A Blog That's Not Really About Food

Friday night was our holiday party for work. Yes, it was after the holidays, so what? It was awesome. It was nice to get to see everyone at work relaxed. Normally, everyone is so straight-laced, I feel like I'm the only one there that's got a bit of a screw loose. It was also awesome seeing all the officers and v.p.s and such dancing. It was fun, seriously. 

What was no so fun was Saturday morning. And, no, asshat, it WASN'T because of a hangover. Saturday morning was minute eyelid operation surgically removing strange eyelid lump time. And yes, every one of those words was necessary. Basically, I had a chalazion that I needed to get removed and Saturday was the day (cue "The Final Countdown"). I'm at the eye surgeon's office, and I'm shitting (not literallly) because I have a horrible fear of surgical needles (looking at myself, I'm aware of how idiotic that sounds, but tattoos and piercings are something that I do of my own free will). I was really really nervous. So nervous that I was crying over a very teeny needle being stabbed in to my eyelid. Think about it, I highly doubt that you would be excited about that shit. Anyway, the doctor gets this shot in and flips my eyelid and clamps it open and shit, and gets this scalpel and he's all 'Tell me if you feel anythiinnnnnggggg attttt alllll' and goes for it. I'm all like "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!?!" because, whatever they injected in my face clearly was not working.

So doc is all "Oh? Did you feel that?" and gives me another injection. This one works like a charm. 

The doc: "OH THIS IS A GOOD ONE!!! Keep your other eye closed."

Me: "I don't even know what that's supposed to mean"

Doc: "Have you ever had a really really big zit that you popped?"
Me: "No."

Doc: "Oh, well it's like a big booger".

And about 40 seconds later, I was all done. The doctor bandaged up my face with some gauze pad thingys for the blood and a shit-ton of tape. There were two problems with this.

A) I had to drive home. Do you know, really, how HARD it is to drive with ONE EYE?!

B) Do you know how embarrassing it is to have to drive home and traffic is slow so a ton of cars see you looking like you have a feminine napkin taped to your face. It was NOT attractive.

So I get home, and I have to have these bandages on for 4 hours. I have a stigmatism, and they eye that was bandaged up is what I call 'my good eye'. So it wasn't like I could read or anything. We don't have cable here, so I was kind of exhausted from the prior night and decided I was going to take a nap. (cue the annoying neigbor kids upstairs doing something that was either bowling or fricking step aerobics or some shit) Napping was out of the question. Also, the painkiller started to wear off and I became disturbingly aware of the pain in my eye. It wasn't like some sort of searing nausea inducing pain; it was more like one of those throbbing pains that just lingers and then when you start to relax, it's like "HA! I fooled you!!" and starts hurting again. I pretty much laid on the couch for four hours pondering what my eye looked like and tried to figure out whether my eye was open...or closed. It was taped up. It was dark. It was swollen. And that was my only means of entertainment.

Then Luz got home and it was time to unbandage my face. There was so much tape that at one point I was like "Luz, this that I'm touching here, is this tape or is it my face, because I really can't tell?" because of course, I was still laying down on the couch, rather than getting up and going to the bathroom like any normal person would. 

My eye looks a lot better now. What sucks is that I can't wear makeup for a week and the eyelid is bruised. Strangely enough, it's only kind of bruised real dark along the lashline. I don't know what's worse, having people look at my eye and being like "is that bruised? what the heck happened?" or having people look at my eye and being like "why has that dingus only got purple eyeliner on one eye?" because that's what it looked like.

I made this for dinner:
 

Meatball Subs, CuppinCakes, and Another Failed Pretzel Attempt

Not to be deterred by the pretzel failure of the other day, I got home from work determined to get the yeast to work. I was very careful with my liquid temperature and the mixture of the ingredients. Still no luck. Another lump of garbage.

But I still refused to call it a night without some sort of pretzel. Failing at yeast I scoured the interwebs for a pretzel that could be made using self-rising flour. I found one that claimed to be a pretzel and looked pretty quick and easy (it WAS getting late). I busted it out and discovered something that a lot of people who write recipes on the internet should know: Just because you can twist it into a pretzel shape does not make it a pretzel. So i had bready dough shaped like pretzels, that were definitely not pretzels. We did decide, however, that this recipe would make an excellent pizza dough, so next week we'll be having a secret homemade pizza party. There will be homemade sauce too.
Smoothie time hit again, and once we were done pulverizing ice with some berries, yogurt, orange juice, a banana, a kiwi, and a peach, the result was delicious:

Tonight I had to make cupcakes for a coworker's birthday.  

