Pate Sucree (Sweet Pie Crust)

You will want to make this pie crust. Maybe not for the pie recipe I will be sharing soon, but at least for some other dessert pie. It’s a pretty simple crust to make, and it had a really nice crispiness I liked.

Spicy Stir-Fried Cucumbers and Chicken

This recipe was super super super spicy with the original ingredients. I have toned it down a bunch from that recipe. You can always add more spice, but taking it away is a bit difficult. K and I tag-teamed this dish, using his awesome stir-frying skills with great effect.

He is much more careful with cutting things than I am, too. I just don’t have patience for certain things!

The cucumbers are almost pickly in this, which is fun.

Baked Pasta with Sweet Potatoes and Cheese

I am a bit hesitant about posting this recipe since most of the pictures don’t properly reflect the changes I made. There was a Food and Wine recipe I adapted, and I am adapting it again for this post. Basically, K and I weren’t big fans of certain ingredients/steps. I could be a good food blogger and make it again for new pictures, but we have a bunch of leftovers to get through and that feels wasteful. (Sorry.) So instead, use your imagination a bit with my pictures, but follow the steps I wrote. Really, it is more about omitting the radicchio I used, cutting the pasta amount in half, and adding in some peas. We loved the sweet potatoes in this (K kept commenting on them) and definitely want to keep them in mind for future cheesy pasta recipes.

 

I did manage to take some pictures when we ate leftovers. I added peas and sausage and it tasted really good.

Berry Pie

With the impending baby, I am not able to fly past a certain time. We are still within that window, but I can say that I have lost interest in flying while pregnant after the last trips. Bleck. The bus on the other hand was great. Anyway, we planned a visit back to the East Coast to see everyone for one last “hurrah” before staying on our side of the country for a bit. Because this is one of my last visits for the year, I had told my dad to pick a treat for this month that would be best made in person. At first he said carrot cake which would be hard without my food processor to shred the carrots. Then he said apple crumb pie, which would be good but apples aren’t quite in season (especially not in Maryland). I suggested berry muffins and then he followed that with berry pie. Keep in mind, this is while I was in a park in NYC, nowhere near my cookbooks or computer to do research (I’ve never made a berry pie before). I said I would pick one of the pies, since clearly he was in the mood for pie.

Glazed Ground Chicken with Fried Rice

I was excited to have another ground chicken recipe. This one reminds me of eating at a Panda Express, in a good way. K loves that place and this gives a bit of the teriyaki chicken with fried rice feel. He made the fried rice, since that is his specialty. I made the chicken, and together, voila!

Ravioli and Tomato Soup

It is getting warmer here, in general. Occasionally we still have rainy chilly days as spring gets its gears moving. We had one of those days recently, and this soup was perfect that day. It also happened to fall on one of my harder days of work (there is a student who is a bit challenging….), so it was nice to come home to comfort food. All we had to do was throw some ravioli in boiling water and put it in a bowl. We’re also filing this recipe away for a good freezer meal. It makes a bunch, and you could even store the soup separate from the ravioli and keep your options open for future meals.

Learning to Cook for Three: Part 1

I don’t know how many installments this will have, but here is the first one! I am hoping it will have a bunch since this will be sort of an ongoing adventure for our family. My husband K had the realization recently that he knows how to cook certain dishes really well, but hasn’t had to do as much cooking since we’ve been married. As a result, his cooking progress had hit a plateau. He wanted to get back in the kitchen and learn to make some dishes we have had in the past and enjoyed. This sounded like a good idea, and one we should start immediately so that we could make him feel better for the future and give us another couple-y activity to do.