I am always amazed with the interesting things one can find when you’re really not looking. I recently ran across several recipes on weather.com of all places. They were promoting some simple and healthy breakfast options for the start of the school year. One of the recipes caught my eye so I decided to try it out for Dawn and myself. It’s called a breakfast pizza margherita. Here is the recipe:
- 1 English Muffin
- 1 Large Slice of Tomato
- Some Shredded Mozzarella Cheese
- 1 Egg (Fried)
- Bacon (or in our case vegetarian stripples)
- Fresh Basil
- Balsamic Vinegar
Turn your broiler on. Split your English muffin, place the tomato and cheese on one half, and sprinkle a little balsamic vinegar on the other half. Place both sides on a baking sheet and slide under the broiler. Broil until the cheese is melted and browned to your preference. Remove from the oven, add the fried egg and basil. Close the sandwich and enjoy!
Dawn and I have become big followers of America’s Got Talent. As the authors of Cats. Crooners. Cook. We wanted to congratulate Landau Eugene Murphy Jr., a formidable crooner himself, for his win on this season of America’s Got Talent.
I must apologize. We’ve had a pretty shaky stretch the last week or so trying to find time to add to our blog. Part of the reason is related to Dawn introducing me to Glee. I fought this for a long time. Dawn would always mention how great this show was, but every time she did I would make some sort of a snide comment and dismiss her claims of greatness. Well, on date night a couple of weeks ago we realized that we had watched all the movies and TV shows we owned. It was either re-watch something, or give Glee: The Complete First Season
a try. Well it took all of about 25 minutes for me to become a certified Gleek.
Well tonight I have cleared some time and am determined to touch on a couple of dishes we want to share with you. First off I want to highlight the drink station we created for our kick off dinner a few weeks ago. I don’t know about you guys, but drinks have always been an interesting area for me. The focus of our dinner was absolutely not intended to be the drinks, however we didn’t want to simply serve water and wanted to be a little more creative than buying a couple of bottles of juice from the store. Both our friend Tim Ko and myself love a simple San Pellegrino with fresh lime. There’s not a lot more refreshing than a cold sparkling water with fresh squeezed lime juice. So I decided to see what we could put together in that area. I’ve seen several recipes in magazines highlighting different fruits and vegetables to flavor water. Knowing that everyone attending the dinner had very different tastes we decided to create a drink bar with several choices to flavor the water. We sliced some lime and lemon, cubed some cucumber, and balled some melon and let each person make a drink tailored to their tastes. It was simple to set up, simple to make, and provided a refreshing element to our savory meal. You could substitute any type of fruit or vegetable you think will create a refreshing drink.
It’s nigh time that we introduce you to the small, cuddly, furry part of our blog’s title. Let me introduce you to Gaby and Lucy.
My family has had cats as long as I can remember. When I came to Ohio I had to come home to an empty apartment every day. Then I found Gaby and Lucy, a cute pair of sisters, at PetSmart. My cousin helped talk me into adopting these two kittens and I brought them home. Since then, I have gotten to experience their personalities.
Gaby likes to relax by lounging on the couch we don’t want the cats on. She likes to play with the plastic ring from milk bottles. She loves to have her belly scratched. She refuses to socialize on the bed when her sister is already there. And we recently discovered that she is addicted to wheat grass.
Lucy hates to be held. She likes to be in control and the instant you pick her up she begins to howl. However, Lucy loves to cuddle under the covers during the winter. Lucy gets very energetic when playing with her favorite toy, sometimes doing complete flips in the air.
As Aric already said, I can’t believe a week has gone by since the big dinner but to be honest, with the amount of food that was made, it seemed like a daunting task of where to start. Pair that with the 250 or so pictures taken of all the food (courtesy of our dear friend and fellow chef that evening, Tim Ko) and I think it has taken us a week just to sort through it all to bring you the highlights from that evening!
Since Aric already covered the meat (and non-meat for the vegetarian better-halves), I will dive right into the salad portion of the meal. One of my favorite cuisines is Italian, one of Aric’s is Greek. It only made sense to make a salad that evening that combined the two flavors and the first thing that came to mind was Ina Garten’s Greek Panzanella.