The cupcakes themselves were pretty boring, just marble with a basic vanilla buttercream. Not something I would have picked out myself, but what said coworker likes. Next week is my sister's birthday, so there will be more exciting cupcakes for me to make and take to work.
As for dinner tonight, I've been craving meatball subs lately, but I'm definitely cutting back on my red meat, so I went with turkey meatballs. It was the first time that I had ever used ground turkey, and one of my roommates' first meatball subs. It went over well:

I found a recipe on the internet and tweaked it to my liking. Once again, I used the good old standby of Newman's Own Sockarooni sauce. A little provolone on a crusty roll finished them up. I served them with rosemary oven fries.

Turkey Meatballs (makes 18 meatballs)
1.25 lb ground turkey
1/4 c. sauteed minced onion
2 cloves garlic, minced and sauteed
1 egg
1/4 c. uncooked oatmeal (my mom always used to do this in meatloaf in place of bread crumbs, I do too, and it always turns out tasty)
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp crushed red pepper
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp Kosher salt
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper.

Combine all ingredients. Form into golf ball sized balls. Brown in a skillet with a bit of olive oil, turning occasionally to make sure entire surface is browned. Heat pasta sauce in separate pot, and add meatballs, after draining excess grease. Simmer over medium heat for 15-20 minutes.
These meatballs were seriously awesome. Much better than any beef meatballs I've had, which usually end up tough and dry.

Tomorrow: Sweet potato chilaquiles.

well, i like pretzel day...

"I wake up every morning in a bed that's too small...then I go to work to a job for which I'm paid too little, but on pretzel day? Well, I like pretzel day..."

Rather I would like pretzel day, but I'm pretty sure yeast has some sort of unspoken personal vendetta against me. There is certain doom when it comes to me and yeast. I've tried numerous different recipes in the past 3 years since I ever tried to work with yeast, and not a single one of them has been a success. I decided that I would give it another whirl because I really wanted to make soft pretzels. The dough has been sitting for about an hour and a half and it still looks exactly...the...same. I'm about to just entirely give up on it.

If nothing else, I'm sure someone else would be down for having a dough throwing contest with me. :(

not such a fantastic week

I didn't really feel like doing anything much between being at home sick from work and worrying myself about paying for doctors' visits. All is finally well, and after my appointment with the ophthalmologist I came home and made a smoothie. I got a lot of fruit, but usually when I buy fresh fruit, I never get around to eating it. I put a banana, a kiwi, and a peach in the blender with about 1/2 cup of low fat vanilla yogurt. It was delicious. (On a quick tangent, one thing that really annoys me is people who say 'delish'. I shake my fist at Rachel Ray, we all know it's her fault. Seriously, it's annoying, much like how annoying it is when people say 'guac' instead of guacamole. Please stop.)
I made a breakfast burrito sans meat this morning. It was also good. I've been kind of lazy besides that in the kitchen this week. I do have a lot planned for this week to make up for it. I made pretzel brownies for work tomorrow. Tomorrow I think I'm also going to try my hand at making soft pretzels of 3 varieties (cinnamon sugar, plain (I don't like salted pretzels) and jalepeno for the Seanface). Sean has also never had a meatball sub, which I think is bizarre. I'm making turkey meatball subs sometime this week. And, I've got a recipe for sweet potato chilaquiles that I made once that I'll be doing again. There will also be salsa making. Better blogs are on their way.

it's kind of blizzardy out.

It's also my mum's birthday. Happy birthday mum! (I'm not British, I just like the way mum and mumsy sound better than mom. Also, you could say mumsy and people will still think you're more adult than if you say mommy.) I still haven't decided what items I am getting for mum for her birthday, but her gift is definitely coming from Adagio. I am in love with their teas and they are decently priced. I have 3 different teas that I keep at work and about 7 others at home. Delicious. And their sample sizes made nice stocking stuffers.
I also have to make 2 quick rants before I start talking about foods.
A) What inspires people to say "an insurance"? I don't think that's a proper term. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm fairly sure it's just insurance. It sounds so weird when you say "I purchased an insurance". Please stop.
B) Please see the title of this blog. Then, stop driving like an idiot, Speed Racer.

