M's Kitchen

okay, NEW new address

2009-01-10T19:29:00.001-05:00

I don't know what happened. The last try didn't work, so it's at www.cooking-with-m.blogspot.com this time. :)

I'm moving the blog!

2009-01-10T16:03:00.001-05:00

I have been keeping two blogs with separate logins and stuff, and consequently never get on to post on this one.... even though I am doing exciting kitchen things! To make my life easier, I am moving this blog to www.mellacooks.blogspot.com so come on over and see what's up! :)

hello again

2008-11-25T14:06:00.002-05:00

Well, Jack was born on Sept 18th, and then Caiden (my nephew) arrived on November 7th, and all in all, I've been kind of busy. :) However, this week I had a particular success making peach-mangosteen jelly!

A mangosteen, for anyone who's wondering (everyone, in short) is a fruit that looks like a garlic bulb encased in a small eggplant, and tastes like peaches and strawberries with some light tartness thrown in. I had some peach-mangosteen hippie juice from Starbucks (where I work) that had just reached its expiration date. I threw 4 cups of the juice and 4 cups of water into a pot and did the whole jelly-making thing.

What do you know, it jelled! I can't believe it! And it tastes really good! I'm beginning to think that the secret of great jellies and jams is to include peaches in some form. :D

apple pie a la mode

2008-09-11T17:39:00.002-04:00

....without the boring "pie" part. :)

I just chopped up apples and made the spiced sugary filling out of them, then baked them in a covered dish instead of bothering with a pie crust. It produced a REALLY delicious, syrupy apple-pie-insides kind of thing. I took one taste and realized it has to be dumped over vanilla ice cream for best effect, so I am getting some of that later tonight. :D

a quick catch-up

2008-09-08T09:40:00.002-04:00

I did trick almost all the family into going "apple picking" at the farm near us. (Amy couldn't come because her parents in law were up for a visit that weekend.) We ended up picking raspberries and blueberries, and buying apples, peaches and corn from the farm stand because I was a bit too tired to keep going on with the pick-your-own. We also got some ridiculously yummy feta, tomato and basil dip which is just perfect on veggie crackers!

Since starting maternity leave, I have made soda bread, strawberry-peach jam, quiche, beef stew, apple pie, many pancakes, and a bunch of more regular meal stuff. The jam came out especially tasty. A bit thin, since I didn't put a lot of sugar in, but who doesn't want low sugar, seedless strawberry peach jam? I usually share my jams with the rest of the family, but Alex has pretty much forbidden me to do that this time!

farmer's market

2008-08-27T18:16:00.002-04:00

I know I've written about the farmer's market before, but I just went yesterday and got inspired all over again.

I got two ears of fresh corn (picked that day) and two of the tastiest white peaches I can recall eating, for a heaping total of $1.50. All these goodies were from a farm about 10 minutes down the road from us called Applecrest Orchards. I am right in the middle of planning an apple-picking trip there with the rest of my family--and of course, I will be visiting their farm stand while we're there. :D

delicious dish

2008-08-27T17:02:00.002-04:00

Ripped off from my beloved Mommie, of course--who better to steal tasty recipes from???

1 link (1 lb) of turkey kielbasa (just as yummy as the pork stuff but MUCH less fatty)
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 cup rice
about 1 tomato can's worth of added water (at least for my rice, which is proving to be somewhat incorrigible about water quantities and cook times)

Throw it all in a skillet and simmer it until the rice is tender.

DONE!

And it's ridiculously good. You wouldn't even believe it. Bo was feasting delightedly on the grains of rice I gave him, because they were so tasty he thought they must be meat.

check your ingredients list

2008-08-22T07:29:00.002-04:00

I was VERY offended to find that some pudding mix that I bought had aspartame in it! This was after I had specifically chosen the "regular" one that was sitting right next to the "sugar-free". WHY would you use artificial sweeteners in the one that's already sweetened with sugar?? (It's probably cheaper, one would assume.)

Anyway, aspartame is one of the items that pregnant ladies are specifically not supposed to eat. Good thing I read pretty much everything that's in front of me, and my eyes wandered over the ingredient list while I was mixing up the pudding!

a small flaw in my plan

2008-08-16T20:37:00.001-04:00

The food I made to save is too enticing--I had some for dinner tonight. :P

and for an encore this morning

2008-08-14T07:16:00.001-04:00

Pancakes with fresh blueberries swirled into the batter. :D

Tonight I believe I may make sloppy joes!

WHY I cooked enough for a small army

2008-08-14T07:06:00.003-04:00

I'm freezing meals for when we have a new Critter to tire us out and distract us from any real food prep! :)

I am very pleased with myself for thinking of this --much better than relying on take-out, or just eating toast all day or something. :)

a cooking frenzy!

