So What's The Occasion?

So Scott surprised me this morning with a delicious breakfast. Normally we just have cereal or I'll make one of my not-so-famous McMuffin clones, but today he announced that I was to stay out of the kitchen and that he'll handle it. What did I do to deserve this? Was it my cooking? Has it been that bad all these years? No, there was no reason. He just wanted to make me breakfast. That's it.

It's not that it's unusual for him to want to do something nice for me, we do things for each other all the time. And I don't ask for much, but if I get an out of the blue craving for.. say, some grapes, he's halfway out the door before I can say "Stop! i'm fine." But I'll admit, it is pretty sweet to have a great breakfast made for you by someone who does it for no reason other then they just love you. There's no better tasting meal then that.

McMuffinness.

I love McDonald's Egg McMuffins. I do. I can't help it, they're delicious. But since we aren't usually up and ready early enough in the morning to get 'em, it's become a rare breakfast around here. So, with my ability to be satisfied with a reasonable facsimile of something, I decided to try recreating them at home. After all, it's just an english muffin and an egg right? And while i've made many McMuffins at home, I still can't quite figure out what that special taste is that McDonalds has. Still, even though it's not quite the same, I do make a pretty good McMuffin If I say so myself.

First, you gotta start with a sourdough muffin. Put it in the oven on broil 'til it's lightly toasted. You don't want to toast both sides, just the insides or it'll be too crispy. Meanwhile, crack an egg into a round cookie cutter on a frying pan and wait for it to solidify enough to take the cutter off and flip. Once you flip the egg, turn the burner off (don't want the egg to cook too much), add a slice of cheese and let it melt. You should also fry a slice of ham or bacon while you cook the egg. Then once the muffin is toasted, add butter, some mayo and a little ketchup. Then it's ready for the egg, the ham and the cheese. Viola!

Kumla!

You may or may not know what Kumla is, but I grew up with it. My grandparents were from North Dakota, and it seems that there is, or at least was a high concentration of Norwegians living there. Kumla is a Norwegian word I think, and although you may have had a similar dish, it probably wasn't as good as my grandma's Kumla. It seems like everytime I visited them, they happened to be making it for dinner.

Kumla is essentially just potato dumplings, though it's so much better! You boil a big pot of water, flavor it with vegetable broth, cook some meat (lamb, roast beef, etc..) in the broth for a while for flavor, then grate some baker potatoes and form them into tennis size balls and boil them til done. People have different ways of making and eating them, but we always just cut a piece off and swiped it through some butter. It takes a few hours to make, but isn't it worth it for one of the greatest meals of all time?

Boiling the kumla balls.

The finished meal!

Mini Burgers

So we've been on a small (no pun intended, oh.. who am I kidding, yes it was..) kick lately of making mini versions of different foods. And now that I think about it, I guess it's not just limited to food either since we recently ordered ourselves a new Mini Cooper too!

Anyway, inspired by Wolfgang Puck's miniburgers, I found a recipe for the buns and gave it a sampling tonight. Not too shabby. Mine were a little bigger then Wolfgang's miniburgers, which are supposed to be bite size, but they were still smaller then normal, and tasted fairly delish! Need to work on making the buns a bit less dense though.

Gobble Gobble!

We spent this Thanksgiving with Scott's family, and had a nice dinner. We cooked the turkey again using Alton Brown's famous brine recipe, and that always goes over very well. Not too much else to mention this year, we ate dinner, hung around and visited for a while and that was about it. Good times..

More Pizza Experimentation

So we did pizza yet again, we're doing it about once a week lately, just having fun, working on our techniques, and playing with different toppings you can't get from your local Dominos. This week Scott went for what he called a beer pizza. It had bratwurst and cashews on it. I went for a Michelle "white pizza" custom, which had garlic parmessan sauce, pepperoni, onions, mushrooms, and steak & crab. Both came out good, and even though mine was a little bland and could've used more "kick", it was good, and I would make it again. Here's some pics.

Scott shaping his dough..

Then he added the sauce, bratwurst, and jalapenos..

.. and tops it off with cashews and mozerella.

The finished pie!

And now for mine:
I start with a white garlic parmessan sauce, and some pepperoni..

..add some green onions, crab, mushrooms, steak & red onion..

Deliciousness!

Pizza Again.

We made pizza again last night, and had some brand spankin' new pizza pans this time too, which worked out pretty well. The last time we made pizza our pizza cutter broke apart, so we didn't have one this time because the new one we bought hasn't arrived yet.

We experimented a little more this time, though still didn't go too crazy. Scott tried a few different cheeses and some pancetta on his, but ended up not caring for it much. I added a few more things on mine including some of Scott's cheeses, plus canadian bacon, pineapple, mushrooms, olives, and onions. A little bit Hawaiian, and a little bit Supreme. It wasn't too bad. I'll try and be more creative next time. Maybe try something i've never had on pizza before.

But yet again, I forgot to take a picture of the completed pizzas before we ate. One of these days i'm gonna remember to do that.