Chicken Ranch Tacos

Confession time. The first gift I ever gave Elizabeth was an onion. I guess we'd cooked together and discovered our mutual appreciation, and it felt like a really safe gift to give when you're not actually quite dating yet.

This is my little brother's favorite dish. Dice up chicken breasts, add taco seasoning and ranch dressing. We added a few onions cut into strips while cooking up the chicken, then made it extra creamy by dumping in plain yogurt while it was cooling down. I use yogurt as a healthier alternative to mayo and sour cream in many recipes, but it doesn't always cook well.

Happy Birthday to Me! Black Forest Cake

From our sister, Amanda the Cake Explorer, comes this beautiful idea. Elizabeth made this for my birthday; I still let her cook about once a week. Note the out of season cherries. They come in a can- found in the fruit and veggie section- not pie filling. The juice soaks the cake and the cream. I'm a sucker for cherries, and it's obvious I just couldn't restrain myself.

It's Cake Time! Omnomnomnom...

+Scott

Howdy! I'm Scott.

So this blog needs some love- and there's so much love around here, that I married Elizabeth.

As part of that process I retired as a Computer Engineer and have assumed roles like family accountant and Elizabeth's personal chef. That means there's a lot of cooking going on ;)

... that and the blog's now titled Food Elizabeth and Scott Makes.

Enjoy!

Pi Month - Triple Pie Dinner

While our Pi day (3-14) celebration was kind of last minute-buying a Brownie Mint pie from a chain restaurant-we made up for it with a Triple pie Dinner (I included their picture, since obviously it's better than I'd make it look).

One of Elizabeth's friends suggested the 3rd month of March in the year 2014 made the whole month pie month. Who can argue with that logic?

So we made pie. Lots of Pie.

First up, we didn't have crackers or cookies to make a cheesecake pie, so we used brownie mix to make a Cheesecake Brownie Sandwich Pie. Extra good topped with chocolate ice cream.

To follow that up, I made Triple pie dinner. Unfortunately we ate Turkey Shepherds Pie and the Mini Turkey Pot Pies without taking pictures. Both were made straight up from left overs. 

I was a little too busy rolling up my first Apple pie to take pictures of the rest.

Sure, I helped my mom a few Thanksgivings back in the day, but this one was all me. Well, and my hero's super-apple-pie recipe.

Duck Curry (not) in a Duck

Last Thanksgiving, I took this really great trip to Chicago. I hadn't really been to Chicago before, so I took this random trip. One really great thing about it was that I secretly met up with Scott (who was living in SLC at the time), back when we were in the kind-of-sort-of-I-don't-really-know-what's-going-on phase. (Well, I was anyway. Clearly he was past that phase, since he flew to Chicago to spend a few days with me.) We just got married in August. Anyway, that's another story. The point of this post is that while we were in Chicago, we ate at this fantastic Thai restaurant and Scott ordered this:

It's duck curry! In a duck! Duck curry in a duck. This dish was so exciting, we still talk about it. Regularly.

Tonight we recreated the dish in our own kitchen. We followed a recipe for duck curry from the Pioneer Woman, including making our own Thai red curry paste. The result:

This was amazing. It was very flavorful and spicy, and although the fire in my mouth felt contained, I soon realized I was sweating through all of dinner. (I'm not even kidding. And it wasn't because we didn't have the AC on.)

Duck curry in a duck.
From: September 22, 2013

Teriyaki Chicken Bones

Scott and I decided to buy chicken at Costco, and we accidentally bought chicken thighs. Oops. Anyway, we planned to make this chicken tikka masala, and so had to get the raw chicken off the bones to marinade it. That's hard work, and the bones still had some meat on them. So we ended up frying them up, and then threw together a quick teriyaki sauce. Drizzled that over the chicken, and added sauted vegetables and pineapple. Turned out great!

From: June 14, 2013

Microwave Cake

For some reason, lately I've been seeing a lot of random recipes on Facebook that I feel like trying. Like this one. Devil's food cake mix + angel food cake mix + water + 60 seconds in the microwave = cake-like substance. Not as good as real cake, but so easy it's almost worth it. Almost.

From: March 31, 2013