Weekend Update: I Can't Think Of A Smart Subtitle...

Just a few randoms from this past weekend for you!

Saturday we headed to Joe's Farm Grill for a birthday lunch with Krista! It was so nice eating farm fresh food & celebrate her joining the 3-0 club! The weather was perfect for sitting outside - so nice that we ended up spending a few hours there! Happy Birthday Krista!

After lunch, we grabbed some groceries and made it home just in time to drop them off & head out to pick up Emily from the car rental return at Sky Harbor. She had been in Tucson for a business meeting & was flying out of Phoenix on Sunday morning. It was such a treat being able to spend some quality time with one of my best friends from Vermont! Jay and I made our homemade pasta & sauce along with delicious garlic bread and Pioneer Woman's Blackberry Cobbler. Emily and I caught up on everything but Jay & I  especially loved hearing all her stories about her 2 year old daughter Sophia (Soph) who is quite the sass!

We had to get up at 5am on Sunday in order to get Em to the airport in time. It was rough for a little bit but once we got back home, we felt awake enough to get ready & head over to 7am mass. Let me just say, this mass is not my favorite because it's music free, but we were up so it was nice to get the day started. 

One of the bonuses of getting up & out early on a Sunday morning? We were one of the first to arrive at the Farmer's Market that starts at 8am (and apparently will start opening earlier & earlier as it gets hotter & hotter). Here is this week's fresh & LOCAL bounty:

Carrots, peas, green onions and ginger. We also decided to try some local grass-fed beef from Red Mountain Cattle Company that is less than 20 miles from our home! 

We had the T-Bone steak that night with grilled tomatoes & sweet potato fries as sides. Let's just say that the grass-fed beef will take some getting used to. It definitely has a stronger flavor (more gamey?) than the corn fed stuff, but it's so much better for us, so I'm going to keep trying it!

Last night we made Martha's Crispy Ginger-Lime Chicken Thighs with the ginger & green onions and then had peas as the side. We both enjoyed the flavor, but for some reason the broiling method that Martha recommends didn't get our skin as crispy as we like. I think next time we'll bake at 400 like we usually do & see how they crisp up then. 

Well that's about all folks! We hope you have a fantastic week & stay cool!

xoxo

From our Kitchen: Leaving us Speechless...

Shane & Erin came over on Sunday with something that Jay was very excited to cook for us. Does anyone have a guess what was on the menu? 

No? Well, let's have Shane & Erin give you a hint:

Now do you have an idea?

Right there amongst the veggies (yellow carrots from the farmer's market!) and grilled ciabatta (freshly baked that morning also from the farmer's market!) is BUFFALO TONGUE.

Oh yeah you heard right. We had tongue for dinner on Sunday. Shane & Erin bought 1/8 of a buffalo recently and were oh so very kind to share this delicacy with them. Can you hear my sarcasm?!

We all agreed that the sauce - a recipe Jay found online - was quite delicious. But the tongue? It was tough. Tough to chew and tough to eat more than one bite. So that's all Erin & I could manage.

But man, was that bread good.

From our Kitchen: Kale Chips

Since I first fell in love with the superfood Kale, I have wanted to try making kale chips. I came upon this recipe & gave them a shot! 

It's super easy. Trim off the stems of the kale, then wash & dry. Toss in olive oil & salt, then spread out on a cookie sheet like this:

Then bake them in a 300 degree oven for about 20 minutes until they look like this:

They are very fragile chips and practically turn to "dust" if you handle them too roughly, but they taste really good are good for you! Next time you see kale at the grocery store, give these a shot!

xoxo

From our Kitchen: Our Butter is Better

One of the many things that we made this past weekend was butter. Jay was curious about it and I remember making it as a girl scout (shaking a baby food jar filled with cream & a marble!), so why not? 

You start off with some heavy cream:

Look how excited Jay is about the cream! Truth be told, I once again caught him off guard with my paparazzi prowess - (hey there US Weekly! let me know if you need any help!)

