For whatever reason almond butter doesn’t give me heartburn.  The kids love almond butter too so it is all good.  They especially love honey almond butter.  I am not such a huge fan of honey so I decided to try almond butter with coconut butter added.

I woke up the almond flavor first up by roasting them in a pan.  Then into the food processor they go.

Almond butter is a delicious substitute for peanut butter.  Nut butters in general are so easy to make in a food processor.  Versatile too, add-ins are endless; white chocolate, dark chocolate, honey, whatever floats your boat.

This spread makes for a simple breakfast on toast.  Or add a spoonful into your oatmeal or breakfast smoothie.  Love it, glad it feels the same about me.

At the end of the Summer, when tomatoes are ripening faster than they can be consumed, I throw them in baggies whole and freeze them.  They make a great substitute for canned tomatoes in chili, soups, and sauces.  Wanting to try something new I gave roasted tomato soup a try.  I wasn’t really sure if the frozen tomatoes would roast OK or if it would be a total failure.  Figured I had enough tomatoes to take a gamble.

Jackpot!  I used this Roasted Tomato Soup recipe, the biggest change I made was using the frozen tomatoes.  I defrosted them in the fridge overnight in a large bowl.  Cut them in the bowl as they will have a ton of juice in them.  Separate the tomatoes from the juice, save the juice to use in place of some of the broth.  I also added a pinch of sugar, ground black pepper and a pinch of salt.  I thought this would be another recipe to use my new stick blender.  Fail!  My husband put the attachment in the dishwasher.  R.I.P. stick blender, hardly knew ya.

Another item found in the wreckage of my freezer, basil pesto.  As green as the day I made it.  It was the perfect topping, along with a dollop of goat cheese, for the soup.  The goat cheese was unnecessary, the pesto was the pièce de résistance!

Tastes like Summer!  Ignore the fact that the temperatures in Chicago were almost 57° on this last day of January, this is a great Winter meal.  Hard to believe last year at this time was Snowmageddon was almost upon us.  I could really go for another snow day party.

Add to the greatness with a panini with pesto, mozzarella, and tomato to make it even better. Like my fancy panini press?

Tomatoes are a great way to enjoy a little Summer in the midst of Winter.  Happy to find another great use for my frozen tomatoes since I no doubt will plant too many tomato plants again this Summer.

I love hummus.  I love love love this buffalo hummus!  The stick blender worked perfect for it too and it turned out creamy and smooth the way I like it.  And while I do love my hot buffalo wing dip I think this is a great alternative.  I’ve been craving celery since the holidays (my body trying to save me from myself no doubt) and this hummus is perfect with celery.

Truth be told I ate this hummus for breakfast with some celery.  For lunch I spread it on a toasted tortilla with leftover steak, celery, buffalo sauce and blue cheese.  It is a good thing we only one tortilla in the house because I am sure I would have kept on eating.

I am sure I will find a way to enjoy it for dinner too!

These peanut butter bars are a good start.  If you want to splurge and want something really sweet try the peanut butter and corn chips.  Can’t go wrong with peanut butter and corn chips.  There is also the peanut butter blossoms, they could not be easier to make.  Or celebrate in style and go hog-wild and try these banana chocolate chip with peanut butter frosting and topped with bacon.

If you are not up for cooking simply order some homemade peanut butter in great flavors like honey pretzel and cinnamon raisin.  It is delicious and best of all natural.

I am going to keep it simple and have a little snack of ants on a log.  Happy Peanut Butter day!

Flank steak, goat cheese, dried mango, and mint leaf.  I was very skeptical at first glance but the flavors worked and made a great one-bite appetizer.

Roasted grapes?  These did not sounds good to me at all when I first saw them, I skipped right by it.  But I kept running across them (here, here, and here) so I finally gave in.  I wasn’t blown away but they were good on top of a warmed brie.

OK and then there was this one, omelet in a bag.  Sounds gross right?  You put all the ingredients in a seal-able bag and boil it in water about 14 minutes to cook.  Not sounding any better I know.  Gotta say it was flippin’ delicious and a great way to serve breakfast to a crowd.  The eggs cook perfectly!

Though I have to say the ultimate in gross sounding recipes that are actually pretty darn good is ground bologna.  My husband’s family introduced me to this, it is their go-to party food.  Though I have never actually made this myself.

OK, but here is one recipe that I am not sure I can be convinced to make…

Source: Lunch Box KC

That is one genius writer on 30 Rock! And I will say I was almost convinced by the end of the this video showing the recipe in action Buffalo Chicken Shake.  What do you think?

