Nesting: The Living Room

I haven't shared too many photos of our home on here yet because it's still a work in progress & we still want to need to get permission to paint. But day by day our little home becomes a little more us and a little more lived in. 

Last week we put the finishing touch on our living area. 

Eventually we'll make a big purchase of buying new couches or a nice chair, but for now two slip-covered old Ethan Allen couches are serving us just fine. This area is our neutral oasis in a room with green accent walls and navy borders (did I mention we reallly want to paint?) But it's a neutral enough backdrop that if one day we do throw in an accent color (like a different blanket or pillow), everything will be able to coexist. And lately I haven't been drawn to colors so much as to patterns and textures. Hence the chevrons, stripes, checkers, baskets, wood and wool. I think patterns and textures offer a happy compromise between a decor that is too girly or too masculine. If you're interested in throwing some patterns into your own life, here's a peak at the making of our living room.

pillows . rug . throw

One Ingredient ||| Three Ways

If you were around a few weeks ago you remember I made way too much food for a certain football game watch party. Well part of that spread was a 5-lb. pork butt that we cooked in the slow cooker for some carnitas nachos. One baking sheet of nachos proved to be more than enough for us, so we had a lot of shredded pork left over. One week later, I was happy proud to say we used the rest of the pork in three different dishes, making my resourceful and creative heart very happy (not to mention our stomachs).

So first comes the cooking of the pork. We altered this beer braised pork recipe from Bon Appetit so we could cook it in a slow cooker instead of in a pot, which really just meant increasing the liquid & cooking time. We cooked it on low for about six hours until the pork fell off the bone (our pork butt wasn't boneless). At this point, remove the meat from the pot and shred with a fork. Store in a container until it's time to make one, two or all three of the following:

1. CARNITAS NACHOS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Reheat desired amount of carnitas in a pan. Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray. Layer tortilla chips, carnitas, 1 can rinsed black beans, 1 chopped onion and shredded cheese (we grated sharp cheddar and Monterrey Jack). Bake 20-25 minutes, or until cheese is melted. Serve with guacamole, salsa, sour cream or pico de gallo.

2. BBQ PORK SANDWICHES + SWEET POTATO FRIES
Place desired amount of carnitas in a pan on medium heat. Pour in your favorite barbeque sauce (for us, that's KC Masterpiece Original) and a few tablespoons of water so the sauce doesn't burn and the meat doesn't dry out. Serve on toasted burger buns alongside some sweet potato fries.

3. ASIAN PORK with NOODLES and SUGAR SNAP PEAS
(I adapted a recipe from Real Simple to be able to sub in a lot of the specialty ingredients I bought a few weeks ago for these chicken lettuce wraps. My resourceful heart was the happiest about this one.)  Place desired amount of carnitas in a pan on medium heat. Pour in 1-2 tbs. soy sauce, 1 tsp. chili garlic sauce, 1 tsp. chopped fresh ginger, 1 tbs. mirin and 1 tbs. garlic rice vinegar. Meanwhile, bring a pot of water to a boil and add udon noodles. Cook 4-5 minutes, adding sugar snap peas during the last minute of cooking. Strain and combine in pan with pork. Toss to coat noodles and sugar snap peas. At this point you can add more soy sauce if needed.

My Must List: Art to See

Lately I've found myself a little uninspired. With so much free time on my hands right now I could be creating things left and right—writing, art, home decor, photo albums ... the list goes on and on. And yet when it comes down to it, it seems like the only thing that has my creative juices flowing these days is cooking. Which is great and I love it, but the lack of other creative outlets is catching up with me. For example, I'm a little embarrassed to say how little art I've consumed in the past few months. Being in a new city with plenty of museums and galleries to explore really gives me no excuse. Just in the past few days alone there are so many art exhibitions I've read about that have me itching to be in a gallery getting lost inside a new work of art.

Here are a few of my must-see exhibitions for this spring (added bonuses are that two involve traveling ;) ).

1) The Progress of Love @ The Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts (St. Louis) *as well as the Menil in Houston
2) Impressionism, Fashion, and Modernity @ The Metropolitan Museum (New York)
3) Picasso Black and White @ The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Recipe Intimidation

As much as I love cooking, I get a little anxiety from overly complicated recipes. I tend to get easily worked up about difficult steps and techniques. Only recently have I started to grasp what my mom teaches me whenever I cook with her: the recipe is just a guide ... make your own rules and ad lib as you go! Her version of a recipe is "a little bit of this, a cup of that (but not a measuring cup, one of those little cups we use for coffee, you know?)"

Case in point: One time in college I decided to make her delicious coffee whiskey semifreddo. I called home to ask for the recipe (she does actually have a "recipe" written down for this). My dad read the recipe to me and I followed it to a T. Later that night I pulled it out of the freezer and served it up to all of our friends. Reactions: "Wow, this is strong!" "V, you don't like to drink, but you sure like it in your dessert!" The recipe called for a cup of whiskey, okay? When I told my mom how much stronger than usual it tasted she said, "No, not a measuring cup. One of those little coffee cups we use for espresso. You know?" Lesson learned. 

