Italian Cookies

I bought a roll of almond paste and later realized I couldn't just eat it plain (i guess I should say I shouldn't eat it plain because I certainly could). I found a recipe for Italian Cookies that looked delicious. It was fun making and dying the layers, and it tasted great. I decided I didn't want to use shortening in the frosting layer...big mistake. It turns out the butter just doesn't do volume like shortening does. It still tasted good but it could have been prettier. Freshly made they were great! Every day you could taste them getting not as great (still delicious though). The problem was the apricot jelly between the layers absorbed into the cake layers. Not the worst, but if you try this I recommend serving it immediately. I'll certainly try this again though!

The start of a new project!

I found a pattern for a new blanket. I'm not sure yet how big i'll make it, but the first piece came out pretty well. Look out for updates on this one :)

Crochet

Remember back in august when the hurricane "hit" I taught myself how to crochet? Well I figured I'd try out making a bigger thing, like a throw for the couch. I found a cute zig zag pattern and gave it a shot! I dont love the colors I picked, and I also picked not the softest yarn since i'm a beginner, so its not the greatest blanket, but i'm done and the pattern looks awesome.

Rosti and Museli

One of my favorite childhood breakfasts is a swiss dish of Rosti and Museli. I don't get it very often, but whenever my dad goes to switzerland he brings back a pack of Rosti for me. I decided to make it this weekend since its almost like latkes so it would be a good pre channukah breakfast. I had forgotten how gross it looks right out of the package.

but after cooking it and next to the bowl of Museli it looked (and was) delicious!

New Foods

I'm a sucker for buying new products that I see whether it be a fruit I've never seen or a new flavor of gum. This week at Trader Joe's and then Whole foods I found 3 new things that I had to buy.

First at trader Joe's I saw pea shoots! I love pea shoots at restaurants but I've never seen them before at the stores, and trust me I've been looking.

I've enjoyed using these by throwing them into stirfry and eating them with my potstickers. Its nowhere near as delicious as the ones in restaurants though, but I suspect those are a slightly different variety.


Next at whole foods I found Keffir Limes. I've never even heard of these, but how could I not buy one to try. I haven't tried it yet though b/c when I went to look up the recipe it turns out what most people eat are the leaves, but they weren't selling those. The internet went on to teach me that the zest of the lime is good in Thai cooking so maybe I'll try that. The part that I thought I'd be eating, the citrus center, is evidently not good for eating but is good for washing your hair because its so strong. Maybe I'll give that a try.


Lastly at whole foods I found an apple variety I've never seen before. I cant remember what its called but the blurb on the sign said its from Japan, perfected in Italy, and made exclusively for whole foods.....wait what??? how can a fruit be made exclusively for a store! This seems pretty wrong to me. I did buy one to try out of curiosity, and it wasn't bad but it tasted as fake as it sounds. I don't think that was just in my head, it had this weird almost perfumy sweetness to it.

Flax Crackers Take 1

My dad has been making Flax crackers and working on perfecting the recipe. His are delicious. I though i'd give it a try....it turns out they are harder to make than it looks! For starters I let mine sit for 2 hours in the fridge in the water, but it turns out you need to let it sit at room temperature. Second for flavoring I only added (low sodium) soy sauce which made them turn out far too salty. Third I cant seem to figure out when to take them out of the oven so that they are perfectly crispy without being burnt. I tried a second batch with soy vay instead of soy sauce, and i'm not sure why but its terrible. Maybe third time's the charm...we'll see!

Butternut Squash Soup

This weekend I decided to try out my new immersion blender, and what better to try it on than Butternut Squash Soup now that the temperatures are dropping and all the fall and winter foods are starting to appear in the grocery stores. we used this recipe, which in my opinion is miss titled. Its called Butternut squash shallot soup, but you could barely tell there were shallots in there, and really taste the ginger. Peter suggested putting a few crumbles of goat cheese on top next time which maybe we will try. It was very delicious.

Fried Rice

Well, we are back from our honeymoon and ready to eat in for a while. This first meal is hawaii-inspired. The best dish I had while we were there was actually at breakfast. Our hotel had an amazing breakfast buffet, and since most of the hotel guests were Japanese, they catered to their guests. One morning for breakfast (along with my amazing fresh pineapples and mangoes) I had a delicious pineapple fried rice that we decided to try and make on our own last night. I found this recipe. It couldnt have been easier to make. We of course omitted the egg, and added corn (peter loves to add corn to everything). The only step we didnt really follow was using old rice or letting it sit for an hour. We let it sit for like 10 minutes, and I didnt think it hurt the meal any. Maybe next time I'll prepare a few days in advance and whip up some rice. Sorry for the bad photo, I really need to start taking these pictures with my nice camera instead of my iphone.



