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Cookie Project Part 2: "Scrooged is supposed to be a comedy?!"

2009-12-13T22:25:00.003-06:00

Today's cookies, coming from the December 2008 issue of Bon Appetit magazine, are Cinnamon Pecan Shortbread.

Some of the reviews were not so great on these, but once I had my finished product, I was convinced that whoever wrote the reviews a) does not know how to follow directions (cookies did NOT spread, nor did they crumble, per A Cook's review b)is a bag of hot air ("high investment, low return"?!?!?! Seriously...what did you invest in?! It's butter, sugar, and flour. Who doesn't have this crap in their pantry???) c)is a Christmas beast monster. (How can you not love pie crust?!)

Anyway, I was pleased with the result. These were really easy, and I didn't actually have to buy anything except for the pecans (which were on sale anyway).

My holiday programming was 'Scrooged' with Billy Murray. I was not amused or impressed, and I will leave it at that.

Because I was pretty lazy and unproductive yesterday, I decided that I was also going to make marshmallows today. I made them last year for Christmas, and they are incredibly easy, and not they're also not labor intensive. And they're also kind of fun. These are just regular vanilla marshmallows, but I think when I do my actually Christmas baking stuff next weekend, I'm going to make some mint ones as well.

Slab of Marshmallow!

Slab of Mallow can be rolled!

Chopped up mallow, ready for hot chocolate!

R.I.P Thanksgiving leftovers

2009-12-08T23:00:00.002-06:00

For some reason, my mother and I are in the habit of cooking enough food for a small army for Thanksgiving, when in actuality there are usually only between 6 and 8 people there, plus whatever random friends my siblings and I can scrape up to come over and help us consume massive amounts of pie.

And every year, there are 2 kinds of cranberry sauce. 'Regular' and 'orange'. And every year, I'm pretty sure my mother and I are the only ones who actually EAT the cranberry sauce. This year I made both. I left the orange with my mom because it's her favorite, and I brought the 'regular' back with me. Alas, I ran out of turkey far before running out of cranberry sauce, and sat around trying to figure out what to do with the leftover sauce.

*light bulb* I love pastries. More specifically, I love turnovers. (Oh, and cream cheese) This was a delicious brain child.

Cranberry Sauce
1 cup sugar
1 cinnamon stick
2 tsp finely chopped fresh ginger
2 tsp grated orange peel
1/4 tsp. ground cloves
1 bag fresh cranberrys

In a pot, combine 1 cup water, sugar, cinnamon stick, ginger, orange, and cloves. Cook over medium heat, stirring, until sugar dissolves. Add cranberries, and bring to a boil. Lower heat until medium, and simmer, stirring, until thickened, 8 minutes. Remove cinnamon stick. Chill.

Cream Cheese Filling
1 8 oz. package cream cheese
1 egg
1/3 c. sugar.

Blend in an electric mixer until smooth.

Prepare phyllo dough (as I did) or puff pastry according to package directions. Place 1 Tbsp each of cranberry sauce and cream cheese mixture at one end of dough strip. Fold flag style. Brush with butter. Bake for 13 minutes at 350F.

Cookie Project part 2 (yeah!)

2009-12-06T22:37:00.004-06:00

Today's recipe was taken from the December 2009 issue of Bon Appetit. The recipe: Lemon Cranberry Florentines. At the risk of sounding like an idiot, I will admit that I didn't have any idea what a Florentine was. Thanks to Wikipedia for enlightening me on this one. "A Florentine biscuit (or, simply, a Florentine) is a confection made from setting nuts and candied cherries into a caramel disc, which is then coated on the bottom with dark chocolate". However, the picture that accompanied the entry did not resemble a cookie, or, for that matter, even a 'biscuit'. At most, it looked like a charred English muffin that got stuck in a commercial restaurant toaster (I know this from experience). My outlook was grim for this project.

However, my hopes for the recipe were somewhat bolstered by the really cute picture that was in the magazine spread (yeah!):

Well, you know what happens when you follow a recipe to a T? How it's usually supposed to work out? (yeah!) Well, it didn't this time. I did write a rather scathing review on Epicurious, but for some reason, it has magically disappeared. Now I'm going to air my grievances.

A) I had the same problem here as I did with the last recipe with the quantity that can be produced by this recipe. It's duly noted that the same person penned both recipes. This, once again, is apparently supposed to make close to 40 cookies. Once again, I got 2 dozen.

B) The baking information is WAYYYYYY off. If you bake these things at 350F for 16 minutes, you know what you're going to have? (yeah!) Not cookies! You're going to have lumps of black crap and a house that smells like carbon.

C) Please note that a combination of A+B left only 12 cookies that may have been viable for eating, but the cookies didn't flatten into discs really. Take a look at the picture above, and then take a look at what these things come out looking like:

I didn't even bother putting the chocolate drizzle on them. I ate one. It was mediocre and I didn't care to eat another one. My roommate decided to try one, and I could tell there was some sort of deep internal struggle taking place for him not to spit it out into the waste can.

This is a big old fail. The combination of cranberry, lemon, and almond was good, just not here....perhaps in an oatmeal cookie? (yeah!)

You might be wondering why this post is flecked with 'yeah!' all over...and I shall tell you. Because of the 1983 epic Christmas-time movie "Trading Places" with Eddie Murphy, Dan Akroyd, and Jamie Lee Curtis. The jail scene? Surely it's coming back to you now. And now, for Christmas-time funs, here's a selected excerpt that I shall leave you with for the evening:

Cookie Project part 1.2

2009-12-03T23:11:00.004-06:00

I love ginger. I mean I really really love ginger. I think that my love of ginger has actually surpassed my love of cilantro. And my love of cilantro is pretty intense. Not this intense, but intense none the less. I think there was only one time I had ginger and it was not enjoyable. I will recount this memory for you:

Twas in the cramped quarters of this limousine on the day of my sister's wedding.

It was indeed a most glorious day, where the whiskey ran wild and free like the most wild and free river you could imagine. Any day that happens, you know it's going to be a good day, or at least you THINK you know it's going to be a good day.

Then my sister's brand new husband decided that while we were in Chinatown doing pictures and what not that he REALLY REALLY needed this ginger candy. And once he had obtained this magical item, he insisted that everyone try it. It was LIKE regular crystallized ginger, but only if you didn't boil it first. It was almost as if someone took a piece of raw ginger, dipped it in adhesive, and then covered it in sugar to trick you. Not good. Extremely potent. And the kind of thing that can only be washed down by chugging a Miller Lite.

But I digress.

Because of my love of ginger, I was very, very happy to see a recipe for Triple Ginger Cookies in the December, 2009 issue of Bon Appetit, mentioned in my previous post. The recipe came along with this really cute picture:

If you can't appreciate that picture, I'm pretty sure you have no soul.

I made a few slight modifications to the recipe. 1)used about 1/2 c. rather than 1/3 c. crystallized ginger. 2)I realized I didn't have any molasses. I went to Target to get some. I checked the baking aisle, didn't find any. (I today learned that molasses is located in the breakfast aisle, next to the maple syrup). But, because I'm a genius, somewhat akin to MacGyver (but in a more kitchen-y sort of way), I simply replaced the 1/4 c. molasses with 1/8 c. dark corn syrup (because when the hell else am I ever going to use it) and 1/8 c. honey bear (because honey bear is always watching).

A couple things here though, no matter how much I rolled the dough into balls, they did NOT get a cracked surface. Oh well, not a big deal. What the big deal is, is that this recipe says that using tablespoon sized balls of dough, you'll get forty cookies. My ass. I wound up with a mere 2 dozen. They were delicious of course, but I really wish i had 40 them, not 24. Here is a picture of the finished product being eaten by one of my lovely housemates:

Whilst the cookies were in the oven, I turned my attention to a horrible piece of Christmas programming. If you like 1989, obviously fake head wounds, useless screaming, and overly exaggerated and stereotyped mental hospital escapees, AND you also like Christmas, then I have a treat for you. Witness this episode of 'Tales From the Crypt', Season 1, titled "And All Through the House":

Cookie Project part 1

2009-11-29T23:49:00.003-06:00

A couple of the recipes that I'm planning on doing for Christmas call for decent quantities of crystallized ginger, and I don't know why, but I'm having a slight problem locating it. Also, if you try to find it online, it seems to be ridiculously expensive. But since crystallizing ginger is pretty much the same as candying things, and since I have candying skills, I decided to make my own, and made about 3/4 lb. of it.

Since the ginger I had wasn't young ginger, thinly slicing it with a santoku knife wasn't working really well. The ginger was far too fibrous. I wound up using a vegetable peeler to slice the ginger, and it worked quite well.

This ginger is going to be used in Triple Ginger Cookies and Gingerbread Cookies. Whatever's left will probably just be eaten plain or put into hot tea. Another awesome thing about candying things? Syrups! I have a jar of lemon syrup in my fridge from some lemon peel I did awhile ago, and now I've got a jar of ginger syrup that I can use to spice up delicious alcoholic beverages.

Crystallized Ginger
3/4 lb. fresh ginger, peeled and thinly sliced
3 c. sugar, plus more for coating, if desired
3 c. water

Place ginger slices in a large pot. Cover with water, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and let simmer for 10 minutes. Drain, and repeat.

Add the sugar and 3 cups of water to the pot. Cook until temperature reaches 210F.

Remove from heat and let stand, one hour. If you're coating the slices, draing the syrup and toss slices in sugar. Shake off any excess sugar. For either, place slices on cooling racks overnight until dry.

To get myself more in the Christmas spirit, I've also decided that each portion of the cookie project will coincide with a viewing of some sort of holiday related programming. Today, I watched a Christmas episode of 'The Twilight Zone' from 1960. The episode, entitled "Night of the Meek". It's about a drunk department store Santa with a magical sack that turns garbage into presents!! It was completely uninspired and features one of the worst fake beards I've ever seen. You can check it here.

Or if you like horribly botched conversion and dubbing, you can check it below:

Watch 11. The Twilight Zone - The Night of the Meek in Entertainment | View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Thanksgiving was amazing. Serious blogging activate

2009-11-28T16:43:00.002-06:00

Well, I did mean for my Thanksgiving post to be lovely and filled with pictures, but when it came down to it, I was too exhausted and hungry to spend time taking pictures of everything I made. And I did make a lot.

What's funny is that most of the recipes were pulled from cooking magazines I've been collecting, but the dish that seemed to go over the best, and the one that everyone had to have seconds of, is an old standby of my grandma's.

While it might not sound too charming, it is delicious, and has been pretty much my favorite holiday food since I was a wee child.

Good old macaroni and cheese with corn. It's the easiest thing ever. Take a pound of uncooked pasta (preferably shells). Dump it into a 13*9*2 baking dish. Add 2 cans creamed corn, and 1 can corn kernels (drained). Add 2 sticks of butter, cut into tablespoons, and 1.5 lb processed cheese foodstuff (aka Velveeta), cubed. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes.

Works wonders. I made it for a cookout we had over the summer. Everyone was quite skeptical about it at first, after they saw me putting it together, but once they tried it, they were in love. Unfortunately, there usually aren't ever any leftovers.

But anyway, seriously blogging project. I've been having a pretty horrid time with cookies lately. I didn't use to have this problem, but whenever I bake them now, it's just a disaster. With Christmas season coming up, I'm planning on getting back on track with baking, and to do so I'm working through all the Christmas cookies in the December issues of Bon Appetit for the last two years (with the exception of the coconut macaroons, because I made them last year), 9 cookies=9 circles of hell.

It's going to happen.

I Made a Roast for the First Time

2009-11-15T18:08:00.002-06:00

Just goes to show how much your palate changes over the course of time, I suppose. I really disliked roast growing up. Don't know why, just something I was not into. I found a recipe a while back for a roast, and something in my head decided it sounded pretty damned wonderful. Magic ensued.

This was my roast after I rubbed salt and pepper into it. A 2 pound boneless chuck eye roast. I got it on sale (I feel the need to note this, because I am a cheap ass about purchasing meat). I think it looks like a damn fine piece of beef.

Roast Beef with Coffee Gravy

Adapted from this recipe
1 2 lb beef chuck roast, fat trimmed
fresh ground pepper
kosher salt
2 Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 large onion, sliced
2 bay leaves
1 c. baby bella mushrooms, rinsed and quarterd
1 can beef broth
2 c. fresh brewed coffee
2 Tbsp. flour

Preheat oven to 325 F.

Rub salt and pepper into beef. Let sit 10 minutes. Heat oil in a large skillet. Brown beef on all sides. Move to baking pan. Add onions and mushrooms to skillet and saute, two to three minutes.

Add bay leaves, beef broth, and coffee to skillet. Bring to a simmer. Add to roast in baking dish. Cover and roast for 3.5 to 4 hours, until tender. Remove the roast from the pan.

Strain juices through a mesh strainer and into a skillet, discarding any solids. Add gravy to skillet and boil, about five minutes until thickened. Strain once more before serving.

I am not generally a beef gravy kind of person, but this gravy has made me a believer. It was amazing, especially when sopped up with crusty French bread.

Amazing Lunch: De Jred

2009-10-18T15:21:00.003-05:00

Since I am on a mini-vacation with plans that always fall through, I was left with really nothing going on on Friday, until one of my friends from work, who also had the day off, was looking for someone to go to lunch with.

We wound up meeting up at De Jred, a new Jamaican restaurant in Skokie that her friends had been telling her about. Because my friend is Jamaican, and clearly I'm not, nor do I have any experience with Jamaican food, I let her do the ordering.

We both wound up getting the Jerk Chicken plate (which you can get as half chicken, or breast only, I believe we wound up with half chickens), which, at only $7.00, came with A LOT of food:

In addition to the chicken, the plate also came with fried plantains, a bowl of rice and red peas (which are kidney beans), and steamed cabbage (I cannot express enough my love for steamed cabbage of any sort. I love that stuff, and was super excited about it).

I am not normally a big fan of chicken on the bone, but in this case, it didn't really matter. This was by far the most tender chicken I have ever eaten in my entire life. We were given knives, but honestly did not need them. The chicken was just falling off of the bone. I never understood how people could describe meat as 'melting in your mouth', but I do now.

As far as the seasoning on the chicken went, it had a nice heat to it. I love hot food, but I also love being able to enjoy food. This chicken had the right balance of being both hot and enjoyable.

One other thing I loved? My bottle of "Kola Champagne". It's like cream soda, which I normally don't like. But, the reason I don't normally like it is because it's too syrupy and heavy. Not Kola Champagne. This stuff was amazing; although it was still pretty sweet, it didn't leave me feeling the need to drink 5 gallons of water and cleanse it out of my system.

The service at De Jred was always very fast and friendly. I'm planning on going back for more jerk chicken, and possibly even going out on a limb and trying the goat stew.

And for those interested:

De Jred
4901 W. Oakton (corner of Oakton and Lamon)
Skokie, IL 60077

Fall Cupcakes

2009-10-18T15:09:00.002-05:00

Two cupcakes I made on Friday for my fall seasonals:

Pumpkin cake with clove & cinnamon cream cheese frosting

These ones are super moist. And to change up the boring regular cream cheese frosting that accompanies a lot of pumpkin cakes, I added cinnamon and fresh ground cloves.

Cinnamon Apple Cake with Cayenne Caramel Icing and Spiced Pecans

For this one, I pulled the 'frosting' recipe from the November 2009 issue of Bon Appetit and added 1/2 tsp. of cayenne pepper. I was expecting something a bit thicker, but wound up with something that, while still good, was more icing-like than i expected, even after chilling for 3 hours.

Zombieland and BLTs

2009-10-15T22:53:00.003-05:00

Monday I made this bomb-ass BLT. I got home from work about 8 o'clock, started making bread. I went to the store, got some thick bacon, avocado, and lettuce. 11 o'clock rolls around and my bread is ready. I've got bacon. I've got mayo. I've got this amazing tomato that I stole from my mom's tomato plants on Saturday. I have the best BLT in the world. It may not look like much, but that shit was amazing. And huge! I'm a simple person, I can enjoy simple things. And bacon is one of the best of them:

Tuesday night after work, I went to see Zombieland. I wanted to like this movie, I really did. I love zombies and zombie movies, however, I do not like fast zombies, and this movie was chock full of them. At one point during the movie, I announced that I was bored. My mind was on three things and three things only, and this is in order of importance:

3) Why is that chick familiar? (She was in Superbad)
2) Woody Harrelson is hot:

I mean sure that other kid is kind of cute, but Woody Harrelson is just really hot.
1) Bacon sandwich. And dammit, you know I made another one as soon as I got home.

Bacon, don't you ever leave me.

it's the middle of october already?

2009-10-15T22:16:00.004-05:00

The past month and a half has seriously flown by...right into the pre-winter weather we all know...and hate. I'm already sleeping with hoodies and spaceheaters and extra blankets. The worst part is how the mornings are always dull and gray. I just want to see a couple more sunny days before the snow starts coming. That's all.

One good thing about the colder weather is that now when the oven is on, instead of it being painfully hot in the kitchen, it's quite comfortable and warm. And I have been doing a lot of baking.

I did my first wedding last week. It wasn't a big affair, but it feels good to have one under my belt. There was an eminent near disaster, when I realized that the giant cupcake cake was not done, and had to start over again. That's when I decided beer would come in handy. And everything else went swimmingly.

The next morning, I had to take the cake to the destination, which was an hour and a half away. I did have severe worries about the structural integrity of the cake stand, as it was comprised, from what I could tell, entirely of cardboard, and was definitely shifting as i was transferring the cake from the box to the stand. I'm not going to lie; once I realized that there was a possibility of collapse, I hauled ass on out of there. BUT! I did take a picture. I know it's totally not stunning or anything, but it was my first one, and it can only get better from there.

