Spaetzle

After too many years of ignoring our blog, I figured it was time to give it some love. First the update we are doing well! Life is good and we are expecting our first child in March 2014.

Other than that as always we are out to eat good food.

This weekend we were craving German food. Bub made some tasty braised beef and I took on Spaetzle. 

I have to rewind and tell you about my first experience cooking spaetzle. The first attempt I went into it a bit cocky, I thought "hey I'm 1/2 German I can do this". Little did I know how underprepared I was! I used almost every thing in the kitchen that had a hole in it. And made a huge mess. The first round turned out tasty but not to my standard. I knew something wasn't right and making spaetzle couldn't be THAT hard.

Fast forward to last night, I was much better prepared we had purchased a spaetzle tool. I'm sure there is a fancy name but that's what I'm calling it. It worked like a dream! After looking at a couple recipes again I went to my German roots and channeled my ancestors and said I could do this. And I DID! With less mess and less time. It actually looked and tasted like I knew what I was doing! 

Now I won't lie the picture does this meal NO justice, but it was very tasty and enjoyable and cured our hankering for German food.

So I give to you my very first Spaetzle recipe.

Nikki's German Spaetzle

1C. Flour

1/4 C. half and half or you can use milk your choice

2 eggs

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

A few turns of the pepper mill

1/4 tsp. onion powder

1/8 tsp garlic powder

1/4 tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. butter

Parsley (optional)

Mix dry ingredients together.

Alternate between adding egg and half and half.

Mix till smooth.

Let sit at room temperature for 15 minutes.

While waiting for batter, salt and boil water.

Find spaetzle tool of your choice.

Once boiling add spaetzle dough to tool. This needs to be done in batches your dough will cook on the tool. Let dough drop into water and cook in water about 30 seconds or until it floats. Remove with hand strainer and put in larger colander.

Repeat until all the dough is used.

Once spaetzle is made let sit in colander for at least 15 mins.

When ready add butter to pan (I used the one the water was boiling in). Once butter is nice and hot toss in spaetzle and cook for about 5 mins until brown bits form on spaetzle pieces. Remove add parsley if doing so.

Enjoy!

Notes: This makes a small portion. Best to double the recipe.

Road Trip #1

Wow how July has flown by. Summer Vacation for the two of us is right around the bend. In a few days we are starting off on our first ever Road Trip.

We will be driving from San Jose, CA and ending in Seattle, WA. The plan is to take HWY 1 all the way up. Each day we will drive about 3 hours per day, stop, then explore the town.

We will also be visiting some family. In Portland, OR we will be having dinner with the OR Hoff's and then we will be joining the Casey Clan for a wedding in Seattle! We will end our trip in Seattle and then fly home. The luxury of renting a car for this drive.

We are going to try our hardest to blog along the way, but who knows what will happen. All I know is we are both ready to ditch our schedules and busy lives and hit the road.

Garden Time Again

Wow how time just really slips by. I'm not one to dwell on the past, so on with the blog. Bub and I have been super busy with life and trying to continue to make our home everything we want it to be.



It is now our tradition that May is the month where we over turn our garden and start he summer garden. It looks so bare and sad right now. We over turned our garden about 3 weeks ago. But the crazy CA weather is preventing any real growth. So we wait.

We really learned a lot after last years garden. While last year was super successful, as novice farmers we need to keep fine tuning our methods. This year we attempted to combat the squirrels a bit more. All of our seedlings have cages around them. We also refined our watering system to be more efficient and less wasteful. We also bought some heavy duty tomato cages, last year our plants were so big they made the standard cages tip over. We also took the time this year to make real garden signs. Last year we used little plastic ones and they were an epic failure.

While we wait for our garden to begin to mature and produce, it is nice to look around our yard and see all the major changes we have made. It is also nice to see that our roses and various flowers are blooming and just so dang beautiful.

Are The Bubs alive?

Wow, it really has been a long time since I've blogged. Of course we are still eating and doing all of the fun food things we enjoy. Life has been crazy. With both of us working full time and myself in Grad School, life has gone back to full speed. Funny enough, though life has been crazy and non-stop we have made it a point to find time in our lives for the little things we enjoy.

