November 2012

Oh I am so sorry, Blogger... I've been neglecting you for the holidays.  Can you forgive me?  Here's a photo of some pretty cranberries I turned into jellied cranberries for Thanksgiving as an apology: 

 This post is looooooooooooooooooong.  Perhaps, even, longer than my long dog (okay... not that long).  But still.  Very long.  You've been warned.  (I mean, in my defense it does span an entire month).

How was your Thanksgiving?  Mine was fun and hectic, filled with visiting family, more food than I knew what to do with and new appliances (so pretty much perfect, in other words!) This was a year of firsts for me, including:

- My first time making dinner completely on my own (my mom has always helped to some degree or another, but this year was completely me!)

- My first year cooking a holiday meal for the in-laws (scary and exciting)

- and of course, new appliances for the home!

Stainless steel makes everything classier!

DM's mom and dad flew up to spend the week with us over Thanksgiving.  We haven't seen them for a while so it was fun to spend so much time with them - DM's dad is a handyman so he re-piped under our sink (which was a mess and had a leaking garbage disposal) and installed our dishwasher (after driving it to the house in a giant truck!) We're all pretty much homebodies (plus DM worked Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) so it was pretty much movies, food and looking up things on the Internet at home, with random trips to Lowe's, Home Depot and a night out to Red Lobster.

Fun Fact #42: Yams are one of my favorite side dishes.  Maybe because they are bright orange, like traffic cones.

We ended up with a 14 lb butterball turkey, homemade stuffing (sage and hot, the latter at the request of my in laws and which turned out to be really really good), mashed potatoes, yams, gravy, cranberry sauce and rolls that tried to choke my MIL (I did not make the rolls so I blame Franz)

Is it wrong to be proud of a turkey?  Because if it is, I don't want to be right.

Thanksgiving was delicious, and aside from me accidentally setting the yams on fire everything was perfect.

Holiday cooking pro tip: don't walk away from  yams covered in marshmallows in the oven or you will come back to FLAMES LICKING THE TOP OF YOUR STOVE DEAR GOD

 

 

 

We also sold the Saturn last month (finally!) after finagling with people on Craigslist (seriously... is it just me or is CL just the spawning pit of the weirdest people ever?) It went to a good home where it will hopefully not break in 4 months.  The night we sold the car DM went and stood out in the garage and wept (okay I made that last part up), but I was psyched because I finally got to do this:

GARAGE SHELVING!

Finally!  Finally.  We went out on Black Friday and picked up the steel/particle board shelf for $50 (yes I know, it's insane - in years past I'd be one of the crazy people getting up at 3am to hit the mall but this year DM looked at me with real concern in his eyes and said "honey, if you want to go out I will go with you but I'm worried about you" so we ended up going out around 11am.  We even still scored a nice Costco cookbook!)  This shelf has transformed my life - turns out the box for our artificial tree fits snugly on the  bottom, then we can stack giftwrap, food and whatever else we feel like on top.  Inside, my inner Tetris nerd is squealing.  I love it I love it I love it.

You had to know the first thing I'd make in my new oven was cookies, right?  And you can't go wrong with a classic chocolate chip cookie:

DM will help if he gets to lick the spoon, raw egg be damned

We tried out the standard Nestle chocolate chip cookie recipe, threw the cookies in the oven and like small children, sat by the oven and watched as the convection oven turned the balls of dough into fluffy, mouth-watering cookies that we ate warm with milk.

Turns out, convection is really nice for baking (at least for cookies).  You can't argue with this:

It was as delicious as it looked!!

With my new oven I also got bold and tried my hand at making fries using some of the 10 lbs of potatoes I got at Fred Meyer for .99c (thanks Fred Meyer!):

I'm kind of really lazy, so the idea that I could make fries by throwing them in the oven versus having to sit and watch them roll around in oil was really appealing to me.  I used a garlic herb blend from a site whose link I can't seem to find at the moment (pardon me!), then just cleaned the potatoes, cut them into steak fries and let them marinate in the olive oil and spices and sugar.

If you're like me, you don't know how to plan ahead so you don't have the right size bag... but that's okay, because if you're like me you're also a master of improvisation!

After about 20 minutes, cut a hole in the bottom of the bag and let the excess liquid drain, then spread the potatoes on a foil lined cookie sheet sprayed with Pam.  Bake for 45 minutes or so, turning once halfway through.

You end up with these deliciously garlick-y fries that are really crunchy and crispy, considering they came out of the oven.  These were good.  We made them twice in two days - I made them with lunch the first time as a test batch, then when we wolfed those down I made a second set to use as the base for chili fries.