The big part of it and half of the cupcakes were lemon raspberry and the rest of the cupcakes were plain vanilla with vanilla buttercream. I'm going to have to pat myself on the back and say that it was the best buttercream I've ever made.

While I did worry that the cake was not going to make it until the reception, someone did post pictures. I was afraid that there would be some sort of cake disaster pictures, but yes, the cake did survive.

My first savory cupcake...and one other

2009-10-13T22:34:00.003-05:00

A couple weeks ago, my roommate and I hosted this like beauty/facial thingy party at our house. I don't know. Whatever. BUT! as all parties in our house go, we have good food and drinks.

I contributed cupcakes to this bonanza. I did lemon-raspberry to test out what I was doing for the wedding last weekend. And then I brainstormed in my little mind and came up with something truly amazing. I picked up some Asian pears on my last trip to H-mart; and I knew I wanted to roast them. Also, everyone (I think) knows that walnuts go well with pears. I didn't want to do a regular old cake for them, so I went with a brown sugar pound cake. My original idea was to do a goat cheese and honey frosting, but I thought the goat cheese might throw some people off, and I stuck with a cream cheese and honey frosting that was pretty amazing. These suckers went like hotcakes. Do people still say that anymore??? I think this one is definitely going on the list of fall seasonal cakes, which I've been working on getting completed.

Also, I have a friend from work that has been throwing some ideas for savory-type cakes at me. I'm really not into these so much. I'm cool with scones and muffins and whatnot, but not quite savory cakes. This weekend, after the wedding cake was delivered and I had time to recuperate from that little bit of stress, I busted one of his ideas out. This is a dill cake with smoked salmon cream cheese...I hesitate to say frosting, because it's lacking the key components of butter and sugar, although I did whip some heavy cream into it to make it a bit fluffier.

I really enjoyed the cake part of it, the fresh dill flavor was pretty nice. BUT, I am NOT a fan of smoked salmon, so the combination was a little bit lost on me. The recipient of said cakes did enjoy them though. Will I make them again? Likely not.

Some people find my bad pronunciation charming

2009-09-05T17:59:00.003-05:00

Honestly. Ask my roommate. I'm just really white, and from a small town. My Spanish pronunciation is pretty bad. I can say things correctly in my head, but when I try to speak, I just sound like Whitey McCrackerhead. It's something I've come to accept.

Which is why you will most likely not hear me say 'empanada' out loud ever again. But my pronunciation of the word isn't really the point here.

The other day I went with Sean to the grocery store (Cermack Produce) up the block because we were out of 'shit tickets' (use your imagination here). The grocery store also happened to have eggs on sale for $0.99 (probably because most of the cartons had at least one broken egg). Well, the egg sale was enough to draw Sean's interest, and there he was rifling through every container of eggs trying to find one without a broken egg in it.

Boredom got the better of me, and I started looking at the freezer cases. It was then that I found the empanada 'discos' and decided I was going to make some.

So, last night after Luz and I had a 'business meeting' over beer, it was empanada time. Here's the recipe, and for fun, more things I can't pronounce.

Black Bean and Corn Empanadas

1 package Goya 'Discos Grandes', thawed (yeah, I'm not saying that out loud either)
1 large can black beans, mashed (frijoles negros)
1 can corn (maiz)
1 jalapeño, seeded and finely chopped
1/4 c. cilantro, chopped
1/2 c. finely shredded cheddar.

In medium mixing bowl, mix last five ingredients. Place a few tablespoons of the mixture in the middle of each round of dough. Fold over and crimp to seal. In a large skillet, or pot, heat a few inches of oil. Fry each empanada until golden brown, about 2 minutes each side.

The results were nice. The crust was crispy and flaky. The filling had just the right amount of heat from the jalapeño, and there was enough filling leftover for me to make a burrito for lunch.

I've got another package of the dough, and am probably going to try to come up with a dessert filling for them.

Insatiable Cravings for Frito Pie

2009-09-05T17:46:00.002-05:00

If anyone has ever been to a county fair, they most likely know what Frito Pie is.

Unfortunatley, no one I know knows what Frito Pie is, and that, my friends, is sad.

It's one of those glorious food items that you should probably only eat at the fair, along with funnel cakes, and hot dogs that are a foot and a half long.

But, I'm short on funds, and Frito Pie is cheap and easy to make. The dish is merely Fritos corn chips (which I will refuse to eat plain), chili (the thick and chunky kind), shredded cheddar, and onions. Since I am an obese woman trapped in the body of a moderately sized woman, I also put sour cream on mine.

I know it's not a lot to look at, but it is pretty filling. Also, if you're broke, you don't complain a lot. Hence, I have eaten this three times in the past week.

Ain't no shame.

The hot dogs have conquered me

2009-09-05T17:39:00.003-05:00

I'm thinking that I need to take a long, well-deserved break from my attempts at eating 80 different hot dogs. I managed to get two down about a week and half ago, but it was a struggle. Just the thought of ingesting another one right now makes me feel a bit physically ill. But, someday, I will finish all 80 of them.

For now, these are the last hot dogs in a very LONNNNGGG time:

On the left you have a buffalo wing dog. This is a hot dog cooked in wing sauce, then topped with carrot, and blue cheese. I suppose you could put celery on there if you like celery, but I don't. Whatever.

On the right, you have my take on the Sumo Dog, from Tubby Dogs in Calgary. This dog originally calls for wasabi, Japanese mayo, pickled ginger, and toasted sesame seeds. I switched it up a bit and did wasabi mayo, pickled ginger, and black sesame seeds.

So long hot dogs. Nice knowing you.

Business Is A Boomin'

2009-08-24T23:17:00.002-05:00

The baking is going well. I've got two weddings coming up and a couple other orders I need to work on (and ship...to California...). I'm pretty excited about both the weddings. The first one is a giant cupcake cake, with flavors of my suggestions (lemon cake with raspberry buttercream. No fondant! YAY!). I think the other one is going to be a more traditional cake, and my first attempt at something huge. I'm pretty excited, although this one will most likely have fondant, and I've never worked with it before (shh!) I'm fairly confident with my handiwork and my ability to quickly learn.

I think we'll be going over the details of that cake this weekend.

After that, I've got a couple weeks till the second wedding.

Then after THAT, I'll be going back to my creative freedoms, and testing things out in the kitchen. Hopefully they'll be more successful than what is sitting in my fridge right now.

I like whiskey. I like to make house infused whiskeys. I've got an apple/vanilla/cinnamon that I've made a couple times, and is amazing. I took a bottle of it to Christmas dinner at my grandparent's house one time. This was two days before I was being banned from solid food and alcohol for two months (massive jaw surgery) and my lil' broseph had never had whiskey before. We pretty much drank the whole fifth of it, while playing pool, and unwillingly listening to the Bill Cosby record that my grandfather will inevitably put on at every family function.

(intermission: I am trying to find a picture of said whiskey, and I came across an old blog where I was slightly disappointed about a job interview I bombed. It was at a children't boutique. This is effin' hilarious, because, hello, I don't understand why I thought I could tolerate a job with kids, or moreover, their yuppie parents. Praise the lord that I've moved on to the wonderful world of asset management)

Anyway, whiskey infusion #1

Then, I did a second whiskey infusion that was peaches, cloves, and cinnamon. That was was decent, not as good as the apple though. But because it's whiskey, and my friend, I made quick work of it. (Cannot find picture).

Right now, I will not discuss what is in secret infusion #3. I just put it in yesterday, and it needs about 5 days to totally come together. You're supposed to taste it everyday. Day one....was not good.

*crosses fingers*

Luz's Birthday Cake

2009-08-12T22:18:00.002-05:00

Or, my first successful attempt at a layer cake. The only other time before this weekend that I made a layer cake was a chocolate mint cake that I made a couple years ago. It was lopsided and the frosting was starting to melt, so I put it in the freezer. That was NOT a genius move. I wound up breaking the handle off a kitchen knife trying to cut it. But, this time i decided to do things right. I asked Luz what kind of cake she wanted for her birthday her only request that the cake be chocolate. I snagged a recipe out of an issue of Bon Appetit.

There was only one slight difference, and that was that I used regular cream cheese instead of mascarpone, because it did not require me making yet another trip to the grocery store. The cake was....delicious. In fact, when I came home inebriated from the bowling alley last night, I ate a cold chunk of it with my bare hands. Let it be known, that by sharing that little fact, I have almost no shame.

A Giant Cupcake Cake.

2009-08-04T22:30:00.002-05:00

Good news! I was approached about baking for a wedding. Seems like a mildly daunting task, but I'm pretty awesome and confident with my baking so I'm pretty sure I can handle it. Originally (meaning before today), I thought it was going to be 100 cupcakes and a giant cupcake cake. So I did a practice cake (autumnal theme). I will no longer be doing the giant cupcake cake, but for a first run, I don't think I did too shabby of a job. I also figured out some good tricks with using the Wilton Giant Cupcake pan.

1) First things first, there are some blogs that I read that said you could do this cake with 6 cups of batter. Well, that my friends, is bullshit. You need at least 8. If you're doing this from boxed mixes, you'll need two boxes. You'll use 75% of the batter in the giant pan and you'll have enough batter left to make a dozen cupcakes.

