Kacie's Day Off: Cooking and Planting

Spring has officially sprung!  I was beginning to have my doubts when a few days after Easter it was sleeting on me while driving to work.  The air is still a bit nippy, but buds are on the trees and I've started sneezing a lot.  Both equivalent with Spring.

Today was my off day for the week, and I wanted to celebrate the new season by doing some planting.  I have a pretty bad history with plants (i.e., I usually kill them all), but I'm giving it another go this year.  A few (hopefully) easy veggies, some herbs, and some wildflowers can't be too hard, right?

I headed to Fresh Market to get some herbs, then Target to get some seeds, pots, and Miracle Grow (lets be honest, I need all the help I can get).  But then I thought, "oh wait - I need dirt"!  Where does one get dirt when you live in an apartment complex?  Well luckily my neighborhood is under construction, so I sneakily took my pots to a ginormous dirt pile and loaded up!  Let me tell you though friends, I don't recommend carrying 9 pots of dirt up 4 flights of stairs unless you're really in shape.  I'm not.

Green Onions and Radishes.  Cheated a little on the onions.  Already had them in my fridge!

I'll be happy as a clam if I can keep these going.  Rosemary, Cilantro, Basil.

Is anything sprouting in there?  I think this one is beets.

Broccoli, Beets, Fennel, Lettuce.  I almost alphabetized. Wildflowers down below.

Unfortunately what good is a lovely patio with flowers if you don't have patio furniture?  Perhaps I'll work on that next weekend.  I'll keep you posted when/if something grows!

And of course, what good is a day off if I don't cook?!  Stuart and I together had exhausted my freezer stores a couple of weeks ago, so today I tried to stock up a bit.  On the agenda: braised beef and frozen pizzas.

This was my first encounter cooking beef.  Well, other than hamburgers which I don't count because Stuart always did the grilling at our house.  But this was my first "big girl" roast I guess you could say. I really don't know much about beef, so I told the friendly meat man what my recipe was and he told me what cut to get.  He didn't tell me how expensive a 4 pound roast would be, though!

I was a bit nervous, but I learned some beef tricks along the way:
- First, you need to season it well.  I used an interesting blend of salt, pepper, and cocoa with some other spices thrown in there.
- Then, you massage the meat with the rub.
- Then, you SEAR the beef before you slow cook it.  This makes a crispy seasoned-seal on both sides and keeps the juices in.

Spice mix

Look at that GINORMOUS piece of meat!  I felt like such a grown-up!

Coating the meat

Searing.  I never would have believed there was almost not enough room  in my Dutch Oven!

 Now, when you sear something you inevitably will get little bits burned onto the bottom of the pan.  Never fear!  That's what de-glazing is for.  Pour in a mixture of liquids (or just water if you want to be kind of boring).  Then all the bits loosen and add tons of flavor to your sauce.

Veggies sauteing after the meat seared (not enough room for both in there.)

 

Deglaze.  Too bad you can't hear the sizzle from there.

 Then you add in some juice-containing things, and let the oven do all the rest of the work!

Pre-three hour bake

Post-three hour bake

And finally, the shred.

While the oven was working for me, I thought Id throw together a few frozen pizzas for quick dinners.  I have this problem when I buy frozen pizzas ... I usually eat the whole thing and then I feel guilty afterward.  Granted, I usually buy Kashis and they have like 700 calories for the whole thing.  But I figured the way to solve that problem was to just make smaller pizzas that I can eat in total and not feel bad!

So I headed to my friendly Trader Joes and bought some supplies. They have these pre-made whole wheat crusts for $1.  One dollar!  So I got a couple of those and some toppings and went to town.  The trick is to pre-bake the crusts a bit, then freeze the pizza once you top them.  Easy-peasy.

4 lovely wheat crusts

 

Pesto, tomato, ricotta

Sausage and peppers with tomato paste for sauce (could anyone else eat tomato paste straight from the can?)

Arugula, Olive, Tomato

Pretty excited about this one: fig preserve, prosciutto, goat cheese

Want some recipes?  Well I'm gonna give them to you even if you dont.  Also another fun fact that might make you want to cook these delicious things?  After divvying up portions to freeze, I calculated out that I made 11 meals for $4.68 each!  Can't beat that with a stick!

Frozen Pizzas
- 2 pizza crusts (home made or store bought), halved
- toppings of your choice

Preheat the oven to 400.  Roll out the crusts, flouring your surface so they don't stick.  Bake the crusts  5-7 minutes or until they're firm, but not done.  Cool.  Add your toppings, then pop in the freezer for a few minutes.  After they've firmed up, wrap in saran wrap followed by aluminum foil.  When you're ready for a delish pizza, pop in a 400 degree oven for 5-8 minutes.



