Come see our new place!

We've moved all of our new posts and content to our Wordpress site: www.foodiesathome.com/blog

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We're moving!

No, we're not changing houses, we're changing blog engines! We've been on Blogger for almost a year and a half now and just can't get it to do all the things we want it to, so this week we're moving over to a specialized Wordpress install. Take a sneak peak here: www.foodiesathome.photographyblogsites.com and let us know what you think! This new site will let us run our Home and Garden, photography and food blog in a much more efficient manner (right now the code is pretty much a giant hack). We should be ready to move officially later this week. Take the new site for a spin, check out all the features and let us know what you think! Later today we'll post something sweet!

Honey Glazed Chicken with Peppers and Goat Cheese

There is just something different about food when you're living in a culturally diverse place like the San Francisco Bay Area, besides seeing squid in between the chicken and the trout in the Safeway freezer. The unique ways in which different cultures approach cooking the same food is pretty exciting for us, because it makes it really difficult to run out of things to do with the same dish. Take chicken for example. Growing up, Eric ate more baked BBQ chicken that you could possibly imagine. With rice and green beans or peas it was a perfect busy-weekday American style staple. Our friends from Asian or Mexican households tell us about their chicken based staples growing that would use the exact same animal and create a completely different meal that was very basic to them but complicated or foreign to us. This is extremely apparent in a diverse city like San Francisco, where Charisse learned first hand the differences between Chinese style whole chicken and American style. In American style whole chicken, the insides are usually cleaned out, put in a small bag and placed inside the cavity (if you shop at expensive stores, otherwise they are just tossed in there). We were living in Downtown San Francsico near the boarder of Downtown, Chinatown and the Little Italy area, so the markets catered to everyone as best they could. Charisse got home early from work, having stopped by out market to pick up a whole chicken for dinner. Upon opening the wrapper she found what looked like the bag stuck in the cavity, so she grabbed it and pulled it out, only to realize as she stared at two lifeless eyes that this was not the bag but rather the whole head from the neck up. She screamed and threw the whole thing up in the air and promptly called Eric, who was working for a Chinese family at the time. After about 10 minutes he had calmed down enough to force words out between the fits of laughter he told the story to his bosses, who simply stared at him and said "isn't that normally how they come?" That being said, Charisse was very careful when opening up the chicken for our dinner the other day. This was a simple roasted chicken, stuffed with goat cheese and a honey glaze on top, which added a little extra crisp to the skin and really worked well with the cheese to keep the bird moist. 

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Swiss chard stuffed garlic bread

So we all know how obsessed with technology Eric can be and how not obsessed Charisse is. The big lesson learned in this living room re-remodel has absolutely been how we both view things differently. When we agreed to remodel the house and make it a "grown up house" we both came up with lists of what we wanted in the living room: Charisse wanted crown, wainscoting around the TV, new paint, some new furniture and lots of new art. Eric wanted surround sound. Of course that means he wants a new receiver a new subwoofer, a new remote and lots of speakers around the room. Between the holes in the walls, holes in the new cabinet and new stuff showing up every other day Charisse was not a happy camper this past week. What did make us both happy was Charisse's swiss chard stuffed garlic bread, something she pulled together for Eric's parents who came over to see our progress. We're both garlic lovers and adore garlic bread so this was a super genius way of adding even more of our garden grown swiss chard into our diet and gave Eric a break from trying to figure out how one painting was different from another or why we would buy something that looks like an eight year old could have done it. After Charisse whacked him she explained that we were getting the art "because it looks nice and you got all your stereo crap". 

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Living Room 2.0

Last week we mentioned that we were going to redo our living room, so we wanted to share an update with you! Once again the house looks like a small war was fought in it with small paths dug through the knee deep wreckage. Holes line the walls and a fine layer of rubble covers the floor. What a mess. However, there IS progress! Lets look at what we started with! Living room 0.5:

This is the living room back in early 2009 after we've taken down the wall paper and painted

Swiss Chard Pizza

Lets face it, Swiss Chard is pretty. Purples and yellows mixing with and accenting the green leaf helps to add a bit of color to our garden. Surprisingly it also adds quite a bit of flavor to one of our more unique pizzas too. Eric was a little hesitant at first, as he is more of a pizza purist (he believes that pepperoni is really the only topping a good pizza needs). How did he actually react? 3 slices later he just couldn't eat any more, so he had another for good measure. With that said, we're finally gearing up for house 2.0: making our house a full blown grown up person's house. Kind of a scary thought, that whole growing up thing but something thats got to happen at some point. It will actually be fun to give the whole house an overhaul, which should be finished just in time for our desire to change something else all over again.

