Sunday, July 13, 2008

Our favorite recipe!

Andy came to visit us last weekend and wanted us to make him a nice dinner. We asked him what he wanted and he requested Lamb. We both looked at each other and thought, our favorite recipe! Black cherry and black pepper lamb chops with mint pea risotto. Now we cannot remember the first time we made this (anniversary or valentines day; we have no idea) but we do know that we got it from the lovely people at Cooks Illustrated and it's wonderful! The dish is very rich and savory, because of the lamb, but the mint pea risotto has a nice cooling affect on your palate. This dish is perfect for a nice evening in and/or to impress friends and loved ones. Another plus, it also tastes like you spent hours slaving over a hot stove but actually only takes 45min from prep to finish.

Here is the recipe for you all to enjoy!
Black cherry and black pepper lamb chops with mint pea risotto

New Kitchen and a few too many spice jars!

Ben and I are very excited about our new kitchen in our new apartment. Not only is the kitchen more up -to-date (by a good 10 years) it also is quite a bit larger. As Ben describes it, we have a two person or more kitchen! Those of you that have had the "pleasure" of observing us in our old kitchens know what a huge change this is. Although I am happy to say that we successfully cooked 2 large thanksgiving dinners in Ben's 1/2 person kitchen (a miracle perhaps).
One thing both Ben and I have learned while moving into our kitchen is that WE HAVE DOUBLE OF EVERYTHING!!!!!! Since we cooked at both of our places we had 2 fully stocked kitchens. It worked at the time but now it's a bit ridiculous! Although having two full sets of pots and pans as well as silverware is wonderful when having people over for dinner! Perhaps the most shocking thing of combining cookware was how many spice jars we have accumulated over 2 years! Ben and I had been very good (perhaps too good) at buying spices in bulk from wards and then buying our own spice jars ($.50 each) to fill. When we unpacked the spices we found that we had a FULL medium sized box containing our spice jars. We decided to just combine them all. However, we quickly found that one does not need two spice racks or 4 containers of ground cumin (for example). In short not only did we have double of spices but there were a "few" things we had 3-4 jars of. To give you an idea the picture below is of some of the spices we were combining (notice Ben's spice rack to the right, I had another one the same size). Here is a picture of the empty spice jars, this is only about half of what we got rid of.
So the moral of the story, no one needs that many spices!

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Improvements

We wanted to update everyone to let them know of some new changes that have and will be made to our little foodie blog.  First, we added an RSS feed (see at bottom of page) if you would like to suscribe to the blog. Second, we will be changing how we blog.  We have been bad about blogging in a "timely" manner so we will be adding posts on sunday's now.  Third, we will be adding actual recipes to the blog so everyone can access the recipes we talk about. You will be able to print them as well!
*Thanks to Andy for this wonderful idea and Casie for the software suggestion to make this task a bit easier!

We hope all of you enjoy these little changes we've made and if you have any other suggestions please feel free to leave a comment!

Cheers!
Ben and Shelby