Rosemary Root Vegetable Soup/Rosemary's Baby

I BROUGHT THE SNOW TO MASSACHUSETTS

I also still don't know how to spell Massachusetts, despite living here for almost 7 months. Thank goodness for spell check.

It was really cold and snowy here so all I did was cook. All day long. Alongside this homemade soup and bread in this entry, I also made pasta, pesto, muffins, salad, and salad dressing - all from scratch. Yes, even the pasta. It was the perfect way to spend the day. Watching Rosemary's Baby was the perfect way to end it. I wish every day was Saturday.

The recipe for the bread came from this awesome book called Ratio, which I would highly recommend for any aspiring baker. It gives you the basic ratios for the main ingredients in staple foods such as bread, pasta, and even sausage. You can then add things as you wish and pretty much end up with something delicious. It reads more like a book than a cookbook, with long detailed explanations behind the methodology of each recipe. So far, it gave me the best damned bread I've ever had. It was a great gift from a great person :)

Get it!

Recipe: Rosemary Root Vegetable Soup

Stuffed Acorn Squash/The Hobbit Part 1

It's the first new movie review!

I don't have much to say here. Being home has been awesome, but I have eaten TERRIBLY. Expect some healthy stuff coming up these next few weeks. I hope everyone's had a great holiday!

Recipe: Stuffed Acorn Squash

Home for the Holidays/NYT Cookies/Christmas Vacation

Special holiday edition!

Typically my rule is that the movie I review has to be a movie I haven't seen before. I've changed the rules so that I can do one throwback movie of the month. Last month it was Jaws, and now this month it will be Christmas Vacation.

I'm home in Michigan for the holidays, and I baked these cookies with my brother Ethan, my sister Caitlin, and her boyfriend Jake. They are all pretty stellar people.

Caitlin happily cutting chocolate 

Jake looking fly.

Ethan looking weird.

There has been a lot of buzz behind these chocolate chip cookies, so I feel like it's time to give them a try. The original recipe is found here. I know it may seem like a lot of chocolate, but somehow it works. We ended up having to use two different kinds (not the fancy discs like the article) because we didn't have enough of one kind. We also just used all purpose flour instead of a mixture of bread and cake. I hope that didn't affect the recipe too much.

Recipe: New York Times (kinda) Chocolate Chip Cookies 

Sweet Potato Burritos/The Magnificent Seven

Hoping to get back on track here. I couldn't decide whether to post the sweet potato burritos or the vegan chorizo soup I made. I think I took a better picture of the burrito so that's what made it.

The holidays have kind of taken over my life, but hopefully this will be the start of the regular posts again. This weekend I will have a post from my home state, Michigan!

I used a soy chorizo "sausage" that I got from the local grocery store here. I only used half of the package because I wanted more of a flavoring than chunks of fake meat. You can use a full package, the real stuff, whatever you want! If you're looking for a good soy substitute, the Trader Joe's brand is my faaavorite. It's also inexpensive and much healthier than it's meaty counterpart.

I also really like spicy things so I used two jalapenos, with seeds. To take it down a notch you can de-seed, use one, or completely omit the peppers. It's up to you!

The burritos have lots of strange things in them because that's what I had. I'm not really aiming for authenticity here.

I served this alongside some Boston lettuce and broccoli salad with pickled watermelon radishes. The radishes were beautiful. To pickle, just combine some rice vinegar and sugar and soak the radishes and an onion in a jar overnight. The color is really something.

They're cute and look like watermelons!

 Anyways, back to those BURRITOS.

Recipe: Sweet Potato Black Bean Chorizo Burritos

Homemade Hot Dog Buns with Beet Sauerkraut/Far Away, So Close!

So if you're looking for traditional fluffy hot dog buns, you should probably follow the original recipe posted here. I decided to go my own route and make them whole wheat. I also substituted yogurt for butter. I probably did something wrong because they just didn't rise. They kind of had a hard pretzel-like quality to them. I thought they held up to the beet sauerkraut quite nicely, but they did not turn out like they should have. Oh well, one of these days I'll learn how to bake. 

Also, another beet recipe. One of these days I'm going to run out of ideas. I actually just got a HUGE bag of them in the farm exchange, and I'm really struggling to come up with some good recipes. Suggestions welcome. 

Lastly, I used turkey dogs because they were an impulse buy and have been sitting in my freezer for weeks. They were actually really delicious, although I can't really remember the last time I had a real hot dog. You can use whatever you want, but I would recommend a more plain frank to let the flavor of the sauerkraut shine through.

Recipe: Turkey Dogs with Homemade Hot Dog Buns and Beet Sauerkraut.

Bacon Chocolate Pecan Bars/Unforgiven

Sorry about this post being late! I was supposed to write it on Tuesday evening, but we got a surprise email from our landlord about the house being appraised. Soooo I guess it was time to get the couch out of the stairway that has been there for 3 months? Maybe?

It's more stuck than it looks.

After about 5 hours of sawing and putting holes in the wall, we gave up (it was midnight on a work evening). Guess where the couch is now...

I don't really want to talk about it.

Anyways, the post is late. SORRY GUYS.

Today's recipe is not healthy. I think you can probably guess that from the title. You really shouldn't eat these. As a matter of fact, you probably just shouldn't read this entry. Unless you want to make lots of friends friends. Or move up in your job. If you bring them to work you'll probably be promoted. That is, if they make it out of the house...

The recipe was concocted for a celebration of "Hamover" - a pork party. I wanted to make something special instead of your run of the mill pig dish. After some extensive searching, I found this recipe from this lady called The Beeroness. I love a good chocolate pecan pie, so I threw some dark chocolate in there as well. It was a good choice.

What do you do with the leftover bacon? Cover it in brown sugar, bake it, and call it "candied bacon". Duh. It melts in your mouth. Also a big hit at the sausage fest.

Recipe: Unforgivably Unhealthy Bacon Chocolate Beer Shortbread Pecan Bars

Special Guests and Tuna Steaks/Jaws

Japanese food galore! I guess I'm on a kick.

I got really excited when some friends contacted me to be guest contributors to the blog. I was happy about being able to hang with some cool kids for the night, but I was also really stoked that people took an interest! If anybody else in MA wants to be included in pretty much the hottest blog around, let me know. Recommendations of movie/food pairings are also taken into consideration.

Special guest Mario!

Special guest Maggie!

Also, a lot of the food from this entry was reused from the last one. The tuna recipe was inspired by this. The tuna was purchased from a fishmonger in Inman Square and HOLYCOW it was good. Jiro would be proud.

Recipe: Tuna Steaks with Leftover Rice and more Spicy Miso Soup

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