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Kale Pesto

Kale has flown well under the radar for quite some time now, not really making waves or getting much face time in the American consciousness. Not until home gardening and the desire for local or home grown food started to take off the last couple of years. Rooftop gardeners and backyard horticulturists quickly came to discover Kale as one of the most nutritional, easy to grow super-foods on earth. Its harder to grow weeds than to grow Kale, which actually thrives when it gets a touch of frost. A terrific winter food, Kale brings so many nutrients that in WWII Kale was pushed hard as a way to make up for nutrients otherwise lost to rationing. In fact, during this time the British had a warship named the HMS Kale, named after none other than the River Kale in Scotland that may or may not have anything to do with the plant. This is Eric trying to come up with some completely trivial, utterly useless fact and falling flat on his face but now you know something new about a boat that got sunk and has nothing to do with the most amazing pesto we've ever made. Thats right, the most amazing. Usually, pesto is pesto is pesto. Sometimes it comes out extra special, sometimes it doesn't come out quite right but most of the time its tasty and expected. This one though, not only stood out, but brought us back for thirds. Ok fourths. Okay, we licked our bowls THEN licked the pots. Don't tell anyone though ok? 

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Home and Garden: Garden Growing

So when Eric sat down to over-engineer the garden beds he was focused on two things: the maximum garden space possible while being able to reach everything and building boxes that would withstand the apocalypse. One hammered thumb and two years later the boxes are done, filled with dirt and fenced in. Eric's job was done and Charisse took over. After a great deal of reading and research she decided to go with the square foot method of gardening, which is a pretty darn cool way to grow a ton of stuff. She dug around the internet and found a great online resource to help plan your garden out. It's free and printable and a pretty awesome tool for the planing stage and adaptable to your box dimensions (in one foot increments), an important tool when you under-estimate the size of your garden beds. After the planting and watering and yelling at the bugs to get out (doesn't work) we're ready for the great reveal! As you can see from the pictures, the garden is four boxes that are eight feet by four feet by one foot high. We built a picket fence to keep the dog out (and had to add some chain link fencing in other areas where the dog found her way in), one day this will be painted white. We also have a morning glory growing over the arbor, which should be very pretty when it takes over and starts blooming. Hit the jump for more pictures, and the list of what we have growing! 

Sweet Potato Pancakes with Maple Whipped Cream

So after an entire spring of working on getting the backyard put together, getting the garden done and growing, we ran into another problem... weeds and bugs were everywhere! We had truly created a nightmare there in our little garden. Every day Charisse would go out and check it, and find some new plant that some new bug ate or have to pick out some new weed that popped up and grew 3,856 feet tall overnight. "You're no help" was the response from Charisse when Eric replied to her cry for help taming the garden was "I build just build it. Besides, you like doing this kinda stuff right?". Turns out Eric did get to tackle the weed issues, by "building" the pebble bed around the stepping stones. Apparently hauling thirty 50 pound bags of rocks from the cart to the car and from the car to the garden counts as "building", which serves him right. She also got some seriously good advice from our friend Christina over at Dessert for Two (Charisse says thanks again!) we were able to sort out what was doing the nibbling and get some solid bug control going on in a pet and people friendly way. So after a hard day of working, what could be better than breakfast for dinner? Yeah not much, especially when breakfast is pancakes made with sweet potatoes. And homemade whipped cream. YUM. 

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Russian Leek and Cheese Bread

We're back! Well, okay we didn't actually go anywhere but Blogger did last week for a few days. Posts vanished, comments died, who knows what else broke over in Google land, but its tough to complain about a free service. Anyways, Bloggers back, we're back, lets get back to work, starting with Russian Leek Bread, and a Mother's day recap. First off: Mother's Day was the other weekend and we hosted a surf and turf brunch of both families. Nothing beats lobster, tri-tip and mimosas at noon on a Sunday. Even the cat liked the menu. Or the menu liked the cat. We're still not sure about that one.
What we are sure about is that somewhere along the line Charisse decided that Russians all like Leeks. Confused? So was Eric but by the time he was done taking photos what Russians like didn't matter, what mattered was how quickly he could stuff this slice in his mouth. For those of you wondering, the answer is very quickly. Really though, Eric was sold as soon as he got the shopping list:

we need cream cheese 1 carton
goat cheese 1 log
sour cream get light 1 tub
ricotta cheese get 2% 1 tub


Seriously how could someone not get excited knowing that all of that will somehow combine with leeks and bread? 


