apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Tonight I'm making Mexican Pot Roast from Bison with homemade Refried Beans. I'm super excited to be getting back into my kitchen after a long summer of being too hot or too lazy.

Baking banana bread! Hopefully I'll do it tonight to have some for breakfast tomorrow.

Spinach pancakes, with bacon wrapped dates for dinner tonight, and chocolate buttermilk cupcakes for my pregnant sister.

Meatloaf and potatoes of some sort for dinner tonight, will likely be feasting on the leftovers for the rest of the weekend.

Leftover roasted chicken, red potatoes, and broccoli. Strawberry banana protein smoothie - pre insanely long run, 23 miles! Probably a big bowl of popcorn to snack on while watching football. And I got some figs so maybe warm those with some goat cheese, mmm.

i have some vague plans for a black bean posole soup....not quite sure how i'll make it happen yet, though.

Portuguese kale stew is on the menu for Sunday night. Otherwise, the weekend will be devoted to kitchen keeping: CSA tomatoes into salsa, a recipe binder clean-up, a range hood scrub-down....and maybe some canning with a friend.

Maybe enchiladas, field greens salad, zucchini carrot bread, and hot chocolate?

Everyone is cooking in their kitchen this weekend! I will be painting and puting handles on my cabinets! I might sneak in some baking with my daughter, though!

Tonight:
Steak salad: sliced grilled rare ribeye on field greens with tomatoes, slivered red onion, balsamic vinegarette and blue cheese! Stella Artois!

Tomorrow night:
Clam linguini with fresh NZ littlenecks, tons o' garlic, lemon and white wine, and whole wheat linguini!
Napa cabbage slaw with slivered carrots, a few chopped scallions, and raspberry vinegarette! Vino vehrde!

Brekky:
Hot steelcut oats with butter, brown sugar, craisins, walnuts and a dash of pumpkin pie spice! Blue Mountain coffee!

TV ballgame snax: home-made Chex mix with lotsa worstershire and fresh picked Honeycrisp apples! San Pell!

I'm going through the dregs of the freezer and back of the cupboard- what to do with a bag of frozen artichoke hearts?
(Seeing as the rest of the weekend will probably be taken over with the mass baking of scones and popovers and cookies, I feel the need to do SOMETHING involving a vegetable.)

CDC, I'm doing meatloaf and potatoes too. Doesn't it feel great to get back to cooler weather food?

I'd like to find a replacement carafe for my 8-cup Bonjour French Press this weekend. Does anyone know where I can purchase one in NYC? I've tried: Broadway Panhandler, Williams-Sonoma, Sur La Table, Zabar's. The Bodum equivalent is sized slightly differently and doesn't fit (sounds weird, I know). I can purchase one online, but shipping is as much as the carafe.

My weekend kitchen plans? I made apple pie ice cream. I used a basic ice cream recipe and simmered three apples (diced) with some butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg and combined it into the ice cream. Then while the ice cream was still semi-soft, I put it into those little pre-made graham cracker crusts and I'll add warm caramel to top it off, just before serving.

Bx,
Can you share your napa cabbage slaw recipe? My bf doesn't like it stir-fried Asian style, which is the only way I really know how to cook it.

I've never even heard of a "slaw" that's cooked! Ooo, isn't it soggy and stinky and non-nutritious that way? Yuckity!

It's always interesting to hear about people's different interpretations of things. Tell me how you cook slaw, I am curious now!

I take a head o' fresh napa cabbage and carefully tear out the best looking leaves. Toss 'em in the salad spinner for a wash and spin-dry. Also wash a handful of carrots, any kind will do.

Chop the cabbage into skinny ribbons, like less than half an inch wide. Chop the carrots into slivers. Chop up a small bunch of green onions/scallions. Toss all of this into a big bowl RAW and toss with some bottled Asian ginger/sesame vinagarette (Amy's makes a fab one).

Garnish with some smashed-up uncooked ramen noodles and peanuts for crunch!

YUM!

Michelle-
There's also a terrific recipe for Hot and Sour Napa Cabbage in the Big Bowl Noodles & Rice cookbook by Bruce Cost (published in 2000). The cabbage isn't cooked -the hot and sour business comes from the dressing. It's easy to make and gets rave reviews each time I serve it.

Ack! My first attempt at making the sweet and spicy cinnamon almonds was a disaster as they burned to a crisp well before the 45 minute toasting instruction in the recipe. I just tried batch no. 2, reduced the oven heat, stirred often, and took them out after 25 minutues. Burned! Arggggg! This is frustrating as my past experience with this oven has been that I have to let things go longer, or turn the oven on hotter to get the desired results. My next purchase will be an oven thermometer to see what the heck is going on. One day I will have a decent oven. *sighs*

I steamed some peas and put them in the food processor. Then I mixed it with Alfredo sauce and served it over penne pasta. Very tasty!

Question for anyone who can answer:
AT Kitchen linked a site that features "common" people in recipe videos. I was enthralled with it for about a week after AT posted it, but now I don't remember what the site was called and can't even find it with a search engine. Anyone have any idea what I'm talking about??

Thanks for the recipe Bx and suze too!

I suppose I mis-spoke (mistyped?) when mentioned cooked slaw. I've always cooked my napa cabbage and never even considered eating it raw like salad. I think it's a Chinese thing...if it's not warm, it's not food.

DubTriptych - are you thinking of ImCooked, with the Christopher Walken video?

http://kitchen.apartmenttherapy.com/food/video/imcooked-christopher-walken-and-cooking-videos-028864

Faith-
Thanks for trying but thats not it. This was just a site with common, everyday people (no celebs) cooking recipes. It was organized into pasta, vegetable, vegetarian entre etc. etc.

Anyone else have any idea what I'm talking about?

Is this it? This is more of a feed or compilation of videos from around the web:

http://www.bestcookvideos.com

This probably isn't it, but we also posted on Grandmas cooking:

http://kitchen.apartmenttherapy.com/food/video/whats-cooking-grandma-023779