2008-08-13T20:45:00.002-04:00

Tonight I made giant batches of beef stock, beef stew, chicken stock, chicken pot pie, and followed it all up with a loaf of delicious soup bread (made with beef stock instead of water). I am soooooooooooo tired! I think I was in the kitchen for at least 3 hours straight. But I probably made enough to feed me and Alex for the better part of a week. :D

EDIT: I forgot to mention the jello (with blueberries from the farm down the street) and the mac & cheese that ended up being dinner!

bread experiment

2008-08-12T17:51:00.002-04:00

I was getting sick of the tiny bit of sweetness that shows up in my Favorite loaf of bread, so I decided to try a batch with NO sugar added.

Well, it really didn't rise much, ultimately, even though I gave it more time. I did know that the sugar is there to feed the yeast, so I'm not too surprised. It tastes good anyway --it's just about 1/2 the size of usual loaves!

baked macaroni & cheese casserole

2008-08-08T18:13:00.004-04:00

This is the best mac & cheese in the WORLD and makes a giant casserole. It used to feed my whole 5-person family when I was growing up, with leftovers!

1 box (16 oz.) elbow macaroni --$1.20
8 oz. cheddar cheese, grated --$2.00
2 tbsp butter or oil --8 cents (vegetable oil)
1/4 tsp salt --negligible
2 tbsp flour --2 cents
2 cups milk --50 cents
1 sleeve saltine crackers --43 cents
Total: $4.23

That's less than $1 per person.

If anyone wants me to start posting recipes instead of just ingredient lists, I can totally do that, but for right now I'm mostly excited about the prices (and how low they are)!

gorgeous bread!

2008-08-07T16:02:00.004-04:00

I have a favorite bread recipe, which I make pretty much whenever the weather's not too hot. I prefer making bread at home to buying it in the store anyway. I made this today:...and then in the spirit of what Alison and I have been talking about, I got to wondering whether/how economical it really is to make my own bread. I did a bunch of research, and here's what I came up with:

1 package yeast --67 cents
1/4 cup warm water
7/8 cup warm water
1 1/2 tsp salt --1 cent
1 1/2 tbsp sugar --2 cents
1 tbsp vegetable oil --4 cents
3-3 1/2 cups flour --56 cents

Whole loaf: $1.30
Comparable loaf from the store: $3.89
Saved: $2.59!

Even if you're just getting a loaf of Wonder Bread, it's $3.19. I'd much rather have mine!

new project

2008-08-05T22:10:00.003-04:00

Alison and I were talking sort of casually about how it's a good Wife's Job to cook tasty yet frugal food, and how neither of us has been particularly good at it, but that I'm working on it. I told her I would see what I could pass along to her for the tips that I've learned, and it turned into a kind of big discussion....

Now we are on a mission to lower her grocery bill while getting her tastier and healthier menus! No problem, right? :)

free yeast

2008-07-31T08:10:00.001-04:00

A while ago I did a survey for Fleishman's (NO idea how to spell that!) yeast, and they sent me coupons for SIX free packets of yeast. What do I make? Cinnamon rolls? Coffee cake? A new kind of bread? :)

the latest challenge

2008-07-23T10:54:00.002-04:00

Since my stomach seems to have given up entirely on the whole don't-give-it-back thing, I am working on what I can eat that at least won't be TERRIBLE to taste again for the next six hours.

Foods so far: Apples, pancakes.

.... though there definitely could be worse menus, this could get dull.

yum yum

2008-07-13T18:40:00.001-04:00

I came up with a big pile of sliced tomato, avocado, orange bell pepper and cucumber with a light drizzle of Greek dressing. It was REALLY good!

dying for a good snack!

2008-07-12T13:38:00.002-04:00

I am really searching for a snack that I can just munch on, without getting a bunch of empty calories and feeling gross afterward. I don't know if this exists, but I am on the hunt!

on the other hand, I may be cut off from dairy

2008-07-08T15:13:00.002-04:00

I have been getting some nasty acid reflux for a few months now, and I just put it together that a lot of times it happens when I have dairy products, like cream cheese or yogurt. I knew that when the baby was born I was going to be off dairy (babies in my family tend not to tolerate cow milk) but I might start sooner, just to get some relief!

heat wave

2008-07-08T15:02:00.002-04:00

As soon as this durned heat wave calms down, I am going to make kind of a hybrid chowder. I can't quite face eating clams, so I am going to put in some cooked lobster-ish meat (kind of like krab) instead. Also, instead of corn I'm putting in some peas, so we'll see how that goes.

As far as the heat, though, I am just waiting and waiting for a break! I even thought of the obvious solution of cooking at night so the apartment would be cool, but the temperature isn't going down at ALL! What happened to those nice daily thunderstorms we were getting to clear all the humidity and heat out?

What happened to cod, anyway?

2008-06-20T22:14:00.003-04:00

Another thing we did with Alex's family was visit a kind of seaside museum/conservation center a little way up the coast from here.

Among other things, we learned about how cod was this awesome fish that all the colonists just adored... They even made it part of Massachusetts' logo for a while. So they kept fishing it and fishing it, and just loving this tasty fish! There was some concern about overfishing when they started being able to catch less, but they switched to smaller boats and were still catching so darn many that there COULDN'T be a problem!