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Blueberry Cornbread

It seems like every time we dig down deep and pull out the cast iron skillet, theres cornbread involved, this time cornbread invited it's good friend blueberry to the party and what a party that makes. For anyone who's ever had blueberry pancakes on a Sunday morning and gone through the rest of the day feeling happy and full of good feelings should be prepared to have that experience at the dinner bell. With every bite you hit a pocket of blueberry goodness and it makes the world seem that much better. Especially on days when the time leading up to that bite has been a little rough. Like on Monday when Eric decided he would bring the dog to the office. What an adventure. By adventure we mean disaster. We got Koda all set up in the morning: bowls for food and water, some toys a bag of treats and a blanket to sit on. After a quick stop at the Vet (reminder, don't introduce your dog to a new environment right after a visit to the Vet) it was off to work. After some introductions and a quick tour Eric settled in and Koda... didn't. She was very chatty with everyone so Eric decided to exercise her with a laser pointer in the middle of the office. It was quite entertaining until she hit the breaks and with everyone watching, did her business and once again proved that she is a great farm dog, not a city dog. Heres a short video of Eric's co-worker turning around and discovering a dog on his desk.

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Honey Roasted Beet and Carrot Salad

When we first got married, there was a standing death threat hanging over Eric's head (and it was a good thing): "eat your vegetables, or else". That's right, "or else" and everyone knows what that means. Growing up, Eric never really had to eat veggies and living on his own provided no external cause for him to change. Turns out the external change was more of an internal change that he had to make before anyone could really push him into loving veggies. Turns out getting into food and cooking as really forced this on him as nearly everything exposes both of us to new foods and new ways of making food. Take mixing beets and carrots. If you'd have asked Eric five years ago what a beet and carrot was like, he would probably have answered "uhm, kinda orange and red-ish? Aren't beets the red ones?" He may or may not have gotten the color of the beets right. Now, he's scarfing things like this honey roasted beet and carrot salad and looking for more. Charisse came across this one and decided that she wanted to go for it, creating one of our best tasting dishes yet. The beets are sweet and crunchy but without being candyish. The carrots really carry the honey flavor. You could even dress it up a bit and serve it as a main course. Yup, it's safe to say that Eric's growing love of veggies has really helped our marriage stay strong. Charisse hasn't had to threaten him about eating it in a long, long time. Doing the laundry when it's his day? "ERIC!!"

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Beat Detroit Hot Wings

Because hockey playoffs haven't taken over our house enough, when Charisse wasn't looking Eric let the sneak into the kitchen. Actually it was less sneaking and more along the lines of "Hey, lets make hot wings!" "Why do you want hot wings all of a sudden, you don't even like them that much?" "Because we're playing the Detroit Red Wings! get it? And then I can chomp on one and yell something like "take that Datsyuk!" "You scare me sometimes". And so it was that Eric broke out the hot sauce, the ground ghost pepper and the grill. While she tried to keep us on track and the obsessive hockey nut that is her husband in check, Charisse threw up her hands and went to watch TV once the infamous Sharks Gnome made an appearance. As big as hockey watching was, the real big event was Charisse's Birthday BBQ. Since her birthday was last Friday, we decided to throw a bit of a party and boy, you've never seen a house go from super clean to super messy that fast. It was very much worth it though, especially having family and friends around all day, grilling up burgers and playing croquette. Add two Sharks wins and stir for the perfect weekend. #beatdetroit

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WINNER!

We've got a winner! Thanks to a randomly selected comment, Danielle over at A day in the life wins the gift card! Contact us Danielle so we can get your address!

Orange Cinnamon Rolls and a CONTEST!!

