Sushi Bowls & Miso Soup/Jiro Dreams of Sushi

All I did in Vegas was EAT. I guess we did some other stuff too, but it seems like everything was centered around food. Not that I'm complaining - everything we had was super. Arriving home, I decided to go with something a little lighter to maybe offset some of the heavy eating. No CSA this week, so no crazy vegetables. There were some good veggies in these sushi bowls though!

The local grocery store didn't have all of the ingredients for Miso soup, and I didn't feel like making an extra trip, so I decided that the Minute Miso paste sounded just as good. After throwing some of my own touches to the paste, it actually turned out to be pretty delicious. Plus, now I have a way to have Miso soup whenever I want. That's pretty great if you ask me.

Takin' a Break!

It's thanksgiving! (kind of)

I'm in Vegas!

I'll be back next Wednesday with a full recipe and movie review. Happy Holidays.

These are my sisters. That's Las Vegas in the background.

Special NYC Restaurant Review/ Diner

 And by special review, I mean kind of ridiculous.

Beet Poppy Seed Muffins/Dr. Strangelove

EDIT: sorry about this one being late - I scheduled it to be posted yesterday morning, but I guess I'm pretty clueless about this blogging thing. Wednesday's will be up on time!

I just noticed that every other recipe on here involves beets. It's ok though because they're really good for you. Or so says these guys. Helps prevent colon cancer and heart disease? I guess I can get behind that. My CSA keeps sending me beets by the pound, and I'm kind of sick of them turning all of my food, well, beet red. Which is why I got super excited when I came across this recipe from The Hearty Herbivore.

I changed up the recipe a bit to accommodate my pantry, and I also added a lemon because, well, poppy seeds and lemon belong together. It might sound a little strange to add the beets to the sweet muffins, but the earthyness actually goes quite nicely with the sweetness. They are a very hearty muffin - I had mine for breakfast every day this past week and found myself enjoying them with a fork. They do still taste like beets, but I would suggest giving them a try anyways - they might just convert you. Plus they are BEAUTIFUL.

These guys also recommend the muffins.

Recipe: Beet Lemon Poppy Seed Strangemuffins

Elmo's Sweet Potato Biscuits/Being Elmo

Every soup needs a bread! And I had a lot of sweet potatoes. I'm not a huge fan of the sweet potatoes covered in butter and brown sugar, so once I came across the recipe for these biscuits, I knew I had to make them. I also appreciated that there was no butter; just a bit of olive oil as the fat. As much as I love the pockets of butter in my baked goods, I would rather not eat that every day. Also, the were super easy, and come from a Sesame Street cookbook. I got the original recipe from here - unfortunately I do not own said cookbook.

The biscuits were DELICIOUS with the everything-soup I made last week. Lunchtime was very exciting. They turned out to be a cross between a biscuit and cornbread, but that worked for me because cornbread is awesome.

Eat them with some SOUP

Recipe: Elmo's Sweet Potato Biscuits

One Pot Everything Soup/Shame/No More Netflix

Ok after this one the movies need to get lighter. I promise the next one will not be full of murdering or sex addicts. The Halloween season got the better of me.

This week is a big landmark for me. I have been a Netflix subscriber since 2006, when streaming movies wasn't a thing. After the "big split" of the streaming and by-the-mail services and the price increase, I was a bit peeved but kept going with the service and shelled out the $16 per month.

 Since moving here, I have fallen in love with this place. They have sections by director. They have an entire wall of criterion collection movies. They were the ones that had the Dario Argento shelf up in the horror section during Halloween season. It's wonderful. Contrary to what Trey Parker and Matt Stone think, people still go to movie stores.

Randy's movie store was not as cool.

I encourage everyone in the Boston area to give this place a try. The prices are a little steep for renting just one movie, but they have buy one get one free on Tuesdays. Also, if you rent a lot of movies, you can get a card for $40 that gets you 20 movies. I opted for this deal.

Anywaaays, Shame was my last movie from Netflix. You can read my review after the recipe post!

The food I made this week is kind of similar to the first post in the sense that the beets turned everything red again. It was delicious regardless, but you can just leave them out if you don't want another pink soup. As a matter of fact, this recipe is kind of a run-of-the-mill clean-out-the-fridge soup recipe. It also only uses one big pot, which is nice for cleanup. There are a lot of different ingredients you can add and take away, but I would say that the advantage of using the list I have compiled is that everything is in season. Stay tuned for Wednesday's post for the delicious bread I served alongside it (and a nice happy movie. I promised.).

Oh, also I used lettuce in my soup. Trust me on this one.

Recipe: Shamefully Simple One Pot Everything Soup

Kohlrabi with Romesco, The Hills Have Eyes (1977)

This is the other dish I decided to make during Sandy's visit. It was not quite as tasty as the borscht, but it was still enjoyable.

The kohlrabi was another Boston Organics gem, and I wasn't quite sure what to do with it. After googling a bit it turns out, I grew up in the kohlrabi capital of the world. Go figure it takes moving to MA to finally cook with it. Anyways, to me it kind of seems like a cross between a turnip and cabbage. Being clueless, I decided to research some sort of recipe as a guidance. This is what I came across.

I followed the recipe pretty closely and it didn't turn out looking like the picture in his blog. Reading the comments, it looks like adding tomatoes would do the trick. I would probably add about half of a can after cooking the pepper and heat them through. Let me know if you try it out and get it to work better! Once again, movie review is posted after the recipe.

Sorry I'm bad at pictures

Recipe: Mutant Kohlrabi with Radiated Romesco Sauce

Borscht, Dario Argento's Deep Red

Well hey! My first post. Here it goes.

So my original idea was to have a movie blog. Then I realized there are a billion better movie blogs out there so I'm doing dinner and a movie. The movies will not always be new, and the food will not always be delicious, but I'm going to try my best.

Instead of preparing for the hurricane that came through the northeast the other day, I decided to cook. I get a box of vegetables from Boston Organics each Friday and like to pretend I'm on an episode of Chopped.

Hurricane supplies: jug of water, Jesus candles, beer.

I actually made two dishes during this hurricane, but we'll save the second for another horror movie and another post. This one is all about the borscht. Now, typically I'm not a huge fan of borscht and its earthy beety weirdness. Actually, it makes me think of that time in the Rugrats when Chucky gets skunked and has to bathe in borscht to get the smell out. Anyways, this is not your Polish grandma's borscht. It has some Thai inspiration and some sweet potato. I ate it every day for lunch this week and my coworker called it zombie guts. Pretty appropriate for the season/horror film post, eh? (Movie review posted after the recipe).

Recipe: Deep Red Borscht