Happy Halloween!

My baby sister sent me a halloween package that included a mummy-cupcake kit! They turned out SUPER cute! So cute, that we made a double batch (the box made 12, and we bought extra ingredients and made even MORE!) so that we can send some to my work and some to the dessert contest at Jonathan’s office tomorrow! (I hope I win!!! Competitive spirit, ignited!)

 

Here is a picture of some of the best looking ones!

 

 

So cute, I had to share! 🙂  Hope everyone has a fun and safe Halloween! 🙂

Kalbi, Warm Fennel Salad, and Rootbeer Risotto

For dinner tonight, I made kalbi, warm fennel salad and a root beer risotto.

For the kalbi, I used a recipe from Food Network which you can find here.

In case you aren’t familiar with kalbi (or galbi), it is a korean barbecued short rib. To really do this right, you would purchase korean cut short ribs. The cut is sometimes called “flanken.” It’s a smaller cut of meat that grills faster. However, I bought American style short ribs and sliced the meat off of the bone. I also bought a small sirloin steak and thin sliced that to see how the two different types of meat fared in this cooking style.

I pretty much followed the food network recipe to a T, except I could not find Mirin in our local grocery store and didn’t feel like hitting an Asian store in the rain today. So I used white cooking wine instead. Also, in hind sight, I would add three times as much green onion as it calls for, and 2/3 as much soy sauce, as I found the marinade to be a bit salty.

Other than that, I thought they turned out delicious!

Kalbi with warm fennel salad

For the side dish, I wanted to create something light, that would compliment the heavy flavors and feeling of the beef main dish. I decided to create a warm fennel salad. While I don’t think the salad is something I would make on its own just for fun, I thought it was an excellent side dish to the kalbi.

It’s also a Sasha-Original-Recipe! 🙂

Ingredients:
1 bunch fennel, sliced thin
1 stalk celery, sliced into thin half moons
6 baby carrots, sliced into small rounds
1/8 cup cooking wine
1/2 nectarine, diced
1/2 tbspn chili oil (optional, can use any oil)
1 tspn mango vinegar (optional)

Heat a pan with 1/2 tbspn oil. I used chili oil to add flavor, but you can use olive oil, grapeseed oil, or any other anti-stick. Add in fennel, and sautee in the oil for about 1 minute. Add the other vegetables and the cooking wine. Let cook for about 4 minutes. Add in cooking wine, vinegar, and nectarine. Cook until vegetables are slightly tender but still crisp. It’s a warm salad, not a stir fry!

Warm Fennel Salad shown with kalbi.

And finally, the dessert! I made a root beer float dessert risotto!

A recipe completely of my own making! Here it is:

Ingredients

:
Rice:
1 cup arborio rice

Flavoring Liquid:
1.5 bottles of IBC rootbeer (2 cups)

Base for toasting risotto:
1 tbspn butter
1 tbspn brown sugar
1 tspn dark rum

Base Liquid:
3.5 cups 1% milk
5 green cardamom pods
1 stick cinnamon
1 tspn vanilla

Topping:
2 tbspn marscapone
1 tbspn rootbeer

Instructions:
In a pot, put all of the base liquid ingredients in a pot and heat until warm. Take care not to burn or boil the milk. Keep it handy and on a low boil.

In a skillet, heat the base for toasting risotto. Once the butter is melted and the sugar stirred in, then add the rice. Stir the rice until the grains are glassy. Add in 1 c of rootbeer and stir until it is absorbed. Add in .5 cups of root beer and stir until it is absorbed.

Start adding in the base liquid one ladle full at a time, stirring until it is absorbed. Do not feel like you have to stir in ALL of the milk, but keep adding it in until the risotto is cooked, tender, and creamy. At the end, add in 1/4 cup of root beer to create a delicious frothiness.

Serve warm. Use the remaining rootbeer to top off your risotto root beer float (the warm risotto absorbs it pretty fast). You can add a creamy marscapone topping if you’d like. I stirred the marscapone and rootbeer together and then put a dollop on top.

Ta da!

Houseparty + Pinteresting

First, if you aren’t familiar with House Party, go to houseparty.com and sign up! I was first turned onto it by my sister, who registered me for a Wii party, and I got free video games! Awesome! Anyway, the way it works is different companies sponsor “house parties.”  You apply for parties you are interested in. If you are selected, you are sent a box of awesome party favors from the company.

