Category: Food and Recipes
Recipes and a White Girl Problem
| May 17, 2012 | Filled under Food and Recipes |
This morning was supposed to be a big morning for me.
I’m in the process of decorating my little “apartment” – it may take me forever, but I think I’ll get it done eventually. Or I’ll move and start over. Whatever.
Anyway, I picked out a color scheme and got to work. A few months ago I found this chair:
I didn’t buy it because I wasn’t sure I wanted more furniture but I filed it away. Then I decided I did want to get another chair, only I wasn’t sure this was “THE CHAIR.”
I was worried that I might get tired of the teal at some point and of course, furniture is not usually an impulse kind of purchase – it typically takes more money than I’m comfortable just spending all willy-nilly like. So I did what any girl like me would do.
I pinned it.
Within minutes I had feedback from three people – one of whom was my friend Amanda. She has her Pinterest account set up to post to Facebook and soon enough HER friends weighed in on the chair too. The consensus was unanimous:
Buy the chair.
Only I dragged my feet because I was still a little nervous but I finally decided that I want the chair, I have the money, it will look awesome in my room, and it will be reasonably easy to recover when/if I get tired of the teal. Besides, how fun would it be to say that I crowdsourced my living room design?
So I got on the website today to buy the chair and wouldn’t you know? It’s out of stock.
What do you think friends – is this a sign that it’s not meant to be? I signed up to be notified by email if they restock, but…maybe I should take this to mean I should keep looking. Or save the money for something else?
This is why I laugh and totally agree when I see “white girl problems” under the popular search terms people use to find my blog.
Anyway, let’s talk about recipes.
I get 99% of my recipes from the internet. But I don’t love following blogs that are only full of recipes. That’s part of why I stopped posting recipes as posts. The other part is that if I don’t own the recipe, all I can do is show my own pictures of the food and link you to someone else’s blog. Which, in my mind, is better done on Pinterest. But I do want to share my personal recipes and that’s why I added my recipe page.
Eventually I’ll get all of my old family recipes posted there too so they’re not lost to yellowing index cards and fading ink.
But, so, here are some yummy things I’ve made lately.
Warmer weather means I have every desire to start grilling again. I think I could grill everything. Yes, even pizza.
Just so you have a little more proof that this is actually on the grill:
Yum. I can’t tell you how delicious that pizza was – or how overloaded with goodies: peppers, onions, mushrooms, zucchini, goat cheese, mozzarella, chicken, and avocado.
But the secret to any good pizza is a good crust. For this pizza I made a Garlic & Rosemary crust that was to die for.
Next up? Quinoa burgers.
You may think of them as “fritters” cause there’s no meat involved and I see no reason to eat one on a bun – but they’re perfect on a bed of spinach!
Finally, and I don’t have a recipe for this one because it defies such a thing:
Buffalo Chicken Grilled Cheese. I think you know what to do, right?
What’s your favorite thing you’ve eaten lately? Would you take the chair situation as sign that it’s not meant to be?
On a Sunday
| May 13, 2012 | Filled under Food and Recipes |
I slipped out of bed with every intention of inventing myself a Red Velvet Waffle recipe. The kitchen is quiet in the morning and there’s a dreamy, soft light that fills the room. I whispered to the pups as I scurried around collecting my tools and when I finally had everything assembled I realized that there would be no waffles this morning – just donuts.
If this girl has a signature anything, it’s Red Velvet. This explains why there are 4 boxes of food coloring in my cabinet and each one is missing the bottle of red. I found a recipe for red velvet donuts, but alas, we had no red food coloring.
We were also out of vegetable oil, I soon discovered, and for a moment all seemed lost. I stared down a box of Bisquik, considering a forfeit. It would have been so simple, really, and no one would ever know.
Still, I persevered and soon we had a pile of donuts as ammunition for our Mother’s Day festivating.
Cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar, and just plain sugar adorned these rings of fried dough – though I will say the powdered sugar put up quite a fight. I tried a chocolate version as well with lackluster results. But the point was simply this: When I woke up today I’d never made my own donuts before. Now I can say that I have.