2) To get a cake that looks nice like the one in the above picture, you'll need handy carving skills. You'll need to cut away some of the swirl for the top half to make it look proportionate to the bottom part.

3) And to prevent disasters and increase portability, I found it is best to cut a dome in the bottom part of the swirl to make it fit on top of the bottom cake, like a little hat. You'll need about a cup of a really, really thick basic butter cream to cement the two together.

All up, my butter cream was 1 lb of butter, 2.5 pounds of sugar, and a little bit of milk. (This will also ensure that you've got enough to frost the dozen cupcakes).

The results: (pardon my table, I like movies):

Also, that frosting isn't chocolate, it's food coloring.

Back with a vengeance...and a belly full of hot dogs

2009-07-31T20:28:00.003-05:00

I have been computer-less for about a month. It was quite unfortunate. Now, because my old computer was not fixable, I have obtained a new computer (at no cost, thank you Best Buy Service plan!). During the past month, I've been keeping myself busy with hot dogs and bagels and baking (and video games). All very exciting, I assure you. I suppose the first order of business would be getting updated on my continuing effort to knock out those 80 hot dogs. (Is is it wrong that the only thing that I really had of any importance on the old computer was my hot dog spreadsheet?) Anyway...

First up, we have the Pittsburgh Dog, and the Southern Slaw Dog:

The Pittsburgh dog was really dry, and I probably wouldn't eat it again. It had provolone, tomato, dry coleslaw, and onion.

The Southern Slaw dog, on the other hand was AMAZING. I'm afraid you just can't go wrong with a mix of BBQ sauce and coleslaw. It kind of makes me hungry for a good pulled pork sandwich....

Next, I conquered the Guatemala dog (with one minor adjustment) and the Montreal dog:

The Guatemala has: guacamole, mustard, mayo, ketchup, green hot sauce, and cabbage (typically boiled, but honestly, no thanks). On the Montreal, we have cole slaw, relish, mustard and onion. Both were decent.

Now, I realize it is not attractive to put up pictures of half eaten food, but if I didn't, you would be able to see the inside of this.

On the left is the breakfast burrito hot dog (which I will NEVER eat again, it was bad enough trying to eat this one). IT has scrambled egg, cheese, hot sauce and hot dog. On the right is the pizzeria dog, which has marinara sauce, shredded mozzarella, and a liberal sprinkling of crushed red pepper. (I also toasted it in the toaster oven). It was not too bad.

The two dogs that followed left me feeling pretty terrible about myself, the Belgium dog and the "Trailer Park" dog. The Belgium had fried potatoes (and because I was in a hurry, I used Ore-idas. Shame) and mayo. The trailer park had melted velveeta and crushed potato chips.

And most recently, I had two pretty good dogs. The Texas is on the left (bbq sauce, cheddar, onion) and the Britain is on the right (cheddar, spicy dijon, cider braised apples and leeks. The recipe came from Bon Appetit).

All up, I've eaten 16 dogs and have 64 left to go. And while it's not really part of the project (yet), here's a shot of me, eating a corn dog, at Bagelfest in Mattoon (more to come on that soon).

Chicago (style dog) Represent

2009-06-23T23:27:00.004-05:00

Tonight, after going to the beach with Luz and Sean, I managed to pack away another 2 dogs for the project. Both of them were more than acceptable today. I went with the Chilean style dog (mayo, ketchup, avocado) and the Chicago style dog (if you don't know what that is, you should stop reading and go school yourself, but I'll provide you with the diagram anyway).

My dill pickle is hidden under the dog itself. That bun was getting pretty crowded. Please note in the chart above that ketchup is a no-no.

I would have to say that the best thing about the Chicago do inarguably is the hue of that relish. Seriously. It is amazing. The secret ingredient is Blue #1.

6 down. 74 to go.

Let the punishment begin!

2009-06-23T00:15:00.003-05:00

So I downed another two hot dogs for the Around the World in 80 hot dogs project. Bon Appetit listed the following:

Korea: kimchi and pickled cucumbers
Vietnam: sriracha, cilantro, shredded carrot.

After an unfortunate discovery involving humidity and my regular hot dog buns, I had to use my poppy seed buns. Please note that my Korea dog does not have the pickled cucumbers. Those things are gross. I bought them and I tried one. I didn't swallow it. Luz said it had a boogery saltiness...All I know is that they were pretty gross. My exact words: "This is just plain foul!" The dog with the kimchi only wasn't much better. But, because I am a trooper I forced myself to eat it.

The Vietnam dog was also deserved the stamp of failure. This one may be my fault though, because I did get a little over the top with the sriracha. My lips were on fire. Luckily, i had MILK!

These are definitely two dogs I will NOT be eating again. Pickled cucumbers be damned!

4 down, 76 to go.

Watch as I attempt to eat 80 hot dogs in one summer

2009-06-20T11:55:00.004-05:00

And no, I'm not going to do it all Takeru Kobayashi style. Bon Appetit has this thing in their most recent issue called "Around the World in 80 Hot Dogs" where they suggest 80 different hot dog variations. I decided, because I like punishment, that I was going to do it. Some of them sounded really nasty though, so I took them out, did a lot of internet research (thank you wikipedia) about regional hot dog styles, and have set out to eat 80 different hot dogs. You know what aggravates me? They left off the Chicago style. Bastards. Anyway, last night, Luz and I made some hot dogs (hers were Ball Park, mine were Hebrew Nationals (which are by far, the best hot dogs ever). Working with things I already had around the kitchen, I went with the Peking (hoisin and green onion) and the Japan (which called for wasabi and mayo, but when you have Kewpie wasabi mayo, I think you're pretty much covered. They were both pretty decent.

I also took the dry erase calendar that we got to keep track of bills but never use, and turned it into my official hot dog tracker:

2 down, 78 to go.

Every little thing I do is magic

2009-06-18T22:54:00.003-05:00

Made these for the monthly birthday celebration at work. Chocolate cupcakes baked in wafer cones and topped with basic vanilla buttercream and star shaped sprinkles. I pondered making a swiss buttercream, but at 11:30 at night, I just didn't have the energy.

I saw this idea in an issue of Gourmet or Bon Appetit a couple years back and have wanted to make them since. I probably won't do it again though. While the cake was very moist and the frosting was amazing (as usual), the cones took on a somewhat stale consistency during baking. No one else complained about them, but I was not satisfied.

In the end, I triumphed because they were still adorable. One of my coworkers said that her daughter had made them for her daughter's birthday but instead of using the wafer cones, she baked them in waffle dishes, and did not have the stale cone problem. I may have to try that.

Muffins Vol. 2

2009-06-07T22:37:00.005-05:00

Muffins are a delicious and filling breakfast food. But when I think of muffins and/or breakfast foods, I usually do not think about chocolate. In fact, that's the last thing that I would think of. I don't understand people and the whole chocolate chip pancake thing. That just sounds kind of repulsive to me. But then again, I'm one of those people who won't eat anything breakfast-y before after the breakfast eating hours (11:30 am), and i usually don't eat anything not breakfast-y before 11:30. BUT, in my dedication to Alton Brown and his kitchen wisdom, I've committed myself to making every recipe from his baking book, cover to cover. I did the 'Old School Muffin' a couple weeks back, and this time around it's 'Chocolate Muffins #7). I did make a few minor alterations (used 2% instead of buttermilk, decreased the vanilla, used half semi-sweet chips, and half white chocolate chips). Once again, I used the large muffin tin, to make 6 large muffins instead of 12 regular sized ones. The baking time was increased substantially because of this. The finished product was nice and moist and encouraged me to drink A LOT of milk because of house rich they were. Unfortunately, they weren't much to look at:

Chocolate Muffins #7
Adapted from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food
2 c. all purpose flour
0.75 c. cocoa powder
1 Tbsp. baking powder
0.50 tsp. baking soda
0.50 tsp. salt
1.25 c. sugar
1 stick melted butter, slightly cooled
2 large eggs
1 c. 2% milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
0.50 c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
0.50 c. white chocolate chips.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Grease muffin tin. In a medium bowl, combine flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. In a separate bowl, whisk together sugar, butter, eggs, milk, vanilla. Mix wet ingredients into dry ingredients until just combined. Fold in chocolate chips. Divide batter into muffin tin, cups should be full. Place in oven and increase temperature to 400 degrees. Bake 18-20 minutes or until toothpick comes out clean. Alton recommends tipping the muffins onto a cooling rack as soon as they come out of the oven, to give the bottoms a kind of crust, but I don't really like that, and leave them in the pan to cool.

The muffins are decent at room temperature, but much better warm, with a BIG glass of milk.

Other projects I have going on right now: my take on Bon Appetit's latest issue's "Around the World in 80 Dogs". Some of the ideas just sound repulsive and unbearable, so I switched them up, and added the Chicago style. I can't believe those bastards left it out!! Also, coconut popsicles. I made them, but they're stuck in the molds....

