Ooops!

Okay, I know...I'm really bad at blogging!

I really had good intentions of keeping this up, but I stopped around the time something I like to refer to as the "shit storm of 2012".  The Shit Storm of 2012 began around the beginning of last November where I found myself stretched to my ends in preparing, planning and executing many important events at work in a fairly short period of time.  First there was our Strategic Planning, then the Citywide Kids Christmas Party, then the Citywide National Planning, and ending with out own Christmas Party.  After these events I then prepared all of our 2013 Planning and Budget materials just in time to go home for Christmas.  During this time I'm not even sure I ate, let alone cooked...and blogged.

But I digress.  I have been very busy in the kitchen recently!  I ended the last year really well with an amazing and courageous meal.  Steve and I planned our Christmas celebration for the day of my birthday as he worked Christmas Eve and I took off on a jet plane early on Christmas day to spend some time with family.  For this meal I decided to make Beef Wellington, scalloped potatoes, and green beans.  Now beef wellington is a pretty big-time recipe.  It pretty well took me all day to make.  Basically it is an amazing cut of beef that is braised, wrapped in prosciutto and mushrooms, wrapped in puff pastry and baked in the oven.

Exhibit A.  The prosciutto and mushroom mixture.  I wish I had a blender as in the original recipe the mushroom mixture is supposed to be a paste like substance that sort of acts like a flavour glue to hold the meat in place.

Exhibit B.  The meat, which was braised first (although in retrospect I should have braised it a bit longer as the piece of meat was a bit bigger than the recipe called for), brushed with mustard, wrapped in the mushroom/ham blanket and chilled.  After it was chilled, I rolled out the puff pastry and wrapped the meat into it.  Side note, I had to improvise a little as this was the first time I noticed we do not have a rolling pin.  Fortunately I was drinking beer at the time and used an empty (cleaned out) bottle to roll out the dough.  After the meat was wrapped in the dough, it chilled again, brushed it with an egg wash and cooked in the oven.

AND TA-DAH!  The finished product.  Now I didn't take a picture of the inside for two reasons.  One because the middle of it was very very rare.  But I was nervous that it would burn or dry out so the middle pieces got nuked a bit afterwards.  The second reason was because unlike the Gordon Ramsey version, once we cut through it all the layers fell apart.  But it was absolutely the best thing I've ever made.  All the flavours were mouth watering!

During the time I was waiting for the wellington to sit or chill for many hours, I made Scalloped Potatoes from scratch.  A process which I thought would be very challenging was not at all, and quite delicious.  Though I must confess once these were done I was not in the mood to try the green bean with vinaigrette recipe.  So we had some canned peas instead.  Still though it was a very impressive meal.  Topped off with apple pie and ice cream for my "birthday cake" it was a very good meal.

Since the new year I have cooked a lot of new recipes.  Most of them working out really well.  We've had chili, taco soup, chicken enchiladas, black bean beef stir fry, pork lo mien, chicken parmesan, and much more.  Another thing that I am doing more often is baking, as we find it is so much less expensive to make as much from scratch as possible.

So my new goal for 2013 is to try out 100 new recipes and blog about it.  I'm about 15 in to my goal so far and the results have been great.  Stay tuned...for real this time I promise!!