36 posts tagged “cooking”

For lunch last week, I gathered some pasta salad ideas, and then changed them completely.
I bought:

• 1 pound of pasta
• 2 cans of black beans
• 1 can of fire-roasted diced peppers & chiles
• 1 red pepper
• 1 lime
• 1 bunch of cilantro
• 1 ear corn

From my pantry: some shredded cheese (okay, that was in the freezer), some plain yogurt, salt & pepper. Ignore the bottle of vinegar in the picture; I didn't use it in the end.

I dirtied extra dishes for this picture, but I didn't care. If I were not Documenting for Posterity, I would just dump all the bits and pieces into one large bowl.

Wow, am I a good cook.

Cream scones, which were so amazing out of the oven I wanted to marry myself:

Recipe:
Cream Scones from Cook's Illustrated: The Quick Recipe

I doubled the recipe. Makes 8 good-sized scones for each batch, and of course they could be made smaller. Original recipe:

2 c unbleached all purpose flour
1 T baking powder
3 T sugar
1/2 tsp salt
5 T unsalted butter, chilled, cut into cubes
1/2 cup currants
1 cup heavy cream

My mods:

• omitted the currants.
• when I made the double batch, I used 5 T sugar total, so maybe 2 1/2 T for a single batch
• added zest & juice of one lemon
• added some recently-dried rosemary. maybe 1/8 or 1/4 tsp total - made for a very (maybe TOO) subtle effect
• for next time, I will not use heavy cream. maybe whole milk?

To make: sift together the dry ingredients (incl the rosemary & zest)
Cut in the butter - it will still be very dry
Pour on the cream and stir til just mixed
Put onto a floured surface, gather into a cohesive lump, knead for just a few seconds to get it all together, flatten out a bit, and cut into ~8 scones (or even more! they're quite big!)
Bake in a 425 oven for 12-15 minutes

Then I made a strawberry-basil topping to smear on the scones. I knew I wanted some sort of basil topping to go with strawberries, and some Google searching led me to this recipe:
http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2006/06/strawberry_basil_pesto.php

Here are the original instructions:

Pesto Fraise Basilic

35 grams (1/3 cup) freshly grated Parmesan
35 grams (1/3 cup) whole blanched almonds, toasted
A small handful (about 1/3 cup) fresh basil leaves
5 small strawberries (or 3 large), hulled [be sure to use fragrant and full-flavored strawberries: if they're a bit bland, I'm quite sure they'll get lost in the battle]
2 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil
Salt, freshly ground pepper

Makes about 1/2 cup (the recipe can be doubled).

Blend the Parmesan, almonds, and basil (I have a mini chopper, so I doubled the recipe, but did one batch at a time.)

 

Add strawberries and blend some more. Then add olive oil, salt & pepper to taste. I never got it perfectly smooth, but I liked it kinda chunky-looking. 

My mods:

• I made a double batch. After tasting, I then doubled the strawberries again - I wanted a big strawberry taste
  
• I added a splash of balsamic vinegar (2 tsp total, maybe - definitely to taste)
• I then stirred this into some mascarpone cheese - maybe half of a little 8-oz package

Finally, I made a strawberry topping: I sliced enough strawberries to fill a pint jar. Added 2 T sugar and 1 T balsamic vinegar, and let it stew in its juices.

Here's the yumminess ready to go:

And here's my breakfast this morning:

 Insert self-satisfied belly rub here! 

Last weekend I made a chiffon cake that came out pretty damn awesome. I also made Nutella ravioli cookies: take some sugar cookie dough, cut out a disk, put in a bit of Nutella, fold over and bake. Drizzle with chocolate. Eat. Swoon. I took pics but they are still on my camera, so perhaps they'll get up this weekend.

Today for lunch group I took a recipe for couscous with preserved lemons and expanded it to include wheat berries, green lentils, and black lentils. It was YUM.

