Weekly Recipe: Four Cheese Fondue

On Saturday night we had my mom and her boyfriend over for dinner. Stephen and I created a delicious pot of fondue and feel that we must share it with you! It was so good we finished it all....

 

Ingredients:

 1 cup Fontina cheese, grated

1 cup Gruyere cheese, grated

1/2 cup medium cheddar cheese, grated

1/4 cup blue cheese, crumbled

4 ounces Pancetta

4 tablespoons flour

1 teaspoon dry mustard powder

Pinch cayenne pepper

1 shallot, minced

1 clove garlic, minced

1 and 1/2 cup white wine

1/4 cup dry sherry

2 tablespoons scallions, chopped

Salt and pepper, to taste

2 tablespoons Olive oil

Method:

1.       Grate cheeses and mix with flour, mustard, and cayenne to coat cheese.

2.       Heat olive oil in a 3-quart saucepot. Add pancetta to oil and sauté for one minute.

3.       Add garlic and shallots to the pot and sweat until fragrant.

4.       Deglaze pan with white wine and sherry, heat to a simmer.

5.       Add 1/3 of the cheese mixture at a time to pot.

6.       Stir well and when ready add scallions, salt, and pepper.

7.       Transfer to fondue pot and enjoy!

Dippers possibilities:

Apples (we used Granny Smith because the acid cuts through the richness of the cheese)

Sourdough bread

Bratwurst

Broccoli (steamed al dente) 

Compromise

I have been married now for three months. Time has flown by. But one thing I have realized is that marriage is so full of compromise. You decide who will pitch in on which chores around the house and you pick your battles. We have really found an excellent routine in the kitchen that allows us both to pitch in. Stephen is off of school before I am home for work. Because of his passion for cooking (he is becoming a chef..) he prepares most of our meals for us. Have I mentioned how wonderful it is to walk in the door after working 10 hours and have dinner ready for you? It's a rough life, I know.

(Spaghetti, salad, garlic bread + wine + candles= I'm a lucky woman!)

Since Stephen makes the food, I step in and help by cleaning the kitchen and doing the dishes. This is what works best for us- having one person cook or do dishes. If I cook, then Stephen will do the dishes.

(Chicken Lettuce Wraps: courtesy of my husband)

Although we have things running pretty smoothly in the kitchen, there are still a few areas we have left to work out.
1) Who does the dishes when we eat leftovers?
2)Why my husband must leave all his "snacking" dishes on the coffee table. It drives me nuts, but he could care less.

I love my husband and am thankful for the fantastic meals he puts on the table for me.

Happy Halloween!

Fall

I love fall. I love the clean smell of the cool, crisp air. I love snuggling up under blankets on the couch with my husband. I love lighting candles while I watch my favorite reality t.v. show. But one of my favorite parts of fall:

Pumpkins.

I eagerly await October because it means that I will be able to drag Stephen to the pumpkin patch, ride a hay-ride, and sip on fresh apple cider. We made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch a few weeks ago, and fun was had by us both. (They even had wine tasting that day!).

Today we carved the large pumpkin we chose and brought home from the pumpkin patch, which brings me to another fall pumpkin favorite of mine:

Roasted pumpkin seeds. We dug and and saved all of the seeds from our large pumpkin and tonight we will spread them out on a cookie sheet, slather them in oil and salt, and bake them. Delicious!

                                (Picture courtesy of Google Image, since we have yet to bake ours)

And the last but not least because it is often on my mind:

a Pumpkin Spice Latte. Otherwise known as: Heaven in a Cup.

My next adventure this week will be using fresh pumpkin from our smaller pumpkins to make homemade pumpkin bread.

What is your favorite part about fall?

Nice to Meet You

This is me with my husband, Stephen, back when we started dating in April of 2008.

He proposed to me in September of 2010, and I could hardly contain my excitement. Or my eagerness to begin wedding planning.

These are just a few of our engagement pictures which we had taken in the November. We love fall so naturally we thought it would be a great time to take these photos.

Now, fast forward ten months and you arrive at our wedding on July 30, 2011. Our wedding day ended up being one of the nicest days we had been blessed with so far during the summer. It was about 85 degrees and beautiful outside. We got married at a winery in front of 200 of our friends and family.

We are thoroughly enjoying married life living in the suburbs of Portland as a nanny and a chef. I'm so blessed to be enjoying life's adventures with my best friend.