My Two Part Approach to my New Year's Resolutions

Being that I'm still recovering from adolescence, my New Years resolutions usually include "being healthy", which is really just code for "losing weight". This year is no different and I'm taking steps in the right direction (I hope!). I'm going to see about a gym membership on Saturday at Curves. I'm a little skeptical, but it didn't seem *too* expensive and it's way closer to my apartment than the UT gym. I've also resolved to start eating better, which includes my snacks. Tonight it was chicken noodle soup, which was basically chicken stock, noodles, chicken, and veggies (this time being carrots, onion, and celery). The other night we made stir-fry with broccoli, chickpeas, and green pepper all foraged from the local Whole Foods. And I can see now that this post is mostly to showcase my horrible camera skillZ AND to keep with my new year's resolution.





Perhaps, one day, I'll figure out how to incorporate pictures into this... but anywho... The other thing that we've been doing a lot is drinking smoothies for whatever reason. I think part of it is that we got a ginormous bag of frozen strawberries from Costco (which, if you're into bulk goods, is a much better choice than Sam's Club).

Mid-snack, it occurred to me that this is exactly the best food to give to sick kids. Who doesn't love soup when they've got a cold? And these smoothies have so much vitamin C that it's a better way to boost the immune system (and to make Linus Pauling happy) than simply taking vitamin C pills. The only thing that's missing is the Vernor's (which is by far the superior ginger ale if you're into that sort of thing). It's revelations like that that make me want to have babies like yesterday.

Home! :)

I'm back! As in, I'm back in Austin for the foreseeable future and I have no travel plans until June, in which a couple of weddings occur in Michigan. Despite vague feelings of homesickness, I'm happy to be back in my own space where I get to be in charge and no one yells at me for not doing the dishes immediately after use. In other words, I'm just glad that there are no more grown ups around to yell at my any more.

We left Austin on the 11th of December, traveled between Stockbridge, Lansing, and Harper Woods, Michigan until January 2 and then headed out early that morning and arrived in Austin at 4:00 PM on January 3rd. I promptly got on a plane the following morning at 10:55 AM and headed to Long Beach, CA and returned on the 8th. Needless to say, I'm glad to be back home. All the traveling made for a lot of eating out, which was okay at first because I missed all of my Michigan eateries including (but certainly not limited to), National Coney Island (which is more "Michigan" than "National", but still the best one around), Menna's Joint (which reeks of college... in the good way), and Old Chicago (which reminds me of falling in love with my husband ::waits for the "awws"::). Substantial changes in my family meant that there were no home cooked meals awaiting me at my house, so meal time at home consisted of me catching up with my friends, though we did have a few nice meals with Colby's family. Other than that, the conference was all eating out, and though I did get ridiculously good seafood and confused at Pinkberry*, I was seriously craving something homemade.

Enter the KitchenAid Stand Mixer. The biggest change in my family, aside from the wedding, is that my dad is now engaged to a really nice woman named Denice. My dad, being tapped out from the wedding, gave us a nice card for Christmas, but Denice got us the sausage/pasta maker+vegetable roto-slicer attachment for the standmixer. What's sounds better than a nice big bowl of freshly made spaghetti and meatsauce? I'm pretty sure the answer to that question is nothing. :)

I found a recipe for fresh pasta from AllRecipes which worked out really well. I had just gotten semolina flour from Whole Foods and it made all the difference! I sifted all the dry ingredients (2 c semolina flour, 2 c whole flour, 1 tsp salt) into the mixing bowl and then added 6 eggs and 2 tbs of extra virgin olive oil (because that's the oil that was closest to me). I guess next time I'll use just plain olive oil so that it doesn't overpower. I mixed it by hand (since Colby hid the flat paddle attachment) and then once it was mostly combined put it on 2 with the dough hook for 10ish minutes. I then covered it in plastic wrap and walked away for about 30 minutes.

I made Colby put the attachment on, but after that, we dumped walnut-sized pieces into the attachment thing. The most important part is that the pieces are narrow enough to get to the rotating blade. I suppose this description is horribly out of context, but if you have the attachment or if you have the manual, it makes more sense. At any rate, we put this into a large stockpot full of heavily salted water and let it boil for a minute or two after the pasta floated to the top. It turned out really well and was exceptional with the homemade pasta sauce. Though I've posted it before, I feel that I've finally come to a spice/meat decision that makes it work even better.

