Blogmas Day 17: Legit Italian Cooking

Date: December 17, 2016

Author: astottler

I’ve mentioned it before, but my sister spent 2 months living in Florence, Italy this past fall. While there, she took a really legit Italian cooking class, where she spent all day learning how to cook Italian food.

Naturally, I enlisted her help to make a Blogmas post out of it.

She’s unwilling to try GF pasta (because the texture wouldn’t be the same!) but she offered me something equally delicious: eggplant parmigiana. Apparently, the real Italian version of this dish isn’t breaded! I actually don’t generally like eggplant because it’s usually served so tough, but I had confidence that my sister would be able to transform it into something I would enjoy.

This dish is an all day affair. Legit Italian cooking takes forever. I actually spent the first part of the day at the library and when I got home, she had already been working for 2 hours.

2 hours chopping. For the sauce, the vegetables need to be chopped into the tiniest, most adorable cubes, to properly break down when cooking.

My contribution here was providing a fresh batch of eggnog. I almost didn’t screw it up this time but cooked it literally seconds too long. Blender to the rescue again.

Once the vegetables are chopped finely, they go in the pot with quality olive oil, sage, bay leaves, oregano, salt, pepper, and other spices.

And then they cook.

While they were cooking, she started prepping the eggplant. The key is to cook the eggplant twice: once before it goes in with the sauce. She sliced it up and roasted it with some olive oil.

Our little helper:

Then, diced tomatoes were added to the sauce.

After everything was thoroughly cooked (with necessary taste testing cooking on as well), it was time to assemble.

It has Buffalo mozzarella and parmesan. Apparently Buffalo mozzarella is made with Buffalo milk! I actually didn’t know that! It’s a lot more flavorful.

Beautiful, and ready to eat!

We served it with a salad and some quality red wine.

We ate this fancy meal in the dining room (we normally eat in the kitchen), and I went to pull out my chair, but it felt surprisingly heavy.

Well hey there Lilly.

This was absolutely delicious. The homemade sauce was out of this world, and the eggplant was perfectly tender. Apparently 2 months in Italy is worth something!

I think next up for her to make us is gelato though…

Blogmas Day 15: Homemade Eggnog, Cranberry Bread, CSA Box

Date: December 15, 2016

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

10 days my friends!

Before we get into the meat of this post, I’m trying my best to get festive up around here! I finally broke out my Bath and Body Works peppermint twist spray (I think I’ve actually had this since freshman year of high school…), and I got my first red cup!

I’ve been using festive plates for my avocado toast.

And bundled up in giant scarves.

We had to take her to the vet due to some eye stuff (minor infection), and this is how she rides in the car…

Check out this picture from the St. Louis Zoo that my coworker sent me. It’s crazy, and really hard for me to imagine it like that!

I wish I could say my workouts have been particularly festive, but going to spin classes and Crossfit here does make me feel like it is the holidays, since when I was in college I would only go to these places when I was home for the holidays.

In Crossfit, we’re still going strong with our 20 rep sets. Tuesday, we did Fran, and it was my first time Rxing it. (21-15-9 thrusters at 65# and pull ups). Then, that evening, I went to a spin class because it was one of my favorite teachers. I woke up Wednesday morning with my legs feeling rough. I still went to Crossfit (lots of back squats), but spent the rest of the day taking it easy on my legs, and refueling with lots of festive food.

You see, we recently started getting a CSA box. I mentioned this before, but we got talked into it when I was getting my Turkey Trot bib. It’s awesome because it comes right to your door, and you get to customize what you want in it. Since we have 100000 persimmons right now, I figured we would want mostly veggies. However, I did decide to keep the cranberries. Because Christmas. There’s really only one thing to do with them, right?

Make my favorite Cranberry Orange Bread. I made this recipe numerous times last year, all the way through February, or whenever cranberries become hard to find. It’s healthy, but the texture is still soft. I love that it only calls for 1/2 cup of sugar. Until you add chocolate chips, of course.

Sadly, they all sunk to the bottom. Which creates a very interesting pure chocolate crust. There are worse things in life.

I actually froze most of the loaf. My current favorite dessert is eating quick breads with Halo Top.

