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    • (In Your Own) Home for the Holidays

      Posted at 11:23 pm by Rachel, on November 22, 2020

      I still remember the first major holiday when I didn’t go “home.” Back then, home still felt like where I had come from rather than where I rested my head every night. My husband was deployed, I was working, and there was not enough time to travel “home.” My brother, who lived about 4 hours away, was also alone, and we decided to have our own Thanksgiving that year. It was… magnificent. Don’t get me wrong, I missed my husband, but what could have been a very sullen day turned out to be the best Thanksgiving I had yet experienced.

      What did we do that was so great? Not much – we spent most of the weekend watching Comedy Central roasts, grabbed some Boston Market for dinner, and I brought a pie with me so we ate that too. Late Thanksgiving night my brother realized he needed something from Best Buy, so we drove over for the fastest ever Black Friday shopping experience. Mostly we just enjoyed each other’s company, something we did not get to do much anymore. It was simple, and special in its own quiet way.

      Since then we’ve travelled the long distance to be with our extended families a couple of times, but if I am completely honest, our best holidays have been the times when we didn’t. Whether it is just our immediate family or us and some local friends, everything is so much less stressful without traveling during an already chaotic time. We get to eat food we know we like, respect the kids’ naptimes, and really just chill and soak in the holidays.

      If this holiday season is looking different for you, embrace the change. This year we are grilling for Thanksgiving because hey, it’s Hawaii and it doesn’t make sense to cook a whole turkey without the crowd to eat it. Last Christmas we stayed in our matching pajamas all day and baked dinosaur-shaped sugar cookies. Cook something special that you never have time for, or order take out. It isn’t a turkey or random relatives you make small talk with once a year that make Thanksgiving and Christmas what they are. That special holiday spirit everyone is after has to come from within, and that is true no matter where you are celebrating.

      Posted in Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged holiday
    • Easter Recap 2020 and Menu Plan 4/19-5/2

      Posted at 11:06 pm by Rachel, on April 19, 2020

      Happy Easter! I hope you all had a peaceful holiday – it was definitely a different feeling this year with a stay-at-home order in effect, and while we all missed getting out to church in the morning, we still enjoyed lots of family time and plentiful food. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I planned to make cinnamon rolls for breakfast, Easter Dinner on 2 Sheet Pans, and a lamb cake for dessert.

      cinnamon rolls 1cinnamon rolls 2cinnamon rolls 3

      Guys, don’t make homemade cinnamon rolls unless you want to ruin the canned stuff for the rest of your life. I grew up eating a lot of cinnamon rolls – my dad made the canned ones for breakfast every Sunday morning and we made pretty frequent trips to the mall Cinnabon – but I never tried homemade until I made this same recipe about 7 years ago. While I haven’t taken the time to make them since then, I haven’t been able to bring myself to buy the alternatives either. This time I did most of the work the night before, and just popped the pan into the fridge after letting the rolls rise in the pan. I let the butter and cream cheese for the frosting soften overnight on the counter, so everything was ready to go in the morning. If you are like me and don’t want to spend an hour or longer making an extra special breakfast in the morning, this is the way to do it!

      easter dinner

      I started making our Easter dinner on the early side. Maybe it is the houseful of kids, or maybe I am just a particularly slow cook, but recipes almost always take me longer than they say they will. Yet in some sort of Easter miracle, this recipe took me the exact amount of time it said it would. Amazing. The potatoes au gratin were the star at our house, and even my sauce-hating 5-year-old really enjoyed them. I don’t have a mandolin, but my food processor’s 2mm slicing disc worked just as well. One thing I would change about this recipe is the cook time on the asparagus and carrots – it was just too long.

