My weekend was pretty great.  Beyond the usual amount of cleaning and laundry, here's what it was full of:

This movie was fantastic, I've always loved Colin Firth and I was in no way disappointed. 

I made it about half-way through this book while waiting for the movie. Its your usual terrible teen fantasy romance, i.e. also fantastic.  Can't wait to finish it next weekend!

J and I love the Saturday night SyFy movies.  The one this weekend was superb.  Giant pythons battling Alligators pumped up on steroids in the Everglades.  Plus, a mega girl fight between the 2 main characters.  Priceless. We ended up watching most of this movie in bed, making it all the better.  

Baked beans attempt number 1.  The other weekend, J made 2 pounds of baked beans, and they were delicious.  This weekend he attempted again and the batch failed, we're not sure why.  So Sunday he tried again and they were still cooking when I left for work this morning...

This is the beef stew I came home to yesterday after my day of reading and movie watching.  Its soo nice to come home to excellent food that's ready when you walk in the door. 

And last but not least, my favorite snuggle buddy and frisbee partner:

 

Pocket pies! - the blueberry version

I can't remember the blog that inspired these beauties but the hubby loves them and with his ulcer has been asking for them like hotcakes. 

First you need crust.  I've been using the crust recipe from The Gypsy Chef's guinness stew because it always seems to turn out and its 100% J friendly without me having to alter anything. Actually, I guess I just skip the egg wash.  Whatever, its good.  I've also tried using a sweeter crust with sugar and oatmeal but then I get complaints about the 'oatmeal texture' so fine.  

 

I usually get about 4 pies out of the recipe and am very informal about making it into pockets.  Just divide into 4 sections and smash each section into a rough circle with either a rolling pin or I just use my palm. 

I forgot to take a picture of my pockets, but they're about the same size as these tops here.

For the filing:

I just threw these together and for the filling tossed in:
1 Tbsp of Flour
1/4 cup brown sugar
4-5 good shakes of cinnamon
and about 1/2 cup of frozen blueberries (fresh are always better if you have them)

clearly, this is too much brown sugar for the small amount of blueberries I needed. Next time I'll use about 2-3 tablespoons and see how that looks.

Add the filling to the pocket and smush the edges together to close the pie.  Mine never look great, and often pop open during baking but they always taste good and that's what counts.

Line your cookie sheet with aluminum foil to help with clean-up and toss them in the oven for about 35 minutes at 400 degrees!

leftover pot pie?

The hubby wasn't too fond of dinner on Wednesday, and he was almost horrified when he heard it was all from leftovers - but after TRYING IT, he decided it wasn't "too bad".  Boys. What can you do?

The leftovers: rice, onion confit, and chicken breast with kale and mushrooms

Leftover Pot Pie and some Trader Joes Cornbread (J-friendly style)

A good pot pie has to have a good crust.  I like this recipe from the Gypsy Chef - the Old Timer's Steak and Guinness Pie is also amazing.  While the dough was chilling in the fridge, I shredded the chicken.

and added it to the rice. 

Everything is better with bacon, so I decided last minute to add that to my pie. (I also love the taste of kale cooked in bacon fat. )

 

Once the bacon was done, I drained about half of the grease and then added the leftover onion confit and let it simmer.

While that was simmering, I crushed the bacon and added it to the chicken and rice mixture.

Then I sliced up some mushrooms and add them to the onions.

While that cooked, I cut up some kale.

and then added it to the pan and let cook for 2-3 minutes.

Once the kale was bright green I added about a 1/4 cup of water to the pan, and let it simmer until the water had almost completely evaporated. 

Then I added another 1/4 cup of water and simmered until the kale was cooked.  

Meanwhile, I started on the dough.  I usually get about 4 small crusts out of the recipe, in this case 2 for dinner and 2 for dessert!

I don't usually use a bottom crust, my ramkins are so tiny I like to get as much filling in them as I can. Here are my two tops.

When the kale was cooked, I added it to the chicken and stirred it all together.

  Then I filled the ramkins and added the tops. 

They took about 35 minutes in the oven at 400 degrees.

I'm not sure I'll ever make this again, but as an I have no plans for dinner, what do I make? I thought this turned out pretty well. 

fringe or no fringe?

I've been trying to grow my hair out for forever.   It all started with a fantastic pixie cut in late 2007 and ended with me, engaged and wanting long hair for the wedding.  We ended up making a quick stop at the courthouse last March but I'm still working on that long hair idea for our "big wedding" that we have roughly planned for the next year or two....  

 

In the meantime, its getting that length where I either need to add some fringe or I need to forgo the face-framing hair that I've had for idk forever!  I think its as long as its ever been and I'm having issues styling it.  (and major issues with the time it takes to do anything with it) Here are a few ideas I've found so far:

My hair right now is roughly the same length as the blonde picture, so if I added long side fringe it would look more or less like this. 

I like the piece-y look of the first but the length of the bangs here.

Knight Cat

I pretty much love everything about Kate's hair here and so far its the winner for "shots to bring to my hair lady" 

Olsen-Fashion

I've been obsessed with the Olsens since Full House. I really like how soft the bangs look in the first picture and how messy yet workable the whole look is in the second.  I also really like the final length of the second picture.  I need a fitted navy blazer!