Panzanella stems from Italian origins and is typically made with just bread and tomatoes. The Greek influence in this salad comes from the ingredients usually used to make a Greek salad: tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and feta. Put these all together and you have one of my favorite salads of all time. I feel I should also state that I adore Ina’s cookbooks, which are stacked in a colorful line on my bookshelf, so it is only natural that I am biased when it comes to her recipes. But honestly, every recipe of hers that I have tried has always been a success so is that really a bias?
One of the many things that makes this a great dish for entertaining is that you can make it ahead of time. In my opinion, this make this salad even better because it allows all that yummy goodness to marinate a bit and the bread can soak up a bit of the dressing. It also makes for great leftovers!
In the case of our crew that evening, it was also a perfect fit for the mixed palates at the table. We had herbivores (us three ladies) and carnivores (the guys) and, just to keep it interesting, a dairy-free diet to work around. I didn’t have to tweak this salad very much to make sure that everyone would be satisfied; I am not a fan of black olives so I left those out and I just made sure to find a delicious goat’s milk feta cheese to substitute for a standard feta. And to be honest, like Aric said himself, I rather enjoy the challenge that comes with find alternatives as it allows me to branch out and try products that I might not otherwise have stumbled upon.
Feel free to add or substitute the vegetables and cheese as you see fit. And make sure the bread is really toasted so it doesn’t get too soggy once it soaks up the dressing. If you can find a rustic bread, I have found that to be the best as it is very dense, but Ina’s suggestion of a French boule or any other heavy bread works well too.
Ingredients
Good olive oil
1 small French bread or boule, cut into 1-inch cubes (6 cups)
Kosher salt
1 hothouse cucumber, unpeeled, seeded, and sliced 1/4-inch thick
1 red bell pepper, large diced
1 yellow bell pepper, large diced
1 pint cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1/2 red onion, sliced in half rounds
1/2 pound feta cheese, cut in 1/2-inch cubes
1/2 cup calamata olives, pitted
For the vinaigrette:
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard
1/4 cup good red wine vinegar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup good olive oil
Directions
Heat 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large saute pan. Add the bread cubes and sprinkle with salt; cook over low to medium heat, tossing frequently, for 5 to 10 minutes, until nicely browned. Add more olive oil as needed.
Place the cucumber, red pepper, yellow pepper, tomatoes and red onion in a large bowl.
For the vinaigrette, whisk together the garlic, oregano, mustard, vinegar, 1 teaspoon salt and the pepper in a small bowl. While still whisking, add the olive oil and make an emulsion. Pour the vinaigrette over the vegetables. Add the feta, olives and bread cubes and mix together lightly. Set aside for 30 minutes for the flavors to blend. Serve at room temperature.
It’s been a busy week. We never intended to take 7 days to get our first posts about our grand blog kick off dinner, but that’s life. Our dinner was a great success. We had some of our best friends over and asked everyone to participate. As is quite customary with our group, we cooked way too much food. Over the next week or so we’ll highlight some of the dishes we prepared, detail the recipes, and share why we chose to make these dishes.
I drew the long straw, so my post is going first. The first dish I want to share is my Greek Chops. The inspiration for this recipe goes back a long ways. As you may recall from previous posts my favorite restaurant is a Greek bistro in Stockton, CA by the name of Papapavlo’s. My parents and I have been faithful customers for years. In fact, we became such frequent customers that we became pretty good friends with several members of the staff, including the head bus boy. One particularly chatty evening he shared with us the recipe to the restaurant’s famous Greek Lamb Chops. This has become one of my favorite things to cook over the past years. I should clarify, generally I do in fact make a Lamb Chop, but this time I switched it up and made a veal chop. I fully intended to do lamb, but when I got to the meat section the veal looked so much better than the lamb did. I’m a very easy going cook, if plan ‘A’ isn’t going the way you intended, I’m generally more than willing to go to plan ‘B’ or, in this case, veal. Let’s jump straight into the recipe.
