Birthday Month 2015!

My birthday month is fast approaching, so I figured it was time for me to put together my annual list of demands, erm.. I mean, wish list for Colby. Also, I should be studying right now, but I am a super wonderful procrastinator.

Raleigh Retroglide

I really want a bike for riding around Alameda. Since Alameda is completely flat and the speed limit is 25 MPH in most places, I don't need anything fancy. Therefore, I want something cute. Like, super cute.

Over the past couple of years, I've noticed that whenever I've tried a Yotam Ottolenghi recipe, it's been a great success. Next on my list to try is his caramelized garlic tart. And now I want all of his cookbooks and have my Julie/Julia moment with him, except that Julie/Yotam is not nearly as alliterative.

Ottolenghi: The Cookbook - Recipes from his restaurants

Jerusalem: A Cookbook - Written with Sami Tamimi, explores the cuisine of their home city

Plenty - Features all vegetarian recipes

Plenty More - Follow up to Plenty

Bonavita Electric Gooseneck Kettle

I've been getting into coffee again. I still haven't found a good replacement for my beloved Epoch, so making coffee at home is a must. I prefer pourover style to coffee machines and a gooseneck kettle allows for much better control. Even better than a gooseneck kettle? An electric kettle. Because I'm lazy.

Italian Lessons

Someone told me that I should blog more. Considering that I posted only 23 times last year (which is the lowest since the first year I had my blog, which was started in August), that's not such a tall order. In lieu of the traditional new year self-flagellation, I want to achieve these two goals, listed in order of importance:

1. Spend quality time with Ramona and Colby
2. Finish my thesis

I don't know how this blog will fit into these goals, but I hope that it will provide an outlet for me and to help make 2014 a lot less horrible than 2013.

A Very Colby Christmas

My crazy night/day schedule is still ongoing and it still sucks, but I figured I'd use some of this quiet time to write a post.  Colby doesn't really read my blog unless I tell him to.  Usually this happens around the time I make my annual birthday list.  If he did read my blog, it wouldn't matter if I posted this because the list at the end of this post is likely fictional.

Colby's birthday is 9 days before our anniversary and 15 days before Christmas, so it gets lost a lot.  Most years he gets a big birthiversarmas gift and this year is no exception.  We just dropped a lot of money on a new dishwasher.  It's pretty and it has a sanitize option, but most importantly, it's EIGHTY times quieter than our old dishwasher.  It's money well spent, but it also put a big dent in the Christmas gift budget.  So below is my list of what I'd totally get Colby for his birthiversarmas this year.

1. Boston terrier print - duh
2. Essential Pepin - Colby's favorite chef
3. Basketball hoop - because we just bought a basketball that Colby torments Kimchi with
4. The Greatest Hoodie - there was a Slate article about this. The tl;dr version is that it's expensive but made with better materials + techniques and made in the US.

The unwilling insomniac

Right this moment, my house smells of garlic and onion and chicken and Ramona's sitting on the floor playing with a pile of toys.  It's quite lovely.  We had chicken and 40 cloves last week and I harvested the thighs and drumsticks from an organic roaster chicken to make it.  Since I knew I had time to kill, I decided to cook the rest of it in the slow cooker on a bed of onions, garlic, and carrots.  While this all sounds like a wonderful Sunday afternoon, it's not Sunday afternoon.  It's 4:48 AM on Monday morning and I started the chicken at about 3 AM with the knowledge that I would be awake at 8 AM to get it out and (likely) put it in the fridge.

"Why," you ask, "are you going to be awake at 8 AM if you're awake at 4:48 AM?"  Good question.

This all started with Ramona's 9 month well check.  When the pediatrician asked about her sleeping habits, she was surprised to hear about her late schedule (down at 3 AM up at noon) and then gave us a pamphlet about sleep phase disorders.  It turns out that I probably have delayed sleep phase syndrome and Ramona either has it too or is being subjected to mine.  I guess what happens is that for whatever reason, your circadian rhythms get out of whack and you just want to go to sleep later than most people in your time zone do.  I've been like this for as long as I can remember.  My family used to joke that I was "stuck" on Korean time, but I'm pretty sure that after 26 years here, I should have adjusted by now.