We hope everyone had a terrific Easter! We sure did, especially since it started out with these Orange Cinnamon Rolls for breakfast at Eric's parents house. There is just something about cinnamon rolls that make us hungry for breakfast at any time of the day. Something about the gooey inside and the sugary frosting on top maybe? Whatever the reasoning behind it, we both have a soft spot for cinnamon rolls and decided to bring them over for breakfast. Since Charisse's grandmother's fruit trees are still producing we had an overabundance of oranges this week, and Charisse decided that she wanted to try an orange cinnamon roll. Probably the best idea she's had in at least a week, by far, it totally changes the whole cinnamon roll game. Speaking of games, Eric has been particularly crazy these past few days with the NHL playoffs going on, to that point that people are simply watching his Facebook posts to see how the game is going. It's become a tradition for him to sit in his comfy chair, watching the game with the computer on, with his lucky hat on. If its a close game, he'll sit on the floor closer to the TV (and yell louder, just incase the players are having a hard time hearing him through the TV). Charisse tried to figure out why he does this a while back and is still mystified that he thinks stuff like this will change the outcome of the game. Which got us wondering: how many of you have superstitions about watching or playing sports, or have loved ones who do? What are they? Leave a comment with your sports traditions and we'll pick a announce a winner for a $25.00 Amazon.com gift card on Monday morning!! 

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(contest rules and small print!) To be eligible you have to be a follower (email, google RSS or Facebook) and your comment has to include your sports superstition! We will close the submissions Sunday night at midnight and pick a winner at random Monday morning. Make you include a way for us to contact you!

Chocolate Bundt Cake

We were thinking about what to make the other day and figured nobody would want a chocolate bundt cake. Okay so that was more Eric being snarky and Charisse almost hit him over the head with a skillet for saying it, because we know if there's one thing just about everyone loves, its chocolate. Mmmm chocolate. Especially moist, succulent doughnut shaped chocolate that happens to be on our dining room table. Thats the best kind of chocolate. At the time Eric was too busy being unhappy with the Sharks (and you thought after last week you were safe from him sneaking in his NHL addiction around here) to let the smells from the kitchen get his appetite going. Yeah, Sharks didn't play well in game 2, Eric exhausted himself yelling at the TV, turning it off, turning it back on, yelling some more, etc. So it was no surprise to Charisse that he seemed completely unaware of the cake until he turned around and it was sitting there ready to be eaten. Now, Charisse tells Eric just about every game that the team can't actually hear him through the TV (its never stopped him from trying to help) but now Eric's not so sure, after scarfing 2 slices in full view of the post game show the Sharks finally started winning some games. Maybe they have Smell-O-Vision, or maybe its just that Chocolate really does fix everything.

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Braised Short Ribs in a Spicy Tomato Sauce

Sometimes life makes you feel a little crazy, then it'll do something that makes you feel a lotta crazy. Take this week for example: Eric starts his new job, is all happy and excited until Charisse calls after getting home from work and finding the fish tank empty and the floor all wet. What a terrific way to end your second day at a new job; "Uhm, my fish tank is broken and my bed room is flooded, I've got to go". Nice. Charisse on the other hand has been battling slugs and other little critters in the garden all week. Now that she's got her garden all up and going and stuff is growing every time she goes out there, there are little holes in everything! After coming this far, the thought of loosing everything to the little buggers has got Charisse in full battle mode! Every evening there's a new battle cry coming from behind the computer: "Citrus, I'll get them with citrus!" or something like that. We honestly can't print most of her battle cries, this is a family blog after all but her determination is something fierce, Eric will vouch for that. We're super excited about the garden, though for now we're still harvesting at Trader Joe's and Whole Foods (and Safeway on occasion). Speaking of harvesting at Safeway, the last time we were there we came back with some rough cut short ribs, and decided to give the oven a good 6 hour workout. Seriously. This one braised for 5 hours the night before, then cooked for another hour before serving. When they say "falls off the bone" this is what they are talking about (who "they" are is a whole new topic). Not to mention this is on the healthier side of meat dishes, the braising draws out quite a bit of the fatty content which congeals on top and gets thrown out, which is pretty fun in and of itself. We've done braised short ribs before, but never like this, with a terrific tomato sauce. The trick to taking this from awesome to "omgwhatisthisitsamazingwliohwghagh" is letting it sit over night. All the flavors intermingle and intermix and the whole pot becomes a big pot of YUM.

