Basically with this sickness and a recent move I haven't been in the kitchen as much as I'd liked to. Figures, the thing that makes me happy is really hard to do when you feel like death. I did get a little date time with my dear friend Doxey last eve and I decided to take him to a staple in the Townsend family dining world, Gray Cliff Lodge, located up Ogden Canyon.

Rayce (the father) got his start there in his late teens/early twenties so we've known the owners forever. It's a completely charming, yet creepy (haunted I kid you not) place that's basically hidden unless you know where you're going. I don't get out there as often as I used to but it's nice to know they still recognize my face when I do show up.

You know how Olive Garden says 'when you're here, you're family?' Screw that, that's Gray Cliff for me.  So much that Rayce has several haunted stories about "Spargo" the ghost that is known to haunt the attic.  I actually used one of his stories to win an autographed Roswell script. It was magical. I always feel like the ghost is just hanging out, smelling steaks all day. Not a bad life.

Now this place has always reminded me of my favorite movie The Shining. There is just some old vibe to it. It basically used to be a house, still has the layout of one, and it hasn't changed decor in the 30 years I've been visiting. It's kind of great that way.

Another Townsend thing that originated at Gray Cliff is the game we play when ordering. You try to get the waiter or waitress to not have to ask you any follow up questions. So my perfect order went as follows:

Fruit cup (other option, tomato juice), salad, bleu cheese (other option, soup of the day), filet medium rare with steamed vegetables (other option, potato, fries, rice). That's it. I nailed it. So did Doxey, but only because he copied my order.

I legit love how the fruit cup comes with a cracker. It makes it cute.

I like to get my bleu cheese on the side so I can hoard it for the steak. Also, these cinnamon rolls, winning. As Rayce would suggest, get them with a scoop of ice cream.

Now I'm typically a ribeye only gal, but my choices here were New York or Filet. Usually, I go with the New York but I decided to up it and try the bacon-wrapped filet and I'm pretty glad that I did. And I'm also pretty glad I hoarded that bleu cheese.

The dinner comes with dessert so the carrot cake was a must have. It's just so festive.

I'll try my best to cook something this week, depending on how I'm feeling but honestly, even documenting restaurant experiences is something I'm going to do as often as I can.  Sometimes you can just find hidden gems up the canyon.  Well worth the drive.

Basically I have the plague this week so cooking has been kept to a minimum. I've decided to utilize this time to figure out a layout and exactly what I want to do with this blog. So here is hoping some progress comes from my misery. In the meantime, someone please have a glass of wine for me?

In an effort to use the grill more, I decided to roast some zucchini. I need to branch out on my zucchini experience because right now it's limited to zoodles and the occasional slice. But grilling them, wow, what an experience.

 I wanted a simple salad, something fresh and light for one of the first warmest days of the year. For some reason, roasted nuts sounded amazing. I got a mixture of pecans and peanuts and put them in the oven at 350 for about 20 minutes, covered in grapeseed oil.

I sliced a zucchini at an angle and coated it in olive oil and pepper. I cut a portobello mushroom I just had on hand and drizzled it on olive oil as well. I put the mushroom on the grill for about 15 minutes...

While the mushrooms roasted, I coated some pre-cooked chicken with pepper, paprika, cumin and olive oil. I like blackened chicken...with grapeseed oil. Lot's of oils going on here, which is how I like it. Mixes it up. Put your cast iron on medium-low heat and occasionally turn for about 15 minutes or until desired blackness.

I love my cast iron. After the 15 minutes for the mushrooms have passed, remove those and throw on top of some spinach or arugula. Really, any green will work. Let it set. At this point I like to add some cheese so it can get a little melty so I threw some bleu cheese on top of the musrooms. Meanwhile, I put the coated zucchini directly on the grill, 3 minutes on each side so I could get those beautiful char marks.

By this point the nuts should be finished so pull those out and place them on top of the salad you've got started. Once you've grilled the zucchini to your liking, throw those babies on top as well. Then we add the chicken, where its crispy and warm and it may melt some more of the cheese. Parmesean is probably a better cheese for this but whatever, use what you want! You don't even need a dressing, the oils completely substitute that. It's fresh and amazing.

I plan on making this A LOT.

I swear, everyone I know is going through some sort of sickness. Cold, flu, you name it. Mostly it's people I work with so I decided to try my hand at a homemade chicken soup because lets be real, who can resist chicken soup? Oh, I guess vegetarians. Sorry.

The base of a chicken soup is simple. Boil chicken. In water. I used a whole chicken and I sawed off the legs and wings and sliced it open but didn't take it completely apart. I have no idea why, this was just my method. Call it laziness.

I'd like to thank my day job for this pot, it was my 10 year anniversary gift!

I brought the water to a boil and then turned it back down and let it simmer for about 45 minutes. During this time, I started organizing my cookbooks.

*Not sponsored by Miller Lite (doesn't always have to be wine).

When I finished doing that, I removed the chicken and removed the bones. I put the bones back into the water for another 45 minutes. I shredded the chicken with a fork and burned the tips of my fingers anyway....

While the bones were still simmering, I spiraled and diced some carrots. I had to change it up a little, right? I did the same with the celery and onion though I did not spiral those. Too much work. Also, only the fat ends of carrots are good for spiraling, hence the half spiraled, half diced.

After the 45 minutes passed, I removed the bones and replaced it with the shredded chicken. I threw all the veggies in as well. I turned the heat up a little, medium low, and went another 10 minutes. 

After that, I added the spice, oh my favorite part. I just kind of went with what sounded good: cumin, turmeric, salt, pepper, chili powder and voila. Perfect. I also threw in a tiny bit of vegetable broth (I would have used chicken broth but I didn't have it, whatever) and just kept stirring. I turned the stove back to simmer and every 20 minutes or so I'd stir again, just to keep it moving.

