Kitschn Calamities

calling all freezer recipes

2012-01-31T01:11:00.000-06:00

I no longer have feet.

I'm 35 weeks pregnant today if you're counting up or have 35 days left if you're counting down. I prefer counting up because 35 days is way too close to a month for my comfort. There's still so much to do, like finishing up the dust ruffle and other nursery decor, finishing up the birth method class, finishing a crucial part of my thesis work. It's all about finishing things up before I lose the time and motivation to do anything anymore. I've come to the realization that we're going to have to eat at some point and going to McDonalds every day isn't my favorite option I've ever heard. In order to keep up with a baby, my thesis work, and being a human being, I've decided that we need to make a big freezer stash so we can just eat instead of cook.

So far, my thoughts have revolved around chili, lasagna, and quiche. I turned to Pinterest to see if there were any good freezer posts and there were a few, but I'd love more suggestions. So please, share away and tell me about all of your favorite freezer-to-table recipes I can make before I become incapacitated with baby!

My annual letter to Colby

2012-01-27T14:52:00.000-06:00

Dear Colby,

I want these for my birthday:

I'm size 37. And the bonus part? If you order them before next Tuesday, they're 50% off. Also, I kind of want this too:

In green and definitely with the Boston Terrier design.

And while we're at it, I want this rug from Pottery Barn Kids for the nursery.

I mean, it's not even for ME and it's MY birthday. I'm being completely selfless here, so you basically have to get this for me.

Love,

Julie

Nursery Preview

2012-01-24T15:30:00.000-06:00

I think I've begun the nesting process. My assumption was that I was going to begin cooking up a storm a week before I gave birth, but I think my nesting urges have been funneled into decorating. We've inherited a rocking chair, toy chest, and dresser, but not all of these are in the condition that I want for the room, so we've been working on redecorating. I'm not exactly sure why this is happening. If you've ever seen my house, it's rather... plain.

One of the biggest things I wanted to happen was to get the chair reupholstered. This was the same chair that my parents rocked me in, so it's quite worn and dated:

hellloooo 1980s

Chair fabric

The toy chest (with loads of random crap on it) used to be bright green, but we painted it a flat chocolate brown. I'm also have a cushion made for the top in pastel pink with light green polka dots.

Pictures of these pieces to come once they've been completed!

After playing around with the upholstery, I decided that I wanted a curtain valance (since we already have blinds) and a dust ruffle for the crib. I like the idea of hand-made, but purchasing these things on Etsy requires one to first win the lottery, so I enlisted my friend Randi to help me make these.

Randi making the valance

Make the tall guy deal with the curtains

Tada!

We're still working on the dust ruffle, but I'll have pictures of the entire room once it's complete.

Steve's Backroom

2012-01-23T11:30:00.000-06:00

I've mentioned Steve's Backroom here before, but I've never gotten around to posting about it. I blame my laziness. :) Over break, Colby and I went with my dad and his wife. It's hard to do a review of a place that you love so much, so suffice it to say that it's one of the places that I HAVE to go to whenever I'm in the metro-Detroit area. My favorites there are definitely the lamb grapeleaves, the hummus, and their baked apricots.

best. hummus. ever.

za'atar spice with olive oil

pita

lamb+rice-stuffed cabbage leaves in tomato sauce

chicken schwarma plate

rice pudding

apricot pudding

Make Up Menu

2012-01-22T20:00:00.001-06:00

My menu for last week fell by the wayside as I managed to overestimate just how much chicken meat is needed to make a quesadilla as well as catch a stomach virus. Wednesday and Thurday were pretty miserable and the only things I ate were applesauce and toast. Needless to say, stir-fry and creamed spinach were off the menu at that point, but now I have ingredients from which to plan this week's menu. Colby's going out of town from Tuesday til Thursday for the SPIE convention in San Francisco. I'd be totally jealous because SF seems like a pretty rad town, but he's going to be standing around hawking his company for three days, so that's a lot less fun than exploring a city by cable car. In light of this, here's this week's menu:

quiche: dinner for lazy people

Sunday
beef, green bean, mushroom stir-fry

Monday
Chicken and forty cloves - by Colby's request and we have chicken thighs and a new resolve to make it this time. Especially since we have some herbs that need to be used asap and this will help set up lunches for the rest of the week

Tuesday
Hopfields with the Austin Food Blogger Alliance - AFBA is having another social function and I'll be able to catch the first bit of it and eat dinner before I'm off to our birthing class.

Wednesday
spinach, bacon, cheddar crustless quiche - the easy, lazy, gestational diabetes-friendly way

Thursday
spinach salad with whatever I find in my fridge

Friday
butternut squash soup and leftovers

American Astronomical Society Meeting Food Adventures

2012-01-16T15:09:00.003-06:00

Though I pledged to post weekly, I'd like to post more frequently than that. My silence in the previous week or so was due to a convergence of many factors, mostly owing to the American Astronomical Society conference which occurred in Austin. Initially, I wasn't even going to attend even though this meeting was held here in Austin, but one of my committee members (and the person who's paying me for most of the spring) encouraged me to attend. I'm glad I did and I heard about a lot of kick ass projects going on in the astronomy community, but my summary of the astronomy content of the meeting will (probably) come later. If you want to see some discussion of what went down, check out the #aas219 hashtag on twitter.

The advantage of going to a meeting in your hometown is that there are no annoying hotels to check into and you can mostly go on with your normal after-hours life. The biggest disadvantage is that you don't get your meals covered. Eating downtown every day can get pretty expensive, even if it just ends up being for lunch. I managed to purchase only one meal the entire conference, due to an unfortunate hair in my fries and skipping a day when I felt sick.

On Monday, a group of us went to Moonshine Patio Bar and Grill, which is right next to the Austin Convention Center. We were seated pretty quickly, though I attribute that to the fact that most of the astronomers were still in a plenary session about the structure of the galaxy. At each table, they put out little buckets of seasoned popcorn. It was pretty good, though I only had a few pieces so I could better control my blood sugar. Oh, gestational diabetes. I ordered the Backyard Chicken Sandwich, which consisted of chicken, pepper jack cheese, roasted poblano peppers, and avocado. The sandwich was pretty messy, so I ended up eating most of it with a knife and fork and omitting the bun. This was served with steak fries, which were hugenormous. Unfortunately one had a hair in it, but after pointing this out, the waitstaff was awesome and brought me out a new plate of fries and comped my meal. As they brought out the entrees, they gave us a basket of corn muffins. These were pretty okay, though nothing incredible. I'd definitely check this place out again if I'm downtown, though it is on the pricey side.

Backyard Chicken Sandwich

The next day we were looking for a lunch spot that didn't include burgers or Mexican. It turns out that it's super hard for me to eat Mexican food because the combination of chips+salsa, tortillas+some small amount of meat/cheese+beans/rice is too carb heavy. I've been trying to keep a ratio of 3:1 carbs:protein at most and really try to keep it within 2:1 if I can. As we were walking out of the convention center, someone was hawking the banana pudding at Blue Ribbon Barbecue just two blocks away. I suppose this should have been our first warning sign. The banana pudding was probably the best thing there (and I hate banana pudding). I ordered the chicken breast plate with cole slaw and potato salad. The cole slaw and potato salad were both strangely sweet and the potatoes were waterlogged. The (smoked) chicken was dry, which I suppose is my fault for ordering chicken, but they did have barbecue sauce at the tables so I tried my luck with that. No dice. The sauce was crazy sweet, oily, and had separated by the time I tried it. I tried someone's brisket and it was pretty dry as well, though it wasn't as bad as the chicken. Lesson learned: never go to a barbecue place that's trying to sell you on the strength of their desserts. In terms of downtown barbecue, the best I've had has been Iron Works. I've heard good things about Lamberts too, but I haven't been there.

Chicken breast platter with cole slaw and potato salad

In all, it was a good meeting even if the food was less than stellar. (HAHA get it? Stellar. I'm a stellar spectroscopist so I get to make these jokes. It's one of the few bones they throw us.)

Menu planning in 2012

2012-01-15T16:41:00.002-06:00

I haven't posted a menu in awhile because we've been really bad about not eating out between the combination of the holidays and having people over. I had the horrible realization that we only have a little over seven weeks before my due date, which means that we only have seven weeks left to save money, get the house ready, and generally act like adults with no responsibilities other than to ourselves. I'm wondering if a lot of cooking is going to fall to the wayside because of this, but I'm hoping not. In any case, cooking at home lets us save money and, at the same time, do something that we might not have enough time to do in the crazy-near future.

This picture doesn't have anything to do with this post except that I'll be allowed to eat that in 7 weeks, if I so choose, damnit.

Sunday:
bacon, salsa, cheddar, black bean quiche - sort of like a breakfast taco in quiche form

Monday:
chicken quesadillas, black beans, cheater's Mexican rice - I add salsa and chicken stock in the rice cooker, instead of just water)

Tuesday:
This is the night of our Bradley Method birthing class, so we usually grab something to go

Wednesday:
beef stir-fry with green beans and mushrooms - recipe to come if I like it

Thursday:
beef and cheddar sausage, spinach salad with bacon, eggs, and anything else I can come up with

Friday:
chicken with roasted butternut squash and creamed spinach

Happy (belated) birthday, Kimchi!

2012-01-12T17:47:00.001-06:00

January 7 was Kimchi's second/fourteenth birthday, so we decided to get her some gifts and make birthday bison tacos. Okay, so that last part is a lie. Tacos = lazy dinner. Since the taco dinner happened on Kimchi's birthday, they also became birthday tacos. We set her up with her own little bowl and then she went to town on it.

taco bowl

om nom

licking the bowl clean!

satisfied birthday girl

Later on, we gave her a few presents. I think she likes unwrapping the gifts almost as much as she likes playing with the toys.

Present number one: bully stick

She really does enjoy unwrapping gifts

She couldn't wait to play with her new toy

In all, it was a very happy birthday for my favorite little girl. :)

Resolutions

2012-01-06T18:32:00.000-06:00

So it's almost a week late, but I've been thinking about resolutions. Everyone makes them and they mostly include being a better person in some way, shape, or form. I usually resolve to lose weight, but this year it's a bit more difficult for me to get a gym membership and start pounding the pavement right. this. moment. Instead, I want to set realistic goals with built in metrics, instead of some nebulous promise of "improvement".

Take better pictures
I've come a long way from not posting photos to posting grainy blackberry photos to my camera phone and now the DSLR, but I think it's time to actually figure out how to take pictures that don't suck. I'd love to take a class, especially since baby portraits are CRAZY expensive, but we'll have to see about time and money constraints on that.

This? This is a crappy picture.

Comment on at least three posts for every time I sit down and go through blogs I read
I read a lot of blogs and I usually have a lot to say, but I hardly ever take the time to comment. I'm not sure if it's because I'm shy or what, but it seems like it'd also help me bring in readers and show my appreciation for the time and effort the bloggers I read put into their posts.

Respond to comments
I'm notoriously bad at actually responding to blog comments and I want to make sure that I start responding to the few that I do get.

Post at least weekly
Last year, I posted more than I've ever posted, but most of these came in November and December. I'd like to make sure that I'm posting at least weekly. If I get into the habit, it'll make it easier not to just drop my blog once the baby comes. Speaking of which...

Make sure that I'm putting real food into my body
Now, more than ever, it's important that I eat real food. We generally do eat unprocessed foods, but sometimes it's hard and I'm tired and we give up and eat something that has more preservatives in it than is necessary. I know how to cook... and well, if I do say so myself, so this shouldn't be such a problem for me.

real and tasty. also, real tasty.

Maintain healthy blood sugar levels
At my most recent prenatal appointment, my midwife indicated that she thinks that I'm really starting to develop gestational diabetes. If it progresses to the point where I can't control my blood sugar through diet and exercise, I'll end up on synthetic insulin to regulate it. Most people know that gestational diabetes creates big babies, but what it also does is degrade the blood vessels in the placenta, meaning that the fetus doesn't get adequate support. It's because of this that my super natural birth-friendly OB induces labor at 39 weeks for women with uncontrolled GD. After monitoring my blood sugar off and on for the past few weeks, I've sort of found a pattern that works for me. I need to stick with it and not just get frustrated and quit so that I can make sure that i have a safe delivery and a healthy baby.

Drink more water
I shared this on twitter, but here's a graphic about what happens to a person's body when she's pregnant. (TMI warning...) So it makes sense that I have to pee every 5 minutes... which is why I don't drink nearly as much water as I probably should.

There are a zillion more things that I should resolve to do better, but this is sort of what's been at the forefront of my mind for the past week. Obviously it would be good to maintain healthy blood sugar levels my entire life, but some of these goals are shorter term than others. I hope that by following these resolutions, I'm able to have both a healthy baby and become a better blogger. What are your (late, like mine!) resolutions for the upcoming year?

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: The Austin Food Blogger Alliance and the Austin to Boston food swap

2011-12-31T12:00:00.000-06:00

In my final entry for the year and for the Days with a Grateful Heart, I'd like to say that I'm grateful for the Austin Food Blogger Alliance. Through the AFBA, I've met many wonderful people and am lucky enough to have taken part in a lot of really fun food events. In fact, without the AFBA, I'd never have participated in the grateful heart endeavor with Jote and friends. I'm excited for some of the events that have been hinted at in the upcoming year and look forward to participating. One of my favorite events this year was the Austin to Boston food blogger swap. First, my many thanks to all the hard working leaders of the AFBA and the Boston Food Bloggers for setting up the Austin to Boston swap. This was such a fun idea and I'm so happy that I chose to do this even with the crazy December I've had.

My Austin to Boston swapmate was Halley from Blunder Construction. Halley writes an awesome blog, which features recipes, great pictures, and stories about her cat Jelly, amongst other things. You should definitely check her blog out. She also happens to be named after a comet and works as an engineer, it's as though the swap matchers could read our minds (or profiles). Yay for STEM people who also write food blogs!

Halley sent her package early, which was good, since we were leaving for Michigan not too long after the swap deadline.

Halley sent along zaatar spice+crackers from Sofra Bakery in Cambridge, REAL maple syrup, cranberry vinaigrette, plum jam, a vegan peanut butter cookie (not pictured), a cute little teddy bear, some eco-friendly pinch bowls, and ginkgo leaves that she mod-podged onto some mini canvases.

So far, we've tried the cookie (which was delicious, hence did not make it into the picture) and the zaatar spice. When I saw the zaatar spice, I immediately made hummus so that we could sprinkle some on, and ate it with a bit of olive oil and pita. Sooo good and definitely a fun reminder of all the great Middle Eastern restaurants at home. The maple syrup has been earmarked for pancakes that will be made on New Year's day and the cranberry vinaigrette is going on a salad for tomorrow evening. With all of the great items in the package, I knew that I'd have to bring my A game to my bundle.

I managed to get out my Austin to Boston package on time, but I totally pregnancy-brained on the taking pictures of what I sent. Fortunately, most of this is available on the internets, so here's a run down of what/why I sent.

I tried to send things that were both from Texas as well as a couple items from Michigan.

