but I thought I'd a little more coziness to the dish by making biscuits.

Since Brian and I are trying to be a little more healthy in our eating, I used this recipe for Fluffy Whole Wheat Biscuits. They came out pretty tasty, considering they were whole wheat! Though, I think I'll roll out the dough a bit thicker next time and possibly layer the biscuits with butter. Now, have you seen a cozier dinner?

Harisah is great, because you could even freeze the leftovers and have them anytime! Although, when we eat Harisah, there are usually no leftovers.

**If you're waiting for wedding crafts, I still can't find my memory card... but I'll keep searching! Wedding crafts will be posted the moment I find it!**