As a side note does anyone have a rice cooker? I'm considering getting one, and peter thinks its a dumb idea. Thoughts?

Crafts in the shower?

Well sorta, more like science projects. One of the awesome things about my mom is that she encouraged my science side and allowed me to take part in many science projects as a kid. Anything I was curious about we investigated. One of which was using an egg for shampoo. I gave it a try except i didnt take into consideration the temperature of the water and made a scrambled egg in my hair. Well now that I'm older and more mature I thought i'd give alternate shampoos and conditioners a try. I get so much build up on my hair from normal shampoos and conditioners that I figured this couldnt be any worse. So i looked up a few different methods and settled on beer rinse to make my hair shiny. My hair is moderately shiny today, but nothing out of the ordinary. What is out of the ordinary however is how dry my scalp is today. I read more and I guess its the alcohol in the beer. An alternate method boils down the beer first which I guess I should try next time. This would have been nice to know before :( Lessons learned.

Amigurumi

Again, in preparation for the hurricane we got old school activities that don't require electricity. I bought a kit from barnes and nobles on how to make Amigurumi (crocheted animals), and re-taught myself how to crochet. I tried to use the instructions in the 1st chapter of the book but some didnt make any sense at all or left out steps, so i went to youtube for that portion. Once I figured out all the stitches I started with the kissing fish pattern.

It turns out that I was reading the instructions wrong and was more than half way through before i realized. For example the instructions would say *1sc, 2sc in next stitch* (12). I read this to mean 1 single chain then 2 single chains in the next stitch and repeat this entire cycle 12 times. Instead what it actually meant was that in the end you should have 12 stitches (not the 36 I was doing). I started to notice the fish wasn't very 3d (minus the lips i did perfectly), I thought maybe at a later step it would pull the stitches in and it would become spherical.

I finally re-read the how to section and realized I had been reading the instructions wrong. Luckily its easy to undo this and I started over from scratch.
I didnt quite get some of the steps on the fins but i think i improvised well.

Hurricane Chili

This weekend in preparation for Hurricane Irene to blow through town (probably an over statement since there was barely even wind) we stocked up with water, batteries, flashlights, and non perishable food. Peter had the great idea to make a big pot of chili and just eat that all weekend. My favorite vegetarian chili is hard times cafe at the ball park. Infact last time we went i got stopped by FOUR seperate guys who wanted to know where I had gotten the delicious looking chili (at first I thought they were just trying to make an excuse to talk to me, but by the 3rd i realized it was the chili not me). We started with a base recipe and added corn and peanuts.

The chili looked great even before the beans and tomatoes were added


The part you could really taste the most were the spices

The recipe calls for Chili Powder ( we added a bit more than it called for), Cumin, Coriander, and a tiny dash of Cinnamon...even though the smallest amt of spice in there was the cinnamon it was the most easily distinguishable with both the final taste and final smell of the chili.

I made nachos with my portion :)

Pea Pesto

Last night I followed Smitten Kitchen's recipe for Pea Pesto. Smitten Kitchen has never let me down so I love trying recipes from this site (see corn pie). English peas aren't quite in season so I had to make do with frozen peas. I also left out the pine nuts since I don't like them at all (although if i were to try it again maybe I'd give toasted pine nuts a chance). Peter also wanted me to add basil, but I left it out this time in curiosity for what a non basil pesto may taste like. In the end it was very nice looking, and pretty delicious, but definitely lacking something. Maybe that Basil and Pine nuts are what I needed. I do love this color though!


All in all I'd file this under a recipe to try again with modifications

Candied Pecans

One night last week I caught a bit of an old Julia Child episode while at the gym. She had a guest on showing how to make some lemon chiffon cake with candied pecans on top. The cake itself didn't look good, but the pecans sure did. I decided to play around with ingredients and make my own. First I tried just plain sugar (1/4 cup pecans, 2 tbsp water, 2 tbsp white sugar). This one was pretty good, but a little too sweet. Next I tried a batch the same but added a few grounds of sea salt. This one was definitely on the right track, but not quite there yet. Then I tried one last one with the sugar, salt, and then added a few shakes of ground cloves, and a few shakes of cinnamon. This one was the clear winner. For all these recipes all you have to do is throw all the ingredients in the sauce pan at once and stir till sugar dissolves and begins boiling, then reduce the heat and let cook for about 7 to 10 minutes stirring occasionally. If you take it out too soon the sugar coating remains sticky. You'll know when you are done when there is almost no sauce left in the pan.