Round Rock wildflower honey - nothing gets more local than honey and I really enjoy their wildflower honey
Confituras pear caramel sauce - Confituras is just one of those quintessential AMAZING Austin small businesses that put out ridiculously high quality products. I ventured over to the farmers market to see what they had and this looked pretty darn good.
Fredericksburg Farms Dusseldorf mustard - I use this as an everyday condiment and I've sent it out in care packages as well.
Native Texan BBQ sauce - BBQ sauce is something that I find a must to make barbecue enjoyable and Native Texan is one of my favorite brands.
Clint's Texas Salsa - Colby loves this stuff and salsa seemed like a must on the list of all things Texas.
Vernors pop - I sent this with a recipe for homemade vanilla ice cream to make the Detroit-invented, but appropriately named, Boston cooler
Al Dente spinach fettuccine - The only time I've ever seen this pasta was in specialty grocers in Michigan, so imagine my surprise when I saw it at Central Market. They're located up the road from Zingerman's in Ann Arbor.

You should check out the posts that Halley also wrote about what she sent me and took pictures (which are way better than anything I could ever take!!) of what I sent her.

New Year's Eve 2011 Menu

2011-12-31T01:44:00.001-06:00

We're going to have a bunch of people over tonight, so I wanted to post this menu plan. It's a bit ambitious, so we'll see if it gets accomplished, though I almost think that this is the last time that I'll be cooking up a storm like this for a single event for quite some time.

Starters:
spinach+artichoke dip
hummus
sun dried tomato spread
serrano ham+cheese plate from Antonelli's
crab-stuffed mushrooms

Dinner:
pot roast
sweet potatoes
truffled grits
prosciutto-wrapped asparagus

Dessert:
strawberries+cream
chocolate chip cookies
cream puffs
apple cranberry pie
pumpkin pie

2011 in Review

2011-12-31T01:37:00.002-06:00

This probably should have posted earlier, as I'll have another couple posts coming up later today, but I wanted to reflect on 2011 for a moment.

This year seemed like it flew by. Here's a month-by-month recap, for funsies:

Take 9

January

I spent the beginning of the year with the usual suspects in Austin and we rang in the new year like we do every year: too much food and just enough alcohol. This was followed by a trip to Seattle for the American Astronomical Society convention, where I picked up a pretty nasty case of the flu. Randi and her boyfriend Steve shot a short film at my house. At the very end of the month, I started Community Supported Home Cooking with Athena, Randi, and Chalence.

sweet corn dessert at Uchiko

February

I was still sick in February, but I managed to get healthy enough to create a list of demands for my birthday. Colby complied ;) and we had a lovely dinner at Uchiko.

rabbit and duck liver pate at Luke New Orleans

March

I did a Nerd Nite talk about astronomy with a couple of my friends from the department. Mid-month, I went on a spring break trip to New Orleans with Kyle. We had ridiculously good food and way too much alcohol.

ridiculously tasty apple tart from Austin Bakes for Japan

April

I participated in the Austin Bakes for Japan bake sale with a lot of my fellow AFBA members. It was quite the success and I met a lot of really cool bloggers. A few days later, Colby and I went to the Guster concert at Stubbs and I had the past 11 years of fandom fulfilled when I got to meet Brian, Ryan, Adam, and Luke of the band.

my plate at the AFBA farmers market potluck

May

May was busy and filled with a lot of things having to do with school. I spent most of it frantically writing a paper. I also joined the AFBA officially that month, I believe, and went to the first official event -a farmers market potluck at someone's home. There was more meeting people and eating of delicious food

I think this one speaks for itself

June

Ahh June. For thirty days, I took a picture of everything I ate, so the posting was thin to begin with. I got really drunk with Randi and dyed my hair purple. I'm still living with the consequences of that decision. At the end of the month, I submitted my paper to the Astrophysical Journal. At some point mid-to-late month, I started feeling crazy sick and when I couldn't stand it anymore, took a pregnancy test which came back positive. I took three more that day to confirm.

someone besides me cooking

July

There was a whole lot of morning sickness going on, so I didn't cook anything, really. Also, it was really freaking hot and I threatened to kill anyone who tried to turn on the oven.

My muse for the month of August

August

Still in the throes of morning sickness, I continued not to cook. I had a disappointing pasty, but that was mostly it for my food adventures. At the end of the month, my paper was accepted and I posted it to ArXiv and I said good-bye to Athena. This was also the end for the Community Supported Home Cooking project and blog. I also took a lot of pictures of my dog.

One of my contributions to the Austin Bakes for Bastrop bake sale

September

The morning sickness finally started to ease up, and we announced the pregnancy to people. Although, I guess we did it kind of sneaky-like because I surprised a whole lot of people with my pregnancy when I sent out my baby shower invitations later. Oops. I also participated in the second bake sale of the year, Austin Bakes for Bastrop. This was put together by the same people as Austin Bakes for Japan, with the proceeds being donated to help the victims of the Bastrop fires. We also got a DSLR for the baby. This has definitely been used for the baby... we have ~10 GB of pictures of Kimchi. ;)

seagulls in Port Aransas, TX

October

We found out that we were going to have a girl and I started cooking again. We also took our babymoon in Corpus Christi and Port Aransas and ate at some pretty yummy places and watched Michigan State beat Michigan from a brewery in Port A. Go Green!

cider making ingredients

November

I attempted to participate in NaBloPoMo for the 6th time and FINALLY finished a month. (Go me!) Colby and I went to a Slow Food Austin session on the making of hard cider and decided to start making our own. The plan was to make a bunch to bring to Michigan for Christmas gifts. I graded a lot of papers and gave a talk at the end of the month, so mostly the month consisted of cooking, working, and more working.

Christmas Eve dinner at my great aunt and grandma's house

December

After NaBloPoMo, I was about ready to stop blogging for awhile, but then found out that some people were going to post 30 times this month about what they were grateful for. I decided that after a month of posting every day, I wasn't ready to commit to posting that frequently again, but rather decided to post 12 times. The first part of the month was filled with more school duties, what with getting final grades in for my students, a committee meeting, and a paper draft. I also started a new research project. We went home for our baby shower and for Christmas. The shower was lovely and we got a lot of clothing. We also celebrated our third anniversary Christmas was less lovely and it made me grateful that I live 1400 miles away from most of my family, but that didn't seem to fit the spirit of the 12 days of a grateful heart, so I kept that to myself... until now. ;) And now I'm home and the usual suspects are back at my house hanging out. I have a menu plan for New Year's Eve posted.

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: Home

2011-12-30T19:05:00.001-06:00

Today and yesterday and the day before that I've been grateful for being home. And by home I mean my house. The one that we own... because even though we left a rather picturesque scene

for one that was decidedly less pretty

we would never have been able to engage in science experiments in our kitchen before heading back to our house

Why yes, that IS a macadamia nut stuck on a paper clip over a pie tin that's been lit on fire. How perceptive of you! It turns out that they burn just like candles due to their high fat content.

Chris brought macadamia nuts to Austin as part of our annual New Year's Eve festivities. Kyle's here too and by this time tomorrow, we'll have a full house filled with friends from all over the country. Life, it turns out, is pretty okay right now.

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: On Road Trips and New Tires

2011-12-27T12:43:00.001-06:00

Today I'm grateful that I'm not driving first and that Colby decided that we needed to replace our balding tires before we made the trip up to Michigan. The trip down is going to be slightly more strenuous than the way up since we're doing it in one go. Now that we're leaving Michigan for Texas, it finally snowed. I'm sad that we're leaving before we had a good chance to play in the snow, but I'm excited to get back to my own house complete with my own kitchen and queen sized bed.

Twelve days with a grateful heart: proxy servers

2011-12-26T15:45:00.001-06:00

This one is short and sweet. Apparently there's been a big debate in some of the science blogs about the legality of trading pdfs of papers. I haven't followed along very closely, but today I'm grateful for the proxy server through the University of Texas' library, so I didn't have to pay $70 for my light holiday reading.

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: Merry Christmas!

2011-12-25T13:00:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas, everyone! Today I'm grateful for Christmas and the wonderful excuse it offers to dress up my favorite puppy.

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: "Coffee"

2011-12-24T09:13:00.000-06:00

Today I'm grateful for decaffeinated coffee because, even though it tastes like crap, it gives me an excuse to sip a hot beverage in a cold climate and pretend to get some work done.

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: Michigan State University and The State Room

2011-12-23T16:03:00.002-06:00

On Monday, Colby and I celebrated our third anniversary. We decided to spend the day in East Lansing, home of our alma mater, Michigan State University. Mostly, we went around the city and did some mundane errands, but we had lunch at The State Room in the Kellogg Center on campus and then dinner at Dusty's Cellar. I managed to forget the camera for Dusty's and Colby didn't want me to go get it. Something about food blogging being weird. Pshh... what does he know? It ended up being okay, though. The meal at Dusty's was, unfortunately, forgettable, but we fared much better at lunch.

Today I'm grateful for Michigan State University. Aside from the education, networking, and friendships I acquired, I would never have the cutest little baby in the world in my life without it:


Turns out my Kimchi fits into 6mo onesies. :)

Prior to this lunch, I'd only been to the State Room once before, despite living in East Lansing for four years. This was right after our induction into Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics honor society and courtesy of a lifelong learning student who was also being inducted. She was old, her husband made lots of money, and she bought about 15 of us a fancy dinner. I don't really remember much of it, except that Colby wouldn't let us get dessert because one of our fellow undergraduates (who was given the not-so-affectionate nickname of douche bag) was getting dessert, so he wanted no part of it. This time, the food was much more memorable and delicious.

cheesy bagel chips

Pistachio-encrusted walleye covered in a dijon cream sauce with roasted potatoes and green beans

Asian Lettuce Wrap with spiced pulled-pork and Thai curried mayo and fries

I'm still waiting on that dessert, though.

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: December

2011-12-22T23:06:00.001-06:00

Oh hai, internets. I sort of forgot about you. At the end of our 1400 mile road trip to Michigan, we ended up at my in-laws' house (aka the land with the slowest internets). We're currently at my dad's wife's house in Port Huron, complete with wireless internet and water that doesn't come from a well.

Today I'm grateful that December has 31 days, because apparently posting 12 times is a challenge. I've started a post about the Austin to Boston swap, though my super-on-top-of-things partner Halley beat me to posting about what I sent. You can see her post here.

Meanwhile, I'm going to slink away to sleep because apparently the third trimester woes (the crazy tiredness, heartburn, backaches, pelvic pain, etc.) have attacked me in full force. And, just for fun, I was going to post a picture of my hugely growing belly (holy crap, I'm 29.3 weeks preg), but it's not cute and it just kicked my computer again.

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: Colby

2011-12-19T16:30:00.000-06:00

We've been married for 3 years, as of right now. Time flies, eh?

Happy anniversary, Colby!

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: On the road again

2011-12-17T12:48:00.001-06:00

It's been a bit quiet around the blog lately. This is mostly due to the flurry of activities that accompany the convergence of the end of the semester and Christmas. In my haste, I left most of the pictures I took on a computer in Austin that I wrong be able to aces until after Christmas. Once that happens, I'll be sure to have some fun posts about the Austin to Boston food blogger swap, my favorite dog-themed restaurant in Austin, and much much more. Until then I may post about some of the stuff we do in MI

We're currently in transit to Michigan, making our way though northern Arkansas/southern Missouri. We stayed in a hotel last night and I found this in the bathroom:

Today I'm grateful for passive aggressive notes that make the 24hr drive even a little bit more amusing.

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: DSLRs and Chicken with Mushroom Sauce

2011-12-06T22:47:00.001-06:00

Here's another ugly meal that not even natural lighting and a DSLR could fix. However, this one is crazy tasty.

2-3 strips bacon

2-3 T olive oil

1 lb chicken (I used boneless skinless breasts since I'm lazy, but chicken thighs would work equally well)

1/4 medium yellow onion, diced

8 oz cremini or button mushrooms, wiped and sliced

2 cloves garlic, finely minced
1/3ish c chicken stock
1/2 c sour cream
1/2 c cream or evaporated milk
salt+pepper, to taste

In a pan, heat olive oil, season chicken with salt+pepper, and pan fry until cooked through and golden. Slice the cooked chicken. In a separate pan, render bacon until crisp. Set aside the bacon and crumble. Leave at least a couple Tbs of bacon grease in the pan, which might mean not removing any of the rendered fat. Saute the onions with a pinch of salt until at least translucent. I usually try to caramelize them a bit. Add in mushrooms and season with salt+pepper. You may need to add a bit of oil if you've used most of the bacon grease for the onions. Saute the mushrooms until they've released their liquid and start to brown a bit. Stir in the garlic until fragrant. Add in the chicken stock and stir to pick up any browned bits of mushroom and onion and let the chicken stock reduce a bit. Turn down the heat and stir in the sour cream and cream until combined. Don't let this boil because things will separate. Add in the crumbled bacon and chicken. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve over rice or egg noodles.

I guess conventional wisdom says that I should use the pan that cooked the chicken to make the sauce, but I wanted a fast dinner, so I cooked the chicken simultaneously with the sauce. After the chicken was out, I remembered that I wanted to make asparagus, so the chicken-y goodness didn't all go to waste. I added a bit of stock to the pan to stir up the browned bits, added in my asparagus and cooked them until tender-crisp.

So yes, I am thankful for my DSLR because with a little bit of natural light, I'm able to take foods that weren't actually that tasty and make them look delicious. Similarly, they elevate ugly dishes to things that maybe look palatable. While this dish is pretty gnarly, it's actually really tasty.

zucchini fritter with way too much onion (way more pretty)

chicken and mushroom dinner, with the chicken-y asparagus (way more tasty)

Twelve Days with a Grateful Heart: Kimchi

2011-12-04T15:32:00.001-06:00

Ahhhhh, that was a nice break from posting, but I'm back. While November was National Blog Posting Month for many of the members of the Austin Food Bloggers Alliance, December has become 30 Days with a Grateful Heart, as led by Austin blogger Jote of Bless Her Heart. I know of a few people participating, but decided that 30 more days of blogging would be too much, especially with the holidays, my impending committee meeting, and a cross-country road trip to Michigan and back. It seemed, though, that this was something that could help me foster personal growth, especially since I've had a hard time feeling gratitude for much of anything lately. I've decided to post 12 things for which I am grateful instead of 30.

Blame it on the hormones, but to say that I haven't exactly enjoyed pregnancy is a massive understatement. This was a huge surprise and I'm still coming to terms with the reality that between now and March, I need to grow up a lot. That's not to say that I didn't want to expand my family, it's just that in my immediate future I saw a baby dog, not a baby human. And why is it that I want another dog? It's because of this face:

So today, I'm grateful for Kimchi. She always seems to know when I need attention and love and she loves food nearly as much as I do.

The End.

