May 24 Weekend

Hope everyone had a safe and happy May 24th weekend! As for me, I didn't do too much. It snowed here on Saturday. Yes, snowed. So the thought of roughing it in a tent or cabin was not a great idea in my books. I spent most of the weekend chilling out on my couch with a mixture of Sebastian, wine, and copious amounts of chips (I may or may not have polished off a big bag of Spicy Nacho Doritos by myself).

On Wednesday, Randy barbecued the leftover hotdogs we had and while I didn't get a picture of them, they were delicious.

On Thursday, I actually felt like cooking so I went with a Sausage and Pepper Po'Boy recipe from my Emeril 20-40-60 cookbook again. I wasn't sure what a Po'Boy was (and still aren't) but since it's a southern Louisiana/New Orleans cajun type cookbook, I figured it was some sort of sandwich and I had everything on hand so I went with it. Emeril describes this recipe as:
             "my rendition of the traditional Italian sandwich, which is also popular at New York City's
              street festivals - it is a favorite at the San Gennaro festival in Little Italy.  I have added
              a New Orleans spin here by kicking up the mayo with a little Louisiana hot sauce."

For 4 servings (I halved all of the below measurements to create 2 servings), you'll need:
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 red bell pepper (thinly sliced)
- 1 green bell pepper, thinly sliced
- 2 cups sliced yellow onions
- 2 teaspoons Emeril's Creole Seasoning (see my blog entry on Turkey Soup for the seasoning recipe)
- 1 teaspoons Italiano herbs
- 1 pound mild Italian sausage, removed from casings and crumbled
- 1/2 cup mayonnaise
- 1 tablespoon hot sauce
- 1 loaf soft French bread (I just used sub sandwich rolls)
- 4 ounces sliced provolone cheese

1. In a large saute pan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. When the oil is hot, add the bell peppers, onions, Creole seasoning, and Italiano herbs. Cook until the vegetables have softened, 4 to 5 minutes.

Transfer the peppers and onions to a paper-towel lined plate.

2. Add the crumbled sausage to the hot pan and cook until the meat is cooked through and lightly browned, about 5 minutes. Set aside.

3, Preheat the broiler.

4. In a small bowl, combine the mayo and hot sauce.

5. To assemble the po-boys, spread the cut sides of each piece of bread with the spicy mayonnaise.

Divide the sausage evenly among the bread, then top evenly with the peppers and onions.

And a close up- shot (I sliced the sub rolls in half):

Arrange the cheese slices over the filled subs. Place the sandwich halves on a baking sheet, cheese side up, and heat under the broiler until the cheese melts, 1 to 2 minutes. Serve immediately.

Since the sandwiches were so full, I served the rest of the sliced peppers with some spicy hummus as a side:

These sandwiches were fan-freakin-tastic. The combination of the sausage and creole seasoning (as well as the spicy mayo) gave the sandwiches a bit of a kick without being overwhelmingly spicy.Very tasty. And very filling! Neither one of us was able to finish both halves of our sandwich.

On Friday, Randy took me out to Don Cherry's for a meal. We both worked that day and were feeling like relaxing over a decent (but not too pricy) meal. We started our meal off with the usual, two pints of Coors:

I ordered the Fajita Wrap with a side Garden Salad. The fajita wrap was a mixture of chicken, salsa, sour cream, peppers, and cheese:

I had a raspberry vinaigrette for my salad dressing. The salad was meh, nothing special. Typical garden salad and the lettuce seemed like it had seen better days. The wrap was decent, although you can tell by the picture that there was way too much sour cream in it. Good thing I could swim in drink sour cream. I ate all my salad and half my wrap, saving the other half for when we got home.

Randy ordered a rack of ribs with fries and a side of gravy:

Randy really enjoyed his ribs and was enjoying his fries...that is, until he found a long, nasty hair in his gravy. That pretty much put the brakes on the fries. He called over our waitress (who, although nice, was very irritating. Every time she would come over to bring us something or check on us, she'd always say "Hi there" in a very high-pitched voice. We said hello to you when we came in - it's cool, we're acquainted. You don't need to say hi EVERY time you come over. But anyway, I digress) to tell her about his wonderful find. She apologized and said she would take the gravy off the bill.

Exsqueeze me? Take the gravy off the bill?

Is it just me, or should we not have gotten a discount on the entire bill? That was one nasty hair. Taking 75 cents off of a 40-50 dollar bill doesn't really compensate for the fact that Randy could no longer enjoy his whole meal, in my mind. Dummy waitress.

Randy was contemplating not tipping her at all, but I told him we should give her something - after all, it was the chef/cook's fault for the hair, she was just the one who served it to us. So we left her a tiny tip, enough to show it wasn't her fault but to also show she should have done more about it. Slick ones, aren't we? :)

On Saturday, we didn't really cook a meal as such. Randy picked up some fresh scallops and made bacon-wrapped scallops so we snacked on those. There was a big difference between these and the frozen pre-made ones: they just tasted a lot fresher (obviously) and we let Sebastian enjoy one as well as his reward for winning the Survivor pool (yes, our cat was in our Survivor pool. Damn you, Boston Rob!). I also ate copious amounts of chips.

Yesterday, I went with an oldie but a goodie: Pad Thai:

Randy wasn't in the mood for Pad Thai so he just made some soup with crackers.

Today, I went with a recipe from the Mexican section of my Weight Watchers cookbook "Take-out Tonight". The recipe is for Spinach, Rice, and Black Bean Quesadillas. I didn't take a picture of this because I scarfed it before I remembered to snap a pic but it was pretty tasty! Healthy with few ingredients and actually didn't taste like a "diet" burrito.

Shoutouts from the past few days go to: Brownie frozen yogurt, Cadbury Creme Eggs, and Spicy Naco Doritos.

Check out Sebastian in his Italian Vogue photo shoot:

And since I forgot it earlier, a prep shot of me chopping peppers for the Sausage and Pepper Po-Boy