Anyway, this is all an extreme tangent to my initial point. Which is this: I shy away from difficult recipes, but I'm learning to loosen up. So I bit the bullet and made beef bourguignon Friday night. I wanted to turn on Julie & Julia and relive the joys and agonies of cooking Julia Child's boeuf bourguignon recipe. Instead, I researched a few recipes and chose a simple yet pretty authentic version. I admittedly shied away from Julia's original or even the million-step Martha Stewart recipe. There's no crime in making the recipe work for you.

A friendly heads up: The prep & cooking time for this is about 3.5 hours. If, like me, you get started on this recipe later than you planned, which means a late dinner, appease your hungry husband/roommate/friends/guests with some French-inspired munchies: bread, brie cheese and grapes. And wine. That always helps.

And if your husband brings home beautiful tulips, all the better.

Beef Bourguignon with Roasted Potatoes

Adapted from Jenna Weber's recipe on PBS Food

Prep + cooking time: Approx. 3.5 hours // Servings: 4

What you'll need:

1 1/2 lbs. stew meat, cubed

1/4 cup flour

2 tbs. vegetable oil

1 tbs. butter

8 oz. bag of pearl onions, peeled with ends cut off

2 carrots, chopped (or in my case, a handful of baby carrots, chopped)

3 celery stalks, chopped

3 cloves of garlic, minced

3 cups of dry red wine (I used Leese-Fitch's Pinot Noir; one bottle=3 cups)

1/3 tsp. dry thyme leaf

2 bay leaves

10 oz. sliced mushrooms

4 small yellow potatoes

1 tbs. olive oil

salt and pepper

What you'll do:

Use a paper towel to pat the meat dry before coating in flour. In a gallon Ziploc bag combine flour and pinch of salt and pepper. Add stew meat and toss to fully coat. Meanwhile, heat 1 tbs. vegetable oil and butter in a dutch oven or large pot on medium heat. {Confession: another reason I've been wanting to make this dish is to be able to use our beautiful Le Creuset}. When butter and oil are sizzling add meat and brown on all sides, approx. 4 minutes per side. Remove meat and place on a plate.

Add the rest of the vegetable oil to the pot and add the onions, celery and carrots. Saute the veggies, adding garlic after 5 minutes. Add a pinch of salt and cook until the carrots are tender, approx. 5 more minutes. Add thyme and stir.

At this point, put the meat back in the pot with the veggies. Pour in wine and add bay leaves. Allow to boil and then lower the heat to low. Partially cover the pot and simmer for 3 hours, or until wine has reduced into a thick sauce. Stir occasionally to make sure meat does not stick to bottom. 

For the potatoes:

When 45 minutes of cooking time remain, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cut the potatoes into eight pieces each and place on a foil-lined baking sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast for 35-45 minutes, tossing occasionally. 

When 15 minutes of cooking time remain, heat 1 tbs. of olive oil in a pan and saute the mushrooms for 10 minutes. Stir into the beef for remaining minutes of cooking.

Remove bay leaves and serve potatoes alongside beef.

Bon appétit!

Snow, dogs & football ( + food, always food)

This weekend was a great reminder that even though we're in a new city, building a new little life together, familiar comforts are close by, too. Like old friends and game nights and unplanned snow-ball fights and cute dogs and delicious food.

In the middle of game night with Jim and Sam on Saturday, a sudden dump of snow beckoned us to head outside and frolic in the snow. There were snow angels made, hill sledding, snow-man building and snow ball fights. Ah, to be young and carefree. 

Sunday was a fun-packed day, starting with the Purina Beggin Pet Parade in the historic Soulard neighborhood. My heart could barely handle the abundance of beautiful dogs.

A man rigged a bicycle for his two dobermans to ride. What can your dog do?

And then I saw the biggest rabbit/hare/mutant animal I've ever seen. Whoa!

Lastly, Sunday would not have been complete without a Super Bowl shindig. We hosted a few friends over at our house, and I learned that I have terrible skills at estimating the appropriate amount of food for any given group. Let's just say we have a lot of leftovers in our fridge and meal-planning for the week was a breeze!

We made some prop bets to keep the game more interesting:

... will Beyonce's hair be straight, curly or crimped?

... will her top be black, gold or silver?

... what color will the Gatorade be?

and then there were game-related bets which I completely got wrong. So I ultimately lost. Surprise, surprise. 

I tried a few new recipes, but the homemade soft pretzels I made were by far my favorite! I wish I made extra (the one thing that wasn't leftover) so I had some handy in the freezer to boil and bake on a whim. If you like soft pretzels half as much as we do, try this easy and delicious recipe.

A great weekend all around.

On the Menu: Super Bowl edition

We spent some time today prepping food for tomorrow's Super Bowl food fest. We're excited to have a few friends over to watch the game, make prop bets, laugh at commercials and, most importantly, eat tasty food. 

We're trying out a few new recipes for the occasion. The recipe for the soft pretzels was a Pinterest find, and beer-braised carnitas were featured in this month's Bon Appetit. Today, Jonathan cooked the pork in the slow cooker to get a head start on the nachos for tomorrow. 

(We're enjoying playing around with Twitter's new video app, Vine. The app lets you shoot a short video—6 seconds—continuously or out of various shorter clips . It seems like it could be a cool tool for cooking tutorials.)

I also made the dough for the pretzels and formed them to freeze overnight. Oh, how I hope they turn out tasty because you know how much we love a good soft pretzel!

Happy game-watching, everyone! May the best team win and may Beyonce sing beautifully.