2011-11-30T11:31:00.001-06:00

This is the last day of NaBloPoMo and I'm extremely excited about that. I'm surprised that I was able to keep up with it this time, but that was due partly to the fact that other members of AFBA joined in on the daily posting fun. This experience has definitely brought me back to blogging. Not only did I challenge myself to post every day, I also wanted to make sure that I was posting real things. Sure, there were a few days that got super lame posts, but for the most part, I think I upped my content, mostly by including pictures.

So how did I actually make it through all of November posting?

1) Not all of the posts are about food. I think I've come to terms with the fact that this blog is going to evolve into more than just what I'm eating/cooking/drooling over, because I don't have infinite things to say about food and I have the cutest little baby ever. Oh and because I'm going to have a baby in March. ;)

2) Most Mondays I posted menus and most Sundays I posted pictures. It's almost like a cheat, but I tried to make sure that the pictures were good and the menus were, mostly, followed.

3) This is probably the real reason why I could stick with it: I prescheduled a lot of my posts. If I had multiple ideas for posts, I'd write them all up at once and then schedule them out. Usually this ended up being a few posts at a time, so it's not like I had the entire month scheduled.

So will I ever do this again? Possibly. Probably not any time soon, though. I'm planning on easing up on the posting, especially right now. I have a talk to give about a carbon-enhanced metal-poor r+s-process enhanced star (say that three times fast) in about 20 minutes, a ginormous pile of papers to grade, and a committee meeting in a week, where I have to tell one of my committee members that I am, indeed, having a baby, which is probably going to cut my spring semester productivity in half. Oops.

So for now, here's a piece of pie for you, because I think we've all deserved it by sticking with me for this long. Also, because I can't eat it due to my newly-discovered pregnancy-induced insulin resistence, but more on that later.

Image from Stu Spivack because my phone is choking on the giant picture of pumpkin pie from inside my faraday cage. I mean office.

Peanut butter blues

2011-11-29T09:00:00.000-06:00

My Koeze peanut butter is almost gone, which is sad but weird on the street is that I don't have to travel all the way back to Michigan to go to Zingerman's to get it. Apparently, Antonelli's carries it. Hurrah!

Also, this talk is happening tomorrow at noon. Which is, again, why I'm not making real posts. Perhaps I should make up for it in December.

science. ugh.

2011-11-28T16:58:00.001-06:00

This is why you don't get a real post today:

Actually, I have to give a talk on Wednesday about this, which is for realz why.

Silent Sundays: Kimchi's Thanksgiving

2011-11-27T20:23:00.001-06:00

home brewing

2011-11-26T19:29:00.001-06:00

me: are you excited?
he: for what?
me: cider!
he: oh, yeah. Are you excited?
me: for what?
he: to play pretend.
me: pretend what?
he: pretend we know what we're doing

After seeing a Slow Food Austin talk by the Argus Cidery dudes, we decided to try to brew hard cider to give as Christmas gifts. It seemed like it was going to be mostly easy, and after two trips to Austin Homebrew Supply, we came home with about $50 worth of supplies and way more confusion than when we first walked in the door. Hopefully this works and we don't end up giving our families a lot of vinegar. I'll update later when we know if it worked or not. And no, the irony of being pregnant and brewing alcoholic beverages isn't lost on me.

cider supplies, including airlocks, campden tablets, and a bunch of other stuff

Bottles that are (still) awaiting cider. Colby and Dustin "made" them in a weekend. Anything for the cause, eh?

Sanitizing everything

The game plan

sulfated cider ready for fermentation

Colby putting the cider in its home for the next couple of weeks. (And yes, this is going to be the nursery, but it's not like we're using it right now.)

Ciders with their airlocks and yeast. Look at that yeast bloom in the upper right corner!

It bubbled! Success!

Black Friday

2011-11-25T20:18:00.001-06:00

We went out on this morning at midnight to see what Black Friday was like. Neither Colby nor I had ever had the full experience, so this was more anthropological than shopping. I did see some deals that looked good, but waiting for hours to get into a store+getting trampled on+waiting for hours to check out didn't seem that appealing. This is what the scene looked like outside of Target:

No, that's not the line to get into Target, that's the crowd that gathered to watch the line to get into Target. At about 12:05 AM.

Here's the line to get into Target:

And then at around 12:30, we meandered down to Best Buy, and they still had a line, complete with security guards. It was kind of nuts.

Needless to say, we didn't buy anything, but now that my curiosity has been sated, I'm content with spending my future Black Friday Eves basking in the glow of a food hangover, rather than contend with crazy crowds of motivated shoppers.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-24T20:19:00.001-06:00

Them's the rules.

2011-11-23T12:06:00.001-06:00

So the results are back and dun dun dun... I don't have gestational diabetes! But I'm apparently developing pregnancy-induced insulin resistance, so I still need to follow a gestational diabetes diet (basically low carb). There's a class that I'm supposed to take next week (pending my insurance) that talks about how to properly diet and exercise to make sure that the baby doesn't grow hugenormous, but until I attend the class, I was given a list of rules to follow:
Avoid Sugar and All Sweets

Avoid fruit in the morning
NO FRUIT JUICE
Eat small, frequent meals
ALWAYS include a bedtime snack
Each meal and snack must have carbohydrate, protein, and fat
If you are hungry between meals & snacks, eat low carbohydrate foods

So basically, no more fun. I ended up getting the Eggs Francisco at Kerbey Lane (and only had half of the english muffin). This kid better be the coolest thing ever, because this is a pretty huge sacrifice.

scrambled eggs, tomato, avocado, and bacon on an English muffin, covered in queso

Flat sprite

2011-11-22T14:00:00.000-06:00

I spent Friday morning sitting in a doctor's office getting my blood drawn four times over the course of three hours. By the time I finished, it had been 15.5 hours since I had eaten anything, aside from chugging a 100g dextrose solution 3.5 hours before. The next time someone tells me about the joys and blessings of pregnancy, I'm going to stab them.

eww.

All of this was for the 3 hour glucose tolerance test for gestational diabetes. I took a shorter test earlier in the week and my blood sugar came back elevated. It was a pretty big bummer, but not unexpected. A couple years ago I was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Nearly 50% of women with PCOS get gestational diabetes. This is the same syndrome that Kate Gosselin had, which is why she opted for in vitro fertilization and ended up with 8 children.

Since we didn't have an extra $50,000 to throw at IVF, I dismissed the notion of having kids and totally came to peace with the idea of being able to travel the world, buying expensive shoes/meals/electronics, and generally enjoying my disposable income. Colby was less okay with this (I guess he's not nearly as into Swedish Hasbeens as I am), and so we went to a fertility specialist to see what our options were and to get further testing. Upon an ultrasound examination of my ovaries, the doctor commented that I had just ovulated and was either going to get my period or was pregnant. We all had a good chuckle and I went to get a CT scan a couple weeks later because my sinuses had been fucked up since December 2010. Oops.

Fast forward five months and now I'm awaiting my results from the GTT. The GTT requires a 12 hour fast, chugging this ridiculous sugar solution in <5 minutes, and then getting blood drawn once an hour for three hours. The last sugar solution tasted like flat orange pop, which is not nearly as tasty as you'd assume. This solution tasted more like flat sprite and was only mildly more palatable. The worst, though, is that they don't let you drink much water because that interferes with the results. My suspicion is that I do have gestational diabetes given my risk factors and the first glucose tolerance test. If that's the case, then the recipes I post here are going to be of a decidedly more meaty nature. In the meantime, I'm going to enjoy the last yummy carbs I'll be allowed to eat for the next 15 weeks.

Thanksgiving week menu

2011-11-21T14:00:00.000-06:00

Menu planning for this week is made easier because Thursday is already planned out for me.

Monday
chili

Tuesday
slowcooker lasagna (hat tip to Austin Gastronomist)

Wednesday
eggs, pan sausage (with possible recipe to come), biscuits

Thursday
Thanksgiving dinner at 24 Diner (we're going to go out to eat for this so I can concentrate on getting work done)

Friday
roasted chicken, stuffing, cranberry sauce, mashed sweet potatoes (like Thanksgiving, but decidedly easier)

Silent Sundays: Venetian Hot Plate, Port Aransas, TX

2011-11-20T19:42:00.001-06:00

Silent Sundays are like Wordless Wednesdays, but on Sunday because, um, I'm sleepy and don't have much to say.

bread and dipping sauce

olive oil, balsamic vinegar, red pepper flakes, garlic, black pepper

misto mare: clams, mussels, oysters, scallops, shrimp, in a butter+wine sauce

salad with balsamic vinaigrette

Mama's lasagna

fresh gulf snapper with artichokes, capers, asparagus, and mashed potatoes

all done

tiramisu

Wherein the posts get a little thin towards the end of NaBloPoMo

2011-11-19T23:21:00.001-06:00

I should probably post something, eh?

I don't have too much to say, except that for once, I'm okay with the University of Michigan not screwing up a game because Michigan State is going to the first Big Ten championship game. Yay!

we picked a name!

2011-11-18T11:00:00.000-06:00

Pumpkin Cornbread

2011-11-17T14:00:00.000-06:00

Recall the ill-fated muffins from yesterday? Well, they only used a half a can of pumpkin and I was taunted with the rest of the can, just sitting in the fridge. I decided that the best way to proceed was to make pumpkin corn bread. This time, however, my recipe tweaking was rewarded.

Pumpkin Cornbread

1 c cornmeal
1 c AP flour
1/3 c sugar
1/4 t cinnamon
1/2 t grated nutmeg
1 T baking powder
1 t salt

1/3 c oil (I used grapeseed oil, but vegetable oil works here too)
1/2 c milk (or more)
1/2 c pumpkin
1 large egg, beaten

Set oven to 400 F. Whisk together the cornmeal, flour, sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, baking powder, and salt. In a separate bowl, mix together the oil, milk, pumpkin, and egg. Fold in the dry ingredients. Pour into an 8x8 or 9x9 baking pan and bake until a toothpick can be cleanly removed, about 15 minutes.

The reason why I say that you may need more milk is that it depends on the consistency of your pumpkin. The pumpkin I used was fairly watery, but the batter was still pretty thick. Thin it with milk a couple Tbsps at a time if the batter turns to dough. You should be able to shake the pan to (mostly) smooth out the batter into one even-ish layer.

Food Links: Stuff I Want to Make

2011-11-16T14:00:00.000-06:00

Do you ever look at a recipe and decide that it's time to tweak it and you know for certain that it's going to come out and be the best thing ever? And then you try it and you're like hm... maybe I should have stuck with the recipe. These are mistake muffins. Don't get me wrong, I truly believe that pumpkin oatmeal muffins can be made to be delicious, but these aren't it. They are, however, pretty. Here's a list of links to things I've been reading around the interwebs that I will definitely try to make but will likely end up tweaking because I'm antsy like that.

Slow Cooker Shredded Korean Beef Tacos I was looking around for a slow cooker bean recipe and stumbled across this blog. This recipe looks like a good way for me to use up the bison stew meat that's been hanging out in my freezer for awhile.

Sweet Potato Biscuits These look awesome and perhaps something that you can actually do with butternut squash instead.

Hot Pepper Cranberry Relish Even though we decided to go out to eat for thanksgiving this year, I'm still drooling over holiday recipes. I'm pretty sure that I'm going to be making this (and also stuffing) at some point in November. Plus, I can use the jalapenos from my garden.

Ugly, but Tasty!, Butternut Squash Casserole

2011-11-15T14:00:00.000-06:00

A couple weeks ago, Colby and I went to Nerd Nite: Food Edition. Okay, it wasn't actually called that, but that's what it was. The first speaker was AFBA's own Addie Broyles. Someone asked her what the key to a successful food blog was and one of her suggestions was to make sure that you post pictures. This is something that I'm not so great about doing with every post. Partly, my picture taking skills are pretty terrible, but also because a lot of the dishes I make aren't so attractive. This dish falls firmly in the category of dishes that are delicious but not at all pretty.

Yeah, this is kind of a hot mess. And by hot, I mean temperature and by mess, I mean, like, look at it.

Butternut squash casserole

3 lb butternut squash, peeled, cubed, roasted in olive oil and salt+pepper at 400 for ~30 minutes
~1/3 lb bacon (more or less depending on how much you love bacon)
1/2 medium yellow or sweet onion, diced
1/2 c sour cream
1 c shredded cheddar cheese (I'd avoid superduper extra sharp cheddar, actually and feel free to use more if you want)
1/4 c panko (optional)
salt+pepper

Cook the bacon until crisp. Crumble and set aside. Remove all but a couple Tbsps of the bacon grease and then saute the onion in the same pan until they're translucent. I tend to brown them, to get more sweetness out of them, but be sure not to let them burn (oops). In an oven-safe dish, combine the roasted butternut squash cubes, bacon, onions, sour cream, and 2/3 c of the cheddar cheese. Season with salt+pepper to taste. Top with the remaining cheese and panko, if using. Bake in a 350 F oven for ~10 minutes, or until the cheese on top is melted and bubbly.

Monday Menu Mania

2011-11-14T13:34:00.000-06:00

This is totally not related, but here's a picture of Colby eating a PB&J sandwich

This is looking to be a rather low-key week, but it seems like I've been attacked with a resurgence of first trimester nausea. This means that my desire to cook is incredibly low, so most of this is easy to throw together or something that I'll make Colby cook.

And to pretend to tie in the random picture with this post, I'm really good at planning dinner menus and lately, we've been good at sticking with it most of the time. I admit that the chicken and 20 cloves was never made, but I've also decided that it's more of a weekend meal than a weekday meal. The one thing I'm pretty terrible about is lunch. Also breakfast. I almost never bring lunch to school, so I pay a lot of money to get some marginal food from O's Campus Cafe. Colby always eats lunch at home and it usually involves things that he can cram down his throat as quickly as possible. Perhaps next week I'll plan a lunch menu as well.

Monday
cowboy casserole from Central Market, green beans

Tuesday
spinach tortellini soup, (probably sans beans bc we don't have any) crusty bread

Wednesday
tacos, green beans (because who says you can't eat green beans with tacos?)

Thursday

pasta with meat sauce (this is coming from my freezer stash of sauce+meatballs, but the BIL doesn't like meatballs, so I think we're just going to break them up and call it "meat sauce"), spinach salad

Friday

roasted chicken, brussels sprouts, rice pilaf

Silent Sundays: Homemade Sushi

2011-11-13T13:22:00.001-06:00

Silent Sundays are like Wordless Wednesdays, but on Sunday because, um, I'm sleepy and don't have much to say.

Saturday Night Jam

2011-11-12T20:02:00.001-06:00

Totally digging Schuyler Fisk right now.

sweatshoes

2011-11-11T20:19:00.001-06:00

This has been a pretty terrible week to be a member of the Big Ten and it's not getting better with the Carrier Classic, so here's a picture of the shoes I wore today. It was super brisk this morning and these are like the warmest non-boots I own. They're basically like wearing a pair of sweat pants on my feet. Also, my belly? Out of control.

Sesame and Wasabi Dressing and Forgotten Jalapenos

2011-11-10T19:50:00.000-06:00

One of the worst pregnancy side effects I've encountered is "pregnancy brain". I've basically lived in a fog for the past 5 months, having difficulty coming up with words and conveniently forgetting how to do things that I've done a zillion times before.