For the most part, it's not a big deal.  DSPS has been linked to ADHD (which I probably have), and clinical depression (which I don't).  It seems like the problem stems from not getting enough sleep since people with DSPS don't have a problem staying asleep, they have problems going to sleep at a societally indicated time.  In high school and college, I powered through and consumed a lot of caffeine.  I also relished the days in which I had no classes before noon.  In grad school, it was mostly more of the same, although I've always had to TA early classes.  Once I became pregnant, the caffeine stopped, but I did manage to sleep more because I was tired all. of. the. times.

And now I have a 9 month old who likes to go to bed at 3 AM, which is around the time her mama prefers.  I'm currently being paid as a graduate research assistant, which means that I can make my own hours.  While most people are getting to work , I'm in the middle of my night.  I usually end up working in the afternoons and late at night, saving the early evenings for Ramona and Colby.  There isn't this tired all the time problem because I do get enough sleep, it's just offset from everyone and my work output isn't suffering because I'm tired, it's suffering because I have a baby.  The one thing that is kind of hard, however, is Colby's schedule.  Colby usually goes to sleep around the same time as us, but he *does* have a job that requires him to be somewhere before the early afternoon (oppressive, I know!).  This means that he usually averages about 5 hours of sleep a night.  When the doctor mentioned DSPS and the "simple" way to fix it, he was super excited.

So.  After all this rambling, my birthday present to him is to try to fix our weirdo sleep schedule in time for the holidays.  While we could work on sleep hygiene and take melatonin and blah blah, we're currently trying to stay up an hour later each day until we get back around to a normal schedule.  While most people can't do this, this has been perfectly timed because it gives me extra time to work and Colby time to sleep.  Today, I'm supposed to go to bed around 8 AM, although I suspect it'll be a bit later.  By the weekend, we'll be going to bed at 2 PM, which sounds crazy, but I'm hoping that we can get back to some sort of normal schedule so that Colby isn't so sleep deprived.

Scenes from an American kitchen

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.

Warm fuzzies.

Apparently, I gave Colby my death flu. He's not nearly as whiny about it as I was but he seems to be going through a milder version of what I had.  As a result, he's sleeping with his three favorite accessories: a hunter's orange hat, fuzzy scarf, and warm puppy.

Dinner was a success tonight, and I might modify the menu for this week because we had so much left over.  This chicken stew didn't taste exactly like the one at the restaurant, so I'll be working on this recipe to make it even more flavorful, so stay tuned. 

One of my new year's goals is (obviously) to lose weight.  No January is complete without a new diet, eh?  This time, my goal is to try to make things from scratch and cut out the processed junk (and make my own junk food ;)).  This week's menu is a good start, though I felt the need to publicly profess my intent. The past two years included brave attempts of weight loss that lasted into March and even April, but my calorie intake was so low that I was tired all the time and eventually got so sick that I had to abandon my diet and then never got back on the wagon.  My hope is that by making food from scratch with whole grains and lots of fruit and vegetables, I won't get crazy sick and will easily be able to stick to something that is delicious and healthy for the wallet as well.  My guidelines are as follows:

No eating after 11 PM

Cook with whole grains whenever possible

Always have a vegetable with dinner

Fresh fruit every day

Drink a glass of water before anything flavored

I suppose I'll update with my progress here, since being publicly accountable will make me less likely to holy crap cheat. :)

home is where the mortgage is.

We're back in Austin.  I just stood barefoot on my front porch and I'm not contemplating which hospital has the best ER to treat frostbite.  This makes me very sad, but it's okay because my best friends in the world are about to descend upon my house and we're going to celebrate Christmas and New Years like it's no one's business.