I topped my salad with the cinnamon pecans and it was delicious!



The two things i'd try next time, is first maybe i'll try a batch using brown sugar instead of white, and second maybe i'd try toasting the pecans first.

Vegetarian White Wine Sauce

I didn't take any pictures, so this wont be a visually pleasing post. But it was so delicious that I'll just try and draw a picture with my words...just kidding, who do you think i am? seriously, I'm an engineer the best I can do is give you a picture in numbers.

I tried to find a recipe online but there were none that fit the idea i had in my head so I made up my own and it came out pretty well if I do say so myself.

this recipe made 2 generous portions
*1/2 cup of dry white wine...I went with barefoot chardonnay b/c i happened to have little bottles sitting around
*1/2 cup of vegetable stock. I used the Trader Joe's vegetable reduced sodium savory broths.
* 1/4 onion chopped
* 1 large shallot chopped
* 1 clove of garlic chopped and crushed
* 1/4 lemon
* 1/4 tbsp salted butter (b/c i like it healthy like that)
* 1 fresh ear of corn, kernels cut off
* 1/2 cup frozen peas
* 1 handful of fresh chopped spinach
* cream to taste

1. Melt in your prettiest le cruesette the butter, and throw in the onions, garlic, and shallots to sautee.
2. squeeze in the lemon juice
3. Once sauteed add the wine and broth and put the top on to simmer.
4. after a few min add the corn and peas.
5. Reduce heat and Simmer longer
6. add a dash of cream
7. Boil up some water and cook the pasta
8. Just before the pasta is done throw in the spinach.
9. Mix and serve
10. On each plate mix in goat cheese, and then top with parmesean cheese
11. if desired add salt to taste.

Note: I used zucchini in mine but i don't recommend it so I wont add it here.

All that practice with play dough paid off!

This past sat was the 1 year anniversary of the day peter and I got engaged. To celebrate we tried out our brand new kitchen aid attachment pasta maker to make ourselves a nice dinner. We also tried out our new beater blade attachment. Kitchen aid is a great kitchen tool, but its major flaw is that the mixing attachments designed for it do not fully reach the bottom of the bowl, which generally results in extra dry materials unmixed at the bottom of the bowl.

This new beater blade (pictured above) reaches all the way to the bottom helping to mix almost all of the ingredients. Since it touches the entire bowl its a bit noisier when mixing, but thats ok with me.

After all the ingredients were mixed through we attached the pasta attachment and began to make pasta! its exactly like playing with play dough! We were slightly concerned because the spinach wasnt chopped up well enough for the dough, but evidently the pasta attachment does some good blending while its pressing out the pasta to give it a nice even green color.



We tried 4 different pasta settings. Fusili:
This one lost most of its shape and looked kinda strange, but the consistency of the pasta cooked well.

Next we tried bucanini which i have never had before. its like spagetti but hollow little tubes. These probably came out the best!


Lastly we tried large macaroni and rigatoni which practically came out the same (rigatoni a bit better).

We threw all the different types in the pot of boiling water and made a confetti of pasta! I made a tomato/cream/pesto sauce that was so delicious if i do say so myself. We served it on our new plates


mmmm what a delicious celebration!

Garlic Scapes Pesto

Last Thursday I headed to the farmers market at work in hopes for fresh peaches. No peaches were to be found, but they had a bucket of beautiful garlic scapes. I've never seen them for sale before so how could I pass up this opportunity! The farm even provided me with a recipe! I bought 1/2 lb of garlic scapes and was excited to try making garlic scapes pesto. I was imagining it to be garlicy, but not overwhelmingly so. I was very very wrong. I tasted the pesto as I was making it and it tasted like pure garlic!! I quickly emptied out my fridge's basil collection and added that to the pesto to try and diffuse the flavor. It helped, but only mildly. We ate it over pasta, but I would not recommend it. Tonight i'm going to try it again since we have so much leftovers ----i'll add more basil this time i guess.

Below is the recipe I dont recommend

1/2 lb garlic scapes (buds cut off)
1 c oil
2 c Parmesan cheese
blend in food processor

Star Wars Themed birthday food!

For peter's birthday gathering I decided to make star wars themed food.
We ended up making 4 star wars themed foods.

1. Light Sabers! We melted white chocolate and dyed it green, blue, and red (no purple b/c peter would have gotten angry if i acknowledged samuel l jackson's purple saber)
2. Princess Leia cupcakes. M&M buns and frosted faces. Not that well done since i'm not that artistic, but you get the idea

3 and 4. Using the william sonoma cookie cuters I made yoda and storm trooper cookies.