Oops.

Take, for instance, hair cuts. I usually cut Colby's hair because all
he gets are buzz cuts, so it saves us like 20 bucks a month or so. The clippers we got from Costco are probably one of the best investments we've ever made there, but I totally forgot that I usually shave the back of his neck, rather than use the bare clippers. He may or may not have ended up with cuts on the back of his neck. Ahem.

Suffice it to say, sometimes my inability to remember things interferes with what I'm doing, occasionally with disastrous results. On the other hand, on Monday I planned ahead and took the time to go to our garden to get some surprisingly resilient jalapenos for dinner. We built a raised garden box a la Springdale Farm because we have fire ant problems and we thought that this would keep them out. The garden grew like gangbusters from mid-May to the end July or so, but then we sort of decided that it would be best to just let everything go because it was probably never going to rain ever again. After about 3 months of very sporadic watering, the garden box looked something like this:

It turns out that basil is impossible to kill. In fact, that basil is made entirely of stuff that reseeded from last year. Our rosemary and sage were fine because those are desert-okay plants, but it turns out that zucchini, cucumbers, and green beans are not. At least, they need to be watered more than once a month in 100+ heat. Surprisingly enough, the mint plant that we neglected had bolted and seeded, so when we started watering the box again once it cooled off a lot, we found little mint plants all over the place. I'll have to come up with creative uses for it. I think the most surprising result was that not only did our jalapenos not die, they started to flower again and make more jalapenos. I chose the biggest one. It was pretty and it was going to be part of our dinner.

I made a version of Nigella's crab and avocado salad, but preg brain struck again and I ended up forgetting about the jalapeno that I had so lovingly harvested earlier. Le sigh. The dinner was actually really good, though. Instead of her dressing, I adjusted the proportions to this:

Sesame and Wasabi dressing
1 t prepared wasabi
1 t sesame oil
2 T mirin
1 T rice wine vinegar
1/2 t kosher salt

juice of 1/2 lime

Whisk it all together in a small bowl and toss with 8 oz lump crab meat, 1 sliced avocado, and as much arugula as you can stand.

Om nom.

Penn State Part II

2011-11-09T23:38:00.000-06:00

After reading more about Paterno's role and the timeline of events, I'm as conflicted as Matt Millen, so I decided to take down my previous post.

JoePa always stood for integrity in college sports, but now I'm not so sure. I'm deeply saddened that this entire thing happened, but I think we need to focus on the fact that Jerry Sandusky is the one who is actually facing charges for child molestation, not JoePa, not Graham Spanier. I hope, for the victims' sake, that the trial is quick and decisive.

Favorite Things: Belli Acne Cleansing Facial Wash

2011-11-08T13:55:00.003-06:00

My food experiences are mundane enough to make it impossible for me to write about it for all 30 days of this challenge, so I decided to share, on occasion, stuff that I'm really digging. Today it's Belli's Acne Cleansing Facial Wash. Belli is a skin care company that focuses on products for pregnant women, mothers, and babies. Pregnancy brings a whole host of skin problems including, but not limited to, stretch marks, acne, and discoloration. I was surprised to discover that certain over-the-counter skincare products aren't pregnancy safe. Salycilic acid is one of these products and is found in many daily facial cleansers, including the ones that I'd been using.

After searching for a pregnancy safe option, in this case lactic acid-based cleansers, I found Belli's line of pregnancy products. You can use the facial wash as a daily cleanser or leave it on for five minutes as a "mask". The cleanser/mask works really well with some caveats. I need to make sure I use it every day. I'm not terribly careful with my skin, but I break out if I skip a day or two. This is probably because my breakouts are usually related to hormonal changes and since my hormones are crazy now, I've been breaking out like a teenager without some sort of cleanser. I find that it works best in combination with a non-comedogenic facial moisturizer because it tends to dry out my cheeks. Additionally, this doesn't have any exfoliating beads, so it's smooth. I always rub it off with a washcloth so I can get a bit of exfoliation in, rather than simply rinsing it away.

My biggest problem with it is that it's CRAZY expensive. I purchased it for $22 at Ulta (for a 6.7 oz bottle!), which I'm hoping will last for most of the pregnancy. I haven't tried any of their other products because I'm not made of money, but if you have some cash to burn and find yourself harboring a friendly-ish uterine parasite, you should check out this product as well as the rest of their line.

Menu Monday

2011-11-07T13:34:00.010-06:00

Full disclosure: I don't always follow the menus I post. Last week, we never made the chicken and 20 cloves because the kitchen was a mess, we both were lazy, and I had a craving for Mexican food, so we headed to Amaya's instead. (Insert excuse for Saturday and Sunday here, though yesterday we did go to Cipollina with Randi.) I always aspire to follow these menus, but we inevitably end up eating out at some point or having way too many leftovers to justify making another dish. My menu this week, though, lends itself to not create massive amounts of mess or leftovers.

Butternut squash from Montesino Ranch and puppy feet

Monday
Crab, avocado, and arugula salad, adapted from Nigella's recipe but it sounded good since we have that arugula

Tuesday
Chicken and 20 cloves and roasted brussels sprouts, for real this time

Wednesday
homemade sushi, which will consist mainly of california and vegetable rolls, mostly to use up the rest of the crab and avocado

Thursday

Bacon, eggs, and biscuits

Friday

butternut squash casserole (recipe to come!) with a salad because that dish is the opposite of light eating. :)

Silent Sundays: Austin Boston Terrier Meet Up

2011-11-06T13:27:00.000-06:00

Silent Sundays are like Wordless Wednesdays, but on Sunday because, um, I'm sleepy and don't have much to say.

Kimchi

Fall Favorites: Butternut Squash and Apples

2011-11-05T12:34:00.001-05:00

I love butternut squash. Along with apple, it's one of my favorite fall flavors. Colby and I just went to the farmers market this morning to pick up some (amazing) bacon from Peach Creek Farms, sourdough from Texas French Bread, and some butternut squash because I can't get enough of it.

I know that I've posted two other butternut squash soup recipes, but this one combines techniques from both recipes and comes out tasting rich and flavorful.

roasted butternut squash and apple soup

2 lbs butternut squash
1 large carrot, diced
1 large celery, diced
1/2 medium yellow onion, diced
1/4 c pine nuts
1 lb apples, peeled and diced (I used a SweeTango, but any sweet apple would do well)
32 oz stock (I used chicken stock, but vegetable stock also works)
1 t ground ginger or 1/2 t nutmeg
1 T brown sugar
1/2 t soy sauce
salt+pepper
extra virgin olive oil

Peel and cube the butternut squash, toss with extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper and roast in a 400 F oven until the squash is easily pierced. Depending on how small the cubes are, this can take anywhere from 20-40ish minutes. Just keep checking. I usually do this the day before I make the soup and put the squash the oven while I'm cooking other things.

In a large stock pot or dutch oven, heat a couple tbsps of evoo. I kind of just eyeball it. Add in the celery, carrots, and onions along with a big pinch of salt and saute until everything is softened. (Usually 5-10 minutes). I tend to brown the onions to add an extra layer of flavor.

Make a well in the center of the pot and add in the pine nuts, careful to stir the nuts around so that they don't burn, but brown a bit. (Usually a few minutes, but just watch it.)

Add in the apples and ginger and mix everything up. Let the apples soften, but not turn to mush. (~5 minutes)

Add in squash, chicken stock, brown sugar, and soy sauce and emulsify everything in the pot until smooth.

Taste for seasoning and adjust levels of salt and pepper.

The soup ends up tasting of both apples and butternut squash since the apples aren't cooked to mush. The soy sauce helps with depth of flavor and is a really sneaky tasty way to adjust the seasoning. This is a great soup to make ahead of time because the flavors mesh together in the fridge.

Babymoon Part 1: Port Aransas Brewing Company

2011-11-04T15:12:00.000-05:00

On our babymoon to Corpus Christi, we spent a half day in Port Aransas. The first order of business was to eat lunch. I was happy that we were out of town that particular weekend because Michigan State was playing U of M in football and my stress levels always shoot through the roof on a rivalry weekend. We stopped by the Port Aransas Brewing Company and, lo and behold, the game was on. There was a lot of screaming from my end and a lot of "OMG BE QUIET" from Colby's, but Michigan State won (Go Green!) and so did we because the food was fantastic.

Colby ordered the shrimp basket and I got a shrimp po' boy. Both came with tasty seasoned waffle fries. Also shrimp. These were probably the best breaded/fried shrimp I've ever had. The only complaint I have is that the cocktail sauce could have stood to have a bit more horseradish because it was lacking zip. Otherwise, the bun was buttery with a crispy exterior and the shrimp were perfectly cooked, with a breading that actually stayed on without being overwhelming. I forgot until to take a picture until I was about halfway through my sandwich, but Colby's half eaten shrimp basket is a lot more appetizing.

Unfortunately we didn't try any of the beer because it was like 11 AM and also because this was a babymoon, and no matter how much I enjoy a good beer, I'm pretty sure the fetus* doesn't. We had such an excellent time in Port A that I want to go back next year with some friends and a baby in tow. I think the better plan would be to rent a condo or cottage and bring food to cook instead of going out to eat the entire time. Stay tuned for more pictures and restaurants!

*We found out the fetus is a girl. I'm excited but now we're duking it out over the name. I'm pretty sure that once it has a name I'm going to start calling it a baby. Also "she", unless it keeps kicking me in the bladder whenever I try to go to sleep.

Chicken and Broccoli Mac'n'Cheese

2011-11-03T20:16:00.000-05:00

Sometimes meals are works of art. This one definitely isn't, but it's pretty tasty.

1 lb whole wheat pasta, cooked
1 bunch broccoli, florets chopped and blanched
1/2 yellow onion, diced and sauteed until brown
2 chicken breasts, cooked and pulled

2 c milk
2 T butter
2 T AP flour
1 tsp kosher salt
2 c cheddar cheese, shredded
s+p

In a small sauce pan, melt butter. Whisk in the flour. Keep whisking until the butter+flour mixture becomes golden and nutty (at least a minute, but longer if you can stand it). Add in salt and then whisk in milk. Keep stirring and bring to a simmer to thicken. Add in 1.5 c cheese and stir. In a large casserole, toss together the noodles, shredded chicken, broccoli, onions, and cheese sauce. Add in salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle the top with shredded cheese and bake in a 350 F oven for ~10 minutes if the ingredients were just cooked or closer to 30 minutes if everything was refrigerated.

This is actually really versatile. We just happened to have broccoli, but everything else is basically a pantry staple. Using leftover vegetables and chicken makes this come together even easier.

Farmers' Market Tomatoes and BAT Sandwiches

2011-11-02T17:43:00.000-05:00

We're going to Nerd Nite tonight, which is going to be all about food. It's going to be great and I'm stoked. In an effort to speed up dinner, I made butternut squash and apple soup last night, but by this morning, realized that it probably wasn't enough to make a legitimate dinner. I'm planning on tinkering with the recipe a bit, but I'll likely post one for it once I've adjusted the spices/flavors.

I put out a call to twitter this morning about what to eat with it. The suggestions were pork tenderloin with arugula and BLT sandwiches. The tenderloin was out because I wouldn't have had time to make it, also I'm still getting over my porkphobia but the BLT seemed plausible. I made a trip to the Triangle Farmers' Market this afternoon and for dinner, we'll be having butternut squash and apple soup with BAT sandwiches (in which the A stands for arugula.)

And here's a picture of tomatoes. Om nom nom.

NaBloPoMo Take 6

2011-11-01T19:32:00.000-05:00

Hey look, it's that time of year again... you know, the month where I try to blog for every day and inevitably fail around day 17 or so. Some of the Austin Food Blogger Alliance members decided to participate for this month, so I thought I'd give it a try. It looks like I've attempted this about 5 times, so perhaps the sixth time is a charm. Given that I usually post menus every week and that posting every day is hard, I'm going to pre-admit defeat and not try to make every post about food. I'll tag the food posts as food, though, so I can make sure that I've written about it at least twice this month.

I've been sort of upset with google lately. Though the abandonment of buzz was sad but predictable, I was a lot more surprised that they took away the share functionality of Google Reader. I've been using Reader as my feed reader for a couple years now and I look forward to reading may of the shared items from some of my friends. I guess now the idea is to +1 everything to google plus, but it seems silly that I can't read the +1 items from my friends in reader. With that in mind, here are some articles that I would have shared. And to keep with the spirit of being annoyed, most of these articles are about things that I find disconcerting, irritating, or horrifying. It's like halloween, but real and actually scary minus the candy. So kind of not like halloween at all.

Slavery Footprint of Your Kitchen - I've read about the plight of tomato pickers in Florida, and we've tried to limit my consumption of out of season tomatoes, but it's still hard. I've also read a bit about the child labor that goes into most halloween chocolate candy as well, and I've mostly avoided that this year. What I didn't realize was that there are so many more areas beyond food in which to be concerned. Definitley food for thought.

Gay Man in Texas Viciously Attacked - I don't even have words for this.

After Soldier's Death a Chinatown Family Seeks Answers - A young soldier was either murdered or committed suicide, but the military won't really talk to the family. Oh and he was Chinese. And he was subjected to racist attacks. I sort of wonder how my (Korean) brother is going to fare in the Marines.

Asian American Students Are the Most Bullied in Schools - Again with the bigotry against Asians. This isn't so surprising, considering my experiences in grade school, but this is in stark contrast to students of other races.

comings and goings and eatings

2011-10-31T23:41:00.001-05:00

i *heart* Cupprimo

The past week has been beyond crazy. Chris came out to visit and we worked on a program that will help me shave months off of my thesis. In addition, we ate at some tasty restaurants, made some delicious dinners, and generally hung out all over Austin. And while normally, a visitor isn't cause for that much chaos, my brother-in-law moved in with us on Wednesday. Colby got him a job at his company and he started today, so this weekend was filled with rearranging the house, sacrificing our guest bedroom, and trying to fit in some Halloween activities as well. Colby and I dressed up as Juno MacGuff and Paulie Bleeker, since the only thing I needed to buy to complete my outfit was a bottle of Sunny D. By the way, Sunny D is disgusting. Six year old me had some pretty terrible taste in beverages. Colby got some sweet yellow gym shorts out of the deal, which I've been wearing since Saturday night since they're actually way too short for him. ;)


confituras apple butter fresh from the farmers market

Monday:
Pan sausage, potatoes, and eggs with toast+Confituras apple butter

Tuesday:
Butternut squash+apple soup, roasted brussels sprouts

Wednesday:
Lasagna from Central Market, salad

Thursday:
Mac'n'cheese chicken casserole (recipe to come, if it turns out okay)

Friday:
Chicken and 20 cloves (We got 4 pieces of chicken thighs instead of cutting up a whole chicken), roasted brussels sprouts + butternut squash

Oh hai

2011-10-19T08:28:00.002-05:00

Hello old friends,

Welcome back from the dark recesses of my closet. It's been far too long.

