A Barefoot Baby

Kristen here: My 8 month old has gone on an all out strike against anything pureed.  If he can't pick it up and feed it to himself, he doesn't want it!  The other night I served the moist and flavorful Turkey Meat loaf ala Contessa along with her Roasted Carrots and Parmesan Smashed Potatoes.  I may have a little gourmet in the making...Baby Blaise ate like he hadn't in weeks!

Steak...Rutabagas...Asparagus...Great dinner!

Marina here.  March isn't here yet, but I thought I'd practice doing a blog.

I may feel new to blogging, but felt like a pro after the way tonight's dinner turned out.  We picked up some New York strip steaks this week and since we were both home tonight, we thought it would be the perfect night to have a beautiful steak dinner. 

Greg bbqd the steak perfectly.  Very light seasoning and the flavor was just right.  Side note: I've always liked my steak super-super-well done.  But he cooked both of ours to a medium/ medium-well and told me that from now on - I'll be eating steak the way it's meant to be eaten :)  I happily agreed and am not sorry.

I prepared two side dishes, both from the Barefoot Contessa (BC) Family Style cookbook: 
Mashed Yellow Turnips (aka - rutabagas - I looked it up on Wikipedia - they're the same)
and Parmesan Roasted Asparagus.

The rutabagas recipe calls to serve crispy shallots on top, which I tried to make before, but my shallots didn't get crispy - only very soggy - and though they didn't take away from the dish, they didn't add anything either. So today - I skipped them.  Love - love - love this recipe.  What a great sub for mashed potatoes!  They're a bit sweeter and a bit creamier than mashed potatoes but not quite as sweet as a sweet potato.  Basically - perfect!

We gave up on buying fresh asparagus because between the two of us, we don't eat it fast enough so it always goes bad.  Instead, we buy the frozen asparagus from Trader Joe's (TJs).  It turned out quite tasty.  Only my favorite way to eat asparagus is when it's crunchy, and tonight it didn't get crispy - so that's the thing I've got to keep working on.  Not sure if it's a temp issue, or if it's because they're frozen (moisture, etc) or if it's because they're roasted.

Greg is opening a bottle of wine we bought from a local winery a little over a week ago - called a Frivolo Muscato Blanco - so I'll wrap it up and get back to snuggling :) 

Oh - one more thing - I started going through Kristen's cookbooks to find my 20 recipes - can't wait for March 1st!!

 

I've got sunshine on a cloudy (or rainy) day...

It isn't March yet, but I had to post this... Erik has gotten in the occasional practice of taking pictures of the meals I cook.  His pictures are pretty good. I am thinking when the cost of feeding all of our growing boys becomes too much for our budget, he could possibly have a second career as a food photographer.

Recently I made Ina Gartens, "Linguine with Shrimp Scampi".  Let me tell you, between the fresh parsely and the freshly squeezed lemon juice and grated zest in the recipe...it truly was like sunshine on the rainy night we ate it!  It was even better served with my very own recipe for Prosecco sparklers (picture in background)

Blog hog.

Sorry about my name being all over this blog! Haven't figured out how to fix the problem of all the posts saying "created by krissymeyers"....so for clarities sake, we will start each post with "Marina here" or "Kristen here"... that way we'll know who actually did the post! This is an equal effort...not trying to hog all the content.

Testing...Testing

Marina here.  I'm very new to the world of blogging, and fairly new to the world of wonderful, delicious, beautiful cooking/baking.  So excited about learning from Ina and equally excited about learning from Kristen!


Let the adventures begin!

Food Babbles with Kristen & Marina!

After years of thoroughly enjoying Ina Garten's well tested, excellently written- and endlessly delicious recipes, it seems the time has come to devote an entire months worth of meals to the Contessa. Having found a buddy who enjoys cooking as much I do- and also loves all things Ina, the stage is set for a late winter culinary adventure.... a Barefoot adventure.