Cooking

by

Taste of Thai

Thai Food

I’ve been wanting to make Thai food for our dinner club for a while now and our month to make it finally arrived!

I didn’t realize how easy it is to cook with curry. Our recipes had a lot of garlic, galangal, ginger, lemongrass, coriander, cilantro, fish sauce, and of course coconut milk. We bought most of the ingredients from 99 Ranch Market. Check out our photos, with recipes to follow!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Drinks

Appetizers

Soup and Salad

Entree

Dessert

I’m glad we selected these recipes, they turned out great! Also, they didn’t need to be finished all at the same time, so we ended up eating over a 3 hour period. Another dinner club success!

Advertisement
by

Grandpa’s Spice List

This SeptGrandpa's Spice Listember marks 6 years since my grandfather on my dad’s side passed away. I believe I got my love of cooking and serving people what they like to eat, from him.

For a time as a child I lived with my grandparents. And every night before I went to bed my grandpa would ask me what I wanted for breakfast. I usually wanted Malt-O-Meal or Orsi Bakery toast. I think I probably walked straight from my bed into the kitchen every morning and breakfast was always there.

The house my grandpa and grandma lived in is still in our family. Recently I was there perusing the cabinets and found my grandpa’s spice list, still taped to the inside of the cabinet. It is dated 5-19-90, more than 22 years ago, older than my brother.

When my husband saw it, he said, “48 cans of tomato paste and 48 cans of tomato sauce… think he’s Italian?”

Miss you grandpa.

Grandpa Charlie

Grandpa Charlie

by

Homestyle January

Our monthly dinners kicked off this weekend at D&V’s place. 2011 marks year 2 for this ongoing event and we continue to have a great time.

Vanessa and Lisa

Vanessa and Me

This time, I made the mistake of not taking any pictures of the food! Rookie mistake of a newbie blogger. What was I thinking? Well, I was thinking about (and eating) the rosemary and olive oil bread they served from Bread & Cie, along with Brie and Irish Cheddar. True to form, I got my bread and cheese on (sorry Paleo)… but the good news is that I indulged LIGHTLY, a skill I am learning. And still lost weight the next day on my weigh-in. That’s how it’s done!

Here was the menu for the night, which was so good!

  • Baked Salmon
  • Au Gratin Potatoes
  • Jalapeño Cornbread
  • Asparagus
  • Prosciutto wrapped Shrimp with Pesto
  • Coleslaw
  • Cheesecake

I don’t remember the red wine we had… I know I picked up a few bottles from Cost Plus World Market, but I guess neither were memorable.

We ended the night by learning a new game called Sequence! Next month we are planning to make French food at our place… so excited! Please send French wine recommendations!

by

Spanish September

Spanish Food

Spanish September

September marked a lovely cooking experience! It was our month to make dinner and we chose Spain as the country from which we made recipes. These are the recipes we used, and of them, the Patatas Bravas and Berenjena con Vinagreta (eggplant topped with tomato vinaigrette) were our favorites.

LIBATIONS
Sangria

APPETIZERS
Patatas Bravas
Berenjena con Vinagreta

SALAD
Ensalada de Melon Chorizo y Alcachofa

ENTRÉE
Simple Seafood Paella

SIDES
Yellow Tomato Gazpacho

DESSERT
Bizcochos Borrachos

by

Monthly Dinners

Beginning in January 2010, my husband and I began a monthly dinner night with another couple we’ve known for years. The rules for 2010 are:

  1. Each month had to have theme beginning with the first letter of the month corresponding to a country, e.g. Jamaican January.
  2. The couple who is hosting must do all the cooking from scratch.

It is almost December 2010 and I wish I had started this blog earlier because I would have liked to keep track of all the recipes we made! I may just go back and add them, as I think most of them are in my husbands bookmarks folder. Here’s what we did for 2010:

  • Jamaican January
  • French February
  • Moroccan March
  • Armenian April
  • Mexican May
  • Japanese June
  • Jordanian July
  • Argentinian August
  • Spanish September
  • Italian October (Oman is the only country beginning with “O” and all of us decided it was time to break a rule.)
  • Nepalese November (We broke another rule here and ordered take out. It was amazing!)
  • December – because the holidays are so busy, we took this month off.