Last night I cast on some two-at-a-time, toe-up socks. I'm partially improvising and partially using a pattern. I am using yarn that will be stripy (blue & white) so I don't know if I'm going to bother with a stitch pattern. I can only imagine that ripping out two socks at once would be a nightmare, so I'm going to do what I can to avoid that fate! I have one stitch pattern in mind that I can test out pretty well on a small bit of sock, I think. we shall see.

Is it just me, or does it seem like personal blog culture is fading? I read lots of blogs that are focused on personal finance, and cooking, but I don't read personal blogs very much. And thanks to stupid vox's stupid policy to not allow anonymous comments, the few readers I do have don't comment. Which makes this seem a lot like talking to myself! Only less obviously nutty.

Apparently, this is a real sentence: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. Even better, I have -for the moment!- wrapped my head around the explanation

This comic is doing a series this week on fiber - the yarn-type of fiber, that is!

I am seeing Coraline tonight and am very excited!

This week for lunch group, I'm revisiting a recipe of my own invention. It consists of mixed grains (last time was quinoa, wheat berries, and barley; this time it's barley, brown rice, and Israeli cous cous), beets (last time roasted, this time boiled), greens (arugula), and cheese (parmesan). You combine the grains & beets and heat them, then stir in arugula, and sprinkle on the cheese. It's beautiful, and needs a name. Here's a picture from the last time I ate it - that time the beets were stored with the grains, resulting in more pinkness than we'll see tomorrow.

As a side note, peeling raw beets? WAY more hand-staining than peeling already-cooked-in-water beets. I'm pretty much back to normal now, thanks.

I'm still in my lunch group, and am deciding what to bring for tomorrow. I thought I'd write up my process, for my enthralled readers' (or is that reader's?) consumption.

I started by thinking about what else we've eaten this week. Monday we had minestrone, Tuesday we had roasted veggie turnovers, today we have baked ziti (oh my yes, we eat well).

This morning I inventoried my cabinets & fridge. Here's what I have that I'd like to use:
can of pumpkin
one frozen chipotle pepper in adobo sauce (the very last one, from a can purchased ... a while ago)
half a block of cheddar cheese (so maybe 4 ounces)
some frozen corn
two frozen tortillas

I made soup the last two weeks: Roasted Beet Soup, followed by Sweet Potato, Corn, Jalapeno bisque. So, this week I think I should get away from soup.

Then I thought about the weather: yeah, we live in California, but it's a shocking mid-50s lately (12.7 Celsius, if I've got any Canadians in the house). So, while the weather doesn't require soup, something warm would not be misplaced.

So, I'm thinking of some sort of casserole/Mexican lasagna thing. In my mind, black beans and pumpkin go quite well together. I searched online and came up with some possible contenders:
Black Bean Lasagna - has guacamole baked right in! nice touch! doesn't include pumpkin though
Pumpkin Lasagna - well.. has goat cheese (yum!) but uses noodles; doesn't have any beans in it
Pumpkin and Black Bean Casserole - now we're getting closer, though it doesn't use any tortillas

So, I think I have enough to get me going. I'll cook the beans with onion, green or red bell pepper, and the chipotle pepper. I can layer the tortillas, beans, pumpkin, corn, and cheese a few times. Perhaps I'll pick up some salsa to mix in; alternatively I can add some canned tomatoes to the black beans. I'll bake the whole shebang for, I dunno, a half hour or so (we'll reheat tomorrow at lunch time). If I can find a ripe avocado, I might bring that to slice on the side. And I may bring oranges to have afterward.

Too bad I can't think of a way to incorporate the mass of Meyer lemons I still have at home! (actually, I'm down to maybe 8)

Whee!! There's a new baby in my life. Welcome baby Kaelyn, and thanks for cooking fully, rather than coming early like certain older siblings. I can't wait to see her in the dress I made for her, and gave to her parents last month:

Oh, heck, I just can't wait to meet her! She'll seem so tiny compared to the other (older) babies around.

