Friday is for free recipes

I am married to the most fantastic cook ever. He makes miracles in the kitchen all the time. It's a wonder we don't both weigh 400 lbs. The only trouble is that he makes things up as he goes along, so there's no record of what he put in when the dish is a success (which it always is). We've tried lots of solutions to this, me tagging along behind him jotting things down, him writing down the recipe when he's done, etc. Mom even bought him a tiny tape recorder so he can talk about what he's making as he makes it. None of this has been very effective.
I have resolved in 2008 to try to keep track of some of his creations and to write them down as close as I can. Here's the first installment:
We had this on the 1st and it was unbelievable. You'll be bummed if you skip the dumplings.
We did our best with the amounts of ingredients. If it's not looking or smelling right at your house, go ahead and adjust.

Rob's New Year's Day Beef Stew
1-2 lbs Tri-tip or sirloin steak
6-ish strips thick bacon
4 medium potatoes
1 large onion
3-4 celery stalks
4-ish carrots
1.5 Quart beef stock
1/4 tsp cloves
2 bay leaves
Some paprika, marjoram, thyme, white pepper, parsley, black pepper (all dry)
dash of Worcestershire sauce

Cut bacon into 1/2" strips. Saute in thick-bottomed (hee hee) pot until brown, remove. In bacon grease over med. high heat, brown steak (cubed) until awesome-looking. Remove. As you're browning, sprinkle it with salt and pepper. In the same pan, saute onions (diced)until clear and yummy. Remove. Deglaze pan with 1/4 bottle (about a wine-glass full) of any red wine. Add bay leaves, stock, cloves, spices, worcestershire sauce, bring to a gentle boil. Add steak, bacon, onions, turn to low and simmer gently for 1 hour, stirring whenever you remember it. Add potatoes, carrots, celery, and some salt if necessary. Cook for 45 min, or until everything is soft and smells good. This sounds like a long time, but you will love the way it makes your house smell.

Dumplings
2 cups regular flour
1.5 tbsp. baking powder
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/4 cup soft goat cheese
2 tsps each parsley, marjoram, thyme, black pepper
about 3 cups stock or water flavored with bouillon

Combine all ingredients in a bowl. Spoon into the boiling stock or water and cook about 6 minutes or until they float and seem done. Serve in stew.

Rob's note: The stew is too thick to cook the dumplings in, so that's why you've got to make them in stock or water.
Lizzie's note: The dumplings were crazy delicious. We baked the leftover batter in little wads on a cookie sheet the next day and ate those pseudo-biscuits in the leftover stew and it was even better than the dumplings.

Hope you like it!

Update:

I was soooo wrong. Jenny has pointed out that giant cupcakes are, of course, still the rage in 2008. This is an example she sent from www.surlatable.com. yum!

sculpey

I got a bunch of packages of sculpey for Christmas and I'm having so much fun with it. I've been making dollhouse food. First I made some tomatoes:


Then I made some eggs, bacon, and pancakes. Dollhouse people are best when they've had a good breakfast. They also like treats, so I made them some doughnuts too.


The pictures are a little weird, but it's hard to take close-up pictures of really tiny, shiny things. Anyway, I'll go find my (homeless) dollhouse people and ask them if they're hungry. They'd better be, they haven't eaten in about 15 years.

2008!

Happy New Year!

Did you get the memo? 2008 is officially the year of cake. 2007 was big for cupcakes, but this year, full cakes are back to claim their place in the dessert race.
No more wimpy tiny cakes. No more weird icing piled up really high. 2008 will be full of delicious cakes meant to be shared with others. And they will be pink.

Catnip is a gateway drug

We went to an eggnog party last night at Ryan and Ashley's. We played Rabbids and looked at their beautiful tree and watched Rudolf.
When we came home, it looked like someone else had been hitting the 'nog pretty hard around here. This is the Christmas tree the way we found it. Notice anything missing?
That's right. No angel. No angel on top of our 7' tree. Where there used to be one. A pretty one. Also, the Christmas tree skirt was missing and there were an outrageous number of needles all over the floor. What happened? Were we robbed? Did the angel have to fight?
This is how we found her...
Poor angel! What did she do to deserve that? Who could've knocked her off the top of the tree and taken the tree skirt?
Suspect #1:

Suspect #2:We caught Georgie this morning trying to light a little bonfire under the tree. She said it was "too cold up in here". Brats. I suspect the angel was making them feel guilty about whatever they were up to while we were gone, and she paid the price. too much nog. Or was it catnip?

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Wait a second. Is that a snowflake? On the Tucson forecast? As in snow? Frozen water falling from the sky? wow.
We've seen mountain snow for a few days. They're saying that Mt. Lemmon is going to get 14 inches tonight. Won't that be pretty! The snow line is moving further and further down toward town. It's raining here now. All dark and gloomy and wintery like.
Update: It's sleeting! The cats are slinking around all scared of the "pink pinkity pink" going on outside!

December

The wind is howling around our house and it's still raining. The house is nice and chilly and I think we'll have soup for dinner. Oh how I wish the weather would stay nice and wintry.