Grad Student Lent

I'm back to menu planning, but with an altogether different purpose. I've let myself off the hook for cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Colby is great at all of those things, except for *what* to make in the cooking department. He made the observation that we hadn't been eating very healthy, so I decided to take a stand. Also, I'm still *trying* to diet.

Sunday - Grilled steak, grilled corn, grilled mushrooms, salad
Monday - Baked ziti with sausage and peppers
Tuesday - Chicken "enchiladas", grilled corn
Wednesday - leftovers
Thursday - Marinated grilled chicken, grilled green beans, salad
Friday - leftovers. I hope.
Saturday - grilled salmon, grilled asparagus
Sunday - spaghetti
Monday - Lentils with couscous
Tuesday - shrimp
Wednesday - sausage
Thursday - tilapia
Friday - going out to eat somewhere because the semester will be over.

Mornay After Sauce

I think I made Colby sick with breakfast. That was definitely not the intention. :(

A couple nights ago we went to a wine and cheese party thrown on our behalf by our good friends Chris+Elizabeth in celebration of the fact that we got married. My officemates and most of my incoming class came and it was a really good time. This morning was a little rough and I didn't get up until 1 (oops!), but I checked the interwebs (because that's what you do when you have an internet addiction) and found that The Delicious Life is sort of posting again. The current featured post was of eggs florentine and I realized that I had all the materials on hand for a surprise breakfast for Colby.

Eggs Florentine ala the delicious by way of my kitschn
extra virgin olive oil
1/2 a small onion, diced because you're not that into onions
3 cloves of garlic, minced because you're actually really into garlic
3 eggs because you've lost patience with poaching
whatever amount of fresh spinach you have on hand
Mornay sauce
same thing with whatever what cheese you have
2 tbs butter
1 tsp salt
1 c milk

Fill a shallow, but deep enough saucepan with water + 2 tbs vinegar and bring to a simmer. Poach 3 eggs (which took about 5 min each). Saute onions and garlic in olive oil with a pinch of salt until translucent. Add in fresh spinach until sufficiently wilted. In a separate saucepan make the mornay sauce: melt 2 tbs butter and then add flour, stirring well to combine along with 1 tsp salt. Add in 1 c milk and stir for awhile over medium-ish heat until thickened. Once thickened, add in some amount of white cheese (I used mozzarella and swiss). Plate with spinach+onion+garlic on bottom, with poached egg (or two) atop covered in the sauce.

It turned out really well and I was tickled pink that I could make this a) as a "pantry" dish and b) as something to clean out my fridge. I was less tickled when Colby ran off to the bathroom in pain. I think that this might have stemmed from the continued use of the raw milk. I figured that since I was cooking the milk, that the bacteria would be less... invasive, but I guess I was wrong. I've learned my raw milk lesson and never again will I buy it.

Three things

Three things about me that are a little bit, not at all, and possibly obvious:

1. I am an emotional eater.

For instance, I just downed a clementine, several crackers, and some goat cheese because the thought of staying in grad school for the next five years is, quite frankly, horrible. I feel like I've painted myself into a corner because yes, I'm better than the general populace at what I do, but I'm not terribly good at it either because it's really hard... but I suppose that's a different story for another post.

I've found that when I'm super upset about things, usually boy related, I tend to not eat. This explains why I weighed the same in high school as I did in 6th grade; This is also why I'm getting rather fat. You see, I'm terribly happy with my personal life because I've married someone who will love me no matter what, so the inclination to starve myself out of spite, sadness, or even self-preservation has basically left me. You could call that a "good" thing, and I suppose that it's actually good, and not just "good", but grad school leaves me almost no time or motivation to exercise. This is why I made a call to Curves the other day and scheduled an appointment for Thursday.

Yes, I will be joining legions of middle-aged women of north Austin on a quest to regain our figures... or something. Wish me luck so that I leave not smelling of old people perfume.