Fast-forward a couple of centuries and the numbers of cod being caught were still plummeting and the average size was way down.... it's no surprise that the whole cod-fishing racket crashed in the early '90s. The choice was either to let cod disappear from the region entirely, or to impose strict government controls on fishing.... guess which happened.

So the good news is, the cod population is hypothetically making a comeback. The bad news is, cod is no longer the available fish-and-chips of choice.

This relates back to me because I started my life in a Massachusetts fishing town where if your fish didn't come out of the ocean THAT DAY and get cooked into a state of perfect deliciousness, it was an embarrassment and the establishment just ought to be ashamed. I used to get fish and chips about 1/2 the times our family ate out, and that was that. I remember that at a certain point, I stopped liking fish and chips because the fish just stopped tasting so good, and got kind of chewy. I thought it was a series of bad cooks, or because we were at an out-of-town restaurant--if I thought about it at all. I mostly didn't, and just got burgers instead.

Apparently that was the demise of cod and transition to haddock and other white fish as fish-and-chips staples. So now I can (unfortunately) say I have been a first-hand witness to an ecological semi-disaster. Think friendly thoughts about the recovering cod population--I really do think that if people weren't dumb we could have our cod and eat it too!

I tried real lobster a while ago

2008-06-20T22:11:00.002-04:00

...sort of, anyway.

While Alex's parents and brother were in town, we all went to this restaurant down the street from our apartment, called The Old Salt. The food turned out to be pretty okay, but nothing fabulous. Anyway, Alex got a lobster roll that was pretty much hunks of lobster in a bun, so I ate one of the hunks.

I am torn between whether "foamy" or "rubbery" would be a better word for the texture, and I think that sums the experience up completely. Too bad!

I also had fish and chips, which was made with haddock. I miss cod....

it's been too long!

2008-06-20T22:03:00.002-04:00

Almost a month since I showed this blog any love!

I have to admit, in the summer I am much more inclined to just eat simple, raw veggies and fruit and pretty well stay out of the kitchen.

I can at least share one of my favorite foods, which I'm now told is now a good baby-growing snack, so it's even better!

The secret Most Delicious Food In The World is avocado cut in half, drizzled with lime or lemon juice and sprinkled with salt and pepper. There is just NO WAY this can go wrong! Also it has about a bajillion units of omega-3-oils/fatty acids/whatevers, and omega-3 is apparently really important for the baby's nerve and brain development during the 3rd trimester.

Not that I wouldn't be eating them anyway. :)

so much for getting back in the kitchen

2008-05-21T13:51:00.001-04:00

I am still not really getting in there much. The good news is that I just spoke to my manager about only giving me shifts of 6 hours or less, so I should be a bit less crazy in the coming weeks! (He's been putting me on five 7-8 hour shifts every week, which has been a bit much....)

haven't had much time to cook

2008-05-01T21:35:00.002-04:00

A side effect of picking up a new job recently is that I haven't had a lot of time to just be in the kitchen, making good stuff. We've been eating and everything, but I haven't made anything really delightful since the pot roast.

Well, I just made an apple crisp. That always makes me feel better. :)

My mom's ALWAYS saving the day

2008-04-28T08:59:00.001-04:00

Isn't she helpful? :)

"So here's what you do about bland gravy. Taste the cooking liquid before you thicken it. It should taste just about how you want the gravy to taste but just a bit stronger. If it is not strong enough you take out the meat and veggies and boil the liquid till it is stronger tasting. This is called "reducing". Then thicken it and it should be right. Oh - and don't leave out salt. It belongs in gravy and makes it taste "gravy like".

Mum"

pot roast turned out well

2008-04-26T19:42:00.003-04:00

I did it by my mom's method. (It's my favorite way to get acquainted with cooking a new food--try it how my mom does it and then play with it from there, if I even need to!)

In this case it meant I browned it on all sides, then nearly submerged it in water and gave it a good simmer until it got really tender. I also threw in some carrots and potatoes to boil in the meat water as the meat finished up.

At the last minute I decided I wanted to make some gravy too. I don't really know the first thing about gravy, except that you start with a roux, and that it involves flour and meat juices, but it turned out okay--a bit bland but definitely edible. Some salt and bay leaf fixed that up okay, and the meat was tender and moist enough that it didn't really need gravy anyway. The thing I ended up being proud of with the gravy was that I didn't burn it to the bottom of the pot. :)

eat at Hoaty's :)

2008-04-26T19:08:00.005-04:00

This is the best little breakfast place in the WORLD. I'm convinced.

Alex and I discovered it for the simple fact that it's right next door to our apartment building. We can walk over there, so one day we did.

They are old-fashioned in the best way--they only take cash, none of the waitresses wear uniforms, there are pigs EVERYWHERE (their decorating theme), and the people packed in at other tables are going to talk to you about something or other, so you'd better just embrace it. (Can we borrow your cream? Gee, that looks tasty--what is it? Gosh, your child is adorable! And every other thing you can imagine....) The kitchen is right out where you can see everything happening, and the owners (a really nice couple) are in there serving with the rest of their crew.