This year we have our first ever actual garden. We are growing crookneck squash, pumpkins, green beans, tomatoes, peppers, and a few failed attempts with corn and strawberries. Our garden allows us to check out of the hectic Silicon Valley and bond with the world we love. So I do truely apologize for the lack of entries. Hopefully we can find time to finish out this summer with many of the wonderful things we have been growing, cooking and eating.

Welcome Chance!

I wanted to formally welcome our newest family member, Chance. He is a male read eared slider (RES) who I've known for about 3-4 years. We rescued him from my work. He was living in a classroom that seemed to have lost interest in him. RES's are a lot of work!

I first met Chance when I worked in his classroom. I was his care provider for quite sometime. He's who inspired me to get Molly. I moved on and he stayed behind. With the building of the pond it was time to move him into a better situation. So, on April 30, 2009 he moved into our life. I introduce the world to Chance Perotti.

Chance is a lot smaller and a bit more unsociable than Molly. He has very large claws, different markings, and a pointed face. It's nice to be able to tell them apart. I'd be a horrible mother of twins! After being with for a few weeks he is doing quite well. I even caught him basking with Molly one day.

Awww look it's there first meeting. I turned off the pump so I could see how they reacted to each other. She's HUGE compared to him. I think that Molly McButterPants remains queen of the pond. The look on Molly's face is priceless.

Whip Cream Adventures

Hey sicko's first off get your minds out of the gutters. Maybe I should have titled it stabilized whip cream adventures. Enough of that, let's get our minds on food! A couple of weeks ago was Mario's 35th birthday. We had a great weekend of celebrating in a beautiful hotel on the California coast. Unfortunately, the big day actually fell on Monday.

Being the loving wife I am, I had to make sure he got to blow out his candles. I ran to our local grocery store to whip up a box of cake mix. On the way I called my mom and told her all about what I was going to make. I told her how Bub had said that his favorite cake was chocolate cake with whip cream frosting. And how the "I can do that" light went off in my head. As we talked about my plan, and she said the statement that sent my brain into a tale spin, "are you going to stabilize it?" I had no clue what the hell she was talking about.

The more we talked I realized she did know what she was talking about. Mom filled me in on how by not stabilizing my whip cream that it would not be stiff and it would be a watery mess by the second day. In a panic I asked her what I needed to do? She informed me to get the ingredients I was already going to get and to pick up some gelatin. As soon as I got home I hit the computer to make sure mom wasn't crazy . And wow she wasn't, I found that there is a pretty standard method of how to stabilize whip cream.

I was able to take this standard recipe and go from this:

To this beauty:

It was perfect and lasted for a good 3-4 days tasting just as good as it had the first night I made it. I have to say that 1. this will be my go to whip cream recipe for umm probably the rest of our lives and 2. Mom you were right (she likes to hear that)!

The final product for Mario's birthday baked treats were cupcakes and I also had tried making cupcakes in cones (which Bub loved). Adorable and perfect for kids. But not so great the second day, the moisture of the cupcake destroys the cone.

Fresh Finds: Pork Medallions with Grapes in Pomegranate Sauce

The other week we found ourselves in a conversation about our cookbooks and the need to try more new recipes. It started out as a conversation about stepping out of our comfort zone and dipping into the different flavor combos out there. So we decided that we would cook at least one new recipe a week. We decided that there are few rules, the two rules being it has to be new and not our own recipe!

We were so fired up about this idea we dove right into it! I thought it'd be great to take a picture of the cookbook and a pic of the final product. I know it's silly but I really wanted to see how closely we could get our dish to look like the dish in the book. I'm aware that not all books have pics but I thought it'd be fun for the ones that do.

Our first dish is brought to you from Jacque Papan's More Fast Food My Way 2008 book. I grew up watching this man on PBS and was so excited to get this book. We settled on a Pork Medallions with Grapes in Pomegranate Sauce. I think we were both a bit apprehensive to try this dish at first. Eventually it sunk in that pork and fruit tend to go together quite well.

Overall we agreed that the combination of flavors were yummy and the texture of the grapes were really enjoyable. I had expected the sauce to be a little thicker but then again I'm a gravy loving girl. Mario overall expected the dish to have a lot stronger flavor.

In the end it was a little disappointing dish. I think we expected some amazing flavors to pop due to the ingredient list and they were just very subtle. Now don't get me wrong we did enjoy this dish, it just probably won't get made again. I had it for lunch the next day and I think the sitting over night did it some justice. But we all know things taste better the second day.