Catching Up

Geez! I have been slacking. Well, here goes on catching you up.

This weekend was great. Friday night I decided that John and I should have a nice relaxing night in. Make a fantastic dinner then watch a movie. I love crab cakes and had never made them before, so I thought I would give it a shot. I'll post pics of dinner and recipes below. Here is us watching movies...ooohhh exciting! :)

Saturday we woke up to snow (yuck) then headed to Lucky 13 for brunch. Lucky 13 is this yummy burger joint downtown-ish. It is cheap and good! Saturday night, we were going to head up to Park City for Sundance, but I really don't like Sundance, so I let the snow be an excuse for not going. Instead we stayed at home, made some pasta, and watched another movie. I guess we are getting old or something...just sitting at home all the time!

Sunday was pretty much the same story. Do you ever have those days where you just don't feel like doing anything? I mean, absolutely anything at all? As if I hadn't already been unproductive enough this weekend, that was yesterday for me. We made breakfast then I parked it on the couch and read a book. After several hours of that, I started to feel lazy and antsy, so I made some Chicken Tikka Masala (or as John calls it Chicken Tikki Dikki - who knows) and homemade Garlic Naan. I'll post those recipes another day because I am still fine tuning. Once that was done, I sat right back on the couch and kept reading. Needless to say, it was not a productive day for me.

OK....now that you are all caught up, here are some recipes.

Friday Night's Date Night Dinner

• Caprese Bruschetta
• Crab Cakes with a squeeze of lemon - Steak for John
• Creamy, cheesy, garlic risotto
• Roasted carrots

Caprese Bruschetta

• 1 french baguette sliced
• 3-4 tomatoes on the vine diced
• 1/2 a red onion diced
• 4 cloves of garlic minced + 1-2 whole cloves
• 10-12 fresh basil leaves chopped
• Sliced fresh mozzarella cheese - same number of slices as bread
• balsamic vinegar to taste
• olive oil to taste
• salt and pepper to taste

To make the tomato mixture, first saute your onion and garlic in a little bit of olive oil for a few minutes - just enough to remove the sharpness. After that, combine your tomatoes, sauted onion and garlic, basil, a drizzle of olive oil, a drizzle of balsamic vinegar, and salt and pepper in a bowl. Cover and refrigerate for a few hours.

When ready to serve, preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place sliced bread on a baking sheet and rub with a garlic clove. Bake for about 5 minutes until just starting to get crusty. Scoop a spoonful of the tomato mixture onto each slice of bread and top with a slice of cheese. Bake for about 8 minutes more. Broil for two minutes at the end to get that golden brown color. 

Crab Cakes

These actually ended up being pretty easy to make. I was a little bit intimidated at first, but they turned out good and like I said were easy to make.

I started out using the recipe found here http://www.onceuponachef.com/2010/07/maryland-crab-cakes-with-quick-tartar-sauce.html. The only thing I did differently was add in some diced onion and jalapeno for a kick (1/4 diced onion, 1 small jalapeno). I am going to work on these a bit more though, because the mixture seemed really unstable. I let them refrigerate for about 5 hours before cooking them and they still seemed like they were going to fall apart at any moment. Let's just say that flipping these was very challenging.


Here is my full meal with the risotto and roasted carrots. Looks yummy!

Of course, John doesn't like seafood (although he did eat 1/2 of a crab cake - woooo big seafood eater :)), so he had steak. That steak does look pretty dang god though...mmm red meat!

So, now you are in the know and are all caught up. I hope everyone has a great week!