Monday, November 17, 2008

Cold & Cozy

I hate to say this because I don't want to jinx it but I think it might actually, finally be turning cold here. Weather.com says tomorrow's high temp is going to be 48F, *swoon*. I spent the weekend being busy, but it was great. I did a little volunteer work, went to my niece's birthday party, hung out with a friend and went to another estate sale and a thrift store, made some great meals, laughed a lot at a comedy show, baked cookies and a few less exciting things like laundry.

On the food front, I made prosciutto wrapped pork loin and I tried to replicate the sweet potatoes they serve at Cafe Eclectic, where my knitting group meets every week. I loosely based the pork loin on the similar recipe from The Martha Stewart Living Cookbook: The New Classics. For the potatoes, I cut up two sweet potatoes (didn't peel them), added a little olive oil, sea salt and fresh rosemary, cooked them in a iron skillet until they looked crispy (6 minutes?) and then threw them in the oven to roast for 20 minutes. They weren't exactly like the ones at Cafe Eclectic, but they were pretty close. Sunday night for dinner I made homemade chicken noodle soup, this recipe was based on the one I found from the One more Moore blog. I omitted the dill and cooked the chicken in a pot with oregano, thyme, sage, bay leaf, salt and pepper. The best part was I got to use carrots from my own garden, score! The soup was the perfect thing to eat on a cold night and I have enough leftovers for lunch and dinner.
Our TWD selection this week is rice pudding but I apparently can't go a week without baking so I made chocolate chip cookies yesterday too. The recipe is from the back of the Guittard Chocolate Chip bag, see it here. I skipped the nuts and subbed 1 cup of whole wheat flour for 1 cup of the all purpose. They are delish, the company uses real vanilla in their chocolate chips and maybe I'm crazy but I swear you can taste it.
This is one of my estate sale/thrift store finds, it's a Ann Taylor Loft skirt. I paid $1.00 for it. It's a tad snug (I probably should lay off the baking) but I can move the back button over a little and it will be fine. The other things I bought I'll post about later in the week.
And finally, I finished the Dolores Park cowl, it's nice and cozy for the cool weather. If given the opportunity I would wrap my entire body in Malabrigo, it's such a soft, warm yarn.


4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Look at you! Delicious sounding food and I love a good tailored skirt. Very nice and classic.

So are you going to make the Rice Pudding? I'm not sure I'm a rice pudding fan, but the next time I go to NYC I'm going to seek out a place that serves nothing BUT rice pudding, Rice to Riches, http://www.ricetoriches.com/index.2.php

Have a great and COLD week! Looking foward to Friday. :) I'm 2/3 done with #4 and am kind of sad it's almost over....I'm a big dork.

bridgmanpottery said...

since I haven't had the sweet potatoes, I can't comment, really, but we cut ours into spears (w/o peeling), olive oil, kosher salt, rosemary, and throw in the oven at 425, shaking the pan every now and then, for about 30-45 minutes. YUM. I could eat a dozen sweet potatoes myself this way.

Farmer's market beef stew's on my menu for tomorrow!

Steph said...

I like your header.. it's pretty! I know what you mean about going a week without baking. Sometimes when I tell people that, they think I'm crazy!

Melly Kay said...

I LOVE your bookshelf w/ the scalloped edges!