I took my sister there (more properly, I made her take ME there :P as payback for her getting pregnant at the same time as me and stealing my round-bellied glory) and we had a SCRUMPTIOUS breakfast:

A giant blueberry muffin, sliced in half and grilled, then drowned in butter
A giant slice of sour cream cinnamon coffee cake, also sliced and grilled
Home fries
eggs
toast
baked beans (homemade)
corned beef hash
hollandaise sauce
2 apple juices
...and it's been a few weeks. I think I'm forgetting an item or three.

We also left a hefty tip, because we were sharing all this with my sister's baby (10 months old) and you know how that goes--we thought we'd leave some extra to cover the floor-cleaning. :)

Well, not to be crass by mentioning money or anything, but tip included, the whole meal was only $20! And it was scrumptious, of course. :D

second artichoke

2008-04-26T17:42:00.001-04:00

I settled for a really simple lemon-mayo sauce. (Yes, I did go out and buy a lemon.) :)

The taste was okay, but it really obscured the flavor of the artichoke, so I think I'll be sticking with melted butter in the future!

artichokes, artichokes, yum yum yum

2008-04-25T19:01:00.002-04:00

Alex has informed me that he doesn't care much about artichokes one way or the other, so I am eating them both myself!

Last night I had the first one fresh from being steamed, with melted butter to dip it in. Tonight I am looking for some other sauce varieties, but they all seem to be mayo-based. I wish I had lemons--I would make lemon-butter sauce, which is more up my alley.

I guess I'll just have to try one of these recipes and see how it does. How about a combination of mayonnaise, mustard, cayenne, ketchup and Worcestershire sauce? (Does that sound hideous to anyone else???)

delicious artichokes

2008-04-24T21:02:00.003-04:00

0. chop off annoying stem and leaf-tops
1. steam artichokes
2. melt butter
3. peel off leaves
4. dip and devour
:)

EDIT: Just to be clear (after reading Chris's comment) I love artichoke leaves. I just meant I was cutting off the very top where the leaves are all spiny and don't have tasty parts anyway. But as far as I'm concerned the whole POINT of artichokes is the leaves! :)

new things to cook with

2008-04-24T18:58:00.001-04:00

Alex and I were grocery shopping and I got inspired by artichokes and pot roast. Not that I've ever cooked either.... but I will! And they're going to be GOOD. :)

catfish, continued

2008-04-23T00:24:00.005-04:00

I've been trying to think of a good way to describe what catfish tastes like. The best I can come up with is "like cod or halibut, but definitely freshwater." Instead of having a different flavor than these other kinds of white fish, it was more that it had a LACK of some mysterious part of the flavor --which I can only attribute to the fresh vs. ocean water situation. (The catfish we had was from Mississippi freshwater. Actually I don't know if any kind of catfish can even survive in salt water....)

Boy, I hope that made sense. It's considerably past my bedtime!

PS--have I revealed myself to be terribly uncultured because I think these fish taste pretty much the same? :)

Catfish

2008-04-21T17:41:00.002-04:00

I ate some. :)

But Alex wants the computer (we're in the airport and only have one) so I'll have to elaborate later. :D

another tasty dinner by the Bowlings

2008-04-10T19:30:00.003-04:00

Alex and I were feeling inspired by the beautiful weather that we had today, so we decided to go to the store and see what jumped out at us for a good springtime dinner.

We found some yummy-looking pre-marinated pork tenderloin, but decided we could marinate some ourselves (pre-marinated was $7 and change and non-marinated was $2 and change, which was good motivation).

We also got corn on the cob to boil up, and then the real stroke of genius was getting apples and onions to boot.

We rubbed the tenderloin in this ridiculously yummy stuff called Maple Pepper. Aside from those, it also has garlic and some Secret Ingredients. My sister and brother in law gave me a jar of it from a restaurant somewhere in the boonies a while ago, and it turned out to be the perfect complement to the pork.

So we baked the pork while we fried up the apples and onions in yummy butter, then we poured the apples and onions onto the pork and baked it all some more.

This was possibly the yummiest thing we've EVER eaten. I'm not exaggerating, either. The pork was so tender we could cut it by waving a fork at it. I think it helped that we had a cover on the baking dish, so all the moisture stayed inside. Also, we threw a little brown sugar into the apple/onion mixture, which helped to caramelize it gorgeously.

The only flaw is that it used up a bunch of maple pepper! We'll have to find out where it came from, so we can get more. :)

crab rangoon

2008-04-05T21:06:00.002-04:00

Alex and I had crab rangoon from this little Chinese food store right next to us-- YUM, it was really, really, REALLY good. I have tried crab rangoon a couple of times before and it always just tasted like cream cheese and a little generic fish-taste. But these ones were very delicious and much more flavorful. Mmmm.... :)

some dinner pictures

2008-03-29T19:20:00.003-04:00

We actually started out this dinner looking all organized and stuff:

The final product was much less picturesque, but darn tasty:

whenever I get a day at home...

