Wacky Turkey TND

So, this Tuesday marked the return of TND after a holiday hiatus. Using defrosted turkey leftovers, I made the craziest turkey remix dish... Thanksgiving leftovers stuffed shells. Basically, they're pasta shells stuffed with a mixture of turkey, stuffing, cream cheese, mozzarella, mayo, and parmesan cheese ALL blended together. The mixture wasn't pretty and it didn't look any jazzier after I covered the shells with gravy and more mozzarella. I guess not all my dishes can be lookers.

Luckily, despite their appearance, everyone seemed to enjoy the meal. Jessika's crab dip helped out with that too though ( : All told, I really loved reconnecting with everyone and hearing their holiday tales. Here's to the New Year and many more terrific TNDs to come!!

Bonus pics: Restaurant week food from Art and Soul including ahi tuna over fried green tomatoes, salmon with braised cabbage and pickled beets, and our group's trio of desserts (cinnamon chocolate cake, banana bread pudding, and almond cheesecake). The salmon was my favorite.

Happy New Year, Happy Brunch

To kick off 2010, I drank some champagne and slept like the dead. Then, my best friend Jason and I went over to MD to brunch with Sara and family. We created quite the spread..albeit a semi-homemade one. I put together blueberry pancakes, Sara's sister Sheila made yummy cheesy eggs, and Sara and Jason baked up some cinnamon crunch muffins. Sheila's hubby was nice enough to clean up post-brunch. Along with the fresh fruit I bought from the Teet (had to include something semi-healthy), it made for a delectable start to the year. After filling ourselves with brunch and mimosas, we played spirited games of Taboo and Apples to Apples. All parties agreed that the brunch should become a yearly tradition.

Christmas 2009

Merry Christmas!! For the first time, little Rhino hosted the Rhino crew plus future rhino Josh at her roost. As mentioned previously, I prepped some homemade cranberry sauce, a fairly manipulated version of Alton Brown's baked macaroni and cheese, and an adhoc version stuffing with Whole Foods stuffing mix as a base and pecans, craisins, celery, apple, onions, sage, and thyme as add-ons.

I found the turkey to be a slippery, leaky, and obnoxious bird. I did not enjoy meddling in its innards nor did I enjoy how it strained my temporary roasting pan. Oh well, at least it turned out to be tasty and gave way to delicious leftover holiday sandwiches when it combined forces with the stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, and obviously bread. BEST SANDWICH EVER!!

I used the same cranberry sauce recipe that I did for Thanksgiving and found it equally delicious, the decadent mac and cheese received rave reviews, and Papa Rhino loved the stuffing. With Mama Rhino's scones, baked stuffed potatoes, and apple scotch pie, peas, and gravy it was an amazing feast. Of course, seeing all of my Rhino relatives was the best part. Happy Holidays, crew!

Snow-mageddon Boredom Leads to Baking

After being trapped in my apartment complex confines for a couple of days, I decided that I'd break the boredom by making more cookies. I don't mind making cookies, but I prefer baking cakes, brownies, and other baked goods with one solid cook time. I always burn my first batch of cookies and these cookies were no different. Little Rhino hates cashews, so I substituted Reese's Pieces that I had leftover from Mexican brownies I made for the NWL holiday party. They didn't turn out to be lookers, but that's all right.

I ate a couple and then passed the rest off to a visiting high school friend on Tuesday who seemed quite pleased with the morsels. Good for Rhino because she didn't need the temptation.

Today, I started preparing cranberry sauce, macaroni and cheese, and stuffing for the Rhino family's Thanksgiving re-do Christmas dinner. Snaps to follow in my next entry!!

In more disturbing news- Check this out!

Deviled Eggs and Heavenly Cookies

Apologies for the lack of post in the last few months. Here's quick recap of the Rhino's Fall.
Late September- Live in the moment by running the Ragnar Relay... End up injured.
October- Spend most of the month believing I have a bruised bone in my foot...Change Facebook language to pirate "ARRR".... Bone Scan on footsie and small kitchen fire that afternoon..."Bruised" bone is really stress fractured cuboid bone (rare and retarded)..Computer hard drive FAIL...Complete first major grad school paper
November- Enjoy work "vacation" in NWL (figure that out non-govvie!!)....Roboboot= conversation piece...Conquer short ribs on a rainy Veteran's Day... Is this grad school thing supposed to be easy?....Why does my right foot still feel the same as it did two months ago?
December- The stationary bike hurts my butt...Oh geez, final paper...FYI- Your teeth still suck..Finish paper draft, Is it hot in here? No, I just have a fever (SLEEP 11 hours).. Nice, only a cold.. Edit paper..FINISH GRAD CLASS!!..Downgrade to black boot...Downgrade to SNEAKERS!!...EPIC FOOT OF SNOW!!

