Roast Beast Feast

We had been craving roast beef for the past couple of weeks, and when Christopher's parents invited us over for dinner last night, we were so delighted to see that that's what we were having! 

They served some yummy snacks to start.

We then had perfectly cooked roast beef, Yorkshire pudding (wowzers), roasted potatoes, asparagus, parsnips, corn and gravy.

Now, this is a pretty scrumptious plate of food ...

Gorgeous!  Roast beef with gravy and all the fixin's is one of my favourite meals - soooooo good!

For dessert, we had strawberry shortcake.

We had great conversation, a lot of laughs, and we left stuffed and happy.  We always have a wonderful time when we get together!

Do you live close enough to dine with your parents often?

Indian Cooking

I have a lot of cookbooks.  Too many.  When the kind people at Robert Rose offered to send me a free copy of Complete Book of Indian Cooking for review consideration, I almost said no; I'm glad I didn't make that mistake. 

We decided to really get a feel for the recipes in the book, and make nine of them, having a whole Indian weekend. 

We are so impressed.  Each recipe was easy to make, and turned out perfectly.  A lot of them used similar ingredients, which made grocery shopping and prep easier.  We went through two bunches of cilantro this weekend, which made me really, really happy!

On Friday evening we made chickpea flour and cilantro squares.  When Christopher came across this in the book, he knew it had my name written all over it.  This is such an interesting recipe, and unlike anything we've made before.

The mixture thickens and then solidifies while cooling in a pan. 

It is then cut it into squares and fried.  This is one of my new favourite dishes.

We also made turmeric chicken, with perfect steamed basmati rice.

And cucumber raita.

What an incredible meal!

Each of us was scared that the other one was going to get up in the middle of the night and eat all the leftovers.  I may or may not have slept with one eye open.

On Saturday afternoon we whipped up mushroom keena and naan, and snacked on those, while visiting, laughing, and prepping dinner.

For dinner we made tandoori shrimp:

Fiery yogurt potatoes:

And curried peas and cheese:

More aces.  These dishes were all fantastic!

Well, as you can see we ate really well this weekend.  We will be relying on the Complete Book of Indian Cooking every time we've got a craving for Indian food (which is pretty much constantly).

How was your weekend?  What did you do?

Have you cooked any Indian food recently?

Making Meals Stretch

One of the ways we've decided to save money in November is to make meals that would stretch.  On Sunday evening we cooked a ham dinner.

We've been eating the leftovers all week ...

And we used the ham bone to make the broth for a big pot of borscht.

We both absolutely love borscht, and it turned out beautifully.

This weekend we'll be staying in and cooking Indian food!

What are you up to this weekend?

So Southern

We visited New Orleans over a year and a half ago, and our obsession with southern food has been alive and well ever since.  We cannot get enough.  We talk about it all the time; we can't wait to go back to New Orleans.  Until then, we will continue to make po boys at home, which is exactly what we did on the weekend.

You can find our recipe for shrimp po boys here.  They are seriously addictive.

We stuck with the southern theme, and made southern eggs benedict for breakfast on Sunday. 

This dish has so many flavours going on, and is a beautiful marriage of salty and sweet, with a touch of sour from the lemon in the hollandaise.  You can see how we make it here.

We have another fun food theme planned for all of this coming weekend!  It's so nice to just stay in all weekend and cook.  No-spend November is off to a great start!

In your travels, where have you had some of the best food?

Halloween and Things

On Wednesday, we were going to take my dad out to Bushwakker, but Christopher had a meeting at work, so it was just me and my dad.  We both ordered pizza, and we had a great visit.

I had the leftovers for lunch the next day.

Thursday's dinner was homemade perogies.

Don't worry, I didn't eat all that!  We shared the giant plateful.  

Halloween was fun!  For dinner, it's our tradition to order Pizza Hut pizza (the only time a year we order from Pizza Hut), and drink a bit of pop (pretty much the only time of year we drink pop).

We only got nine trick-or-treaters, and then headed to our pal Shauna's place for a little gathering.  Christopher dressed as a skeleton and I was a Freudian slip! 

From the weather, you'd never guess today was November 1st.  It's gorgeous outside!  We hit 11 C already!  We made a nice breakfast, got groceries, and then Christopher raked a bit, while I did some reading for my class #vomit.

Today starts our no-spend November!  Besides one road trip to Saskatoon, one evening out for a stag/stagette, and one concert tomorrow evening, we plan to stay in all month.  We really want full weekends without leaving the house, where we can cook, visit, and watch movies, but it seems something always comes up.  There are always social events, etc., to go to, but this month, we're saying "no".  We'll see how much money we save not going anywhere or doing anything big this month ... then we'll blow it all in Vegas at Christmas!! 

Do you ever have a hibernation week?   Month?

Did you dress up for Halloween?  What were you?