German-style Potato Soup

We got a HUGE head of cabbage in our CSA box a week and a half ago. Even after splitting it with my co-worker Mark (with whom we split all contents of the box) it was still a lot of cabbage. So I set out with a mission of finding something cabbage-y to use it in.

I flipped through my favorite crock pot cookbooks, The Biggest Book of Slow Cooker Recipes, and found a recipe for German-style Potato Soup (I guess I'm continuing with the Oktoberfest theme!). The recipe calls for 2 cups of cabbage. I thought that was a lot, but after I used a bit more than 2 cups, you could barely tell I cut any part of the cabbage off!

I thought the soup was really good. Very hearty and filling. Nate just said it was good. I think next time I would add some more smoked sausage. I only used the 8 oz. the recipe calls for (even though I bought 16 oz.), and I think it could use more for a bit more flavor. We served the soup with a side of the applesauce I made about a week ago (I finally got Nate to admit the applesauce is a little too sweet).

Here is the soup recipe:

German-style Potato Soup

-4 medium potatoes, peeled and chopped

-2 stalks celery, sliced

-1 medium onion, chopped

-8 oz. cooked smoke sausage, sliced

-4 cups beef broth

-2 tbs. vinegar

-1 tbs. sugar

-1/4 teas. celery seed

-1/2 teas. dry mustard

-1/4 teas. pepper

-2 cups shredded cabbage with carrot (coleslaw mix) I used the head of cabbage with some peeled carrots

-snipped fresh parsley (I didn't use this)

In a slow cooker, combine potatoes, celery, onion and sausage.

In a bowl, combine broth, vinegar, sugar, celery seed, dry mustard and pepper. Pour over potato mixture.

Cover and cook on low heat for 8-9.5 hours or on high heat for 4-4.5 hours. Stir in cabbage mixture. Cover and cook 15-30 minutes more. Top each serving with parsley

Southwestern Acorn Squash

I love, love, love this time of year for the wonderful, seasonal food you can find, especially squash. All kinds of squash. I'm notorious (according to my husband, anyway) for stocking up on squash early in the season, storing it in the basement and then ... forgetting about it and never using it. I'm determined to not let that happen this year, especially now that we've gotten in the habit of eating our produce sooner than later with everything we get from our CSA box.

So a few weeks ago we picked up an acorn squash at the West Allis Farmers' Market, and I wanted to use it sooner than later. We usually make squash as a side dis--for acorn squash, I usually just roast it with some oil or butter, salt and pepper--but I wanted to make a whole meal out of it this time.

I easily found a recipe just by Googling acorn squash on my phone. The recipe I found was for Southwestern Stuffed Acorn Squash. There's a lot of good stuff going on in the dish.

I made a few changes/additions:

-The recipe calls for three squash, but I know we only wanted to use one for the two of us, so I cut parts of the recipe and just eye-balled a lot of the ingredients (such as the black beans, tomatoes and red pepper).

-I couldn't find turkey sausage at Outpost, so I just used ground turkey and flavored it with salt, pepper, garlic powder and some chili powder.

-Also, since we already had some Pecorino Romano cheese, I used that instead of Swiss. I think next time, while the Pecorino is delicious, it doesn't melt so well. I'd use a better melting cheese.

-We had an extra hot pepper from the CSA box, so I threw that in (I didn't think it was a hot pepper, but I later found out it was, since my hands burned the rest of the night ...)

The dish was very good. As Nate said, "it was actually really good." The flavors were great, and it was very satisfying. There's a lot you could do to mix up the filling. It'd be a fun thing to experiment with.

Oktoberfest Feast

This Saturday, my parents had an Oktoberfest celebration at their house for my dad's birthday. This, of course, meant lots of good German food and beer.

My parents made one of our favorites, sauerbraten and bread dumplings, which I blogged about back in April. It's still so good and still one of my favorite meals.

For starters, I made obatzta, a "traditional Oktoberfest snack," per a Journal Sentinel article from September. I got the recipe from the food section--here's the recipe. It's made with Camembert cheese, a French cheese, which kind of threw me (I spent a summer in France long ago, and bought many wheels of delicious and inexpensive Camembert and ate it with wonderful French bread. Yum!). But the dish was really tasty and good with huge sourdough pretzels and pretzel rolls.

Along with the sauerbraten and dumplings, my parents served red cabbage from a jar (which is growing on me, although I probably wouldn't seek it out on my own) and a delicious spinach dish with artichoke and cheese. Here is the recipe (the picture shows the recipe doubled), courtesy of my mom and a cookbook from Wauwatosa's First Congregational Church:

Spinach and artichokes

1 can artichoke hearts (cut in half if large)

1 stick butter

2 boxes frozen spinach

8 oz. cream cheese

Parmesan cheese to taste

She also added:

about 1/2 cup mozzarella cheese

a few shakes of garlic powder

Put artichokes in bottom of buttered 1 1/2-quart casserole dish. Cook spinach per box instructions and drain until almost dry. In a bowl, mash cream cheese and butter; add spinach, mozzarella and garlic powder. Mix well and pour over artichokes. Top with Parmesan cheese. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Makes six servings.

For dessert, my uncle's partner, Roger, made my dad's favorite--and appropriate for this meal--dessert: German chocolate cake. It was wonderful, but man, was I full after all of that!