Love,

Julie

yet another menu plan

2011-10-17T21:24:00.001-05:00

We arrived back from our babymoon yesterday evening and since then I've been tired and trying to keep busy. We have another appointment tomorrow where we find out the sex of the fetus. I definitely have my preference and so does Colby. Either way, I'm just glad that I'll finally be able to start filling out the rest of the baby registry so the overeager grandparents can get off my back. ;) Our babymoon was awesome and I'll be posting pictures once we finally sort through them. We put our new camera to use and wow, does it ever make a difference. In the mean time, here's a quickie menu plan for the week

This is what happens when a DSLR meets dusk and my dinner

Tuesday:
Pasta with spinach, tomatoes, sundried tomatoes, artichokes, chicken and mozzarella cheese

Wednesday:
Grilled cheese with homemade tomato soup

Thursday:
butternut squash gnocchi with brown butter sage sauce and roasted brussels sprouts

Friday:
Chris comes to town, so it seems likely that we'll go out to eat somewhere. Or maybe we'll make something fancy for dinner

Menu Plan, because cooking doesn't make me want to pukedie anymore

2011-10-09T22:32:00.000-05:00

My summer long odyssey of getting through the first trimester of pregnancy largely unscathed meant that I basically had to stop cooking. It's not that all I wanted were pickles and ice cream, but rather the convergence of common first trimester side effects. Everyone knows about morning sickness, and I became intimately familiar with it. What I didn't realize, however, was that I would attain a superhuman sense of smell. Granted, it was nothing like my dog's amazing snout, but it was enough to make things like cooking onions verboten in my kitchen. One day, Colby made a salmon burger without using the vent hood and the entire kitchen and living room reeked of its salmon-y afterscent. In order to escape the stench, I made him go to IKEA and the outlet mall in Round Rock, in which the only thing we ended up purchasing was a halloween costume for my dog (and oh man, does she ever *love* it. ;)).

Kimchi only looks a little bit defeated, no?

Now that I'm well into the second trimester, I'm at the point where I can cook again. Both my wallet and the 'sband thank me. Mostly my wallet. Colby still isn't so happy about the constant mess in the kitchen, but baby steps, you know?

Monday:
Bison tacos with spinach, tomatoes, sour cream, sharp cheddar, and salsa

Tuesday:
Pasta with sundried tomatoes, grape tomatoes, spinach, artichoke, garlic and mozzarella

Wednesday:
Pan-fried marinated chicken with roasted brussels sprouts and mashed sweet potatoes

Thursday:
Tuna salad sandwiches with roasted butternut squash

Friday:
Something yummy in Corpus Christi

My goal this week is to eat in for every lunch and dinner. Monday and Tuesday I'm attending a conference that provides lunch, but on Wednesday and Thursday I'll be schlepping in leftovers. On Friday, Colby and I are going on our babymoon. My plan is to eat yummy food, hang out on the beach, and visit the aquarium. Posts and pictures to follow.

Austin Bakes for Bastrop Recap

2011-10-04T00:15:00.002-05:00

Austin Bakes for Bastrop was a resounding success. Between the seven bake sale locations, online donations, and online donation matching from Key Ingredient, over $12,500 was raised. This will all be donated to the Central Texas Wildfire Fund.

I volunteered at the Whole Foods Gateway location with some pretty rad ladies, including the authors of Stetted, The Kid Can Cook, and My Vegan Journey, as well as the owner of Sweet Pop and a couple other people who don't have linkable places on the internets. Thank you so much to everyone who organized, volunteered, and bought goodies. Here is just a smattering of pictures (taken with the new camera!) of our location.

Setting up one of two sets of tables

Wonderfully decorated Halloween cookies

Cake pops from Sweet Pop

pretty cupcakes

One of the many gluten-free items available at our location

Pretty granola, and one of the default suggestions for people asking for "not too much sugar"

table full of goodies

Austin Bakes for Bastrop

2011-09-27T17:21:00.000-05:00

As I'm sure many of you have heard, central Texas has been devastated by wildfires. The continuing drought, low humidity, and extreme heat have made the area incredibly susceptible to fire. As ridiculous as it seems to people who don't live here, cigarettes and charcoal grilling have been banned from Austin city parks and as a resident I'm grateful that these measures are being taken in order to reduce the risks we face. Recently, Bastrop county suffered much in the way of fire damage. In all, 34,000 acres of land burned, as well as 1600 homes. To aid in their recovery, the same fine people who put on Austin Bakes for Japan have pooled their talents together for another event, Austin Bakes for Bastrop. I highly encourage everyone in the Austin area to come out to one of the seven locations around Austin this Saturday between 10AM - 2PM and support the people who have been devastated by these fires. I'm planning on bringing pumpkin bread and apple pasties to the Whole Foods at Gateway. This is a great opportunity to give back to the community, as well as eat lots of tasty treats.

That Ain't No Etch-a-Sketch

2011-09-08T21:09:00.001-05:00

*ahem* is this thing on?

I admit it's been quiet around here lately, but with good reason. Though it's been too hot to turn on the oven All. Damn. Summer., I've been cooking something for the past few months. See Figure 1 for details.

Figure 1. 12 gestational-week fetus

I can haz paper

2011-08-23T21:18:00.000-05:00

I've been trying to write a post all month, but I've either been sick or busy or completely uninspired. Part of the reason why I've been busy is because I finally submitted my paper and heard back from the journal. With a bit of work, it was accepted and I posted it to the e-print archive. You can find it here, if you're interested. Posting to ArXiv is interesting because everyone wants to have their paper listed first. You can post as early as 3:00 PM CST. I posted mine at 3:01:10 PM. My paper is 6th for the day. I'm not even the first poster in my main category (Galaxy Astrophysics). It turns out that the cosmology people are QUICK. The first five people who posted did so at 3:00:01, 3:00:02, 3:00:04, 3:00:07, and 3:00:30.

To celebrate, Colby and I didn't do anything. I'm going to try to make him go out at some point soon, but we've been eating a lot of low key meals either at home or at familiar restaurants. The new adventures we've had have included Full English and Baguette House (click here for a pdf menu).

We went to Full English because I was having a serious pasty craving, after discovering that you can order Yooper pasties from a restaurant in the UP, only to realize that the shipping costs were over 100 bucks. So much for that. I guess I try to reserve judgment on places without having gone there more than once, but I'm unlikely to return to Full English because a) it's like CRAZY far from our house, b) I had to bribe Colby to go, and c) the pasty I had was clearly baked, then frozen, then reheated. This makes for a frozen middle if it's not in the oven long enough or a really dry inside once it is cooked through. I'd be lying if I said I didn't experience both of these. It was served with a red pepper chutney, which was good, but not nearly moist enough to make up for the chalky potatoes and the dry beef. My usual pasty sauces are beef gravy and sour cream. I leave the ketchup to the real Yoopers.

The person who cooked our meal (perhaps the owner?) felt bad for the frozen part, so he gave as a free dessert. I have no idea what it was, but it tasted like a firmer version of the granola bars they served at Cafe-to-Go at Michigan State. Oh, the memories.

Tastes like college. mmm...

Baguette House, on the other hand, was wonderful and we'll be returning at some point. My only complaint is that I didn't realize how big and filling their sandwiches are, so the spring rolls we ordered were totally unnecessary. So this isn't really a complaint at all, just a really tasty sandwich.

Basil Limeade

2011-07-31T13:21:00.000-05:00

It's still July. Thank goodness. I'm sneaking in my second AFBA-mandated post in at the last minute, but this is super tasty.

Basil simple syrup

1.5+/-0.5 c basil, loosely packed
1 c water
1 c sugar

In a small pot, combine all ingredients and bring them it a boil. Allow to maintain a rolling boil from a minute and then remove from the heat. Cover with something that lets it breathe, but won't let in the flies (I used my splatter guard). Steep for at least 30 minutes and more if you like a more intense basil flavor (I think I left mine in for a couple hours while I ran some errands). Strain and refrigerate

Basil limeade

2 T basil simple syrup
2 T freshly squeezed lime juice
6 oz water

Mix. Enjoy. You can play around with the ratios, but I've found that equal lime juice and basil simple syrup is the best. I really enjoyed using sparkling water too, but this is probably only a reflection of my affinity for pop.

So yeah. Where have I been all month? I've had some health problems take over my life. It's not super serious, but I've been doing all I can to avoid sinus surgery. It's been quite exhausting and painful to deal with, which is why I haven't been posting so much (or showing up to anything).

Tomatillo Salsa

2011-07-10T22:52:00.001-05:00

Why hello, stranger. And by stranger, I mean the one person who still periodically reads this blog. Last night, I came to the realization that I only posted three times in June, which is the low for this year. I'll have a menu soon, but I think that July is going to be another low-post month.

One of my excuses *ahem* reasons for not posting so much in June is that for nearly the entire month, I was taking pictures of every meal and snack I ate as part of an artist's project. So while all was quiet on this front, I was still thinking about food a lot. It's been sort of weird not taking pictures of everything I consume, and I think that I might try to take more pictures and post them on my tumblr. We'll see, though. I periodically pick it up and put it back down again, but it's been my way to catalog what I've eaten, which (usually) keeps me accountable.

On one of the final days of the project, my dinner consisted of a lot of chips and salsa. No, I wasn't undergradding out, but rather I participated in a salsa show down at Lewis and Rachel's place. It was a lot of fun and I was glad to participate, plus I won a giant bank filled with jello. It also gave me the excuse to make salsa for the first time. Below is my (jello winning!) recipe.

Tomatillo salsa

2 lbs tomatillos, husked and washed well
1 large poblano pepper
2 whole jalapenos
2 jalapenos, seeded and finely chopped
1/2 c chopped red onion
1/2 medium yellow/sweet onion, chopped
1/2 T extra virgin olive oil
6-7 cloves garlic, more if you love garlic (oh man, I love garlic)
1 t cumin, optional
1/3 c parsley or cilantro, chopped, optional
the juice of one lime
salt, to taste

Preheat the oven to 350. Either in a dutch oven or over the flame on a gas stove, char the tomatillos, poblano pepper, and the two whole jalapenos. Put the peppers in a plastic bag and seal. Place the tomatillos on a large sheet pan and then bake in the oven until soft (~10 minutes or so, but squeeze with some tongs to make sure). In a small pan, heat the olive oil and then cook the YELLOW onion with a pinch of salt, until it's soft and slightly browned. You can also toss in the garlic to take off the bite. Remove the onions from the pan. If you're still concerned about the heat level, remove the yellow onion from the pan and then quickly sautee the jalapenos and red onion until slightly soften. This step is optional. Peel the poblano and the jalapenos. My favorite method is to just do it with a dishtowl and scrape the skins off. It's best to do this with gloves so you don't accidentally put a jalapeno finger in your eye when you're taking your contacts out later that night. That is a mistake you make only once. *ahem* Once the tomatillos are cooked, place half of them in the food processor, along with the yellow onion, roasted skinless jalapenos and roasted skinless poblano. Blitz until liquidy. Add in the rest of the tomatillos and then pulse until a little bit chunky. Combine this with the red onion and chopped jalapenos. Crush the garlic into the mix and stir. Add in the cumin and/or cilantro/parsley if using (I honestly don't remember if I put the cumin in. I don't think I did, but I did add in parsley [because yuck, cilantro]). Season with salt and lime juice to taste. If you let the flavors marry overnight, it's pretty tasty, if I do say so myself.

In creating this recipe, my main goal was to balance everything. The tomatillos are sort of sour, but they were mellowed by charring and cooking them. To add that acidity back in, I included the lime juice. It's the same story with the roasted jalapenos/chopped jalapenos and the sauteed yellow onion (which also adds sweetness to the entire salsa)/red onion. If you really want to be snazzy, roast about half of the garlic cloves before pressing.

SeaVeggie Pesto

2011-06-22T20:07:00.000-05:00

I haven't been posting much lately because I've been writing a lot lately for school. I'm excited that I can finally take a break from that because I *finally* submitted my first refereed paper to the Astrophysical Journal. Here's hoping that the editor/referees are gentle.

Anyway, I do more than just write about food. This should be obvious since I've only posted twice this month and I'd be doing a lot of nothing if I didn't. ;) Awhile back, I had the opportunity to give a talk at Austin's Nerd Nite. It was about astronomy and sort of a brief overview of the stars I study and why they're interesting. There's a video my Nerd Nite talk, along with the other speakers. In meeting with the Nerd Nite organizers, I got to meet Lewis Weil, a man of many talents. Not only does he help organize Nerd Nite (which you should totally check out if you're in Austin), he also grows his own ogonori, which he calls SeaVeggies. Lewis let me take a pack home to play with and I came up with seaveggie pesto.

SeaVeggie Pesto

SeaVeggie Pesto
1 pack (~30g) SeaVeggies
1 T miso paste
1 T soy sauce
2 T toasted sesame seeds
1/2 T sesame oil
splash of rice wine vinegar to taste

Process all the ingredients until it makes a thick paste.

pesto+couscous

I tried this pesto mixed in with some couscous, which was pretty good and also on some grilled fish. The salinity of the seaveggies in the pesto match really well with seafood. I tried it with steelhead trout but you could definitely do this with salmon or any other flavorful fish.

pesto on grilled trout

A month or so later, I stopped by the SeaVeggie stand at the downtown farmers market and was given a couple packs to bring to the Austin Food Blogger Alliance potluck. I made a sesame and wasabi SeaVeggie salad. This was sort of whipped together at the last minute and these amounts are approximate.

Sesame+wasabi SeaVeggie salad

2 packs SeaVeggies, roughly chopped (the SeaVeggies, not the packs. ;))

1 T sesame seeds, toasted

1-2 t prepared wasabi (depending upon how much heat you like)

1 T sesame oil

2 T mirin

2 T rice wine vinegar

Whisk together the wasabi paste, sesame oil, mirin, and rice wine vinegar. Taste and adjust for seasoning. If you find it to need some sweetness, either add in a bit more mirin or you could also whisk in a few drops of honey. Combine with the sesame seeds and the sea veggies. Enjoy!

wasabi+sesame SeaVeggie salad

The combination of my terrible photography skills and the fact that ogonori isn't, perhaps, the prettiest vegetable around means that these photos don't do SeaVeggies justice. Both applications were really tasty! You can purchase SeaVeggies at the downtown SFC Saturday farmers market and at Wheatsville Co-op on any day. Thanks, Lewis, for the three packs of SeaVeggies and for letting me play with a really fun and new-to-me ingredient!