      lamb cake batter
      lamb cake 2020

      This year’s lamb cake started out dramatically the day before Easter when I lost the lamb pan. My kids really looked forward to this cake – they had spent the whole week divvying up the cake, and I had spent the whole week listening to them chime, “I get the head!” and, “I get the tush!” So it was a frantic and sad 30 minutes as I searched and imagined telling them that there would be no lamb cake this year. Of course I did eventually find it tucked away inside my stock pot. It is not the first thing I have stored in the stock pot and then lost, and sadly will probably not be the last. So after all that, I did get the lamb cake made. It was kind of sloppy this year, which is what happens when you forget to take it out of the pan for almost 24 hours and don’t pipe frosting until your kids are asking to eat the cake. The recipe does only call for 3 cups of cake batter, so if you use the The Cake Bible’s recipe for Perfect All-American Chocolate Butter Cake (find the recipe online here), you will have enough leftover batter for seven cupcakes. This year I paired it with Sally’s Favorite Vanilla Buttercream. I think I still prefer the flavor of the coconut frosting from last year, but this one was a lot faster to make and still quite tasty.

      This week we are back to simpler, more standard fare. This will be my first time making the ham and Swiss sliders. We had them at a friend’s house a few months ago and my husband and I both liked them, so they seem like a good way to use up the leftover Swiss cheese from Easter (I subbed Swiss for Gruyere in the potatoes au gratin). The kids will most likely eat a deconstructed version of the sandwiches. I have high hopes for the chicken parm meatballs, which is the other new recipe we will be trying in the next couple of weeks. At least one of my kids is SUPER into meatballs right now and one is moderately interested in them, so my fingers are crossed on that one.

      I hope to make a menu plan for the entire month of May, but our grocery store continues to have shortages of random things, so we might stay more week-to-week for a bit longer. We’ve just gotta stay flexible right now!

      S 4/19 Pasta with burst cherry tomato sauce, green vegetables
      M 4/20 Ham and Swiss cheese sliders, broccoli
      T 4/21 Slow cooker tomato soup (from The Complete Slow Cooker), biscuits, spinach
      W 4/22 Leftovers
      R 4/23 Eggs, vegetables
      F 4/24 Pizza (crust, sauce), vegetables
      S 4/25 Chicken and snap pea stir fry, rice

      S 4/26 Pasta with chicken parm meatballs, vegetables
      M 4/27 Mayo-free chicken salad sandwiches, carrots, fruit
      T 4/28 Potato cauliflower soup, vegetables, bread
      W 4/29 Leftovers
      R 4/30 Eggs, vegetables
      F 5/1 Pizza (crust, sauce), vegetables
      S 5/2 Cheesy farro with chicken and broccoli

      Posted in Menu Plans | 2 Comments | Tagged breakfast, chicken, dessert, Dinner, Easter, food flops, holiday, Menu plan, menu recap, pasta, soup
    • Menu Plan 4/5-4/18 and some Covid-19 updates

      Posted at 5:24 pm by Rachel, on April 4, 2020

      Anyone else feel like 2020 is just kicking you when you’re down? I thought so. We started our social distancing about a week or two before guidelines started to come out here in Hawaii because we had a stomach bug (somehow our second stomach bug of the year), so we have been away from other people and our activities for a good while now. Having three kids five and under certainly has its challenges, but I am especially grateful that we have our small hoard of little kids right now because they do the best job of playing with each other and generally keeping everyone’s spirits up.

      In some ways, things seem to be very much business-as-usual around here – we are still in a routine (thanks to the kids, who are home with me all the time anyway), and I am still menu planning and making a grocery list once a week. But now my husband has been doing the weekly shopping trip to minimize our exposure (he still has to go into work) and keep the kids out of the stores, and I’ve been trying to order more pantry staples online because some things are just out of stock around here and it minimizes the time he spends in the store. As with all other online shopping, finding places that will mail food to Hawaii was a challenge. In case you are looking too, this is what I have ordered so far:

