Recipes

Since I don't do a separate "recipe blog," but still love to cook good food, I thought I would do a little recipe blog entry.  This will be easy since we get all of our recipes online so I can just post the links to them instead of typing them all up.

Our newest recipe that has been added to our favorites is this roast chicken.  The is such a delicious meal.  You stuff the chicken with rosemary, thyme, a  lemon, garlic, and an onion and then wrap the whole chicken in bacon (how could anything not be delicious wrapped in bacon?).  You throw a bunch of mushrooms in the pan to make a yummy sauce.  Its even delicious if you pick the mushrooms out like I usually do!  Its actually really easy to make and fantastic with yukon gold potatoes.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_34517,00.html

Now for those of us with a major sweet tooth and weakness for all things chocolate...Brownies!  This is Barefoot Contessa's recipe and these are the richest brownies you will ever eat.  They are especially good if you cut them up and put them in the fridge and eat them the next day.  I usually don't care for recipes with coffee in them, but this was outstanding!  (PS...I don't add the nuts...I can't stand brownies with nuts!...well, not so much that I won't eat them...I just pick the nuts out).

http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/recipes/recipe/0,,FOOD_9936_23629,00.html

Here's an appetizer that we made for the MSA wine and cheese party and it was a big hit.  They are little mini tacos you make in muffin tins with wonton wrappers.  Just lay the wrappers in the tin like little bowls and brown them up in  the oven and load in the taco fillings.  This was a great way to use up all our extra wonton wrappers from when we made delicious pot stickers...recipe to follow.

http://www.recipezaar.com/74301

Pot stickers--we leave out the water chestnuts because Rob doesn't like them.  We usually make a big batch and then freeze most of them.  Its great to just pull a couple out of the freezer and cook them up as an easy appetizer.

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Pot-Stickers-Traditional/Detail.aspx

And here's the sesame chicken we usually eat it with.  This is just like the kind from the restaurants!  We have received many compliments when we make this for friends.

http://www.recipezaar.com/129598

All of this is making me hungry now, so I'm going to go get some dinner started!  Let me know if you like these recipes.  I think I'll post some every now and then if anyone actually uses them!

Our First Tornado as Homeowners

So Rob and I can now say we have experienced one of a homeowner's big scares.  We were hit by a tornado about a month ago (the same storm system that hit downtown Atlanta real hard).  The tornado didn't actually hit our house, but it was somewhere in the very near area.  We didn't see a funnel cloud or hear the "train" noise, but it was pretty scary for about 5 minutes.  We had been watching the news all afternoon and getting really worked up and excited about the possibility of a big storm.  I am super impressed with how accurate the technology is now.  The local weather guy was predicting the exact location where the tornados could form and giving minute-by-minute details of where it would be right down to the street names.  We kept watching and saw that the whole storm system was coming right at us.  The rain started right as predicted and within a couple minutes the wind was howling and we decided to take cover in our hallway.  It was right at this time that the power went out and we lost our exciting commentary on the TV.  Rob was running in and out of the hall to take video of it all (you can see the video footage on his web album http://picasaweb.google.com/regbert/March08Tornado).  Next thing I know Rob is yelling that a tree fell and we are freaking out/excited/confused.  We were worried one of our big pines would fall on our house, but luckily it was a smaller tree that didn't do any damage!  Luck was definitely on our side as not a single plant from our yard was touched.  We had been planting stuff all over the yard earlier in the day and working on the garden.  The tree came within inches of our brand new azaleas and one of my rose bushes, but not a branch was harmed!  Here are the exciting photos of the clean-up.     
   

Here I am taking all of the branches off the tree.  Rob had a test the next day, so while he studied, I tapped into my Harding genes and did all the work on day 1 of the cleanup.

 

 

Showing off all of my hard work            

A view from below

We don't own a chainsaw so Rob decided to be resourceful and cut the tree up into pieces using only a circular saw and an axe.  Yes, it sounds crazy, and it was.  But it did the trick.  Granted, the really thick part at the bottom and all the roots are still laying in the yard until we get a chainsaw to finish it off.