The principle player in this dish is the marinade. It’s a very simple marinade. I don’t have an exact measurement, that’s not the kind of cook I am. I tend to follow my instinct and taste buds. Whatever sounds good is what I put in. In this case, here are the ingredients I generally include:
- A cheap bottle of red wine (we used Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joes)
- Chopped Basil
- Chopped Cilantro
- Chives
- Olive Oil
- Balsamic Vinegar
- Ground Pepper
This is by no means the only ingredients that I have tried. These are just the marinade all-stars if you will. When I don’t have the pressure of guests eating my meal I generally dig through my herb cabinet to see what looks (and smells) like something that might make the meat better.
However, when the pressure’s on I go with what I know will serve me well, and that’s fresh basil, cilantro and chives. In all my cooking I used fresh herbs whenever I can, or as was this case last weekend, what I have growing in my herb garden. The flavor is just so much more robust, and I love full flavored food. My only suggestion to you is that you make enough of this marinade to reach at least half way up the meat in whatever dish you have chosen. You may not want to make enough to fully submerge the meat, but ½ submerged will allow you to fully marinate by flipping the meat periodically. I suggest letting the meat rest for at least 6 hours in the marinade. I have gone as far as 24 hours. The flavor will intensify the longer you let it rest.
I have always chosen to barbeque my chops. I grill them over medium high heat for about 6 minutes on each side. We made sure each piece of meat reached an interior temperature of 165 degrees, and removed the meat from the grill. I like my meat just a touch more than medium and these chops were perfect. Let the meat rest for a few minutes before serving, then enjoy. The marinade creates a wonderful, full and fresh flavor. There is no need for anything to dress this chop up. A fork and knife are more than enough.
That cover’s the main dish, well at least for the meat eaters. However, at our dinner party, the carnivores represented only 50% of the population, the guys. The ladies are all vegetarians. This put me into a strange new world. I have never been, nor do I ever plan on becoming, a vegetarian. Substances like tofu are foreign to me, but what kind of a food blogger would I be if I didn’t accept a new challenge and attempt to expand my abilities? Luckily, this isn’t the first barbeque I’ve been to with vegetarians. I’ve seen many a tofu kebob prepared over the last few years, so i began looking for a good tofu recipe online. I found a recipe for cilantro lime tofu, which I have to say, sounded almost appetizing. The preparation for the tofu was very similar to the veal. Prepare your marinade, pour over the tofu, let it rest. The recipe can be found here. As I stated above, my final product was something close to the recipe, but I never once pulled out a measuring spoon.
I let the tofu sit for about 6 hours in the marinade before we put it on the grill. If I do this recipe again, I will most definitely let the marinade work longer, probably a minimum of 12 hours to give the tofu more opportunity to soak up the flavors. I would also keep the tofu pieces on the thinner side. I sliced my tofu into slices about an inch think. I would suggest no more than ¾ of an inch. This will help to keep the balance of flavor between the marinade and the tofu.
One of the nice things about this marinade is it keeps the tofu from sticking to the grill. The tofu actually came out very nice. The marinade was dynamite! It was fresh and crisp, but the cayenne added a little bit of a bite. The tofu firmed up nicely on the grill, and had very nice grill markings. I was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out, but honestly I don’t know good tofu from shoe soles, so my opinion is, as Joey Tribiani once said, “a moo point… it’s like a cow’s opinion. It doesn’t matter.”
Before we get into the kick-off dinner (because that is going to take multiple posts based on the number of photos we have from the festivities), a quick post about cookies.
Growing up, my mom was (and still is) famous for her desserts. Her cookies and brownies and cupcakes were always the first to go in a bake sale at school. She had to pack at least 4 or 5 extras of whatever dessert she gave me for lunch because I inevitably ended up getting swarmed by half of my classmates and even some teachers, all wanting a piece of the goodness. I guess you could say that my sweet tooth was unavoidable... not that I’m complaining!