      • Real maple syrup from Carman Brook Farm – I received my order 4 days later, in perfect condition, shipping prices are reasonable, and if you order 6+ items you will automatically receive a 10% discount.
      • Chicken and sausages from Perdue Farms – Not many places will ship meat to Hawaii, so I was pretty excited to see that Perdue would ship to me for FREE (I had to spend a certain amount to get free shipping, and it was worth it). Unfortunately they are experiencing delays, and while they are very upfront about this, I ordered on 16 March and my order hasn’t shipped yet. Mainlanders, you have a lot more options for meat and produce shipped to your doorstep!
      • Flour, yeast, and other baking supplies from King Arthur Flour – I was lucky and found everything I needed in stock. I really like that you can see which items are in stock, and I appreciate the current 2-per-item limit they have in place. While flour and yeast are out of stock, they still have a lot of mixes available, including some soup mixes! It took less than 2 days to ship and then arrived another 3-4 days later. If you are looking for flour, a family member told me she was able to order some through Baker’s Authority. Shipping to Hawaii is EXPENSIVE but it might be worth it if you live in the Lower 48.
      • Organic chicken and beef base from Better Than Bouillon – I haven’t seen the organic beef base around here and had been meaning to order some anyway. I started out at Thrive Market, because they have the best price on Better Than Bouillon that I’ve seen and I used to order from them. But after playing around on Thrive Market for probably an hour, I realized that they don’t ship to Hawaii. Womp womp. So I checked the BTB website every day until it was back in stock, and it was delivered to me 4 days later.
      • Dry goods including teas, farro, quinoa, and applesauce pouches from Amazon Subscribe & Save – I added a couple of things to my subscriptions this month, but a lot of this I was already set up to receive. Checking it again now I am actually surprised that the applesauce is coming (because a few days ago it was out of stock), but as of right now it looks like only my regular toilet paper and baby wipes delivery are going to be disrupted. I love Subscribe & Save, even when there isn’t a global pandemic it is worth looking into.

      Now onto the menu plan for the next two weeks!

      S 4/5 Polenta, pesto, & roasted vegetable bowls
      M 4/6 Maple mustard chicken, mashed sweet potatoes, green vegetable
      T 4/7 Pasta and meatballs (from the freezer), green vegetable
      W 4/8 Leftovers
      R 4/9 Eggs, vegetables
      F 4/10 Pizza, vegetables
      S 4/11 White bean and garlic soup, bread, green vegetable

      S 4/12 EASTER – Breakfast: Cinnamon rolls
                                             Dinner: Easter Dinner on 2 Sheet Pans
                                             Dessert: Lamb cake

      M 4/13 BLAT sandwiches, oven fries or carrots, green vegetable
      T 4/14 Beef tacos (homemade taco seasoning recipe)
      W 4/15 Leftovers
      R 4/16 Eggs, vegetables
      F 4/17 Pizza, vegetables
      S 4/18 French onion soup, bread, green vegetable

      Posted in Menu Plans | 1 Comment | Tagged beef, chicken, Covid-19, dessert, Easter, holiday, kid-friendly, Life in Hawaii, Menu plan, soup
    • Thanksgiving Menu 2019

      Posted at 3:00 pm by Rachel, on November 26, 2019

      Planning for this Thanksgiving has been the polar opposite from my planning last Thanksgiving. Last year, I knew months out that I wanted to buy a pre-made meal from a grocery store. I researched my options, looked for other people’s experiences, and stalked stores online as I waited for the special holiday fare to appear. It was the best, especially postpartum, and I still 100% recommend this option to everyone.

      This year, I have basically been in survival mode since August. For a long time I thought that we would be living in a hotel over Thanksgiving, and I didn’t take the time or energy to come up with a plan for that scenario. Then we were offered this house… and while that did make things a lot less stressful, I am still running around like a chicken (turkey?) with its head cut off. Case in point: it wasn’t until the beginning of last week that I realized Thanksgiving was only 10 days away. Maybe it is the endless Hawaiian summer playing tricks on me, but I was really taken by surprise here.

      There was still time to order dinner from Whole Foods or a dozen other places, but I wanted to use my new kitchen. So I returned to the easy yet festive option we enjoyed last Christmas… Turkey and Stuffing Meatballs. That was my plan until Sunday night when one of my kids expressed a deep desire to have a traditional roasted whole turkey for our Thanksgiving meal. As delicious as those meatballs are, making my kids’ Thanksgiving dreams come true is more important, even if that leaves me scrambling for the smallest turkey I can find on the Monday before Thanksgiving (it is 13 pounds, by the way, so not really small).

