Time to Cook

It's so nice being on vacation. Mark and I have actually had time to plan meals and cook together. For New Year's Eve we had bread, manchego cheese, and fig jam as appetizers. For dinner we had three different pastas: cheese ravioli with pomodoro sauce, pear and cheese pockets with sautéed garlic, and prochini tortellini with pesto sauce. It was divine and we ate way too much! I only made the pomodoro sauce, the rest was from Mazzaro's.

I've been looking for a good (half-way decent) red velvet recipe for years. Since I didn't do much actual cooking Friday night I decided to try a new red velvet recipe for dessert. To quote Rooster Cogburn (True Grit), "That did not pan out." The cake was mediocre and the cream cheese frosting was just plain bad. I am leaving all attempts at red velvet cakes behind with 2010.


Today we worked out and took a nice walk to the Saturday Morning Market. After getting outside and enjoying the first rays of the new year, I was ready to get cooking again.

On the menu for today: Hoppin' John salad with molasses dressing,

pickled collard greens with pineapple,

and, of course, corn bread. I used a Molly Katzen recipe from her Sunlight Café book.
I had left over yams and okra and I my hand at making fried okra-not too bad for a Yankee gal.
Dinner tonight was better than we expected! For dessert we have left over strawberry and peach brown betty I threw together on Thursday. Thank goodness. I would hate to start the year out without a tatsy dessert!