2. I was recently hit by a car. As in me, the person.

It happened at the intersection of Jollyville and Balcones Woods. There was a red light at Balcones Woods and I was about to cross the street. The "walk" sign came on and so I began walking. After walking nearly 1/3 of the way across, I see this white Altima start to move. If you've never seen an Altima, this is sort of what it looked like



Given that I was nearly in the middle of the road, running back to the curb wasn't really an option, so I stared right at the driver, who then looked in my direction and KEPT GOING. I fell over, as Julie vs. Car means that Julie loses every time and then got up. The guy rolled down his window, asked if I was okay and then sped off as quickly as he could. I was flabbergasted and then upon talking to the police department discovered that the only thing I could do was to file a complete police report, but a) I didn't really want to waste the city's time and money and b) was mostly fine except for a bruise on my elbow that you could barely see. I guess this is why some places ban "right turn on red" when it is sometimes translated into "kill pedestrians to beat the light."


3. I am moderately lactose intolerant.

One of the most comforting, happy-childhood invoking tastes is American cheese with pita. This is due, in part, to the fact that I grew up in a middle class white suburban family that was um... a little trashy. I have no idea why the pita fits in, but it does. My enjoyment of dairy extends far beyond simply liking American cheese (and actually, I'm not quite sure that I even *like* American cheese, or if it just tastes like home); I'm absolutely in love with things made of cow milk including... cow milk. The other day we went to Central Market because we were bored and got a bunch of random groceries, including raw whole milk.

I had tried this milk (from Remember When Dairy) before in a sample offering several months ago and it was absolutely delicious. Reading up on raw milk led me to believe that it was possible that raw milk is better for those who are lactose intolerant because, given the lack of pasteurization, the healthy bacteria that are found in yogurt remained and feasted on some of the lactose, doing exactly that of which I am incapable. When I finally got the milk, I brought it home and poured it out. It was absolutely disgusting. The cream had solidified and would not go back to solid. Yes, I could have heated it, but that would have basically defeated the purpose of raw milk and also its deliciousness. After pouring some out to shake it better, the cream basically stayed solid, but at least this time the chunks were littler. I tried some, but it was just too hard to drink because, seriously, who wants to drink milk with chunks of cream bobbing up and down? I went to the website and emailed them and got this response:

The perocn to answer that is my husband, Mark. His number is xxx-xxx-xxxx
Ometimes the milk gets puched back in the cooler and may get frozen..if thats the case.The milk is fine..but please call Mark and ask him..if it turns out that the milk was a bad batch for some reason...we will definatle make it right
please call Mark and let know about the problem
Thanks DeOnna

It was, perhaps, not the most grammatically appealing email I had ever received, but it seemed like a good step in the right direction. I called Mark the following day and asked him about the safety and status of my milk and he explained that it was perfectly safe to drink, but that cows sometimes have different cream content in their milk based on the season and what they've been eating recently. Apparently there's so much cream in the milk that it basically solidifies... so it works like carbon-enhanced stars, come to think of it. :) I took this advice from farmer Mark and tried drinking a glass earlier tonight and am now currently paying for it in spades. It turns out that the metabolic pathway of lactose digestion in the body is extraordinarily complicated and even if I shut my eyes and pretend I have the genetic mutation that allows me to drink the nourishment that would ordinarily go to baby animals from their lactating mothers beyond infancy, I still can't drink milk. :(

My lactose intolerance is extraordinarily unfortunate, especially in light of the fact that our friend Chris and Elizabeth (one of our two sets of married couple friends that we hang out with) are throwing us a wine and cheese party on Friday in our behalf celebrating our marriage. So to end this rather rambling post, I present you with a picture from dinner in Long Beach. That was the best cioppino I have ever had in my life. This statement means little since I've only had it like... twice, but it was still a really amazing dish.



See? I'm posting pictures. :) It just takes me a little longer...

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.

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. :)

Thanksgiving Recapped

I celebrated my first Thanksgiving away from home and it made me realize two things: a) my friends are wonderful and b) I really want a *real* dining room table instead of the card table that we inherited from Kyle. I sent an open invitation to the department and had about 12 people show up. It was the perfect size for the party and now I'm looking forward to planning a miniature white-elephant exchange Christmas party.

