quinoa & tofu salad

at work a few weeks ago we had a healthy potluck lunch.  i'm not a huge fan of the health food, so googled "healthy potluck" and found this amazing recipe.  i've already made it twice since the potluck and am pretty psyched i found a recipe i liked that can actually be considered healthy.

i love how easy it is to cook quinoa - right in the rice cooker!

yeah, so i took some photos while i was making this the other night, what of it??

the wine in the first photo is another fabulous selection i got from this amazing washington wine distributor

homemade chile rellenos

my sister was going out of town and forgot to cancel her CSA (monthly food delivery from a local farm), so she gave me her poblano peppers.  since chile rellenos are one of my favorite foods, i decided to give it a try to make my own.  i found this great post on how to make them and gave it a shot.

 the most fun part was roasting the peppers straight on the gas stove.  it was surprisingly easy and a little bit scary.

 after roasting them, putting them in a covered bowl with their steam makes them easier to peel.

 peeling was easy under running water, but cleaning out the seeds was a bit of an annoyance.  especially a couple hours after cooking and both my hands were still on fire from the hotness of the peppers.

cleaned and slit, it was time to add the cheese!

god, i love cheese.

the step where you dip the cheese filled peppers into the batter and onto the hot oil skillet was definitely the most difficult.  as you can see from the closest pepper, i wasn't able to get the slit part down in the oil first and the cheese got fried and the pepper wasn't completely closed.  luckily fried cheese is amazing.

i added enchilada sauce on top of my peppers rather than make another mess by making a homemade salsa.  the peppers were delicious!  (although suuuuuper hot)  and surprisingly easy (although not the cleanup.  beer batter.  everywhere.)

Peepsus Christ

Photos of our Easter cake...

christmas breakfast

on fake christmas morning i really wanted to make my dad's favorite recipe of swedish pancakes. we normally have crepes with strawberry's back home, but i don't have a crepe maker and actually prefer the swedish pancakes to crepes anyway.

since it was christmas we obviously used some food coloring to make red and green pancakes (or really we used a ton to get it to be more red than pink). and perhaps one of us set theirs up to alternate red pancakes with green pancakes (with a layer of butter/powdered sugar or homemade ollaliaberry jelly/powdered sugar on each pancake).

here is the recipe for swedish pancakes (which i am currently getting via gchat from my sister who's had it memorized since we were little):

1.5 cups milk
3/4 cups flour
3 eggs
2 TBL sugar
1 tsp salt

beat milk and eggs together until they are a lemon yellow color (not with an electic beater or it will get foamy and you'll have to wait an hour to cook them) (yep, this happened to me)
sift the flour, sugar and salt and then mix into the milk and eggs until just combined.
pour one ladle of batter onto a buttered skillet.
flip when they look cooked to cook both sides.
keep them warm while cooking all of them.
serve with butter, powdered sugar, and jelly. or syrup if you're like my annoying little brother who never did it right...
also goes really well with apple juice as your drink.
preferably out of a plastic cup.

merry christmas!!

homemade goat cheese ravioli with vodka sauce

last night i made this dish for dinner with my boo. deeelicious. i've made it a few times before, but never quite this good since i learned from my past mistakes.

i started with this recipe from epicurious. instead of bell peppers and brown butter, i used vodka sauce. rao's vodka sauce. sifted to remove all the tomato chunks. i also didn't include any of the herbs in the cheese mixture. mostly because larissa told me not to, but also because i didn't have any.

i used wonton wrappers purchased at whole foods wrapped like the recipe suggests. a key step in this recipe is carefully closing up the raviolis to make sure there is no air stuck in them. air inside makes them float to the top when boiling and also creates holes and water gets in them. yuck. (although not too "yuck". there's still goat cheese in there...)

another key was using one of those spoons with the holes in them. the ravioli are too delicate to just dump in a strainer after boiling, so pulling each one out individually without extra water keeps them in tact and not too watery.

anyway, this was easy AND fancy. perfect! all both of you should try this recipe sometime. sorry i forgot to take photos!

making dinner

...counts as a thing i make, right? here's a photo of my standard chicken and rice with a delicious bottle of wine for dinner last night with my favorite roomie, allison (sorry, simon!) (he doesn't read this.) (actually, neither does allison.) we were lucky to get somewhat decent weather so we could eat on the porch. this view never gets old! although i do need to learn to photograph it better. i was well aware of the lens spots i'd get when i took this, but was too hungry to go get the lens hood.



i also threw in a photo i took this morning. since i drank a bit too much wine at dinner last night, i fell asleep forgetting to close the blinds and awoke without an alarm to this sweet view. (sweet because it wasn't foggy and i could actually see gigi)

i never want to leave this city...

mmm... strawberry pie

with homemade graham cracker crust! love this recipe...