Tag: winter

Make This Now: Cold Weather Favorites

Lauren4 Comments

With a new season comes new cooking inspiration and the return of some old favorites.

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Spiced Pumpkin Chocolate Chunk Cookies

Putting a batch of cookies in the freezer is one of the best things you can do for yourself.  It took me 26 years to learn this, but now that I know, I’m not wasting another second of this life without cookies stashed in the freezer.  These ones ooze fall flavor, and chocolate chunks — are you kidding me?!  So much better than chocolate chips!  I just take one out of the freezer at dinner time and by dessert time, they are perfectly soft.

5 Ingredient Coconut Curry

Kinda forgot how much we used to make/love this quick curry recipe.  Do yourself a favor and use full fat coconut milk because that creaminess is so worth the extra fat/calories.  This time around, I didn’t even mix in the water/cornstarch because I didn’t really want the sauce to thicken up and I’m doing that every time from now on.

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Roasted Vegetables with Nutritional Yeast

Joey and I might be the unofficial spokespeople of nutritional yeast.  I know it sounds (and looks and smells) weird, but GAH, IT IS SO DELICIOUS.  For this recipe, you roast some squash (or broccoli, but I prefer the squash) then toss it in nutritional yeast and prepare your tastebuds for pure delight.

White Bean & Hominy

We made this a handful of times last fall/winter and we love it so much!  The recipe calls for meatless sausage but that sounds ew so we just leave it out and it is so so good.  Eat a bowl + a jalapeño cheddar corn muffin for the most perfect winter dinner.

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Pumpkin Maple Pecan Granola

I’m on something like my fourth batch of this granola and I eat it EVERY SINGLE MORNING.  It’s on the softer side, so if you’re looking for big crunchy clusters, this isn’t it, but if you’re looking for fall spices and that perfect blend of oats and nuts, HERE YOU GO!  Also, you mix chopped dates into the mixture after it’s done baking and I kinda never want to eat granola without dates ever again.

United States of Meatloaf

Never thought I would wax poetic about meatloaf until I tasted this one.  If tender is a word you can use to describe meatloaf, that’s exactly what this tastes like.  Sautéing the onion and garlic before mixing it into the meat and adding a delicious glaze on top are serious game-changers.  Jeff Mauro, I love you for this recipe.

P.S. I use half beef, half pork and nix the veal, I use panko instead of Saltines and have left the sriracha out of the glaze when I made the horrible mistake of leaving the bottle at work.  It still turned out perfectly.

Ginger Cashew Chicken Curry

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I turned down an invitation to get a manicure with my sister for this chicken curry.  And it was so luxurious, decadent and flavorful that I almost cried upon first tasting it.  You know when you eat something and with every bite, you feel like yelling “HOW’S THIS SO GOOD??” This is that meal but with the added bonus of having MADE IT YOURSELF.

Kale Salad Bowl with Tahini

Alright, I’m not sure a kale salad fits in the winter comfort food category, but this one has lots of cheese, sauce and roasted sweet potatoes so it’s about as comforting as a salad can get.  Plus I just gave you a list of sweets, stews and meatloaf, so our palate could probably use a salad, right?  I ate this every day for lunch last week and would do a little salad happiness dance while eating it.  It’s that good.

Happy Winter Eating!

10 Things to Love About Winter

LaurenLeave a comment

I don’t think it’s any secret that winter is not my favorite season.  Actually, it’s not my second of third favorite either.  As someone who is always cold — seriously don’t think my feet ever defrosted after getting into bed the other night — winter is my worst nightmare and I cope by keeping the heater on in my office 24/7 and declaring that “I hate it here!  I’m moving!” every time I have to go outside.  BUT, in an attempt to be more positive, I’ve come across a bunch of things that I actually do like about winter.  I think they’ll keep me going until April when spring weather finally shows up.