Strawberry Cupcakes

2011-06-07T02:26:00.003-05:00

No quaint story to accompany this cupcake. Just a recipe because it's 2:30 AM and I should be editing my paper.

strawberry cupcakes (makes ~30, adapted from Baked)
2 1/2 c cake flour
3/4 c AP Flour
3/4 t sea salt
1 T baking powder
1 t baking soda

2 sticks butter, softened
1 3/4 c granulated sugar
1 t vanilla extract
1 T water
1 egg + 1 yolk
1 1/2 c strawberry puree

1/4 t cream of tartar
3 egg whites

In a food processor, liquefy ~12 oz of washed and hulled strawberries. Pass through a fine mesh strainer lined with cheese cloth (or, really, I passed the puree through a chinois) in order to get rid of the seeds. Make sure it makes 1.5 c of liquid. Preheat oven to 325 F. In a large bowl whisk together flours, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside. Cream together the butter and sugar. Add in the vanilla and egg+yolk and combine. Alternate in the flour mixture and the strawberry juice. In a separate bowl, whisk the egg whites and cream of tartar until soft peaks form. Bake for 20-30 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean.

I served these with cream cheese frosting and placed a strawberry atop each cupcake to reinforce the strawberryness.

a menu and some promises

2011-06-06T17:26:00.000-05:00

These are really tasty. I promise.

Why it's, gasp, yet another quick menu post. I've got some really yummy things in the pipeline, including recipes using Austin Sea Veggies and from-scratch strawberry cupcakes, but I figured that I needed to put a menu down somewhere before we end up eating whatever is closest to the stove for the rest of the week. Last night, I made Colby go to HEB with me at like 10 PM to get fish sticks (because I'm apparently 7 years old) because it was late and I was hungry. It was some tasty nostalgia, but in order to convince him to get out the door and put on big boy pants, I promised that we wouldn't eat out for dinner the rest of the week aside from tonight. Speaking of which, tonight is my awesometastic office mate, Athena's birthday so we're going out to Trudy's for drinks and dinner and then we're coming back to my place for strawberry cupcakes, brownies, and ice cream.

So now the question is... what are we eating the rest of the week? Actually, the only person asking this question is actually Colby, but let's keep me accountable, eh?

And by the way, on Thursday, we're getting this from Farmhouse Delivery:

Peaches - McPeak Orchards

Blackberries

Tomatoes - Josh Reese Farm

Lettuce - bella verdi and Bluebonnet Farm

Carrots - Montesino Ranch

Yellow squash and zucchini - Naegelin Farm

New Potatoes - Naegelin Farm

Parsley - Tecolote Farm

Cucumbers - The Farm Patch

Tuesday:
Salmon burgers, with cucumber salad and strawberries

Wednesday:

spicy egg salad sandwiches, with carrots and strawberries

Thursday:
Strawberry, walnut, Gorgonzola salad with strawberry vinaigrette

Friday:
garden burgers, grilled zucchini/summer squash, tomato, cucumber, parsley salad

Saturday:
grassfed all beef hot dogs, bruschetta with tomatoes, mozzarella, and homegrown basil :), fresh fruit

Sunday:
fish tacos with jalapeño slaw

Fast and nutritious dinners for busy people

2011-05-31T15:42:00.000-05:00

I've been busy. Like SUPER busy. The kind of soul crushing busy that can only be tackled with copious amounts of caffeine and convenience foods. Fortunately, my sorts of convenience foods are ones that I've either made myself previously or that can be quickly thrown together for a nutritious and tasty dinner. Below are some of my go-to meals that I've eaten recently that are also relatively inexpensive.

Breakfast for dinner

Ottmer's Farm Eggs, Richardson Farms pan sausage

Nothing is faster than scrambled eggs. Add in some toast and a handful of vegetables and you've got yourself a super quick and tasty meal. Here is one of my favorites.
sauteed mushrooms and spinach: add some oil to a nonstick pan and heat. Add in ~8 sliced button mushrooms with a pinch of salt and pepper and cook until the mushrooms are nice and brown. Add in a handful of spinach (say half a bunch) and stir until wilted. Remove from the pan to a plate. Add in 4 beaten eggs with a pinch of salt and pepper and cook halfway. Add in the spinach and mushrooms and cook the rest of the way.

If this sounds at all familiar, it's because I eat a lot of eggs. They're filled with protein, inexpensive compared to fresh meat, and quick to cook.

Dinner Salads

Seafood Salad from Zed's

One of my favorite take out meals in Austin is the steak salad from Central Market. It has steak (duh!), hard boiled eggs, bleu cheese, roasted tomatoes, and some lettuce. It's filling and delicious and a good way to get a balance of protein, carbs, and fat. The Caesar salad is also another classic dinner salad. Add in some protein in the form of an omega-3 fatty acid-rich fish and you have a really healthy and satisfying meal. Dinner salads are also good go-to meals because you can use leftovers from previous dinners to add to the salad. My new favorite is a homemade taco salad.
Toss together some amount of leftover taco meat (I think I had like 1/3 lb the last time I made this) with a handful of shredded cheese, diced tomatoes, a dark green lettuce (not iceberg!), and anything else you have on hand (beans make a nice addition). Serve with some crushed tortilla chips for added crunch and use salsa for the salad dressing because there is already fat there from the taco meat that you made... speaking of which...

Tacos

chili and garlic porkbelly

I make a lot of breakfast tacos, which consist of egg, cheese, some protein (so meat or beans), salsa, and a tortilla. Wrap it up in a tortilla and cook it in a pan to seal it. Austin in famous for breakfast tacos, but usually they're not sealed. This was not, however, my idea. This was stolen from my favorite late night food stop in college, Menna's Joint. Granted, most of their menu is terribly unhealthy, but if you make these yourself, you can control the ingredients and sneak in some vegetables to balance out the carbs. Lately, I've been picking up 20 packs of tortillas to make tacos for dinner as well.

I admit to using a pre-made taco seasoning blend. It's cheaper than buying all of the spices individually and I happen to really like one particular brand. In lieu of this, you can use this taco seasoning blend, which is really quite delicious. Make up a large batch and keep it on hand.
1 lb ground beef (ground turkey or pork also work well)
1T+ taco seasoning (or to taste)
1/2 medium onion, diced
1-2 jalapeños, de-seeded and diced.
2 cloves garlic, crushed or minced
1-2 chipotle peppers, diced (optional)
salt+pepper, to taste

Add in ground meat to a pan and cook until thoroughly browned. Remove the meat from the pan, leaving the drippings and cook the onions and peppers with a pinch of salt until the onions are translucent and soft (~5 minutes or so). Add in the garlic and stir until fragrant. Add the meat back in, as well as the taco seasoning and chipotle peppers, if using. Let the flavors mingle over low heat for at least 10-15 minutes (more if you can stand it). Serve with tomatoes, lettuce, beans, salsa, etc. with the tortillas.

Last night I made this recipe from the Kitchen Wench. I happened to have pork belly on hand, but the recipe is, in principle, super adaptable and should be able to be made with just about any meat or even (gasp) tofu. I served these with some cabbage and rice inside a tortilla. Super yummy and super easy. While gochujang is not the easiest to find ingredient (I got mine from a Korean supermarket), you could likely sub in things like sriracha which can definitely be purchased at HEB, or any other hot, garlicky chile paste.

Abbreviated Menu

2011-05-31T02:47:00.002-05:00

Greetings from my bath. I had an incredibly relaxing three day weekend and I'm sad to see it go. The only thing that eases the burden if going back to work is the fact that this week has only four days. I'm looking forward to being more productive than ever in both my research and in my kitchen.

Tuesday
Grass fed all beef hotdogs with jalapeño slaw and roasted potatoes

Wednesday
Salmon Caesar salad with homemade croutons and dressing

Thursday
Korean chile and garlic beef with rice and a green vegetable

Friday
Poached eggs and potato and salmon hash

Menu Part A Million

2011-05-23T16:33:00.000-05:00

I feel like I should start posting my menus up more often because this means that I'll be held accountable somewhere to stick to them. It turns out that when I announce something to Colby, it usually devolves into going out to eat nearly a third of the time and that's just silly. I love to cook, so I'm not sure why I don't cook all the time. I suppose it has to do with messy kitchens and paper writing.

I never quite realized that the most useful class I ever took at Michigan State was PHY 191, which was an introductory level physics lab. It was mostly statistics in disguise and everyone openly loathed it. And now, I'm reading through a textbook (the train book for all you physics nerds) to figure out how to prove to the world that my measurements aren't wonky. Oh, John R. Taylor, you may be a total turd, but your error analysis writings are crystal clear. This is actually on the back of the book:

I almost lit my copy on fire. Fortunately, I married someone who also possessed this textbook.

And to the menu:

Monday - Lemon-pepper cod with green beans

Tuesday - chickpea and spaghetti squash vindaloo from the freezer

Wednesday - Ottmer's Farm eggs, pan sausage, toast

Thursday - Chris gets in, so we're going to go to Judge's Hill for their tasting menu

Friday - homemade fish tacos with jalapeño slaw

pre-summer cocktails

2011-05-22T15:46:00.000-05:00

I was on the phone yesterday from about noon til after 6 PM working on my paper. It's not that I don't enjoy talking with my collaborators, it's that it was Saturday and I wanted to spend the day with Colby. So to relax today, I went to my favorite east side coffee shop and stood behind someone who ordered a shandy. I immediately realized two things a) there was no indoor seating, so we weren't going to stay and b) I needed to recreate this for myself.

Shandy

1 part beer

1 part lemonade

mix all two ingredients. Enjoy.

Roasted Potato Salad

2011-05-15T02:21:00.000-05:00

I'm bringing this to the food blogger potluck tomorrow. Hopefully it'll go over well!

3 lbs potatoes, peeled, cubed, roasted

4 cloves garlic, oven roasted

1/2 lb bacon

1 c sour cream
1/2 large onion, diced
1/2 lb green beans, de-stemmed, chopped into 1 in segments
2 green onions, chopped
1/4 c parsley, chopped
salt+pepper to taste
extra virgin olive oil

Set oven to 400. Toss potatoes with salt, pepper, and olive oil. Coat the garlic cloves with olive oil as well. Roast the potatoes and garlic in the oven on a large sheet pan for ~30 minutes, or until the potatoes are easily pierced with a knife. Meanwhile, render the fat from the bacon and cook it until crisp. Remove the bacon and chop. Set aside. Remove all but ~1 T bacon grease from the pan. Saute onions with a pinch of salt until browned. Remove the onions. Add in an additional 1 T of the bacon grease and then add in the green beans and a pinch of salt. Cook until tender crisp. Squeeze out the garlic from the 4 cloves. Mash it up and mix with the sour cream. In a large bowl, gently combine all ingredients. Season with salt and pepper and taste for seasoning.

Ramping up

2011-05-08T21:31:00.002-05:00

Seeing what this whole ramp craze is about... I sauteed the little bits in olive oil for a minute or two and then added in the leaves to wilt. We tried it then and it was pretty tasty, but I'm not convinced it's $15/lb good. Since the pan was hot and had some oil in it, I threw in an egg and fried it up to eat with the ramps. Such a pitiful (though tasty) little bowl of food had almost a dollar's worth of ingredients in it. I think that made Colby sad.

Friday Eve Jam

2011-05-05T18:49:00.000-05:00

This week has been insane. I'm sort of surprised that I haven't exploded, but repeated listening of Easy Wonderful has eased the madness. This is probably my favorite song on the album.

Pasta toss, frittata, and eggs

2011-04-30T13:33:00.001-05:00

The first official philanthropic effort from the Austin Food Blogger Association is to help the Central Austin Food Bank SNAP program create nutritious and inexpensive meals that can be made on the cheap. If you would like to know more about the CAFB or would like to donate please visit these sites:

http://www.austinfoodbank.org/

http://hungerisunacceptable.com

I started to learn a lot more about nutrition after I found out I'm glucose intolerant. Sure, I knew that we were supposed to eat mostly plants, but that's not always fun and it was easy for me to ignore. One thing that I've mostly given up since then is pasta. When I do have pasta, though, I make it count. No more huge portions of watery tasteless pasta with jarred tomato sauce. We've made the switch to whole wheat pasta and have never looked back (well, maybe once or twice).

One of my favorite ways to eat whole wheat pasta is to stirfry it in a pan with vegetables. It gives leftovers some life and allows the noodles to be infused with flavor while helping to get rid of any bitter whole wheat flavors. It also makes for a more nutritious meal because I can sneak in some extra flora.

1 lb whole wheat pasta ($1.50)
4 T olive oil (~$.60)
1/2 medium onion, diced (~$0.50)
1 medium carrot, peeled and diced (~$0.20)
4-5 medium-sized cloves of garlic, minced (~$0.15)

1 lb vine tomatoes, cut up ($1.70)
1 bunch spinach, thoroughly rinsed and roughly chopped ($1.98/bunch)
4 oz shredded mozzarella ($0.93)
salt+pepper

1. Boil the pasta in salted water until al dente, which varies on the type of pasta used. Angel hair pasta cooks rather quickly, where as things like penne pasta take longer. I prefer angel hair in dishes like these.

2. In a pan, heat up the olive oil over medium heat. Add in the carrots and onion and ~1 t salt and cook until translucent (~5-10 minutes).

3. Add in the garlic and stir until fragrant (~30s - 1 minute).

4. Add in the tomatoes and the pasta and stir until the tomatoes are heated through. (2-3 minutes or so).

5. Add in the spinach and stir until it's all wilted (~1 minute).

6. Stir in the mozzarella cheese until it's melted. (~1 minute).

7. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

This should make ~8 servings or so and costs $7.56 to make, which is $0.95 a serving. These prices were based on prices I found at my local HEB. Things like the olive oil and the garlic were prorated to what that portion would cost, though the price of salt and pepper were omitted. A half pound of pasta is more than enough to feed a family of four with leftovers. These leftovers can then be turned into a quick frittata for the next day's meal.

Remaining pasta+veggie leftovers
4 eggs, beaten ($0.50)
4 oz shredded mozzarella ($0.93)
1 tsp olive oil ($0.05)
~1 tsp salt+pepper

1. Preheat oven to 350 F.

2. Oil a small casserole or oven-safe vessel. A pie plate would work really well.

3. Beat the eggs, salt, and pepper.

4. Pour over the pasta in the oiled dish and sprinkle with the mozzarella.

5. Bake for ~20 minutes, or until the eggs are set all the way through. You'll be able to tell when this happens because the center won't jiggle if you shake the dish. Either that or see if you can cleanly put a knife in it.

This dish can easily be expanded by adding more eggs and either one of these dishes work well because the ingredients are so interchangeable. The additional cost of this dish is $1.48. Since we used leftovers, this dish ends up costing $0.25 per serving. I'm claiming that the addition of the eggs and mozzarella bulk up the leftovers to 6 servings. Both meals end up totaling $9.04, which ends up being $0.90 per serving.

So how does the pasta dish stack up nutritionally? The pasta has the following nutritional values:

321 calories

10.2 g fat

9.13 mg cholesterol

505 mg sodium

48.4 g carbohydrate

9.16 g fiber

13.9 g protein

This isn't the whole story, though. Here are a selected set of vitamins/nutrients:

17.5% RDA iron

19.0% RDA calcium

117% RDA vitamin A

34.4% RDA vitamin C

The same can be calculated for the fritatta by multiplying each of the above items by 2/3 and adding in the following values from the eggs, olive oil, and mozzarella:

104 calories

7.07 g fat

153 mg cholesterol

164 mg sodium

0.78 g carbohydrate

8.78 g protein

3.83% RDA iron

5.50% RDA calcium

0.50% RDA vitamin A

These two dishes could feasibly provide a healthy dinner for two nights and two lunches. In addition, there will still be leftover items like eggs. Eggs are nutritious and filled with protein. They can also be cooked in the microwave, which makes them a good after school snack option for a hungry middle schooler. Here's how to proceed:

1 egg ($0.13)

smear of olive oil ($0.01)

1. smear a tiny bit of olive oil in a microwave safe bowl

2. beat eggs in the bowl

3. microwave for ~30 s, stir.

