Saturday night we made some fish tacos for the first time. I’m not a huge fan, normally, but these turned out delicious!

We used fresh cod which David seasoned spicily and then grilled out on the barbecue. There’s some leftover fish, and since it was surprisingly sturdy I’m going to try to smoke it!

We also grilled up some red bell peppers, and made some caramelized onions (though I would have preferred fresh).

Top it all off with some sour cream, salsa/hot sauce, and Tillamook cheddar. The tortillas we got were corn, but I definitely prefer the texture of flour. We served ours alongside a cabbage + blue cheese + dried cranberry + sunflower seed salad (not pictured).

I love how easy pasta is to come up with delicious food in so little time! Today I’m home for lunch, and even with a not-as-well-stocked-as-usual pantry/fridge I still came up with a pretty tasty meal. This dish has a fantastic blend of sweet, spice, and smoke.

This personal sized pasta dish contains (roughly; I need to start measuring the things I want to post here!):

• 1/3 cup elbow noodles (uncooked measurement)
• quarter of an apple, cut into small chunks (I used a locally grown Fuji apple, my fave!)
• 1/4 cup shredded smoked salmon
• 1 tbs olive oil
• pinch of Kosher salt
• Aleppo pepper and dried parsley to taste

After cooking the noodles, just toss it all together and enjoy with a tall glass of iced tea! (Or whatever drink hits your fancy)

Was productive! Well, overall. I slept quite a bit to be fair.

Did a little work on decorating the bathroom we re-did. We’d wanted photos for the walls but are having trouble finding stuff we like for the frames. David had a great idea to turn the 11x14 frame into a chalkboard. So, we spent a few hours making a chalkboard. Here’s a preview!

We’re actually going to flip the ledge the other direction to give it a more country look, and I want to buy a little vase to put on the end to keep filled with fresh flowers. I’ll post more on the chalkboard making process later in the week once it’s all set up properly.

I also prepped some salmon that our friend Adam brought over to smoke for his folks. (Of course we also did the flat bread I posted about earlier!) Now I need to find a good ribs recipe; I have a slab of ribs in my freezer to smoke for them, too!

Sunday we watched the hockey game (see previous…) and I smoked the salmon. And the sun came out!

Look! Sun! Proof! And, really, how much happier does my smoker look in the sun? Can’t wait for summer.

This time I borrowed my folks’ vacuum sealer to keep everything as fresh as possible. I hope Adam’s folks enjoy it!

Hopefully everyone had a great weekend as well! My goal is to do at least one fun, new crafty thing this week. We’ll see.

While I was at work yesterday, Davy came up with a yummy flat bread recipe. Tonight for dinner we made more of it, and stuffed them.

Here’s the basic recipe; we don’t usually measure, or follow measurements strictly so these are all approximations. The wheat gluten flour can be substituted for more regular flour; we added it in so the bread would have enough protein to complete the meal without too much stuffing; I would highly suggest Bob’s Red Mill for this.

Basic bread:
2 cups flour
1/2 cup wheat gluten flour
1/2 cup crushed peanuts
1/4 cups brown sugar
1/2 tsp yeast

Seasoning:
1/8 cup parsley
2 generous pinches basil
2 generous pinches kosher salt
1/4 cup Aleppo pepper
1/4 tsp white pepper

Note: This seasoning makes the bread spicy! Good for savory pairings as we did, but also with some sweet strawberry jam which I had for dessert!

We crushed the peanuts with a mini food processor until the nuts were crushed but not yet turning into peanut butter.

We mixed this dough with our stand mixer. Put all ingredients into the mixer bowl. Start running the mixer and slowly add in water, about 3/4 cup water to every 1 cup flour.

Mix until it looks doughy. The dough should be a bit wet looking.

Toss some flour (1/4-1/2 cup) on a mix surface; we used a glass dish to keep everything from being super messy. Knead the dough until it forms a more normal dough, then divide into 3 balls.

Loosely cover with a towel or cellophane leaving a pocket for it to rise. Let sit 20 minutes; we didn’t let it rise longer because instead of baking this bread, we’re going to pan fry it!

Split each of the balls in half so you have 6 pieces of dough. Flatten each one, lightly flouring the outside. You want the bread to be as flat as possible.

Lightly oil one side, oil of your choice. Davy used safflower oil on his and I used olive oil on mine. That top shot is Davy’s stuffing, a delicious mix of hot red peppers and Fuji apples minced together; he also added mozzarella and cheddar cheese. I used salami and mozzarella in mine.

Fold the ends in over the stuffing and re-flatten the bread. If you’re not doing a filling, fold the bread in half but DO oil the inside so that the bread will split open once cooked.

In a cast iron skillet over medium-low heat with a little oil, cook the bread a few minutes on each side, flipping so that each side gets cooked twice.

We dipped ours in bleu cheese. Yum!!

Also for Valentine’s David and I made ravioli from scratch. Without a pasta rolling attachment for our mixer they ended up a bit thick but still delicious!

We used a basic dough recipe and used our mixer to knead the dough. Don’t really bake so we rarely use the mixer, but we’ll definitely have to get a pasta attachment and use it more.

After the dough rose, we flattened ‘em out, stuffed ‘em with sausage, and turned them into cute hearts. It was a bit difficult to do without a roller, but we made do with a jar and a pan. Definitely getting a roller, at the least, when we make these again.

Because of the thick dough we didn’t trust the ravioli to boil so we first seared and then pan braised them.

The sauce was an improvised cream and pepper sauce which we left simmering throughout the whole ravioli making process.

Served with toast and wine. Yum!