On this Mother’s Day it’s this legacy that I’m thankful for: my mother, her mother, and my father’s mother – all women with their own level of kitchen fierceness, whose aprons I take on each time I step into the kitchen. I imagine them whispering advice as I work (when we all know they’d probably be slapping my hands and/or shouting at me), picture them sharing their strength as I knead the bread, cautioning me that biscuits do not tolerate so much beating, and reminding me once again to slow. down. I never had the privilege to cook with all of these women, but they find ways to teach me nonetheless. The veil often seems thinnest when I’m the most buried in a new kitchen escapade. Even when I’m faced with something I’ve never done before, I know I can do it if I know one of the women in my family has done it. I trust them to help me out.
Maybe that explains why I treasure a quiet kitchen so much.
It was a day full of activity indeed and the flurry of comings and goings left the pups nicely worn out:
Which is, in fact, the secret to successful puppy raising. A tired dog is a good dog – provided they are exactly the right amount of tired.
I know I am exactly the right amount of tired right now and though the weekend seems too short (as always) I’m also looking forward to the week ahead of me.
I hope you, your mother, and all mothers out there had a most spectacular Mother’s Day.
Garden 2012
| April 30, 2012 | Filled under Food and Recipes |
Once again I’ll be joining with my friend Claudia to work on a little garden plot this summer. If you’d like to follow along with this adventure (oh, and it is sure to be an adventure) you should become a fan of my blog on Facebook:
You know you want to!
April Foodie Penpals Reveal!
| April 30, 2012 | Filled under Food and Recipes |
April was my first month participating in the Foodie Penpals swap and I have to admit I was nervous! I loved the idea of sending out goodies and getting my own set back but I was really worried my penpal wouldn’t like her box. Then I was worried the treats I sent would be all broken before they got to my penpal.
All of that worrying got me to forget that I was getting my own box of goodies in the mail so when I saw this huge box on my porch I just knew it wasn’t for me.
Until it was.
When I saw Ellen’s name on the return address I knew immediately what it was and I was ready to rip into it right away!
She packed everything so neatly with pretty tissue paper. I was good and read the card first even though I wanted to just see what she’d gotten me.
I was really excited to find lots of delicious snacks in my box! And out of all of these I’d only ever had Lavash chips before so most of them were totally new to me.
Everything Ellen packed me was yummy but out of the entire selection I would most highly recommend the baked Lentil chips. They’re definitely going to be a staple in my house. The second runner up would be those iced mint mango candies – I wasn’t sure mint and mango would be such a winning combination but I loved them!
My penpal hasn’t posted any pictures of the box I sent her but I will update this when she has so you can see the fun things I put together.
And now it’s time for some details about Foodie Penpals. Here’s what the program is all about:
-On the 5th of every month, you will receive your penpal pairing via email. It will be your responsibility to contact your penpal and get their mailing address and any other information you might need like allergies or dietary restrictions.
-You will have until the 15th of the month to put your box of goodies in the mail. On the last day of the month, you will post about the goodies you received from your penpal!
-The boxes are to be filled with fun foodie things, local food items or even homemade treats! The spending limit is $15. The box must also include something written. This can be anything from a note explaining what’s in the box, to a fun recipe…use your imagination!
-You are responsible for figuring out the best way to ship your items depending on their size and how fragile they are. (Don’t forget about flat rate boxes!)
-Foodie Penpals is open to blog readers as well as bloggers. If you’re a reader and you get paired with a blogger, you are to write a short guest post for your penpal to post on their blog about what you received. If two readers are paired together, neither needs to worry about writing a post for that month.
-Foodie Penplas is open to US & Canadian residents. Please note, Canadian Residents will be paired with other Canadians only. We’ve determined things might get too slow and backed up if we’re trying to send foods through customs across the border from US to Canada and vice versa.
If you’re interested in participating for May, please CLICK HERE to fill out the participation form and read the terms and conditions.
You must submit your information by May 4th as pairings will be emailed on May 5th!
*If you’re from somewhere besides the US, Canada or Europe and want to participate, send Lindsay an email and she’ll see if we get enough interest this month!
What’s the most delicious thing you’ve ever gotten in the mail?