Spoiler alert: these make your house smell so good strangers that come to your door go "is that your house that smells that good?!" True story.

Homemade Tortillas

I have a confession: DM and I have been living off tacos for the past four/five nights.  Not because we had to (we have plenty of food... probably too much), but because we recently discovered the joy that are homemade tortillas.  Warm.  Soft.  Fluffy.  Perfection.

Even though this is becoming a fairly regular occurrence in our house, I'm still amazed at how much better tasting homemade anything is over store bought.

Homemade tortillas are... deceptively simple.  You know those recipes that always say "oh, you probably have all the ingredients right now in your cupboards!" Then you look and they want flour, sugar, salt and vanilla beans grown on the north slopes of the Himalayas between the months of July and August ONLY?  That is not one of those recipes (I hate you, tricky recipes).  You actually probably do have all the ingredients in your cupboards - flour, salt (if you want), baking powder and oil.  I'm going to make the bold guess that most of us have hot water.

You just mix all your dry ingredients together, then add in the oil and hot water and mix...

...Until it all forms a doughball.  Then, rest for 30 minutes.  You've worked hard.  Go take a break.  Watch some TV.  Eat a KitKat.

After the dough has rested, it's divided into 12 balls (I didn't weigh them, I'm just that lazy).  Someone on the TastyKitchen blog left a comment saying to pat them out on foil, as when they start to cook they'll lift right off.  Genius!  Bonus: it totally works.  I've tried it.

Here is my not-quite-round tortilla, happily cooking away in the pan.  I was having issues where I would burn the living daylights out of them and they'd get all stiff and Frisbee-like, but by the end I was doing warm, soft tortillas.  Mmmm.  My mouth is watering just thinking about them again.

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These are my second batch (yes, we ate TONS of tortillas over the past week...) I love how they get so puffy.  These are seriously addictive - I can already tell I'm going to have a problem knowing that these are readily accessible in my home (hopefully my laziness will win out over my desire to cook and devour a dozen tortillas).  DM and I were sitting on the couch inhaling the smell of the tortillas because they just smelled that good.  (Also, we have issues.)


So good.  TastyKitchen was right, I'll never buy store bought again.


Homemade Tortillas @ Tasty Kitchen

Mushroom and Spinach Ravioli

Last night I tried my hand at making ravioli for the first time... it is hard.  Rolling the dough definitely becomes the worst part after the first thirty minutes, it's just so... elastic.  And refuses to roll out.  Stretch, dang you!  My arms are still sore from all the rolling.

Recipe at Allrecipes.com: Mushroom and Spinach Ravioli

Here's our ingredients, lined up for a mugshot.

This is my first time making homemade noodles, so I'll admit I was a little apprehensive!  It's pretty straightforward, though.  Measure your flour and salt, mix your egg (and any other wet ingredients), then combine and turn out onto a floured pastry cloth.  Then knead.  And knead.  And knead.  And knead.  

And knead some more.

Until you get something along the lines of this, a smooth ball of dough.  The instructions say to wrap it up and let it rest, so I moved on to making the filling, because I'm an impatient kind of person like that.

Mushrooms, onions and garlic all sauteing together nicely.  This made the house smell delicious, by the way.

After the mushroom mixture cooked, I added in the spinach, cream cheese and parmesan.  I didn't have any shredded mozzarella so we just did cream cheese, mushroom, spinach and parmesan cheese ravioli...shhh don't tell my husband.  Oh wait, he reads this.  Oh well.  Sorry honey!

When I took this picture I had just rolled out my dough ball and was thinking "huh, this is actually pretty fun".  Silly me, I didn't realize that I would have to roll this dough out several times and each time it would become more and more resistant to my rolling attempts, much like a certain stubborn dog.  I cut out circles using a drinking glass, then rolled those out again.  There's a lot of rolling involved in this recipe.

After rolling out the circles, I plopped a tablespoon of filling in the center.  Doesn't that look pretty?

I love these photos, because they scream quintessential ravioli pictures to me.  The puffy pillows, the decorative edges...you can't see the person behind the camera going crazy trying to roll out the dough (which is becoming increasingly aggressive each time I use it).

Ravioli pile!  After I got tired and stopped I boiled  what I had for a few minutes and to my immense surprise, none of them split open.  Victory!

I served ours with marinara sauce, not the chive butter sauce - I have to stick with the classics. (Yes, there is spaghetti in there as well.  We had some leftover spaghetti I had to find a use for!) I was surprised at how full I felt after eating 3-4 of these - they're actually really filling.  Overall it was really really good.    Bonus points: vegetarian!  The recipe was right, I totally didn't miss the meat.  Would I make it again?  Probably not, unless I have a ton of energy that day.  Or get a pasta roller.

