Thanksgiving for the service peeps

Happy Thanksgiving!

What? I’m 2 days late? Uh.... well Happy Thanksgiving Week! My Colorado friends and I, being employed in the lovely hospitality/service industry, worked our little booties off on Thursday hence the feasting celebrating on Friday. Friday celebration was fine with me, since we had more than enough food to stuff our faces with...I guess we did the holiday proud.

I was in charge of cornbread w/ butter, roasted asparagus, and cranberry sauce. Nothing extraordinary on the first two; I just baked a box of Jiffy mix with whole corn kernels to be served with softened butter mixed with chopped thyme while the asparagus simply roasted for 15 minutes in the oven alongside smashed garlic cloves. One thing that was a bit more near and dear to my heart was the cranberry sauce!

What makes mine so special? Well first of all I had to go through with permanently staining one of my favorite zip-ups...thanks to POM! These little things are what I love about my cranberry sauce. I almost bought a short-cut already separated arils for $4.99, but for $1.99 ended up with a whole pomegranate and a brochure that simply read, “EASY OPEN.” ‘nuff said.

I never knew the trick with the water! But like the brochure said, all the arils sank to the bottom leaving the white chunks float!

I used a can of whole berry cranberry sauce, jellied one, an orange and last but not least the POM!

I bring the sauces into a simmer then get a good squeeze out of the orange,

then I add the POM and simmer again for another few minutes. How easy, no?

Well I guess it wouldn’t be a Thanksgiving post without pictures of the bird (the juiciest turkey breasts!):

And here goes our assembly line!

We all squeezed and sat around Amy and Jeffrey’s gorgeous dining table...

Then got ready to FEAST!

The night was capped off with a round of good ole Cranium and Jay's famous Apple Crumble Pie with vanilla ice cream. Good food and good company always equal good times...

This year, I am thankful for so many things... first and foremost my beautiful family who gives me so much support from so far away. Then my wiener of a boyfriend and his family who I’ve come to call my own. :) I’m thankful for dear friends back in WI and NY/East Coast, as well as new friends out here in the mountains... Thankful for my jobs, thankful for Yoshi, thankful for my car... thankful for my God who allows me to wake up every morning and be thankful everyday.
 So which post next? Well I believe after Thanksgiving comes the bestest leftovers!

aireese's pieces' pieces

As per usual, I was reading through a few of the awesome food blogs from my blog roll, and somehow it got me to go back on my blog archive. I started to read my first few posts, and boy my blogging "style" has gone off lately. I read this one, this, and this and I had to think 'whoa, did I really write that?'
 
I think I took my affection for photo-heavy posts a little bit too seriously. And granted I have flippin' 10 posts for this month, but which ones actually count for having quality content? Okay, don't answer that. It's a rhetorical question. haha
 
One of the reasons for my short and sweet, photo-heavy posts could be the fact that I feel like I need to be a posts-pumping machine and try to squeeze in any posts I can without delay. So what was I going to do when I'm going to be overloaded with work starting next week? Just post pictures? Hmmmm...
 
I need to take some time and make sure I put out the good stuff. In the meantime, back tracking through the blogs led me also to this post which will be my inspiration for the next cooking extravaganza. :)

Kudos to my BB :)

I've been going to Smoke (the modern barbecue) a lot. First, it's right by my place and second, the prices are right up my alley, and lastly the food is deeeelish. I went to another ladies' brunch and had this humongo plate of pulled pork salad. Can you see the crunchy fried okra bits?

Then a side of their famous macaroni and cheese...

Then a few nights after the brunch, I went for dinner where I had a giant plate of barbecue (brisket and chicken), and we shared the nightly special mac n cheese, chicken and mushroom Tuesday. I didn't care so much about the side mac n cheese, but this special mac n cheese was absolutely out. of. this. world. YUM.

All these photos are taken by my good ol' Blackberry Tour. Didn't it do a good job? Oh, and check this Mr. Scruff after sniffing through the snow:

Speaking of snow...we are expected to get about a foot of snow from Sun-Wed! Two of our mountains open up Thanksgiving Day, the town is slowly waking up from the dreadful off-season! Aaaand another reason to be more excited? We have our food tasting for the new menu items at work today, yippeedadoo!

My first official Le Creuset experience!

My friend Christine recently scored an awesome deal at the outlets and brought home the prettiest little yellow Le Creuset french oven. But the weird thing is, she's not much of a cook so the pretty little yellow pot had been sitting on her stove top for a couple of weeks...until we decided it was time to "christen" the pot!