You can see the kids way over there on the other side of the street.  We headed right to Emperor’s Choice for lunch, it started with hot tea.

Of course we ordered far too much food.  Pot stickers, sweet and sour chicken, fried rice, shredded pork, and kung pao chicken.  They brought each dish out as it was made instead of serving the table all at once.   I loved that they did that because the food was so fresh.  Everything was really especially the chicken in the sweet and sour chicken, fried to perfection.

I was disappointed with the heat leave of my kong pao chicken, the waitress kept warning me spicy it was.  I didn’t taste any spice.  And the hot sauce on the table wasn’t spicy either.  I had hopes it looked crazy spicy.

We had a great meal and great entertainment.  The five year-old decided to tell jokes the entire time, he had us in stitches.  We made a good dent in our food and still brought a five-pound bag of leftovers home.

Of course the meal wouldn’t be complete without fortune cookies.

We attempted to walk off the meal and explored the stores.  The kids bought surprise packages wrapped in newspaper for $2.50 each.  They had some fun little toys and made for some cheap souvenirs.  We stopped in a wok store too and got couple cheap items we needed.  We ventured into a small grocery store that  had lots of seafood, frogs, turtles — not so fresh smelling.  But the fruits and vegetables looked amazing!

Finished the day with some smoothies for the kids and a sesame ball.

If our visit to Chinatown is any indication the Year of the Dragon will be good a year!

I did a good job at not letting the holidays (they seem so long ago now) interfere with my workout schedule and runs.  I was committed to start strong well before the holidays, I didn’t want to start the new year behind.  The mild Winter has of course made it easy to get out for plenty of runs.  I am still working on a race schedule for 2012 but it is looking a little disappointing.  The Spring half marathon I wanted to sign up for closed almost immediately after opening.  Bummer!  Two of my favorite races are on back to back weekends, and we will be on a Spring Break road trip both weekends.  Double-bummer!  Also there is a half marathon I was considering and it falls over Spring Break too.  A race a month (almost) like I did in 2011 is clearly not going to happen.  Probably for the best since I actually want to stick to a better training schedule.  I think focusing on the longer distances and spreading out the races will work better.  I found I did not really train for the 5Ks.  The closeness of the races didn’t help either.

This year my goal is to have a more consistent schedule and improve on the pace I have built up.  I had a strong start last year, but slowed up and bit.  I did not vary all that much and I guess the good news is I improved, finished better than I started the year.

So pace is what I will focus.  I started incorporating more regular speed training runs which has made a lot of difference.  I am planning to do the Lakefront 10 in April followed by the Soldier Field 10-miler in May.  That’s all I have confirmed at this point.  I like this distance and I love the idea of doing it back-to-back, it will be a challenge to best my time.

Still need to work on a more detailed plan, I am trying to stay focused on the short-term goals and not the long-term plan to avoid getting lost in the details.  The weather this Winter has been running friendly, up until last week anyway.  Though I can’t complain about the first significant snow fall and temp drops in mid-January, this is late for these parts.  Gave me a chance to finally give me Winter gear a test.  They all passed with flying colors!  My jacket I have had for a while, it is like this one.  It is warm and water-resistant and not at all bulky.  I finally invested in running gloves instead of wearing the $2 stretchy pair from the grocery store.  These new gloves are perfect and breath with avoids my hands from getting hot or sweaty.  My body temp runs pretty high so I dress light even on the coldest days.  My biggest issue is my legs, my thighs get cold and red.  It isn’t an issue until I get indoors and they start to sting a bit.  I invested in running pants that got rave reviews, they are awesome.  Seriously the most comfortable pants!  Most importantly they do keep my legs warm and protects them from the wind.  Definitely worth the investment, especially now that they are on sale.  Now I just need new sunglasses.  Why are they so flippin’ expensive!?!  I got a late birthday gift that I am waiting to arrive too, a Road ID.  Good thing to have, hope I never need it though!

We got about 8″ of fresh  snow out there now, can’t wait to get out in it.

Can you believe this rainbow chard has sat in my fridge since the first week in December and is still this fresh?  Our CSA ended just before Christmas and we are using up the last of the produce.  My body is screaming for fresh fruits and vegetables.  That will happen after a four-day indulgence seeing the old year out and ringing the new one in.  We used the chard for this Chard with Orange and Shallot recipe.  It is like a wilted salad, though I sautéed the chard a bit longer than the recipe suggested and topped it with stir fry chicken.  Great alternative to a cold salad in the Winter.

