Food for Thought: First Barbecue of the season!

In addition to enjoying my first barbecue of the season, I went for a run on Saturday and passed several people on their front lawns planting flowers...spring is in the air!

On Wednesday, as I mentioned in my last post, I did a little experimentation with the leftover sheet of Puff Pastry I had after making Rachael Ray's Fancy Pants Salmon.

I poured a couple whole eggs, some egg whites, some chopped red pepper, and some chopped breakfast sausage (pre-cooked) into a frying pan and tossed around until it was all scrambled nicely:

I then rolled out the sheet of puff pastry onto some parchment paper and sliced it in two. I piled my egg mixture on top, folded the dough over it, and sealed it with an egg wash. Now for the hard part: flipping the pastry over so the seam side was down. Instead of it being a nice, simple, uniform flip (like with the salmon), the lumpiness of the egg mixture made it really difficult to flip over without tearing the puff pastry (which by this point, was a little warm. Warm puff pastry = extremely difficult to work with). I flipped it over without the greatest of ease and as such, it looked a little...mangled:

After having suffered aesthetic casulaties, I repaired the one rip in the pastry and made three slits on top and then baked in the oven for about 20 minutes at 300 degrees. It came out looking like this:

I don't know if this picture does the pastry adequate justice, because these things were massive. I didn't realize exactly how much egg mixture I was putting in each pastry until they were finished cooking. Massive, massive, pastries. I also cooked some hashbrowns as a side:

This was pretty darn tasty and a different twist on breakfast for supper. However, since the pastries were so big, I only made it through about 2/3's of this bad boy.

Since this upcoming week is grocery week, I am trying to (once again) use up leftover foods. So on Thursday, I made the Spinach Ricotta Gnocchi of one of my earlier posts. I had all the ingredients left over from making it the last time and wanted to use them up. The only thing I didn't have was any mozzarella cheese, so I topped it with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese instead:

Simple, quick and full of fiber.

On Friday, Randy took me out to Clem's in the Mount Peyton Hotel for a nice dinner. We got there at 5 (I was hungry) and I'm glad we went when we did. There was some kinda kiddie sports tournament in town and a lot of kids must have been staying in the hotel because not long into our meal, several of them showed up with their families. I'm not a fan of kids ~~in general~~ in restaurants (especially since one of them was playing her Nintendo DS loudly) so I was glad we got out of there before the place got swarmed.

Whaddya know? We got rolls this time. We ordered a half liter of French Cross White Wine and enjoyed our warm rolls while we figured out what to order.

Randy ordered an appetizer of Turkey Vegetable Soup which he said was pretty great:

I went with the old staple: the wrap of the day with a side garden salad and balsamic vinaigrette dressing. Actually, I'm quite surprised I decided to go with this considering when I asked the waitress what the wrap of the day was, she said " Eh, it's probably BLT." Probably? Wait to know your menu, lady. Well, it was BLT:

Not bad - not too tasty, not gross. Just a fine, light supper which is what I was in the mood for. Randy, for his main course, ordered the fishcakes and fries, dressing and gravy:

I snuck a few bites of his fries, dressing, and gravy and they were heavenly. Perfect comfort food, as Randy called it. Randy enjoyed his meal, his only complaint being that the fishcakes were a little burnt on the bottom. I perused the dessert menu, but decided against ordering one since I knew I'd be drinking a little more that evening, and probably eating a nice few extra calories in junk food.

Saturday was beautiful here in Grand Falls - sunny and fifteen degrees. Randy and I went for a nice stroll to bask in the sunshine, and I even followed it up with a run. Our kind landlords just bought a new barbecue so they brought down their old one for us to use. Randy picked up a t-bone steak, I got a chicken breast to grill, and we picked up a pre-made caesar salad. I let Randy take the barbecue reins since he is a lot better at it than me (and genuinely enjoys it) and he barbecued my chicken breast with a little Onion barbecue sauce mixed with some Frank's Red Hot sauce: