More blueberries

We had more blueberries than we needed for the salmon recipe I made earlier in the weekend so I got out Granny's Muffin House Cookbook and found a a recipe to use them up.

We had breakfast-for-dinner on Monday, so these made for a nice pre-dinner snack, and a dessert, too.

I really should make better use of this cookbook. 

Salmon and Blueberries

We took Friday off to turn the three-day holiday weekend into a four-day mini vacation at the beach house. Friday's dinner was a salmon recipe we found on the New York Times cooking page.  It wouldn't have occurred to me to put blueberries on salmon, but this was delicious. The blueberries were cooked in a sauce made with honey, shallots, white wine, and vinegar. The recipe called for white wine vinegar, but I happened to have blueberry vinegar from Lebherz Oil and Vinegar Emporium in my cupboard so I used that instead. We baked the fish a bit longer than the recipe calls for - after 10 minutes it still seemed way to undercooked, so we left it in the oven for a few minutes. This looked and tasted great with a lot of colors, textures, and flavors.

Although we cooked with white wine, it paired nicely with a Malbec. We will definitely have this again.

Chicken Paprikash on Noodles

Still on my own until tonight when James returns from Costa Rica, last night I used a single chicken breast to make a variation of this recipe from the New York Times Cooking page. The only significant change I made was that I didn't include the red and green peppers.

This was easy and relatively quick (the 30 minutes indicated on the recipe page was exactly accurate). It was filling, tasty, and also made enough for me to have the leftovers for dinner this evening.

Stir fry with chicken and peanuts

Our child had some friends over at the beach house while visiting for Christmas. They made a meal featuring rice noodles, but didn't use them all. This New York Times recipe then appeared on my Facebook feed, and since I also had some peanuts, and still had some chives (from when I made the Dutch Baby) at the beach house it felt like kismet.

The recipe calls for ground chicken, but I had a boneless skinless breast, so I diced it up and adapted the recipe accordingly. I was also bereft of sesame oil and used olive oil instead. I added some peas just because it seemed like it needed something green. It was rather simple, and a fine, filling meal that wasn't too much work for one person.

Two Skillet dishes from New York Times Cooking

The days between Christmas and New Year's Day are slow-paced for us, and generally a time to relax. We spent a few days at our near-the-beach house and took some time to try some new dishes. Normally when we are at the beach house we have waffles for breakfast, but since we were there for four days we didn't want them all four mornings. James made them for the first two, and then I was in charge of breakfast. I found this recipe for Dutch Baby with Bacon and Runny Camembert from the New York Times Cooking pages. I don't think we'd ever had Camembert cheese before, and apparently no one at the deli counter at our local grocery store had ever even heard of it. James googled it and discovered that it was a type of brie, so he started looking around where the brie was located. This method worked and he brought home a nice 8 oz. wheel, just like the recipe called for. I followed the recipe pretty closely, with the exception that I only used seven eggs instead of eight, since that was all I had. This was both visually appealing, and really tasty. It made enough for the both of the remaining breakfasts.

The second recipe I tried was an easy skillet dinner Cheesy Spicy Black Bean Bake. This was quick and only the skillet was needed, no additional pots, pans, or bowls.

Spicy pairs well with sparkling, so we enjoyed a bottle of Blancs de Noirs from Westport Rivers Winery with this.