2008-03-29T18:01:00.004-04:00

...I end up cooking all day!

I started today with an apple-and-raspberry cobbler for breakfast. YUM. Yes, we already ate the whole thing. I'd show you a picture of the dish all scraped clean, but it's already in the dish washer.

Then I made a loaf of bread and some Parmesan-and-italian-seasoning rolls.

Alex and I teamed up for dinner. We decided to go all-American, having cheeseburgers with lettuce, tomato, pickle and onion. Also kettle chips (instead of french fries) with onion dip, and some baby-friendly decaf Coke. And of course, we used some of the aforementioned rolls for buns.

Incidentally, we discovered while making the burgers that lettuce, tomato, onion and pickle make a really good snack all by themselves--there's almost no need to even add the burger.

And as a closer, what would this fabulous dinner be without a little chocolate pudding for dessert? Yummm. I keep telling Alex that all he has to do is earn a million dollars and I will SO stay at home and cook delicious things for him ALLLL the time!

woo, gardening!

2008-03-29T11:22:00.002-04:00

I got together with my mom this week and talked over my plan to commandeer some of her yard space to expand her garden. We are agreed about the idea of expanding her garden area and maybe even making a raised garden bed!

My next task is to figure out exactly which kinds of veggies and herbs I want to put in there, anyway. :)

real vegetables

2008-03-25T22:54:00.006-04:00

I am in LOVE with fresh, GOOD produce. We got some tomatoes from Stop & Shop (which turns out to be kind of 2/3 of the way in quality and price from a Market Basket to a Hannaford, for those of you who have any idea what I'm talking about).

Anyway, the tomatoes were so ripe and perfect that the whole display of them smelled like REAL tomatoes--the kind you can pick off the plant and just gobble down. MMMmmmmm.....

(ASIDE: I am SOOO sick of "vegetables" and "food" that are in fact not truly edible at all! For instance, supermarket cucumbers are a joke. They are foamy plant fiber and water, and nothing else. A home-grown cucumber is a thing of flavorful beauty. I NEED to get some garden space!)

Anyway, it's a couple of days later now and the tomatoes still smell like that, and every time I smell one I just want to dig in!

Eating these delicious tomatoes reminded me that my mom grows tomatoes when the season is right, and that they are invariably damn tasty.... This combined with my general state of disgruntledness at bad veggies, and resulted in me hatching a plan to see how I can earn a supply of Mom's tomatoes for myself, and maybe get some more kinds of fresh veggies to boot. :)

family time :)

2008-03-25T22:47:00.002-04:00

Alex and I love cooking together. We are working on cooking together every day, and have been doing pretty well at it! We don't do something hugely fancy every day, but it's always nice to spend some time hanging out and making something we both can enjoy.

Today we made a salad with REALLY good tomato, salami, grated cheddar and Italian dressing. We tossed it in a big salad bowl, and it looked so good that we just grabbed a couple of forks, sat on the couch together and ate the whole thing out of the big bowl. :)

It was so yummy, I made seconds for tomorrow!

back on the (sea)horse, ha ha ha

2008-03-23T21:39:00.005-04:00

Today I ate three shrimp with a yummy cocktail sauce, and several crackers with lobster dip.

I even ate them on purpose. :)

This marks the first time I have even remotely been around lobster-as-a-food since when I first smelled it (around 10 years old) and literally almost threw up. I am proud of myself!

Easter dessert decided

2008-03-19T20:09:00.001-04:00

I'm going with a sort of ice cream/sorbet hybrid. Unless it totally sucks, in which case I'll go to the (delicious) standby of apple pie. :)

hmm...

2008-03-18T15:05:00.001-04:00

I am in need of a good Easter dessert.... I'm shopping around now. :)

perfect pizza topping

2008-03-17T20:09:00.001-04:00

Okay, so the absolute BEST cheese combination to put on a pizza is mozzarella, sharp cheddar and a sprinkling of Parmesan over the top. I am not kidding--it's to DIE for!

yummy, yummy bread

2008-03-14T20:42:00.002-04:00

I've been having some trouble with my bread: Every time I got to the kneading part, the dough would end up tough, with holes busting out all over it, and yet seemingly under-kneaded rather than over-kneaded (because the bread wouldn't hold a rise properly).

It was a BIG mystery, and no matter what I tried, I kept getting the same weird, unhappy result.

I finally pulled out the big guns by asking my mom to make bread with me and show me what I'm doing wrong. Yaay, mommie!

It turns out that in the beginning, when you first mix together the yeast with some sugar and flour, there is some heavy stirring to be done, to activate the gluten right then.

There is also a very successful family kneading technique, but it can't really be explained in writing--you just have to watch someone do it. I can say that it involves leaning on the dough from the shoulder rather than trying to knead it with the wrists.

Needless to say, these two elements have greatly improved my breadmaking!

