New Topic For The Blog

It's been a long while since I have posted a blog and, after all of the cooking Nick and I did this weekend, I decided I should use this blog space to share our cooking endeavors. Thanks to some great friends, Nathan and Alana Wood, we have been working with recipes off of the Cook's websites(America's Test Kitchen, Cook's County and, Cook's Illustrated). Unfortunately, I did not take any photos of the food we prepared but, I will in the future.

On the weekends I take the helm when it comes to breakfast. For a while there I was on a pancake kick (blueberry, pumpkin, and anything else that sounded good) and, now, I think I have moved onto hash browns. Saturday morning I went downstairs to start on breakfast when I remembered we did not stop by the store to grab anything. We had eggs, milk, and some cheap bacon(we recently tried some more expensive thick cut brick style bacon, seriously, the best thing ever) but, no starch. I knew we had some potatoes so, I went to one of the Cook's pages to find a recipe.

Every time I had attempted to make hash browns from scratch there was too much moisture in them so they were mushy and, not crisp. From reading online I thought I needed a potato ricer to squeeze out the excess moisture. Turns out, there is something way easier you can use, a kitchen towel. By placing shredded potato into the towel you can then wring out all of that potato juice. The hash browns I made turned out fantastic, I even made more on Sunday.

Nick took care of dinner on Saturday. He prepared a Horseradish crusted pork tenderloin, garlic rosemary roasted potatoes, and braised brussel sprouts. The recipe originally called for a 2lb beef tenderloin but, we opted to go for a less expensive route and, the results were still fantastic.

Sunday morning I baked up some blueberry scones from the Cook's website. Nathan and Alana had already given the recipe rave reviews so, I could not wait to try them myself. While the scones were baking I fried up some bacon (I went to the store on Saturday so, we had some good bacon on hand) and lined some up for baking. Nick likes to fry up eggs in bacon grease so that's why I prepared the bacon two ways. I prefer baking bacon because it turns out crisp every time.

Wow, the blueberry scones were fantastic. Mine didn't turn out as pretty as the ones on the Cook's website but, they were crazy tasty. Nick said they were as good as the ones at Panera, if not better. The scones were soft, not dry, you could taste the bit of lemon zest in them. I don't know that I will ever buy another scone!

Here is the list of everything Nick and I cooked this weekend:

-Hash browns from scratch (2 times)
- Bacon (2 times)
- Fried eggs and scrambled (2 times)
- Horseradish crusted pork tenderloin
- Garlic rosemary roasted potatoes
- Braised brussel sprouts
- Blueberry scones
- Christmas cookies