Roast Beef Nori Rolls

First things first, I forgot to take a final picture of the rolls. And that is why I am a bad blogger. Needless to say these are wicked tasty and super easy. All you need is a couple sheets of nori, roast beef, sour cream, and horseradish. Mix up the sour cream and horseradish together to your liking, really up to you and your tolerance. Place roast beef on about 3/4 of the nori and spread with the zesty cream thusly.
Then all you have to do is roll it up, wet the nori and let them sit a bit. The sitting is not vital, but it softens up the nori a bit and lets everything meld a bit. Slice them up with a nice sharp knife and pop them in your mouth! Or in our case package them up along with oodles of IPA's for a beer tasting.

look at me I am a posting ninja... maple bacon snickerdoodles

Soooo, I was basically over work for the week by 8:30 this morning. This bodes poorly for the rest of the week, but when that happens it does give me ample time to day-dream about food. What, you don't do that? Basically if I ever need motivation for any sort of experiment or project, just have me get a touch bored at work, next thing you know I am researching how to debone a squab. Enter these cookies, what is funny about all of this is that for the last year or so I have totally lost my sweet tooth. Random cookies or frosting are just to much, my sweet tooth may have been replaced by a high quality ice cream and potato chip tooth. So, I like the concept and flavor combo of this, but they were crunchier than I prefer and was kinda of over it after one bite. If you want the recipe, I snagged it from Closet Cooking but added bacon, that kid makes some tasty grub. I did however cram the few pieces of bacon left over into my maw. On a similar note, I may have dropped a snickerdoodle dough-ball, destined for the sugar bowl for rolling, on the floor and had to retrieve the whole thing from the Saltine's mouth. FYI, I opted not to cook that one. P.S. we got a super cute dog.

Kinderhook Farm Sirloin

We thawed out the sirloin from Kinderhook Farm and in an effort to truly see how the meat tastes I simply tossed it under the broiler. Nothing fancy, nothing to amp it up. All I can say is holy shit, this was delicious. Super tender, very flavorful, and not at all chewy but not in that funny mushy way that some mass produced meats can be. After cooking this up I am very much looking forward to chowing down on the rest of our meats that we got from the farm. Since I was cooking up the sirloin in the morning I made a right brekkie of steak and eggs for the Hubbs. I also will not deny that I "may" have gnawed the bit of meat that was on the bone after we sliced this baby up.

Kinderhook Farm

In our goal to try and have most of our meats come from local-ish and happily raised animals we took the jaunt out to Valatie NY to check out Kinderhook Farm. I was a gorgeous day and perfect for a short trip. The farm store was small, just a few freezers of meat and a fridge with their eggs. The eggs, by the way, were totally beautiful light green, browns, and tan; sadly we had just gone shopping so we had about a dozen and a half already hanging in the fridge at home. We called Georgia, one of the owners, she met us at the store and helped us out. After chatting for a bit we decided on a nice brisket, sirloin, and some marrow bones. Everything comes frozen but according to the website you can call ahead and they will pull stuff out of the deep freeze to start defrosting in advance of your visit. The super friendly and helpful Georgia took us on a quick tour of the farm where they were in the early days of "lambing" which meant there were oodles of wee day-old lambs just cold-chillin with their moms. There was also a brandy-new calf that had been born the day before as well.

As far as the meat, we have not had any of it yet. I will definitely post on that once we bust into the stash.

Oh, and as far as posting, which I suck-diddly-uk-at, my new goal is to wow you all with at least one post a week. This should help "goal orient" stuff a bit more. Here is hoping it works!

Mommy sheep

home made goat cheese

Even though I have made mozzarella at home, for some reason I thought the process for goat cheese would be different or more difficult. Turns out it is probably easier and with ingredients that don't involve a trip to a special market providing that you have a hook-up for goat milk or it is in your regular market. I followed Kiss my Spatula's recipe pretty much to the letter, except that I doubled it. doubled for no other reason than I purchased a half gallon of goat milk rather than a quart and we were not to apt to use it in coffee or over granola.

Draining cheese looking, well, sacky

We chopped up the green parts of a handful of scallions to add into the mix for some additional zing and color. To sample my freshly made cheese I went for dates with goat cheese wrapped with prosciutto. It was really hard not to make 14 of these and cram them into my gaping maw.

English Muffins

Look at the patient muffins chillin in their rings, aw.....

Months ago on a whim I purchased some english muffin rings in the hopes of making my very own nook and cranny filled muffins. Fast forward till a week ago and the rings were still sitting lonely in the cupboard. While prepping for the previously mentioned post-christmas brunch, I figured that it would be a nice time to test out the lonely rings. I used the recipe and directions that came with the rings and as you can see they turned out pretty fluffy and giant. I wish that I had taken a better side shot since they were seriously about 2 1/2 inches tall, at least! Our guests commented that they looked more like the "grands" style of refrigerator biscuits from the grocery store. They did taste great, but not the chewy-crunchy way that a traditional english muffin tend to be. I need to experiment with a couple of different recipes. The one that came with the rins produced a rather stiff dough and I had imagined that it would have been different with a looser more slack dough with less in the rings initially. Overall they were pretty good considering it was an early morning experiment.

"working with what you got" muffins

We found ourselves the hosts of a pot-luck brunch on the day after Christmas and since we had been traveling in the days before and would be traveling in the days after our few days at home I refused to make a special trip to the market for grub. I did however find time to hit a liquor store to procure the requisite bubbly for brunch, not to be a poor host, obviously. These blueberry cottage cheese muffins were a bit of an iron-chef-to-the-interwebs creation. I based the recipe on this one that I found here. These muffins were very well received by Lady Giblet of Ridiculous Food Society fame, and that makes them a winner in my book.