Okay, so today is October 12th. Unfortunately, I did not make as many new dinner recipes as I had intended to. However, I HAVE been cooking meals. Just, you know, making a lot of things that I already knew how to cook.
I think this happened because the reward for baking something new is so much bigger (i.e. the insane deliciousness factor, plus your friends love you more and hang out with you to eat it) than the reward for making dinner. Plus by the time I make dinner, I'm pretty hungry and I just wanna eat asap. Whereas when I make dessert, I...just feel like eating chocolate, basically.
My next goal: A very delicious carrot cake for Rebecca's birthday. Rebecca is one of my roommates, and her birthday is this Saturday. Classes have been INSANE the last week or 2 (another reason I haven't cooked too many original dinners) so buying the ingredients may be difficult, let alone cooking the actual cake. But I asked her this week what her favorite cake was and that's what she said (no dirty joke intended). So, that's what I'm making. And it'll be delicious, damnit.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Dinner #3: Breakfast for Dinner
Okay. So tonight I decided to try something new to surprise Mike with when he comes over for dinner. Partly because I was a bit of a dork to him, and partly because it's fun. Also partly because I'm hungry. So..
my own version of the garbage plate!
Okay, the garbage plate is a delicacy in Rochester, according to my roommate Rebecca. It consists of macaroni and cheese, french fries, hamburger meat, and a whole lot of other things that are bad for you...One recipe I found:
MY version, on the other hand, was kind of a breakfast-dinner. It was scrambled eggs with a bunch of different kinds of cheese, green peppers, toast, garlic, mixed spices, and turkey meat (I don't know how to cook red meat because my mom doesn't eat it, hence never taught me how to cook it. I assume it's about the same, but now I like turkey meat and I'm kinda in the habit.)
It was delicious and a triumph.
my own version of the garbage plate!
1st layer: Home Fries and Macaroni/mayo (very slippery macaroni and mayonnaise) a little celery and carrots in the macaroni (very little). No unusual taste with the macaroni, just like all the take out fillers we've ever had. The home fries are crisp and delicious just like homemade.
2nd Layer: Two hamburger patties medium well done covered with melted cheese, a mustard horseradish sauce, and then covered with chili hot sauce. The mustard horseradish sauce is delicious - more horsey than mustard in flavor. The hot sauce is like every ground beef hot sauce you can imagine. Typical and very good. Not too hot, very zesty and rich.
Typical Garbage Plate:
MY version, on the other hand, was kind of a breakfast-dinner. It was scrambled eggs with a bunch of different kinds of cheese, green peppers, toast, garlic, mixed spices, and turkey meat (I don't know how to cook red meat because my mom doesn't eat it, hence never taught me how to cook it. I assume it's about the same, but now I like turkey meat and I'm kinda in the habit.)
It was delicious and a triumph.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Dinner #2 and Dessert #4
I have officially achieved my dessert goal with my fourth new recipe in a month. Ended with a classic:
Triple Chocolate Brownies:
2 tbsp unsalted butter + more for greasing
4 squares (4 oz) semi-sweet chocolate (We - Mike helped me - approximated this to be something like 1 cup, I think. I don't remember exactly, but whatever, the chocolate-y-er, the better)
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
2 lg eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt (Apparently this recipe is big on fractions.)
1 cup milk (ha. Semi-sweet all the way.) chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (Again, ha.)
Place oven rack in middle position, preheat to 350. Line an 8- or 9-inch square pan with aluminum foil, making sure two ends of the foil overhang the pan by about 2 in. so you can easily lift the brownies out of the pan later. (Okay, I messed up here and told Mike to grease the pan before I read the instruction, and that worked too.) Lightly rub bottom and sides of foil with butter. Set aside.
Combine chocolate, water, and butter in medium, heavy pot (that will fit all the ingredients) over low heat, stirring occasionally. When chocolate is just melted, turn off heat and add cocoa. Stir until combined and set aside to cool.
Add sugar, egg, vanilla, and stir until well blended. Add flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir until no flour shows. Stir in chocolate chips and walnuts, if using.
Scrape batter into pan and bake for 20-25 minutes or until top feels firm and brownies pull away from sides of pan. Remove from oven and cool on rack for 15 min (or until you can't wait any longer and all your roommates are whining). Cut into 25 squares (or like 10) and serve. Store in airtight container or wrapped in foil or plastic wrap (unless it all disappears in the next 24 hours. In that case, you are fully entitles to leave it on the stove like I did).