Out of all the goodies my mom has made, nothing beats one of her cookies on a day when you just need a pick me up. Whether it was a rough day at school back then or a long day at work now, cookies never fail to help ease the day away.
With that in mind, I baked some Chocolate Chip Oatmeal cookies last week. But not because Aric or I had a particularly difficult week; rather we recently “adopted” a local college student for the school year. Essentially we are here to offer some moral support and a helpful hand whenever it is needed. So I thought what better way to make him feel welcome than with homemade cookies. Of course, we threw a few more odds and sods into the welcome basket but I wanted to make sure to have something straight from the oven in there.
I kept a few for ourselves, justifying it by saying it was for photos for the blog, but let’s face it, before we even finished taking the pictures, Aric was asking me to hurry up so he could eat some of the cookies. I’ll admit, I was getting hungry taking the pictures too, what with the lovely photo arrangement Aric had set up.
As we slowly enter into fall weather, I’m sure there will be more cookies to come and new ones to try my hand at... like the chocolate dipped cookie dough balls I spied at the grocery store over the weekend and found the recipe for on Love and Olive Oil's blog!!
I’m not sure how the rest of you are, but when I frequent the same restaurant often, I tend to pick a favorite menu item and order it every time. This has never been truer than at my favorite restaurant, Papapavlos. I can’t say with 100% certainty, but for the most part I’ve ordered the same thing for about the last 15 years. The centerpiece of my meal is the appetizer, Saganaki, also known as flaming cheese. For years I’ve wanted to try to make Saganaki at home. Today I finally followed through with that wish. Tonight was just a test run for the big show tomorrow. Dawn and I are celebrating the start of our blog by inviting some of our best friends over for dinner. I’ve been talking about making Saganaki for years now and finally have an occasion fitting of such an exciting dish, but with all the hype I needed to be sure I can deliver a good product.
After my first trial, I’m glad I decided to conduct a test run before tomorrow. The Saganaki flavor was just about there, but it surely didn’t look like the Saganaki from Papapavlos. I put too much butter in the pan, had the heat too high, didn’t get the cheese uniformly melted and I didn’t really have the right spatula available. All that said, when we lit the Ouzo, the flame was big, fun, and looked like it was supposed to.
As I stated previously I’ve been contemplating this recipe for quite some time now. I’ve scoured the internet for any recipe I could find to see other peoples interpretations. From the best I can tell, the most traditional method is to use kefalotiri or kefalograviera cheese, but when those are unavailable or too pricy, kasseri cheese does just fine. Both Papapavlos and I used Kesseri. I chose to fry the cheese in butter and chose the more tradition use of Ouzo to create the spectacular flame so synonymous with Saganaki. I tried to keep my recipe as close to the one I’ve grown up on from Papapavlos as I could. Hopefully I’ll be able to shore up a few of the deficiencies I experienced tonight before our big dinner tomorrow.
I hope you will all check in tomorrow to see how my Saganaki turns out and what else we prepare for our kick-off dinner.
If there is only one thing that you will get to know about me very quickly, it is that I love dessert (as the title of this post suggests. I added in Aric’s name because, well, I love him too). I love baking dessert, eating dessert, finding new ideas for dessert... you name it, I’m all over it. Which explains why I have signed myself up for a majority of the baby shower planning since I moved to Dayton. It should be noted that there must be something in the water here because there have been three baby showers in the 10 weeks I have been here. Most of the themes involve dessert, so it is a great place to try new ideas.
The latest baby shower (seen above) was a collaboration so I can’t take credit for the entire final array of sweets and treats, as much as I would love to because everything they made was delicious; but I can take credit for the cake pops, cupcakes and the vegan brownies. Let me first start by saying that just before the shower, I became slightly obsessed with www.bakerella.com and the whole cake pop idea. So many ideas, so little time. As it turns out, I also had so little knowledge about melting candy for the pops. I learned three things about cake pops the day before the shower: I need to use a double boiler to melt the candy for the pops (a sauce pan on low does not cut it), add Crisco to the candy to make it smoother for dipping, and freeze the pops in the freezer for at least a few hours before dipping to make sure they don’t just crumble into the melted candy.