Pour it in the handy stand mixer that you got off your wedding registry (thanks mom!):

And then start whipping:

And whipping. And don't add sugar when the temptation hits you because thats what I wanted to do. This is how whipped cream is made! No. You add a touch of salt and keep on whipping past the beloved whipped cream stage:

Until you get to something like this. It doesn't look very appealing, but that's when you know you're done. It's amazingly yellow compared to the white cream you start with. 

Pour off the excess cream (save that for your coffee the next day - Jay said it was good) and catch the butter in a cheesecloth. 

Wrap that cheesecloth real tight, squeeze out any excess moisture, and you end up with this pretty ball o' butter:

Then squish it into a nice airtight container & there you go! 

But wait! Before you put it in the fridge, scoop some up like this and spread it on some of that delicious high fiber bread that you got at the farmer's market! (or better yet, make your own bread and put it on that!)

And then take a bite of something so delicious...

...and amazingly simple...

That you gobble it all up before you know it. 

A Fly On The Wall During The Palm Sunday Pancake Breakfast

Amie: So hun, what do you want to do for Easter dinner this year?

Jay: I dunno.

Amie: Well, I know you're never too excited about ham, so maybe lamb? Or we could be really crazy and get duck!

Jay: How about goat?

Amie: ::silence::

Amie: I think duck sounds so good! And we've never cooked duck before!

Jay: I hear goat is really healthy and we've never cooked it before.

Amie: ::silence::

Amie: But where do you even BUY goat? It's not like Safeway has it over by the pork & beef?

Jay: There's that mediterranean place where we got that really good hummus. I bet they have goat.

Amie: Really? But doesn't duck sound soooo good?! I love duck! And that lamb we made a few years ago was delicious!

Jay: Ready to go? The let's go to the Farmer's Market while it's still early....

10 minutes later at the Farmer's Market we come upon this sign:

Jay: 1 Amie: 0

And I must say I'm surprised nobody noticed the Goat Loin Chop in the last post...

I don't think we're going to have it for Easter Dinner, but we will be having it soon, so stay tuned for details...

                          

Weekend Update: Home Sweet Home

On Thursday night, Jay and I looked at each other in shock once again realizing that we'd be home together for another weekend. I know it's probably sounding old to you by now, but for us it really is nice to be home together! Especially after last year. 

Friday night after work we headed directly to Chino Bandito to meet up with not only Jeff, Tara & Alistair but also our friends The Jarmans who were in town from the L.A. area. We had yet to meet little Liam, so it was such a treat getting to meet him and to catch up with Angie & Chad. 

Liam & I got along very well!

The must-take photo with Chino's mascot

Saturday morning after relaxing at home, we headed to the local nursery to find ourselves some pepper plants! My dad made us some hot sauce last year and Jay wants to try to make (and grow!) his own! It was a beautiful day to be at the nursery - being there reminded me of family trips to Claussen's in Vermont when I was growing up!

Look at the smile I caught on Jay! He was strategically trying to avoid the camera, so I think this is a pretty good catch!

The flowers were beautiful! I look forward to the day we can have our own gardens. Flowers out front and a big vegetable garden out back! 

We ended up coming home with a habanero plant and a tomato plant. We were told that both would do well in big pots since we don't have a real yard to plant them in. The other pots in the below picture include seeds (that I found in my storage - they're old though, so not sure if they'll "work") for cilantro, green onion and rosemary. 

Look at Jay tending to his habanero. The guy at the nursery gave him some tips as to how to make them extra hot, so we'll see how that works out!

Remember this post from a few weeks ago when we got cheese curd at the farmer's market? Well lookee what we made here for dinner on Saturday night! I call it Arizona Poutine since we used jalapeno cheese curd. I think it turned out pretty good - not a huge fan of the gravy as I've been spoiled with the homemade stuff my whole life, but overall, I say it was pretty successful! You definitely can't buy this in Phoenix!

And from the farmer's market this week, here's our bounty:

I have decided to do a few "From our Kitchen" posts related to what we get at the farmer's market throughout the week. Hopefully I'll be able to keep up with all the yummy things we make!