This past weekend, I hosted a Weight Watchers Sweet Treats House Party. The theme was “me moments,” sort of advertising that weight watchers desserts are a great way to take time for yourself and indulge without the guilt. Anyway, I got onto pinterest and really ran with the idea of a light and fresh summery party to compliment the weight watchers desserts.

I served:

– strawberry mascarpone bruschetta

– triskets and home made red pepper hummus

– cucumber bites with homemade guacamole

– a fruit display

– homemade lemonade and limemade in mason jars

and of course the weight watchers desserts.

It was a lot of fun, and I was really pleased with how my food and decorations came out!  12 of my fave ladies came out for the party, and my friend Nancy took some great pictures, so here they are!

Two Product Recommendations

So, I have been super beyond impressed with two products recently.

1. Yes To Cucumbers Facial Wipes

I bought a travel pack of these at Target and absolutely LOVE them! They take my make up off, while gently soothing my skin and keeping it feeling moist and refreshed.  I highly recommend them. If you sign up for the Yes to Carrots email, you can get a 5% off code.

2.Weight watchers creamy popsicles

These little babies are only 3 points, gigantic, and delicious! They are more delicious than many popsicles I’ve had that were full fat.  And they are so big! I can not finish one faster than in fifteen minutes. And that’s trying to eat it fast! I highly recommend it! I found these at my local grocery store.  

Cookie Recipe

Here’s the cookie recipe that Sasha talked about yesterday. She’s taking an involuntary sabbatical due to being very very ill, so I’m doing a guest NaBloPoMO post for her. The sorbet was a bit sweeter than I was expecting, so we decided to make some cookies to help offset it. I found the recipe below here, http://stephchows.blogspot.com/2008/03/big-soft-ginger-cookies.html, and it turned out pretty well. The dough was very sticky, so they didn’t roll in the sugar very well. I ended up just sprinkling it on top instead. It made 18 semi-large cookies, which 4 of us gulped down rather eagerly. Definitely a keeper if you’re looking for a cookie that’s something a little different.

 

Big Soft Ginger Cookies

• 2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce
•  1/2 cup white sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon water
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 2 tablespoons sugar for rolling

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Sift together the flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt. Set aside.

1. In a large bowl, cream together the apple sauce and 1/4 cup sugar. Beat in the egg, then stir in the water and molasses. Gradually stir the sifted ingredients into the molasses mixture. Shape dough into walnut sized balls, and roll them in the remaining 2 tablespoons of sugar. Place the cookies 2 inches apart onto a silicon baking mat on a cookie sheet.

• Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool completely. Store in an airtight container.

Asian Pear Sorbet

 

that sure doesn’t look like much, but it’s delicious!
So on Monday, we bought a box of asian pears from Sam’s Club, and on Tuesday, I cut one open and it was brown in the middle. So I sliced the good outsides off and discarded the rest. So I had to think of a way to use the rest of the asian pears pronto!  Lucky for me, my big sis had just given me an ice cream attachment for the kitchenaid for my birthday, and we had yet to break it in.

So, voila! Asian pear sorbet!

If you have an ice cream maker, here’s how you do it:

Ingredients:

2 lbs asian pears

3/4 cup sugar (or agave syrup)

1/2 tbspn vanilla

 

Peel and core the pears, and slice them up. Put them in a pot and cover with water, and add the sugar and vanilla. Bring to a boil, then let simmer for about 45 minutes or until the pears are soft. Remove the pears with a slotted spoon, and reduce the water left in the pot to a half of what you had. Put the pears back in, and blend (either use an immersion blender or put the entire contents of the pot into a blender). Chill this mixture in the fridge over night, and then use it like ice cream batter to the specifications of your ice cream maker.

 

Some notes… Jonathan and I found it to be almost too sweet, so consider using 1/2 cup of sugar if you prefer less sweet sorbets. Also, our pears were super ripe, so they were already really sweet, so maybe that was part of it. Also, I think in the future we are going to try stewing some fresh ginger in the mix while its simmering for 45 minutes, because I think that flavor would be good.

 

Anyway, it was a lot of fun to use our ice cream attachment, so thanks big sis and big sis’s hubby!