Halloween Weekend

Huge post FTL.

Well anyways... here's what we did for Halloween weekend. On Friday, we went to Catherine's party first.. The most memorable costumes was Hoho's Todd from Scrubs and Douchebag. Yeah, some guy actually dressed up as a douche bag. I seriously LMAO'ed when he was in character. They also shot gunned some Natty Ice... worst beer ever. Oh yeah and the Douchebag kept getting hit on the head by the Douchebag Police. Hahaha! What a concept.

After that we went to Ken's house for the rest of the night. The chickadees were hot and the jack-o-lanterns were hotter! They actually put flare sticks in the pumpkins. Scary, but full of awesome! Lots of great costumes and fun!

The next morning, I went to Lucky to get ingrediants for AltonBrownSlideways' cabbage rolls. It's a very easy recipe..... take a look:

2 decent sized heads of cabbage

1/2 lb ground beef

1/2 lb ground lamb

1 red bell pepper

1 small onion

1 bunch of green onion

1 1/2 cups rice cooked

Oregano

Tarragon

Salt & pepper

For the sauce:

1qt sour cream (I don't use it all, but I always like to have extra in case)

1 large can diced tomatoes

Vodka (add to taste)

What to do:

Start cooking your rice while you carefully peel the large leaves off the cabbage.

Blanch them for about 1-2 minutes in boiling water, then immediately immerse them in ice water.

Set aside to drain.

Finely chop the pepper and onions.

Mix the beef, lamb, veggies, and cooked rice together in a large bowl. Use as little or as much rice as you like. I like just enough to notice as texture/taste/filler, not overpowering. Season the mixture with the afforementioned spices as you see fit.

Then take small handfulls of the filling and roll them up in your drained, blanched cabbage leaves. This should net you about 12-14 good sized rolls.

For the sauce: Combine the tomatoes, sour cream, and vodka (again, do this to taste) in a saucepan and simmer till everything is nice and mixed and happy... should be a sort of pinkish color. Maybe about 10 min or so.

Bringing it all together:

Preheat your oven to 400. Pour some of the sauce in the bottom of a baking dish. Set the rolls on top of the sauce, then pour the remaining sauce over them. Cover loosely with foil and bake for about 30 minutes or until they reach 160F when checked with a meat thermometer.

These cabbage rolls along with the leftover vodka were transported to Jason's house. We ate, drank and were merry until someone decided to turn on a very gory and no plotted movie. What was it called? Something vomitmdolls.com. Yeah.... gross as hell and boring. But other than that the party was awesome! It was fun to help Jason cook (he made Beef Bourginon sp?) and provide my inputs. One of the highlights was him making a ghetto roux. The sauce he was reducing wasn't getting thick enough so instead of starting with a roux he microwaved some butter and flour together and then mixed it into the sauce. Apparently it worked because the sauce thickened right up. A good tip to keep in mind. Anyway, it was good to see some faces I haven't seen in a while.

Well, besides all of that... our weekend is pretty much over. Tomorrow we rest and clean. The next weekend we'll be celebrating our 2 year anniversary as husband and wife! Wooo!