(A different cranberry orange bread from the other night.)

But of course I had to do a taste test.

On the topic of our CSA box…what else have we been making? The other night we made smashed potatoes from the purple potatoes. Roasted in the oven, then smashed and brushed with garlic and olive oil, salt and pepper, and sprinkled with parmesan, and then put back in the oven. (We had them with chicken cooked in meyer lemon artichoke simmer sauce over spinach.)

We based Wednesday night’s dinner around our new box finds as well. We made kale chips out of the kale—massaged in olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic powder, baked for a little over 10 minutes at 400.

For the main course, we had eggs and a butternut squash dish. The recipe for this honey garlic roasted butternut squash came with our CSA box. It had some balsamic in there too, and was topped with feta. Plus a baby avocado toast on the side.

I ate a festive dessert while making a festive dessert. I nibbled on peppermint bark before trying my hand at some eggnog.

I used this recipe for low fat eggnog. I wanted to try and make a healthier eggnog, and my family generally likes light eggnog better anyway (the regular stuff is too thick.) I reduced the sugar in the recipe to only 1/4 cup, down from 1/3. I also added a dash of cinnamon.

Cooking on the stove:

This has cornstarch to give it a little thickness.

I’m not really sure what happened when cooking. The recipe said once the egg was in, cook for about 8 minutes, or until it starts to thicken. It started to thicken after less than 5 minutes, and was a little chunky. It was basically separated custard. Ugh. But it tasted good.

My mom suggested we put it in the blender, and that did wonders! Despite the rocky start, it actually came out well.

And hey, it tasted good! Delicious warm as well!

And on that note, enjoy my babes:

Are you an eggnog person?

On the Fourth Day of Christmas My True Love Gave to Me…

Date: December 1, 2014

Author: astottler

Categories: Uncategorized

4 variations on a theme

3 new recipes

2 workouts

1 family

When I saw last year’s post for this day, I was stuck. Uhh you can only mash bananas so many ways! Instead, I decided to alter the the idea to variations on a theme. Much easier to work with! But what could I make 4 ways?

Custard! Last summer, I tried my hand at healthy banana custard and it came out really well. In the fall, I tried pumpkin custard. But then I realized I never posted the original recipe! And here’s a bonus-one version is a microwave version of the original as well. Although fair warning, it is bit hard to not get it to overflow in the microwave. That happened when I made it in DC at the house I was staying at. Let’s just say that microwave needed the cleaning. *Shudder* So let’s get to it!

First, we’ll go through general custard making, and then I’ll do adjustments for each variation. Note that I use egg whites and skim milk for it. If you want to make it richer, feel free to use full fall milk or egg yolks.

Custard Making

1. Heat milk up in medium/large pot until it simmers.

2. Meanwhile, whisk egg whites and corn starch together (and banana is recipe calls for it) in a medium/large bowl.

3. Remove milk from heat and pour onto the side of the bowl with the egg mixture, while wisking the mixed mixture.

4. Immediately pour everything back into the pot and cook on medium high until everything thickens.

5. Stir in butter and vanilla

Ok! Now for the fun part.

Banana custard

3 bananas, well mashed (can microwave to soften them but cool before adding to egg mixture)

1 T butter

1 t vanilla

2 c milk

1 c egg whites

1/4c cornstarch

Bananas Foster Custard

3 bananas, sliced

2 T butter

1 t vanilla

2 c milk

1 c egg whites

1/4c cornstarch

2 T brown sugar

1 t cinnamon

Sautee 1 T butter, the cinnamon, the brown sugar, and the bananas.

Sautee until soft and tender, and then lightly mash.

Let the bananas cool before adding them to the egg and corn starch mixtures, and follow the directions above for custard making.

Eggnog Custard

2 cups light eggnog or soynog/coconut milk nog/almond milk nog (go with regular eggnog if you want it super rich-I used Silk Soynog)

1 cup egg whites

1/4 c corn starch

1 T butter

1 t vanilla

Follow above instruction for custard with eggnog in place of milk.

When this came off the stove, I was sort of blown away and decided it needed to be inside a cake. I used it as a filling for pumpkin cake and it was fantastic!