It seems like every day the past week and a half has found us on the road. That makes it hard to be creative in the kitchen! Even if we’re home for most of our meals, just driving all over the place gets exhausting and drains creativity. But, at least I came up with a good Pie of the Week: Chicken Parmesan Pizza!
This is a little different take on the pizzas I’ve been doing lately. But really delicious, nonetheless. It uses ingredients left over from making the blackened chicken wraps yesterday. But we unwrap the wrap, put it on a quasi-neapolitan pizza crust, and give it a couple of minutes in the Roccbox.
I don’t do a lot of wraps. But this winter has provided us with a bounty of sweet winter carrots, we had some really good local chicken that needed eating, and, after a slow market day (too cold, I guess), we had several unsold bags of our spinach to eat our way through. Sure, salads seem like a logical choice. But, I wanted something different. So, I improvised a blackened chicken wrap.
So many ways to use a turkey… But it’s winter, and comfort food is in order. Carbs, cheese, AND tryptophan, all in one dish! This casserole is loosely based on turkey tetrazzini, and was made with shredded turkey meat picked off the bones after making turkey stock. Of course, I used some of the stock, too.
I’m not much of a New York style pizza fan. Sorry. In the regional pizza battle, I fall squarely in the Chicago camp (the deep dish, not the thin crust. Chicago offers two powerful indigenous pizza styles…). But this week, as part of my triumphant turkey tribunal, I at least made a pizza based on a “sandwich” named after one of New York’s five boroughs: the Turkey Manhattan.
Turkey is one of the best protein values. It was nearly the National Bird of the United States. It is one of the healthiest as well. Yet it is often relegated to a once-a-year feast, where its novelty and size make preparation a challenge. That’s sad, because, turkey is a great everyday food. I usually buy one or two after the holidays, when the price drops to a mere fraction of the regular price.
The only real down side (once you know what to do with them)? They take up a lot of space in the freezer. Our remaining personal turkey had migrated to the farm‘s freezer. But, we had lambs to pick up from the butcher, and needed all the space we could get. So, time to talk turkey!
This beef short rib and noodle soup is perfect for winter. It’s rich, savory, and full of comforting umami. It is braised for hours, filling the kitchen with the wonderful hygge we so long for during nesting season. Yet a healthy dose of ginger gives it a pop of brightness during the season of dark grey. It is also full of collagen, elastin, and chondroitin, to help support our joints – always appreciated in the cold days of winter!
Christmas Eve found us retreating inside, close to the wood stove, as the -35 F wind chill and blowing snow made outdoor activity rather unpleasant. But, if you have a wood stove and time to hang around it, you can do all sorts of fun cooking. On this day, I made a delicious lamb tagine with freeze-dried wild blackberries we foraged this summer, and dates from the pantry.Continue reading →
If you bought into the media hype, you knew winter storm Elliot was going to kill us all. Comparisons to the blizzard of ’78 were flying everywhere, and I understand there was nowhere nearby to get eggs, milk, or bread. In reality, we only got about an inch and a half of snow. But the cold. The cold meant doing everything possible to stay inside! With wind chills approaching -40, traveling any further than the sheep barn was not in the cards for us.
But, Xenia had foraged some winter oyster mushrooms ahead of the storm, and I had some old, leftover Neapolitan style pizza dough. It was really too old to make good pizzas, and since the pizza oven is an outdoor only appliance, I wasn’t going to be making pizzas anyway. But, a savory onion, mushroom, and cheese roll for breakfast? That sounds perfect for a cold day next to the wood stove!
I didn’t realize I hadn’t posted my Grand Marnier Dark Chocolate Chunk Cookies to the blog. What an oversight! They’re only the best cookie in existence!