4. microwave again for ~10 s at a time and check for doneness.

You can also add in things like cheese, vegetables, herbs, spices.

Working from home is awesome because

2011-04-29T11:57:00.000-05:00

my house smells like basil and garlic and tomatoes and Colby is eating homemade tomato basil soup. Annddd... this is what I ate for breakfast:

Fried egg on multigrain toast with CheesyGirl Hottie chevre

all the while contemplating the elements that make up the oldest stars in the universe.

Pumped

2011-04-27T08:28:00.002-05:00

These would hurt a lot more if not for my secret weapon: a pair of flip flops in my bag.

Outfitted

2011-04-21T18:25:00.001-05:00

I've been reading a lot of fashion blogs lately and it kind of makes me want to join. The problem is that it's even harder to write a fashion blog without pictures than it is a food blog. Oops.

Anywho, today I'm wearing a garish skirt with equally garish shoes.

Ends and odds

2011-04-13T23:49:00.000-05:00

So... it's been busy. I'm like a good solid day's worth of work away from being able to say that I have a 99.9% complete first draft of my paper. There's still one problem that I won't be able to solve, but I think it'll be good enough to call a First Draft to send to my committee. I've also had other things going on, but suffice it to say, I owe Community Supported Home Cooking about four posts now and I owe Lewis a post as well. I'm hoping that I'll get to those over the weekend.

Anywho, last Sunday we went to Urban an American Grill for brunch as part of Austin Restaurant Week. It was really good. I'm pretty sure that adding brunch to Restaurant Week was one of their most brilliant ideas yet. Who doesn't love brunch!? *Anywho* Colby got a bloody mary, Branch Ranch steak with fries, and strawberry shortcake bread pudding. I got a tulip (cava+cranberry juice), salmon eggs benedict, and a trio of sorbets (olive oil, mint, and grapefruit). I didn't have my phone on me at that point because it was dead, but everything was pretty and delicious. My favorite part was definitely dessert. The mint sorbet was alright, but the grapefruit sorbet was phenomenal. It was really delicate and delicious. The best part, though, was definitely the olive oil sorbet. We went on the first day of ARW, so apparently the sorbet hadn't properly set yet, but that wasn't a problem. It had a really velvety mouth feel and a creamy, balanced flavor. I'd love to try it again when it's properly set. The only reason I know any of this was because the chef came out to talk to us, which was totally cool. We'll definitely head back there at some point to try other parts of the menu.

There's still another weekend for restaurant week and it's a really great way to try different restaurants that are prohibitively expensive. Bonus! Some of the participating restaurants donate part of their proceeds to charity. You can find these restaurants here and a list of ALL participating restaurants here. The last restaurant week, we went to Sullivan's Steak House and the one before, we found ourselves at Fogo de Chao. They were both really tasty, but no longer an option for us... which brings me to why I really decided to post.

I just made pasta and meatballs for my weekly meal sharing project. I had some grassfed ground beef in the freezer, as well as some ground pork. The recipe I use is criminally easy and makes the most delicious meatballs I've ever had. The only problem is that I have no idea where the pork originated. I bought it from Central Market awhile back, but I honestly haven't put a lot of effort into sourcing where they get their meat. This has become a priority for me after reading Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer. I'm not about to go vegan, but Colby and I have made the decision to enter into the realm of "ethical omnivorism". For us, this means that we're going to be getting our meats from local farms that have higher standards than just claiming to be "all natural". And this also means that we're likely done with chicken.

Right now, we have about 3 lbs of frozen chicken breasts, a half a pack of jalapeno sausage, and a brick of tempeh in the freezer. I'll let you guess which one we bought most recently. I am vehemently opposed to throwing away food, so we're getting through it, but we're done buying any more meat products that we haven't first properly researched and sourced. The end goal is to stop eating food that has anything to do with factory farms, but we're doing this one step at a time and our first step is to stop eating animals that were abused, tortured, or generally mistreated on their way to a terrible slaughter. I have so many more thoughts about this, but I'm sure I'll explore this topic in later posts.

Scenes from an American kitchen

2011-04-05T12:10:00.000-05:00

Scene: Colby comes home for lunch and all we have is about a 1/3 c of quinoa and half a chicken breast. Julie roots around the fridge and finds a maple bacon cupcake and sets it out for lunch.

Julie: Did you eat the cupcake?
Colby: Yeah, that's why I'm flossing.
Julie: Whaa...?
Colby: I have bacon in my teeth, freak.

End scene.

Austin Bakes for Japan Recap

2011-04-04T12:09:00.000-05:00

AMAZING spread, eh?

On Saturday, Colby and I arrived at the Nomad Bar a little after 10 AM. We brought about 30 homemade kolaches to sell and met several other Austin bloggers including Anna from Keep It Luce, Elizabeth from Local Savour, Rachelle from Blinded By the Bite, and Casey from The Modern Gelatina.

My homage to Colby's deep east Texas Czech roots.

We donated some money and picked up some really amazing baked goods, including a gluten free brownie baked by Rachelle (that Colby *loved* and didn't even know was gluten free until I pointed to the bottom of the bag), cupcakes from Sugar Mama's, strawberry jelly from someone, and an incredible apple tart made by another mystery person. In all, the event was a smashing success and the city wide bake sale raised ~$11,000 for Americare's humanitarian efforts in Japan.

Oh, and that apple tart was the bombdotcom.

Tomatoes

2011-04-03T17:08:00.001-05:00

Local organic tomatoes from Gundermann Acres, oil, vinegar, fresh oregano, sea salt, and freshly cracked pepper. Need I say more?

Vices.

2011-03-31T10:54:00.000-05:00

So those maple bacon cupcakes with chocolate bock-flavored cream cheese frosting I made? Super yummy, but I can't eat more than half of one before feeling like I'm about to have a heart attack. Basically? They're vice in a frilly pink wrapper.

Austin Bakes for Japan

2011-03-30T01:23:00.000-05:00

I went to the Austin Food Blogger Alliance happy hour at Takoba today with Colby. Once we arrived, I realized that the only IRL person I actually knew was Colby. We ventured in the bar for a couple of beers and loosened up a bit. It turns out that physics majors aren't the most sociable people and much of our socializing in undergrad came with lots of alcohol. *ahem*

Eventually we wandered a bit and found some really neat people to talk with. I managed to meet two other people named Julie, which is awesome because anyone named Julie is totally rad (duh). See, even Fountains of Wayne think so:

One person I did hope to spot was the person running Austin Bakes for Japan. Basically, it's a bake sale being held at several different locations across Austin to raise donations for Americares' humanitarian efforts in Japan. See here or the flyer below for more details. This is a really important cause and every donation of food, time, and money will help!

Colby and I will be at the East location from 10-12 on Saturday morning with homemade kolaches. You should come out and pick up some awesome baked goods for an even more meaningful cause!

[Si]lly...haha get it?

2011-03-29T11:49:00.001-05:00

At one point I started an astronomy humor blog. Mostly it was because there was a paper that came out with a ridiculous figure. It turns out that astronomy isn't that funny. It's mostly frustrating, occasionally satisfying, and supposedly rewarding; hence, I abandoned that blog, but if I hadn't I would have posted this there.

Instead of here.

On my food blog.

Oh well. I'll explain these later. Sometime. You know... in the future. Until then, I'll just amuse myself and continue on measuring the amount of silicon (seriously, now do you get the title? C'mon, it's funny!) in the oldest stars observable in the universe. Yeah..

Menu Planning Part a zillion

2011-03-28T00:36:00.001-05:00

I've begun to venture into the deep dark world of tofu and it's not going so well. For dinner tonight, we had tofu with a spicy peanut sauce and I mostly wanted to eat the peanut sauce and feed the tofu to the babydog. She didn't have a problem with that, but I needed to actually eat dinner, so I ate the tofu. I'm hoping that the rest of the week is tastier, so here's a menu since I haven't posted one in quite awhile.

Monday - Either going out to dinner or probably grilled chicken breast with salad and grilled corn
Tuesday - CSHC goodies.
Wednesday - CSHC goodies part II.
Thursday - We're getting our CSA share that day, so I'm thinking lots of greens, grilled fish, and polenta
Friday - rice and beans and more stuff from the CSA

Friday Night Jam

2011-03-25T22:53:00.000-05:00

I should probably take this advice, but it's 10:52 on a Friday night and I'm working my paper. ANYWHO. New Orleans Part II coming up soon... after this draft is submitted to the bosspeople. (I would say "bossman", but there are two and one is a woman.)

Spring Break Part I

2011-03-23T00:52:00.001-05:00

This past weekend was awesome. Kyle flew in from Tucson for part of Spring break and I took a few days off from paper writing to visit New Orleans. Colby hates cities and didn't want to spend 18 hours in a car for 36 hours in a city, so he stayed home and watched the babydog. Kyle and I, on the other hand, took the opportunity to explore creole cooking and meet up with my college friend Traci.

We left on Friday mourning (not a typo) at 7:30 AM and made it to Sulphur, LA by lunch time. We found a Wendy's because we just wanted something fast and cheap. This might have been a mistake because it was overrun with a large group of middle school kids, most of whom were girls. At the register the cashier asked me if I was part of the middle school group... I apparently still look 12 (I'm 25!). We ended up in New Orleans at around 5:00 PM at the Bywater Bed & Breakfast. As per usual, the sight of a man and woman together implies marriage or togetherness and so the innkeeper asked if we actually wanted two separate beds. Yes, yes we did.

We went out the first night and went to Luke, a brasserie-style restaurant. One of my motivations to go to New Orleans in the first place is my major crush on John Besh. This restaurant did not disappoint. We started by sharing the pate of Louisiana rabbit and duck livers topped with a muscato gelee, which was served with whole grain mustard, fennel relish, something that was pickled that we never did figure out, and sweet pickles.

The muscato gelee wasn't so much to our liking, but once you get around that, it was awesome. The pate was incredibly rich and the whole grain mustard and fennel relish helped to cut through it and made it a wonderful appetizer. This was really way too much for two people, but it was definitely a really great choice.

Kyle ordered drum meuniere, which was served with roasted vegetables. I don't remember if I tried it. I think I did. It didn't matter, though, because in terms of this dinner, I totally won.

I ordered the moules et frites. These were Prince Edward Island mussels steamed with garlic, thyme, butter, and wine and served with fries. The fries were delicious, but this was all about the mussels. So. freaking. good. Once I ate a layer or so off, I was able to get to the delicious sauce in the bottom of the vessel. Dipping the mussels in it was divine. Dipping the fries in it was even better. Dipping the bread in it? I don't even have words to describe how delicious. This was definitely one of the highlights of the trip.

Afterward, we wandered around the French Quarter for a bit, but mostly we stayed on Bourbon Street. Bourbon Street has been described like Sixth Street, but longer and filthier. I knew this in the back of my head, but I just wasn't prepared. Bourbon Street-style drinking involves things called "hand grenades" and "hurricanes" and some other concoction that's served in a fish bowl. The bars don't have to close at 2 AM, unlike everywhere else I've ever lived and patrons are allowed to wander out of the bars as long as they have "to go" vessels (i.e. not glass bottles). Not that anyone cares whether or not there are glass bottles. Kyle and I walked up and down and eventually got to Tropical Isle and we each had a hand grenade. I have no idea what's in it, but holy crap it had a lot of alcohol.

UGH

After finishing ~3/4 of our drinks, we found ourselves at Pat O'Brien, home of the hurricane and a dueling piano bar. I love dueling piano bars more than is reasonable for someone my age. I think part of it has to do with watching old people get crazy drunk... and then singing. The place was packed and we were seated next to a gay couple from Houston. I decided that I needed something slightly less alcoholic than the hand grenade, so I opted for a beer. Kyle wanted to try the signature hurricane. After making it through about half of the beer and half of the hurricane, the couple decided that we looked thirsty and ordered us one. At that point I knew I was in trouble. The next morning was rough, but well worth the night before. But this is a story for another post.

Spring Break Posting

2011-03-16T20:47:00.000-05:00

I've been busy and lazy, hence the posting has vastly slowed down. This doesn't mean, however, that I've abandoned the internet. Here are some interesting links from the past couple of weeks that I've been meaning to share.

Universal Wrapping Paper - Too cool! And I'd totally get/make some if I actually wrapped my presents. ;)

Redesigned Recipes - New and (mostly) interesting ways to represent recipes. I really like the Choose Your Own Egg Adventure

I Don't Need a Hug - This is basically my mantra.

Mapping Gangs and Cupcakes - this is mostly just interesting, but Colby just came in and said that it was stupid. :( Asshole.

And there you have it.

Wherein I suck. Also, coffee is delicious.

2011-03-12T10:51:00.000-06:00

Colby's uncle died last week. He was 81 and had 7 children and 15 grandchildren. His funeral is going on right now and I should be there. Instead, I'm at a coffee shop 2 miles down the road waiting the service out. I sort of knew that it was going to be hard, but I couldn't quite put my finger on why. I've never met this person and the last time Colby saw him, he was 11. We got a call from Colby's dad on Thursday. Actually, Colby sent it to voicemail and Thursday night we listened to the message that said that he and Jason, Colby's brother, were in the midst of driving down to Texas from Michigan and that they'd be in the state on Friday and the funeral was Saturday.

Colby and I made the trek to Richmond, TX, just outside of Houston, this morning. It only occurred to me enroute that this was going to be flashback inducing. Colby's grandparents are the oldest non-religious people I've ever met. I've never met anyone before whose grandparents weren't religious. It was a little bit strange, but I attribute that to my incredibly Catholic upbringing. The thing is, though, that these are his maternal grandparents. His dad's side is all Catholic and this was going to be a Catholic service. I prepped Colby about the proper way to make the sign of the cross (spectacles, testicles, watch, wallet), what happens during a mass (DO NOT under ANY circumstances try to receive communion, you heathen). It was only then that I realized that the last Catholic funeral I attended was my mom's. This was going to be the stuff of emotional napalm.

I convinced myself that as long as the service was different, it was going to be okay. Apparently all Catholic funeral services are the same. The song of the opening precession was the same. As long as they didn't play "On Eagle's Wings" I was going to be okay, but that was the second song. At that point there were tears. Totally inappropriate tears for my mom, at someone else's funeral. And then I left. And now I'm sitting at a coffee shop. It's probably the only independent coffee shop in Richmond, TX if Richmond is the way Kyle describes it. And the coffee is pretty good.