BaconBurgers and Cupcakes

2009-05-31T15:18:00.004-05:00

Last weekend, we went to 'the beach house' (location undisclosed). While we weren't having stiff drinks and pissing off the old codger of a neighbor with fireworks, a lot of good food happened, most notably, the BaconBurger.

I was really excited (I am a huge dork) that they had slider buns at Target, and proclaimed that we would be making use of them. These burgers were amazing. The patties themselves consisted of ground beef (duh), a nice chunk of bleu cheese (crumbled), Worcestershire, and salt and pepper. The Paul face grilled them up (although it should be known that I can make a mean burger). Near the end we glazed them with the best BBQ sauce ever. They were topped with bacon and avocado and were so amazing that I made the same a few days later at home for some friends.

To go along with the burgers, I also made a sweet potato salad, a recipe I stole from Bon Appetit, although what I made looked way better than the picture on the website. I would also like to note that I didn't peel the potatoes, because I like the skin.

Also, this week, I had an order for cupcakes, and was pretty pleased with what I came up with. It was for a dozen S'mores (naturally) and a dozen of these beauties:

Mexican Chocolate Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Chile Buttercream. I was pretty excited about the sprinkles.

Wonderful Food That I Didn't Make

2009-05-30T21:07:00.003-05:00

It's too warm out for me to do any serious cooking/baking in the house unless I'm getting paid. Last night, the Paul face and I drove around for an hour trying to decide what to eat. I originally wanted Mexican, and then we almost when down to Goose Island Shrimp House, and then almost over to Suzie's. While we were waiting in the drive through line there, I had a craving for a rueben, but not knowing where to get one, we reverted back to the idea of shrimp. And so we wound up at Snappy's Shrimp House (1901 W. Irving Park Rd).

We each got a 1/2 pound jumbo fried shrimp meal. The menu board inside takes pride in the fact that these shrimp are Gulf shrimp, and not farmed. You can really taste the difference, in that these shrimp actually had flavor. And they were gigantic. They are not lying about the jumbo part. We opted to have the hot sauce instead of regular, and I was expecting just a mild tang, but the hot was actually hot. It was good, but I think I should have gone with the regular cocktail sauce. My coleslaw was just your average Sysco stuff that comes in a 5 lb plastic jar, but the fries were also really good. They were nice and crispy and had just the right amount of salt on them. The only thing better than a well-salted fry, is a well-salted-and-peppered fry. The prices were quite reasonable, and the only bummer is that we didn't remember to order any hushpuppies, but I'm certain there will be a return trip.

Today, I was able to kidnap Danny K for a bit, as we were going to go to a toy signing at Rotofugi, but were quite discouraged by the long line. We skipped out and went the complete opposite direction for lunch, up to Taste of Lebanon (1509 W. Foster). I read a bunch of reviews on this place on Yelp! and figured it would be acceptable, as although I do have a profound love for meat, Danny is of the non-meat eating nature. This was another satisfying meal (Danny and I both got full meals, and a can of pop for a total of $14.00).

I had a falafel wrap and fries. The fries were nothing to write home about, but it really doesn't matter. My wrap was really good. The falafel was nice and crispy, and well spiced. It was topped with sauce, lettuce, tomato, and onion. The pita was amazing. More like a big tortilla, which is awesome because I hate those horrible rounds that come from the store that are like eating cardboard. Gross.

Danny went with the vegetarian combo #1 (3 falafel, 2 pita, baba ganoush, hummus, veggies, and pickled turnips). I tried some of the baba ganoush, and was a bit sad that I didn't order some for myself.

I think it's fairly certain that I'll be popping back up there in there near future as well.

I'm baking these muffins asbestos I can

2009-05-21T23:15:00.003-05:00

So I survived jury duty. That was pretty much a waste of a day, as I sat in the waiting room pretty much the whole time. Let's hope I never have to do that again. The weather has been beautiful lately, so I'm trying to be more productive around the house. Sunday, I made tamales and crab rangoon to freeze for when I get hungry for junk. Yesterday for dinner I had Alton Brown's oven roasted broccoli. It was okay. I also made bread so that I could have a tuna salad sandwich for lunch today. I left out the celery (I hate it) and the grain mustard (which was a good idea, because just the dijon gave it plenty of flavor. It was a bit overwhelming. I think I'll just stick to the good old tuna, mayo, relish combo.

I've decided also, to put my cookbooks to a use other than gathering dust. I was going to work Alton Brown's cooking book cover to cover, but I think at this point, it's going to be easier for me to do that with his baking book, so tonight I started with the first recipe: 'Old School Muffins'. It's a basic muffin recipe which calls for you to add your own extras. I went with white chocolate chips and raspberries:

They turned out pretty good. Next time, it will probably be beneficial for me to use fresh berries, to avoid the juice discoloring the batter, but I had a bag of berries in the freezer that needed using. Alton's recipe was for 12 standard muffins, but I used the big muffin pan and got 6 substantial ones instead. His recipe called for one whole egg and one egg yolk, but I didn't feel like wasting an egg white, so I left the yolk out. They turned out fine

White Chocolate and Raspberry Muffins
2.25 c. all-purpose flour
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
pinch of salt
0.5 c. sugar
0.5 c. vegetable oil
1 large egg
1 c. plain low fat yogurt
0.75 c. white chocolate morsels
0.5 c. raspberries

Preheat oven to 375 and grease a muffin tin. Blend flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the sugar, oil, egg, and yogurt until combined. Combine wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until batter just comes together. It will be very thick. Fold in the berries and the morsels, and spoon into prepared muffin tin. Cups should be quite full. Bake for 18-20 (for standard muffins. Bake 20-24 minutes for large sized muffins) minutes or until toothpick inserted the in the center comes out clean.

Best Week Evar?

2009-05-17T20:25:00.004-05:00

This week went by really fast at work. But Friday was a killer. I enjoyed this weekend. I definitely need it, because I've got jury duty on Tuesday. I have to be downtown at 8:30. This is a problem for me. On work days, I don't even get up until 8:45. I am not a morning person. If I get up before 8:45, I'm generally cranky and unpleasant to be around. Speaking of cranky and unpleasant to be around.

Today I was coming back on 90 east. After the tollway, there is generally a bottleneck. Well, I let two cars in front of me, and I feel that was good enough. Then some dumb bitch from Wisconsin (FIGURES!) almost sideswiped me, because she was too busy being from Wisconsin to know how to drive like a normal person. So I honked the horn. Apparently she took offense to that, cut me off, and waved TWELVE cars in front of, whilst her and her "hubby", who looked like a low-rent version of William Regal from wrestling, turned and pointed a laughed at me. Well, guess who's laughing now?! ME! I would tell you how I sought my revenge, but it might get me in 'trouble', but if you ask, I shall tell. Sometimes it makes me giggle, what a bitch I can be.

BUT! I am not always such a bitch. This Monday at work, I did another fund raising bake sale for a couple coworkers for a breast cancer walk that they are going to do. Some of the tasty baked goods were:

Peach Cupcakes with a Ginger Buttercream

Mini Lemon Meringue Pies

And the ever popular S'mores Cupcakes

Friday night, I did some baking for my friend Dahlia's cousin's baby shower. I was asked to do the above mentioned S'mores cupcakes, as well as some pink lemonade cupcakes I had made before:

I hope everyone enjoyed them. Right now I've got a loaf of white bread going, so I can make some tuna salad.

I'm working on being more economical. I'm steaming some chicken tamales, that I can freeze for lunches at work. I'll be doing the same thing with breakfast burritos, and if I get around to it this evening, I may even make some crab rangoon. Whippy dippy.

S'more what? I haven't had anything yet!

2009-04-26T23:04:00.005-05:00

In light of the fact that I had to take something to work for our department's 'food day', the fact that everyone expects me to bring cupcakes, and the fact that that one child actor from 'The Sandlot' was arrested for domestic battery (reminiscing led to the title of this post), I decided to make S'mores cupcakes. I also made something I've dubbed quadruple chocolate bypass cupcakes, but these S'mores ones were the clear winner:

I've been toying with the idea of making them for awhile after a failed attempt a couple years back to make s'mores brownies (I blame a slight mishap with the graham crackers). All day at work on Friday, I pondered what kind of cake I was going to do. I wanted something that was actually going to taste like a graham cracker, and the few recipes I'd seen online merely used a regular yellow cake mix, which I personally think is the lazy man's way of doing things. Luckily, Nabisco has a recipe for just such a thing. I was able to make about 4 dozen mini cupcakes with the following recipe:

1/2 c. butter, softened
3/4 c. sugar
2 eggs, room temp
1 c. milk
1 c. flour
1 1/2 c. graham cracker crumbs
2 tsp. baking powder
pinch of salt

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs and beat to incorporate. Add flour and graham crackers crumbs. Beat in milk, baking powder, and salt. Spoon into lined cupcake tins. Bake at 350, 15 minutes.

