What have you been eating, drinking, and cooking?

I have had the past week off work for the holidays so I took it upon myself to cook outside my standard cycle of meals.

Bolognese Sauce:

• 25 grams of butter
• 60 mL of olive oil
• 50 grams of bacon
• 350 grams of ground beef
• 1 stick of celery and 1 carrot
• 1 clove of garlic
• 150 mL of red win
• 125 mL of milk
• 14 ounce can of plum tomatores
• Bay leaf and thyme

Heat the butter and garlic in a sauce pan. Add bacon and cook until translucent. Add in garlic, carrots, and celery. Cook 3-4 more minutes. Add the beef and cook until browned. Salt and pepper as needed. Pour in the wine and evaporate 3-4 minutes on high heat. Add the milk and cook until it evaporates. Stir in the tomatoes with juice and herbs. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to low, simmering for 1.5-2 hours. Taste and season further if needed.

Ham

Just a spiral sliced ham from the grocery store. I bought Hawaiian rolls and some pepperjack cheese to make mini sandwiches.

White Bread

Recipe Link. I have some authentic Italian olive oil from a small market in Italy that someone sent me as a gift. I decided to do a taste test between it and California olive oil. The two were pretty close but the Italian olive oil had a more prominent flavor and smell. I also did a taste test between extra vecchio balsamic vinegar (aged 30 years, DOP) and the stuff you buy off the shelf at the grocery store. This was way more incredible of a taste difference. Which should be warranted because the fancy stuff was ~$100 for a small bottle and the grocery store was 3-4% of that price. The consistency was like molasses and the flavor just pops at the smallest drop.

Sugar Cookies

Found on the back of a grave stone. I paired this with a royal frosting I made from egg whites and powdered sugar. They were delicious and had the consistency between a cookie and a scone.

Vegetable and Barley Soup with leftover Christmas Ham

• 225 grams of pearled barley
• 9 cups of broth or water
• 3 tbsp of olive oil
• 2 carrots
• 1 large onion
• 2 sticks of celery
• 1 leek
• 1 large potato
• 1 cup of diced ham
• Bay leaf, parsley, and a sprig of rosemary

Soak the barley a minimum of 3 hours. Drain and place in a large pot with the broth/water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 1 hour. Stir in the oil, vegetables, herbs, and ham. Add more water if necessary. Simmer for 1-1.5 hours. Taste for seasoning. Garnish with parmesan cheese.

I also got some 30 month aged parmesan cheese as a gift so this recipe was the highlight recipe for it. So many crystals in the cheese! If you don't add parmesan cheese, you will need to add salt to this recipe.

Home Run Inn Pizza

This is a frozen pizza that I felt deserved a shout out. Typically I like Red Baron pizzas as a mid-week easy snack but opted to give this one a try. It was way better than I would have thought! Looking at the calories though, I could tell why. 1200 calories for half the pizza! That is more than a whole pizza from a nearby restaurant. Delicious, but definitely something I will only eat on special occasions.

Pocket Coffee

This was another gift I received from Italy. Essentially, it is a chocolate with a shot of espresso (100-150 mg of caffeine) inside. It is incredible! So good, that I ordered some to be shipped to me and a friend who is expecting a baby. Very surprised on how good this was and I wish they sold this in the US.

The only downside to the cooking was I didn't make homemade pasta like I had wanted to, instead I opted to use the dried stuff that's been sitting in my pantry for the past few months. The sugar cookies with frosting were definitely a big surprise for me on how well they turned out. A+ cookie recipe. I had also wanted to fit in making a pecan pie but the time was lost to me and I had already had too much cooking going on.

My kid loves to make Adam Ragusea's lasagne.

It includes making huge quantities of fresh made pasta, bolognese and béchamel sauce.

Huge quantities.

In the past, we've tried eating nothing but lasagne for three days. Nobody could stomach that.

We've tried freezing the lasagne. But it definitely loses its appeal after being frozen.

We've tried giving it away, but no one seems to want home made lasagne from a 10 year old.

This time around I tried freezing the individual components.

The Bolognese freezes up well. Defrosting huge blocks of it is a challenge.

I tried freezing the fresh pasta. But unfortunately I froze it in a giant ball. By the time it had thawed and we were ready to cook with it, it had turned moldy.