The ingredients for cake pops are fairly straightforward. Take any box cake mix you want (for these ones, I used Devil’s Food) and bake it in a 9 x 13 baking dish according to the box’s directions. Once that is cooked and cooled down, crumble the cake into a large mixing bowl and take a can of matching frosting (again I used Devil’s Food) and dump that in and mix. I usually prefer to make my own frosting but in this case, the canned frosting is the right thickness for this project. Once you have thoroughly mixed the frosting and cake together, you can form small balls either with your hands or a small ice cream scoop or melon baller. Place these balls on a lined baking sheet and put in the freezer to harden for a few hours. Once they are frozen, you can melt some candy in that handy double boiler and dip lollipop sticks about a half inch into the candy. Then stick the candied end of the lollipop into a cake pop ball - this helps to secure the cake pop onto the stick for when you dip the whole pop into the candy. Let those harden for half an hour in the freezer. Then melt more candy and start dipping the pops. Just make sure to have something to place the finished pops into when you finish dipping so that they can dry. I had Styrofoam blocks handy as I was going to use them for the centerpiece decorations and those actually worked quite well.
As a side note, I got a bit crafty and ended up making the centerpiece decoration as well. A really quick project too - hot glue gun some tissue paper to a Styrofoam block and tie it all together with ribbon. It is great for showers as you can match the tissue and ribbon to the theme for a custom look.
The cupcakes are straight from Martha Stewart's website (which a bookmark on my web browser and my go-to for most dessert ideas, especially cupcakes). I have wanted to make these for a long time and finally had a reason to do it and I was so happy with the results. You can either make your own chocolate cake or use a box version if you are running low on time, and the icing is fairly straight forward. I will admit though, the icing gave me quite the headache. It took three tries and tweaking Martha's idea of melting white chocolate but it was worth it. I melted the white chocolate, as she suggested, but added about a tablespoon of heavy cream to the chocolate and some corn syrup to make the right consistency for piping the lettering.
The other dessert I wanted to try was Gwyneth Paltrow’s vegan Fudgy Chocolate Brownies. I should note I am a vegetarian, so you will get quite the assortment on this blog between my carnivorous boyfriend and myself. However, I am not vegan but some of my friends are, including one who was co-hosting the shower, and I wanted to make something she could eat. I have been a fan of everything I have made so far from Gwyneth’s cookbook My Father's Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness so I figured these brownies had to be amazing as well. I was not wrong. Just make sure to take them out when there is still a slight bit of goo on the toothpick when you take them out, to make them extra fudgy. Oh, and Trader Joe’s carries vegan chocolate chips, if you happen to live near one of these fine grocery stores.
Recipe courtesy of My Father’s Daughter: Delicious, Easy Recipes Celebrating Family & Togetherness by Gwyneth Paltrow
Makes 12
INGREDIENTS
2 cups white spelt flour or all purpose flour
1 cup cocoa powder
1 1/2 tablespoons baking powder
1 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup brown rice syrup (or light agave nectar)
1/2 cup strong brewed coffee
1/2 cup soymilk
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
2 tablespoons oil
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, divided
PREPARATION
Heat oven to 350°. Sift flour, cocoa powder, baking powder and a pinch of salt into a bowl. Whisk maple syrup, oil, brown rice syrup, coffee, soymilk and vanilla in another bowl. Fold wet ingredients into dry ingredients. Pour half the batter into a greased 9" x 11" baking dish; top with half the chips. Pour remaining batter into dish and top with remaining chips. Bake until knife comes out with crumbs adhering to it, 30 minutes. Let cool.
As Aric mentioned previously, my baking isn’t solely for pregnant women. I do tend to use Aric as my guinea pig for my latest baking idea or if I am in the mood to make an old favorite. Such as the case with the Giada de Laurentiis' Chocolate Hazelnut Crunch cake that I made a few weeks ago. I made this on a whim one day for my parents when I was back in Vancouver, simply because it looked so pretty in the cookbook. Not only did it live up to the picture but it became one of my favorite cakes of all time. It is actually easier to make than perhaps it looks and it has a fresh orange zest twist that makes it unique.
