A Jeanne in the Kitchen

We’re back from Hays.  It was just a quick trip to celebrate the Billinger Christmas with Larry’s family.  The Billinger Christmas  We had a lot of rain and snow going and high winds coming back, but we are back home now, and there were no problems at all.  We had a bit of a scare though this morning, because it was reported that 1-70 was closed at the Kansas/Colorado border, but that was just a false alarm.  We made it back home safe and sound.

There were about 30 of us who gathered to celebrate, and that wasn’t even all of his brothers and sisters either.  Larry is the youngest of 9.  The table was covered with food, and we all brought out gifts to be exchanged in the gift exchange.   I did NOT do any of the cooking this time around.  Strange, I know, but every now and then it does happen.  It was good to visit with Larry’s family and to catch up with everyone, but the highlight of the trip was most definitely the puppies.  Larry’s sister’s dog just had puppies, and her husband brought “a box of puppies” to the party after the food and festivities.  Puppies always make us smile.  Everyone had a ton of fun playing with the puppies.  These puppies definitely brought and shared some puppy love.

Puppies are always a big hit and we love all dogs.  These are Dobermans.  They are about 5 weeks old.  There were 9 in the litter, but we only got to play with 4 this time.

Larry made a new friend.

Brooklyn has a a Christmas puppy.

Cousins playing with the puppies.

There were 2 kitties that also had to make their presence known and get in on some of the loving too.  This is Winston popping in to say hi.

Winston and Sue getting some treats.

As much as we were loving these puppies, we left them all in Kansas.  We did not bring any of them home with us this time.  Tempting though it was, we were good, and they all stayed in Kansas.  Although, on other occasions we have been known to bring back a rabbit, Fluffy, and our two current kitties, Otis and Nicodemus, from Kansas.  So it is not unheard of for us to bring back more fur babies, but we were good this time around.

 

The Kitchen will be closed for a short while.  We are off to Hays, KS to celebrate the Holidays with Larry’s family, the Billingers.  We will only be gone for a couple of days, and even though there will be a ton of food, as there always is, I will not be doing the cooking, or at least I will not be doing much of the cooking.

We are big bacon fans here.  If it has bacon, it is almost a guarantee that we are going to like it.  Potatoes are another staple in our house.  So combining bacon with potatoes …. YUM!  This winning combination is a different twist to an old favorite, loaded potato skins.  Bacon wrapped potatoes with queso blanco sauce was one of the dishes I decided upon for our Christmas Eve dinner.   Christmas Eve Celebrations  They were a big hit.  As you can see, it is a simple dish with just a few basic ingredients that most people have on hand all the time.  Often times, simple is best.

Bacon Wrapped Potatoes with Queso Blanco Sauce

1-2 lb red potatoes, washed and cut into wedges

1 lb bacon – I used pepper bacon

salt & pepper to taste

olive oil

1 jalapeno, diced fine

1 shallot or 1/3 red onion, diced fine

1 TBSP garlic

1/2 cup milk

4 slices jalapeno jack cheese

1 jar queso blanco dipping sauce

1/4 diced tomatoes

1/4 cup fresh cilantro, chopped fine

 

Preheat the oven to 425* F,

Add salt & pepper to the potato wedges.  Cut the bacon in 1/2 and wrap a piece of bacon around the potato wedges.  Hold the bacon in place with toothpicks.  Drizzle a little olive oil over the wedges and roast for about 40-45 minutes, or until the bacon is crisp and the potato wedges are tender.

While the potatoes are cooking make the sauce.  Saute the shallots, garlic and jalapenos together in olive oil for about 2 minutes or until the onions are translucent.

Add the queso blanco sauce, the milk and the jalapeno jack cheese then mix everything together well.  Cook until the sauce is creamy and the cheese is all melted.  Then add the tomatoes and the cilantro and combine well.  Adjust the seasoning if needed.  Your sauce is now ready to serve.  Serve it warm or hot.