Until then though - you know it's fresh and local when you get oranges that look like this! It's pretty enough to be in a Sunkist commercial or something!

Can you believe we went to church, enjoyed the annual Knights of Columbus Palm Sunday Pancake Breakfast afterwards (we love it), AND hit the farmer's market all by 11:00am? It was so nice to be up & out and have a full day ahead of us afterwards! We ended up enjoying some sun at the pool for a bit and then got in a workout at the gym as well. We actually worked out both Saturday and Sunday evenings. And tonight too. It feels good to get in some exercise! It also makes me feel less guilt when eating things like this delicious homemade pesto & chicken pasta (made with our very own basil!) that Jay whipped up for dinner last night:

We did a bunch of other cooking this weekend as well so I'll get some fun posts together for those soon! 

Have a great week!

xoxox

Weekend Update: Celebrating Spring

Jay and I had another wonderful weekend at home. It started Friday afternoon when we met up with Ryan for lunch at Pita Jungle. He had such a great time with us that he spent the rest of the afternoon with Jay and let us (Jay) cook him dinner! I had to work and then got my hair cut (like my summer "do"?), so the guys made sure dinner was ready when I got home. What a treat! 

On the menu - Pioneer Woman's Macaroni & Cheese. The only words I can describe this dish is a piece of heaven. And the fact that I didn't have to cook it? Priceless.

It was so nice having our special dinner guest. Especially since he's now living so far away in Jersey. He's not in this neck of the woods very much anymore. 

You know what's weird about him though? He puts ketchup on everything. Even on PW's Macaroni & Cheese. But that's ok. We still love him.

I can't believe we almost ate the whole thing!

Saturday morning we headed to downtown Chandler to attend the city's 1st annual "Barbeque Throwdown". It was the perfect day to be outside and we were both anxious to taste some award winning barbeque. There were all sorts of set-ups from "Big Green Eggs" to huge smokers like this team below:

I stayed "green" and held onto my fork. It ended up being a good thing because forks (and eventually samples) were hard to find as the day progressed! I think all of the vendors were surprised at the attendance & weren't quite prepared for it.

We both got more sun than we had expected! Jay got a red neck (hehe) & I got a little burn on my chest. Next time we won't let that morning breeze trick us into thinking it would be "not too hot" out.

One of the coolest parts of the day was that we ran into Myla who was there with a bunch her friends!! It was such a treat - she lives on the complete other side of town, so to see her there was a very happy but unexpected surprise! We ended up spending most of our time with them (and Jay took stroller duty for her friend Jerilyn and baby Talon (sp?).

After we had our fill, we headed to El Zocalo for some drinks & basketball. I had a delicious margarita and Jay had a beer. It really hit the spot soooo.......you remember our last update where I called us old? Yeah, well, look at what we did the remainder of Saturday afternoon:

And of course, we had to get this delivered later on to round it all off:

Ahhh just like the good ol' days! I guess I spoke too soon about the getting old thing. :) It really was such a blast. We watched basketball, I did laundry (I will admit - the beers made it not so bad), and we just had a nice time at home!

Sunday morning after mass, there was a group from Bethlehem selling carvings in the courtyard. They come every year or so & I've always wanted to purchase a nativity scene from them. Well this year, we finally caved and brought this home with us: 

It is hand-carved from genuine olive wood in the Holy Land. The group of Christians that sell these pieces are able to stay living in Bethlehem by selling these carvings throughout the year. I just love it & look forward to bringing it out during Advent later this year.

Once again we headed to the farmer's market after church to get some veggies for the week. Here's our bounty: 

We made a delicious bruschetta for dinner with the tomatoes (and basil from our new plant!) and a salad with those fresh greens in the back. Jay also made a yummy tangelo vinaigrette to top it off! So fresh & of course it felt great to know we were eating from (and supporting) local farmers! Later this week we're going to make one of our favorite sides by roasting the beets, carrots & turnips.

Phew! Once again we packed in so much fun stuff into just a few days! Spring is definitely in the air! 

Hope you have a great week!

xoxo