      So now our menu is as follows:

      • Roasted Turkey
      • Homemade Gravy
      • Cranberry Sauce
      • Maple Brown Butter Mashed Sweet Potatoes
      • Roasted Brussels Sprouts
      • Buttermilk Bread – making one plain and one cranberry-walnut loaf
      • Luscious Apple Pie with Perfect Flaky and Tender Cream Cheese Pie Crust (both from The Baking Bible)
      • Homemade Whipped Cream

      And the game plan:

      • Wednesday – Cranberry sauce, buttermilk breads, apple pie
      • Thursday – Turkey, gravy (while the turkey is resting), mashed sweet potatoes (stove top, while turkey is in the oven), Brussels sprouts (prep while the turkey is in the oven, roast while it is resting), whipped cream (right before dessert)

      It was hard to choose just a handful of side items, but I know that there are still going to be a bunch of leftovers even with limited sides. Harder for me was choosing just one dessert (whipped cream is an “accompaniment,” right?) – I love to bake and I have a wicked sweet tooth. But I keep reminding myself that I am only cooking for my little family of five, and I will be doing plenty of special holiday baking in the weeks ahead.

      Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours!

      Posted in Menu Plans | 0 Comments | Tagged dessert, Dinner, holiday, kid-friendly, pie, thanksgiving, turkey
    • Easter Recap

      Posted at 9:54 pm by Rachel, on April 25, 2019

      Happy Easter! My holiday was filled with good food and good company; I hope that yours was too! A few days ago, I shared my Easter menu plan. I want to revisit that post to recap what I actually made, the cooking timeline, and which recipes I will make again.

      This is the list of food I shared in my previous post:

      1. Crudités and fruit
      2. Roasted eggplant dip (from How to Cook Everything and Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone)
      3. Good cheese and crackers
      4. Good bread and butter
      5. Meatballs (the sauce and the meatballs)
      6. Kolokithokeftedes (zucchini fritters) with tzatziki
      7. Lamb cake
      8. Sugar cookies

      Of that list, we made or purchased everything except for the sugar cookies. It was just a bit more work than I wanted to take on – I try not to spend the whole day in the kitchen on holidays. We ended up with quite the spread and a good bit of leftovers!

      My husband did the shopping on Friday, and I started cooking mid-morning on Saturday. I didn’t have plans to be out of the house so I took my time. As I mentioned, the sauce I make simmers for 6 hours in the oven, so that is the first task I tackled. (It was an unseasonably cool and rainy day here so having the oven on all day was nice.) My kids helped measure ingredients to make the sauce – they loved seeing the peeled tomatoes and smelling the different spices and herbs. I took a little break and then made the meatballs. If you try these meatballs out, I find my food processor to be a big help. I use the standard chopping blade to mince the onion, finely chop the parsley leaves that have been removed from the stems (I chop extra for the sauce at the same time), and grate parmesan.

      I took out the butter and eggs for the lamb cake, ran the dishwasher since I used my stand mixer’s bowl to make the meatballs, and took a long break.

      Later in the afternoon, I started back up again with the tzatziki. I only did a half recipe because I was only cooking for my family, and even half the amount was more than enough to last us several days. This is an excellent make-ahead recipe that even recommends mixing and letting it set in the fridge for a while to let the flavors meld. I used Greek Gods Traditional Plan yogurt; it was nice and thick so I did not have to strain it. I used a combination of dish towels and paper towels to squeeze the water out of the cucumber, but I think for the cucumbers you could get away with using just paper towels. This was extremely easy to whip together and it ended up tasting as good as anything I have had at a restaurant. The next day I just took it out of the fridge, gave it a stir, and it was good to go.

      Next up was the roasted eggplant dip. I preheated the oven and put the eggplant in to roast while we were eating dinner. After dinner I peeled the eggplant skin off by hand (it was quick and easy), finely chopped the flesh, and added the other seasonings. All in all I think it took about 10 or 15 minutes, and then I covered it and set it in the fridge overnight.