Portobello Burgers!

So last night I tried making Portobello Mushroom burgers.  This is totally a first for us (our only other foray into vegetarian meals has been eggplant parmesan); multiple sources confirmed the mushroom has the consistency of hamburger and "even if you eat meat you won't miss it in this burger".  We'll see σ___σ (this is my skeptical face)

Portobello Mushroom Burgers from Allrecipes.com

 Here are the mushroom caps and all our marinade ingredients!  I washed the mushrooms and removed the gills because those creep me out.  Mushrooms with gills.  Like fish.  Ew. 

Since I was only making 2 burgers instead of 4, I cut the marinade down by half as well.  I threw soy sauce and worcestershire in there along with onion powder just because I could.  So there.

Here is a mushroom, happily sitting in its marinade.  I let them sit for about 20 minutes while I ran around doing other things (laundry, cleaning).  I love recipes that I can forget about - it's why I'm such great friends with my slow cooker.

Since I don't have a grill (shame) I ended up cooking these guys on the stove.  I'm happy to report that they shrink as they cook so what starts out as a giant mushroom-zilla ends up being a rather manageable cap in the end.  Sidenote: this recipe makes your house smell delicious.  Seriously.  My mouth was watering before the food was even done.

I also decided hey, why not grilled onions? and tossed those in with the provolone-covered patties.  Mmmm.  So good.  They smelled like the ridiculously huge burgers you can get at the fair, that are like the size of your head.  I love those burgers.

Viola - the finished product!  I toasted the onion buns, whipped up an aioli sauce, sliced some pickles (seriously I have a thing for pickles... husband always jokes he'll never be able to tell if I'm pregnant because I already eat pickles with everything) and smothered it all in onions.  Is there any way this burger could not be delicious? (The answer is no.)  We ate these babies with a garden salad and baked potato, and I will totally be the first to admit I was surprisingly full coming away from a meal with no meat.


So this was pretty darned good, though as someone who was raised on beef burgers I have to say there is definitely a difference.  But at only 200~ calories you're going to have a hard time going wrong with this.  I think next time (read: tonight.  We are a household that looooves leftovers) I'll cook them longer; I tried 40 minutes on the stove but the center was still very mushroomy (sides were really soft and easy to eat, though).

Chickens and bathrooms

Today I tried something that has scared me for years (both because it's kinda gross and looks hard)... cutting up a whole chicken!  On a random sidenote, I kinda like the smell of raw chicken.  It makes me want to sink my teeth into a steak (yeah I don't understand me, either).

This is my second chicken (out of three).  Normally, I would throw this little guy into our crockpot with some seasonings and in the evening have a fall-off-the-bone roasted chicken.  This time, I'm performing surgery.

I've already found I like starting with the legs, the bigger bones are easier to find versus the wings.  The video I watched advised breaking the legs and cutting the skin, then cutting between the two bones (kind of like a ball and cup) to separate the legs.  One of the worst parts about doing this is the sound of bones breaking and shifting around inside the flesh (seriously).  In this photo I've broken both legs and cut through the skin so all I have to do is find where the ball joints meet and cut through that (I love these knives)

 No legs!  The process is essentially repeated for the wings (find the ball joint, which I totally misjudged the first time and ended up with a super short wing).  I'm planning to use the thighs and drumsticks for fried chicken and the chicken breasts for sweet and sour chicken, but have no plans for the wings... maybe we could make some impromptu buffalo wings?

 Now we're left with just the chicken carcass.

I flipped the bird over (breast side down) and broke through a ribcage with the scissors, then split the breasts apart and deboned them.  Nice and easy (mostly).  This photo looks like something out of Resident Evil.

 Now this looks more like chicken I'm used to seeing!  I'm thrilled - I've never been brave enough to try deboning a chicken (always afraid I'd mess it up or chop off my hand somehow), but it's actually not too terrible and by the third one I was slicing pretty quick.

I have realized that while I always thought I'd have an edge if a zombie apocalypse ever occurred (because I spent so much of my youth playing zombie videogames); this dismembered chicken has made me realize that all I would do if confronted with a zombie would be to run for the hills screaming like a small child.


Sooo... since I don't have access to the internet on Monday but I don't want to miss a day writing, I'm going to just start double posting on Tuesday (writing on normal like Monday then uploading it the next day).

Jump for the post from Monday, 7/23/12