The cupcake part was really simple. The frosting was a bit frustrating. Marshmallow creme, ftw! It's bad enough that that stuff is as sticky as it is, but WHY, pray tell, does Kraft insist on packaging it in this asinine shaped container?!

That is one mystery I have yet to unravel. Moving forward, the frosting was such:

2 7oz. containers marshmallow cream
1 stick butter, softened
2 tsp. vanilla extract
1 32 oz. package powdered sugar

After you've just about lost your mind scooping the contents of the jars of creme into a mixing bowl, cream it with the butter. Add the vanilla and powdered sugar and beat to incorporate.

I used a round tip on these when frosting, because I think a star tip would have somehow made them less fun. I pondered the idea of taking the torch to them and toasting them, but because i wasn't sure how that would hold up overnight to take the office the next day, I decided not to. I topped the cupcakes with crudely chopped pieces of Hershey's almond bars, I liked the appearance more than the nice little squares of chocolate.

They were amazing.

I have a breadmachine

2009-04-21T22:37:00.002-05:00

It was a birthday present and it makes me ever so happy. I can cook just about everything (except for a damn grilled cheese as witnessed below, and bake just about anything. Except when yeast is involved. For some magical reason, it just refuses to work for me. But thanks to the magic of my bread machine, I have to worry about that no longer. I've already made (and almost devoured, along with my roommates) 2 1.5 pound loaves of white bread. The leftover ends are going to be made into bread pudding this weekend. I'm pretty excited.
Since April is national grilled cheese month, I took it upon myself to take some of the freshly baked bread and make a delicious sandwich of black forest ham and dill Havarti:

I also made the same sandwich the next day, but didn't toast it. It was actually better cold. What can you do?
I also made a batch of homemade snickers bars (recipe from Chow). I altered it slightly, in that instead of using 'real' chocolate for the coating, I used Wilton's candy melts (I had an excess of them from a 40% off sale at Jo Ann Fabrics). When making the caramel for this, you have to temp it. Poor old me, without a candy thermometer, right? I found a way to improvise, by clipping my digital read onto a wire whisk and precariously balancing it. Worked like a charm:

They were still delicious, and were devoured by my coworkers. i think they were slightly more of a Baby Ruth, but not gross. Perhaps what a Baby Ruth SHOULD taste like?

2nd Worst Doritos Ever

2009-04-13T21:07:00.002-05:00

These can only be topped by those ones that were 'cheeseburger' flavored.

On my way down to my grandparents' house for Easter dinner yesterday, I stopped to get gas and something to snack upon. These were a BIG mistake:

They were not expired, but they tasted stale. After the first one, I was pretty disappointed, but for some reason, I had that reaction where there's some really horrible train wreck, but you can't bear to look away. I just kept eating them. And then I realized that they tasted familiar, so I had to eat a couple more. They tasted like soggy lettuce and bad sour cream. And then it hit me!!

About a year and a half ago, after I had my jaw surgery and had to be on a liquid diet for two months, my surgeon told me that a lot of his patients just pureed normal foods, like steak and pizza. I, for one, thought that sounded really disgusting. But, after a month and a half of nothing but soup, yogurt, mashed potatoes and discovering that I could just SWALLOW macaroni salad, I needed something else.

So one night I went to Taco Bell (gross, I know) and got a supreme burrito, figuring most of the stuff in it is pretty mushy anyway; I just needed to give it a quick pulse in the blender to smooth it out, because I really COULD NOT chew. So I got the burrito home and squooshed the innards out into the blender and just pureed it a bit.

I poured it (yes, I poured the burrito) into a bowl and got a couple spoonfuls. It was horrible! You would think that since it's all the same things, it wouldn't be bad, but the texture of it was absolutely revolting. I thought I was going to vomit.

That is what these chips tasted like! Like the nasty pureed burrito!!!

So I got to my g-parents' and I was talking to my brother and all I had to do was mention the chips and he's like "DUDE THOSE ARE NASTY! Don't get the popper ones either!"

Jalepeno popper chips?! Thank god he told me, because I seriously would have bought them!

to serve and protect?

2009-04-12T18:18:00.002-05:00

It's angry blog time, because this has kind of been festering all weekend. On Friday, an off duty, and really drunk police officer careened into a vehicle on the side of the expressway, causing the other vehicle to catch fire and kill the two occupants. Not only this, but after someone helped him get out of his Lexus, he tried to walk away from the scene. I didn't know the two victims, but I know people who did. Some of my other friends have friends that knew them, and they were young. And talented. If this wasn't bad enough, this wasn't the first serious wreck this degenerate drunk piece of shit has caused. Nor was it his second, or third, or possibly even fourth:

Frugoli’s other accidents include a collision near the intersection of 37th and Wallace in Bridgeport when he allegedly ran a stop sign and struck a Chicago police car, injuring two officers, records show.

Seriously, what the fuck?! Is enough only enough when someone winds up dead? This guy really is a fucking piece of work. Joseph Frugoli, you are a piece of shit, and you deserve a lot worse than what you're probably going to get.

Best Dinner Service In A LOOOONNNNGGGG Time

2009-04-03T22:49:00.003-05:00

Tonight, my sister and I went out to eat at Leona's, at the Elston location, and I would just like to say that it was the best dining experience that either of us have had in a very long time. I really like the food from Leona's but we usually wind up getting it delivered because generally I find the service to be only okay. Tonight was wayyyyy different. Our waiter was awesome. He was funny ("I can make it work for you to get half a meatball!"), extremely personable, and, as we wrote on our credit card receipt, "the best waiter ever!!!". Unfortunately, I didn't get his name, or I would put it here for all to see. I have not laughed so much (disrespecting my salad) or had as fun a time (Why aren't there any more bandits in the world) because of a server in any restaurant since before I moved to Chicago. Hand's down awesome. I will probably call there tomorrow and speak with a manager or whoever and let them know what an awesome job this guy does.

And my lasagna was phenomenal (They have a bunch of different ones, but I went with Italian meats, which had sausage and pepperoni in it). I'm usually very hesitant about ordering lasagna when I go out to eat because it usually comes in like a puddle of orange water and is disgusting, but not this time. I usually only get a burger from there and tonight I was very glad I tried something else. I even have enough for lunch tomorrow.

This was way better than the meal I had earlier in the week, which I will write a scathing review on next time. Oh yes.

MegaBus=Mega 3 Day "weekend" "adventure"

2009-03-19T22:52:00.003-05:00

Following the catastrophe with last's post's car problems, my chances of getting to Champaign for a Sunday-Tuesday trip were slightly hindered. Instead, we wound up taking the MegaBus (I'm slighly distracted right now, it sounds like there's a fucking lawn mower outside. It's 11 pm and 20 degrees out) down on Saturday night with a return trip EARLY (i.e. 6 am) Tuesday morning.

Highlights!
*Paul, Luz, and I managed to drink almost an entire bottle of whiskey on the way down. We probably annoyed everyone else on the bus, who all seemed to be sleeping. I didn't witness it, but this was a sticker in the restroom (which, as I'm told, also had no soap! or sink! FILTH):

*Checked into dingy motel, where mattresses were equivalent of sleeping on 5 cardboard boxes stacked up. Sean arrived. Mattresses prevented anyone from getting good night's sleep.
*Next morning wanted to have Baker's Square for breakfast because it was near motel. Wandered across parking lot to discover 'For Lease' sign on property. Settled for Chevy's next door. Will soon probably also have 'For Lease' sign on it.

*Took bus to campus. Got haircuts by Ryan. Met up w/Stymie and Ryan for the Watching of "The Watchmen". I'm glad that I was able to use my student ID and see this movie for $5.75. I was skeptical about it after seeing the tragedy that was Zack Snyder's remake of "Dawn of the Dead", and because of the fact that there was so much going on in the book, there was no way to fit that into one movie. It was a decent film, but I can't say that I was impressed. The movie did have two very important and redeeming qualities:

1)Soundtrack-BAD ASS. The songs were perfect for the movie, almost in a humorous, ironic sort of way. *downloads* such fine, fine pieces by Simon & Garfunkle, KC & the Sunshine Band, and Janis Joplin, it was a really fantastic soundtrack.
2)GORE! (not Al) When I am going to see a film rated R, I like it to be worth it. Not rated R for a profuse use of the f-bomb. Thumbs up on that part.

*Headed over to Jupiters. Drank 3 of my favorite beer ever (Anchor Steam) in rapid succession, while the guys knocked their balls around (whilst playing pool). The six of us managed to devour two large pizzas, one of the pesto persuasion, the other was a BBQ chicken. Secret: They use frozen crust, which in this case I'm deeming acceptable, because they are tasty pizzas and their BBQ chicken pizza is the first of the kind that I've ever enjoyed, let alone gobbled down relentlessly.
*Left the bar and realized that it was a tad too late to purchase more alcohol (12:05 am). Luckily, Stymie is awesome and presented us with a spare bottle of Gentleman Jack, which he refused to take any money for. Paul did manage to hide twenty bucks under a bottle of shampoo in Stymie's shower though. Returned to hotel room and drank some of said whiskey. Everyone slept (as best we could on the craptastic matresses) until about 2:00 the next afternoon.