Restaurant Review: Thai-Namite

I had the day off work last Friday, so my friend Ann and I had a lovely girls' day: manis and pedis in the morning, massages in the afternoon, with a stop in the middle for lunch on the east side. Ann had gotten a recommendation for a newish Thai/sushi place on Brady Street, Thai-Namite (unfortunately, the website is still "under construction" so I have to write based on memory ...), so we decided to check that out.



We had a great experience. Good service and really good food--for a very good price. The place was different than I pictured it to be, but in a good way. It was very open with lots of windows, sleek and modern. The menu was quite large, and I didn't spend too much time looking through it after I caught a glimpse of their lunch specials. I knew I wanted Thai, rather than sushi, which seemed to be the focus of the lunch specials. The six or so lunch specials each included a soda, a crispy spring roll and a noodle or rice dish with choice of meat (pork, beef, chicken, tofu or shrimp) all for $8 (I think shrimp was $2 more). (Sorry for the flipped picture below--this always happens with my point-and-shoot camera.)



Ann had a noodle dish, with really wide and fresh noodles, beef, broccoli and green beans (there may have been something else on the plate).




I had the holy basil dish, with white rice, tofu, green beans, peppers and onions, and a slightly spicy chili sauce.



We also started with edamame. You could have it chilled or warm, and we elected for warm.



Everything was very tasty, fresh and an incredible deal. I'd definitely go back and explore the menu in more detail.

Wine Craze at the InterContinental

Earlier this week, I was fortunate to receive a last-minute invite to a special wine craze event at the InterContinental Hotel on Wednesday. While the hotel's Clear Bar hosts a Wine Craze event every Wednesday (get more details here), this was a special event for some wine lovers/connoisseurs and/or food/local bloggers (clearly, this was my category, since you should all know by now I love beer and don't know much about wine).

I took Nate along, and we were joined by six other people--some people from a local PR firm and another local blogger and a friend of hers. A wine distributor introduced us to, and explained in great detail, two wines. The first was a merlot from Sterling Vineyard's Three Palms and the second was a cabernet wtih some merlot from Beaulieu Vineyard (BV).

The wine distributor (sorry, I wish I could remember his name!) was very thorough and detailed, and told us a lot about the wine. After we were done sampling, he asked us for feedback on the wine and what we tasted. It's amazing everything peple taste in the wine: cedar, blackberries, cherries and more. I have a hard time picking out each individual, but hopefully I'll get better the more wine I drink ...

I prefer ed the first wine, the merlot, over the second one just a bit. I don't have a good explanation as to why that was, but that's just the way it is!

In between samples, we were served tapas that were just as good as the wine. The food was as good as the wine! We had bacon-wrapped dates, flatbread with a wonderful roasted garlic flavor, big pretzels like you get at the ballpark (one was filled with cheese!), chicken quesadillas and some kind of roasted whole peppers with a dipping sauce.

The event was great, and I really want to get to another wine craze event some Wednesday. Those events are a little different, in that they last longer--from 5:30 to 8:30--and include $5 pours of mid-tier or high-end bottles of wine. I would recommend the event for both wine lovers and connoisseurs as well as those a bit new to the wine scene, like me.

Lunch with Mexican Flavors

I had to come home early today to be here for a plumber (shower faucet issues, if you're wondering), which gave me the opportunity to make have something a little different for a weekday lunch.

I often start daydreaming about lunch early in the morning, and I had already picked out what I wanted to make when I got home: black bean soup and a grilled cheese.

Whenever I go to Trader Joe's, I stock up on some of my favorites: salsa, blue tortilla chips, frozen pasta meals, mixed nuts and Latin style black bean soup in a carton. It's so tasty and really filling--it makes a great lunch, especially with a few add-ons.

For the soup, I heated up a little more than a cup of it in the microwave. I added some Cholula hot sauce, crumbled tortilla chips and some crumbled queso fresco we had leftover from tostadas. Yum! Other add-on ideas include avocado, chopped tomato, shredded cheese, salsa and tortilla strips.

For the sandwich, I used some super delicious English muffin bread we stock up on when we're up north. I just made a basic grilled cheese sandwich with Colby cheese, and then decided to add a twist, and layer some chunky roasted garlic salsa on both sides of the cheese. Wow! What a great flavor. I'm going to have to do that more often. And dipping the sandwich in a bit of the black bean soup? Oooh, tasty!

Mushroom, Sausage Ragu with Polenta

It's been a while since we made a Cooking Light recipe, so I was excited when I picked out a few recipes from the October issue.

For dinner this week, on a night when I got home late, Nate made Mushroom and Sausage Ragu with Polenta. The only substitutions we made were using "XXX hot" Italian sausages (not turkey) from Outpost, "regular" mushrooms since I couldn't find cremini and vegetable rather than chicken broth, simply because they were out at Outpost.

The meal was very good and super filling. I think next time I wouldn't bother adding cream cheese to the polenta. When you have the ragu on top of it, you can't really taste it anyway.

The only downside to the meal is that when we had it for leftovers the next night, the polenta isn't all that great heated up. It's not creamy like it is the night it's cooked.

The first night, we had the polenta and ragu with a side salad and some delicious roasted red pepper dressing we bought up north a few weeks ago.