1 lb ground Italian sausage
1 sm yellow onion, diced
6-7 garlic cloves, minced fine
1.5 tbs extra virgin olive oil
1 tsp kosher salt
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes
1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes
2 tbs basil
1 tbs parsely
1 tsp oregano
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp sage
1 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
s+p to taste

in a pan brown Italian sausage and be sure to break it up. I did this with the Mix'n'chop that I got as a shower gift. It actually worked really well (Thanks, Franny!). In a stock pot heat the EVOO and then add in the onions + salt on low heat. Stir occasionally until the onions are translucent. Add in garlic and stir for ~1min until fragrant. Add in the tomatoes and then the herbs and then the Italian sausage and let simmer for about 15-20 minutes until the flavors have begun to really meld together. This is actually a modified recipe for a lasagna sauce, so it's meant to be cooked and it's nearly impossible to overcook, so this can be simmered for as long as need be.

Happy New Year!

Greetings and salutations! May 2009 be filled with a lot more happy than sad to all of you! New years eve was spent, in part, working on a poster that I'm presenting at a conference and cursing my lack of adequate internet access. I spent the other bits of it with good friends and good, um, drink. :)

Today, we came back to Stockbridge to pack up the rest of our stuff in order to start the 1400 mile drive from Michigan to Texas. It should be... interesting. We're taking it slower this time, but I need to be back in town on Sunday, complete with poster in hand to go to Long Beach, CA for the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society. It should be really informative and a lot more relaxing than the other meetings because, for once, I'm not trying to talk to every professor in the convention hall attempting to convince them to let me attend their graduate school.

Much to my surprise, Colby wanted to try the cookie press that we got for the shower. Most unfortunately, it was full of fail. We used a spritz cookie recipe provided with the cookie press and it's mostly butter and flour, meaning that the cookies don't really taste like much, but here's the recipe because I haven't posted one in so long that this almost doesn't count as a cooking blog any more!

Spritz Cookies (from the Pampered Chef)

3 sticks butter, softened
1 c granulated sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla
3.5 c flour

cream butter. add in sugar, egg, vanilla until thoroughly mixed. add in flour. jam in cookie press and go!



We tried all different kinds of shapes and none of them turned out well, though these three are probably the best of the bunch... which is sad. Next time, I'll use a different recipe and we'll see how it goes. Yay pictures and keeping to my New Years resolution. :)

Still procrastinating...

My husband is wearing his wedding ring with a rubber band tied around the inside because it falls off when it's cold. This leads directly to two conclusions: 1) he seriously needs to get that resized before he loses it and 2) I'm married!

Yes, I survived not only the wedding, but also the reception, after party at my house, and Christmas with my future step-family and my in-laws. I am now allowed to use acronyms like "DH" and MIL and... um... I think that's it. And, as a bonus for making it through the wedding and the holiday, we have found ourselves in possession of some nifty door prizes including (but not limited to) a 13 piece tri-ply stainless steel Calphalon cookware set, the meat-grinder-pasta-maker stand mixer attachment, and a new last name.

I haven't really been sure about what I wanted to do with my last name, but I finally decided to take Colby's last name as my own because I wanted to. At 22, I haven't really made a huge career based around my maiden name, so other than some annoying paperwork, I couldn't really find any compelling reasons to not change my name. Right now, I guess my name is in flux. My user name for a lot of things has become my J-lo name, which ends up being jkru, but the new name would be j-ho, much less appealing. I guess I'll keep jkru until I find something better. ;)

Since the wedding, I've been shuttling back and forth between Colby's home town and my home town. We live only an hour and a half apart, but after spending appreciable time in what is essentially a rural area, I'm beginning to understand how Colby can keep himself entertained with very little effort, whereas I need stimulus in some form or another. Thankfully they have internet. Since I've been away from my own kitchen, the closest that I've come to cooking is making Colby a sandwich about an hour ago. Most unfortunately, after we make the drive back to Austin (in a much less frenetic pace), I'll be on a plane to Long Beach, CA for the winter meeting of the American Astronomical Society to present research that i should be finishing up right now instead of blogging. (Though, in my defense, I'm almost through with my sanity check and the rest is pretty straightforward.)

Later today, we're headed to East Lansing to meet up with friends before we leave and to a hotel that we've booked such that a large number of people will be able to drink and pass out. It should be fun. And, of course, the new year's resolutions include losing weight (because I'm seriously not far into post-adolescence), blogging more frequently with pictures (because I must be the only person who writes a food blog that doesn't post pictures), and rededicating myself to my studies to make sure that I at least get my masters.