We realize that to anyone who doesn’t spend 5 hours a day with us may have a hard time deciphering exactly how these seemingly independent things managed to come together in the title of our blog. Well, truth be told, Cats. Crooners. Cook. was probably the 17th option we discussed for a title. Dawn and I weren’t entirely up to speed on just how vast the blogosphere actually is. We assumed that we had a pretty original idea when we decided to run with the whole blogging couple discussing, among other things, our love of food and life. Turns out we’re getting into the game about 5 years too late to have a real shot at any of our favorite blog titles. Our favorite, and one that earned me a big kiss for thinking up, was Table for Two, but it turns out Table for Two is already the name of a dating site, a couples cookbook, and a Sydney based blog about, you guessed it, food, lifestyle, and travel…Congrats to Billy Law and his blog. While we were disappointed to have our first hope and dream dashed, Billy’s blog is actually quite amazing, unlike the blog that stole our second choice of name, A Dash of Love. The lovely blogger who stole our second name managed all of 1 post… in 2009, before hanging up her blogging boots. Not cool my friend, not cool. Needless to say, Dawn and I spent the next few hours frustrated and dejected racking our brains for something fun and original. In the end we simply went with three words that describe what happens in my house when Dawn and I cook.
Cats. I have 2 cats, Lucy and Gaby (short for Lucifer and Gabriel, and yes their names match their personalities) who can’t stand to be out of eye sight. When we’re cooking they’re always milling about at our feet meowing, imploring us to pay less attention to the food and more attention to them. Gaby is famous for her falls. I know right? Cats are known for their grace, not their falls, but Gaby loves to have her belly scratched and any time she senses that a belly scratch is near she makes sure her belly is easily accessible by flopping to the ground and rolling onto her back.
Crooners. I have always loved music. I don’t have a favorite band, or even genre. I listen to all sorts all the time. At the beginning of our relationship, before we began using Skype, Dawn and I would email, literally writing books back and forth (and I mean literally. Dawn made an actual book of all our emails for my birthday present last year.) During one of those early emails I told her that whenever I cooked I listened to music. And not only that, but I had a playlist on my ipod dedicated solely to cooking. She loved the idea so I introduced her to my playlist the next time she was in town. Ever since, whenever we cook we have music blasting through the house. We listen to all sorts of music, but as stated in the title, we can often be found cooking to the classic Las Vegas style crooners such as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr., but we also love music that portrays images of the places our food originates. Salsa, Italian, French, Greek and Cajun are some of our favorites. No meal is complete without the proper musical accompaniment.
Cook. This one is pretty self-explanatory. We love to cook!
We’re going to kick our food entries off with something we did a couple weeks ago. In fact you might say this blog is the result of that night in the kitchen. The previous week Dawn cooked me a phenomenal meal. She made millionaire mashed potatoes, grilled asparagus (one of my favorites), and roasted lemon chicken. The meal blew my socks off, then she rolled out dessert, a chocolate hazelnut crunch cake (Check out the picture in the post below!). For those who may not actually know me, I’m a wee bit competitive. So after stuffing myself on Dawn’s amazing food I accepted the challenge to top her cooking the following week. In all honesty I’m not sure I did, but it’s the first food we started taking pictures of, which won it the rights to be our first food entry.
I actually had a sandwich very similar to this for lunch the day of our dinner. I stopped at Dorothy Lane Market for lunch and liked the sandwich so much I decided to make it for Dawn that night. The sandwich is simply a Caprese salad grilled cheese. Pick up a loaf of your favorite bread; stuff a couple of slices full of fresh basil, mozzarella cheese, tomato, then drizzle with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Brush the outsides of the bread with a little butter and fry like you would any classic grilled cheese until golden brown.