Serve the potato wedges and the queso blanco sauce hot.  I guarantee these will be a party favorite and will disappear almost as soon as you get them out of the oven.  I barely had time to plate them up before they started disappearing.  And there are plenty of things you can use the left over sauce for too, assuming you have any left over.  I have already used it for a couple of things.  Once was in our Christmas morning omelettes.  Christmas Day  You will just have to wait to find out what else I did with it.  🙂

 

 

 

 

Merry Christmas Everyone.  I hope you are all enjoying your holidays.  Our big Holiday celebration was last night.  Christmas Eve Celebrations  We have had a VERY lazy day today.  We stayed in bed, watched TV and are just taking easy.   Since we do not have any kids, Christmas morning is more about taking it easy and relaxing than it is about presents.  We don’t really exchange any big gifts with each other.  We prefer making memories and sharing experiences than getting “things”.   We have found the most important gift to each other is the gift of time.  We have a few presents we open, but more so than not, those are shared adventures than actual things.  One of our “presents” to ourselves is to get NITROX certified for scuba diving.  We’ve been talking about it for quite some time and just haven’t done it yet.  So now is the time.  This will come in very handy since we already have 2 major dive trips planned for 2020; one to Cab San Lucas, Mexico,  and the other to the GBR in Australia.  After opening our “prezzies”, we made omelettes out of some last night’s leftovers.  This was the perfect way for us to “celebrate” our day.

We had the leftover bacon wrapped potatoes and leftover ham, so we made ham, spinach and mushroom omelettes.

We even had a little Christmas visitor stop by to wish us a Merry Christmas.

However you spend your day, make it merry and bright.  Celebrate all the good things in life.  Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

Merry Christmas Everyone!!!!  It’s Christmas Eve.  Soon it will be Christmas Day!

We had a small but festive and fun celebration with our friends Priscilla and Jonathon and their daughters, and our friend Laura and her family.  Larry was busy cleaning all day and I was busy cooking all day.  We were getting everything ready for the festivities to come later in the evening.  I knew I was cooking the roast and the ham; it was just other stuff I wasn’t sure about.  What Do I Make for Christmas Dinner? But all that too came together, and we all ate way too much.  We all enjoyed everything and all had a great time.  I finally decided on a pear and green bean salad over spinach with a champagne vinaigrette and bacon wrapped potatoes with a queso blanco sauce, and then just some simple nibblies as well.

The table is all set.  Let the festivities begin.

The roast is ready to carve.

Larry is putting the glaze over the ham.

The bacon wrapped potatoes with queso blanco sauce are in place.

The salad is prepared.

And the guests arrive.  Priscilla and I enjoying a glass of bubbly to ring in the Holiday cheer.

Priscilla brought some fabulous sweet potato gnocchis made with sage butter, dessert and rolls.  Laura made a delicious zucchini casserole.  Both complimented the meats just perfectly.

After dinner, we pulled some Christmas crackers and let the games begin.  We all gathered ’round the Christmas tree (the smaller one) and played Apples to Apples until it was time to go home and go to bed, and wait to see the surprises left by good ole’ Saint Nick.

Merry Christmas Everyone.

OK!  I have the Christmas cookbooks.  Now, what do I make for Christmas dinner?  We are hosting dinner on Christmas Eve for our friends Jonathon and Priscilla, their kids, and our friend Laura, and possibly her kids too.  Priscilla, Laura and I all love to cook, so we decided to make it easy on ourselves and do it as a potluck.  I know I am making the roast, but what else am I going to make?  HMMMMMM.  I will have to go through my Christmas library and find the perfect things.  I had better get busy and figure it out pretty quickly.  After all Christmas Eve is TOMORROW night.

Merry Christmas, Happy Channukah and … all that jazz.  Enjoy your holidays, whichever holidays you celebrate.

 

‘Tis that time of year when we coaches and teachers get all kinds of fabulous gifts from our students.  My swimmers have been giving me some wonderful gifts.  The theme this year seems to be caffeine, chocolate and chlorine.  They seem to know what coaches live on.  We need all three of these things to keep us going.  I got some really cool coffee mugs, one even personalized, gift cards to Starbucks and other great places, chocolate, and some DELICIOUS caramel popcorn that is to die for.  The coffee is to help keep us awake, especially if we do early morning sessions.  The chocolate is a given.  Who can live without chocolate, right?!  And the chlorine, well, that is just in our blood; literally.  A few years ago, when I was swimming hard and training hard, one of my bosses told me that if she did a DNA test on me, my DNA would read 1/2 chlorine, 1/4 blood and the other 1/4 dolphin/mermaid.  She knows me well, and so do my kids.

Many thanks to all my fabulous, wonderful CUDAS!  I have some great kids and some fantastic swimmers.  Swim hard, swim fast, but most importantly, HAVE FUN!  Just keep swimmin’, just keep swimmin’, just keep swimmin’.

