The past week has been full of A LOT of Mexican food - which is in no
way a bad thing. I still don't understand how restaurants in
Massachusetts can't duplicate the flavors of Texas, but that is the
way it is.
Our adventurous day began in Brooklyn...
...and quickly moved to Manhattan.
We walked around Union Square,
brunched at Petite Abeile,
and headed uptown!
We saw the outside of Radio City Music Hall,
got pushed around underneath the Christmas tree,
and pushed around even more in Times Square.
Then we visited my precious friends from the Hundred Acre Wood at the New York Public Library. If you ever want to go, it's on 42nd street. I've visited these friends every time I've been in the big city. Can you find Stanley?
I can't wait to be a first grade teacher...
This past weekend, we visited the glorious New York City at Christmastime. It was our first time there during the holiday season, and boy was the city hustling and bustling. It was fun, though, and our friend Katherine showed us a wonderful time! Our first night in, she took us to a wonderful seafood restaurant, Sel de Mer, where we had an amazing butternut squash risotto and mahi-mahi. It was super wonderful!
As it turned out, one of the most interesting features of this restaurant, for us at least, was the menu. The menus were stylish and eco-friendly - they used recycled old books as a cover, and placed the hand-written specials inside along with their regular menu. The spectacular part was what appeared on the cover of Jamie's menu:
And the crazy thing was, that out of all of the people dining in the restaurant (it was full), they delivered that menu to our table - and out of the three people dining at our table, they put it in front of Jamie. Weird, no?
I guess you have to also know that Jamie goes to MIT, if you don't already.
I just thought it was fun :)
I'll post more NYC pics soon, and they will feature our new friend Stanley!
Here's the recipe for some yummy crab dip I made for book club two weeks ago!
Ingredients:
1 8-oz package cream cheese, softened
2 6-oz cans crab meat
1/4 c. diced green onion
1/4 to 1/2 of a mild green chili pepper (Anaheim pepper), minced
1/4 to 1/2 of a jalapeno pepper, minced
1/4 t. salt
1/4 t. white pepper
2 T. shredded parmesan
cayenne Pepper
chopped fresh parsley
1 fresh lemon or lemon juice, if desired.
Instructions:
Preheat the oven to broil. Combine the cream cheese, crab meat, green onion, minced peppers, salt, white pepper, and lemon juice (if desired) in a bowl. Spread the mixture into the bottom of an oven-safe dish. You want to have a thin layer of dip. Sprinkle the parmesan over the top, and broil until the cheese on top begins to brown. Sprinkle the parsley and cayenne pepper over the top.
If desired, you can squeeze a little lemon juice on top as well. Serve with blue tortilla chips.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJiCFE3EFF4?wmode=transparent]
For the very first time, I made homemade stuffing PW style (I used her recipe)- from scratch! My previous experience is with boxes of Stove Top - which is great - but this is better! It did take longer, but in the end it was worth it.
You will need the following:
1 loaf of crusty french bread, cubed; it was a couple days old and was already pretty dry, but I let it sit in a 200 degree oven for a while to dry out some more
1 batch of cornbread, cubed (For this, I used 1/2 of the Cook's Country recipe); I also let this sit in the oven to dry out
1 stick of butter
2 c. chopped celery
1 onion, chopped
4 c. chicken broth
1/4 c. chopped parsley
1/2 t. dried basil
1/2 t. dried thyme
2 or so t. fresh rosemary, chopped
Melt the stick of butter over medium heat.
Add the celery and onions, and saute for a few minutes, until onions are translucent. It will start to smell really good at this point!
Add 4 c. chicken broth,
bring to a boil,
and add the herbs. Stir it all together (I failed to show this part)!
Mix the bread cubes together in a large bowl (I had to split it up into two batches!),
and spoon the liquid mixture over the cubed bread.
Yum!
Spread it out into a large baking dish. I used the 10 X 15 pyrex dish I have, but you could definitely use the 9 X 13 too.
Bake in a 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes. I put the broiler on at the end to get the top a little brown.
Enjoy!