I took a lot of recipes from all over and modified them to fit my tastes/pantry. I made the homemade rolls from the pioneer woman cooks, which were tasty if not a bit heavy. Turkey, of course, with stuffing a la Chris complete with breakfast sausage and sour dough bread from the farmers market. We also had the Alton Brown version turkey and green bean casserole (although, I didn't have the patience or time to make my own french fried onions). Both came out wonderfully, and the turkey was made even better with cranberry apple chutney. There were also mashed potatoes with roasted garlic (along with plenty of cream and butter) and we mashed sweet potatoes from the farmer's market with cream, butter, smoked sweet paprika, and just a hint of cayenne. We also had apple and pumpkin pies which were made courtesy of my new pink KitchenAid stand mixer. Way tasty and easy too! :) In all, it was very successful and I'm looking forward to winding down the rest of the semester and going home.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The preparations for Thanksgiving are very much under way. In the past couple of weeks, I've done some test run on side dishes, and I've definitely come across some really awesome recipes. :) Currently, the test pumpkin pie is half eaten, and sitting in the refrigerator and the apple pie is in the oven. I think that later today will be a well orchestrated dance between oven and stove top, made more complicated by a relatively small kitchen and four people who want to be in it.

Here's the menu at current:

Turkey a la Alton Brown
Sour Dough + Challah bread dressing
green bean casserole a la Alton Brown
roasted garlic mashed potatoes
roasted sweet potatoes with smoked sweet paprika
home made dinner rolls
apple cranberry chutney
apple pie
pumpkin pie

Sooooooooo excited! :)

Why Cayenne Pepper is Entertaining: A Memoir on Corn Chowder

Colby is funny, but more on that later. After perusing enough tastespotting, I've been itching to make some sort of soup. I found one recipe that seemed promising, mostly because it didn't require a stick blender.

Corn Chowder a la Julie
3 tbs butter
3 tbs olive oil
1 carrot, chopped
2 celery stalks, chopped
1 small tomato, deseeded and chopped
1/4 sweet onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 baking potato, cubed into 1 cm pieces
celery leaves, chopped
1 c chicken stock
4 ears corn
1 c cream
herbs
cayenne pepper
s+p

Melt O.O. and butter in a stock pot. Add in onions, celery, carrots, garlic, potato and s+p to taste. Let cook for ~10 minutes, until the onions turn translucent and everything begins to soften. Husk the corn. Take a large bowl and place the corn in the center, cutting parallel to the body in a swift, downward motion to take off the kernels. You'll probably have to flip it upside down because it'll probably be too hard to get all the way down. Once you're done, take the cob and run the back of your knife down where the kernels used to be and get all of the "corn juice" out. Take one of the cobs and divide it into thirds (I just did it by hand). Add in the corn, tomato, and chicken stock. Also, add the corn cob bits. Take this up to a boil and let cook for another 5-10 minutes. Add in the stock and then whatever herbs/spices you want. I used ~1 tsp of Old Bay, 1/2 tsp cayenne pepper, 1 tsp dried basil, 1 tsp dried parsley and let's say 2 tbs of celery leaves, chopped fine. Let it simmer for awhile until the flavors start to blend.

So about celery leaves: Colby and I were discussing whether or not to get celery. I decided to make the soup at about 10:30 PM last night (and by "last night", I mean 3.5 hours ago, but *technically* it was last night) standing in front of the produce section at H.E.B. the local friendly megamarket. I have always felt that celery smells wonderful, but tastes disappointing, since all of that wonderful scent is coming from the leaves. According to Rayray and Alton, celery is related to cilantro or parsley or something that's aromatic and herb-y so I took all the leaves from the celery bunch and treated it just like a fresh herb. I felt all thrifty and creative. Small victories. Anywho, it actually turned out wonderful. I'm guessing that as long as you have the celery leaves, s+p, and like cayenne pepper, the taste will still be wonderful.

