Florentine Bake

Our friend Shellie was nice enough to pose for some photos for Mike this weekend. After they were finished with the photos, and as a small thank you, I made this florentine bake with baked apple struesel pancake bars (coming in a few days). (Ann has posed too but her cooking has to wait until Lent is over!)

I really liked this baked dish filled with eggs, cheese, spinach and potatoes. (Since there were only 3 of us, I halved the recipe.) The original recipe from Pioneer Woman calls for a layer of sausage but I omitted it. This was plenty filling and I didn't miss the sausage at all. I also didn't add extra cheese to the top and broil it. It was also easy to put together. I got up around 9, did all the prep work and popped it into the oven. Then, Mike, Shellie and I went out to take pics and came back about 15 minutes later to a finished dish!

Orecchiette with Sausage, Broccoli & Caramelized Garlic

After a week of lots of tex-mex, Mike was begging for pasta. I'm kind of tired of the marinara/spaghetti sauce routine so I chose this sauceless pasta (and new recipe for us) from Serious Eats. I made some recipe changes...

1. I increased the ingredients to accommodate a full pound of pasta (which is the full box in most cases; I didn't see the need to leave 4 ounces of pasta in the box).


2. I also think I was short on the amount of broccoli once I cut the majority of the stems off... I'm still learning to like broccoli and just avoid the stems altogether. Bonus point - broccoli was in season (aka better quality/taste) in Texas in March! (We made this just in the nick of time during the first days of April.) Instead of preparing the broccoli as written, I tossed the florets with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted it in a 325 degree oven for about 14 minutes.


3. I also substituted spicy Italian turkey sausage


4. And omitted the thyme.

The only other "change" was that I actually cleaned out the fat rendered from the turkey sausage before proceeding with the rest of the cooking process. It just looked to fatty and not appetizing. If you encounter this, just pour out the fat you don't want in the pan and start with fresh olive oil.
Pretty good! Its a nice method of cooking things too... probably would be easy to use whatever ground meat you have on hand (or go meatless and add some crushed red pepper for spice) and a nice spring vegetable like broccoli, broccolini, asparagus... you get the idea.

Houston Weekend

Mike and I took off to Houston last weekend to visit my bestie, shoot some photos, attend a wedding and visit with our wedding photographer turned friend Julie (oh and eat and sleep too). I'm sure you can guess that we planned 100 things into our short weekend... not even realizing we were coming into town during a golf tournament and the men's final four! Not to be discouraged, we edited our plans and got down to business...

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(1) & (2) guava margaritas and brisket tacos thanks to el tiempo (3) & (4) a stop at laura's very local bar, rose's garden where we dropped in on an april fool's fake wedding reception and were offered sausage (that's what she said) and politically incorrect wedding cake then spotted this iguana (a real one that has been stuffed, ick) (5) lunch in cancun via juan mon's international sandwiches (such a cool idea, maybe nibbe could pull it off?) (6) & (7) antique shopping and gawking off taft (8) wiener dog (9) pulled pork taquito brunch at cedar creek (10) photoshoots


just a note... the hubs and i celebrated 6 months of married life yesterday!