Boy did I have a good lunch today.  At Butterfield's I had a Poached Egg Frisee Salad.  It was delicious.  The description from the menu is "Organic mixed greens tossed with chopped tomatoes, cucumbers, bacon bits, and goat cheese topped with poached eggs and balsamic vinaigrette".  I had them hold off the cucumbers and add extra goat cheese.  I also had the dressing kept off.  I was surprised how much I liked this....the warm egg over the cold salad was a wonderful, unexpected enjoyment.  And the egg yolk with the slightly melted goat cheese, due to the heat of the egg, made its own yummy dressing.  

For dinner tonight I made some recipes I just found in the latest Food Network magazine.  The barley beef slow cooker stoup was delicious.  I made changes to the original recipe (of course, I always do).  I will give the Super Mom version of this dish.

Ingredients

• 2.75 pounds boneless beef chuck (in one piece)
• 2 cup pearl barley
• 4 stalks celery, cut into 1/2" pieces
• 6 medium carrots,  cut into 1/2" pieces
• 3 medium leeks, sliced 1/2" pieces (white and light green parts only)
• 2 sprigs thyme
• 8 cups low-sodium beef broth
• 2 tablespoon soy sauce
• 2 tablespoon red wine vinegar
• Freshly ground pepper
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Directions

Combine the beef, barley, celery, carrots, leeks, thyme, beef broth and soy sauce in a slow cooker. Cover and cook on low, undisturbed, 8 hours.

Uncover and skim off any excess fat (if you have any...I didn't). Pull out the sprigs in thyme. Shred the meat in the pot just using 2 forks. Add 2T red wine vinegar, and 1-2T soy sauce (instead of salt) and 1-2t freshly ground pepper. Thin the stoup in the slow cooker with some more broth, if desired.

Then I made popovers that I also found in the same issue of the magazine.  I bought a popover pan at William Sonoma ($20).  It was SOOOOO easy and SOOOO impressive that I will be making them again.
I doubled it because I wanted to make 12 and this recipe only makes 6. The recipe below (from Alton Brown) is for the original 6 popovers.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted and cooled, plus 1 teaspoon for the pan
• 4 3/4 ounces all-purpose flour (This is tricky....I happen to have a food scale from one of those crazy diets we tried to do once.  I weighed the flour....it came to about 1 cup)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons kosher salt
• 2 large eggs, at room temperature
• 1 cup whole milk, at room temperature (to lighten up this recipe I used 3/4 cp fat free half and half cream and 1/4 cp skim milk)
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• Directions

Heat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Grease a 6-cup popover pan with the 1 teaspoon of butter.

Combine the 1 tablespoon of butter, the flour, salt, eggs and milk in a food processor or blender and process for 30 seconds.

Divide the batter evenly among the cups of the popover pan, filling each one-third to one-half full. Bake on the middle rack of the oven for 40 minutes, taking care not to open the oven door. Remove the popovers to a cooling rack and pierce each one in the top with a knife to allow steam to escape. Serve warm.

I also made some honey butter for a snack later on the left overs.  To make the honey butter, just let butter soften then mix in honey.  SO good with re-warmed popovers.