Baked Stuffed Haddock

Do you know how great it is living close to your parents? Well, if you have awesome parents like mine...it's pretty great.

Last week Mom & Dad made this amazing haddock with crab meat stuffing and Mom dropped some off for Pat and I. It was delicious. They seriously made the stuffing with a pound of crab meat. Yum!

She even dropped off the potatoes for us. She's so great.

In other news, we had some friends over this weekend to help us with some yard work. There was this stump I wanted up righted and some more trees to cut down. So Mitchell & Phil made their way down from Fryeburg to help us out. We spent our evening sitting around our fire pit table enjoying some burgers and beers. What a great weekend.

The boys up righting the stump:

That's the huge brush pile we hope to burn soon if we ever get some rain.

Our backyard with the two leaning birch trees gone:

The front yard with the Daffodils up:

Random Picture Post

Bacon, Eggs & Hashbrowns cooking Saturday morning:

Yum - I like my hasbrowns with cajun seasoning:

Pat making me breakfast before work:

Flipping the ployes!

Yummy ployes:

Stryker's favorite place in the kitchen:

Our new patio set - it's a fire pit!

Stryker waits here for me in the morning (upstairs hallway)

Stryker was "helping" Pat with some work:

Easy Beef Stroganoff!

Growing up, beef stroganoff was one of my favorite meals. My Mom makes it the "right" way.

I cheated.

I starred this recipe from a blog I read months ago and just never got around to making it (like the million other recipes I have starred).

Anyway, it was very easy and very good. The best part? It makes a ton so we have enough for lunches tomorrow! It was also very quick to prepare, which is a MUST for me if I'm cooking after work.

We both really enjoyed it and we will definitely make it again. The only changes I made were using fat free sour cream and "no yolk" egg noodles (which are 99% fat free). All in all it was a pretty healthy meal!

Pineapple Upside Down Cake

First, I need a large rectangle serving platter.

Second, I should work on taking better pictures.

Third, this cake is fabulous. Make it.

I've never made a cake from scratch before and I was a little intimidated! However, this recipe was so easy and it didn't take very long. A better baker than me could have been done in probably half the time I took to do it. I don't multi-task well in the kitchen. Yet!

I found the recipe here: http://www.frontiercoop.com/store.php?Screen=recipe&recipe=967

I would make sure to use the FULL cup of pineapple juice (and maybe a little extra) in the cake batter. I was a smidgen under, so next time I'll use more. I will also butter the baking dish, even though it doesn't say to. I think it will help the brown sugar and butter mixture release easier.

I brought the cake in to work today and so far I've gotten rave reviews. I am anxious for my family to try it on Easter Sunday. I hope you enjoy it!

Macaroni & Cheese

Pat loves homemade macaroni and cheese. Me? Not so much. In fact, I eat mine with ketchup because I don't think it has much flavor. But I have been promising him one for a while and I finally made it last night. I'm debating in the future adding a different flavor of cheese and also including less macaroni to have it runnier. That's more my style.




I forgot to take a picture before we dug in.


The recipe is from the Cooking Down East, by Marjorie Standish, which is a Maine staple. Everyone in my family has one and some of our favorite recipes come from this book.

New table!

While we were on vacation, Pat's mother found a great deal on craigslist for us! We needed a new kitchen table since ours was tiny and only had two chairs! We finally got the kitchen cleaned out this weekend and moved the table in. We love it! It fits there perfectly and looks great! Thanks so much Mary!

French toast bake review

Not very good. The top pieces were too hard and the bottom pieces weren't done. I'm not giving up though. There are a hundred recipes out there with fabulous reviews so I must have messed up. Oh, and the fact that I didn't have brown sugar probably affected the taste as well.

Pat works the overnight tonight so I'll have some leftover pork from Tuesday night. Tomorrow night the plan is to make homemade macaroni and cheese. I've made this before with good success, so we'll see.

We ordered a table for our entry-way last night, it should arrive next week. We searched high and low locally but didn't find anything. Here's the one we ordered from target.com:
We'll be putting our pub mirror on the wall above it and I think that will look nice.

Last weekend while we were shopping we both had a good time because now when we're looking at things we can really envision them in our house, as opposed to a hypothetical house. Our next purchase will be a new living room set, but that won't be a for a few months.

The Verdict

The cranberry crock pot pork didn't meet my expectations. I had anticipated a nice, strong cranberry flavor and it fell short. It wasn't terrible...just not what I had hoped for. I made some brown rice, corn and crescent rolls to go with it.

The meat was VERY tender, so I will definitely be doing a pork loin in the crock pot again, but probably not with this recipe. It's such a bummer when you've been looking forward to cooking a recipe for months and it falls short.

Tonight was supposed to be salsa chicken in the crock pot. Who didn't buy chicken Monday night? Me. I poured the salsa in the crock and went to get the chicken out of the refrigerator only not to find any chicken. So frustrating.

So tonight I'm going to try and use up the zillion eggs we have and make a french toast bake. So if you have a relatively easy recipe, send me the link!