fresh squeezed

Is anyone out there?

2011-12-15T21:28:00.000-08:00

So, if I were to start this up again? Would anyone be interested? I am so not sure I have the time to do it, but I haven't stopped cooking or taking photos, I'm just not documenting. I definitely miss it, it's a super-fun creative outlet. However, it seems like there are so many blogs and websites about cooking today, what's another perspective? So, no promises, but if I were to start up again, which of the below would you most want to hear about? Based on the response (or lack thereof) I will probably have my answer....

Short Rib Ragu with Tagliatelle

Super Easy Deep Dish Pizza

Emeril's Christmas Morning Bake

Peach Jam

Technical Difficulties

2009-03-20T12:15:00.000-07:00

I can't seem to get my photos to upload, but I haven't forgotten you! Please check back again soon!

Reconnected

2009-03-16T12:09:00.000-07:00

Man. It has been a while. I feel like I was missing a sixth sense or something. Aside from being sick, we have been disconnected from our tv and Internet service since February. Yes, February, as in about a half a month! Wow. Thank goodness for Blackberries! I am sure there is a way to blog from my bberry, but man, I missed a keyboard. Those little letter keys were practically the death of me. Well, as you can see, I did survive. Our Verizon Fios Internet and tv were installed about 15 minutes ago. Hooray! I can't wait to get back to sharing with you. I have a fresh loaf of bread on the counter which was baked last night and a batch of citrus shortbread cooling. Trying to decide whether they want a chocolate icing. I will share the decision with you next time! :)
Talk to you soon!
Meagan

Baked Peanut Butter Cookies

2009-01-31T08:09:00.000-08:00

If you don't want to run to the kitchen to start making irresistible desserts, you should stop reading. Honestly, I consider that I've given you fair warning, and if you make these cookies and complain about how wonderful they are and how your defenses are immune to their pull, please don't say that I didn't warn you.

There are few cookies that rise to the level of the classic chocolate chip in my esteem. These do. Sometimes, they are even better. I guess it's not shocking, the combination of peanut butter and milk chocolate has always been a favorite. These will satisfy on many different levels- salty and sweet, ooey-gooey and crispy, sandy crust, melty chocolate. Yea, they are beyond a triple threat. Obviously you're feeling pretty confident about yourself if you haven't clicked away at this point, so we might as well dive in. I am going to do this a little differently just to see how it feels, I'm going to list the recipe first, then go through my steps. If you've been playing along, you know that I bought the Baked cookbook in a moment of weakness after buying two other cookbooks that month. Of those three, it's the best. It might be the best baking cookbook that I own. Wow. Yea, I said it.

Peanut Butter Cookies with Milk Chocolate Chunks

From Baked by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup light brown sugar, packed

1 cup sugar

1 cup creamy peanut butter (I used Costco's organic which does not have stabilizers or sugar)

2 eggs, room temperature

1 teaspoon vanilla (I use 2)

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 & 3/4 cups all purpose flour

8 ounces milk chocolate, broken into chunks

First things first. Butter and sugars into the mixer. Cream until light and fluffy for a few minutes.Add the eggs one at a time, beating until fully incorporated each time. Add the peanut butter and vanilla. It's considered appropriate to sift together the dry ingredients to ensure that the salt and baking soda are evenly distributed. It works best to me to add them to the wet ingredients before adding the flour. I hate dirtying another bowl if you don't have to. Proceed with either method you like.
After incorporating the dry ingredients, stir in the chocolate. I had a bar and a half bag of chips, so I used both. Either way will be good. The authors caution not to swap semi-sweet for the milk chocolate, and they are absolutely right. It won't be the same, trust them.Roll into teaspoon size balls and roll in sugar. Place 2-3 inches apart on a parchment lined baking sheet.Bake at 360 for 10-12 minutes. Cool immediately on racks. Don't cool on the baking sheet as the chocolate might burn.Enjoy. Again and again.