      The last dish I prepared on Saturday was the cake for the lamb cake. As you may recall, I used Rose Levy Beranbaum’s recipe for Perfect All-American Chocolate Butter Cake from The Cake Bible (if you do not have a copy of The Cake Bible handy, you can find the cake recipe here). Once the butter is soft and the eggs are at room temperature, this cake does not take a long time to mix. I followed the directions that came with my cake mold and only put 3 cups of batter into the mold (I baked the rest in a 4-cup Pyrex container to make a small cake), and then baked the cake at 375°F for 45 minutes. I’m not sure how long I was *supposed* to leave the cake in the mold to cool, but the mold was too hot to touch for a while so I ended up leaving it overnight.

      easter spread

      So again, at a fairly relaxed pace, I prepared the meatballs, tzatziki, roasted eggplant dip, and cake on Saturday. If you are looking back at my list, there are still a bunch of things not accounted for, but most are quick and easy and do not involve cooking. When I got back to work after church on Sunday, I took out butter for the lamb cake frosting, washed and cut up the crudités vegetables (we had fruit but I forgot about it), and cut a few slices of cheese and arranged it with some crackers. My husband sliced some nice store-bought bread.

      zucchini fritters

      Then I started on the kolokithokeftedes (zucchini fritters). Now I do not say this lightly, but this is the best new recipe I have made lately! I did not expect to be this wowed by zucchini, but this with the tzatziki was phenomenal. I always worry that new recipes will take 3 times as long as they promise. Fortunately this was not the case. Squeezing the water out of the zucchini took 3 or 4 dish towels – and you’re definitely going to want dish towels and not paper towels for this one – but it did not take more than a couple of minutes. Literally the only potentially negative thing I can think to say about this recipe is that you can’t really work ahead here. It is fried, and you will lose that crispy exterior if you don’t serve it immediately. We did have leftovers which we reheated in the microwave, and they were not as crispy as the fresh fritters. Still very flavorful though!

      Last up was the coconut frosting for my lamb cake. It was not my first time making this frosting, and I am sad to report that it did not turn out as well as in times past. I think the root of the problem was the coconut milk I used to make the reduction, which I started after lunch. The recipe notes that the “coconut milk will boil up high in the pan,” but mine never did. The end result looked kind of wet, gelatinous, and grainy – really not appetizing. When I opened the coconut milk, I noticed that it was a lot more watery than previous times, so maybe that had something to do with it. In case you are curious, this time I used Goya coconut milk whereas I previously used Thai Kitchen organic coconut milk with excellent results. The frosting still tasted amazing, but it was a bit wetter than it should have been. Unfortunately I realized this when a big chunk of frosting fell off the back side of the cake… twice! Oh well, the cake was still a delicious pairing of rich, dark chocolate and sweet, creamy vanilla and coconut. Lessons learned! By the way, I did end up making a double batch and I used almost all of the frosting!

      OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

      So what would I make again? The meatballs were already a favorite, the lamb cake has become a family tradition, and the kolokithokeftedes with tzatziki were the star of the day. Of all the foods we had, if I had to cut one from the menu, it would be the roasted eggplant dip. Don’t get me wrong, it was good, but it was not life-changing either. It was kind of an awkward addition to the spread because I didn’t make something specifically to go with it. I thought we might dip veggies in it, but we loved the tzatziki so much that we just dipped in that instead. I could see making it again if I had an eggplant that I needed to use up, but I probably will not go out of my way to make it again.

       

      Posted in Menu Plans, Uncategorized | 2 Comments | Tagged appetizer, dessert, Easter, holiday, kid-friendly, recap
    • An Easter Menu Plan

      Posted at 8:00 am by Rachel, on April 18, 2019

      So let’s talk Easter. If you recall, I have been trying to decide between a more traditional Easter dinner à la Easter Dinner on Two Sheet Pans, or go the small plates route like we did for Christmas. And after a lot of hemming and hawing, we decided to go non-traditional again. I know that classics are classics for a reason, but there are so many more foods that we would rather be eating than ham and potatoes right now. As an added bonus, this most of this menu can be made ahead of time, and that means more family time on Easter.

      OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
      OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

      1. Crudités and fruit

      I usually do sliced cucumbers, bell peppers, cherry or grape tomatoes, and olives for my crudités. I might throw in some baby carrots or celery – we will see what they have at the store. For fruit, my kids are partial to blueberries and strawberries, so I will try to get those and maybe a melon.

