cold weather and cooking

I finally have a chance to sit down and write.  Things have been so busy the past few days, with 3 home games last week, the Christmas party, and Thanksgiving, there wasn't much down time around here!!  It was a nice change of pace.  Now I'm preparing to have things slow down quite a bit... the guys are gone 10 of the next 18 days.  Time to find things to do to entertain myself (ideas are very much welcomed)!! 

One thing I've started doing more now that I have the time to do it is experiment with cooking and baking.  It's not that easy to do here with a) the difficulty grocery shopping and understanding what you're buying and b) trying to convert measurments!  I wish I had paid more attening in what... 2nd grade? when you learn the metric system.  I'm catching on more as I go, and a lot of things I "guesstimate".  It's all turned out okay so far!!

The first thing that I made was Chili.  Neither J nor I like beans in our chili (or at all for that matter).  I found a recipe without, changed it around a little bit, tried it out... and it was delicious!!  It doesn't have onions or tomatoes either.. but you certainly could add them if you'd like.  I told my mom I'd send her the recipes a couple weeks ago... but figured this way I can share them with all of you :) Here they are!

My Chili Recipe

3 lbs. ground beef
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 Tbsp. chili powder
2 tsp. ground cumin
3 Tbsp. flour
1 Tbsp. dried oregano
28 oz. beef broth
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

Brown beef in pan, add garlic.  While beef is browning, combine chili powder, cumin, and flour.  Sprinkle mixture over the beef once browned and stir until evenly coated.  Add oregano over meat and pour in 21 oz. of the beef broth.  Add salt and black pepper, stir well and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to low and let simmer for 90 minutes.  Pour in the remaining broth and simmer for an additional 30 minutes.  Let chili cool, cover, and refrigerate to allow flavors to blend.

tips: 
1) Refrigerate overnight.  It allows the flavors to blend even more.
2) I found it easist to brown the meet in a skillet, and then move it to a larger pot that was easier to stir liquids in. 
3) This recipe makes several servings (I'd say about 6-8 medium sized bowls)
4) Serve with grated cheese, sour cream, crackers, bread, or however else you like your chili. Enjoy!

Another recipe that turned out to be absolutely delicious was the Chicken Noodle Soup.  J was sick so I figured I'd give it a try... turned out to be the best Chicken Noodle Soup I've ever had! (and those of you who know me know that I think very highly of Panera's Chicken Noodle Soup... this was even better!)  Similar to the chili, we don't like onions, carrots or celery in our soup (if you haven't noticed, we're very particular eaters!) so this recipe cooks with the whole vegetables to make it easy to strain them out when serving.  All of the flavor, no picking out the onions and carrots! :)  Here is the recipe for that:

Chicken Noodle Soup

1 L (about 4 cups) water
1 lb. Chicken Breast fillets
1 small-medium sized onion, peeled and halved
3 whole black peppercorns (or a dash of ground pepper, preferably freshly ground!)
2-3 whole carrots, peeled
2 chicken bouillon cubes (this may change your water measurments, so follow the measurments on the bouillon box to determine exactly how much water to use)
About 2 cups dry pasta noodles (I like the spirals!)

Bring water and chicken breasts to a boil in a pot.  Reduce heat, add bouillon cubes (stir until dissolved) cover and let simmer for about 30 more minutes.  Add whole carrots, onion, and pepper into the pot, cover, and let simmer for 1 hour.  Pre-cook the noodles in a separate pot, drain.  Remove chicken and cut into bite sized pieces.  Add chicken and noodles to the broth, warm on low heat.  Strain whole vegetables and serve.

you can add chopped vegetables if you'd like, this is just how we prefer it (we're not big fans of cooked veggies)  This makes about 2 large servings (we ate it as a meal) or 4-5 smaller bowls (to eat as a side with a sandwich or salad).  Hope you like it as much as we did! 

And the last recipe that I'll share is for the Apple Pie that I made as part of our Thanksgiving meal.  I was really winging it.. but (as long as the guys weren't lying to me just to be nice) it was a big hit!  You can make your own pie crust, of course... but especially on a day like Thanksgiving, that was way more than I was willing to take on!

Apple Pie

1 frozen pie crust, thawed
6-8 medium sized apples
1/2 cup flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup butter 
1 1/4 cup oatmeal
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 tsp. cinnamon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees/175 celsius.  Combine flour, brown sugar, oatmeal, nutmeg and cinnamon in a bowl, mix well.  Once pie crust is thawed, roll out and put in a greased/floured 9 inch round pie pan.  Peel apples, slice thin and add to the crust, filling almost to the top of the crust.  Melt butter and mix it with the flower/brown sugar/oatmeal/nutmeg/cinnamon mixture, stir until well coated.  Pour topping evenly over apples.  Put in oven for about 45 minutes, until crust is golden brown.  Allow to cool a little bit (but not all the way!)  and serve with vanilla ice cream.  mmmmmmm :)

My next recipes I want to try are something with rice, and a ham one.  I'll have to report back once I try them out and let you know how they go!

After I made the Thanksgiving feast on Saturday, J made us an absolutely delicious meal on Sunday.  Too bad we're both such bad cooks, huh? ;)  Guess being domestic comes along with the marriage certificate.  

Speaking of which, we have found out that we need to send our marriage certificate BACK to the U.S. to get an Apostille seal (?) (we're still not 100% sure what that means, but it's a way of 'legalizing it' and is sort of like getting it notarized but for foreign countries, we think)  so that I can register here and get a Finnish ID number (like a social security number).  J was able to register without a problem with the team being his employer, but since he/that is the reason I am here, I need to prove my relationship to him.  It doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, because they accepted our certificate as it is when we got our Visa's... but who knows.  So, just a heads up to any hockey wives coming over to Europe, get your marriage certificate legalized BEFORE you leave the U.S. so they will recognize it when you are abroad.  Just wanted to save anyone the step of sending it back like we have to do!

Another note: I see there are lots of you reading from different places across the US/Canada/Europe... I can happily say have been able to connect with a few other hockey wives through this blog, and if you are reading this, feel free to become a follower, comment, or contact me :)  It's such a small world that we live in and no one else understands our crazy lives like a fellow hockey wife!

Well, J is at an away game tonight (if you could call it that, they're playing 10 minutes down the road...) so I'm going to try and stay warm by curling up on the couch with a blanket and a glass of wine.  It's been very cold here lately (single digits fahrenheit, around -15 celsius!) and we have lots of snow.  I better get used to it, I don't think it's going to get any better between now and April!

Hyvää Yötä!