Rocked Lobster

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Tonight we bring you our main course dishes from Sunday’s Chopped Challenge. The basket for this round came to us from Sally at Bewitching Kitchen and included lobster tails, edamame, buckwheat noodles and chipotle peppers. We were a bit intimidated because if you’ve been to Sally’s blog, you know she’s always coming up with inventive dishes that look deliciously full of flavor – without fail – and we wanted to make sure we did her proud.

We were also a bit nervous and baffled about how to combine edamame and buckwheat noodles with chipotle peppers. This one was definitely throwing us. Do we go Asian or Southwestern? Ultimately we went both directions. I went towards Asian flavors and Mike embraced the Southwest. And while our dishes may not look as restaurant-worthy as the last round, these were hands down our favorite dishes of the day. Mr. N and Miss A were also very excited about the lobster. You should have heard Miss A, “Is it ready yet? Is this the lobster? Is it dead? Can I eat the lobster?” Apparently we taught them well in Maine this summer. Continue reading →

Scallops and Drunken Chestnuts

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Yesterday was our epic Chopped Challenge for Mike’s birthday celebration and our New Year’s Day fun. The baskets of ingredients were provided by members of our blog family and put up to vote by our readers. We completed three rounds including an appetizer, main course and dessert recipe. It was a crazy day of cooking, spills, dirty dishes, laughter, a bit of competitive jabbing and absolute fun. Thanks for all of those that participated and followed along. We hope you had some fun too. 🙂

Now as promised here are the first recipes from the event. We’re going to kick off with the appetizer dishes. We used the ingredients suggested by Linda at Savoring Every Bite (who has some fantastic recipes – we’ve tried several in fact – not to mention amazing party planning/hosting skills) which included Chestnuts, Brandy, Polenta and Scallops. The measurements provided in the recipes are approximated as we didn’t do too much calculating yesterday. We mostly went on gut feel and tossed in what we thought worked.  Continue reading →

Chopped Challenge Begins…(A Live Blogging Event)

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Our chopped challenge begins with the appetizer round.  We’ll be posting live updates through the day, so check back often!  Our voters were generally kind, hopefully our judges will be kind as well, though we don’t expect them to be as kind as the Dalai Lama himself.

Continue reading →

Sweet and Spice and All Things Nice

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Before we close up the computers for one last holiday (and birthday) fling this weekend, we wanted to share a new appetizer recipe we whipped up for our Christmas parties, a Cranberry Bruschetta.

We started by whipping up our traditional cranberry sauce recipe with a little twist. This time we tossed in some Cointreau with the fresh orange juice and zest. We also substituted agave nectar for some of the sugar and added some crushed red pepper flakes to the mix. I also used this as a chance to try out my new immersion blender –  I never knew making cranberry sauce could be so quick and easy (and with a ton less dishes!). While the cranberry sauce cooled down, we prepared the bread  by slicing it on a bias and brushing it with olive oil.  Continue reading →

Quest for the Best Banana Bread and a Chopped Challenge

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We just wrapped up our Christmas parties yesterday, after a celebration with my family. As is tradition, we had a meal of all appetizers. Every family brings their favorite appetizers to share with everyone else and we spend the entire day just grazing. It’s an understatement to say that I’m full today. So before we get to our quest and our challenge, here are a few other blogger recipes we enjoyed once more.

First up is this delicious (and super easy) Baba Ghanoush recipe from Charles at Five Euro Food. I enjoy this one for lunch quite a bit too.

We also made some Candied Cranberries that we saw over at A Spicy Perspective. Miss A and I really enjoyed these – most of the cranberries were sweet, but every now and then one would give a surprisingly tart burst of flavor. A very fun flavor experience, plus they were just pretty. Continue reading →

A Delicious Time of Year

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We hope that everyone is enjoying the holidays. We had a wonderful weekend complete with a visit from Santa (the kids are still besides themselves), laughter, love, family and delicious food. We’d like to start by giving a shout-out to some of our blogging friends who made our holiday all the more delicious. Unfortunately I don’t have photos of all the dishes we made, but each one was every bit as good as we hoped!

We spent Christmas Eve having a family dinner with just the four of us. We dressed-up, opened presents, ate our traditional homemade Italian dinner, followed by a tour of Christmas lights in our Christmas pajamas while we ate cookies in the car. Our meal this year featured two amazing recipes from Linda at Savoring Every Bite. The kids especially enjoyed her Calamari Pomodoro. We did too, but the kids beat us out of seconds and thirds. They love their calamari. So while the kids devoured the calamari, Mike and I enjoyed the Pasta with Pecorino Herb Walnut Sauce. (Which incidentally makes for great leftovers too!)

We kicked off Christmas day with our Maple Bacon Biscuits – every bit as good as the first time and then got ready for the festivities.  Continue reading →