I made brownies because Rebecca's boyfriend was here and my other roommate, Jessie, announced that we should have brownies. Those two reasons were enough for me. I borrowed another roommate's 9in square pan, and this was the beautiful and mouth-watering result. And yes, there is a chocolate chip heart on top.
Once again, my book-o-chocolate desserts did not fail me. They came out very chocolatey and delicious and I wondered, not for the first time, what I will do with myself once my metabolism slows down. (I am a very lucky person in that category. And I do mean lucky. I don't really exercise. Well, I do right now because I am taking a gym class. And I might keep doing it. But I have exercised sporadically, at best, for the first 20 years of my life. So the fact that I still weigh basically what I did in eighth grad is kind of astounding. Especially when you look at the crap I eat.)
Which brings me to Dinner #2. By the way, I have no idea why I thought I would cook dinner more often than dessert. I mean, I cook dinner a lot, but they are very rarely new, adventurous dinners. Also, Mike cooks for me sometimes, which is cool. Unfortunately, I saved this post as a draft and I now have no memory of what I cooked for this meal, although I'm pretty sure it involved pasta and frozen veggies and wasn't very good. Frozen veggies suck. Anyway, I have been too busy and important to blog lately. I do apologize. This will have to end.
Triple Chocolate Brownies:
2 tbsp unsalted butter + more for greasing
4 squares (4 oz) semi-sweet chocolate (We - Mike helped me - approximated this to be something like 1 cup, I think. I don't remember exactly, but whatever, the chocolate-y-er, the better)
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 cup sugar
2 lg eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt (Apparently this recipe is big on fractions.)
1 cup milk (ha. Semi-sweet all the way.) chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (Again, ha.)
Place oven rack in middle position, preheat to 350. Line an 8- or 9-inch square pan with aluminum foil, making sure two ends of the foil overhang the pan by about 2 in. so you can easily lift the brownies out of the pan later. (Okay, I messed up here and told Mike to grease the pan before I read the instruction, and that worked too.) Lightly rub bottom and sides of foil with butter. Set aside.
Combine chocolate, water, and butter in medium, heavy pot (that will fit all the ingredients) over low heat, stirring occasionally. When chocolate is just melted, turn off heat and add cocoa. Stir until combined and set aside to cool.
Add sugar, egg, vanilla, and stir until well blended. Add flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir until no flour shows. Stir in chocolate chips and walnuts, if using.
Scrape batter into pan and bake for 20-25 minutes or until top feels firm and brownies pull away from sides of pan. Remove from oven and cool on rack for 15 min (or until you can't wait any longer and all your roommates are whining). Cut into 25 squares (or like 10) and serve. Store in airtight container or wrapped in foil or plastic wrap (unless it all disappears in the next 24 hours. In that case, you are fully entitles to leave it on the stove like I did).
I made brownies because Rebecca's boyfriend was here and my other roommate, Jessie, announced that we should have brownies. Those two reasons were enough for me. I borrowed another roommate's 9in square pan, and this was the beautiful and mouth-watering result. And yes, there is a chocolate chip heart on top.
Once again, my book-o-chocolate desserts did not fail me. They came out very chocolatey and delicious and I wondered, not for the first time, what I will do with myself once my metabolism slows down. (I am a very lucky person in that category. And I do mean lucky. I don't really exercise. Well, I do right now because I am taking a gym class. And I might keep doing it. But I have exercised sporadically, at best, for the first 20 years of my life. So the fact that I still weigh basically what I did in eighth grad is kind of astounding. Especially when you look at the crap I eat.)
Which brings me to Dinner #2. By the way, I have no idea why I thought I would cook dinner more often than dessert. I mean, I cook dinner a lot, but they are very rarely new, adventurous dinners. Also, Mike cooks for me sometimes, which is cool. Unfortunately, I saved this post as a draft and I now have no memory of what I cooked for this meal, although I'm pretty sure it involved pasta and frozen veggies and wasn't very good. Frozen veggies suck. Anyway, I have been too busy and important to blog lately. I do apologize. This will have to end.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Dessert #2: Chocolate chip banana cake
I know I said chocolate chip scones, but it turned out my recipe resource did NOT send me the recipe (yet. Fingers crossed.) so I had to bake something else for my detoxing purposes. One of my roommates had four bananas that were no longer, shall we say, in their prime. SO I looked up a recipe for banana cake and substituted the nuts (not my favorite thing) for chocolate chips (definitely my favorite thing) and left off the frosting. I practically filled my one cooking pan and it came out DELICIOUS!!!!