*With everyone showered and ready to go, we took a bus back to campus and wandered around whilst Sean gathered his trappings from the tattoo shop and had Stump give him a ride back to the motel. There was confusion on where we were supposed to meet back up, which led to some EXTRA walking and then we walked some more, over to Dos Reales to meet up with Sean's brother and his girlfriend, and Stephanie. Dos Reales is ever so tasty, and I do miss it quite a bit. Not wanting to spend the rest of the evening back at the motel, we all decided to go bowling. I did poorly, which is not a surprise, but I'm sure I could have done better if I had my ball with me. Ryan classed it up:

*Being as it was our last night in town, and we had to get on the MegaBus MegaEarly, it was decided that we were going to pull an all nighter. To do this, we needed food. And not just any food. We needed Fat Sandwiches. This place, so many things I could say here, but I think I should let the menu and the following pictures speak for themselves.

My Sandwich: The Fat Sorostitute-buffalo chicken fingers, jalapeno poppers, mozzarella sticks, fries, and ranch in a roll.

Luz's Sandwich: Chicken Donut-Fried chicken patty with cheese on a glazed donut.

Paul's Sandwich: The Fat Walk of Shame-cheesesteak, bacon, egg, mayo, ketchup, and fries on a roll.

Sean's Sandwich: The Fat Mess-jalapeno poppers, mozzarella sticks, fried mushrooms, mac & cheese bites, pizza bites, BBQ, ranch, and fries in a roll.

Luckily no one had to undergo a triple bypass after eating.

With the sandwiches and some horrible TV, time flew by until it was time to head back to the train station to catch the bus. Trying to sleep on a bus when you're almost 6 feet tall really, really sucks. Should I say MegaSucks?

I'm stranded at home

2009-03-13T10:29:00.002-05:00

My car won't start and I can't get to the burbs to get to work. I'm pretty upset about this actually. So, in lieu of going to work, I'm going to catch up on some blogging.
On my way to and from work, I am forced to listen to the radio. I don't have a CD player in my car, and it's really hard to get reception for an mp3 transmitter in the city. So I listen to the radio. Most of the time, if something crappy comes on, I can just change it to one of my other presets, but sometimes all my presets are crappy and I'm forced to listen to crap.
I would like to attest to the fact that one of the crappiest "bands" out there is "Hollywood Undead". I've pondered over the last couple days, having heard their "music" on several occasions, what is was that annoyed me so much about them; and then it hit me! This group has the lyrical stylings of a bunch of fifth graders in an English class learning about rhyme scheme and verse meter. Their lyrics rarely, if ever, break from an abab rhyme scheme, and the majority of the lines have the feeling of being composed of iambic feet (I'm a bit rusty so I'm not going to say for sure). Making it worse is the fact that whoever composed these lyric is so barely literate, that words with more than 1 syllable are scarcely heard. It's mind-numbing. If you don't believe me, the proof is in the pudding:

I see the children in the rain
Like the parade before the pain
I see the love I see the hate
I see this world that we can make
I see the life I see the sky
Give it all to see you fly
Yes we wave this flag of hatred
But you`re the ones who made it
Watch the beauty of all our lives
Passing right before my eyes
I hear the hate in all your words
All the words to make us hurt.
We get . so sick we`re so sick
We never wanted all this
Medication for the kids with no reason to live.

Sorry I forced you to bear witness to that.
And yes, I just did go all English major on their asses. Gotta use that degree for something.

I'm not done griping though, yet! You're next Starbucks.
The other day before work, I was quite hungry, and unfortunately out of appropriate breakfast items which i could eat at my desk. I stopped by Starbucks after I got off the expressway because it's right there on my way to work, and much less likely to make me feel bad about myself than the Burger King down the street. I got an iced green tea (unsweetened, I don't know why people have to taint everything with sugar) and a turkey bacon breakfast sandwich. It was tasty, and I enjoyed it regardless of the fact that I had just read the article comparing the sandwiches to airline food.
This is not what I had a problem with. Apparently, the folks at Starbucks are still trying different (and as of late, not extremely successful) new products to bring in a larger clientele (aka massive amounts of dollas) and are offering an instant coffee granule mess (dubbed via). While handing my my sandwich, the girl at the drive-thru window thrust a couple sample packets at me, which I rather unwillingly was forced to take.

I would like it to be known, that whilst I supply Starbucks with my business on occasion, I am in no way, shape, or form, fan of their coffee, hot or iced. I do like a plain black coffee, but not when it puts me into some sort of seemingly crack-induced frenzy, or when it wreaks havoc on my innards. Neither of those are desirable or appropriate for the workplace.
I should have known better, but for the sake of trying it. And it was horrible. The granules leave a muddy layer at the bottom of the cup. The liquid (I refuse to call this 'coffee') itself has an unnatural murkiness to is as well, and frankly if someone told me they actually liked it, I would have to be inclined to think they don't know their ass from their elbow.

And one more thing while I'm on a roll here, phone etiquette for the love of all that is holy. I really wish people would have some manners and quit behaving like they were born in a barn, amongst other things. It's work related, rather than cell phone related, but how can you not laugh at this picture?!

I bring to you the three things that make my skin crawl the most at work:
1)Heavy breathers.
Dude, I do not know what you're doing on the other end of the line, and from what it sounds like, I most likely do NOT want to know. Yes, you are giving me money for a service, but I am not an adult line operator, and I do not enjoy being spoken to as if I was one. Additionally, I don't know what kind of business you own, but if you are in the phone sex industry, don't talk to me like you're on the job either.
2)Chewing
I really don't care if you're calling me on your lunch break; maybe you shouldn't be because the sound of you masticating is rude and makes me want to throw up in my mouth. When you're chewing in my ear, all I can picture is slack jawed open mouth chewing and the inside looking like a cement mixer; perhaps you look like a cow chewing cud. I don't know, but it's wrong of you to make me picture these things. Also, if you say, "Sorry, I'm chewing," that doesn't make it okay for you to swallow, take another bite, and keep doing it. I really hope you get a cheesy cracker crumb lodged just right in your throat so you have to drop the phone and run and get a glass of water to dislodge it. Because, praise the lord, that means I don't have to keep talking to you. Didn't your mama teach you any manners?
3)Wet talkers
In their defense, I do know that it's not their fault, and there's really not anything they can do about it, but it's still icky. These are the people that you can just hear the saliva in their mouth clinging to their top and bottom jaws making those phlegmy spit strings that you can see when they talk. That just made me shudder, writing that.

I feel much better after that rant.
Food related post to follow later.

I got the job (I think)

2009-03-06T00:03:00.002-06:00

The job is mine. Unless I was thoroughly confused.
In other news, it's nice to have surprises for me waiting on my desk at work. That aren't work related. Tuesday was my one year with the company, proving that I, in fact, can hold down a job for a reasonable period of time.
Tonight, I made dinner for myself. Black bean soup with cheddar jalapeño corn muffins. It was delicious, filling, and on the remote end of healthy. I consumed mass quantities of the aforementioned whilst watching Rocknrolla. Guy Ritchie=awesome, even more so now that he has escaped the steely (not to mention scarily masculine) death grip that Madonna so tightly had on his bollocks. It was an enjoyable film, and I actually laughed out loud during a scene in which there are Russian assassins. I do believe I will be watching it again before I return it to ye olde Netflix.
I will now enlighten you with the easiest soup recipe ever:
Black Bean Soup
1/2 medium sized white onion, finely diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 large jalepeno, stemmed, seeded, and chopped
1 medium sized carrot, peeled and chopped
2 Tbsp olive oil
3/4 c. vegetable stock
1 15 oz can black beans, drained
salt, oregano, chili powder to taste

In a medium saucepan, cook the onion, garlic, jalepeno, and carrot with the olive oil until carrots are slightly softened. Add the vegetable stock, beans, and seasoning and cook over medium heat until excess liquid dissolves. I like to put queso fresco, sour cream, cilantro, and a squeeze of lime on mine.

tomorrow is the day of reckoning

2009-02-24T23:13:00.002-06:00

About 3 weeks ago my job sent an e-mail out company-wide looking for people interested in a couple open positions, including collections. I sent an e-mail response for it. I work my butt off in my current position, but I am bored with it and feel like I could be doing more. Well, words have been swirling around, and I got an e-mail back from the VP today asking me to come to her office tomorrow. So tomorrow, I'm thinking, is going to be the day where i hear either a 'yes' or a 'no'. I'm kind of nervous and trying not to get my hopes up too much. I will be pretty excited if i get it. It's considered a lateral move within the company (i.e. there is no raise involved), but I'm considering it a promotion. I'll have certain accounts that I'll be responsible for and I'll have a lot more independence, not to mention a bigger cube that's got 3.5 walls (which is nice considering my 'cube' right now has a total of 2 walls. I will also not be forced to listen to anyone else's radio/music picks all day. Oh, the glee that will bring. I'm looking forward to the challenges that the new position would involve, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed tomorrow going in to work.
I was thinking about doing some baking tonight, but that was before I received the aforementioned e-mail. In lieu of baking, I bought a new blouse to wear with a skirt I have so I can look somewhat more presentable tomorrow. I did, however, come home and after doing the dishes, made myself dinner. The inspiration came from a recipe I found on tastespotting, but since I am poor, I did a lot of improvising. This recipe doesn't get a fancy name, but right now I'm thinking about Dwight Schrute and this line from the office keeps running through my head "I don't want Garbage! I want Sprinkles"

Delicious Pasta Dinnner (and enough leftovers for lunch tomorrow)
1) Boil 8 oz. pasta (I used rigatoni) until al dente.
2) Remove the casings from 2 links hot Italian turkey sausage and brown the meat in a skillet, crumbling the meat as it cooks. Drain the grease and set sausage aside.
3) In the same pan, heat a small amount of olive oil and sautee 3 cloves minced garlic, a small amount of finely diced rosemary, and a big handful of baby spinach until the spinach is softened but not mushy.
4) In a bowl, combine the spinach mixture, the sausage, 1/2 c. cottage cheese, and 2 tsp crushed red pepper. Add cooked rigatoni.
5) Bake covered at 400 for 20 minutes.