So during the making of the soup, Colby started making a pork roast. We're apparently impulse cookers. How cute. He was in the kitchen and standing by the sink and I had just dumped the cayenne pepper into the soup and I wanted to clean off the spoon to use it to taste with, but I wasn't about to eat a mouthful of cayenne with the soup. While my back was turned, Colby put the spoon in his mouth, not really knowing what it was and then turned around to me and told me that "the stuff on the spoon" was hot. Tee hee.

Lego my dinner party!

Okay folks, here's the lego party post. Unfortunately, there weren't really any pictures, but I'll do my best to describe.

So the whole thing that started this party was this post that I found on Slashfood and then later on Tastespotting. It was apparently taken from the Betty Crocker website, but it seemed like a fun idea. Shortly thereafter, I was alerted to the existence of Lego gummy candy from Kellog's. Seeing that I'm not actually three, I procured a box. Also, at some random trip to the mall (the one where Colby and Kyle went on a mandate to see the batman movie) I found these hard tablet powder candy legos that you can actually build with! Super cute.


We (Colby, Kyle, and I) used box mixes to make the cake (chocolate, yellow, and marbled) and then used white frosting + food coloring from Hill Country Fare. The interesting thing about Hill Country Fare is that it's one of a few different house brands for HEB, a largely Texan grocery store; given that Texas is beef country, I shouldn't have been surprised when I found out that the main fat ingredient was lard. Oh well. I didn't have any vegetarians at the party. We made the cakes the night before and they came out okay. It doesn't help that I suck at frosting cakes.

To continue on with the lego theme, I made lasagna (which is sort of brick-shaped!) which was topped with homemade croutons that were cylindrical. The lasagna is actually super simple and mostly stolen from the America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (of which I have mixed feelings):

15 oz ricotta
1.25 c grated parm
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 cup fresh basil, minced
1 egg, lightly beaten
12 no boil lasagna noodles (I used HEB brand)
16 oz shredded mozzarella cheese
3ish c sauce

I made the sauce first which consisted of:
1 lb ground beef
s+p
1/4 c minced onions
6 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbs olive oil
1 28 oz can crushed tomatoes (I used Contandina crushed tomatoes with herbs by accident)
1 28 oz can diced tomatoes
1/2 tsp dried oregano, parsley, basil

Brown/season meat w/s+p, break up into little bits. In a sauce pan add in olive oil and onions and let them soften for like five minutes (or more if you realize that you've forgotten to mince the garlic), add in the garlic and let cook for 30 seconds and then add in both cans of processed tomatoes and whatever herbs you decide. Let that simmer for 15ish minutes or so and that could be a sauce in and of itself. Add the meat (try to drain off the fat) and then let that sit with the sauce for as long as possible.

To construct the lasagna:
preheat the oven to 375. combine ricotta+s+p+egg+1 c parm+basil mix thoroughly until combined. add in like 1/4-1/2 a cup of sauce to the bottom of whatever you're using to cook in. It should be rectangular and deepish. layer on three lasagna noodles side-by-side and spread some amount of the ricotta mixture on it. Add about 1/2 c of sauce over top. cover in mozzarella and do this layering bit twice more. take the remaining three noodles and layer over top the rest of the pasta, cover with the remaining sauce and then cover in the rest of the mozzarella and 1/4 c of parm. cover with foil and bake for 15 minutes. Take it out and then uncover it and bake for an addition 25ish minutes until everything is soft and the cheese is all melty.

I found that the easiest way to spread on the ricotta mixture to the noodles was to take the dry noodle in hand and then spread the cheese on it before putting it in the pan. It caused way too much grief to try to do it the other way.

As a side, I made garlic bread the Heidi Swanson way and at the very end, put 2 little half slices of fresh mozzarella on each piece so that they would look like lego things.

Everyone loved the lasagna and people that that the cakes were clever. I'm not so sure that they tasted all that good, but that wasn't really the point with these cakes. I made a flourless chocolate cake the other night which turned out "better", but that's for a later post.