I'm not sure these bangs would work as well with long layers but they're still great.

There are soo many great bangs out there, but there are also sooo many terrible bangs.  and so I hesitate.  Hopefully my hair lady will have ideas and work her normal magic and I'll spring out of this hair funk just in time for Valentine's Day and my anniversary.  

I'll leave you with B - after his brisk, freezing cold walk last night - I tossed on his "mittens" because his morning walk consisted of :

2 steps - puppy dog eyes - "my feet hurt" pathetic looking hopping - licks and then another bound into a snow pile; repeat.  

Dogs are too funny.

weekend in review

I had a great weekend, despite the freezing weather.  Along with plenty of cups of hot tea, here's what it was full of:

Two fantastic loaves of Guinness Beer Bread (the first loaf disappeared in a day and as you can see, I couldn't even get a picture of the second before my husband dug in!)

The latest Vogue delivered to my door:

 

The book  I had ordered earlier in the week didn't arrive in time for the weekend so I reread Cast in Chaos.  It's number six in a series I've been reading since 2008 and I love it.  Lots of great fantasy, a hint of romance and world-ending danger. 

I also met up with my little sister for a lazy lunch at P.F. Changs, made an oven version of Beer Can Chicken, and had plenty of afternoon naps with the B-man.  I even remembered to set the coffee machine to automatic before I went to bed.  Not too shabby at all.

mustard please?

Braised Pork Chop in Sweet Apple Mustard and Allegedly Healthy Potato and Green Bean Salad!

I get junk mail like you wouldn't believe.  Catalog this, catalog that, credit card offers, and recently Omaha Steaks?  I haven't had too much experience with Omaha Steaks, I've heard they're good and the delivery bit is a huge bonus this time of year, especially since its snowing here again!  We'd actually had an Omaha Steaks dinner over Christmas break with the In-laws, so J and I decided to try them out.  For the relatively low price of 66 bucks (that included shipping), we got 4 steaks, 4 pork chops, 2 stuffed fish, 4 chicken breasts, something like 12 burgers, 8 hot dogs and 4 baked potatoes (there may be more, I can't remember).  Needless to say, when the large cooler arrived we had to do some serious freezer rearranging.

We tried out some of the pork chops the other night with a great Sweet Apple Mustard glaze and they were great! I found this jewel of a recipe to make as well - I was clearly in a mustard mood.

The pork chop recipe only took 35 minutes, so I started with the potatoes first. 

Roast potatos with green beans and bacon
serves 4 just for 2!

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. 

Ingredients
6 kipfler potatoes, halved lengthways 5-6 baby yukon gold potatoes, sliced into thin wafers

4 rashers bacon, chopped (I took this mean 4 pieces of bacon?) I used 2 and had plenty.

100g green beans, trimmed and blanched - I had a small bunch leftover from another dinner so I used what I had, thought it was going to be a bit too much but we devoured the whole thing!

 I had never blanched green beans before, but its easy!  Just boil enough salted water to cover the green beans, toss the beans in when its boiling and let them boil for about 3 minutes. Then remove and put in ice cold water for another 3 minutes and you're all set!

Once you've sliced the potatoes and bacon, put them onto a cookie sheet or baking dish and add the about a tablespoon of olive oil and salt and pepper.  Mix well and toss into the oven. 

Bake for 40 minutes, or until potatoes and bacon are crisp. 

Here is what mine looked like at around 25 minutes.  Be sure to flip the potatoes to ensure even crisping! 

Mustard dressing:
1/4 cup (60ml) olive oil
1 tblsp white wine vinegar
1 tblsp lemon juice
1 tblsp Dijon mustard

  Mix up the dressing while the potatoes are baking, now is a good time to blanch the green beans as well!

I wasn't sure that I could successfully halve the dressing and it still taste as good so I made it as is and only used half on the actual salad.  The rest went into my lunch wrap the next day. 

Back to the potatoes:  Once they're nice and brown remove them from the oven.  I let my potatoes drain for a minute on a paper towel before I combined them with the green beans and dressing.  That's it!

In depth instructions for the pork chops can be found here.   I again halved the recipe for two people and used apple cider instead of apple juice.   I also used pork chops without the bone.    Don't be afraid to get a little creative with your recipes, chances are they'll turn out great!  

Here are the spices that I used, that little mustard we found at Wal-mart and it is seriously good and how wonderful does that rosemary look?  One of my goals this Spring is to start a herb garden extraordinaire so I can stop buying all the little boxes of spices and use my own!

 I never use my nice white bowls to mix things, but all my clear bowls were dirty.  I love how well the white shows off the mixture!  When I started looking around at homegoods, back when I first moved into my own place, I really wanted some fantastic colored set of dishes - now I'm so happy that I went with my white Ikea-ware.  Nothing shows off the vivid colors of food quite like a nice white plate!

searing the chops.

mixing the chops into the spices and apple cider

just out of the oven delicious

 I love pork chops and this sweet apple mustard recipe is a new favorite! 

Have a great weekend!