Valentine's Day Fail

pic forthcoming

We opted to stay in for Valentines Day, so that meant the Fail Kitchen was open. We opted to shop at Trader Joe's and plan the meal dependant on what we found. I was thinking surf and turf, and they had some lovely tri-tip steaks. But we opted to check out the frozen seafood first, hey desert, hard to find the fresh stuff.

We settled on some scallops and ahi tuna steaks, picked out a couple bottles of wine, some desert and we were set for dinner. Also picked up some steaks and chicken sausage for a BBQ on Sunday, TJ's has the best chipolte flat iron steak.

Later we picked up some mushrooms to sautee, it was going to be a lot of butter and garlic on this evening... good thing we were staying home. All in all the meal turned out well, the flavors on the ahi and scallops were not super impressive. The tuna was pre marinated in olive oil, red pepper flakes and some other things, but didn't really carry the flavor.

The scallops I just straight up pan seared with salt and pepper, they could have gone another minute and been closer to perfect. I felt they were a bit cool in the center, cooked through, but not as firm as they should have been.

Our espresso / chocolate mousse desert was good, but tiny. The appetizer of our favorite brie, an fabulous rustic ciabatta bread from TJ and their wine infused salami was the best course of the meal.

Not too much fail last night, but their is always today!

Post Super Bowl Fry Party

Catching up on my posts as usual, when we last left off I had mentioned a post SB party on Monday. I had already planned on making some Green Pork Chili, seen above, in the about to be roasted phase. But that was not enough, we also decided to have a Fry Party.

On Saturday we purchased a small deep frier and spent Monday morning looking for things to fry in the poor little machine. It had no idea what it is was in for...

The first victim arrived in the early afternoon, we fried pizza rolls, lumpia, dill pickles, all fabulous. We drank Kaffir Lime Mojitos and enjoyed the afternoon. We were joined by a couple more victims later when we continued with more of the same and some lovely homemade onion rings. Those were awesome.

After a break to let the oil cool and change it out while I worked on the chili, we moved onto desert. Oreos, cheesecake bites, Milky Ways, Heath Bars and Reeses PB cups, everything got eaten before I could take pictures.

Definetly a fun but deadly (to your arteries) little time was had. Oh and the chili turned out great also, we had that for dinner on Tuesday.

Super Bowl Sunday

Sunday brunch went well, we did some from scratch cinnamon rolls to go along with the Blueberry Marscapone Turnovers and the usual scramble of eggs and bacon.

Because it was pre football we also had some bloody mary's, hit the beers about noon, had some band practice (Rock Band) all before heading out to the football party elsewhere.

Not a bad little party, lots of food, too much drama, busy day and worst of all we made plans to continue the party on Monday since most of us were off from work.

Saturday Night Football Prep

Couple things going on before Superbowl Sunday, first up the BBQ sauce for the next batch of BBQ Kielbasa. Secondly a lovely little desert to test out the new deep fryer. Lots of fail from the two of trying to work in the kitchen at once, lots of standing in front of the drawer the other one needed tools from, etc.

I kicked up the BBQ sauce with some Guinness and amber weizen, otherwise the same base recipe of ketchup, vinegar, brown sugar and Worcestershire sauce. Also hit it with a lot more brown sugar to take down some of the vinegar intensity.

As for desert, well, this recipe is from the Food Network football special they had on last weekend. It's Giada De Laurentiis' recipe of Blueberry and Mascarpone Turnovers, to celebrate this dish we bought a little baby deep fryer.

We had a couple things going on with this recipe, we did one batch with puff pastry dough and the other with pie crust. They both have their pluses and minuses, but both turned out well for the most part.

The real tell will be this morning when we serve them for our pre Superbowl brunch.

Friday Pot Luck Fail

Found this recipe in Draft magazine, in an interview with David Boreanaz, the recipe is his mothers. I modified it a bit the first time I made it, because I always do. It was deemed worthy and I planned on rolling it out for Super Bowl weekend.

First up, Friday pot luck at work and much of the fail was involved with this batch. Fail one came when I stayed out too late Thursday night to do my prep as planned, that left me scrambling to do everything Friday morning before work.

Fail two, my rushed grocery shopping this week, first unable to find kielbasa and then when I finally did find it, I got the smoked sausage and not the kielbasa.

Fail three, I forgot the crock pot liner, insuring a sticky gooey mess to clean up at work, no fun there.

Over all though, the recipe was a success, it was fully eaten, no leftovers. Two people asked for the recipe, we will have to see how it goes over on Sunday.