Croissants!
| April 10, 2012 | Filled under Food and Recipes |
Okay, so here’s the top secret baking project I’ve been going on and on about for the past few days. And yes, it really did take us a few days to get these done! My mother and I have wanted to tackle croissants since we got our new copy of the bread book. With a certain someone’s baby shower just around the corner, we figured we’d do a test run and if all went well we’d be able to whip up another batch for the party.
Well, we may make more for the shower but there will definitely not be any “whipping up” of anything. Croissants are a labor of love, there’s no getting around that. The process takes not just a span of hours, but DAYS. There are so many stages where you have to stop and refrigerate the dough and just wait until it gets to the right temperature.
I had serious anxiety over these babies. All you ever hear is how hard it is to make croissants and how easy it is to ruin them. I had the impression they would be insufferable little things with dough that turned to cement if you looked at it the wrong way. I was wrong.
Other than just taking up a lot of our time the other stages of the process were not particularly difficult. I think the most difficult part of making croissants is just getting the timing right so the butter and dough are the right consistency. We may have been just plain lucky to decide to try these during this time of year when the weather is so mild (and not yet so stupendously humid). All in all I could not be happier with how the whole thing went.
The other thing I’m really happy about is that I made sure to use my actual camera instead of my cell phone for these pictures since I’m constantly complaining about wanting a new one even though I don’t use the one I have. So I used mine and it wasn’t so bad after all – imagine that!
Day One involved making the dough and shaping the butter into the little 6 inch square you see below. Both were then banished to the fridge to reach the right consistency.
Because our timing was late on Saturday, we ended up leaving them there overnight.
Day Two – One Good Turn Deserves Another
After taking out the butter and letting it soften, it was time to start the “turns” – the process of folding and rolling out the dough.
You fold the four corners in over that square of butter and roll it into a rectangle. You fold that and roll it out again, then fold that rectangle and roll it out again. Then you fold it:
And refrigerate for a few hours. Then you – surprise! Roll it out and fold it again. And then it’s back to the fridge for 6-8 hours or overnight.
Day Three
This is the best day. You roll out your dough and cut it into triangles:
Then roll the triangles into croissant form!
No, my croissants did not all turn out beautifully:
The “stickiness” you see on those two is butter that is seeping out of the dough. Don’t ever let anyone tell you a croissant is low fat because that’s a lie. Or it’s not really a croissant. But that weird skinny croissant looks like that because he didn’t start out as a triangle like the rest.
At this point I was extra nervous because we’d spent 3 days working on these things. We wondered if making them for the shower was too ambitious, if it would be worth it, if we should just admit defeat. The rolls I put in the oven looked alarmingly like the rolls you can make from a can – and while those might be tasty I was ready to crumble at the thought of all our work yielding nothing more spectacular than a traditional crescent roll.
The smell while these were baking was absolutely divine. I would love to bottle that scent and mail it out to all of you. Each time I got too worried I leaned over our oven and inhaled the heady scent of baking croissants.
Then the moment of truth arrived:
They smelled right and seemed to look nice and flaky, but would they be what I hoped? A proper croissant is crispy and flaky on the outside but soft almost to the point of melting on the inside.
Oh, yes. These were exactly right – and they tasted amazing. I savored each bite and licked my fingers afterwards. I’m so glad we tried making these because it was an awesomely rewarding experience – one that I consider my greatest kitchen victory so far.
What baking/cooking experiments have you been wanting to try but too nervous to actually do? What has been your greatest kitchen victory so far?
Pinterest in Real Life: Butternut Squash and Porcini Mushroom Risotto
| March 27, 2012 | Filled under Food and Recipes, Pinterest in Real Life |
Last night I decided it was time to get back in the kitchen. I’ve been avoiding it for a while but…it was time.
I’ve had this recipe pinned for months and like 90% of my pinned recipes, hadn’t gotten around to actually trying it. But we’ve also had a butternut squash sitting on our counter since January and I had to finally accept that it was never going to feel quite like “butternut squash eating weather” again this year.