Mishmashes

I caught Colby looking through pages and pages of Tastespotting. Way cute.

I tried my hand at chili last night. That wasn't the greatest batch that's ever been made, but it was a lot better than Colby's for the very fact that I believe that ground beef should never be boiled.

I've recently begun experimenting with meatballs. The first batch came out pretty awful. No one has touched the leftovers and i was only able to manage one bowl before declaring that battle over. I've also started to experiment with limeade mixes because, well, I had limes and lime-juice-from-concentrate (yes, yes, I know... I inherited it from Kyle). The first batch turned out too sweet, or so complained Colby (last night). This morning it was mostly gone.

The one thing that I did intend to experiment with that needed no iteration was the guacamole, which consisted of 3 avocados because the ones at HEB were *tiny*, 1 jalepeno seeded and diced, 1 tsp cumin, 1.5ish tsp salt, some amount of black pepper, 1/2 larger-ish tomato seeded and diced, 1 clove minced garlic, 2 tbs minced onion, juice of 1 small lime. Mash mash mix mix nom nom

Patriotic Dinner Parties

Or not.

I love dinner parties. I decided, at mostly the last minute, to throw a dinner party for the 4th of July. It's not normally one of those holidays that I celebrate, but I mostly didn't have anything better to do and I hadn't had a dinner party at the apartment yet, so I was itching to host one again. My friend Chris is in from EL to visit us and so between the two of us, we put together quite a feast. Yay food.

It began with the impulse buying of a baguette to match with the tiniest bit of brie I had left from a previous impulse shopping trip. I kind of forgot about it, so it was good and crusty and so I cut it up into cubes and made croutons.

The Impetus:

most of a baguette, cubed
1/2 c EVOO
1/3 c grated parm cheese
2 tbs dried parsley flakes
2 cloves garlic, finely minced

mix the EVOO, cheese, parsley, garlic. toss the bread cubes in EVOO mixture. bake in an oven at 350 for awhile and turn half way. (I'd check after 5 minutes)

Austin is home to the world's largest urban population of bats. They mostly reside under the Congress St. bridge, so we went to watch one night. It was okay, but the real highlight was a trip to Six Flags over Whole Foods (which is apparently the flagship Whole Foods store for the brand.) which was just down the road. I sort of impulse shopped my way through, getting amazing tomatoes and some mozzarella. This led directly to bruschetta.

The Impulse

1 large salmonella-free tomato, seeded and diced
1/3 c finely chopped basil
3-4 tbs olive oil
1/4 tsp salt
1 clove garlic, pan-toasted, minced
1/3 c fresh mozzarella diced

toast the garlic with the skin on in a pan until it softens and the flavor mellows. mince. combine everything and toss it. let it sit for awhile so the flavors all combine.

The initial dinner party was at Kyle's and was mostly devoted to deep fried foods. Whilst completely delicious, it was, alas, quickly approaching one of the Seven Deadly Sins. To repent, we planned a "healthy" party themed "Atonement"; I suppose this was it:

The Penance

2 chicken breasts
some amount of italian-like dressing

marinate the chicken for like a day. pan sear.

lemon-shallot vinaigrette
(combine everything below, shake){
3/4 c extra virgin olive oil
3 tbs lemon juice
1 shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp dried thyme
2 tbs Dijon mustard
}

some amount of spring greens
impetus croutons
Parmesan cheese

toss everything. eat.

In the day leading up to the party, I was browsing the good old inter-mo-tron and The Minimalist put out a list of 101 quick'n'inspired picnic dishes. This, of course, meant that there was more food blog reading to transpire, so after salivating over tastespotting for awhile, I found a pasta-salad recipe that included items that my guests wouldn't eat (broccoli) and I couldn't afford (pine nuts)... so that sort of morphed into a cous-cous dish with items that my guests would eat (asparagus) and I could purchase without signing away the rights to my first born child (pumpkin seed). This mostly involved some amount of asparagus being pan fried with garlic, shallots, and olive oil until it was just barely tender, toasting the pumpkin seeds and then adding all of that to plain cous cous (that I must admit was made from one of those instant box things.) We also oven roasted corn from Whole Foods because I have yet to see it in any capacity at the farmer's market.

