With our nice new kitchen...

...we'll be sure to make more dinner's like this. A few weeks back Matt bought Ad Hoc at Home. This cook book is nothing shy of amazing. These aren't the simplest recipes, but they are well worth the extra work. Matt and I love to cook together. Usually during the week we would cook a simple but good meal using Cooking with All Things Trader Joe's or some modification there within. The weekends were the time for a more in-depth recipe we wanted to try from a few of our other cookbooks (don't worry, I'm sure I'll mention them at some point.) Although we aren't able to cook together every night right now due to our current living situation (soon to change!) we still try to make amazing meals when I come up and visit.

Matt is a breakfast boy. He eats breakfast every single day. His breakfast food of choice is usually an egg. Now, I never was an egg fan. Some things happened in my past that caused me to loathe the egg for as long as I can remember, but like most of my other tastes, that changed when I met Matt. This boy makes a mean egg. Because of this, and because every time I make an egg I choose to scrabble it so it resembles Maddie's food more than it does an egg, Matt makes the breakfast. Since pouring the orange juice doesn't take as long as cooking the eggs, I am expected to do other productive things during the breakfast preparation (I learned long ago that using Facebook wasn't considered productive.) The alternative is, I get to go through the cookbooks and figure out which cooking journey we will  partake in that night.

A few weeks ago we wanted chicken. The problem with Ad Hoc is that a lot of chicken recipes require you to brine the chicken for more hours than we had available. But then I saw it! The Crispy Braised Chicken Thighs. Not only did the recipe sound delicious but it requires the use of an oven-proof skillet. For a long time we've wanted to purchase a cast iron skillet, but haven't really had a reason to. But now we did! After doing a bit of research we decided to buy a Lodge Logic cast iron skillet. Not only did we buy a skillet to cook our chicken in, but I also got a miniature one to make amazing chocolate chip cookies in! Stay tuned...

Anyways, we absolutely love our Lodge Logic skillet. It takes some getting use to, but let me tell you most of Matt's meals since have some how managed to incorporate the skillet. And I mean, when it makes your meals look like this why wouldn't you?

Note: It tastes even better!