Aside from new-baby, not much to report. I'm feeling tired, and am now blaming it on the dirty air we have (fires in the region) rather than on, I don't know, going to bed too late. For the last few weeks.

I started watching Battlestar Galactica with Kristin - we're on season 3 now, but it's been ages and ages since we finished 2.5, so I'm finding that I don't remember too much about it. I should've re-borrowed all the seasons from my sister.

Money spending is going well: I'm about to close in on the second month in a row of spending sharply less than I had been. Which is great, but it also means I'm putting off buying my two December plane tickets (Portland & RI) until July, which means I'm pre-hosing that month. Ah well.

I made my best lunch ever for lunch group yesterday, both recipes courtesy Mark Bittman: SPICY chilled mango soup
and radish salad (which I used as a topping on salad greens, along with some garlic-rosemary white beans). We've been doing lunch group for over a year, and I've kept a list of everything I've brought in. Cool stuff on there!

Finally, I'm over 500 miles for the year so far. Which is only half-way to my biking goal of 1000 miles by August 24. eek.

I'm still participating in my work lunch group - I feed myself and four friends a vegetarian lunch on Wednesday, and they bring in lunch the other days. It is BRILLIANT.

It's fun to peruse cookbooks and see what I feel like making. Tomorrow's lunch is Sopa Seca ("dry soup" in Spanish), and I got the recipe from:

(which is a great cook book, by the way).

Sopa Seca sounds fancy, but my friend took one look and said "That looks like spaghetti casserole!" so it's not pretentious at all. Basically you use the following ingredients:

and do the following:
Break the vermicelli in half and saute in some oil for about four minutes, then set in casserole dish.

Saute the onions, then add the garlic and cumin for about 30 seconds, then add the tomatoes, two diced chipotle peppers, the beans, and the broth. Bring to a boil.

 
Pour the HOT HOT HOT liquid over the noodles and bake at 350 for about 15 minutes. Then sprinkle with cheese, let melt for a couple minutes in the oven, and enjoy. 

First, the Major Cookery Accomplishment for the Christmas Eve Feast:

Mmm Chocolate Roulade, we barely knew ye.

And misc family shots:

This weekend has been super productive: making soup, getting my knives sharpened, and altering my Christmas flights. The hits keep rolling in: today I got a new belt for my vacuum AND successfully reassembled it (whew) - and it works like a charm. I also roasted butternut squash for Girly Mae's mac & cheese I'm making for my lunch group this week. AND (drum roll, please) I baked bread. It smells amazing and I'm dying to try it.

Oh, and I got to make not one but two two-mile-roundtrip walks to the hardware store, first for the vacuum belt, then for a bread pan. Coulda sworn I owned one, but apparently not, or not anymore! Between me and the hardware store lies a massive hill, and I managed to make it up the steepest eighth-mile segment without stopping, both times. I'm going to feel that tomorrow!

Oh, Bruce Springsteen is so wonderful. I'm seeing him on Thursday  (!!!) and so I dug out a mixed tape that a friend made for me a LONG time ago - probably 1994. I was living in Boston (okay, Somerville), and working one and a half jobs. The part-time gig was at a bookstore, and perhaps predictably, it was a lot of fun. This particular coworker, Kevin Q., was a fanatic for Stephen King, and for Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen. He made me mixed tapes of each musician, and wrote a dissertation to accompany the Billy Joel tapes. So, I've brushed off an old-skool medium, and am glad I still have a stereo that can use it. The tape's held up fine and I'm rocking out.

I also made polenta for the first time tonight. jeez, what a mess. The recipe called for frozen chopped spinach, and dictated that it be thawed, then squeezed out in a clean towel. Perhaps predictably, there were flecks of green *everywhere*.

Then, the actual polenta - did you know that it kinda burbles and ploops? In a messy and near-violent way? Yeah. That probably won't leave a scar.

But the food looks great and my lunch group should approve, so what's a little polenta-based scarring?