Ideas I didnt follow through with:
* Han Solo action figure in Jello (carbonite clearly). Someone suggested I turn this into Jello shots, but I was afraid people would accidentally eat the han solo figurines.
* Death Star Truffles, pretty easy to make a chocolate truffle look vaguely like the death star
* Luke's severed Hand. At halloween Diana took a latex glove and filled it with water and froze it to have ice hands floating in the punch, I figured this might be able to be adapted for the star wars purpose as well.
* Home made marshmallows for cloud city

Cooks Illustrated

I've recently been introduced into the world of Cooks Illustrated, and even signed up for 1 year. I found some great recipes and all turned out delicious. One however could have turned out better. It turns out Cooks Illustrated has a handy iphone app, which of course I downloaded. You can look up a recipe, add the ingredients list to an easy shopping list, and then follow the recipe by phone as you cook. This would have been all fine and dandy if there hadnt been a major typo in the iphone version. I made the Poached Pear and Almond Tart. There are 3 different portions to this recipe, the poached pears, the crust, and the Frangipane filling. TWO of the 3 portions (the pears and the filling) had the same typo. On the iphone version it called for 5/6 tsp of salt. First off who has measuring spoons that can even do that? I thought it sounded like a lot, and didnt have the right spoons, so i put in 3/4 instead (so slightly less for those of you who dont feel like doing the math). I decided to taste the frangipane b/c I love almond flavored anything and it was super salty!!! I ran to my computer and sure enough it was supposed to call for 1/8 tsp instead! I dumped in a ton of sugar to both parts to try and compensate for my super salty tart. The tart ended up ok (esp since I love salty things), but I think next time will be better.

Scalion Pancakes!

Earlier this week I came across a recipe for scallion pancakes, which is just about the only part to Chinese food I'll eat. For some reason no restaurant around here offers them. I started discussing it with Emily who recommended a slightly different recipe. Who knew scallion pancakes are so easy to make!!! The other nice part about making them at home is that you can use less oil, and put them directly on paper towels to soak out more oil when you are done. mmmm so delicious.



Emily was also inspired by our conversation and made them as well this week!

LDCM Cookies

Today we had a govt shutdown party. I made cookies stamped with the image of the satellite our instrument is mounted on. They came out alright

Pizza!!!

Friday during the day peter and I were emailing back and forth trying to figure out dinner plans. We decided on home made pizza...who knew almost all recipes out there require you to start a day in advance! Luckily I found This recipe which only takes 45 minutes to rise! We made two small pizzas and peter and i each added our own toppings. Mine was a white pizza with caramelized onions, spinach, and gorgenzola cheese, and peter's was a pesto pizza with the onions and spinach and ricotta.

Here is my pizza (the more delicious one)



And Here is Peter's less delicious one

Poached Eggs!

I was really late on watching Julie and Julia, but when I did I loved it. Also it made me realize that I've never poached an egg and it looked like fun! So this morning I made peter a poached egg (since I dont want to eat it myself).

Check it out! I'm super proud that it worked first try!

Tomato Sauce

I like to make big portions of home made tomato sauce to keep around in the fridge for whenever we feel like pasta. I like making my own for two reasons, one is that I like the taste better, and the second is I can control more about it such as salt content. Generally I use canned tomatoes of any sort, and include sauteed tomatoes, garlic, and herbs and spices. I decided recently to try using fresh tomatoes instead of canned, and started with the fun first step of blanching the tomatoes. I also used fresh herbs instead of dried ones. The outcome was pretty good, but in my opinion the the canned tomatoes result in better sauce both texture and flavor wise. I'll probably go back to the cans for next time!

the best Peanut Butter in the world

Last night while watching the snow fall outside, I decided it was finally time to try making my own peanut butter. This is something I've been wanting to try for a while. I found an easy recipe and got to work.



This is seriously the best peanut butter i've ever had. It almost tastes like the peanut butter in a reeses cup!

Home Made Gingerale!!

I made my own ginger ale last night, using most of Alton Brown's Recipe, but replacing the step where you add yeast to carbonate it, by using my awesome Soda stream to carbonate it!

My apartment smelled delicious as it simmered. After straining out the ginger I decided to try the syrup on its own. It was spicy and hurt my mouth, I wouldn't recommend that. I then mixed it with my bubbly water and a splash of lemon juice and it tasted almost store bought!


I'd like to try rootbeer next, but I'm not sure where to buy sarsaparilla.