Our good friends Ron and Laura had a Halloween party at their house Tuesday evening, and to celebrate, I brought an oh-so-scary eyeball cheesecake. I used just the basic recipe from Philly Cream Cheese, but substituted almond extract for the vanilla extract. I made sure to whip up the filling nice and fluffy before pouring it into my graham cracker crust. Then, after baking the cheesecake, I let it cool completely on a rack before sticking it into the fridge - this prevented the surface from cracking.
For the decoration part of the evening, I used a mini springform pan to create the iris (green, as requested by green-eyed Hubby), and displaced the green sprinkles of the iris with a small Ateco cookie cutter for the cocoa pupil. The capillaries around the iris, I heated up some strawberry jelly, cooled it down to touch, and filled a snack-size Ziploc bag. After snipping just a tiny opening at one of the corners, I was able to draw the capillaries. A yummy, scary delight!
Otherfoodwise... Wednesday night, I fixed up some mache salad and a baked-ziti stuffed roasted bell pepper. On my way home from work, I stopped by our local organic supermarket and picked up some mache - from CIA week, this is a buttery, mild baby green. Using my mandoline, I sliced a miniature bartlett pear paper thin for garnish and for a pearing (haha!) for the mache. I also made a simple viniagrette with balsamic, walnut oil, sea salt, and fresh coarse-ground pepper. This pairing was quite nice - buttery flavor of the mache paired with the sweetness of the pears and the deep sweet and tartness of the balsamic, cut by the sharp flavors of sea salt and pepper.
Stuffed bell peppers
Here's what I did...
- 1 red bell pepper, roasted on open flame (on our gas range, easily done while I got some of the other ingredients together) and sliced in half (removed stem and seeds)
- Pasta (small pieces) quick cooked to JUST al dente, since it will get cooked again in the oven (don't overcook it, otherwise, you'll end up with mushy pasta - ewwwww!)
- Pasta sauce (premade, I used Newman's Own Cabernet Marinara)
- Ricotta
- Shredded mozzarella
While the bell pepper roasted on our range, I boiled up some water, salted it, and quick-cooked the ziti to just al dente. To about 1 cup of pasta sauce, I added an equal part of ricotta. I also added about 1/8 cup of mozzarella to this mixture. Once the pasta was done, I drained it and mixed it with the tomato sauce mixture, and
Once the ziti finished cooking, I stuffed the mixture into each half of the bell pepper - no worries if it stuffs higher than the pepper. Bake this for about 15 minutes, until the cheese melts.
So that was Wednesday's dinner, and last night, Hubby decided to take an evening off from teaching (yay, I got more Hubby time!), and I brought home a Margherita pizza from Pizzaria Paradiso. And as for my lunches and breakfasts, I didn't vary too much this week - another vendor took us out to lunch yesterday, where I enjoyed some lobster ravioli; and another day, I stopped by a Dean and Deluca's for some thin-sliced charcuterie and cheese, to have with my Asian apple pear and some stoned wheat thins. Breakfasts, well, we've got a whole stash of baked goods (our kitchen island looks like some baker just deposited all the treasures of a solid weekend of baking), so each day, I had some variation of carrot cake, raspberry swirl bread, chocolate cake (yes, I have caved to having a bit of chocolate here and there), raisin bread, or baguette bread pudding.
Today, since autumn has definitely settled into the DC area, I got some Manhattan-style clam chowder for lunch, along with a Thai chicken egg roll, also from Dean and Deluca, along my walk back from having a pedicure. As for tonight - I'm planning on making some shepherd's pie, to help warm the tummy for the cooler evening!
As for the title of today's post - we went and had a visit with the OB this morning. He used this little handheld unit, to listen for the baby's heartbeat. Well, what we do know about our little guy, it's one active little piglet (since, yes, it will be born in the year of the piggy). OB took one scan, found the heartbeat for, oh, all of 3 seconds. And then, off it went. He wasn't worried - he was like, "and there it goes!" Scans again, finds the heartbeat in another area, and again, the 3 second performance and the curtain closed. Again. At this point, I was in a fit of giggles, as was Hubby. OB scans again, and after some difficulty, finds the little bugger in yet another area, and was able to get the heartbeat reading for all of 10 seconds before it decided it really didn't like this machine poking at it and sending radiowaves to it, and runs off again to a quieter area of my abdomen. The little piglet knows a good game when it sees it, and it has made a full playground of my abdomen!
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