That was much quicker than I expected. Being as it's snowing out, and I was hungry, and did a lot of cooking this weekend, I picked up dinner on the way home from work. Or, as Eric prefers to call it: "the lonely man lunch". Subway. It is kind of shameful, because I've been working really hard on not eating fast food. But! It could be worse. There was a McDonalds right next door, and I could have just as easily gone that route. But I didn't, and I made it not so terrible by getting a ton of vegetables on a turkey sandwich. Whatever. And I've got mango lemonade. Snow be damned! I've got 2 space heaters and mango lemonade and I sure as hell can pretend to be in the tropics (with flannel pajamas, thick socks, and a bathrobe).

My bosses at work asked me to make some cupcakes to celebrate a new hire. I decided to go with a lemon cupcake recipe I found here. I'm glad everyone at work told me they enjoyed them, because I was less than impressed with the way the recipe itself turned out.

My first project for these cupcakes was to make the candied lemon peel, which was pretty easy and delicious. Plus, you get leftover lemon syrup, which you can use in other things (like booze!!), or, as I found out, this recipe.

I followed the recipe for the batter closely, but I tasted before I baked, and despite knowing that the lemon flavor would come out more the next day, I knew that there wasn't going to be ENOUGH lemon flavor. Enter in aforementioned lemon syrup. I didn't really measure how much I put it, but it was at least one tablespoon. Instead of the sour cream or plain yogurt, I used low fat vanilla. The cakes themselves came out quite nicely with the addition of the extra lemon, and they expanded a lot more than I expected them to.

The problem I really had with these was the frosting. I make a pretty awesome cream cheese frosting. It's amazing. If I'm making a plain cream cheese frosting, I usually don't go very heavy on the sugar and I only use a tiny bit of milk. It's easier to pipe it on that way. But since I had never made a lemon cream cheese frosting, I went by the recipe. It tasted really sour. Not tart, lemony sour; it was more of a "Is there spoiled dairy in this frosting?" sour. Apparently I am the only one that noticed this, because everyone who at them really LIKED them (or at least didn't say anything to me about not liking them). If anyone at work reads this, honestly, I WAS NOT trying to poison you.

From now on though, if I'm making a lemon cake, I'll probably stick to this recipe.
I'm going to finish my shame sandwich and go to my room to think about what I've done.

Last weekend, we took a trip to H-Mart to stock up on delicious tasty items. I wound up getting a lot of stuff, including K-rab (our code name for delicious imitation crab smeat (code for imitation meat). I don't care that it's imitation. I'm broke and it tastes fine. Whatever. Besides, after looking at the little blue crabs in a big tub with no water wilting away, it kind of kills your appetite for real crab. That and the little snot bubble like things that they had coming out of their eye sockets. I'll stick with the k-rab. I also got rice paper wrappers for fresh spring rolls and nori sheets for making some California rolls with Luz. Eventually, I'll make it somewhere to buy decent fish for sushi making. I also invested in a bottle of wasabi mayonnaise, which has a little star shaped hole on top for decorative mayo slathering:

I also wound up picking up a bottle of Golden Boy Fish Sauce for a recipe I had found for tofu and vegetables. Two things about this fish sauce. A) The bottle is freaking hilarious. It looks like one of those religious candles that you can find at the grocery store that have the weird little prayers on them and if they're not unscented, generally smell horrible (and he's giving the freaking thumbs up. What the hell seriously?!):

B) Trying to open this bottle was ridiculous. Luz and I were both looking at it like "What the hell am I supposed to do with this?" and we couldn't figure it out. So I did what I do any time that there is a pressing matter that needs to be urgently resolved: I asked the interwebz and all of it's wondrous knowledge. It was somwhat of a relief to know that I wasn't the only one having problems with it.

One of the other little jars of awesome I got was ths:

Tapioca pearls for bubble tea! (I also got a jar of cream of coconut today to make smoothies with to put the pearls in). One thing that I didn't notice until I was uploading the pictures to put on here was that one of the ingredients was lye, and we were kind of like "What the hell!?" Once again I had to consult the magic of the internet and was quite relieved when wikipedia comforted me with the fact that lye is quite often used in curing foods. All is well. 

