6th Annual Campsgiving

We embarked on our 6th Campsgiving trip this year! I think this is our favorite tradition. This year we headed to Colorado. We flew into Denver and grabbed a car to head to Golden Gate Canyon State park where we had a cozy cabin waiting for us. We were afraid of the temperature being super low like it was a few years ago, when we froze in a yurt, but it turned out to be high 60's the whole time we were there!

Thanksgiving morning we headed out to a little 4 mile hike. We couldn't fly with our snowshoes, too big, but we did bring our spikes. They made it super easy to ascend the hill and the snow was low so it worked out perfectly. We wandered around the Estes park hike for a few hours, took in some sweeping views until the sun started to fade.

Headed back to our cabin to start the Thanksgiving feast. I accidentally got sweet potatoes instead of red potatoes but they still mashed up into a delicious mashed potato. We had smoked turkey with gravy, roasted garlic mashed sweet potatoes, sausage stuffing, and roasted Brussel sprouts with leeks. The trick is to get it all done at the same time and the fact that we're doing it over a fire makes it a little stressful but we did pretty good this year. It was all super tasty and we had enough left for a sausage stuffing leftover dinner the next night, our favorite part.

because I love looking back
campsgiving 5
campsgiving 4
campsgiving 3
campsgiving 2
campsgiving 1

Josh's Birthday Hang Out - the food

The party! was awesome but I love love making food for parties as much as the party!

The cake:
Milk chocolate cake iced in spiked caramel frosting

milk chocolate cake with my favorite airy whipped caramel frosting.

   -I edited it a little by doubling the recipe, adding in 1 cup powdered sugar & 2 tsp spiced rum

Topped the cake with some shards of cocoa nib brittle

I made a trio of homemade hummus and they all turned out to be super tasty. Paired with some cut carrots & naan. The colors of them all and the textures were perfect! They looked so fancy! Bonus- we get to eat all the leftover hummus for lunch the rest of the week. 

Tahini Hummus:

15 oz can of chickpeas; drained, reserve 1 tbs liquid

1 clove garlic

1 tbs lemon juice

1/4 cup tahini

2 tbs olive oil

paprika

sea salt

1   in a food processor combine chickpeas, liquid, garlic, lemon juice, tahini. 

2   scrape down the sides and drizzle in olive oil, pinch of paprika, pinch of salt

3   process until smooth, serve drizzled with olive oil and salt

Agave Sriracha Humus:

2 15 oz cans of chickpeas; drained and rinsed

1/4 cup sriracha

1/4 cup olive oil

2 tbs agave or honey

2 cloves garlic

1/2 tsp salt

3 tbs cold water

1   in a food processor combine chickpeas and garlic until chunky

2   scrape down sides and add sriracha, oil, agave, and salt process

3   drizzle in olive oil and process until smooth

roasted beet hummus:

1 small beet; roasted in oven until easily pierced with fork

15 oz can of chickpeas; drained and rinsed

1/2 lemon; juiced

2 cloves garlic

1/4 cup tahini

1/4 cup olive oil

1   cut beet into large chunks. in a food processor process beet until chunky

2   add in chickpeas, lemon juice, garlic, tahini and process

3   scrape down sides, drizzle in olive oil and process until smooth

spinach spanakopita

large meat, cheese, crackers plate with olives & spicy pickled vegetable

I've been dying to make these cute little peppermints. Joshua loves loves Junior mints and these are those inside out. They make tons so a party was finally the time to make them.

chocolate peppermints:

1 lb powdered sugar

4 oz cream cheese

1/4 tsp peppermint extract

6 oz dark chocolate

1   beat the cream cheese and gradually add in the powdered sugar

2    mix in the peppermint extract

3    the mixture should be soft but not sticky, if it is too sticky add in 1/4 cup more powdered sugar until you can roll it into balls in your hand. Then place parchment paper on a baking sheet and in batches of 6-8 roll the mixture into small balls. Then using the back of a tsp, dip it in powdered sugar to avoid sticking, press the back of the tsp on top of the balls and make a indent. Repeat until the mixture is all used.

4   place in fridge for half hour. in the meantime in a double broiler melt the chocolate and place in an icing bag.