As mentioned above I love grilled asparagus. It’s my default vegetable. If I have the time to marinade properly I like to let the asparagus sit overnight in the house dressing from my favorite Greek restaurant, Papapavlos in Stockton, California. It’s a wonderful blend of balsamic, olive oil and assorted herbs. When I am in a hurry, as I was on this occasion, I simply toss the asparagus in olive oil, a bit of balsamic and whatever fresh herb I feel like (usually either chopped basil, cilantro, or oregano), then salt & Pepper to taste. I prefer to grill the asparagus on the BBQ, but broiling in the oven works well. It doesn’t take long to cook. The smaller the diameter of the asparagus the faster it will cook.
The final piece of the meal was the Sweet potato French fries. And again, being honest here, I got the idea from Dawn. She found a recipe for honey lime sweet potato fries which we made earlier this summer. I took the idea and put my own twist on it. I purchased a couple Asian Sweet Potatoes, for no reason other than they sounded like fun. You will want to boil the potatoes before grilling. I boil them till they feel cooked through when I poke them with a fork. After boiling, slice them into fries. I prefer thick slices, but most any form will do. Just remember to keep them big enough that they won’t slip through the grates of your BBQ. I threw together a simple glaze of oil, salt, pepper and chopped fresh basil and cilantro. They don’t need long on the grill, just a few minutes on each side of the fries is plenty to cook them through and leave those coveted grill marks. To top the fries off I whipped up a dipping sauce that we both agreed was surprisingly tasty. Take equal parts ketchup and BBQ Sauce along with some honey, cayenne pepper, fresh cilantro (chopped), and salt & pepper. I made this sauce again last week for some friends and added a bit of fresh lime juice and was very happy with the results.
It all started nearly 4 years ago. He was beginning his professional career in a new city. She was in town visiting mutual friends who believed they had found the perfect guy for her; it wasn’t him. The night before the arranged “set-up” was to happen, the two of them met while having dinner with their mutual friends. It was nothing more than a chance meeting, two people in the same place at the same time. Who could have guessed that she would in fact meet the man of her dreams on that trip, albeit not the one everyone had planned on? Who would have guessed they both would experience that proverbial spark when their eyes first met as she sat down at their table? Who would have guessed that they each would spend that dinner stealing glances at the stranger sitting across from them and wondering to themselves, just who is this? The truth is, no one would have guessed it. Not even the two fated strangers sitting at that table.
Nearly two years passed after that first chance meeting without even the slightest contact between them. It wasn’t until their second chance meeting that the pieces of their puzzle began to fall into place. It wasn’t until he accidentally stumbled into the Skype conversation between her and his cousin that their story really begins. It took that awkward Skype hello to remind him of the spark he’d felt years ago. With his curiosity beginning to build, he returned to his home and did some searching. Finally, after building his courage he took the plunge and made his move, a Facebook friend invite. What started as an innocent hello between old acquaintances soon evolved into page after page, chapter after chapter of email correspondence. It was like nothing either had ever experienced. One day, on a whim, he booked a plane ticket to visit her. As the day drew near, both grew nervous with anticipation. An online relationship is one thing, where imagination and hope can fill in any gaps. An in person relationship is entirely different. Still, without hesitation, he boarded his flight. From the moment they first embraced in the baggage claim of Seattle airport they have been a perfect couple, complimenting each other in a way neither ever expected to find.
They sailed through ten months of a Vancouver, Canada / Dayton, Ohio long distance relationship until she was offered a job in his home town. It was in the first ten weeks of this second phase of their relationship that the idea for this blog began to maturate. Their individual love of food and cooking blossomed when they shared this love together.
We love to cook and spend time with friends and family and enjoy life. We are excited to share our experiences, both in and out of the kitchen, with others. We look forward to having you join us in this adventure.
Welcome to Cats. Crooners. Cook. We love to cook. Our cats love to cuddle. Turn on some Sinatra and come join us in the intersection of our life and our love.
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so I figured these brownies had to be amazing as well. I was not wrong. Just make sure to take them out when there is still a slight bit of goo on the toothpick when you take them out, to make them extra fudgy. Oh, and Trader Joe’s carries vegan chocolate chips, if you happen to live near one of these fine grocery stores.
