shrimp and potato soup with bacon & cheese!

We got a lot of shrimp from our fish share - emily did lots of work shelling them, and made some delicious scampi. The rest? she froze. Excellent. When I got back from my little mini vacation in Vermont, I was resupplied with potatoes from stone soup farm. I went with something chowdery - I used this recipe - http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/paula-deen/potato-soup-with-shrimp-recipe/index.html - but I changed it slightly by adding corn too (because gina marie was going to have some, and she loves corn.)

Here's the pictures!

norwegian waffles and hot lemonade

Recently the residents of 48 hosted a clothing swap. we had to feed the people, so we made hot lemonade and norwegian waffles.

we've made hot lemonade once before. It's easy, and it's a good combo of refreshing and comfortingly warm in the winter. It can be spiked, but best to do it individually (as always, I recommend whiskey.)

recipe? lemon juice, water, sugar. heat. Slices lemons to garnish. adjust everything to taste.

I use bottled lemon juice from the fish section - easier than squeezing 10 million lemons and then the lemon slices are prettier and not deformed.




Norwegian waffles are made on a special waffle iron that produces a circle of heart-shaped waffles. They are designed and blessed to use up all leftover dairy products in your fridge, and they have cardamom in them.

special waffle iron that I got for xmas from my mom, (thanks mom!)


Batter. here's the thing, you can really put anything in it. This one had:
3 eggs, 1.5 cups flour, pinch of salt, 1/3 cup of sugar, 1 tablespoon cardamom, and 1 cup of sour cream. But later I made one with yogurt instead of sour cream and half and half instead of milk. It's just whatever.



then butter the waffle iron, pour, and eat! delicious. good plain, with butter, with jam, or with applesauce. But definitely best hot and fresh. The batter keeps a day or two in the fridge.

beef stew: local edition

So, I've made beef stew on the blog before - but this time I got local meat and vegetables from the winter farmer's market. The beef was grass fed from Gibbet Hill in Groton, MA. delicious.

Here's the pictures....

Returning and Comments

Hello, ducklings.

First item of business is that I intend to post again. Go easy on me. I'm rusty.

Second is that I have changed the comments settings for our blog. We have been getting these oh-so-lovely spams about China and Viagra and 20 ways a person can make money real quick. I don't want to read that. I don't want you to have to read that. Lord knows, I don't read Sarah Elisabeth's fish recipes and think, "But what about Russia?"

So going forward, us Leisurely Breakfast kids will be reviewing all comments before they get posted. If you're not a robot, you should have no problem getting your comments through to us. And if you are some kind of Big Brother blog monster, well...we're watching you back.

floundering

So, we at 48 have been engaging in a Community Supported Fishery (or CSF, or Fish Share.) It's called Cape Ann Fresh Catch http://namanet.org/csf/cape-ann-fresh-catch We are splitting it with another household, so every other week or so we get, basically a few whole fish. We will also be getting shrimp, but that has not materialized yet.

This week, we got a whole cod, already gutted, and a flounder, not gutted. gina marie dealt with the cod, I took on the flounder. Sadly, I was in a rush and didn't take any pictures of the gutting and filleting. gina actually did the skinning.

Once that was done, the flounder sat in tupperware in the fridge for a few days. I was thinking of how to use it. I decide to do something inspired by my favorite fish dish that my Norwegian grandmother makes for me - I'm not sure on the spelling, something like "røkt kolje" røkt means smoked and kolje is a kind of white sea fish. I had a white sea fish, but it was not smoked. My grandmother prepares this in a butter sauce with carrots and hard boiled eggs, served with boiled potatoes. I was in a hurry and had no idea how to even make the sauce - so I winged it!


I put most of a stick of butter in a pan. Chopped a carrot, put it in the pan, and let it simmer. I sliced a couple of little farm share potatoes (purple and white) and put those in the pan. I added some salt and pepper. I let it simmer. I added some white wine, I turned the heart up a tad. I added some more butter. Than I popped the tiny flounder fillets on top (my skills aren't great so there was definitely some fish left on the skeleton.) then I let it cook for a while. Flipped the fillets, and let it cook a little more.





The meantime, I was hard boiling two eggs. emily, 48's other non-feline resident, advised me to boil the water, then add both eggs with a slotted spoon, then let barely simmer for ten minutes. I did that. butfor 11minutes. A quick rinse in cold water and I peeled them. Then I used my egg slicer (Norwegian invention!) to cut the eggs both ways.






then I served it on a plate, topped with eggs. It was good! very buttery. I think it could afford to be less buttery, but I hadn't wanted to risk it.

Squash soup and squash seeds. take two - with pictures.

So, I made squash soup and toasted seeds the other day and posted about them without taking pictures.

Today I gave it another try, but this time I took some pictures.

Changes: the squash soup this time was more of a root vegetable soup - in addition to a winter squash, a delicata, another little one, and a butternut squash, I also roasted 4 beets and a kohlrabi. I roasted the beets on top of the squashes because I was worried they were too small. That turned out not to be necessary.


In the actual making of the soup this time I just added one can of coconut milk and an equal amount of water and about 1.5 teaspoons of thai red curry - and then used the immersion blender. The color was way cool this time - I think because of the beets.


For the seeds - I did the same procedure as last time, except this time I went dessert themed, and I tossed them in t tablespoons of melted butter and 2 tablespoons of maple syrup with a sprinkling of pumpkin pie spice.



they were *really* good.