5   squeeze chocolate into the indent of each peppermint and then place back in fridge until chocolate dries. store in fridge with layers of parchment paper separating each layer of peppermints

herb & parmesan soft pretzels

and I hung our hanging fruit basket over the table to hold the mustard bowl and pretzels for fun. We don't have a very big table so this saved space and made the food table more dimensional and fun.

President's Day off

I had Monday off work so Joshua decided to join me. They only told us about a month ago that we were getting President's day off so all the cabins and such were already booked. Instead we had a city exploring day together, which we really haven't done in a long time.

 

 

We bused over to Capitol Hill and ate at Stateside, Seattle Met's 2015 restaurant of the year. It was the lunch menu so it was cheap but so so pretty and everything was delicious! Also since it was Vietnamese food and mostly fresh veggies and homemade sauces it felt like it was all good for you :)

Then we went to the Starbucks Reserve/Roastery. We'd been before but never had any of their drinks. They were decadent! Mine was an Americano with some fancy syrup/flavoring foam that was so thick I tried to take a drink and the liquid couldn't penetrate it. We dipped our cookies in it, so creamy! Joshua's was an espresso with Madagascar vanilla and a little bit of cream. Darn good coffee.

 

After that we went to Kurt's Ice Cream Shop which is down an unassuming looking space between two buildings. It opens up into a hidden walkway with shops restaurants dotting the sides. I would love to come back to this spot at night, it feels like a secret. The ice cream shop has a dairy farm on Vashon Island and usually makes cheese, but this little store sells ice cream too. We had nocino & salted plum and they were way better than you would think.(Nocino is a liquor made from steeping green, unripe walnuts in spirits, divine)

 

After that we headed home and took a nap, I believe on a day off you should always nap.

 

Farmer's Market Fancy Feast

 

We had the honor of hosting a fancy meal for our friend's birthday this past weekend. Started it out by flipping through a fancy cookbook she got for Christmas followed with a rainy meandering through the farmer's market to get the goods.

We all spent the afternoon chopping, washing, sautéing- really all the cooking words. It all came together into a beautiful table full of color. Everyone smashed around our table made for 4 and our friend's son hung out on the floor playing with his socks. It was cozy and one of the best ways to spend a Sunday I can possibly think of.

It was fun to celebrate our friend's birthday by all creating something together.

Capped off the evening with some dark & stormies and a confusing game of Munchkin. We also had ice cream sandwiches with very tall candles questionably balanced on a plate, worked out.

 

I think this weekend may need to involve more physical activity because Saturday was also full of food. We had a few people over for brunch in which we consumed chorizo frittata, apple butter & biscuits, fruit, mimosas. Finally worked ourselves up into a walk which only lasted a few blocks. We got distracted by the idea of splitting a pitcher of sangria and eating mushroom toast. I'm pretty sure we just took a nap after that and later a few of us reconvened for some turkey chili and a rewatching of Star Wars.

 

Weekend full of friends and food- winter weekend champions!

Potter & Pasta

 

We had cause to celebrate so our friend Liz brought over her fancy pasta making attachment and our friend Megan came over and we got to work. We made twisty pastas and macaroni pasta which are adorable and so cute plopping out of the machine. (Little did we know they take 10x longer to dry and ate dinner at 10pm) I'm also forcing Liz to watch Harry Potter so our friendship may continue so it was a Potter & Pasta night! She even found a Griffin(dor) wine : amazing!

 

We made Megan put on the Sorting hat and take the quiz and turns out we then had a person from every house present. She rounded us out and it made us all pretty darn excited. We snacked on stone fruits with fresh whipped cream & star fruit snacks. It all seemed like a good idea until we realized both sauces also had cream in them and then found out the whipped cream wasn't a good idea, it was an excellent one. Once we finally got to the eating we made a roasted tomato vodka sauce & an alfredo. So tasty and the texture of the thicker pasta, I've only made fettuccine before, made my teeth happy- chewy, al dente perfection.

 

Fabulous night, even if we were on the 6th movie which means SO MUCH SEPIA TONE!

Also I still dream of this pasta!

