I can't believe how quickly time is moving. I'm still shocked that we're almost half-way through March! Things have been busy as usual... school, work, cooking, watching Colorado lose a lot of hockey games... keeping up with kickboxing on the weekends. It's mostly lots of fun, although work has been busy and stressful lately so the kickboxing has been coming in handy - it's like a session of Saturday morning therapy :)
Last weekend, I had been having a rough week so I planned a cooking & baking weekend to kick back and relax. First up: Friday night I made up a new cookie recipe. I need to get the recipe out and post it, but I'm calling them "kitchen sink cookies" since I just threw a bunch of stuff I liked in them. They turned out so good that I'm definitely going to make them again.
These are made with bread and cake flour instead of regular and I subbed in quick cook oats for part of the flour. Then I threw in a bunch of coconut, a big handful of rough chopped pretzels, a smashed up graham cracker, and a handful each of cherry, white chocolate, milk chocolate and butterscotch chips. You could just kick back with a bowl of dough and a spoon and be perfectly happy, and the cookies were so good... keeping myself from eating more than one at a time was almost impossible.
Next, I decided that I wanted to make bolognese from scratch so I settled in to do that on Saturday afternoon. I found a bunch of different recipes that had things I liked about them, but the one I liked best was Anne Burrell's - plus it had a 5 star review with over 400 reviewers. How could it be bad? I'll admit I made a few changes... I cut back on the oil, used an alcholol free Merlot (quite nice, actually) and also added some mushrooms, fresh rosemary and parsley and for a little extra depth of flavor, cinnamon. I babied the sauce for about 5 hours and I have to say, it was divine.
While I was waiting for the sauce to cook, I made a quick batch of homemade baguettes (recipe from my Modern Mediterranean cookbook, which I'm really enjoying). They were perfect... golden and crispy on the outside, soft and chewy in the middle. I sliced off a few pieces and added a little goat cheese and some fig spread and just munched and savored while I stirred my sauce. It made for such a lovely, relaxing and delicious afternoon.
After the sauce had finally simmered and reduced long enough, I put it in the fridge for the night. The next day after church, I pulled out the extruder attachment for my Kitchen Aid (which I absolutely LOVE - it's super fun to use) and made a good sized batch of homemade rigatoni. I think pasta is actually really easy to make, and using the extruder is even easier and faster than rolling it out.
Then, like a good little cook, I pulled out the bolognese and got it heated back up and then finished my pasta in the sauce. One more round of adding liquid and reducing and then I finished it with a little good olive oil and some fresh parmiggiano reggiano. Yum, yum, yum.
Served with some roasted asparagus and fresh bread...
It made a lot and it's fantastic. I'm loving the leftovers, and I have some in the freezer too. A serving of the pasta and sauce is about 9 points+ on Weight Watchers. Not too shabby!
Then the week went by in a blur. Lots going on with school and work, super busy all the time and it was Friday again before I had even blinked, it seemed! So last night I went to the EMBA Honored Alumni Banquet over at the Marriott School. There were some people from previous classes, a few from our class and professors, deans, even a few students from the upcoming class. We also honored one of our professors, Burke Jackson, and that was really sweet - he's such an awesome teacher. I hung out and mingled for a while before dinner and then ended up at a table near the front with Chad, Steve and Joe from our class plus Steve's friend and Joe's wife, with another couple from a previous class. We had Todd Budge speak to us about ethics and he tied it in with the 23rd Psalm which was really quite enjoyable - fantastic message. Then they had the awards and acceptance speeches - Professor Jackson's was really touching and funny all at once; I'm lucky to have had the chance to take classes from him. The food was pretty good too... all in all a great night!
Tonight we had another dinner planned with friends - we were going up to a restaurant I had read about in downtown Salt Lake - Bambara Restaurant in the Hotel Monaco. It was shaping up to be one of our biggest groups to date and then in the end, there were only 4 of us! Darren and Mindy's daughter was in a cheer competition and advanced to finals that night so they ended up having to stay for that... then four other people dropped out as well, so it was just me, Chad, Brent and his wife Maggie. But we still had a great time and the rest of them totally missed out. The food was fantastic and we just chatted and joked around all evening. I got a few pictures during dessert.
Brent and Maggie:
One of Chad and I where you can see the gorgeous desserts (I had a pear tartelette with honey ice cream and a caramel sauce, Chad had a really fantastic walnut cheesecake):
And another one after I told Chad I needed a picture where he looked like he was actually having a good time. lol.
Sigh. Good enough.
The food was definitely worth the drive so I'm glad we still went. I had the roasted chicken with brussel sprouts and camembert bread pudding (can you say yum?) in a really fantastic sauce. Chad got a pork porterhouse on cheddar polenta that was really delicious, and Maggie got some really tender, falling off the bone lamb. Brent got diver scallops and I refrained from tasting. lol.
Whew. Now I still have a headache from all the laughing tonight and I still need to get to work on my Sunday School lesson for tomorrow. Nothing like procrastination! Off to grab some Excedrin and get to work.
I love to cook, too! You were a cooking FOOL to whip up all this stuff from scratch. And can you believe that I never went to Bombara the whole time I lived in SLC? (We just moved to New Hamphsire.) I've heard nothing but great things about it--glad you got to experience it first-hand!
Posted by: Cath | March 24, 2011 at 10:25 AM
Hey Gwen! Thanks for commenting so I could link back to you and pretty much have my brain explode from seeing such incredible food and creativity! I am amazed. So glad to catch up!
Posted by: Meg C | March 24, 2011 at 08:06 PM