So the next time you find yourself in Richmond, TX avoiding a Catholic funeral because it's way too much like your mom's, go to Mugz. They make a good latte.

Spicy Syrup

2011-03-10T22:23:00.000-06:00

I was going to post about an apple pie that's in the oven, but honestly, I'm not convinced that it's going to be that good. I was going to bake a pie for the talk I gave a week ago, but I was too busy. I had Colby chop up some apples for that effort, but they've been in an plastic bag in my fridge for over a week now and if they weren't going to be used now, they weren't going to be used ever. I decided that I wanted to make a "spicy" pie. I'm still convinced that it can be done well, but I phoned it in and used store bought crust. I'll post a real apple pie recipe when I make a real apple pie from scratch. And by "from scratch" I mean starting with flour and butter, not Carl Sagan from scratch. ;)

The one thing that came out of this that was incredible, was the seasonings I used for the apples. It ends up being spicy and sweet and it's begging me to get some ice cream, but I'm lactose intolerant and ate a bunch of pizza at dinner, so my carb limit is kind of maxed out for the day. I can imagine using this on fruits like peaches and plum (ooh... perhaps grilled peaches and plums) or over ice cream or just of a jar with a spoon

Spicy Syrup
1.5 oz Pimm's No 1
2.5 T butter
1 T vanilla extract
3/4 c sugar
1 t corn starch
1 T cinnamon
1/2 t cayenne
1 t ginger
1/2 t cloves
1/4 t fresh ground black pepper

Melt butter over medium heat. Whisk the pimms, vanilla extract, and corn starch together. Add this to the butter, along with the remaining ingredients. Reduce until it can coat the back of a spoon. Don't lick the spoon because it's going to be hot. Like crazy hot. Not that I know that from experience or anything. *Ahem*

Martes Gordo

2011-03-08T19:14:00.002-06:00

chalupa especial, queso, and the best salsa in the world. nom nom.

Or should it be martes grasa?

Also, Amaya's Taco Village is the best Tex-Mex in Austin.

Happy March!

2011-03-08T11:43:00.000-06:00

Okay, so I haven't posted much lately. I also haven't been dealing with my glucose intolerance very well lately either. It turns out that healthy eating is mostly difficult for me because it involves lots of planning and free time that is apparently being ripped from my hands. But whatever, everyone's busy. I didn't come here to post and bitch about my busy schedule. I came here to bitch about Paczki Day. Or, really, the lack of Paczki Day in Austin. I miss the ooeygooeyjellyfilledpowderedsugartopped doughnuts from Hamtramck. The closest thing we have in Austin, it seems, is the kolache. It turns out that those make a poor substitute for the beloved Paczki.

And this? This is how you do Paczki Day. You stand in long lines outside bakeries in Hamtramck and get a dozen amazing paczki to go. Next year, I'm totally making my own.

Jam of the night

2011-02-23T23:17:00.001-06:00

Because let's not kid ourselves... this is mostly my personal dumping ground, rather than a food blog. Here's my new favorite song of the week.

Broccoli rice'n'cheese

2011-02-23T03:09:00.000-06:00

Here's a quick post because I'm on my phone and suffering from caffeine-induced insomnia. I've been sick for about 2 months now with some horrible sinus infection that morphed into the flu and then back into a sinus infection. It's been the definition of not fun. Apparently this isn't "normal" and after going to three different doctors to try to get antibiotics to treat it, one decided that I should get a blood panel to see if there was something wrong. It turns out that I have a crazy huge vitamin D deficiency, which is bad for a host of reasons. I also found out that I'm glucose intolerant. This means that my body can't properly deal with sugars in blood after I eat something that is carb-heavy. From what I've gathered, this is a pre-insulin resistant state, which is pre-diabetic. I guess this means that I'm pre-pre-diabetic, which is kind of scary to think about.

What does this mean for my food blogs? Well, nothing really. I need to eat smaller meals more often and when I do eat carbs, I need to make sure that they're always paired with protein. In an effort to make sure that I do eat properly, I've been trying to incorporate a whole lot more vegetables and fruits into my diet. And tomorrow, for dinner, we're going to have broccoli, rice, and cheese casserole as a stand in for the carb-heavy mac'n'cheese. Brown rice is a vast improvement over normal macaroni and bulking up the dish with broccoli adds nutrients, fiber, and lets me use up some stuff in my refrigerator.

Broccoli, rice, and cheese casserole

1 c brown rice

2 c stock (or 2 c water + 2 T bouillon), I used chicken

1 T butter

1 T flour

1 c milk

s+p to taste

1 c mozzarella cheese, shredded

2 oz chevre.

3 c broccoli, cut into bite sized pieces, cooked (broccoli stems work well here)

Cook the rice with the chicken stock. In a small sauce pan, heat butter until melted. Whisk in flour and stir until it turns tan. Add in milk and stir again until smooth. Bring to a simmer and let thicken. Add in cheeses, lower heat, and stir until the cheese is melted and well combined. Combine the rice, broccoli, and cheese sauce and eat up.

Birthday Dinners Are Awesome.

2011-02-19T23:51:00.000-06:00

I apparently crave seafood every time my birthday rolls around. When I was little, I always went to Red Lobster (fancy, I know) and last year we went to Truluck's. This year we made our way to Uchiko. I've been completely excited about the prospect of going there to eat and it definitely didn't disappoint. I took some pictures, but it was dark, so mostly they didn't turn out so well.

We started with an amuse bouche of strawberry and beet sprinkled with sea salt. I kind of hate beets, but this was mostly okay.

candlelight does not good photography make

Again, my apologies for the pictures.

So Uchiko has a permanent menu that has a lot of incredible dishes and then they have a specials menu that is constantly changing. The difference between Uchiko's specials list and another restaurant's specials menu is that this isn't the chef trying to get rid of some ingredient that's going to go bad shortly. We ordered the first course from the permanent menu. It was called ko viche and it consisted of a fresh diver scallop served on top of a tomatillo with kalamata olive powder, black lime, and a corn "chip" served on top. We used the corn chip to scoop up the entire thing. It was light and delicious and acidic in a good way.

The next course was tempura nasu, which basically meant deep fried Japanese eggplant. It was served sprinkled with a chili powder and served with a sweet and spicy chili sauce. Let's get one thing straight: I hate eggplant. Or at least, I thought I hated eggplant. This was divine. I actually think that this is the best fried food I've ever had in my life. It wasn't soggy, but it was crispy and delicious and light and everything that was good and right in the world. I'm definitely going to try to make this at home.

The next dish we ordered was off their daily menu called "skin and bones". It was presented as a really interesting salad, with cured salmon, crispy salmon skin, lettuce+seabeans (hence the "salad" bit), salmon roe, all atop meyer lemon curd. Colby didn't really like it, but I loved it. Then again, I'm a sucker for anything with salmon skin. The meyer lemon curd was amazing and the salmon roe presented a nice salty balance to the sweet curd.

Too pretty to not take a picture, but too dark to take a pretty picture.

The next dish they brought out was from the permanent menu called chicken karaage. It was basically fried chicken, served with a lemon+pepper dipping sauce. It was awesome. It came out with a bunch of different pickled items as well. The chicken was spicy and sweet and well cooked. This was Colby's favorite dish.

The last dish we shared was the shag roll. When in Rome, right? I overheard the waitress tell another customer that this was the one menu item from Uchi that Tyson Cole allowed Uchiko to share. The shag roll is a tempura battered roll, with salmon and sundried tomatoes. It was served with squid ink. The first thing that struck me when I bit into it was how hot it was... temperature wise. I assumed that tempura meant that the salmon would be battered and fried, but it was the whole roll. Regardless, it was tasty, though I don't particularly like squid ink.

I also ordered a piece of nigiri. I got the madai sushi, which consisted of Japanese bream, a fish that I've never had before, shiso leaf, and meyer lemon zest on top of some olive oil. It was very tasty and I'd love to come back again and try a lot more of their sushi.

And finally... dessert.

I'm not a huge fan of dessert, but all I've heard about was how fantastic the dessert at Uchi is, so I had really high hopes for Uchiko's desserts. A lot of this is molecular gastronomy inspired and I don't hate that. I actually think that it makes dessert interesting to eat, instead of something that you scarf down because it's a combination of fat and sugar.

Colby ordered the fried milk, which was served with ice milk, chocolate mousse, chocolate wafers, and a chocolate sauce. The fried milk is the golden brown and delicious cube in the picture. When you sink the fork into it, the milk oozes out. It was the best part of the dessert. I tried all the parts, but I'm not into chocolate, so anything with chocolate seemed unbearably bitter to me.

I got the sweet corn sorbet, which was served with sweetened corn "chips", polenta, a corn puree, polenta "soil" and lemon droplets. The corn puree was very sweet, but was well balanced by the lemon. The sorbet was AMAZING. Taking a bit of everything was pretty much how God intended dessert to be. I can't wait until I go back to Uchiko because there's just so much more I want to try on their menu.

this picture gets to be bigger because it's the most delicious.

It's my birthday and I'll post if I want to.

2011-02-14T03:01:00.001-06:00

So first of all, Happy Valentine's Day! And if you hate valentine's day, then Happy Cupcake Distribution Day! I swear, it's a thing... I just made up, but if you're in the astronomy department today, then you can participate. :)

My parents told me that I was super excited to turn five. I thought that it was going to make me SOO grown up, but now twenty years later (holy crap), I wish I was closer to five than twenty-five. The past four years have been incredibly eventful.

21. Colby and I started dating.
22. We graduated college, moved halfway across the country, and got married.
23. We bought a new car and then our first house.
24. We got a puppy and I got my masters degree.

I'm not so sure what twenty-five is going to hold for me and for us, but I hope it includes publishing my first refereed journal paper and an actual vacation. So far, twenty-five has meant making cupcakes with Colby, making sure the dog didn't tear the house apart and determining photometric temperatures for my standard stars.

Oh, and I finally got all the loot. ;) Colby's almost finished with the sous vide set up, and it looks like all he needs to do is test it. I'm going to be pouring over my two new cookbooks to look for recipes that I can modify to include sous vide cooking, but that will be for later because tonight we're going to go to Uchiko for my birthday dinner.

Frittata alla putanesca

2011-02-11T15:08:00.001-06:00

SO. Colby listened to me. He's pretty much the best gift giver ever when he listens. The best part about getting multiple gifts that I already know about is that I get a "new" gift every day. The other day, I got to crack open Bitchin' Kitchen and it's hilarious and filled with some pretty awesome looking recipes. Nadia G's recipes sound incredibly straight forward and reading through it made me crave frittata and pasta alla putanesca. The only logical thing was to combine the two.

Frittata alla putanesca (or, you know, fritatta the way a whore would make it)
1/2 lb angel hair pasta, boiled in salted water
1/4 c pesto
8 eggs
6 or so anchovy filets packed in oil, smushed into a paste
1 T+1 t anchovy oil
1 c shredded mozzarella cheese
3 cloves garlic, finely minced or crushed
1 c cherry or grape tomatoes, halved
1 T capers (if packed in salt, rinse them)12 kalamata olives, pitted and roughly chopped

Magic mushrooms optional

Preheat oven to 350. Grease a vessel (like a pie plate or an oven safe pan) with 1 t anchovy oil. Toss cooked pasta with 1 T anchovy oil and pesto. Set aside. In a large bowl, whisk the eggs until sort of foamy. Whisk in the anchovy paste. Fold in cheese, tomatoes, garlic, capers, and olives. Toss in the pasta and fold to coat all the noodles and evenly-ish distribute the goodies. Pour everything into the pie plate and bake for ~35ish minutes or until the frittata no longer wobbles in the middle.

Fresh from the oven noms

p.s. check out my recap of our first week of community supported home cooking and Randi's post about cooking really delicious, healthy and cost effective meals!

Favorite Superbowl Commercial:

2011-02-07T00:18:00.000-06:00

By and far, this commercial was my favorite:

On the exact opposite end was the Groupon commercial mocking Tibet's struggles. See Angry Asian Man's take. In the middle, I wasn't so impressed.

What was your favorite commercial?

This is what almost burning down your house looks like

2011-02-03T15:11:00.000-06:00

In my defense, I can't smell anything. I have a cold again. I've been sick for the past two months and this is how this whole house burning business started. It began in Boston, where I got a simple cold, which then turned into a full blown sinus infection in Michigan. Back to Austin, where the cedar is in crazy full bloom in addition to having a housefull of people who were just on airplanes and we were all sick again. Fastforward about a week and I found myself in Seattle, filled with astronomers who care way more about SCIENCE than their health (and I guess that includes me), and then I got the flu. I was getting a lot better until everyone in the astronomy department in Austin got sick and now I'm going to the doctor.

Which is why I was home. Colby asked me to make him this boxed couscous crap for lunch. The directions read: "Boil 1.5 c of water with 2 t of butter and the seasoning packet". Our stove takes forever to boil water, so I turned the burner on high, put the pot+lid on the stove and walked away. I used a pot that I got in undergrad when I moved into my first apartment. Boxed couscous doesn't deserve good cookware. ;) Also, all the good stuff was dirty. What you should know about this crappy pot is that it's blue enamelware, super old, and chipping. I guess you can't expect quality from $10 K-Mart specials. (JK. I'm sort of surprised it lasted this long.)

I went back to the home office and started doing more science. (Man, science *always* gets in my way.) I totally forgot about the crazy hot stove with the crappy old pot until Colby came home for lunch and asked what the burning smell was. I couldn't smell anything, but I could see the smoke wafting through the kitchen and living room area. Oops. Colby tried to get the pot off the stove, but it was stuck. The enamel on the outside had MELTED onto the burner and now my stove looks like this:

mm mm blue goo

Working lunch

2011-01-31T14:41:00.002-06:00

Just a quick post on my lunch break. We got fennel, butternut squash, and apples in our CSA. It turns out that I don't actually like fennel because it tastes like licorice (you know, the gross kind, not the strawberry Twizzler version), so I needed a recipe that masked the anise-y flavor. Enter: another version of butternut squash soup. This one is super easy and it's just a chop and dump job, requiring a knife+cutting board, a pan, and a stick blender.

Butternut squash soup with fennel and apples
2 T extra virgin olive oil

1 2-2.5 lb butternut squash, peeled, seeded, and cut into 1 in cubes
1 fennel bulb+ stems, diced
3-4 smallish apples, diced
3-4 c chicken stock
0.5 t nutmeg

0.5 t cayenne pepper (or more if you really like it spicy)
1 t smoked sweet paprika

s+p to taste

Heat up evoo in a large saucepan/stockpot. Add fennel, butternut squash, and apples and sautee until the butternut squash can be easily pierced with a fork and everything is a little bit browned.

Add in nutmeg, cayenne, and smoked sweet paprika, and stir to coat. Cook for ~1 minute to let the spices toast a bit.

Add in chicken stock. The amount sort of depends on how big your squash is, but make sure that there's enough liquid to stick blender it without it being too thin.

Season with salt and pepper to taste.

P.S. Check out Randi's post at Community Supported Home Cooking! :)