We decided to go all out for Christmas day, and made this breakfast strata. It’s one I’ve made before for brunches, etc. and it was even better this time with some minor changes (changes included below – this originally came from Cooking Light – just a bit less milk and a bit more cheese). A great holiday morning lunch or brunch item, and the ingredients can be combined the night before and baked in the morning for some make-ahead convenience.
I got this recipe from my friend Missy, and we had it for Christmas Eve dinner with asparagus and white beans. It was excellent! A lighter Christmas Eve meal before the very heavy one the next day. See the recipe at Missy’s website.
Possibly it’s a stretch to call this a recipe, but we loved this – just a tossed-together thing that would be good to clean out the fridge. Would work with most vegetables, but I think the sweet potato and sausage base made it. Hot Italian might be really delish.
So I really love anything wrapped in biscuit or crescent dough as an appetizer. This was a simple one (they all are, really…even when you make your own dough, which I did not this time) that was pretty tasty – next time I might add some spinach or some other green veggie for color. It’s not really even a recipe, but it is a great appetizer for a potluck…you could probably even use this for a brunch. It’s very flexible and very much to taste.
After the better part of a month on travel, and the end of my CCIE studying (finally), it’s time to get back in the kitchen! I think *anything* cooked at home would have tasted great today, but this one was really good. I’ve had my eye on this recipe for several weeks, and just never seemed to get around to it, but I’m glad we did. This was out of Sunset, and the only changes I made were to up the garlic and sub Sriracha for chiles in the sauce. The sauce was especially good, and we were thinking it would do well with pretty much any meat out there (steak marinade or fish comes to mind in particular). Worth repeating for sure.
As much as I hate it, it is soup and stew weather again. I first saw this on Skinnytaste and liked the idea, though thought it a bit bland. Turns out there are a lot of recipes for stuffed pepper soup out there, and this is a mish mash of all of them – forgive the vague measurements. This was great – I wouldn’t change anything other than potentially lowering the amount of stock I use next time and upping the number of peppers. Definitely one to add to the cold-weather line up!
After traveling for two weeks and eating restaurant food (some of it not very good), I was dying to cook despite the study hours. This is a Cooking Light recipe I had been eyeing for a while, but never got around to making. We were very pleased with it. I cooked it a bit too long, so there was less sauce than I would have liked, but still a winner. I did sub golden raisins for apricots since that’s what I had on hand and it worked well. This might also do well with chicken breasts, though I prefer thighs in general.
So this is kind of a modified clam bake…I am a born-and-bred New Englander who is allergic to shellfish – the crawly kind, at least. So no lobster, shrimp, crab, etc. Seems sacrilege, doesn’t it? But clams and mussels? It’s on. So when I do a clam bake, it’s unfortunately not traditional – no lobster and no shrimp. Still delicious though! Who can complain about clams and smoked sausage? I throw in some corn and potatoes, a good crisp beer…summer in Connecticut. 🙂
We have a CSA dill plant that is flourishing when most of our other plants have kind of had it…went searching for an easy weeknight dill recipe and here’s what we found! This came from an old issue of Gourmet magazine. We enjoyed it and it was a pretty fast meal – the original recipe called for chicken legs, but I used chicken breasts and it was fine. Otherwise no changes. Definitely a make-again, but I do think I’d add more mustard next time.
This is our second time making this Cooking Light recipe, and we were just as pleased as the first go…though I wish I had remembered to write it down then, because I felt like there was too much lemon BOTH times. We marinated this for about 4 hours (rather than 15 minutes in the original), and grilled them outdoors. Next time I might add a bit more garlic and about half the lemon. We served this with orzo salad and minted zucchini ribbons.
Om nom nom! 