We have been cooking

Earlier this week I posted about my goals for the year. My goals are very general, like choose happiness. Others may be a little more specific like workout. And may of them actually work well together.

Cooking at home meets almost all of my goals. It helps us stay on budget, we can be creative, it is a healthy habit (rather than eating out), it is something that is finished in one night and when I take pictures of it I am capturing life and since the hubby and I are doing it together it really does led to happiness.

These last couple nights we spent a lot of time in the kitchen cooking. Our culinary adventures traveled from Italy to Japan and today will be Mexico. Both my husband and I love to make food especially foods that take a bit of time and effort.

First we made homemade pasta with bolognese sauce.

I made the sauce from a pioneer woman recipe.

Randall made the pasta dough from Making Artisan Pasta: How to Make a World of Handmade Noodles, Stuffed Pasta, Dumplings, and More

Together we made pasta with our Pasta Maker. Trust me it is a two person job!

We had a lot of fun and I would recommend all the recipes. The only change I would make to the pioneer woman recipe is that I would crush the whole tomatoes first. It never calls for it, but when you look at the pictures on her site there aren't whole tomatoes flopping around.

Then we enjoyed a delicious dinner together at the table.

That was until the sulfites in the wine caused me to have an allergic reaction. Bad Bad Wine! I do have a sulfite allergy, but it usually takes a lot more than four sips of wine and a little wine in a sauce.

I know it is hard to tell from the picture but I should not have a red chest and a bright red nose and a couple sips of wine should not make it hard to breath. Luckily I knew what to do. A couple of benadryls and a couple puffs on my inhaler (asthmatic here) and all was better (that is once the drugs took effect). My husband commented that I never have this reaction to "expensive" wines. I of course retorted that I don't have it to two buck chuck either (Charles Shaw at trader joes).

The next night we continued on our cooking adventure by making homemade gyozas with a ginger garlic dipping sauce and sunomono salad.

The gyozas, also know as potstickers were made using this recipe.

Sunomono is my all time favorite food. Cucumber salad rocks. I mixed a few recipes to make my sauce and it is still not perfect. If I get it perfect I will share.

I also mixed a few recipes for the dipping sauce. Also not perfect yet, but I have four more serving of the gyoza left in my freezer, which that will allow me to perfect that recipe too.

Fun couple of days. Now back to working on quilting!