The next development is that now, with these two elements in, I find that I can add much less flour to the dough before going on to kneading, which handles a lot of the toughness that I was encountering.

Woo!

beautiful new bowl :)

2008-03-10T19:17:00.000-04:00

My mommie got me a gorgeous big dark brown ceramic bowl for making things like bread and pie in. I'm breaking it in with a batch of bread tonight!

food today

2008-03-03T22:24:00.003-05:00

I had some extra time today so I did some cooking.

YUM, as it turns out. :)

I started with potato soup, since Starbucks had some whole milk that was expiring, so I took it home to cook with. Don't worry, I made sure it hadn't actually spoiled before I threw it in the soup.

Alex and I ate the whole pot of soup in maybe half an hour. :) AND I am thinking about making a whole extra batch tomorrow. I made it from a recipe that was pretty bad, so I wrote in my changes for next time (more potatos, add cayenne pepper, things like that...).

I am really happy because in Oregon you could pull cans of potato soup off ANY grocery shelf, and in New England you just can't find potato soup without YUCK CLAMS. AKA clam chowder, which people around here are crazy about despite the presence of, well.... clams.

And then, I was having such a good time cooking that I made a chocolate cake. But chocolate cake is so much better with fruit sauce! So I made some sauce out of a bunch of mixed berries, and the cake soaked up a bunch of it really nicely. It was deeeelicious.

Just when I was running out of steam and couldn't face cooking for myself, Alex made TWO grilled cheese sandwiches for me in the knick of time. :)

epic project :)

2008-03-01T11:27:00.002-05:00

Somewhere along the line I noticed that I have collected up about a million (conservative estimate) handwritten/magazine clipped/mail order/etc. recipes that hang out with my cookbooks.

Their main function in life seems to be "look messy and be really hard to sort out". They have been sitting on the counter in a pile with my cookbooks, looking like crap and basically hindering everything.

Well, well, well. What is a girl to do?

I don't remember if it was my idea or Alex's, but the idea came from somewhere that these loose recipes need to be captured and put in a binder between those neat-o plastic sheets (which I love because I spill egg on EVERYTHING when I cook).

Well, I'm doing it and I'm actually almost done. AND everything is getting sorted by category, so my seventy five bread recipes, for instance, are all actually hanging out together!

This project has been a long time coming, and I'm so glad to finally be doing it!

Alex's new job

2008-02-26T22:26:00.003-05:00

Alex has picked up a new duty around the house: wife reviving! Every so often I totally crash and burn and he scrapes me up from the floor and feeds me until I can get going again.

An example happened last night, when in the space of about five minutes I went from totally fine to having a headache, aversion to light, feverish feeling, and exhaustion. Now, when such situations come up, it's pretty much all I can do to wave my hands in the air and yelp that I'm going down. So I tottered off to crash in bed and just lay in the dark for a while.

This is where Alex somehow saves the day pretty much every time. I don't know how he does it, because when I get into this state, no food is appealing but he finds out which food secretly is the one I need.

In this instance, he put a whole rack of ribs into the oven for me and just brought me a plate of ribs when they were done. I went from bedraggledly picking at the plate while still laying down to sitting up and ravenously devouring the remainder and not even needing a nap afterward.

How does he do it? I think I would be a goner by now if not for the magical words, "The Husband, I need to eat something." Ones that also work are "I need some food but I don't know what," and "Wow, I think I'm hungry."

I think I married a superhero. :)

grilled chicken

2008-02-19T20:03:00.002-05:00

So I don't know how I did it (especially since all my past attempts have basically sucked), but I made really yummy pan-grilled chicken. I laid down just a bit of olive oil and then sprinkled the chicken with garlic, salt and basil. It was deeelishus. :) Maybe it's because I used a different pan this time?

seafood update

2008-02-14T22:36:00.002-05:00

I'm sure some of you already know this: I'm pregnant! :)

Unfortunately, this means that my seafood adventures have been somewhat curtailed by my whimsically (maddeningly) finicky tummy --not to mention the fact that I've acquired some pretty good anti-mercury paranoia.

Sooo, the seafood adventures will probably have to wait a while longer. I just wanted to set the record straight that I'm not just being chicken about it. :P

Valentine's dinner

2008-02-14T22:35:00.002-05:00

Alex and I made breaded pork morsels, delicious salad and chocolate pudding. Damn tasty, and easy to boot!

pasta primavera, PS

2008-02-12T18:23:00.000-05:00

I forgot that the awesome thing about the pasta primavera was how I cooked it! I don't have a steamer, but I wanted to steam the veggies. SO. I took a big pot and boiled the spaghetti in the bottom of it. Then I put my pasta strainer (which is metal) over the top and steamed the veggies right in it! When the veggies were done it was just time to drain the pasta, so I dumped the veggies, strained the pasta, and had a big meal with only two dirty dishes!!

pasta primavera

2008-02-11T21:42:00.000-05:00

I had forgotten about this tasty dish until today, but I made it as soon as I remembered:

spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, salt, basil, oregano, and "Italian" seasoning, with steamed broccoli, carrots and peppers.