Gah Prettiest Pasta ever made

Look at this stuff! I want to hang it as a permanent curtain! With the light behind it the herbs look so scrumptious!

Our friend Kristen's husband is away for work so I snatched her for a night of just the two of us making pasta. We had a really great time once we finally figured out how to make it. The kitchen was devastatingly covered in flour and pasta was hanging to dry at head height (dangerous) we forgot to laminate one sheet of pasta together before cutting it into spaghetti so we ran each piece through again individually, and we ate heaps of perfect beautiful pasta. The herbs made the dough smell so good while rolling the sheets out and I think we swooned every time we cut them into pretty little noodles (while simultaneously dropping some on the floor)

 

We had many lessons learned which I will let you in on here for a more seamless herb laminated pasta experience than we had.

herb laminated pasta:

6 eggs
3 egg yolks
1 tsp salt
1 1/2 tsp olive oil
4 1/2 cups flour
bundle of herbs (we used cilantro and parsley)
small bowl of water

1  In a large bowl add in eggs, yolks, salt, olive oil, and flour. Using a dough hook slowly mix the ingredients together. Once they are incorporated bring the mixer up to medium low and knead the dough until smooth, 6-8 minutes. Then break into two balls, wrap in plastic wrap, and let sit in fridge for 20-40 minutes.

2    Pull one dough ball out of the fridge and break in half again. Shape one ball into a rectangle with your hands and cover the other one back up with the plastic wrap and set aside.

3    Roll your dough through your pasta maker starting at setting 6 all the way down to setting 1. If it seems to be sticking rub some flour on the sheet

4    Lay your pasta sheet on the table (we had to drape some over the chair but that's okay because you only need to work on half of it) You will be folding the dough over the length of itself so very lightly brush a small amount of water with a pastry brush onto half of the dough. Don't sprinkle water over with your fingers or you will create water pockets that will explode flour water out when your run it through the pasta maker again (we know)

5   Break the leaves of the herbs off of the stems, you don't want stems in the dough because when you roll it through again it will create a break in the dough and shorten your noodles. Lay the herb leaves all over the half of the dough you brushed with water, Then lay the other half of the dough over that to create a sandwich of the herbs. Lightly pat down the dough so they two layers stick to one another.

6    First change your pasta maker to a 3! then run your dough through. Run it through again at a 2. Then lay the dough down and lightly rub on flour, flip over and do the same to the other side so it won't stick in the machine. (If you don't have a pasta cutting attachment you can just cut the noodles with a pizza cutter) Run the dough through the pasta cutter attachment for linguine.

7   Then hang your noodles to dry, I used a dowel rod rubbed with olive oil but you can also use hangers.

8   Repeat with the other half of the dough and the other dough ball in the fridge.

9   Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Test with one noodle first to ensure that they are dry enough to hold together in the water, it is best to start with the noodles you made first. Boil a batch of the noodles for 2-3 minutes, until al dente

10   We topped ours with browned butter sauce with minced garlic (brown about 5 tbs of butter and then add 2 minced garlic cloves. Pour some sauce onto the noodles and throw in a few mozzarella balls and some fresh cracked pepper!

Cheesemaking Adventurers

 

I bought us a DIY cheese kit about 6 months ago (because it was on super sale of course) and we finally got around to making some. It's similar to this one. We decided to start out with mozzarella and next we have big plans to make ricotta and use my pasta maker to make homemade lasagna noodles mmm. We had a really great time trying to figure out what we were doing. In the end it's not the best texture, a little too tough, but we think it's because we used 1% milk instead of whole and then brought the temperature up a little too high. But since we have 9 more cheeses of supplies left we plan to mold our skills into pro cheese making.

 

got to buy the fancy milk

rigged a thermometer holder and look it's forming curds

cheese curds!

tip toes because we over estimated the size pot needed

cheese salt and molds

we wanted to make one with herbs and a little spice

stretching and mixing the cheese

 

heart molds :)

mmm look at that cheese

 

we're pretty proud

A winter type date night that melded perfectly with our Sunday. The best part is it only takes an hour and then the cheese is best if eaten fresh, no arguments here!

the mess after a full day of beer and cheese making