My husband took the reigns for dinner one night cooking up French Onion Salisbury Steak on Cheese Toast.  Holy moly was it delicious!  I don’t recall ever trying Salisbury Steak, I am amazed at how the texture of the ground beef is just like steak.  But it was really the gravy that made it so great, it would be good on just about any beef dish.  Actually I want to make it to top fries, similar to poutine. This was one of the best meals we have had in a very long time.

We also tried out our not so new stove-top smoker.  Uh, yea it has been sitting in the box for almost a year.  I can’t believe we’ve waited this long, it was so easy to use and the result were tasty.  You place a few tablespoons of wood chips in the bottom of the pan, top it with a drip pan, then the rack to hold the food.  The cover slides in place and you cook it on a single burner.  You can also use it in the oven or even on the grill.

We smoked a few heads of garlic.  Place it on the rack and smoke for about 45 minutes, easy easy.  Just like roasted garlic but obviously with smokey flavor.  Great simply spread on toasted bread.

The main event was ahi tuna (love the freshness of Trader Joe’s frozen fish).  Oh my goodness was this good.  The fish was perfectly cooked and came out moist and rich with smokey flavor.  The advantage of using the smoker is you don’t need to use oil to cook and the food sits on a rack so the fat drains into the drip pan and off the food. We just simply seasoned the tuna with a seafood seasoning a friend brought back from Seattle and nothing else.  It smoked up in about 20 minutes.  I just regret not doing more steaks to have around for leftovers.

See the smoke in the tuna?  Mmm good!  Served it with a simple herb yogurt/mayo sauce and green beans.  The downside of the smoker is your house smells a bit like a Summer campfire.  Especially if the seal on the lid is not as tight as it should be like we found was the case with ours.  We’ll need to bend some of the clasps, but we used the cast iron pans to keep the smoke in.  We loved the smell though, a nice reminder of Summer in the midst of Winter.

This smoker will definitely become a part of our regular routine, still can’t believe we waited this long to give it a try.  It will make eating fish on a regular basis easier, we love fish but are not huge fans of preparing it indoors.  We’ve also had homemade sausage on our to try list for a long time, we can easily smoke it now.  But first we are going to try a smoking a meatloaf, doesn’t that sound delicious?

Plate as in plates.  Lots and lots of plates.  Whole lot of eating going on this holiday season.  Friday was the family celebration and traditional Pierogi Fest.  Homemade and fried to perfection.  A delicious way to kick things off.

Actually we started with lots of appetizers too.  My husband’s liver pâté and I brought these tarts.  I had leeks from the CSA that needing using and I have been dying to try the spicy apricot jam from the food swap.  The tart were simple to make and I loved the added spice with the rich goat cheese.

I also attempted Challah for meal, I was semi-successful so skipped bringing it.  I need to coat it with egg better next time and figure out where in my house dough will actually rise fully.

It wasn’t a total loss though since it made the perfect bread for an overnight Hot Buttered Eggnog French Toast.

I used my hot buttered rum batter as the base layer, topped it with sliced Challah, soaked it in a mixture of beaten eggs and eggnog.  I let it sit overnight in the fridge and baked it while we exchanged gifts.  Very good, though skip the syrup it is sweet enough.

The full spread was bagels, cream cheese, smoked salmon (two ways), leek and apple sausage Quiche.  I realize I totally failed on the fruit and vegetable front.

A few beverages too.  A spicy bloody Mary topped with celery salt and a hot eggnog latte.  The Bloody Mary counts as a vegetable right?

Thankfully I was able to head out for a run.  If you are keeping count that is about a zillion calories consumed.  A Christmas day run was great but being in shorts is so wrong.  Forty five degrees is nice, snow would have been preferred.  I thought it would be a quiet run but it seems everyone was out — a family with their Christmas puppy, two people on roller blades (yes two, it was like I ran back to the 1980′s) they were not together and one of them was dressed up like Santa.  I also saw a guy wipe on his motorcycle.  He was OK, just hope it wasn’t a gift because it did not look so good.  Got in about six-mile before we headed out for more good eats with family and friends.

A few more food firsts I made twice baked potatoes and a standing rib roast.  This was honestly the first time I have been successful in making a baked potato!  I used this recipe for the roast, it was foolproof as the title suggests.

Lot of other delicious meals and desserts.  Of course food always taste better when you are in good company.

A great Christmas was had by all.  Onto the New Year!

The husband making his famous liver pâté.  I don’t want to know what is in it, self-defense mechanism.  It is delicious and I want to keep enjoying it.

Cookies dough being rolled out and cut with cookie cutter.  Again the husband handles this.  It is his mom’s recipe one of his favorite Christmas cookies.

The results are always fun and tasty too.