Yum, yum. I ate a vat of it, which was very satisfying. :)

Toys I want

2008-02-04T19:16:00.003-05:00

Have I mentioned that I want a KitchenAid mixer? With a bread hook? And a pasta attachment? And a grinder/mill attachment?

I SOOOO WANT ONE!!

Also, Kitchen Santa, please bring me a wok and a vegetable steamer, and a thin metal spatula. And a biiig pot with a canning rack. :)

good breakfast

2008-02-04T19:13:00.000-05:00

I am trying to be good about eating breakfast, so I got granola for morning cereal. THEN totally coincidentally I got a big tub of vanilla yogurt. Well, there was only so much time before I realized that these two needed to be combined. The result was the most DELICIOUS bowl of 25 grams of protein for breakfast that I've met yet! Kashi makes really good granola.

Whole Foods

2008-02-04T19:03:00.000-05:00

AKA my new favorite place in the UNIVERSE!!

Alex and I just went to a Whole Foods in Nashville with an old friend of mine/ours (Kelsey) and her boyfriend. We knew we were meeting up, and didn't know where to go. I said, "I want potato salad, sushi, and pizza." Now, I was pretty sure we were going to have to go to at least two locations to achieve this, but No! Kelsey informed me that Whole Foods would have all of these. And more!

So I totally ate my hungry little heart out. I won't even write down how much it cost, because it was really somewhat obscene (but totally worth it), but here was MY meal:

potato salad (a really light, fresh-flavored one)
a slice of pepperoni pizza
roasted vegetables
macaroni salad
a tray of sushi
big, thick slabs of ginger-orange beets
raspberry health-soda (you know the kind, I'm sure)
and for dessert, vegan chocolate mousse with craisins, chocolate chips and fresh strawberries thrown in.

Alex had his own goodies, like a sweet potato & honey soup.

YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM YUM, etc. :)

Yes, I really did just sit there and gobble it all down. To be fair, all I had earlier in the day was a bagel and a pretzel, so I was ready for some GOOD FOOD. And we have some leftovers. But I ate a ton of it and then was just happy for hours afterward. I am going to have to find a Whole Foods in New Hampshire!

roasted potatoes

2008-01-24T21:31:00.001-05:00

....with olive oil and a little bit of thyme. Mmmmmm. :)

What, cottage cheese now?

2008-01-18T12:05:00.001-05:00

I had cottage cheese for breakfast! This is another first food for me. I'm doing quite well at widening my food horizons! And I have to admit, it didn't taste like what I expected it to. I had it with cinnamon-sprinkled peaches. I might even make it a regular breakfast. :)

I ate a shrimp

2008-01-17T22:25:00.001-05:00

I thought about eating two. It was really gross for a minute but then I tried not thinking of it as meat, and just concentrated on the cocktail sauce. So I really did swallow it and everything, and I wasn't even sick! I have to say that MAYBE I could eat more in the future. I don't think I would pursue it unless they've got some great health benefit though.

a shrimp deferred....

2008-01-16T22:36:00.000-05:00

The shrimp will be waiting for tomorrow. But it wasn't my doing! I will post just as soon as I eat it. :)

I wish for....

2008-01-16T20:19:00.000-05:00

On the way home tonight I expressed a wish something along these lines:

I am really jealous of places that have meat markets. Where you can just walk up and say "I'm making chicken tonight. Give me some chicken for dinner." And then you get enough for just that night, and the next day you come back and say, "Hi, I'd like some pork tenderloin for two." I really wish I had a place where I could go and get fresh meat just like that.

Later on, Alex and I were at Hannaford and lo, there was a meat counter! They had a bunch of fresh cuts of meat laid out, some seasoned for you with fascinating things like mango chutney. And then a little way down the back wall of the store, there was a fish counter with fresh cuts of fish, clams, etc.

This is my newest delight in the cooking world. The whole point is that the meat is FRESH! :)

seafood, ahoy!

2008-01-16T19:43:00.001-05:00

Tonight I will eat at least one shrimp. All the way down the hatch. No spittings-out allowed. I have mixed feelings about this. :P

Discovery!

2008-01-15T18:21:00.000-05:00

Cool Whip makes the best mousse. You have to not mind the fact that nobody (at least not me) knows what Cool Whip is. But it makes a delicious, fluffy, delicious mousse that lacks some of the bitter chocolatey-ness that my earlier attempt had.

Ultimately I guess it depends on one's mood on the particular day. But I am now resolved that I need to figure out how to get that light flavor out of regular whipping cream and chocolate.

my mommie

2008-01-11T10:49:00.000-05:00

I just want to take a moment to appreciate an aspect of my mom's parenting style. She ALWAYS let us help out when she was cooking things. I was probably three years old and already stirring pots and adding ingredients to things.