[I know the picture's not that beautiful, it's just kind of brown with chocolate chip dots in it. You'll have to take my word for it that the inside was perfect and moist and the outside was just the right amount of crunchy and not burnt at all.]
Recipe:
2/3 cup pecans or walnuts (Do not like. Did not use.)
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to rm temp., more for greasing
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 bananas
3 lg. eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour + 2 tsp for dusting
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp buttermilk (I literally just use butter and milk, because what IS buttermilk, anyway?)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Oven rack in middle. Preheat to 350. Do stuff to the nuts. Generously rub the bottom and sides of a 9 cup bundt pan with butter (clearly, I used a 9 x 13 inch pan, because...well, that's all I have here at school). Add 2 tsp flour and swirl around, coating buttered surfaces. Set aside.
Put butter and sugars in large bowl, beat with electric mixer (/wooden spoon) until smooth and creamy. Cut bananas in chunks, add to butter-sugar mixture and mix until well incorporated (this part is fun). Add eggs, one at a time, and mix until well incorporated (This part is slimy). Add flour, baking soda, salt, buttermilk, and vanilla and mix until blended. Do not mix battter too much, or cake will be tough. Stir in pecans or walnuts by hand (or chocolate chips, if you are me).
Spoon evenly into pan, bake 50-55 min or until top is firm and brown and toothpick (or fork) comes out clean. Let cool. Obviously.
I am seriously scoring this semester in the recipes I use/mess with. I am also getting mad good at the actual baking part of baking. I am much better at telling by looking when things are done. And (knock on wood) I haven't burnt a single thing yet! Why, you ask, do I consider this such a huge accomplishment when I've only made two desserts? Good point, fair reader.
...
because I've made THREE!
The banana cake was all but gone within a day after I made it (which I did on Friday, by the way) and then on Sunday my a cappella group went apple picking to bond with our new members. My boyfriend and roommates and I bonded particularly well with one of the girls (for some reason that came out sounding dirty. I swear it's not.), who came back to the apartment with us and collaborated in making....
APPLE CRISP!
Unfortunately, I cannot convey smell through my camera. But if I could, your mouths would be watering. All gazillion of you who read this. Ha. Ha ha. Anyway.
More on the smell: I haven't anticipated anything coming out of the oven this much since I was a kid, back when time slowed down colossally when your mom made cookies and you had missed licking the spoon because she forgot to give it to you and washed the bowl and you would have done many scary things, like walk around in the basement without lights on, to make the cookies bake faster...but I digress.
The cool thing about the apple crisp coming out so well was that we sort of made up the recipe. I mean, I found this one online:
Recipe:
2/3 cup pecans or walnuts (Do not like. Did not use.)
1 1/2 cups (3 sticks) unsalted butter, softened to rm temp., more for greasing
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
3 bananas
3 lg. eggs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour + 2 tsp for dusting
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
3 tbsp buttermilk (I literally just use butter and milk, because what IS buttermilk, anyway?)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
Oven rack in middle. Preheat to 350. Do stuff to the nuts. Generously rub the bottom and sides of a 9 cup bundt pan with butter (clearly, I used a 9 x 13 inch pan, because...well, that's all I have here at school). Add 2 tsp flour and swirl around, coating buttered surfaces. Set aside.
Put butter and sugars in large bowl, beat with electric mixer (/wooden spoon) until smooth and creamy. Cut bananas in chunks, add to butter-sugar mixture and mix until well incorporated (this part is fun). Add eggs, one at a time, and mix until well incorporated (This part is slimy). Add flour, baking soda, salt, buttermilk, and vanilla and mix until blended. Do not mix battter too much, or cake will be tough. Stir in pecans or walnuts by hand (or chocolate chips, if you are me).
Spoon evenly into pan, bake 50-55 min or until top is firm and brown and toothpick (or fork) comes out clean. Let cool. Obviously.
I am seriously scoring this semester in the recipes I use/mess with. I am also getting mad good at the actual baking part of baking. I am much better at telling by looking when things are done. And (knock on wood) I haven't burnt a single thing yet! Why, you ask, do I consider this such a huge accomplishment when I've only made two desserts? Good point, fair reader.