I'm getting married in the morning...

No, like seriously, I'm getting married today.

It's kind of a surreal feeling. I'm not sure that I'm ready for a wedding, but I'm ready to be married. What I mean by that is that I've been living with Colby for six months now and we work really well together, so that's not scary. What is scary, however, is facing down 100 of my closest friends in a giant white dress. I think that if I had a couple more months, I would be able to enjoy the wedding more. At current, I'm just counting down until the ceremony is over.

I have restaurant reviews of Wasabi and Steve's Backroom. If I had to pick again, it would be Steve's hands down. More later.

journey (the noun, not the band)

The way that I can tell that I'm about to fall asleep is when I start having a series of different thoughts that are very loosely connected and won't be able to recall thought one when I'm onto thought two. As it turns out, this is also a very good way to determine when one is no longer fit to drive... that coupled with the road signs that I was hallucinating was enough to convince me that it was time to give up the driver's seat to Colby.
We're finally in MI now, after a rather stupidly planned out trip. Though, there's one thing you should know about Colby and me before you judge our trip planning skillz: despite Colby being an old man (as he celebrated the big two three last Wednesday), we are both still young enough such that we're invicible. I've heard that this invincibility fades when you have kids, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. ;) But all proclamations of superpowers aside, we made the decision to drive from Austin, TX to Stockbridge, MI (which is midway between Lansing and that lesser town of Ann Arbor and the town where Colby (mostly) grew up :P) WITHOUT STOPPING. I'll repeat that because I've been told that anything worth saying bears repeating at least twice: we decided to make a 1400 mile drive across the country with not one stop over at a place of lodging and only one real meal break. We started at 530PM central time yesterday and we're currently about an hour out from Colby's house. We've made pit stops along the way, mostly to get gas and change drivers, but we're never doing this again. The plan for the drive back is to take our time and check out the sights on the drive down, something we never really did. I guess it'll be part of our pseudo-honeymoon... which brings me to my latest life-sized epiphany.

This trip home isn't for Christmas or for winter vacation. I've found myself at the stage of live where I truly no longer live "at home" but rather have taken up residence in some other terribly foreign place and am returning to get married, almost exactly one week from today. I guess one week and like an hour to be precise. I can barely wrap my head around the idea, but I plan to spend this week enjoying the vestiges of my childhood before they are taken away from me in an effort to encourage me to grow up. (But don't worry, Colby and I have a secret pact to never grow up all the way. Shh!)

I'm FINISHED!

I finished a very crappy paper on the radiative feedback effects of the first stars on local star formation at about 3:00 PM yesterday and that meant that I was done. It sort of made me eternally grateful that I'm not a theorist. That looked like that was no fun to do and even summarizing a paper was a little bit terrible. After having been grilled at my talk (seriously, I don't think anyone else in that class knew what a truncated isothermal sphere was either and the Cosmology kids had a homework assignment on it!) I just wanted the day to be done and it was. I finished some meager tasks (like cleaning my desk) and got a ride home. I went home and promptly passed out at about 6:00 with minor interruptions from Colby. I awoke at 1:00 AM to find that a) I was really ridiculously sick and b) Colby had eaten all of the chocolate chips (GRR!) and so now I had to make some other type of cookie for the office birthday party. I ended up with snickerdoodles

1 3/4c sugar
1 stick butter, softened (or not softened if you have, say, a kitchenaid standmixer)
1/2 c shortening (I used 1/2 a stick of crisco, which works out 1/2 shortening, 1/2 butter)
2 large eggs
2 1/2c flour
2 tsp cream of tartar
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tbs cinnamon

preheat oven to 375. whisk together flour, salt, cream of tartar, and baking soda. mix together 1/4 c sugar + cinnamon in a shallow dish and set aside. cream 1 1/2c sugar + butter + shortening until light and fluffy. add in two eggs and try not to spill the egg white down the side of the mixer and onto the floor. (oops). add in the eggs, one at a time, and then turn the mixer setting to low and gently add in the flour mixture. roll the dough into walnut-ish sized pieces and then coat them in the cinnamon+sugar mix. place onto parchment-lined paper for 10-12 minutes and enjoy!

I'm not sure how these turned out because I've never had *real* snickerdoodles. They've always been store bought, but as a cookie, they're pretty tasty. The next step is to try making fuckerdoodles... you know, snickerdoodles dipped in fudge. :) (also, that was totally not my idea, that's Chris' idea.)