Mi Comadre and my best friend Andrea, whom I have known and loved for over 45 years, sent me this delicious box of honey from The Blue Sage Honey Company as my Christmas present.  We have shared so many laughs and tears, and good times over the years, and even though we now live in two different states, we are still going strong.  I am definitely looking forward to the next 45+ years.  My box of honey was a present.  Of course, I had to open it right away.  Andrea would be very disappointed in me if I did not open it the minute I received it.  And boy, am I glad I did too.  It was filled with all these delicious and unusual infused honeys.

My gift box included cinnamon honey, rose honey, chamomile honey, lavender honey and ginger honey.  I just had to try them all too.  They are all delicious, but my two favorites were the ginger and the lavender honeys.  I know they will all be great in tea, but I want to find better, more creative ways to really highlight these wonderful flavors too.  Stay tuned for some new and creative honey recipes in the near future.

Blue Sage Honey Company is located in the Sierra Mountains of Northern California.  “It is a small batch woman-owned business, inspired by love of honey bees, quality foods, the environment and sharing goodness in the world”.  Blue Sage Honey Company is owned any operated by Abra and her husband.  Abra and her husband have chosen to live close to the land, where they farm as much of their own food as they can, love their animals and their honey bees, and are avid gardeners.  Rather than succumbing to the hustle and bustle that is so prevalent in today’s world, they chose to give it all up for a clean, simple life instead. Preserving and protecting the honey bees is their passion, and a portion of every sale goes to the education of preserving and protecting the honey bees.

Protecting and preserving the environment is another passion and way of life for the Blue Sage Honey Company. All of the packaging they use is environmentally and eco-friendly, and they try to re-use and re-purpose things that are already being used and are in circulation as much as they can.

You can contact the Blue Sage Honey Company by calling them at (510) 292-7053 or by visiting them on line at BlueSageHoneyCo@gmail.com

Muchas gracias Chica.  Te amo mucho.   Tu familia es mi familia.  Feliz Navidad y Prospero Ano Nuevo.

 

 

In case you haven’t figured it out already, I lead a very busy life.  I am always fighting against the clock trying to get everything done.  I always do manage to get it all done, but there are plenty of times when it feels like a very steep, uphill battle.  I am also a perfectionist to a certain degree, AND I tend to take on way more than I should most of the time.   And you already know how much I love to cook.  If I had more time in the day, I would probably cook a lot more fancy meals, but since I don’t, simplicity is key.  I want to prepare good food that is both healthy and tasty, and of course visually stimulating as well, but time does not always allow for that.  The K.I.S.S. rule – Keep it short and simple, or another version I’ve heard, Keep it simple, Stupid, is one of my everyday mantras for a lot of the meals I cook.  Depending on the day, either one of these versions can be applicable.

Green beans almondine is one of those simple, easy dishes, that only takes a few minutes to prepare,  looks good and is always very tasty.  The term almondine just means something cooked with almonds.  Almondine, spelled this way is American and amandine is the European spelling for the same thing.  Usually when I prepare something in the almondine method, I use the slivered almonds, although you don’t have to if you prefer something different.  We eat a lot of green beans, and I like to prepare them in a wide variety of ways, although almondine is a favorite.  When I prepared my cod with the pepper coulis, one of my side dishes was green beans almondine.  Something from the Sea

As with many dishes and recipes, there are usually quite a few different variations.  There are some basic guidelines, but then there is also room for creativity too.  This is true for green beans almondine too, although the basic recipe is green beans or haricot verts, which are smaller, more tender green beans, almonds, butter and seasonings.  You can also add garlic and/or shallots too, which I do quite often, though this time I did not.  This time around, it was just the basics.

Green Beans Almondine

1 lb green beans, with ends trimmed

1-1 1/2 cups almond slivers

3-4 TBSP butter

salt & pepper to taste

1-2 tsp lemon juice

 

Cook the green beans in boiling water for about 5-7 minutes or until they are tender, then drain the water and set aside.  Melt the butter in a hot skillet.  When the butter is completely melted, add the lemon juice.  Cook it down for about 1 minute or so, then add the almonds and cook for an additional 2-3 minutes or until the almonds are golden brown and crunchy, making sure to stir constantly so they don’t burn.  Almonds, particularly the thin slivers, can burn very easily.

When the almonds are golden in color, add the green beans and the seasonings and toss everything together thoroughly.  Simple, easy-peasy, tasty and healthy too.  What more can you ask, right?!  🙂