Chicken Natalie

Heather added chipotle powder and used brown rice this time. It was nice.

"Vegetable Soup"

I have been jonesing for some of Heather's spicy vegetable soup since it has been very cold in the evenings. She took beef stew meat and chopped it into smaller, bite size portions. Then she added a can of rotel, her remaining brown sauce, corn, lima beans, mushrooms, and other secret ingredients. She made some infamous Jiffy corn muffins and the meal was on. Of course Tanner took an hour and a half to eat, but this is some fine, soul warming goodness.

"Carnitas" with tomatillo sauce and maux choux

This was the very definition of winging it. I had some country style boneless pork ribs and zero ideas about what to do. I LOVE carnitas so attempted this in the crockpot. I added a can of rotel, lime, cumin, and some other spices. The tomatillo sauce can be found in our cookbook. The maux choux is basically sauteed onion, peppers, and jalapenos then tossed with sweet corn. It wasn't as good as I have done in the past, but the leftovers were better for some reason.

Eye-of-round with mushroom sauce, creamed potatoes, and fordham hook lima beans

Heather found a great looking eye-of-round while we were shopping. But how do you best prepare a beautiful roast that has zero fat. Zilch, nada, negative. Do you roast it wet and slow? Dry and fast? Mimi called Aunt Sheryl and suggested roasting it as hot as your oven will go with minimal seasoning coating it. Slice it thin and you will win. This is what I did. Heather made a brown sauce. The mother of all the mother sauces. She added it to the pan drippings and sauteed mushrooms. It was a hit. The potatoes were, well, potatoes. The lima beans were large and a bit bland. Overall, it was pretty good and the leftovers made a great sandwich.

Cresent wrapped brie

To peel the rind or to eat it. That is the question. It is a good question too, because there is no wrong answer. We peeled the rind from the brie. It leaked, but I like to think it wasn't because we peeled it. This was much better than I expected.

http://www.pillsbury.com/Recipes/ShowRecipe.aspx?rid=9907

Macadamia nut truffle cups

This is the basic recipe:

http://www.pillsbury.com/Recipes/ShowRecipe.aspx?rid=13830

There was a bit of substitution going on. Not because of me trying to tweak this award winning recipe, but because we didn't have everything we thought we had. These are tasty little treats and will be served for an upcoming event.

Black Bean soup for lunch

Heather whipped this up. It had quite a bit of jalapeno, but wasn't hot. It just had the flavor. Top notch impromptu soup. She had made some falafel that I had to take to the garbage because it smelled so bad.