Living Insanity's Loving Food

Founding Farmers in Potomac My husband and I tried the Founding Farmers in Potomac for dinner. My husband has been to the DC location which is a 100% green restaurant. It's a really big deal to win the award for being so green. The restaurant also deals with ingredients that are farm fresh. We order the chips, crips, and dips because he already knew he liked it. Fancy potato ships with three different dippers including one that was like pimento cheese. I had a special soda. They make all their own and they all sounded great. The waiter claimed to love hibiscus. Mine has raspberry syrup and lime juice in seltzer. My hubby ordered the chicken and waffles for dinner which also came with mac n cheese and some steamed vegetables. I tried a piece of the waffle with the syrup. I don't even like syrup and I could tell this homemade syrup was good! The waffle was not as good as the savory waffles of Mosiac Cafe though. I ordered gnocchi with beef ragu. I really shouldn...

What did everyone do with their turkey leftovers? We roasted a turkey breast Friday night. We carved the meat off the bone and made turkey stock with the bones and some vegetables overnight. Saturday I made turkey pot pie and my husband made turkey noodle soup.

We have our orders for Thanksgiving. My husband and I will be making several side dishes. The best news is I am allowed to leave work on Wednesday before Thanksgiving at 1:45 this year without using any leave time. Creamed corn casserole, triple batch Broccoli rice casserole which is a new recipe this year without cream of mushroom soup and without cheez whiz Brown sugar glazed carrots Cranberry habanero sauce Thanksgiving is creeping closer and I can't wait for the food and the nice long weekend :)

This weekend was the DC Metro Cooking Show! We have been going to this show for several years now seeing different chefs each year. This year my husband and I went to a food and wine pairing with Mike Isabella from Top Chef and owner of local restaurant Graffiato and Laurie Forster the Wine Coach. Mike looking over the menu We had three tastings and with each tasting we had two glasses of wine to pair it with. 6 glasses of wine! There wasnt a dump jug either :) This first tasting was a scallop with sunchoke puree and pickled apple. After this point I forgot about taking photos of the food and I just inhaled the food and wine. I will say that my husband and I are dying to make Mike's final dish of pork ragu and gnocchi. The recipe can be found on Laurie's website thewinecoach.com

We grew many varieties of peppers this year and my husband made several batches of hot sauce. Here is the process in his words I've been making hot sauce with my garden peppers this year and it isn't nearly as difficult as it might seem. Here is my process: 1. I collect my peppers in batches and keep them in the fridge until I have enough to make sauce (I don't care if the earlier picks start to get a little pruny, as long as they don't start to rot. 2. Clean all of them by seeding and keeping the seeds. 3. Toss all peppers into a sauce pan and sautee without anything added until they begin to blacken and soften. 4. Pour in white vinegar and season with salt. (At minimum, it should be 1 part vinegar to 2 parts pepper meat.) 5. Puree the mixture with a submersible blender. (You can use a normal blender, but keep a firm hand on the lid because the steam will blow it off.) 6. Continue to simmer, while adding anything else you want. I've added garlic, l...

Martha Stewart sugar cookies with royal icing.

I got to use my tiny apple cookie cutter to decorate this apple pie.