Greek Chicken Stew with Cauliflower

I'm sick, y'all.  At least I was sick when I decided to make this dish.  Now, I'm on the recovery bandwagon.

One of the overarching reasons I decided to go with a chicken stew this week is that I was really feeling run down by the flu.  The flu! After years of only experiencing colds during the winter months, the flu bug finally bit me.  And it bit hard! I was incapable of making it to work for two whole days this week, and that's never happened in the 6 years I've had this job.  I could barely even make it to the next room.  It was bad.  So a few days after I was able to move around freely, I conjured up this beauty.

I really don't make stews a whole lot.  But I dug this recipe up from the NYTimes and decided I needed to make this for myself.  What better way to provide comfort than through food?  That's pretty much status quo for me.  Don't act surprised.

Black Swan: A Review

This post.  Uhhhh, yeah.  This. Post.

I had the best intentions.  I swear to you that I did.  I wanted to do another review post, complete with beautiful (albeit iPhone) pics.  I stepped into Black Swan and was swept away with the beautiful decor, the dark wood, and the homey atmosphere.  Though I've never actually been in an English pub, I would imagine that it looks something like this place.  I want to live here.  I took lots of pictures.

Get ready for the pretty pictures...

Go!

Spinach Pie

I may or may not have completely skipped Thanksgiving recipes on this blog.  So little time and so many things to do.  Sorry friends, but I'm just going to twist things around and say that I was being a rebel.  This may also be known as "Oops.  I didn't get around to planning that far in advance."  Sorry.

But we press on...

You know those recipes you really want to make, but you keep putting off for some reason or another?  Yeah, I have those.  In fact, I have quite a few of them.  Most of those recipes involve yeast or phyllo dough.

Recently, I saw that one of those recipes that I have a love/hate relationship with, spanikopita, was remade by Beth M of Budget Bytes. Spanikopita is typically the second thing I order when I sit down at a Greek restaurant.  (Clearly, I order the saganaki, or flaming cheese first.  Seriously.  The cheese is set on fire.  You have to love it.  Hot, flaming cheese. Stop it now.)  I've always wanted to replicate the spanikopita I get at restaurants, but each recipe I took a look at required me to work with those dreaded phyllo sheets.  Nope.  Thanks.  Bye.

Then Beth turned things around with a single blog post.  I was introduced to the beautiful spinach pie.  It makes use of a puff pastry sheet, frozen spinach, and lots of cheese.  Yeah, let's do it!

Pizza Hummus

I'm in the middle of thinking about cleaning out my pantry.

I tend to have great epiphanies in the grocery store and I end up purchasing canned vegetables that I just KNOW I will use within the next week because I have all these amazing recipe ideas that I want to try out.

Now let's fast forward to about 10 months later, when that same can of garbanzo beans is still staring me in the face. Hmmmm...why did I buy this again?

Interestingly enough, I was browsing my old Food Network magazines the other day (no power in the aftermath of Sandy means you look through a lot of magazines) when I stumbled upon a writeup for three variations of hummus.  Jackpot!  Though I do love hummus, there are just so many other snacks out there that I want to try.  I also want to blog and share those recipes with you.  Truth.  I honestly could only get away with blogging about plain old regular hummus once.  Once and that's it.  Let that bad boy go.  So you can see why I was so excited to find other hummus options.

I had a really hard time picking between the three recipes, but I ended up choosing the pizza-flavored dip since everyone loves pizza.  By everyone, I mean me.  I won't tell you about the other hummus flavors just yet, because I want to make and blog about them later.  It's a surprise!

Apple Grilled Cheese

What do you do when you're stuck indoors in 50 degree weather and with no power?  You make quick and easy comfort meals.  And who would blame me if those meals happen to include bread, melted cheese, and apples?

Hey, I need to get my daily serving of fruit from somewhere, right?

Truth be told, I was attempting to channel Jessica's Caramel Apple Grilled Cheese which looks so so scrumptious.  However, since my internet options were severely limited and I also didn't have a source of power with which to charge my phone or tablet, I decided to just wing this recipe.  Apparently, that meant I missed an in-your-face key ingredient that may also be a part of the recipe name: caramel.  I have a jar of salted caramel just begging to be dipped into.  So yeah.  That may have been a slight fail on my part, but I think we can overlook that.  What really matters is that this sandwich made for an awesome and comforting lunch.  It was super simple to assemble and in no time I was sitting down to enjoy it.

Rosemary Pork Roast

Heyyyy!  If you haven't already heard, I weathered Hurricane Sandy about two weeks ago.  And while I emerged unscathed, I can't exactly say the same for my frozen meals (or the town of Hoboken, but that's a really, really long and sad story).  The freezer is pretty much empty now.  Sigh...I hate to throw away food but I've had food poisoning once and I don't actually feel guilty enough to want to risk getting food poisoning again.  I'll take a pass on that, thanks.

With this month's Secret Recipe Club's assignment, I knew I would need to start stocking up my freezer once again.  I figured I'd start with meat.  It's so versatile that it can be eaten alone, on a sandwich, with sides to make a full meal, etc...  This month's assignment gave me the opportunity to make something from Miz Helen's Country Cottage.

Miz Helen's a cool lady.  I can tell.  She has a ton of recipes for me to choose from, but of course my wandering eye strayed to a rosemary pork roast.  Who doesn't love rosemary?  It's one of my favorite herbs and I could eat it all day.  Don't make me prove it to you.  Let's get into this!

Sabrina's Cafe: A Review

I apologize for my absence the last week or so. You see, I've been busy. I live in Hoboken and we sort of got hit pretty hard with the hurricane and storm surges. So yes, my apologies.

And now I'm back. I'm back with the review that I promised you about a week ago. There's this place in Philadelphia called Sabrina's Cafe. It's off the beaten path, but you wouldn't be able to tell that from the amount of people standing outside waiting.