Chicken freakin-fried steak

Derek, I'm so sorry you missed this:

Even though we had mashed potatoes as part of our "meat-n-three," I think you would've enjoyed our meal last night:


But now it's all gone:

Pretzel Experiment Results

Gropius and I concluded our pretzel experiment today. I took both out of the freezer this morning and left them in the fridge while we were gone. This evening, we finished preparing them and compared the results. Just to re-cap:

Last weekend, I made half a batch of Martha Stewart's pretzel bites and divided my dough into two parts. One part I cut into little bites and boiled before IQF'ing them (Individual Quick Frozen) and putting them in a Zip-Loc. The other half I cut into bites, IQF'd and froze without boiling them first.



So, I put the pre-boiled bites on a baking sheet, brushed them with egg white, sprinkled some kosher salt on 'em and baked them until golden. The others, I boiled then baked.

Here are the results:

The one on the left is from the boiled/baked this evening batch and the one on the right was boiled before it was frozen. Gropius and I agreed that the boiled/frozen/baked batch definitely had better texture than the frozen/boiled/baked batch. So, the conclusion was when preparing to have a stash of pretzels in the freezer, boil them before freezing them so you just have to pop them in the oven (although, unfortunately, I think you have to defrost them first).

Regardless, we enjoyed both with a spicy, whole grain mustard. Mmmmm!

Breakfast

Because my loyal readership expects food photos, here are a couple of pictures of our breakfasts from this weekend: chocolate cherry scones and almond poppy seed muffins:

Lasagne and Schnitzel

Gropius and I made lasagne and asparagus on Thurs evening for dinner and it was very tasty. I've been craving tomatoes and cheese lately.



Last night though, I made spatzle and a mushroom-cream sauce while Gropius cooked schnitzel. Also very, very tasty!
the spatzle-maker

cooking spatzle

finished spatzle

our full meal

close-up of spatzle with sauce and schtnizel

Pedernales Chili

Continuing in our attempts to horrify Gropius's family with our recent eating habits, tonight we enjoyed LBJ's world famous Pedernales Chili. I realize for all you NM chili purists out there that this recipe is an abomination, but it was a classic example of Texas chili at its finest (no beans, no frills).




We had our dessert first though: Black Forest Milkshakes. Basically, chocolate milkshakes with frozen cherries added in for good measure. I think they might even be pretty tasty with a splash of kirsch, too. Unfortunately no pictures--they were slurped down too fast!

I'm feeling so grateful to LBJ right now, I almost wish I had a beagle's ears to pull....

More Food-related stuff.

Yesterday, Gropius and I had cherry-pecan scones for breakfast.



And Saturday, Derellek invited us over to their house for a roast beef dinner. Very delicious!

The *Other* Wild Turkey

My father would've enjoyed seeing this sight this afternoon:




Apparently the wild turkeys that live by the creek decided to take an afternoon stroll.