Fall foodies!

home made pizza tonight. working on pretzel bread for tomorrow

Thought I had forgotten how to cook after not doing it for the whole month. YIKES!! But, I'm getting back into it. YAY!! Mom always made black-eyed peas, too.

Ham steak and vegetable risotto. Dessert is peach tart and eggnog.

Made the pork roast with applesauce, asparagus, & red cabbage....my sister brought sweet potatoes, a friend brought a rum cake, & New Year's dinner was fun......Have no idea why my aunt called it Lucky Bean Soup, but it was a tradition to serve in every New Year's at her house......I know she loved Gourmet magazine, perhaps that's where the recipe was found.....

RosemaryK, now that I see that Lucky Bean Soup has black eyed peas, it reminds me that there is a southern (Louisiana?) tradition that black eyed peas on New Year's day are lucky. Maybe that's it?

Could be......my aunt was very superstitious, so if a food had 'lucky' in its name, she would be drawn to it!

I had fun preparing for a New Year's Eve get together at friends. I suggested that each of the two couples bring 3 hors d'oeuvres and that that would be it except for dessert. I spent a good hunk of the afternoon preparing six kinds of bruschetta, one for each of the four of us. I couldn't have done that on top of a regular meal. I got some pricey smallish tomatoes from Maine, of all places at a pricey gourmet store near us and they were WONDERFUL. My husband and I were amazed at how good the drained liquid was all by itself. The bruschetta were (all drizzled with olive oil before toppings):

Goat cheese topped with tomatoes and fresh basil
Tomatoes and anchovies and arugula
Pureed beans topped with collards and sautéed shallots
Pureed beans topped with tomatoes and sautéed pancetta and arugula
Pesto, mozzarella and tomatoes with fresh basil

Mmmm....sounds delish, except hold the anchovies for me! My sister is not coming for dinner tomorrow....freezing rain.....so I think I'll make soup for myself.....

Soup sounds great right about now!!

Freezing rain right now.....soup for supper!

Went out for pizza!

Always a good Sunday meal! Brings me back to my childhood.......my Mom would make pizza dough on Saturday......on Sunday she would roll it into a cookie sheet pan, make a sauce from her own canned tomatoes, put on cheese, herbs & olive oil, & that was Sunday's supper......we're talking 65 years ago.....not many pizza places around then even in CT......

I found another amazing cake lady. :) DD Tarsha's Baby Shower was yesterday and the lady hired delivered the cake for me before I arrived. I wish I could of met her to tell her what a wonderful job she did!! I asked her to do the same thing on the cake as on the invitations. Here are the invitations and here is the cake. What do you think?

great job!
beef stew tonight.

Wow....I love both the invitation & the cake....Tarsha's one lucky girl!

Love the cake! So much nicer than the "typical" shower cake!

Roasted chicken breast, green beans, broccoli and brown rice.

DW made soup from a Waltham Butternut squash. I am usually ambivalent about squash, but it was so good I told her to be sure to save the recipe!

I have a butternut squash to use up.....soup it is, Don!

2d go around for the squash soup as first course for Chicken Italiano, Spaghetti and Spinach. As an experiment, I made the spaghetti sauce from onions, peppers, garlic and commercial garlic-pepper sauce. It added a real kick to the spaghetti, but was a bit too spicy for DW.

Love hearing your recipes, Don!

...well you all often inspire my experiments. Right now Pixie's cake has me thinking dessert...hmm...I've never made a red velvet cake...let me look that up...

I remember my sister making one many years ago.....I know it involves red food coloring & cocoa.....my pastor makes a wonderful cake from a family recipe....it has cocoa, coffee, & oatmeal & nuts......I'd love the recipe, but it's not forthcoming!

I have to laugh. I read a bunch of messages here and was composing a post in my head about eggplants growing in CT in January, etc. Finally I looked at the dates. For some reason "skip to new" left me at the top. I must have double clicked on the link in my home page.

Well I made the red velvet cake and was disappointed: it didn't taste red! Makes a pretty contrast with the white icing though, but the butter-sugar icing was too sweet, I should have used cream cheese icing.

Coincidently DW had been making beet-potato soup with some beets I had laboriously chopped out of the frozen ground yesterday, so what with the tomato sauce on the leftover chicken and the red wine, we had a rather monochromatic meal. (Sorry I didn't have any scarlet runner beans to complete the one-hue decor.)

LAS, eggplants don't even grow for me in July! My veggie garden has been a big disappointment the past few years....don't know what the problems are, but I should get the soil tested......Don, your beets must have been very sweet....that's another veggie that didn't grow for me last summer, & I always have beets....no cukes, squash or peppers either.....I did have great tomatoes, beans, & peas....that was it! I like beet soup, usually make it cold in the summer.....

Good old spaghetti & meatballs today......nice with fresh basil....

Yum! Leftover pasta and meatballs here.

It must be catching. I made S&M too last night!

Amazing how "in tune" we are to the weather....comfort food in January!

I made S&MB last night :)

I've been missing your menus, Pixie!

grilled cheese tonight

LOL Robin!! I got a new stove...i've been cooking up a storm!

What kind of stove did you get? I got a new one 3 years ago, & the oven still has me guessing! Leftover meatloaf for tonight.....

Frigidaire with reg. and convection oven

Ah, smart to get a convection oven....I've used my DIL's when I've cooked dinner while babysitting.....cooks very fast!

Bought kale, leeks & parsnips at the store.....thinking of veggie soup.....

On a pre-storm shopping trip, found some very respectable clam chowder (lunch) and chicken pot pie (dinner) at, of all places, a cheese shop!

Glad you found a great place....hope you aren't too snowy down there, Don....only 3" here. The soup turned out great, I had a bit of leftover ham, added sauteed leeks, onions, garlic, kale, potatoes, parsnips, & carrots along with chicken broth......

Sounds deeeelish!!!! I need to get some parsnips. Forgot how much I like them.