P is for Pizza

I don't know why I'm so proud of this pizza but it's one of the best looking ones I've made. And best yet, it was so simple to pull together.

A ball of pizza dough from my local Stop & Shop, stretched on a greased pizza sheet, brushed with olive oil and topped with a little fresh ground black pepper and sea salt. I ended up throwing on some odds and ends from the fridge, which included mozzarella cheese, chunks of roasted tomatoes, a few slices of bacon (the precooked slices, cut into small pieces) and my absolute must have on pizza, feta cheese.

I feel guilty for making this on a Sunday night when it's a perfect weeknight dinner (as in, too tired to make anything complicated) but Andrew and I definitely feasted on it. We will definitely be working out all next week to make up for our gluttony today.

Christmas Dinner 2009

At this point, I have to pause for a moment to thank Andrew's parents once again for a wonderful Christmas - they simply made it awesome.


After a great breakfast and a nap, I felt like all the "kids" (except poor Amanda, who was also cooking in the kitchen with Tom and Charlotte) in the house sauntered back into the dining room to find the table set for Christmas dinner - can you see the cute little presents scattered on the table?



Amanda, festively attired in shades of red, leads the way in trying out all the delicious food - we had turkey, Tom's famous sausage stuffing, asaparagus, creamed corn, biscuits, jello and "orange" mashed potatoes (from the addition of carrots):

Adam, visiting from California, looked happy to see the homecooked food although he's not as used to all my picture taking like Amanda is:

My delicious plate of food - I couln't be rude so I had to have a little of everything. :)

Another thing I love about Christmas - it's a time when family gets together to enjoy each other's company and good food:

After dinner, we headed over to Taunton for a few hours to spend time with my uncle Rich and my cousins Andrew and Andrea (as well as Andrea's friend Stephanie):

This was our first dessert of the evening - a choice between a beautifully decorated white cake, a cannoli cream cake and pumpkin pie. Andrew and I limited ourselves to a small slice of dessert each (knowing what was waiting for us back in Plymouth) and we dived into several rounds of Apples to Apples - what can I say, the game is great to play with all ages and both sides of the family!

With Andrew's family waiting patiently for us back in Plymouth to start dessert there, we headed back to find this monstrous trifle:


As well as homemade carrot cake and pumpkin pie:

I think my stomach is still full from Christmas.

Butternut Squash Soup With Apples

A lazy Sunday spent at home with snow on the ground outside seemed to call for a cozy type dinner.

As I'm always excited to use my crockpot and I had a package of butternut squash languishing in my fridge, I decided to try Beantown Baker's soup recipe.

I've clearly gotten lazy with my food blogging, but you can find the recipe on her site, and I did follow her instructions on adding a can of pumpkin and keeping the skin on the apple. However, I didn't have any coriander on hand so I ended up tossing in a 1/4 teaspoon of pumpkin pie spice.

This is what it looked like uncooked:


And ready to eat after being hand mashed with a strainer and a spoon (a brief bout with the hand mixer convinced me it was too messy to do any good). The perfect dinner for a cold night:

Creamy Pumpkin Pasta

Our dinner tonight, complete with wilted spinach and goat cheese on top:



The recipe and better pictures can be found on Beantown Baker - I'm bummed that I didn't have a full box of bowtie pasta on hand to use.

Dinner at Le's

I had to fly into NY for a quick one day business trip, which meant waking up at 4:30 am and not returning until close to 7 pm (random sidenote, Larry Summers was on my return flight back). This meant the last thing I wanted to do was cook dinner when I got back, so we decided on Le's at the Atrium mall - yummy and reasonably priced Vietnamese food!

Andrew's seen here protesting me taking a picture - it doesn't reflect his attitude towards the kappa maki (cucumber rolls), which he loves, that we had as an appetizer:

I had the sparkling raspberry mojito which ended up being too sweet (should've gone for my original choice of sparkling limeade) and Andrew tried to order the pear martini but our waitress misheard him and delivered a regular martini. It was a situation where he couldn't send it back, because she confirmed the order with him but it was hard to understand what she was saying - awkward! He gulped that bad boy down and promptly ordered a silver Sapporo - which the waitress didn't understand again! At least this time, she brought over one of the bartenders who, upon hearing Andrew's order of a Silver Sapporo, promptly said, "Ok, tall Sapporo coming up."

Andrew orders what he always gets at Thai and Vietnamese restaurants - Pad Thai, this time with Beef:

I went with my favorite - Vermicelli noodles topped with spring rolls - you pour the sauce all over the noodles and veggies in the bowl and mix it all together into a delicious, messy meal:

We walked out of Le's well-fortified for our visit to Gap afterwards.