New things...

This past week has been a jumble of new things tried. All related to food of course but hey, it is something.

Friday night we tried a new restaurant. It is attached to a local brewery and they just opened. I was very excited to finally get some sweet potato fries. We both were giddy that of all the condiments that they could have on the table... they had vinegar! Not white vinegar but malt vinegar. It still helped recreate some flavors from our honeymoon in Vancouver. MMMM vinegar and fries! What was even better was that I totally stumbled across the news that this place had opened when I was looking for a menu to the new bar in town. DH said his burger was the best he has had in a really long time... from even several places before his stomach made him give up beef for two years.

Saturday we tried a new dish at our old standby Chinese place. I liked the Orange chicken... he didn't. No biggie--- he ate it though.

Sunday DH cooked dinner pretty late because I got back from shopping with my mom late. He heated up the Buffalo style chicken pizza by Palermo's. It was good, but a bit too spicy for me. For some reason I just really wasn't all that hungry but I managed to still eat 2 pieces. It had blue cheese and Gorgonzola. I had been worried about the chicken but it was good enough that I am going to look for their other chicken pizzas when we decide to pickup frozen pizza again. We are trying to stay away from the habit that we used to have of frozen pizza once or twice a week. When DH had his surgery, we hadn't had pizza, except for fresh California Pizza kitchen pizza, in over a year. It is creeping back into our regular menu again so we need to be careful. Not that pizza is bad... it can just be bad for us!

Monday I made a different corn beef dish for St. Patrick's day. It came out pretty good except I over cooked the potatoes and I didn't have Dijon mustard. I still can't figure out where it went... I could of sworn I bought it to make balsamic chicken. We both had leftovers without eggs for lunch today. I tried to half the recipe but I wasn't successful as I flaked and added the whole bag of sauerkraut. I also miscalculated the amount of potatoes to half the recipe. I did only use half of the corn beef as the deli only had half a pound left when I went and I only used about half of the cheese. We thought that the cheese ratio was plenty but if you really, really, really love cheese than use the whole amount.

Edited: Yes, DH did teach me how to fry an egg. I have never eaten them fried so I didn't know how to cook them. Yes, I realize it is crazy to be 34 and never had fried eggs but my mom and step dad never eat them anyway other than scrambled that I know. I honestly always thought that a fried egg had an uncooked yoke so I never thought about it since that totally grosses me out (my eighties background is showing).

Today, I am making this. In fact the oven just beeped. I didn't make the homemade biscuits in the recipe though because I didn't have any soy milk and I wasn't sure if almond milk would work. I did use a can of store bought ones though so our version is not completely vegan.

Verdict: DH didn't like it. Said that maybe if it had less veggies and some chicken in it he would. Off to the kitchen to make a sandwich he went as I declared I liked it. I think it needed more pepper, garlic, and salt but I used the lowest sodium veggie broth that I found at the store. I also did not add any salt in cooking because of my blood pressure issues. However, the leftovers will be eaten with salt added.

Edited: The recipe for the leek and bean casserole says that the leftovers are nasty, however, I liked them. The biscuits don't hold up as well so I am guessing that the vegan ones wouldn't either but the casserole itself ended up being thicker after it sat in the fridge for a day or so. Maybe it is me, but I tend to enjoy leftovers.