Pre-Thanksgiving

On 23 November, Brian received a free 13-lb turkey from his landlord! We decided it would be fun to throw a "pre-Thanksgiving" for some of our fellow classmates. Early Sunday morning I started to prepare for the feast...with only one oven, timing is critical and I wanted to have as much stuff prepared as possible before Charlie (the turkey...yes, I named him) had to go into the oven. I started with the stuffing, which I made vegetarian.  I found a great recipe by Emily Harris and the only modification I made was to include mushrooms.  It's nearly impossible to go wrong in cooking when you add two sticks of butter! 

After I got the stuffing in the oven, I started on the mashed potatoes. I stuck to a recipe from the Pioneer Woman, and they turned out to be great....again, might have been the butter (and cream cheese).  Seriously, the recipe required that you put pats of butter all over the top of the potatoes before they went into the oven!

After those were ready to go into the oven, I just placed them to the side. They would get cooked right before the guests got here. Then I got started on the sweet potatoes.  I've never made these before, so Brian helped me out with the "how to" of it all. 

These also were put to the side for baking right before dinnertime. By this time, it was time to get Charlie ready for the oven. I figured it was important to give him a name to honor him, haha. This was all Brian though...I wasn't willing to play with the dead bird. 

 And this is about the time I forgot that I had a camera....silly me took the majority of the pictures while cooking!  Anyway, here's at least two pics that I did get when everything was ready.

Final spread of food!

Time to eat!

Autumn Leaves

A few weeks ago, I wandered down Broadway Street here in Fort Leavenworth with my camera. The leaves were at the peak of their change and it was a beautiful, brisk day. In addition to the gorgeous leaves, I also snapped some photos of some of my favorite houses. Here are some of my favorites!

Couldn't resist trying to catch a photo of this little guy!  He was nice enough to sit still while I switched lenses.

Stopped by a little antique shop as well, and took some fun photos.

Weston Apple Festival

Two weeks ago I went to the Apple Festival in Weston, KS.  It was so much fun!  The weather was perfect - a chilly 50 degrees.  Tons of vendors came out to sell their crafts and there was a lot of delicious food to eat!  I even got a chance to "help" make some apple butter.

After the festival, we went to the Red Barn Farm and saw some animals and bought a pumpkin, two apple pies, and had some delicious apple fritters!  I sure do love fall!!!

Campfire Chef

Over the Columbus Day Weekend, Brian and I decided to head west to Perry Lake for a little kayaking and camping.  (I was pretty excited when my instructor told me he would let us borrow the kayaks for the weekend!) On Saturday morning, we hit the farmers' market in Leavenworth and picked up some fresh veggies - new potatoes, broccoli, onions, zucchini, and green beans. Then we stopped at the grocery store to grab some eggs, mushrooms, steak, foil, and s'mores supplies! (More about why I've listed out all of the food later!)

Once we arrived at the lake, we found an excellent camping site and got the tent set-up.  After that we took the kayaks down to the water (no pictures...I was too nervous to take my phone near the water).  We had a great time though and there weren't many speed boats, so the water was pretty calm.  Once our arms were too tired to continue, we got the kayaks back out of the water and Brian set out to try out his "new" fishing pole.  

After an unsuccessful attempt at fishing, we were both pretty hungry and decided it was time for dinner. Brian got to work on building a fire to cook our "hobo stew." I was pretty excited about our dinner plans because I'd done some searching online for new campfire dinner ideas.  We put together foil packets that had lots of cut up veggies, potatoes, and meat (soy "meat" for me), added some spices and a few pats of butter and threw those on the fire.

Some lessons learned from this experience:
1) Always plan to not have a grill top at a campsite.
2) Bring tongs.
3) Dish towels are NOT a good way to retrieve hot items from the fire pit.
4) There's always a way to make do...even if you forget the important stuff!



Despite all of these issues, dinner was delicious once we got it cooked.  We also had fresh green beans that I boiled on our cookstove.  It was a pretty fancy meal for a night of camping!  After that, we settled down with some beers and hung out by the fire.  Of course, no night of camping is complete without s'mores!



The next morning, I was super excited to test out something my friend Christina told me about - Omelets in a Bag!  We used some of the leftover veggies from the night before and shredded cheese. First we cracked the eggs into plastic bags and "scrambled" them.  After that, we added the veggies and cheese and did our best to get all of the air out of the bag.  Cooking them was super easy - just place the bag into a pot of boiling water for 13 minutes!  Sorry for the blurry pictures!

 

City Market

I keep finding wonderful new places here in Kansas City, thanks to recommendations from friends.  This past weekend, I ventured into KC to visit City Market.  If you've ever been in the DC area, it's very similar to Eastern Market.  They have tons and tons of produce vendors, flower stands, and more.  Additionally, they have a multitude of foods to try from cultures around the world!  It was packed with people on Saturday, but I had a great time weaving my way around and asking questions about some of the strange looking produce being sold.



Produce here in KC is extremely expensive, regardless of where you shop.  So I was quite pleased to find that this produce was reasonably priced and fresh.






They had rows and rows of spices for sale, but the lines were super long, so I only took pictures!

I ended up buying some zucchini, yellow squash, white squash, oriental eggplants, swiss chard, bread, and some tea.  Then I came home and roasted most of the veggies and sauteed the swiss chard.

I believe that a trip to City Market might become a weekly thing...I need to find out if they still have it in the winter!