Last night, I made tofu with sugar snap peas and mushrooms. It was decent, but the recipe I had called for cornstarch to thicken the sauce. The cornstarch made it kind of gross. Slimy in a disgusting sort of way. Honestly, the only thing that can fix that is Sriracha. A lot of it.

Tonight was much better. After braving a ridiculous amount of snow to buy make-up and new shoes (It was worth it) Luz and I bought a ton of fruit and vegetables (and beer) and came home to make California rolls. I got to use the mandoline I got yesterday, which was amazing and much better than cutting veggies by hand, and the end result was pretty tasty:

And with that, I'm going to return to my booze and watching of Superbad. That is all.

Family Game Night

Let it be known that there really is no 'family' present at family game night. That's apparently just what we call it. Last night the roommmates and I had a couple friends over to hang out and play games. This eventually led to drunken Sing Star playing, and me falling over the back of the couch onto the floor after consuming the better part of a bottle of Riesling.  All of that aside, we had snacks for dinner last night, and I made a mean spinach artichoke dip. I put some sriracha in it for flavor, and it turned REALLY pink.  I did the lip biting "Oh shit" thing for a second, but once I put in the spinach and artichoke, you couldn't really tell very much. I think the only thing that would have made this better is if I put actual garlic in it. I'm glad I doubled it up as well, because it wound up disappearing pretty fast.

HOT SPINACH ARTICHOKE DIP

1 8 oz package 1/3 less fat cream cheese

1 cup light sour cream

1/2 cup regular mayo (please refer to my post about mayo)

1 tsp sriracha

3/4 c. shredded mozzarella

1/4 c. grated parmesan

1 14 oz can artichoke hearts

1 10 oz package frozen spinach, thawed.

This is actually really easy and requires minimal effort. I mixed everything in my Kitchen-Aid so the artichoke hearts broke up. If you're mixing by hand, you may want to chop the artichokes. Mix everything together and bake for about 35 minutes at 375. We ate it with crackers and tortilla chips. It was....amazing.

What else was amazing? Abel's falsetto while singing 'Gold Lion' with Sean. They both have the voices of angels.

Angrily Shaking My Fist at Target

Today, I decided I needed something new to make my tea in at work. I got a tea ball in my stocking for christmas, but some of my teas are very fine and get out through the holes. I also needed something that wasn't going to take up a lot of spacce because my desk at work is already full of other work related things, and the desk is the equivalent of a fold-down tray table on an airplane. My friend had suggested getting a small tea pot with infuser, but when I saw this Bodum travel mug, I thought it would be perfect and got it.

Basically, you put your tea or coffee in the bottom, fill with hot water, and press. The press is mesh with rubber around so none of the leaves get into your beverage. I was pretty excited about it. I took that with a couple other things, including 2 bottles of Italian soda to the check out. Now, I understand that being a checker at Target may not be the most exciting job in the world, and as such, an employee may become apathetic to that job, but seriously, is it that hard to take some care with what you're doing? This girl pretty much dropped the 2 glass bottles into a bag, I had not noticed that this was the same bag that she put the travel press in until I got home. There's a huge chip in the bottom of the cup, and she somehow managed to cause a large crack up the side of the inner plastic. So, not only do I not get to test the thing out tonight, I've also got to find time to return it and get a new one. I'm really not looking forward to standing the customer service line. At all.

*crams another piece of mochi in face to ease sorrows*

In other news, as may be suspected by my heightened consumption of tasty mochi, I did make it down to Chinatown today and picked up a couple things, including new heavier chopsticks and onigiri molds.

I got these ones:

and another set that has shapes, I think a star, heart, flower, and possibly just a round one. *twiddles fingers*. It may still be a good week afterall.

Chicken Pot Pie

Tonight I made chicken pot pie, which I've never done before. I asked my mom to make me a pot pie a couple months ago and to send it up with my dad when he was going to help us move, but he didn't come up. When I was little, my mom's pot pie was probably the most bad ass thing ever. Far more awesome than roast beef, which i despised (but now crave..that'll be a project in a couple of weeks). It was always creamy, and perfectly seasoned, and if you were lucky, which rarely happened, there would be some for leftovers the next day, though dad usuallly snagged these for his lunch at work. 

Let it be known that I did cheat on this crust. Pie crust is not  my forte. Luckily enough for me though, in home ec in high school, I wound up having pneumonia during the pie unit, and got to make up my work at home and my mom, who is awesome, made my crust for me and noone was the wiser. Since mom doesn't live close enough to handle my crust for me now, I wound up picking up 2 boxes of the Pillsbury refrigerated pre-made pie dough. Ironically enough, unrolling that crap probably took me just as long as it would have to make my own. 

