The kitchen has been pwned!

As per the "to-do" list, I took a crash course in turkey roasting this weekend to make good use of the bird my Dad bestowed on us earlier in the week. Thank heavens for cookbooks and common sense (of which I dare say I have both) because it's not easy wrastling a thirteen pound fowl in an ity-bity, micro-mini kitchen if you have no sense of direction. You should have seen the stove at the end of our evening however, multi-layered top coat with a fiery will to live! I've attacked the backed on sludge once, but it will take at least one more round of elbow grease to wrench it free and hopefully reveal the same stove we began with underneath. So worth it though, as Hans mentioned in his guest post, our dinner was FAN.TAS.TIC. In between each step and course prep we cleaned something or ran an errand or spent forty-five minutes at the park with the dogs etc. All in all, a satisfyingly productive day for sure.

Behold! The bird!

I don't know how this happened, but Hans is thee best brussel sprout cooker ever. Seriously, you might think you hate these little suckers, but Hans' 'sprouts will totally change you mind. He has made them several times now and both of us choose them often over other more "popular" veggies. Last night's were of the grain mustard variety, a style we had tasted at Oceanaire when we had our epic lunch there for Hans' birthday... YUM!

Behold! The sprouts!

Rounding out our January turkey dinner was garlic mashers and I think they won the prize for best dish among our trio (personally). Loads of garlic, cream cheese, heavy cream, butter, salt and pepper and sour cream. Lets see, did I forget anything? Nope, we were sure to get all the important dairy products in there...

Behold! Food-gasmic 1,000 calorie mashers!

Let us not leave out dessert now, the cupcakes are BACK!
About a week and a half ago I made some more vanilla cupcakes with chocolate frosting from The New Best Recipe cookbook because one of the doctors I work for begged for them and claimed that she had been dreaming about them since the year earlier when I made them for a special occasion of some sort. She spouted off something about being a "total frosting whore" and how that was "the best frosting I've ever had." I just couldn't deny her such a pleasure any longer so I baked them that night, until 10pm. Well, with all the raving she did you would think I might have suffered some performance anxiety and I absolutely did. It was stressful wanting to recreate those little yummies as perfectly the second time, but I tried anyway and every one's feedback was positive again. Happy doctor = happy tech. Anyhow, those vanilla lovelies were the start of getting back into the cupcake routine on a regular basis. I've been craving the banana cupcakes with honey-vanilla frosting and some cream filled chocolate cupcakes especially. The cream filled cakes won out this weekend because that horribly bad for you mallow filling was on sale for only ninety-nine cents which made dying from a diabetic coma cheaper than getting fit and losing three pounds as would possible be the case if we went the banana route.

Behold! The cupcakes! They have SOUR CREAM IN THEM! Oh Lord!

Once cooled, the cupcakes are attacked from behind, their bottoms drilled out and insides removed. I then filled the majority of them with mallow/butter mixture which had been blended until smooth and refrigerated in a gallon Ziploc (left a few without additional cancer agents). When you're ready to use the filling you just snip off the corner of the Ziploc and TA! DA! you have a homemade pastry bag. You know, for those of us without an actual pastry bag. I should really have one of those... That's it! We then proceeded to eat a couple of which I have no pictures because at that point we had twenty-trillion dishes and were EXHAUSTED. I literally felt like I had been preparing an actual Thanksgiving dinner all day and my feet were so tired. I wished I could just curl up in a pita pocket like Lucca!


No rest for the weary! Today we got up and got busy yet again with our recycling drop off and a long dog walk before the cleaning job and a meeting with our tenant, which went very well. We have a decent plan of attack for the next few months, but I'll ultimately be so glad when we know for sure if she can sign another year-long lease. I'm still feeling much better though since it's "on the table" and we know how to proceed, for now. Oh and I totally finished the cooking madness off with a delightful turkey pot pie this evening that was intended for tomorrow, but we just had to taste it by the time it was done smelling up the house so nicely and looking all ooey-gooey as it cooled on the table. Must change pants to ones containing elastic...

Hope you all ate well this weekend, I will be planning turkey soup next!