      2. Roasted eggplant dip

      I still have eggplant on the brain from last month, and saw recipes for a roasted eggplant dip in a few cookbooks when I was flipping through looking for ideas. This will be a new recipe for me. Really I’m going to try a mashup of two recipes – I will use the seasonings suggested in How to Cook Everything but the cooking method from Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. Consensus is that this dip is good with crackers or bread, but I am kind of curious to try it with some of my veggies too.

      3. Good cheese and crackers

      It’s time to put away your Kraft singles and pick out something from the fancy cheese section! Same goes for the crackers 😀 And in that same vein…

      4. Good bread and butter

      No further explanation needed.

      broiled meatballs

      5. Meatballs

      I’ll be making the same meatballs I talked about in My Postpartum Menu Plan. Start with the sauce – this recipe takes 6 hours to cook, so I will be doing this on Saturday. Once the sauce is going, prepare the meatballs. I ignore the instructions for sauce in the meatball recipe and make all of the meat into meatballs, and add them to the 6-hour sauce after broiling. This recipe yields me about 32 meatballs and a bunch of sauce, surely more than we will eat on Easter, so some of these are going into the freezer.

      6. Kolokithokeftedes (zucchini fritters) with tzatziki

      I’ve not tried these before but they look good! Always nice to have a veggie recipe in the mix, and the tzatziki will also go well with the crudités.

       

      And now for dessert…

      lamb cake

      A lamb cake! I made this for the first time last year, and while my piping job is definitely not professional-quality, we all really enjoyed how it turned out. My kids are particularly excited to have another lamb cake this year. If you are interested, this is the cake mold I used. The mold needs 3 cups of batter. Unfortunately I do not remember the exact recipe I used last year, but this year I am going with the Perfect All-American Chocolate Butter Cake from The Cake Bible. (As an aside, if you have an early edition of this book and measure by volume, know that you will need 16 tablespoons of butter, not 12! If you measure by weight then the recipe is fine as written.) If you don’t have a copy of The Cake Bible handy, you can find the cake recipe here.

      For the frosting I used this recipe for coconut frosting. Actually, the frosting plus that cupcake recipe is really good, but I digress… I really like the flavor of it and it was just the right color for the lamb’s wool, even if it did get a bit melty in my warm kitchen at the end of piping. And speaking of piping, applying the frosting with piping tips uses A LOT of frosting, so I’m going to go ahead and make 1.5 or 2x the original recipe. If you read the whole recipe before you begin, you’ll realize that you do NOT need to make double the amount of reduced coconut milk in order to make a double batch of frosting. Learn from my mistake!

      Really the lamb cake should be enough dessert for our little family, but we had a lot of fun making sugar cookies with the kids at Christmas, so I might put together a batch of cookie dough too. Maybe.

      Posted in Menu Plans, Uncategorized | 0 Comments | Tagged appetizer, dessert, Easter, holiday, kid-friendly
    • Recipe: Slow Cooker Unstuffed Cabbage Soup

      Posted at 3:00 pm by Rachel, on March 4, 2019

      Unstuffed Cabbage Soup has been my family’s St. Patrick’s Day dinner for as long as I can remember. I could not tell you whether or not it is actually traditional Irish fare, although my Irish-American mother has always insisted that it is “more Irish” than corned beef and cabbage. I do know that cabbage is heavily featured in Irish food, and this is delicious. It goes well with potatoes; my personal favorite pairing is potato cakes, but mashed or even roasted potatoes would do the trick quite nicely.

      I adapted my mother’s recipe so I could make it in the slow cooker because, if you hadn’t noticed, I prefer to use my slow cooker when given the choice. The recipe just about fills my 6-quart slow cooker. If that’s too much for you, don’t worry, the leftovers freeze beautifully.

      The honey and raisins put this soup is on the sweet side – it is definitely the sweetest of any soup I make. If you prefer something less sweet, you could reduce the amount of honey. I suppose you could also reduce how many raisins you include, but then you would miss out on the joy that is plump little re-hydrated raisins.