I started browning some chicken thighs on the bone (for the bone-lovers),

and also some chunks of chicken breast (for non-bone-lovers)...

Any guess as to what it's for? Well...these are my first steps to one of my favorite meals: Chicken Cacciatore! So in the same pot with all the browned goodness went in the mix of mire poix, red, yellow, orange, and green bell peppers...

And some cremini and button mushrooms.

Then the chicken pieces plunged right back in along with canned diced tomatoes, chicken stock & good quality chardonnay (Oops, forgot the tomato paste!)!

After that we just waited...

and waited...

Voila! It was ready!

We served it up alongside some angel hair pasta. 

So delicious, and so appropriate for the pretty little yellow french oven! I can't wait to have one of my own... 

My newly found sweet tooth & a four-legged furry baby

Today's post is short and sweet. Let's begin by taking a glimpse at how better of a dog Yoshi has become (not to mention adorable...at times)!

Moooovin' on!... I've always been a savory gal, I always reached for a bag of chips rather than a candy bar, but recently I've had this sweet tooth that I can't seem to shake off! So when I went to the store yesterday, not only did I buy oatmeal butterscotch cookie dough but more importantly... the Peanut Butter & Co.'s "White Chocolate Wonderful!" 

I'm not a big white chocolate fan, but this peanut butter is the king of all peanut butters. My best friend from college Sam turned me into this bad boy junior year at NYU. I still have a vivid memory of us reaching for thirds and fourth spoonfuls from the pantry.

I love this so much, I took a spoonful with me on my commute to work! But no guilt, no shame- I can justify myself at least for a bit since this PB has "No Hydrogenated Oils" and "No High Fructose Corn Syrup." You see?

Then another loaf of the store's multi-grain bread...

 For only $1.69 (!!), you get this grainy and soft goodness! 

Perfect for a strawberry jelly sandwich- no need to be toasted, it's so nice and fluffy!

I suppose it's ciao for now! I have an awesome meal post coming up soon, but who knows when that's to come because I have my fingers crossed for Matt's visit! :)

Rescuing my lentil soup

Given the limited amount of space and supplies that I have in the kitchenette, I could not think of a better meal to cook than a soup. So there came the inspiration for lentil soup filled with vegetables, turkey sausage, and turkey bacon!

While I browned the meat,

 I prepared my mirepoix...

 Then I added the mirepoix along with cubed red potatoes.

 After that went in the chicken stock, bay leaves, and lentils. And here comes why my soup needed to be "rescued." I added almost the entire bag of lentils. Who knew lentils plump up? Clearly not me. So you could imagine this little pot filled with turkey meat, mound of veggies, plus a whole bag of lentils. I still had yet to put in my kale and spinach! It was nearly impossible to cook off the soup that night, so I resorted to putting it away in containers in hopes of "rescuing" it in the near future...

 And rescue it, I did! All it needed was more chicken stock and a tad bit more time for the lentils to fully cook. And wahla! A deliciously satisfying bowl of soup!

Without knowing, I had made about 10-12 servings of soup, so I even brought it over to my friends... and it went beautifully next to her salad filled with spinach, raisins, cherry tomatoes, mandarin oranges, and cheese! 

 I'm usually not a big fan of cheese in salads, but boy this one worked sooo well with all the accompaniments. 

Kudos to Christine. :)

 Seeing that I still have tub-fulls of that soup, I know what I'm having for lunch today...

Just another Tuesday

The pumpkin butter + multi-grain bread has been too addicting! 
I've even topped it off with some sliced apples with a dash of cinnamon. Mmmmm.

I also had some leftover chicken tortilla soup sitting pretty in my fridge, so decided it'd make the perfect lunch while I watch the snowfall through my window. Since I didn't have any tortilla chips handy, I cubed the multi-grain bread and toasted it in the pan with some butter...

 The bread pieces became ultra-crunchy in a couple of minutes 
while the smell of butter wafted throughout my teeny studio.

They made the best  second best toppers for the tortilla soup. 
Obviously because tortilla strips take the number one spot!

 Done under 5 minutes! Agh, I'm such a chunker. :P Ugh, I'm not too crazy about these bowls and plates that came with my studio, but no dinero hence I just have got to suck it up and deal with them!)

So I've been blogging a LOT these days...and that's due to the crazy amount of free time I have because of the "off-season." They say enjoy it while it lasts, but I'm such a naturally hustle-bustle girl so this free time is drivin' me nutso! Can't wait until Thanksgiving week when things start picking up! Oh, and check out these awesome dog cookies that my neighbor baked! They smelled so good, I'm so jealous of Yoshi.