Now that I'm finished with the grad class, my blog can live again. So, this week for my work holiday party that I will miss (oh well) I made deviled eggs and to thank the unit I've been cross-training with for the last two months at work, I made these fancy-schmancy white chocolate, cranberry, macadamia nut cookies (I swapped cranberries for the recipe's candied cherries). I'm an ace at making deviled eggs and can't wait to tote them to work in my deviled egg caddy. That's right, a deviled egg caddy! How's that for a stylin' rhino? The cookie batter tasted delicious the day before, but my oven burned a good ten of my first baking batch. I blame my less than state-of-the-art oven and Paula Deen's faulty baking directions. Oh well, we'll see what the NARA folks think of them tomorrow ( :
Here a few pics from last couple of months of baking including Aaron Sanchez Mexican brownies with Reese's Pieces to wow the cross training crew at their Halloween party, one of Jessika's super- delicious desserts, and Elizabeth's birthday cranberry-peach cobbler and frozen limeade pie (see my summer frozen lemonade pie and sub frozen lemonade for limeade). .
Stay tuned for holiday-themed food and fun featuring macaroni and cheese, cranberry sauce, and my favorite sister and future brother-in-law ( :

Crabby Casserole TND

Argh....Unfortunately, I received bad news on the foot front last week. It turns out that I stress fractured the cuboid bone in my foot. So, I'm stuck in a removable air cast for six to eight weeks. *Sigh* Apparently, since the flimsy walking boot did not completely isolate the foot, I need to start from scratch and the cuboid heals especially slowly. I also found out on Thursday that I over-pronate and my arches and my legs are uneven. It floored me to realize that for all these years I bought shoes using the wrong criteria and nobody told me about all of my foot's flaws. Obviously, I wish I knew all this information earlier so that I could have prevented this injury, but I suppose the silver lining to this whole thing is that I will be able to avoid more foot problems in the future. *Fingers crossed*

Okay, enough about my damn foot, I'll move onto the food. So, last weekend, I made cranberry-date bars for Chester's birthday. I don't usually do bars, but I gotta say, they came out pretty well. Following my bone scan on Monday morning (I don't reccomend one unless you truly need it), I set the kitchen on fire (literally) while making Taste of Home's Sea Shell Crab Casserole. Luckily, the casserole came out unscathed. I added some canned artichoke hearts, spanish olives, and a nice layer of monterey jack to the recipe (I also used real crab..oh la la).


Jessika contributed a wonderful tomato-based crab soup to Tuesday night. Wes and Ben brought lovely marinated shrimp and Andrea brought Great Harvest whole-wheat and pumpkin bread to our feast (best bread around!!). Poor Anders brought a salad, but who wants salad with so much bread and seafood?! MmMMMmMmm....It was a truly delicious and decadent Tuesday!!

Bonus pic- My smiley face cottage cheese sandwich lunch

Chowhound chicken TND and rainy day sloppy joes

Alas, still no stampeding allowed for Little Rhino. The good news is that the Sole Doctor did not see any fracture on my x-ray on Monday. The bad news is that I need to get a bone scan next Monday because it could be a Jones fracture (I'm soo peeved it's the same metatarsal I broke in 2004) which is pretty awful. Pleassssse wish me luck!! Rhino misses her running and feels rounder by the day. Arrrrr-gh!
Thankfully, I can still put together a tasty TND. This week, I made some super easy honey mustard chicken from chowhound.com and smoky chipotle cornbread (not bad..but not cornbread enough for Miss Rhino). Along with Andrea's homemade guacamole, a joint Anders and Elizabeth salad, and Wes' AMAZING coconut pie, it was a very very tasty Tuesday.
In other news, this week I started cross-training with a different division at work. Honestly, so far I've done hardly anything other than going on a field trip to view UnAmerican Activities Commission Records in the stacks and reading the NARA Guide Book on the Records on the House of Representatives. Hot stuff.

The cross-training also lets me work my own hours. So, I'm saying goodbye to NARA nights for a while (unless I'm offered OT) and I can eat dinner at home (!!). Tonight, after a cold and windy day, I cooked up a sloppy joe dinner. It probably could have fed two people, but it only fed one Rhino. Rhino may be out of the running, but her appetite is still going strong. Oh dear, my waistline better watch out!

Up next: cranberry date bars for Chester's birthday (my co-worker not my sister's dog)