The Bloody Hundredth

Most people know that Ross has a love for all things "airplanes". *Love*. So, it is a tad bit ironic that his brother, Adam, is a pilot in the AF. But it gives them very, very many things to talk about.  Adam and his wife Danielle are EXPATS living in Mildenhall, England for the next couple years. Currently, Adam is doing a short term deployment to Kyrgyzstan (Find THAT on the map). By the way, do you know the time difference between Anchorage and Kyrgyzstan? They're 14 hours ahead (or 10 hours behind going the other way). It's not surprising Adam called Ross at 2 AM in the morning his first day there... that's just confusing!

Anyway, we got a package from the UK last week! Ross usually gets all of Adam's Squadron T-shirts, but this time I was included in the fun (Thanks Danielle :)). Adam is in the Bloody Hundredth Squadron. Here's a snippet from Wikipedia:

"The group flew the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress as part of the Eighth Air Force's strategic bombing campaign. In combat, the 100th operated chiefly as a strategic bombardment organization until the war ended. The group gained the nickname "The Bloody Hundredth" due to its heavy losses during eight missions to Germany when the group experienced several instances where it lost a dozen or more aircraft on a single mission, whereas most units suffered losses in consistent small amounts."

Check out the shirt modeling below. Just like the Macy's ads right?

I was pretty excited that I got to use my new camera remote for the first time. Here's an outtake as I was doing some testing before making Ross get off the couch for the T-shirt modeling...

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Ladies Night Out

First off, Sorry if you couldn't see the videos in yesterdays post. Technical difficulties...

Emily had Baby Eddie a couple months ago and was feeling like she needed a ladies night on the town. The following pictures are a result of careful planning/scheming at dinner last week. Please note the common wardrobe selections, it was not just coincidence that we all wore sunglasses :) Totally necessary for summer sunlight in Alaska.  Can't prepare soon enough, right!? 

Allison and I

Kim and I

Sierra, Liz, & Kaity.

Gangstas. (Actually we were just paying Kim and Emily back for the sunglasses).

Emily, Kaity, and Kim.

Gangstas? Complete with yellow bow rings and frozen pizza in hand.

Fun night of dancing!

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Movie: Coming Home

Sometimes you just have to post certain things, you know?

Be sure and check out the ears all laid back and the wiggle bum...

Now you know why I LOVE coming home... :)

1 year ago: This and That
2 years ago: Baa Baa

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Mango Chicken Salad

We had a delicious new version of chicken coleslaw last week. It's got the regular cast of characters: pulled chicken, coleslaw, carrots, scallions, then you throw in some surprises: mint, mango, and tomato. The sauce uses Sriracha and fresh ginger, which adds some nice heat/flavor to the whole salad. I "healthy-ed" up the salad by using Splenda rather than brown sugar and increasing vinegar/decreasing oil. Be sure and double this recipe... LEFTOVERS!!

Recipe Adapted from Smok'in Chestnut

Mango Chicken Salad with Spicy Ginger Dressing
serves 2 (can easily be doubled)
from Design Sponge


Salad:
1 skinless, boneless chicken breast, cooked and shredded
1 medium sized Napa (or Savoy) cabbage, thinly sliced
2 medium carrots, peeled and thinly sliced
1 small tomato, chopped
1 mango, thinly sliced
4 scallions, thinly sliced
2 Tbsp roasted sesame seeds
handful fresh mint, chopped
handful fresh cilantro, chopped
handful roasted peanuts, very roughly chopped

Spicy Ginger Dressing:
2 tsp freshly-grated ginger
1 Tbsp Sriracha sauce
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 Tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 Tbsp soy sauce
1/8 tsp sesame oil
3 Tbsp vegetable oil

In a large bowl, combine all of the dressing ingredients and whisk. Then add chicken, cabbage, carrots, tomato, scallions, sesame seeds, mint and cilantro to the bowl and toss gently. Serve in a bowl and top with sliced mango and chopped peanuts.

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Omega-3's

There is a fair share of salmon consumption in our household. Keep in mind the "household" I'm referring to includes more than just Ross and I...

The vet wanted me to buy an expensive Omega-3 pill to help with Roma's dry skin in the winter, but I told him that I knew another source of these elusive Omegas that was also much cheaper...

"Mom, I need those Omegas...soon. I'm fading."

This is what it looks like on the rug right beside me after taking the salmon out of the freezer all the way until the time the plates are scraped...

"Mom, look how cute I am"

Oh, my. We better do some extra fishing this year.

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Stuffed Chicken

Kaity has hosted "The Bachelor" girl night dinners for basically the whole season of the show. To be completely honest, I'm not a big fan of the show and usually skip out a bit early (2 hours is too long to stretch out all that drama!), but I LOVE having a girls night during the week. Food+wine+stories. Sometimes baby Owen and baby Eddie even make an appearance.

Anyway, the season ended last week and it was definitely my turn to do some cooking. I chose to make Apple/Fontina/Cranberry Stuffed Chicken, Lemon Asparagus, Spinach Couscous. The chicken got rave reviews from the ladies (including myself). Ross thought the leftovers were pretty good too :) Check out the recipe below. 

Drizzle Sauce: White wine and Cranberry Reduction. It bubbled away for ~2-3 hours.

The chicken gets charred on the grill, to give the breasts the nice cross-hatched markings. Then, they're stuffed with caramelized apples, fontina cheese, and dried cranberries before heading into to the oven to cook. So good!