Store in the fridge for I'm gonna say about 5 days it should hold up. It may even be better after some time for the flavors to come together, I'll let you know. And in case you were wondering, they're all color-coded now!

After a few discussions with my love Chryshele I discovered she was not remotely familiar with the eggplant. This needed to change, and immediately. So this eve, I attempted a roasted eggplant with a greek yogrit topping*.

*Footnotes suck at the bottom, no one ever scrolls. Since the beginning of time aka when my Sestra was 2, we have called "yogurt" "yogrit" and I am a fan of sentiment.

So. You start with eggplant. Cut that bitch in half and either roast it in the oven at 400 covered in olive oil or put that shit on a grill. I chose the grill.


I left it on about 30 minutes. In the meantime, I set my stove to 2 (fucking electric stove) and heated up some greek yogrit and blueberry cheese I found at Smiths for cheap.

Remember how one day I'll be awesome at taking food photos?

Annnyway, I added some diced thyme (fresh) and garlic to the mixture. The cheese melted super nicely and then I added some lemon juice. It smelled amazing. Once the eggplant was finished grilling I let it cool a few minutes before putting the topping...on top. But the smell, out of this world.

Seriously. SERIOUSLY. This was so tasty and ridiculous. Happy meatless Monday!!

Adapted from this awesome book, but I couldn't find pomegranates so I improvised.

My favorite food has got to be a steak. It's the first thing I learned to cook well (not well DONE, though, blah) and why not? Steaks are a Townsend staple.

Last eve I was invited to cook for two of my co-workers. They wanted steak. I obliged and when I oblige on steak, I go all out. Prime ribeye, bleu cheese creamed spinach. Hell, yes. I stopped at the store first, if I am being fancy, I really like to get my steak from the actual butcher. I will pay for a good steak, and luckily with the size of these ribeye's, one feeds two. As I'm shopping I see the elusive Rayce (father and sort of cooking mentor, especially when steaks are involved) throwing 10 top ramen packages into his cart. As the sort of healthy food person I am, I basically followed him for a few aisles and criticized everything in his cart. "Do you know how much sodium is in that? Is that even legal? WHY RAMEN?!?" He politely asked me to leave, and I did, since I had cooking to do.


I met up with Tammy and Sandy and began my preparation in one of the most gorgeous kitchens I've ever had the privilege of cooking in. I cut the steaks in half and used black pepper to season. Sometimes you don't need anything more than pepper, especially if the steak is good enough (believe me, there will probably be several posts dedicated to steak and how to not fuck them up). Heat up a bit of olive oil and start them on fairly high heat.

Now, I'm a medium rare gal and I'm an ADVOCATE for medium rare, however some of us (Tammy) like their steak well done. Okay, I'll cottle you. There isn't much to the steak. These were particularly thick so about 5ish minutes on one side, turn, another 5ish on the other for the medium rare, I'd say 7-8 minutes each side for the well done. Now, I know, you're not supposed to cut into the meat, it takes the flavor away, even a tiny cut, so you do the hand test/palm test/finger test. I'm awful at explaining it so please, refer yourself here.




Also, may I just say, GAS STOVE GAS STOVE GAS STOVE.

Now when they are at their desired doneness, take them off the pan and let them sit. They should rest about another 5 minutes which will give you time to prepare the spinach.

Anyway, I took an entire bag of spinach, chopped it up a little with Kevin, the fancy Wusthof, and simmered in in olive oil about 3 minutes on medium heat until it was slightly wilty. A little olive oil in this case goes a LONG way. Now, remember, the spinach will reduce like crazy, so even when you think an entire bag of spinach is enough for 3 people, I'd rather have had 2 bags. After the simmer I added bleu cheese crumbles (literally I add bleu to almost everything). It'll start to get a little creamy as you stir, some choose to add half and half at this point, I am not one of those people, however, do your thing. Some add a little broth...again, not one of those people.


When the bleu cheese is to your desired creaminess, give it a good stir and place on the plate. You can arrange how you like...next to, on top of or under the steak. Whatever is fancy. In this case, because I only had so much spinach, I did a nice side presentation and added a shit ton more bleu cheese to the steak.

And then, I stuffed.




Steak isn't really that hard to fuck up, however you can. Be mindful and pay attention and damnit, get prime steak.

*I realize it's Thursday and I'm late. Whatever.

Not to be a cliche, but it's wine Wednesday. NO, I will not do a wine post every Wednesday because that would be lame, but since it's kind of a 'get to know me' time on this blog here, I figure we'll discuss my history (not all of it) with wine.

I started as a young gal appreciating how great White Zinfandel was, probably before I should have. I would sip on the parents if they allowed me to and it was my first purchase as a legal adult. Funny thing is that I wasn't even carded on my 21st birthday as I walked into the downtown Salt Lake City liquor store with one of my boss's who I'm fairly certain the cashier thought was my sugar daddy. I'm still upset about that. I gave up wine basically most of my 20's. I partied with beer and Long Island Iced Teas and such, like you do. I didn't give wine another shot until I was probably 26 or 27 and it was a sweet reisling. It was very, very sweet, but I enjoyed every minute of it.

Then I went to a wine party. Then a co-worker, Karie, told me about Malbec.

So, I'd dabbled in reds a little, but really couldn't find one I could connect with. I liked a nice Cabernet, couldn't really do Merlot, Pinot was alright. I did have a thing for House Wine and still do on occasion. But it wasn't until I was told of the lovely Malbec that I really decided it was for me.

Red Rock became a quick favorite. I tend to buy based on label design (if affordable). I have really no other system. I liked the design of this with the cute, red, rock. Somehow it stuck and I got my mother addicted and the rest is history. When cooking, it's my wine of choice. Always.