I'm Here ... Just Not Cooking

I can't believe it's been more than a week since I last posted. I don't remember the last time I went without posting for this long.

I haven't posted anything because, unfortunately, I really haven't been cooking anything. Dinners last week and this week have consisted for pulling Tupperware from the freezer and hoping it's still edible. We decided to take this route for two reasons: cut down on the grocery store bill (hard to do when you stock up on chicken and beer, though!) and clean out our freezers (yes, both freezers are filled with leftovers).

I've mostly found leftover soup in the freezer, along with some chili and pasta. It hasn't been bad, but I am definitely itching to cook! After the holidays--really, after the first of the year, I know we'll be back at it with some great stuff. I'd like resort back to a New Year's resolution I made either last year or the year before: make at least one recipe each week from a different cookbook. We have so many great cookbooks were rarely use, that I'd really like to try this.

In addition to our freezer meals, we haven't been cooking because we've been out and about a bit, namely in Madison over the weekend, where we were for Nate's birthday. We had some great meals (and beer, of course!), including:

Ale Asylum brewery, where we split a beer sampler (10 beers!!) and each had lunch.

I had a really tasty black bean burger.

Nate had an equally tasty pulled pork sandwich (I know--I took a bite before he did!). We also each had a cup of lovely roasted red pepper tomato bisque.

Later, we met up with friends and headed to the Great Dane pub and brewery (do you see a theme here?). We, of course, had a beer sampler. Then I had the mac and cheese with a pretzel roll.

Nate had the drunken jerk, which was jerk pork steamed in banana leaves and came with sweet plantains and green beans. I had a bite of this, too, and it was very tasty.

For breakfast, we stopped at Marigold Kitchen, which was right near our hotel. Nate and I split two things (I like to call it "halfsies," which is one of my favorite ways to eat!)--the chile poached eggs and the salmon, dill and cream cheese omlettes. Everything was excellent, but, unfortunately, I didn't take any pictures.

So there you have it. That's what I/we've been up to these past few weeks and hence, no blog posts.

But stay tuned! There is lots of good stuff coming up, including restaurant reviews, a trip to Boston and a recap of all the great food I eat, Christmas dinners and new recipes.

A Vegetarian Thanksgiving

We had some leftovers from Thanksgiving at my parents' house--sweet potato casserole and green bean casserole--and needed a "main dish" to go with the sides. I intended to pick up some chicken breasts to have with it, but then I spotted a small Tofurky on super sale at Outpost. I've only had samples of it during Outpost's sample days, but I thought it was tasty, and Nate said he was game to try it.

The Tofurky was really easy to make. It was still frozen when I wanted to bake it, but I just needed to increase the cooking time. All you have to do is take it out of its wrapper, place it on a piece of foil on a pan, baste it with an olive oil, soy sauce and sage mixture, wrap it up and bake it for about 2 hours and 20 minutes.

Then you take the foil off, baste it with the rest of the mixture and bake it another 20 minutes uncovered. That's it!

It was really pretty good--it's stuffed with a wild rice stuffing, making the "meat" more moist. I'm not sure Nate loved it (he's quite the carnivore) and was a bit thrown off by the texture, but he did say the taste was good.

I wasn't sure if it would be dry or not, so I made a super easy vegetarian gravy. Here's the recipe.

Instead of 1 cup of water, I used 1 cup of veggie broth, thinking it would give it more flavor. It was really pretty good. Next time I might try the water--it was pretty salty, and I think it would have been flavorful enough with the water.