Thanksgiving Practice Apprtizer

Ty made a snack today for the Bears game which we think will be a perfect Thanksgiving appetizer:) Ingredients are red pear, green and red apples, raisins, large white raisins and peanut butter. Festive AND healthy! Sure to be "gobbled" up by a hungry crowd!

Birthday Breakfast Cupcakes

This morning Tyler created breakfast cupcakes for Phil's 40th birthday that were delicious.  She first caramelized onion and broccoli. Then she put a "crust" of the caramelized onion in the muffin cups, filled the cups with scrambled egg, placed a cooked broccoli floret in the center of each one ("so when you cut into the cupcake it was a broccoli filling"), and topped them with sliced cheddar cheese. They puffed up like little soufflés! Cute. We served them with festive birthday candles (which unfortunately melted into the hot cupcakes {hopefully candle wax isn't extremely toxic}). Very creative birthday breakfast!!

Thanksgiving Prep

Just found this from Thanksgiving...

Fruit Parfaits

Last nigh Tyler made a "chopped salad" of honey crisp apples and clementines. She layered it in with Greek yogurt and honey in "fancy" glasses. It was good, but she said she'd leave out the clementines next time. I thought that would be a good idea too.

Linguini with Carrots and Andouille

This week Tyler created a pasta dish with garden-fresh carrots (here's the picture of her harvesting them), andouille sausage, peas, tomatoes, chicken stock, and topped with Parmigiano Reggiano cheese.  She was hard pressed to choose ingredients, as the fridge and pantry were a little bare. It certainly was an original, creative creation.

Celery, Onion, Brown Sugar...Concoction

If you have trouble seeing the video from email or iPad, just go to www.tckculinaryjourney.blogspot.com to watch. This goes for all videos (I understand that automatic post emails do not show the videos. Sorry for the technical difficulties, if you're having them.)

We All Have Our Thing

Last night while getting ready for bed Tyler asked me, "Mom, do you ever just feel like sweating onions just for no reason? You know, just sautéing them to cook them, not to brown them?" I said, "Do you mean do I enjoy sweating onions when I'm starting to make soup or something?" She replied, "No, do you ever feel like cooking onions, just cause it's fun, not to use them for anything? I do."

She and I made butternut squash soup for dinner and she managed the onions, measured and added the other ingredients and did the stirring throughout the cooking. Apparently she realized (or was reminded in the process) she really enjoys cooking onions. I guess I'll know what's going on if I wake up to the smell of onions cooking one of these mornings.