      Ingredients:

      For the soup base:

      • 1 large onion
      • 2 lb head of cabbage, preferably Savoy
      • 1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
      • 1 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes
      • 1 cup water
      • ¼ cup honey
      • ¼ cup lemon juice
      • ⅓ cup raisins (or currants)

      For the meatballs:

      • 1 lb lean ground beef
      • ½ cup uncooked rice
      • 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
      • ½ tsp salt
      • Freshly ground black pepper

      Directions:

      1. Dice the onion. Core and dice the cabbage. Place both the onion and the cabbage into the crock of a 6 quart slow cooker.
      2. Add the other ingredients for the soup base into the slow cooker. Stir to combine.
      3. In a separate bowl, add all of the ingredients for the meatballs. Gently mix with your hands.
      4. Roll the meat mixture into small, bite-sized meatballs, adding them to the slow cooker as you go.
      5. Fold the meatballs into the soup, taking care not to break them apart.
      6. Put on the lid and cook for 8 hours on low. Serve with potato cakes, mashed potatoes, or whichever starchy carb you prefer!
      Posted in Dinner | 1 Comment | Tagged beef, cabbage, Dinner, holiday, recipe, slow cooker, soup, St. Patrick's Day
    • Alternative Holiday Dinners (Part 2)

      Posted at 9:00 pm by Rachel, on January 8, 2019

      This is the second of a two post series on alternative holiday dinners, where I share two ways to celebrate without cooking a big, traditional dinner. For Part 1, click here.

      When it was time to plan for Christmas, I considered ordering catering from Earth Fare again. But when I checked their menu, it was exactly the same as the Thanksgiving menu. I suppose that there is a lot of overlap between Thanksgiving and Christmas meals, and I guess that is what I do not like about holiday meals: they can be kind of boring. I had already ruled out ordering from other stores because most of their meals were intended for 10-12 people, were too expensive, or just looked kind of gross.

      Some friends had mentioned that they only do appetizers and desserts for Christmas, and we really liked that idea. I think most people can agree that the sides are the best part of any holiday meal, and they generally are less time-consuming to prepare than the main course, so we decided to give it a try. The verdict? This will probably be how we do big holiday meals from now on.

      On the menu for the evening were Turkey and Stuffing Meatballs served with mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce, Pesto Pizza Rolls, Smoky Parmesan Roasted Cauliflower, cheese & crackers, and crudités (yes, 4/5 of those recipes are from Budget Bytes – all are amazing). It was more than enough for me, my husband, and 2 small children. We were able to have a several leftovers meals in the days following, so this spread could probably serve 6 or so people easily. I wanted a variety of foods including veggies and something that I knew the kids would eat. They love crudités and cheese and crackers, and that is mostly what they ate. We put those out first so the girls could start munching while everything else finished cooking. They also really enjoyed the cranberry sauce.

      We started prepping food a day or two ahead of Christmas. I made the cranberry sauce first. I had never attempted to make cranberry sauce from scratch before this, but I am happy to report that it was quick and easy and kept well in the fridge. Next up were the mashed potatoes. I am glad that I cooked these the night before because they were the most labor intensive item on the menu. I highly recommend this time-saving tip for peeling potatoes, by the way. I’ve peeled potatoes this way a few times now and it always works well for me.

      christmas cranberry sauce 1
      christmas cranberry sauce 2

      On Christmas Day, my husband mixed and shaped the meatballs in about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, I mixed the pizza dough in my stand mixer. I used a spoon to combine the ingredients and then let the mixer do the work of kneading for me (about 6 minutes around level 4 with the dough hook, in case you are wondering). Once that was done, I took the dough out, oiled the bowl, then returned the dough to the bowl to let it rise for a couple of hours. I also cut up the cauliflower and combined the seasonings in a separate small bowl, and sliced up and plated the veggies for the crudités.

      turkey stuffing christmas meatballs

      All in all I think that was about an hour of work. Once it was done we went over to our neighbors’ house to hang out for a couple of hours before coming home to finish up cooking. We turned the oven on right away, and I tossed the cauliflower with its seasonings and assembled the pizza rolls while it preheated (the pizza dough stretched and rolled up very easily!). Overall, it was still very low stress and the food was better than most holiday meals I’ve had.

      smoky parm christmas cauliflower
      christmas pesto pizza rolls

      For dessert, we had an array of Christmas cookies – gingerbread, chocolate spritz, sugar cookies, and snickerdoodles – that we had been baking for the last few days.