Source: womansday.com via Kate on Pinterest
So I finally decided enough was enough! Not only was it high time to get myself back in the kitchen but it was also time to eat the stupid squash before it, like its predecessor, shriveled up. On that note, did you know a squash can go bad? You have to neglect it for a really, really long time but it will happen.
And so it came to pass that last night I made butternut squash and porcini mushroom risotto.
And it was GOOD.
The original recipe(from Woman’s Day magazine) calls for plain arborio rice but this is the “plainest” option our grocery store had:
The risotto packet came pre-seasoned so I left out the the salt and pepper, and thyme. Otherwise I pretty much followed the recipe exactly which is pretty rare for me. My only other step was to omit the romano cheese and just serve it on the side – I’m not off dairy again, but if I can avoid it I might as well, right?
A note for the vegetarians out there – this particular risotto has dehydrated chicken in it (I’m not vegetarian, but the sound of that is not appealing). Just an FYI!
This was definitely a Pinterest victory for me and I’m moving this recipe to my “must make again” board!
Have you had any kitchen victories lately? What have you pinned and actually done in real life lately?
I’m So Addicted to You
| March 21, 2012 | Filled under Food and Recipes, Getting Healthy |
I’m not entirely sure when my obsession began, but these days I can’t seem to get enough of the most amazing food group I know: Sushi.
I am almost completely convinced that I could eat sushi for all three meals and still enjoy it for snack and dessert as well.
In fact, if I were going to envision my ideal food pyramid, it would look something like this:
Not that I’ve given it a lot of thought, or anything.
But as my cravings persist, I’ve started asking myself what I’m really after. I assume when I’m craving something that my body has an ulterior motive. I find that when I’m really hungry I crave incredibly high calorie foods, usually high in fat or sugar as well – foods that will fill me up really fast and give me a brief energy boost. Usually when I crave something like ice cream I know having a glass of skim milk will take care of that feeling. I know I’m dehydrated when I start craving things like plain shaved ice.
Sushi is a really different kind of craving though in that I don’t see the immediate correlation between my want and a need. It doesn’t just hit me when I’m hungry like my urge to eat french fries. I can’t think of a viable substitute that would be “better” for me either – though I do get it with brown rice or just as sashimi whenever that’s an option and I try to stay away from the tempura (fried) choices.
Until I figure it out, I’m happy to indulge at least once a week in some raw awesomeness.
What are you craving most these days? Do you indulge your cravings or do you try to ignore them?
Slumping, but Still Baking
| December 19, 2011 | Filled under Food and Recipes |
How about another blog post full of Christmas vomit?
No? Not gonna do it for you? Okay then.
This weekend was nowhere near as fabulously well-organized as last weekend was and I can’t shake the feeling that I’m kind of half-assing everything right now. I’m just…tired.
Which leads me to a spiral of “waaah, I don’t wanna go through life feeling like everything I do is mediocre and blaaaaaaah.” And then I remember what time of the month it is and give myself permission to just be tired because I’ve earned it (more on that later).
I don’t think I’ve really earned the right to splurge on every single kind of candy that appears in front of my face though.
Cause it’s not just one hershey kiss, it’s a handful of them. Every. time. I. pass. the. bowl.
I kind of don’t want to talk to me either, to be honest.
But life doesn’t stop for anybody so why should it stop for me because I’m feeling like less than my usual awesome self? It shouldn’t.
Anyway, I have a gift for you today and it comes from the place where I found the cake that almost killed me. These cookies, however, will make you feel like a champion of cookies and like you can take on the world. Once again, Sprinkle Bakes is the source of all that is good and delicious in this life.
So much win. Make them. The dough is like a dream. And I will even admit that I didn’t chill the dough as long as directed in the instructions. AND she added a note today that I completely didn’t see (since I made them yesterday) about making them in the food processor, not in your KitchenAid mixer – but I did mine in the stand mixer and had amazing results. So if you don’t own a food processor, know it’s possible to do them in the stand mixer but just be careful about not over-mixing your dough to the point where it gets too tough.
How was your weekend?
Doesn’t Bake Well With Others
| December 13, 2011 | Filled under Food and Recipes |
My weekend was a blitz of baking and crafting. I can’t tell you how good it feels to have the kitchen all to myself for a little bit of fun.