Tomato and Olive Beef Roast (altered from The Healthy Foodie blog)
Roast:
- 4-5 # beef roast
- 2 onions, chopped
- 1 pint mushrooms (I used baby 'bellas)
- 6 cloves garlic, minced.
- 1 cup water
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/4 cup grainy mustard
- 1 28 oz can diced tomatoes
- ~25 kalamata olives, halved
- handful of pearl onions

Spice Mixture
- 1 Tbsp black pepper
- 1.5 tsp Kosher salt
- 1 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 1 tsp cocoa powder

Preheat oven to 350.  Trim outside fat from the roast, and pat dry with paper towels.  Massage the spice mixture into the meat.  Wrap in saran wrap and let sit for 30 minutes or so.  Heat a dutch oven with enough Grapeseed or Canola Oil to coat the bottom.  When hot, add the meat and DONT TOUCH for 5 minutes, or until a crisp coating forms.  Flip the meat (which is easier said than done).  Again sear for 5 minutes.  Remove meat from pan.

Add onion and mushrooms and saute for about 5 minutes, or until the onion begins to soften.  Meanwhile mix together the water, vinegar and mustard.  After 5 minutes is up, pour in this mixture to de-glaze the pan.  The, add back the meat.  Pour the tomatoes and olives on top, give a quick stir, and pop in the oven.  Bake for about 4 hours, or until the meat tears apart tenderly with a fork.  With about 30 minutes left, stir in those pearl onions.

Serve on top of polenta, mashed cauliflower, or with potatoes.

A couple of years ago, my parents bought me this book called Emily Alone.  It was when I was interested in Geriatrics, and it's basically the story of this little lady coping with aging.  It's pretty cute, but kind of depressing, so I don't know if I'd recommend it.  Anyway, it's set in Pittsburgh, of all places!  There's this scene in the book where she's looked forward to Spring for so long (turns out Pittsburgh is pretty miserable in the winter ...) and she and her friend go to this Spring Flower Show at a place called the Phipps.

I was planning a little trip up to P'burgh this past weekend, and am pretty ready for Spring myself.  So I did a little research and it turns out that the Spring Flower Show is a real thing at the Phipps Conservatory!  And it also turns out that my husband is awesome and was willing to spend 1.5 hours looking at flowers during March Madness season.  Gotta love him!

We walked through all the amazing displays, smelled some flowers, sneezed a little, practiced with my new camera, and really got ready for Spring!  Hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them.

Wedding colors, anyone? =)

There were SO many kinds of orchids!  It was amazing!  Also did you know the flavor vanilla comes from the orchid flower?  There.  You learned something from my blog.

Some of the orchids even had scents  =)

I.  Love.  These.  Peach tulips!

Pineapple, anyone?

Youch!  There was a cactus garden, too.

I don't know what that was, but it was about as tall as we were

Stuart experimenting

Sculpture in the cactus room.  Appropriately shaped.

This was my favorite flower of the day.  Double early tulips.

Can you tell I like tulips?

Unfortunately, Spring wasn't quite ready to be sprung.  On my drive back from PA today it started snowing up a storm!  By the time I (safely) made it back to C'ville, there were already a few inches on the ground!

Home sweet, frozen, home

Maybe next week it'll get warm.

Intern Day Off!

Time off is few and far between these days; and even when you have it it's tough to find a day when other folks are free, too.  Last weekend the planets all aligned and about 15 of us 'terns were off on the same day.  It just so happened to be beautiful weather and so we decided to spend the day in the great outdoors.

We started the day off at Pippin Hill Vineyards.  It's a pretty young vineyard a bit south of town in a beautiful setting.  The weather was perfect and there was still some snow left on the ground from our recent 8-10 inches!  We walked around indoors and out, and noshed on some fancy lunches.

Probably one of the prettiest, but least rustic, barns I've seen

Brick oven pizza made fresh inside

Cyndi enjoying her Virginia ham, goat cheese, and arugula pizza

Croque Monsieur for me, with an arugula salad

Who doesn't love a mason jar?

Design for future house?   Haha

We ventured outside after lunch to soak in the views

Wow I love Virginia!

Part of the vineyard to the left

After we hung out there for a while, we drove a few miles down the road to Albemarle Cider Works.  They grow bushels and pecks of apples to sell, and also press them into cider.  Saturday was the "release party" for two of their new batches, so of course they were doing tastings complete with a live band!  We tasted (small) samples of all their ciders while we sat on the porch in the sun.  And of course we sampled some apples, too!

Some Granny Smiths

The (empty) box at the end obviously had the best apples, called Goldrush.  I brought home half a peck!

Pink Ladies

We had to wait a few minutes for a table for 12, but we didn't mind snacking on apples while we waited

Some of the cider samples

A toast to ALMOST being finished with intern year!

We got to sample a bit of each type they had.

Ragged Mountain was my personal favorite.

Chatting in the sun and enjoying some cider

Scout even joined the party

She wasn't allowed to have too much fun though.

After spending a few hours enjoying the sunlight, we traveled a bit further to Blue Mountain Brewery for some light pre-dinner snacks.  Then back into town we went for some Thai food!  We all ate a ton throughout the day!  Perhaps next day off we'll go on a hike ...