...
because I've made THREE!
The banana cake was all but gone within a day after I made it (which I did on Friday, by the way) and then on Sunday my a cappella group went apple picking to bond with our new members. My boyfriend and roommates and I bonded particularly well with one of the girls (for some reason that came out sounding dirty. I swear it's not.), who came back to the apartment with us and collaborated in making....
APPLE CRISP!
Unfortunately, I cannot convey smell through my camera. But if I could, your mouths would be watering. All gazillion of you who read this. Ha. Ha ha. Anyway.
More on the smell: I haven't anticipated anything coming out of the oven this much since I was a kid, back when time slowed down colossally when your mom made cookies and you had missed licking the spoon because she forgot to give it to you and washed the bowl and you would have done many scary things, like walk around in the basement without lights on, to make the cookies bake faster...but I digress.
The cool thing about the apple crisp coming out so well was that we sort of made up the recipe. I mean, I found this one online:
EASY APPLE CRISP
6 to 8 med. apples, peeled and sliced
1 c. sugar
1 c. flour
1 egg
6 tbsp. softened butter
Cinnamon sprinkle
1 c. sugar
1 c. flour
1 egg
6 tbsp. softened butter
Cinnamon sprinkle
Slice apples in bottom of 13x9x2 inch pan (ungreased). In bowl, mix sugar, flour, egg and butter until crumbly. Sprinkle on top, covering sliced apples. Lightly garnish with cinnamon sprinkle (if desired). Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour (until golden brown).
but then we realized that it doesn't call for either brown sugar or vanilla, both of which we felt were crucial. So I halved the sugar and made it half brown and half regular, and added about a teaspoon of vanilla. Also, one of my roommates has oats. A lot of oats. So we dumped in some of those too. And I was pretty liberal with the instruction "cinnamon sprinkle." All in all, deliciosity ensued.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Hell Week --> Chocolate Chip Scones
Usually a "hell week" is a week before a play, musical, concert - anything where there are rehearsals every night and you go home a) having forgotten that there is life off the stage and b) wondering how you can stand five more seconds of the people involved.
I just had an insane week with basically my life, and enough of it involved performance that I feel it is appropriate to call it a hell week of sorts. In the past seven days, I have been to three rehearsals, three rounds of auditions (The oldies a cappella group I'm in held auditions, I didn't have to audition for anything.), and (including tonight) three shows. While none of these things are inherently stressful activities, they took up SOO MUCH TIME.
Time during which, if I had not been rehearsing and whatnot, I could have been writing that paper that was due today that I instead wrote in bits and pieces every time I had a spare minute. I could have been painting for my art class. I could have read something for fun. Hell, I could have read my History homework. I could have been SLEEPING.
Consequently, I have been feeling like merde all week. (I don't normally swear in French. I just thought it might be classier than putting "shit." Which I have now done anyway.) SOO after show number 3 tonight I plan to get some cooking therapy. Which I'm sure will turn into eating therapy for Mike and my roommates.
I think that if my ex-boss (we broke up on good terms) facebooks me the recipe tonight, I might get to make....
...
..
drumroll please....
CHOCOLATE CHIP SCONES!
I'm not sure yet, and if I do, there's no guarantee they will look like that ^. But in the past, when I used to make them at Thanks A Latte, my old job (hence, ex-boss and knowledge of said recipe) they looked better. So this could be a great idea, both in stress-level-lowering and in the deliciosity factor. And after this, I swear I will attempt to make something that does not have "chip" in the title.
I make no guarantees on whether it has "chocolate."
I just had an insane week with basically my life, and enough of it involved performance that I feel it is appropriate to call it a hell week of sorts. In the past seven days, I have been to three rehearsals, three rounds of auditions (The oldies a cappella group I'm in held auditions, I didn't have to audition for anything.), and (including tonight) three shows. While none of these things are inherently stressful activities, they took up SOO MUCH TIME.
Consequently, I have been feeling like merde all week. (I don't normally swear in French. I just thought it might be classier than putting "shit." Which I have now done anyway.) SOO after show number 3 tonight I plan to get some cooking therapy. Which I'm sure will turn into eating therapy for Mike and my roommates.
I think that if my ex-boss (we broke up on good terms) facebooks me the recipe tonight, I might get to make....
...
..
drumroll please....
CHOCOLATE CHIP SCONES!
I make no guarantees on whether it has "chocolate."
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