Back to MY Food

I mentioned that we had house guests for 10 days.  I don't cook my regular food when we have guests because then I would be cooking my food, the kids' food, the husband's food, and the guests' food. Yes, it would be better if everyone would eat the same food, but as I'm sure many of you also experience, this will never be the reality in my house. There are only so many pots I can wash in one night, especially for so many days on end. SO I generally don't eat very well when we have guests, because I just make do. Kind of like when you go to an omni's house for dinner and you just make do.

I was excited to get back into the kitchen and make something yummy. This is from the new book by Isa, Appetite for Reduction. There are so many recipes I can't wait to try in this book. I started with the chickpea piccata. VERY delicious! And easy, too. I tried a new product for this  - the "Better Than Bouillon" No-Chicken Broth paste. I really like this product. I usually use the Vegetable flavor, but I like this better. It is much milder - the veggie version, while good, has a very pronounced flavor that tends to take over everything.

Those of you who have this book have probably read the "Caulipots" recipe, a combo of potatoes and cauliflower, designed to reduce calories. I didn't have the potatoes needed for the recipe, so I just steamed the cauliflower and served it with potato gnocchi on the side. Trader Joe's sells gnocchi made without eggs!

For Christmas, my husband gave me a cooking class at the Viking school. If you can ever take a class at Viking, I highly recommend it. They are hands on and use only top notch ingredients and of course all the great cooking gadgets (so you will want to buy them in the store after class). Also, they serve wine when you eat the meal you cooked. This was a class in gluten free cooking. It was very interesting -  mostly about how to combine different non-gluten flours to make baked goods. We made pasta, bread, cupcakes, and a few other things. The chefs at the school also made a quinoa salad and the spinach salad  I made last night. The salad had a caramelized shallot vinaigrette that was to die for. I seriously could not stop eating the salad (and I don't even like raw spinach)! It also had toasted pecans and dried cherries (in class the salad had goat cheese). Now if I can only figure out how to make those cupcakes without eggs! They were way better than traditional cupcakes. Unfortunately gluten free is not necessarily vegan.

On Saturday we drove my parents up to the airport in Milwaukee. We stopped at the outlets on the way home. They had a gourmet store and I bought this. Does anyone know what it is? The girl that worked there did not know!

We have had a lot of snow (although not as much as my friends in the east!) One day it went all the way up to about 30 degrees, and everything started melting. The dogs love to play in the snow - they play on the slide and in the kids' playhouse! They were out so long that they looked like they had a bath. Don't they look sad? They look so skinny when wet.