And thus, this morning I realized that I had too many eggs. Hmm.... what would mom do? I made a quiche. Which was ridiculously easy because I've been helping out on them for at least ten years. :)

new project

2008-01-09T21:17:00.000-05:00

I am on a mission to find something chocolatey, delicious AND healthy for my mommie. More on this later. :)

cooking with espresso?

2008-01-07T17:30:00.001-05:00

This goes on the Starbucks blog due to the espresso and the cooking blog due to the creative inspiration:

The espresso machines at work just got fixed so they pull really REALLY good shots, so I was thinking of making mousse or something with espresso added. Peter, one of the store's regulars, was there while I was tasting the newly repaired shots, and he told me that you can actually use espresso in soups, to marinade meats, in virtually every dessert dish thought of by man, and so on. I will have to start experimenting!

kitchen scale

2008-01-04T20:54:00.000-05:00

Chris and I traded digital kitchen scales for Christmas. It was a very awesome present for her to have gotten for me! Today I weighed another awesome present (the giant bricks of chocolate that Alison got for me) and discovered that I have nearly a kilogram! Put another way, I have a pound and a half of chocolate --and that's with some already having been eaten.

*happy happy happy*

:D

I bought a vanilla bean

2008-01-02T09:40:00.000-05:00

What shall I do with it??

vanilla beans

2008-01-01T22:54:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I go on a quest to the natural foods store to see whether they carry inexpensive vanilla beans. Woo! :)

branching out already

2008-01-01T18:25:00.000-05:00

Last night I ate a crab puff or something like that. It was a crispy pastry with a crab/cream cheese mix inside and I ate the Whole Thing! I even liked it. I'm proud of myself. :)

a new drink?

2008-01-01T18:11:00.000-05:00

Okay, I am not very well-informed about the world of liquor and mixed drinks. Someone has probably come up with this before me and it probably has a dazzlingly clever name already.

With that said: I made up a new (to me) drink! I like margaritas but I don't put that much tequila in them. I am a lightweight, for sure. So I don't care about having a ton of liquor, I just like the flavor. SO I took a Mike's hard lime-ade and threw it over ice with just a splash of tequila. The whole inspiration was that I was too lazy to bother with doing the drink mix, salt, etc..

It turns out it was DELICIOUS. I'm calling it the Lazy Margarita. :)

chocolate melting

2007-12-31T14:19:00.000-05:00

I melt my chocolate in the microwave. It saves about a century of time and a pile of annoyance! The trick is to microwave it until it's ALMOST melted and then just stir it around until it melts the rest of the way.

guest chefs :)

2007-12-31T14:16:00.000-05:00

If anybody wants to share a recipe, insight, or whatever, email it to my email address. (Sorry I'm not posting it right out here in public, but that's how it is.) :) I would love input from other people too!

foods I want to try

2007-12-30T18:19:00.000-05:00

shellfish
duck
veal? (don't know if I'm brave enough for that one)
actual non-Cod fish
octopus

as you can see, I'm really trying to get acquainted with the ocean here. :)

clam chowder? me?

2007-12-30T18:01:00.000-05:00

Let's get something straight: Seafood really creeps me out. I just can't stand it. So imagine my surprise when my aforementioned Best Friend In The Whole World and I made clam chowder together, and I really liked it! Of course, I scooped out my bit before the actual clams were involved, but there was clam juice in the soup and it was YUMMY.

I have resolved that this year I will try very hard to overcome my dislike of seafood. After all, it seems quite silly to live in New England and not like seafood, doesn't it?

chocolate mousse

2007-12-30T17:51:00.000-05:00

I made chocolate mousse the other day and it was damn tasty. Six squares of Baker's Chocolate and 1 1/2 cups of whipping cream is all you need! The recipe is straight out of the Baker's Chocolate cookbook that my sister Alison got me for Christmas. Well, sort of. They said six squares of white Baker's Chocolate and I did three squares of bittersweet milk chocolate and three squares of sweet dark.

So, you melt the six squares in 1/4 cup of whipping cream. Then you whip 1 1/4 cups whipping cream and stir it into the chocolate mixture. And then you're DONE! I'm sure there are other, much harder recipes to make mousse, but I decided to start with the easy way first. It was darned tasty, too, so THERE. Who needs separated egg whites and confectioner's sugar?

The only thing I would change is that it said to refrigerate the mousse for at least two hours and it was actually WAY tastier before it ever got chilled.

Why a cooking blog, exactly?

2007-12-30T15:55:00.000-05:00

My best friend in the whole world has been on a natural/healthy/organic kick for a year or two and has gotten me pretty excited about it. She invited me to do an experiment with her this year where we will challenge ourselves to do more things at home in a natural way, for ourselves, rather than just buying pre-made stuff and going along with the Consumerist American lifestyle. For me this means (for one) that I will be doing a lot more cooking from scratch, and I thought I'd keep a record to see how I do!

Other than that, I just love messing around in the kitchen and am excellent at willfully disobeying recipes. I like to share what I discover, so I'll be posting my own recipes here too.

So, I guess I'll get to it. :)