Jasper Winter Holiday Pictures

Gluehwein, Messy Roasted Chicken, Parsnip Fries

Gluehwein's a warm, spiced red wine drink common in Austria and Germany over the holidays. I remember having a lot of it last year, it's sold on the street from little stands. I looked up a recipe for it...you combine 3/4 cup water, 3/4 cup sugar, a cinnamon stick, the juice of an orange, and the rind of the orange studded with cloves and simmer for 30 minutes. Then you add a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon or Shiraz and let it get warm. Of course, I didn't have a cinnamon stick or whole cloves, so I just tossed some spices in there and hoped for the best. Also, Georg was sent for an orange and brought back a grapefruit (ha) so I used grapefruit juice instead of orange. It was still good though. I would just caution against overwarming the wine...if it's on the stove for a long time, it gets a little syrupy. I would probably cut back on the sugar next time as well; that might help eliminate the syrupyness too. I think this particular recipe could stand with just 1/4-1/2 cup of sugar rather than 3/4 cup.
Well--on to the dinner I made that night...roasted chicken and parsnip fries. The parsnip fries were really good. I cut them into sticks, tossed them in thyme, olive oil, and salt, and roasted them at a very high temperature (450-475 degrees) for 20-30 minutes. Cooking them at a high temperature is key; it makes them crispy on the outside and soft in the middle.
The roasted chicken was also really good...crispy skin, really moist meat. I used this recipe from one of my favorite blogs. This recipe, too, relies on a high oven temperature. Well, what worked on parsnips became a big mess when applied to chicken. Chicken fat exploded all over my oven. It popped and sizzled everywhere, including the heating coils, and once the fat hit the heating coils it created this awful smoke that burned my eyes. I am going to have to totally clean my oven before using it again after that chicken.
Our lantern-flower kitten says hello and...
Here is a nice little scene of Gluehwein and nuts that Georg set up and wanted me to take a picture of...what a little food stylist.

Georg and I leave on Friday for a trip to the Canadian Rockies for the holidays! I will surely have lots of pictures to show soon from our excursion!

Chocolate Walnut Chess Pie

Funny, I made a lemon chess pie just about a year ago, and now a chocolate one. I hope this one will be just as much of a success as the last one.

I haven't been baking too much lately so I owed it to Georg and myself to make this. We have been subsisting on cheap blueberry pies you can buy at Safeway for $3.49 and that just isn't cutting it anymore.

I haven't actually cut into this pie yet (I'm saving it for dessert tonight), but it contains little more than chocolate, sugar, eggs, walnuts, and bourbon. How bad could that be?

Here's where you can find the recipe:
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Chocolate-Pecan-Chess-Pie-4504
(they use a frozen crust and pecans, but Georg likes walnuts and I like homemade crust!)

Christmas Decorations

Well, it's the Sunday after Thanksgiving, which means it's officially permissible to start decorating for Christmas. Georg and I aren't spending it with either of our families this year, so I guess I feel like I have to create Christmas because it's not coming to me otherwise.

Saturday morning I got up bright and early and went shopping for some Christmas decorations. We'll get a real tree later, but for now I've gotten a silver-spraypainted plastic one, sitting in a flowerpot with fake moss. I adorned it with globe-shaped white lights and am quite pleased with it. In the future when I can find some, I will further decorate it with some red ribbon.
I also got some Christmas-scented, red, white, and silver painted pinecones, nuts, and twig-balls, which I put in one of my wooden salad bowls. I set a small feather-poof of a bird ornament on top, as if the bowl is its nest. It's really cute.
See how cute?! Finally, I got a 97 cent Advent calendar...they had a really nice one at Starbucks filled with truffles, but it was 24 dollars, and who in their right mind would spend 24 dollars on an Advent calendar? I'm excited, because tomorrow is December 1st and Georg and I can open the first chocolate-filled window in the calendar!

Christmas Cactus, Bloomed

My Christmas Cactus is blooming! I took a picture of it last weekend in the bright Saturday morning light. Did you know that during the week I never am actually in my apartment when it is light outside? That I never really see my dwelling in natural light except on weekends? I leave for work around 7:40 when it's still dark and get home around 5:30 and by then it's dark too. I guess that's the thing with having a real job--you can afford a nice apartment and nice little frills like Christmas cactii, but you never get to experience them in daylight.