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Peanut Butter Chocolate Pudding

That time of the year has rolled around again, that time when grown men are allowed to cry and hug each other unabashedly, hurl insults and other throw-able objects at the TV (or other nearby people wearing the wrong colors) and everybody feels just a little bit Canadian (except for actual Canadians, who just feel pretty normal). Yup, the NHL Playoffs are here and Eric is that excited. Actually, he's more excited than that, but we can't print that level of excitement here, this is a family blog! Really the only thing that's been able to cut into talk about his new job has been the start of the playoffs. He spent some serious time getting ready this year: washing all his sharks shirts, getting his jerseys in line, polishing his Sharks gnome (a gift from Cherlyn and Dave that Charisse has restricted to the garage, yes still finds it sitting on shelves around the house) and watching as much hockey has he can take. In other words he's like everyone else who lives in San Jose, Sharks obsessed. Since we don't have tickets this year (yet!) we'll be watching on TV and having people over for assorted Sharks viewing parties and one of the best things to have a viewing party is DESSERT! Last season, we had our friends Dan and Jen over for one and right in the middle of the game, there was a distinct hankering for Ice Cream. Eric like to pretend it was the girls who sent us to the store during intermission and give them a hard time about it, but everyone knows he wanted the ice cream just as bad. This time around, we're not going to get left without, not when we've got Peanut Butter Chocolate Pudding! It's seriously half chocolate pudding, half peanut butter pudding, all awesome. It's like a Reece's peanut butter cup in pudding form, but better.  

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Grilled Fish Tacos

So Eric spent the better part of last week in Columbus Ohio at a show and Charisse insisted that he bring her home some sort of present. After tooling around Columbus on his way back to the hotel, Eric ran into North Market, an indoor farmers market type place chock full of good food and wonderful surprises, namely North Market Spices, a small spice shop that somehow cost us 150 bucks in “presents”. We think you’ll agree that the price was worth the spices we ended up with. Powdered Wasabi, Mace Blades and Powdered Hibiscus just to point out a few. Eric even brought home a book “Herbs & Spices” which is all about… you guessed it, herbs and spices. Reading it on the plane, the smell of all those spices emanated from the pages and pushed Eric to will the plane to go faster so we could hit the kitchen and start coming up with yummy foods and awesomely full stomachs to go with the wonderful smells emanating from the book’s pages. Charisse was home, completely unaware of the culinary storm that was fast approaching, instead enjoying watching her dad Pat play the drums with his blues band. Getting home was almost like Christmas morning, spices flying out of their wrappers and lots of "oooh! ahh!" sounds. Now that the storm has passed here, we’re going to make you wait a little longer to see what we conjure up with all this loot, instead we still need to show you last Tuesday’s recipe: Grilled Fish Tacos. Booyah. Fish tacos are one of those uniquely South American dishes that always seems refreshing, especially at the end of a long, tiring day. We spent most of last weekend getting the yard cleaned up and getting benches put in around the edge of our patio, so we were pretty beat. We decided to fire up the grill, invite Charisse's parents over (actually Pat called and asked "what's for dinner?", so we made extra) and threw some wood in our outside fireplace. The tacos hit the spot and were generously helped down by an outstanding martini. Okay, maybe more than one. Hit the jump though for the Grilled Fish Taco recipe and Eric’s personal view on what makes the perfect Martini. We think James Bond would agree.

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Grilled Corn Salad

So Eric's one task on Monday nights and Tuesdays around lunch time is creating and posting wonderful things for everyone to read, but this time around he was pretty much not really focused on much of anything. Instead he took off for Ohio for this last work related trip Wednesday morning after spending all of Monday and Tuesday distracted. We were both pretty much super distracted this week, on one hand because of Eric's trip, but on the other hand because we were expecting to hear back about a possible new job, which means he sat around the last few weeks saying "oh, I'm sure I didn't get it. Oh, I'm sure there'll be more interviewing to do for it. Oh it's just exploring my options, I'm not going to get all excited about something that probably won't happen". Of course Charisse managed to decode these messages and revealed the real message he was sending as: "OMG, IfIgetthisjobitwillbethebestjobeverI'msoexcitedIcan'tthinkorsitstilllongenoughtowriteablogpost". Needless to say, we were both very excited when Eric actually got the call on Tuesday morning, and the call was "you got the job!". Don't tell anyone, but Eric was caught dancing a little jig down the hallways of his office and Eric dancing does not happen that often (not without a long night out that leads up to the dancing part anyways). Anyways, our post about firing up the grill, grilling being Eric's "man thing" and how to make the best Martini in the world (at least one that would make James Bond proud) got a bit sidetracked. Instead we offer you a grilled corn salad which we hope will tide you over until next week and get you though all of Eric's corny jokes.

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