 

Spinach Couscous

Roasted Lemon Asparagus

Stuffed Chicken topped with wine reduction.

Finished plating!

The ladies: Kaity, Emily, Kim, Sierra, and Roma (of course!)

Apple/Fontina/Cranberry Stuffed Chicken
Recipe from Step by Step Gourmet

Helpful Hints...
1. This is a great dish for dinner parties as the chicken breasts can be grilled and stuffed and then refrigerated up to 24 hours in advance.
2. Try to find chicken breasts that are thicker in the middle, giving you plenty of room for your stuffing.
3. I would recommend some sort of accompanying sauce. In the pictures below I made a cranberry wine sauce using 3 cups white wine, 1 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup dried cranberries and 1 Tbs dijon mustard, brought to a boil then simmered for several hours.

INGREDIENTS
Marinade
4 Tbs red wine vinegar
6 Tbs apple cider vinegar
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 tsp dry mustard
4 tsp honey
5/6 cup olive oil

Chicken and Stuffing
8 chicken breasts, boneless and skinless
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 medium Fuji apples
1 Tbs unsalted butter
4 oz fontina cheese, shredded
4 oz dried cranberries

DIRECTIONS
Marinade
1. Place the red wine vinegar, apple cider vinegar, the mustards and honey in a food processor.
2. Turn it on and drizzle in the olive oil until fully incorporated / emulsified.
3. Marinade the chicken breasts overnight in this mixture.
4. Hold breasts in the refrigerator until ready to stuff.

Stuffing
1. Peel, core, and very roughly chop the apples.
2. Melt the butter in a saute pan over medium high heat and add the apples.
3. Cook the apples for roughly 5 to 10 minutes or until they are deeply browned.

Prep
1. Preheat grill to high.
2. Remove chicken breasts from the marinade and transfer to a plate.
3. Season them with salt and pepper.
4. Mark the chicken breasts by grilling them only long enough to make grill marks and then rotating them about 45 degrees to make crosshatch marks. Do this on one side only. The chicken breasts should still be completely raw inside.
5. Remove from heat and transfer to a mixing bowl.
6. Add the fontina and cranberries and mix.
6. Season, to taste, with salt and pepper.

Chicken
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Cut a slit in the thicker side of the chicken breast about 1 inch wide, creating a pocket almost as large as the breast itself.
3. Stuff the breasts with the apple stuffing mix, cramming in as much as possible without ripping the breast.
4. At this point the breasts are ready to bake and can either be held in the refrigerator for up to 24 hours or baked right away.
5. When ready to bake, place on a baking sheet and bake for about 12-15 minutes or until an instant read thermometer registers 155 degrees in the thickest part of the breast.
6. Let the meat sit and slice each breast for plating. Drizzle with sauce!

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Boys will be Boys

Last weekend Ross and some other guys drove an hour and a half to chop wood. Afterall, Arctic Man 2012 is quickly approaching and if they plan to haul the trailer jacuzzi out into the woods with them, they got to have wood to heat the water! (I did just say trailer jacuzzi. One of the guys actually has a home built jacuzzi on wheels. I will surely post pictures of this as soon I see for myself!) They also plan to have a big bonfire, which requires lots'o'wood.

I think their caravan looks like a Truck commercial. What do you think?

Stacking up the wood back in Anchorage.

Kris is all smiles now that he's got a cold beverage and the hard work is done.

1 year ago: Volleyball
2 years ago: Ranch Pictures

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Albondigas (Meatball) Soup

I was pa-rousing one of my "healthy" cookbooks and this recipe caught my eye. I'm not really sure why, but it did.

And I made it.

And it was delicious.

Ross thought so too, so it must be true, right?

It's got some heat to it too! Top it with freshly sliced avocado and you won't be disappointed.

I don't really have a great picture of the final product. That's the problem when cooking! It's hard to take a time out for pictures...

Here's the recipe!


Albondigas Soup
Adapted from Everyday Paleo

Meatballs
2 lbs 93/7 ground beef
2 cloves minced garlic
2 tbsp ground cumin
2 tbsp dried oregano
1 tbsp black pepper
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp sea salt

Soup
4 tbsp olive oil
1 shallot minced
3 garlic cloves minced
5 carrots chopped
2 1/2 cups shredded green and/or purple cabbage
2 1/2 cups fresh (not canned) diced tomatoes
1/2 to 1 full jar of salsa
10 cups water
1 tbsp cumin
1 tbsp oregano
2 tsp sea salt (more or less to taste)



1 year ago: Date Night
2 years ago: Cold Weekend When you're Camping

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Flightseeing 'Round Anchorage

A couple months ago we bought a Flightseeing Groupon, but because of scheduling and the unpredictable Anchorage weather we had yet to use it. But we finally made it happen, with 2 weeks to spare before the Groupon expired.

We flew in a Cessna 206 with another couple visiting from Virginia. We flew over  Triumvirate Glacier and Mt. Spurr Volcano. We had hopes of going to Denali, but the cloud cover just wouldn't lift. (In retrospect that was a good thing because Denali is a much longer trip and I got "plane sick". By the end of our flight I couldn't wait to get off.)

Sleeping Lady.

Glacier Field.

Anchorage.

"Sleeping Lady" Mountain.

Glacier ice slabs. These laminated layers are pushed and pushed forward.

Mud Flats visible at low tide.

1 year ago: Chena Hot Springs
2 years ago: House Guests

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