By the way, it was delicious. I have roommates that can vouch for that.

so my birthday's coming up

2009-02-23T00:05:00.002-06:00

And somehow this game has been out since September without me knowing about it and I'm not sure why:

I was really hoping that Seth or Lacey would get voted off this week, but no such luck. If those two had a child, it would most likely only have two brain cells, and those two brain cells would probably both get lonely and die.

I was going to make these really awesome cupcakes to go with my watching of Resident Evil Degeneration (which was actually awesome) today, but my red velvet looks like poop and my mousse didn't set right. Flarge. And all that happened after I spent chopping a half pound of chocolate into itty bitty pieces for ganache. *Slaps self in face*. I think I might try to make Boston Creme cupcakes later this week and then I can just use the chocolate then.

That is all.

I'm drinking my dinner!

2009-02-19T20:27:00.002-06:00

And for once, it's not booze! *insert round of applause here*
Because I lack the willpower to actually make dinner for myself today, I decided I was going to throw whatever I could find in the blender and call it a day. Contents:
(I would love for you to imagine these words being narrated to a choppy video ala Gordon Ramsay in 'The F Word')
1 green apple
1 pear
1 big ass chunk of pineapple
1 handful of spinach
1 big spoonful of coconut milk
Dole Pina Colada flavored juice.

It's interesting. And somewhat tasty.

Last week I made bananas fosters cupcakes. But it's my own secret recipe so you're not getting it. There was a slight mishap when what I intended to be a soft caramel topping turned as hard as a rock, but other than that, they were quite tasty. And just for shits and giggles I repeatedly kept dumping my cheap rum (I'm a whiskey drinker, what else am I going to do with it) into a hot skillet and setting it on fire. Good times.

My sister and our friend are planning on doing a 2 day walk for breast cancer. They each need to raise $1800. I'm having a bake sale for them at work (we all work together)
I think I've come to a conclusion on the line up:
Bacon, Cheddar, and Black Pepper Muffins
Raspberry Coconut Muffins
Banana Muffins
Milky Way Brownies
Jamaican Coffee Brownies
Peanut Butter Brownies
Red Velvet Cupcakes
The aforeblogged pineapple cupcakes
And one other cupcake, quite possibly in the stylings of Boston Creme.

That is all.

LB cake

2009-02-09T21:51:00.003-06:00

This weekend I was going to make blood orange cupcakes, but I wasn't able to find any. So i used this thing I had sitting around instead:

It was amazing. Also, I'm thinking something quite lovely is going to happen to me within the next couple days, so I'm drinking an entire bottle of wine. That's how I do. Oh, and watching Hell's Kitchen on youtube. I really don't know what I'm going to turn my attention to after I'm all caught up on this. On a side note, bacon and scrambled egg tacos with Cholula are an amazing dinner.
Last night, I decided I was going to get a chicken sandwich from McDonalds. And then I remembered why I stopped eating fast food. The only thing I could taste was dirty fryer grease and it was horrendous. Today was terribly busy at work and it was like one thing after another going wrong. Thankfully, the countdown to Reno has begun. I leave you with a recipe, for what I did with that delicious pine apple.
Fresh Pineapple Pound (cup)Cakes

Cream:
2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 c. granulated sugar
Add:
3 eggs, room temp, one at a time
Mix in:
1 tsp. vanilla extract
Followed by a mix of:
2 c. all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
Mix in:
1/2 milk, room temp
Fold in:
1 c. chopped pinapple

Pour batter into lined muffin tins (I came out with 16) and bake at 350 for 20 minutes. While the cupcakes are cooling, make the frosting:

Coconut Buttercream:
Beat:
1 stick softened butter
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
3 Tbsp coconut milk
1 tsp. vanilla extract.

Frost those cakes. They're bad ass.

Alton Brown Schools Me. Week 1

2009-02-03T23:00:00.005-06:00

So I've taken it upon myself to conquer cookbooks that I've had sitting around for awhile and haven't done anything with. The first one I have is "I'm Just Here for the Food" by Alton Brown. I love Alton Brown; he's really nerdy. Not only does he tell you how to make something, and make it well, he also tells you the most random bits of knowledge about what you're doing or why you should do something a certain way. I also like that his cookbooks are separated by cooking method rather than the type of dish. It's a concept that works really well for him, because of the scientific way he looks at food. So I decided that I would try to do one recipe a week from the book, doing a different chapter each week.
The first chapter is on searing, and there are a lot of really good sounding recipes. Since we're all trying to eat a bit better and cut some of the meat out of our diet in my house, I went with 'Bar-B-Fu'. I love tofu. A lot. A lot of people at work apparently don't like it. I'm thinking that they've never had it cooked right, or they've never had it at all and just have some sort of misconception about it. When I lived down in Champaign, I wasn't a big fan of it. Most of the places that I had tofu down there only used the soft tofu, and it was always steamed. Definitely not a fan of that. I like firm tofu, and I like it pan fried, dammit. If I wanted Jello that's what I would have gotten. Fortunately, Alton Brown likes the firm stuff too. The sandwiches, just so you know, were served with a side of ~~doom~~ zucchini oven fries, were only mediocre. That's what I get for relying on the internet to tell me how to cook my vegetables.

Bar-B-Fu (adapted from Alton Brown)
1 19 oz package firm tofu (I get the kind that comes in 4 chunks, and then i sliced each one in half to get 8 big squares)
3 Tbsp minced garlic (I like garlic. A lot)
1 Serrano chile, seeded and minced
1/3 c. original Sweet Baby Rays (the only brand of BBQ sauce I will buy)
1/4 c. white vinegar
kosher salt & fresh ground black pepper
sub rolls
3/4 c. Goose Island 312 (out of a 22 oz. bottle, the rest of which I enjoyed while catching up on Kitchen Nightmares. I have now seen EVERY episode)

Drain your tofu and press between paper towels to absorb as much excess moisture as possible. Whilst doing that, mix the garlic, Serrano, BBQ sauce, and vinegar.

Season the tofu with salt and pepper and place in a large zup lock bag. Put the sauce in the bag and *GENTLY!!!* shake to coat the tofu. Shake too hard and it's going to look like scrambled eggs and you're going to look like a nincompoop. Let sit for an hour. Enjoy the rest of your bottle of beer. If your day was anything like mine, you earned it.

Drain the marinade from the tofu. Alton's recipe says to reserve it, but my tofu sucked the life out of it and there wasn't much left. What I did instead was take the 3/4 c. beer and a hefty amount of bbq sauce and simmered that in a hot pan, cooked it down, and had beerbeque sauce. Good enough. Heat a separate (NON-STICK) pan over high heat. DO NOT ADD OIL. Add tofu squares and cook on each side for 2 minutes, without moving the tofu around. I know you want to, but don't. AB says if you do, you're not going to brown your tofu. Heat your rolls up (room temp breads just don't do it for me), cut a slit, stick your tofu in and add sauce. Delicious.
The tofu was nice and flavorful, spicy in an enjoyable way. I do love spicy foods, but not the kind that I feel like I'm dying spicy, like the horrid noodle mess that we had the misfortune of eating last week.

And one thing to leave you with from this week's Asian food shopping adventure:

I wonder if it's anything like CHUD.

A Blog That's Not Really About Food

2009-01-26T22:14:00.002-06:00

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

2009-01-22T00:14:00.003-06:00

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...

2009-01-19T21:28:00.002-06:00

"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

2009-01-18T21:50:00.002-06:00

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.

2009-01-12T19:59:00.003-06:00

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.

2009-01-10T23:49:00.003-06:00

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

2009-01-06T23:03:00.002-06:00

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

2009-01-04T19:56:00.003-06:00

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

2009-01-03T20:33:00.003-06:00

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.

2009-01-02T22:51:00.002-06:00

*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.

2009-01-02T20:24:00.002-06:00

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.