Sunday Funday (Again : )

Dave and I had an amazing relaxing and fun weekend. On Friday night, we used up the rest of our Thanksgiving leftovers to make a Grilled Turkey Sandwich with Mashed Potatoes and Cranberry Sauce. I served this along with the Butternut Squash, Kale, Cheddar Bread Pudding and Corn Pudding. Here's how I made the Sandwich:
Leftover Thanksgiving Sandwich
Ingredients:
-2 pieces of wheat bread
-4 slices of gruyere cheese (all we had)
-sliced turkey meat (leftover turkey
-a couple tablespoons of cranberry sauce
-a couple tablespoons of mashed potatoes
-2 tablespoons of butter
Instructions:
Melt butter in hot skillet on medium heat. Add on piece of bread and layer with some cheese, turkey, sauce and mashed potatoes. Add more cheese before putting other slice to cover. Cook 3-5 minutes until each side is lightly browned and cheese is melted.
Saturday, we were pretty lazy. Slept in because neither of wanted to work out. Dave slept pretty late so to get him out of bed I made him this breakfast.
I snuck in some marscopone cheese into the scrambled eggs. Yum!
We played a lot of Super Mario Bros and Trivial Pursuit for the Wii. I also did tons of laundry. Then I got started on lunch. I made Grilled Corn and Jalapeno Soup.
Grilled Corn and Jalapeno Soup
Ingredients:
For the soup:
6 medium ears sweet corn
Olive oil
Kosher salt
2 jalapeno peppers
1 large red onion, minced Freshly
ground pepper, to taste
Cumin, to taste
2 cups low-sodium chicken broth
2 cups half-and-half
For the relish:
Reserved grilled corn
¼ cup red bell pepper, seeded and diced
small 1 small jalapeño pepper, seeded and minced
1 tbsp. honey
1-2 tbsp. white vinegar
Salt, to taste
Directions: Shuck the corn. Rub the cobs lightly with oil and season with salt. Place on a heated grill or grill pan and cook, turning occasionally, until some but not all kernels blacken and pop and the cobs are nicely browned. Remove from the heat and cut the kernels off the cobs with a sharp knife. Transfer half of the corn to a bowl and set aside for a later use. Add the other half of the corn to the bowl of a food processor along with the jalepeno, and red onion, spices and half of the chicken broth. Pulse until the mixture forms a coarse paste. You can leave the soup on the chunkier side if you prefer. Add more broth as needed. Transfer the mixture to a large saucepan or stockpot, and stir in the half-and-half. (I was following this recipe from Annie-Eats. Next time I will wait to add the cream until the very end. I think it messed with the consistency). Heat over medium-high heat and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to a simmer and let simmer for at least 15-20 minutes. For fullest flavor, simmer and reduce the volume of soup by half. To make the relish, add all the remaining relish ingredients to the bowl with the reserved corn. Mix well, cover, and refrigerate until ready to serve. Source: adapted from Use Real Butter and Annie Eats

Next up I realized that I still had two sweet potatoes left and about a cup of cubed squash. So I made Sweet Potato, Butternut and Spinach Gratin. I made this recipe up on the fly. This was sorta like this recipe and sorta like a recipe I saw on Smitten Kitchen.
Ingredients:
2 tbsp butter
1/2 small onion, finely chopped
8 oz of frozen spinach defrosted
1/2 cups milk 1/2 cream
1 1/2 tbsp flour
2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced thinly
1 cup of butternut squash
3/4 cup Gruyere
handful or two of panko bread crumbs
Instructions: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. In a medium saute pan, melt 1 tbsp of butter. Add the onions and saute until translucent. Remove from heat and set aside. In a small saucepan, heat the remaining butterUsing a whisk, add in the flour, constantly stirring until you have a light brown paste. Gradually add the milk and cream to the flour/butter paste about a 1/4 cup at a time, stirring constantly between additions. You want a thick, gravy-like sauce to develop. Once it's sufficiently thick, remove from heat and whisk/figure eight in the cheese. Butter or grease a 8 x 8 square glass dish. Layer some 1/3 of your sweet potatoes, squash and onions on the bottom, then 1/2 of the spinach on top. Spoon a few tablespoons of the bechamel sauce on top and sprinkle cheese. Repeat once more, topping with the last 1/3 of sweet potatoes. Top with any remaining bechamel sauce and cheese and add a couple handfuls of panko. Bake for 1 hour.
Dave and I hung out for the rest of the afternoon and put up our Christmas Tree which we got out of the attic. It looks pretty good if you ask me!
Then it started snowing and we had to decide what we were going to do. Our original dinner plans got canceled so we decided to head up to my brothers place in Brookline. With the snow accumulating, we decided that it was smartest if we stayed the night. So we packed up our Wii remotes and grabbed Trivial Pursuit and headed up there. Once we got there, we walked to a local Thai place to get dinner. (SNOWY!!!) Then we ate and played games for like 3-4 hours. It was fun! Trivial Pursuit for the Wii is awesome : )

Today we ended up staying at Mike and Natalia's ALL Day. When the Pats game started to go sour, Natalia and I took off to the mall. Gap Outlet is sooo good right now. Then we hit up Whole Foods on our way back. It was the first time in A LONG TIME I went to the grocery store without a plan. And I walked out of there spending only $102. I'm pretty proud of myself!

When we finally got home, I made two sirloin grassfed steaks with mushrooms, argula and a Chili Lime Sauce. My steak was only o-k. It had a lot of fat on it so I wasn't able to eat that much. But I also had leftover gratin.
Then I got cracking on lunches. On Saturday when the gratin was roasting, I also cooked a spaghetti squash. This will be part of our lunches for the week. Then I went upstairs and took a nice long relaxing bath and finished my book, Dear John by Nicolas Sparks. Amazing book. I read it in 5 days.

Summary of Workouts 11/30-12/6:
Monday- PT and ran 2 miles
Tuesday- boot camp
Wed- ran 3 miles, lifted legs
Thurs- muscle conditioning
Friday- ran 4 miles
Sat/Sun- off

Goals for this week:
(Same as above with 1 more mile each day)
Dinners for the Week of 12/6:
Sunday: Mushroom and Argula Steak
Monday: Recreation of Bertuccis Silano Pizza
Tuesday: Japanese Chicken Scallion Rice Bowl
Wed: Chili Chicken with Rice and Black Beans
Thurs: Chinese Chicken and Brocolli
Fri: Veggie (whatevers left in the fridge) quesidillas and tomato soup

Gretchen comes back tomorrow! YAY!