Sunday, 1/30/2011

Ben was in charge of preparing dinner tonight.  I was babysitting at a friend's house all afternoon and couldn't be much help to him.  He made buffalo chicken fries and served a wedge of iceberg lettuce on the side.  Katie was not at all interested in the chicken, but she did show a surprising interested in the lettuce.  

Ben altered the quantities for the hot sauce mixture ingredients to try to increase the heat and decrease the sweetness.  He used 1/3 of a cube of butter and only a 1/2 tablespoon of honey.  We plan on having this again tomorrow, so he cooked up two pounds of chicken.  He worried that there was not going to be enough sauce for the extra chicken, and so we doubled it.  I didn't know that he had halved the honey in the first batch of sauce.  So, I added a full tablespoon of honey to the second batch.  The result of these changes was a slight increase in heat and it was still too sweet.  In the end, we didn't need the second batch of sauce. 

Saturday, 1/29/2011

I ordered a pepperoni pizza from Garlic Jim's for Spencer and Katie to eat for dinner last night.  We finished off the left overs for our dinner tonight.  

Friday, 1/28/2011

Tonight, Ben and I had a fantastic date night.  A year ago my name was selected in a drawing for a free night's stay at the Hotel Monaco, Downtown Seattle.  That is the same hotel we stayed at on our wedding night and our first anniversary.  How very cool!  Anyway, we had to use the gift certificate by the end of this month.  It's January 28th.  Yes, it was time to use it or lose it.  Thankfully Ben's brother, Spencer, was willing and available to stay with Katie while we took a night off.

After getting Katie and Spencer settled, I took the bus into Seattle to meet Ben.  We checked into the hotel and went out in search of food.  We ended up being able to get a table quite quickly at the Purple Cafe and Wine Bar.  What a great meal!  Here's what we ate:

Appetizers

I had the pork and chicken sausage with cranberry-apricot chutney and pecorino sardo gran cru cheese.  Ben had lamb chili with polenta croutons and rogue smokey blue cheese.  The cheeses were served with a fig jam which was delicious.

Drinks

We each enjoyed a flight of wine--four wines to sample.  I had the red wine flight from Italy with these wines:

• cabanon ‘augurio’ . provincia di pavia . 09
• fattoria pogni . chianti . 08
• il trullo . primitivo del salento . 08
• vinosia aglianico . irpinia aglianico . 08

Ben had the red wine flight from Washington with these wines:

• substance merlot . washington . 08
• l’ecole syrah . columbia valley . 07
• gamache ‘boulder red’ . columbia valley . 07
• brand cabernet sauvignon . columbia valley . 08 

The Substance merlot in Ben's flight was fantastic.  We each had a glass of that with our entree.  It was divine.  

Entree

We shared the artisan cured meat pizza with soppresata, coppa, spanish chorizo, mozzarella, fresh oregano and tomato sauce.  The flavor of the meats took us back to our vacation in Italy.  On that trip, we purchased a variety of cured meats in Greve and ate them with cheese, bread, and wine for a meal at our bed and breakfast.  Who would have thought this meal would take us back to that wonderful vacation.  Here's a photo of that picnic meal for fun:) 

Dessert

The desserts were perfectly sized--small:)  I had the ruby port chocolate torte with cocoa nib whipped cream and port fudge sauce.  Ben chose the bittersweet espresso truffles.  He said the truffles were good, but mine was definitely the better of the two desserts.  Yum!!!  

After dinner we saw Black Swan.  I'm so glad we saw it in the theater.  There were parts of the movie that just needed to be presented in a bigger scale than our TV would have.  While it was definitely a disturbing movie, it was beautifully acted and had amazing cinematography.  

Thursday, 1/27/2011

I put together the following delicious salad for our dinner tonight.  I used a honeycrisp apple and bagged spinach.  The honeycrisp apples are expensive compared to many of the other varieties, but I find that they are consistently good in flavor and texture and the others are not.  So, I choose to spend the money on the good apples rather than waste it on the bad apples.

CHICKEN, APPLE, WALNUT, SPINACH SALAD

Toss the following ingredients together in a poppy seed dressing:

1 1/2 cups of chopped rotisserie chicken
1/2 apple- diced
1/4 cup glazed walnuts
Freshly ground black pepper
baby spinach

Katie ate some blueberries, mandarin oranges, ham, and peanut butter toast. 

Wednesday, 1/26/2011

I reheated our stir fry left overs from last night in a frying pan with a little bit more chili oil. Katie wasn't as eager to eat this dish tonight, but she did eat a little. She was more interested in dumping the contents of her bowl onto her tray than she was in eating.  Oh well, at least she's cute:)  Here are a few photos I took of her this afternoon while we were working on crafts for Valentine's Day.

Tuesday, 1/25/2011

We had stir-fry for dinner tonight.  I followed a recipe that we used right after Thanksgiving that is intended to help you use left over turkey.  Instead of using turkey, I used cubed rotisserie chicken.  I added some chili oil to the skillet to bump up the heat, but I don't think I added enough.  When I reheat it tomorrow, I'll add some more. 

One great thing is that Katie ate the meal with us!  She started with slices of bell pepper while I was cooking, then ate a decent amount of noodles, chicken, peas and peppers during the meal.  She didn't finish her serving, but she did try everything in it. 

Monday, 1/24/2011

We grilled burgers in the rain tonight.  I seasoned lean ground beef with Lawry's seasoning salt, A-1 steak sauce, and black pepper.  I added an egg to help hold everything together.  We made three patties out of a pound of beef.  Ben and I each had one topped with cheddar and bacon in sandwich thins for buns.  Katie ate less than a quarter of hers.  

I made a fruit salad of apples, mandarin oranges, and bananas to go with our burgers.  Katie quickly ate her oranges and wasn't happy that we wouldn't give her more.  Her butt gets raw if she has too much acidic fruit.  (Sorry if that is TMI.)  We held firm with our "no" answer and she eventually gave up:)