      I know that this approach will not work for everyone, but it definitely helped make our Christmas dinner feel more festive and joyous. Really that is how a holiday should feel – more joyful than stressful. If cooking up a big “traditional” meal with all the fixings does not bring you joy, then maybe you would be better suited to an alternative meal.

      Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments | Tagged appetizer, Christmas, dessert, Dinner, holiday, kid-friendly, side dish
    • Alternative Holiday Dinners (Part 1)

      Posted at 9:00 pm by Rachel, on January 1, 2019

      This is the first of a two post series on alternative holiday dinners, where I share two ways to celebrate without cooking a big, traditional dinner. For Part 2, click here.

      Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you and yours!

      Looking back on this holiday season, it is hard to believe that it was less busy than previous years. Our newest addition arrived before Thanksgiving, which means there are now three kiddos ages four and under in our household. So even though we have pared down holiday travel and other things that cause more stress than we care for, life is full.

      I decided many months ago that I would not be cooking Thanksgiving dinner. Knowing that we would have a brand new baby at home, and not knowing what her temperament would be or how any of us would be feeling, I did not want to embark on the ambitious task of cooking a traditional Thanksgiving dinner. Instead I took the ultimate shortcut – grocery store catering. A couple of years ago, we were in a similar situation of having a brand new baby during the holiday season; except back then, we also moved across the country with our brand new baby and ended up hosting a large family gathering two days after moving into our new place. The pressure of it all really set in the night before move-in, so I did some research and saw that Wegman’s would still let me place an order for Christmas Day. The food was so great that I have been tempted to cater every holiday meal since then.

      That brings me back to this year… I looked into several options in our local area, but ultimately went with Earth Fare in Martinez, GA. They offered a good balance of healthier options, price, and portions (many other stores only offered meals for larger groups). Again, the food was delicious. It was a fairly basic dinner – turkey breast, gravy, cranberry sauce, stuffing, green beans, and mashed potatoes – and if I did it over I would probably want to add sweet potatoes. But it was still a solid Thanksgiving dinner and the only thing I had to cook were some baby carrots for my little ones. I think my favorite components of the meal were the cranberry sauce and stuffing, which really says something as those are typically my least favorite part of Thanksgiving.

      thanksgiving spread 1
      thanksgiving spread 2

      For dessert we went all in and ordered three pies from The Pie Hole in Augusta, GA. The Pie Hole is a local establishment here that I got hooked on after trying their peach pie last summer. They also sell deliciously fresh coffee roasted locally by Buona Caffe. If you are ever in the Augusta area, I highly recommend checking them out for some pie and coffee. All of their Thanksgiving offerings were so tempting, but we narrowed it down to pumpkin, apple crumble, and chocolate pecan, which I served with homemade whipped cream. My favorite was the apple crumble, and my husband’s was the chocolate pecan. Neither of us knew what to expect from the chocolate pecan, but it turned out to be like a chocolate chip cookie pie. The texture was phenomenal.

      thanksgiving piesthanksgiving pie slice

      There were almost no dishes, and there was virtually no stress. With all of the extra time on Thanksgiving Day, we got to soak in extra time with our kids, go for a long walk, take some family photos, and do some coloring. Speaking of coloring, everyone enjoyed our restaurant-style coloring place mats. We put down an extra-large piece of paper at each place along with some crayons. It made the evening all the more special for our younger party goers.thanksgiving coloring

      If ordering a catered meal doesn’t feel festive enough for you, be sure to stay tuned for Part 2, where I will discuss another alternative holiday dinner option!

      Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments | Tagged Augusta GA, dessert, Dinner, Earth Fare, holiday, kid-friendly, pie, take out, thanksgiving, The Pie Hole
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