In the interests of health and not wanting my dinner to go straight to my ass, I made a few minor adjustments to a random recipe that I found months ago, somewhere that I don't really remember. The end result is tasty and I'm working on seconds. I would have taken a picture, but if you don't know what pie looks like already....(on to the recipe)

1 large bag chicken breast tenders, thawed (yes, the sack o' chicken. The economy sized one)

1 large potato, cubed into bite sized pieces

1/2 yellow onion, cut into small pieces

1 bag mixed vegetables (I went for the carrot, corn, green beans, peas mix, making sure of course there were no Lima beans in sight)

1/4 cup olive oil

1/2 cup all purpose flour

1 cup fat free half & half

2 cups fat free, low sodium chicken broth

2 boxes pre-made pie crusts, or if you can manage it, make your own

garlic powder, paprika, parsley, fresh ground black pepper, salt.

*Start by preheating the oven to 350. 

*Get all your little pieces of chicken nice and neat on a rimmed cookie sheet. I rubbed my sheet down with olive oil to prevent the chicken from sticking to it. 

*Season your chicken with garlic powder, paprika, parsely, and the black pepper. 

*Pop the chicken in the oven until no longer pink in the middle, around 20 minutes. I couldn't tell you the time for sure because I was busy doing such domestic tasks as dishes and reorganizing the cupboards to fit today's trappings from our H-Mart adventure.

*While your chicken is going, throw your olive oil into a pot with the onion, mixed vegetables, and potato. Saute for about 15 minutes or until potatoes start to soften. You don't want to cook them too much, because you'll  lose nutrients and texture.

*Gradually add the flour, stirring to coat the vegetables. 

*Follow by adding the half & half and broth. Simmer until sauce becomes thick. 

*While your sauce is simmering, cut up your chicken tenders. I saved some of mine to make a delicious chicken salad for lunch to take to work on Monday. 

*Add the tenders to the sauce and vegetable mix. Kick up the oven temperature to 400.

*Grease a 13x9" baking dish or pan and arrange to of the crusts to cover the bottom and sides. Dump in your filling and arrange the other crusts to cover the top of the dish. You can cut off any excess and make delicious crust bites with cinnamon and sugar.

*Take out some aggression and use a knife to stab some vents in the top of the pie to allow steam out.

*Throw your pot pie in the oven for about 40 minutes, or until crust is golden and crispy and your filling is bubbling.

*Enjoy!!

And enjoy I did, having seconds with a Rum & Diet Pepsi. Quite a delicious and warming meal for a chilly winter night.

this is a post entirely about mayo.

*squish face* i can't let all this mayo go to waste *clutches giant tub of mayo*

what is the point of light mayo? that's like drinking a diet, caffeine free soda. no point.

i have mayo all over my face and i love it.

maybe all these vegetables will make up for my mayo slather.

all of the above comments came out of my mouth this evening about my favorite condiment ever. curse you healthy eating, i'm having an affair with mayo and i will not be stopped!!

first. post. ever.

Pardon for the lack of entertaining titles. And for the lack of classy photographs. I'm working on getting the funds together for a new camera now, but for the time being, where there are photos, don't expect masterpieces.

I decided to start blogging because I've got a bachelor's in literature that is not getting much use working in finance. I used to do some zine writing, but my dull office lifestyle does not provide an encouraging atmosphere for such vivid prose as I used to come up with . I mean, it brews in my head, but can just never find the right way to get it down on paper. 

So, instead, I've decide to stick to something I know I'm good at. Cooking and baking. Part of my New Years resolution to get back into shape (I've put on some pudge since moving to Chicago) is to start cooking at home more and to cut out all fast food for an entire year. I think I can handle it, but we'll see. I'm also going to attempt to teach my two roommates a bit more about cooking from scratch, and I'll write about the results.

What I've been up to lately. 

Homemade marshmallows. They are honestly the easiest thing ever. Now I'm working on homemade mint extract (which should be ready in about 3 weeks) to make homemade mint marshmallows.

Tomorrow is another outing to H-Mart to pick up vegetables and tofu and other Asian goodies and maybe try out some new recipes next week. Wish me luck.