I’m generally pretty independent and being in the kitchen is no exception. When I have a crowd of people (or even just one other person) in my kitchen hanging over my shoulder asking questions or making what they think are “helpful hints” I tend to get a little cagey. “Are you gonna do it this way?” “I’ve heard if you do this…” or the most offensive “My mom says/does/thinks…” are all phrases that start my blood boiling. I could go on and on about the joy that I find in having the entire kitchen to myself with my music turned up and no one around to stress me out.
Nothing makes me as happy as trying a new recipe and discovering it’s amazing. I found these “peanut butter surprise” cookies through Pinterest and had to give them a try.
It’s always fun to play with dough and these cookies require a lot of that. You have to take little balls of peanut butter dough and hide them inside balls of chocolate dough – and then you smash them. It takes a while and you get really tired of it after the first tray of cookies but it’s SO worth it in the end.
These cookies are rich and delicious and you’d better believe they ended up in my Chocolate + Peanut Butter Treat boxes which will be on the way to 4 lucky baking happiness participants today (I’ve already hand delivered the two local boxes). I decided I liked the idea of having themed boxes instead of making one batch of something for each person. I have four different themes in mind – Chocolate + Peanut Butter was just the first!
What is the one activity you know will always put you in a good mood? Are you good at cooking/baking with other people around?
Giveaway Winners!
| December 9, 2011 | Filled under Food and Recipes |
First things first, I have the giveaway results for you!
Our winner is Ali! Ali says:
“Oh man. Until I had Jesse, I worked at an optometrist’s office in a MALL. The stupidest thing was the holiday hours. No one wants to buy glasses at 11 pm, but because the mall was open, so were we. Luckily, my boss totally got it, and let us watch movies or read after our regular closing time of nine.
Coming to work in the middle of the day was a serious pain, too. Crazy drivers, parking REALLY far away, huge lines at the food court, just yuck. Not having to deal with that might be one of my favorite things about this Christmas. In fact, I don’t think I’ll go to the mall at ALL this holiday season. So nice.”
Congratulations Ali – and I hope you manage to avoid the mall all season, I know that’s my plan too!
So here’s the thing…you all were basically like, “I don’t want to whine about the holidays but I will cause you offered treats.” Which means that you all are a bunch of sellouts (except for my Aunt Mary who refused). And it’s all because of me.
Which makes me feel even Grinchier. Except that you were totally just playing along to cheer me up, so now I’m feeling a little like the Grinch post-heart growth. So…kind of like Oprah. Which means everyone gets goodies! Hooray!! Never mind that you all were on the list for Baking Happiness goodies anyway (and if you weren’t, you are now – or you can go add yourself, I haven’t closed submissions).
Fantastic.
So if you need me this weekend, I’ll be in the kitchen doing a whole lot of this:
Because even though I’ve said every day this week that I wanted to leave work and do some baking, I only actually did that on Monday. Every other night I’ve gotten home and there’s been something else to do or take care of and the baking gets pushed aside.
Which makes me sad, but that’s life.
You know what doesn’t make me sad? Finally being able to talk about Kathy’s baby. When there are things I’m told not to talk about I suddenly feel like I don’t have anything to say at all because the only thing I want to talk about is what I’m not allowed to talk about.
So I don’t want to overwhelm anyone with baby talk and baby posts because that would be a little weird considering it’s not my baby and also that I barely stick to my own “healthy living” theme as it is so I don’t want to consciously step away from that any further but I will be posting the full baby story later today for those of you who are curious. I’m not gonna say I won’t talk about the baby much because I’m obviously really excited and Kathy is the first one of my really close friends to have a baby so this is a new experience for me and we all know my enthusiasm gets the best of me sometimes. So….sorry, I’m not sorry. Babies, yay!
Let’s talk baked goods today: Do you like peanut butter and chocolate? What about mint and chocolate? Or would you rather have something more savory like bread or scones? Or are you all about some sweets as long as there’s not too much chocolate involved? (hint, if you’re on the list to get baked goods you may want to captain your own fate and answer this question…just a thought!)