10 Things to Love About Winter

1. Award Shows!

Bet you didn’t see that one coming.  I’m sorry, but I love it all.  I love heading to the movie theater on a cold winter day.  I love talking Joey’s ear off about whatever movie we just saw.  I love reading what the critics and other moviegoers had to say.  I love a red carpet full of actors in crazy (sometimes good crazy, sometimes bad crazy) outfits.  I love rooting for the movies I liked and against the ones I didn’t.  And I love overzealously tweeting about it all.

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2. Comfort food.

Fact: winter makes hot oatmeal taste better, increased coffee consumption acceptable and constant soup-making totally normal.  Joey loves soup more than a normal human being probably should so this time of year is his jam.  I’m happy to oblige on the soup-eating spree because there’s no denying that nothing tastes better than hot soup on a cold night.

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3. Valentine’s Day.

Okay, call me a sucker but I love V-Day.  I think it probably has something to do with how I was raised to believe this was a big and important holiday. When my sister and I were little, my mom went all out with big helium balloons in our rooms when we woke up and Christmas-worthy presents — no joke, one year I got a car — so she’s pretty much ruined me for life 😛  I also seem to be impervious to bad moods on Valentine’s Day… knock on wood.

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4. Winter Birthdays.

I wonder if post-Christmas babies like having their birthdays in the dead of winter after all the holiday hoopla has passed.  I mean, I still enjoy celebrating them.  My dad and my nephew have birthdays in January and February, respectively and I definitely like the idea of having celebrations to look forward to once we’re finally back to that working-all-5-days-of-the-workweek thing.  We took my dad to True Food Kitchen on Monday night for his birthday and he loved it.  Who doesn’t?

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5. Denver Restaurant Week

I hate that DRW and Valentine’s Day can’t coincide, as it’s hard to justify going out for two expensive dinners two weeks in a row.  And yet, I somehow to manage justifying it every year.  I’m about to pop over to the DRW website now to stalk to the restaurant menus.  If you don’t have a restaurant week where you live, it’s 7 days where a bunch of restaurants offer a set multi-course menu for a set price (ours used to be $52.80, the altitude of Denver, for 2 people but it just changed to $30/person).  Picking just one (or 2 :D) restaurant out of the list is an agonizing decision every single year.

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6. Winter TV shows are back.

Season 3 of Girls premiered last Sunday.  Did you watch?  What did you think?  As much as I loved the first two seasons, I’m not so sure about this one.  Maybe my expectations were too high but I didn’t find it as funny as I usually do.  It’s a week later and I haven’t quoted a single line.  Shameless on the other hand, never disappoints.  Seriously love that show so much.

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7. The Super Bowl

Yeah, I really just said that.  I honestly couldn’t care less about the actual game — although I think I’m required to care if the Broncos make it — but the food, beer (or jello shots!), commercials and halftime show are what I live for.  The past two years we’ve thrown a party but this year’s shindig is still up in the air.  If worse comes to worse, I’ll make myself some game time snacks and watch with Joey.  Oh and actually be able to hear the commercials instead of listening to a room full of guys arguing about the game.

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8. Mardi Gras.

Okay, so Colorado Mardi Gras celebrations aren’t exactly like New Orleans Mardi Gras celebrations (read: the only people celebrating are college kids who will use any excuse to get drunk), but I still look forward a surprise King Cake in the mail, watching live feed of Bourbon street online and cooking a Cajun meal in honor of the holiday.  Plus it’s the one time a year when I can wear a string of obnoxiously colored beads to work and feel cool.

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9. Colorado sunsets.

Fact: Colorado has the best sunsets.  I know you probably thought your state had the best, but you’re wrong.  Sorry.  Although I love summer and those sunsets are very pretty, they’ve got nothing on winter.  It probably also has something to do with the fact that daylight savings means the sun is setting as I’m driving home from work, so those vibrant blues, pinks and purples are just BAM! right in my face.  I went on Instagram yesterday to find 3 pictures of the sunset in a row.  It was pretty breathtaking though 🙂

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10. It makes spring feel that much better.

When the snow finally stops coming (although in Colorado, there could be snow all the way up to May…), warm weather becomes more the norm and bare trees are replaced by big colorful blossoms, it’s practically impossible to be in a bad mood.

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Happy Friday, all!