The event concluded with dessert, which chris made, which was mostly the following:

1 bag frozen berry fruits
1/2 c water
2 tbs sugar, more to taste
splash lime juice

boil h2o, berries, sugar in a pot and let it thicken. taste. when it's like oh-holy-crap too sweet, add in a bit of lime juice and then when you add too much, add in a bit of sugar and let it thicken still. Serve over some cake like thing (I used my corn bread recipe) with home made whipped cream.

1 c heavy cream
2 tbs sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract

mix until soft peaks form.

nom. nom. nom.

Monkeying Around

So I've been meaning to post, but every time I start, I get interrupted. I guess that's not a horrible thing and up until the past couple days, I've been productive at work (which is unusual for me). In an effort to accept the fact that we are dirt poor, Colby and I have effectively stopped eating out and we've been cooking a lot. I've done some experimenting with deglazing pans. Also, I accidentally made monkey bread which is partially the result of an argument. At least our fights are productive.

Here are some mostly unconnected thoughts in my head, linked only by the fact that they fall under the category of confessions:

I'm secretly a Martha fan

I tell everyone blue is my favorite color, but it's clearly pink

I used to love Sunny D. A lot.

My favorite chip dip is cottage cheese with a bit of black pepper.

I hate sci-fi, but like parts of "fantasy" (and by parts, I mean His Dark Materials and Neil Gaiman)


"Monkey" Bread

dough
2.5 c flour
2 tsp sugar
1.25 tsp baking powder
.5 tsp baking soda
.5 tsp salt
1.25 c milk
1.25 tsp lemon juice
2 tbs melted butter

"filling"
.25 c sugar
.75 c brown sugar
2 tbs melted butter
2 tsp cinnamon

start with the intention of making cinnamon rolls and proceed with the filling and mix mix mix. Then get into a fight which involves him sulking to the couch and you improperly making a buttermilk substitution. whisk together the dry ingredients for the dough bit and then more sulking. gently fold in the milk that has had the lemon juice in it for like 5 minutes (which makes it "thicker", but not thick enough to save your intended cinnamon rolls from the fight). fold in the sugar mix and dump into a pan. Bake at 425 for some indeterminate amount of time, but if i were you, I'd start checking in like 15 minutes.

Tomorrow we're (Colby+Kyle+me) going to the farmers market to get tomatoes and mushrooms and maybe some breakfast and then after that, we're going to Barton Springs (which is super cold and we haven't told Colby who doesn't do "cold". TEE HEE HEE). I almost got some heirloom tomatoes at the supermarket, but I decided that I didn't *need* them. Tomorrow looks like it might be a greek orzo salad that I've been envisioning for weeks on end.

sigma pi sigma and lobster mashed potatoes

Today was the physics honor society induction which involved me shaking hands with the professor who, more than anyone else in my college career, wants me to fall off a cliff. Okay, maybe it's not that extreme. Regardless, it was awkwardtastic. Following the "induction ceremony", we all went to the State Room on campus and had "fancy dinner". After a quick glance over the menu, it became increasingly obvious that I was getting the walleye simply to try the lobster mashed potatoes. Also, duh, there was wilted spinach. The meal, though promising, was a bit disappointing. The spinach was a bit bitter and the breading on the fish was soggy, but the mashed potatoes were okay. They were a bit drier than one would hope and the lobster could have been better executed, but I guess I can't complain too much because it was free. So very very free.

And now I'm back in the office for a long night of preparing three talks in the next two days (one on beryllium, another on lithium, and a third on lithium + the Ising model of a ferromagnet). Also, there's that bit with the senior thesis and trying to ensure that I graduate.