Shrimp with Roasted Tomatoes, Feta, and Herbs

I've been relying on this meal a lot lately...it's easy, doesn't require a lot of preparation work, and it tastes really good. One needs:

1 pkg. frozen shrimp (lately all I've been able to find affordably is peel-on, but peeled would make this a lot easier to eat)
1 pkg. cherry tomatoes
2 or 3 cloves garlic
olive oil
salt, pepper
1 1/4 cup crumbled feta cheese, preferably the kind with the herbs already in it
herbs (I've used both oregano and thyme)
pasta or rice

To prepare, halve the cherry tomatoes and mince the 2 or 3 (or more) garlic cloves and add to a roasting pan. Douse the tomatoes and garlic in olive oil, salt, and pepper, and roast in a 450 degree oven for 15 minutes or so, or until the tomatoes show signs of being cooked or until you're afraid the garlic is going to burn.

Then, take out the roasting pan and add the thawed shrimp, cheese, and any more herbs you wish to add (when I use the feta with herbs I don't add many extra herbs, but if I use plain feta I add maybe a half tablespoon of dried herbs). Put back into the oven until the shrimp are cooked through and pink, and the cheese is a bit browned on top.

Serve over pasta or rice.

Coconut, Cashew, and Ginger Bread Pudding

Bread pudding with shredded coconut, toasted cashew nuts, and 1tbsp. minced ginger.

Red Beet and Feta Ravioli with Orange-Thyme Brown Butter Sauce

I was grocery shopping the other day when I saw some wonton wrappers in the refrigerated section. I'd never used them before and kind of wanted to try them out to make ravioli. I've seen this technique on the Food Network--Giada DeLaurentiis is particularly fond of it. I've often wondered, though, if wonton wrappers can really serve as a substitute for fresh, rolled pasta dough.

I decided to make beet ravioli, something for which I've seen a lot of recipes online, but I couldn't remember the exact ingredients. When I got home and looked at one of the actual recipes, it called for ricotta cheese (I only had feta), salt, pepper, and breadcrumbs for the filling, all of which I luckily had on hand.

I roasted two beets and put those, cut up, in the food processor with a half cup of the cheese and salt and pepper. I formed the triangle-shaped ravioli by placing a rounded teaspoon of filling on each wonton-wrapper square and sealing with water.

The original recipe I was going off of suggested a butter-poppy seed sauce, but since I didn't have any poppy seeds, I decided to use orange zest and thyme instead. I boiled the raviolis, and then put a rather huge amount of butter, orange zest, and thyme in a skillet and allowed it to brown. Then I tossed the boiled ravioli in the butter sauce.

The wonton wrappers worked out ok...they had the same flavor, but the texture was off. They weren't dense and chewy but more smooth and delicate. Smooth and delicate is nice, but it's not really like ravioli. The wonton wrappers also had a difficult time holding the filling in, and it kept sticking to the skillet and tearing when I tried to toss it in the butter sauce.

Next time, I think I'll stick with traditional pasta ravioli, even if it is more work. But even though I was a little disappointed in the wonton wrappers, the ravioli were still excellent! The filling was earthy and a little tangy from the cheese, and the thyme, orange zest, and butter worked really well with it. In fact, I can't imagine a poppy seed and butter sauce being even near as good.

Also while at the store this weekend I bought my first Christmas cactus! I don't know why it took me so long to purchase one since they are cheap and pretty easy to take care of. They remind me of my Granny so much; she always seemed to have a few scraggly Christmas cacti hanging around. And I found a cute little pot to put it in. It looks really cute on our red table by the couch.

Globe Wine Decanter

One of the gifts my parents got Georg for finishing his Ph.D. was this globe wine decanter. We brought it with us to Canada. Miraculously, it didn't break on the freight truck on the way to Edmonton! It is a delicate little thing, and very beautiful. We used it one night with white wine, but it'd probably be even prettier with red wine. Thanks Mom and Doug!

Georg's 10k race and Edmonton Fall pictures

On Sunday, Georg ran a 10k race. He finished 5th! I was so proud of him. Yay Georg! After I took the above picture of him taking off, I took the opportunity to take some pictures of the fall weather. It was a beautiful day and I was right by the river.