Therapy

2009-01-29T18:54:00.000-08:00

I had one of those days. Not one of those days, not the ones where everything goes wrong, not the ones where one big thing goes wrong. No, basically just uneventful. It might have been better if something had gone wrong, because then at least something would have happened! Of course I am kidding, but it was kind of a weird day. On my way home I was not looking forward to cooking given my compromised condition, but luckily I had frozen homemade lasagna in the freezer. That helped. Combined with sauteed green beans and mushrooms and a spinach salad, it ended up being not as bad of an evening as I thought. I am so glad I didn't give in to the take out that I had been considering. This was so much better and easier. And just the act of doing it made me feel better. Yes, I think cooking is my therapy.

I called it a day with the finger frog...

And this girl always helps...

Hope you had a good one. If not, try this recipe below to accompany anything you like- as long as it's easy. I promise it'll pick you up!

Sauteed Green Beans and Mushrooms

1 bundle of french trimmed green beans, rinsed and patted dry

1 clove of garlic, crushed with the back of your knife and peeled

pinch salt, pepper and red pepper flakes

olive oil

Heat a skillet over medium high heat and add a few swirls of olive oil in the pan. Heat until hot, but not smoking. Add the green beans, mushrooms and garlic and sautee. About 5 minutes. Add the red pepper flakes, salt and pepper and toss in pan. Sautee for 5 more minutes, serve immediately.

Plans...

2009-01-27T07:18:00.000-08:00

I went to yoga on Sunday night, and one of my favorite parts is the deep relaxation at the end. (Shocking, I know!) It's funny, sometimes I just lay there and feel all the muscles that just worked and how they feel relaxed and tired and I sort of drift off into this relaxed state until... ding! ding! Class is over and it's time to pack up your things. Ahhh. Then, there are other times, when all I think about is what I am going to run home and make for dinner. And dessert. And lunch to take to work on Monday. On and on. Sunday was one of those nights. I was going to make pizza with this spelt dough that I had tried for the first time. I was going to try new toppings. We had just gone to costco and I had a big package of strawberries and spinach just waiting to be made into this wonderful salad that I make all the time, but haven't shared yet on this site.

I had a tub of greek strained yogurt to make into gelato in my new gelato machine.

Things were promising. Then, when I was cutting the mushrooms for the pizza, somehow my finger got mixed in with what I was doing. Argh. This is like, one of my worst fears. Luckily, I am not badly injured, but the damage was done. Chris was so helpful and got me bandaged and settled down. He helped me finish the pizza, which was already in the works.

We ate dinner together, and I was already feeling a little bit better. However, needless to say, I didn't get around to any more photos. I didn't get around to the salad or the gelato. I didn't get around to my lunch for Monday. So much for my plans.

So I decided to take this opportunity to share some of my favorite food pictures of my work over the last year, as well as links to where they appeared on my blog, in case this inspires you to try them again or for the first time. I hope you rediscover something that you'll love. I'll get to the rest- you better believe I am making plans for what to make as soon as I am back to my old self!

http://meaganstephens07.blogspot.com/2008/07/all-things-grilled.html

http://meaganstephens07.blogspot.com/2008/10/better-than-halloween-candy.html

http://meaganstephens07.blogspot.com/2008/10/jealous-much.html

http://meaganstephens07.blogspot.com/2008/09/where-were-we.html

http://meaganstephens07.blogspot.com/2008/09/cheesecake-tart-with-fresh-fruit.html

http://meaganstephens07.blogspot.com/2008/08/summertime-lasagna.html

Real Deal Gelato

2009-01-21T19:53:00.000-08:00

I guess there is no point in having a gelato machine if you don't go all out and make the real deal gelato. I figured Giada's nutella gelato was a good place to start. Basically started with a custard base, then you can add any flavors you like. I decided to make mine half nutella and half pistachio. You start with 1/2 cup sugar, 2 cups milk and 1 cup of cream over low heat. Using room temperature eggs, beat 4 egg yolks with 1/4 cup of sugar until light in color and thick.

This takes about 5 minutes of beating. To temper the yolks before adding to the milk mixture, add a half-cup of the warm milk to the eggs before adding them to the mixture on the stove.

Cook for about 10 minutes until thickened. Insert a spoon in the mixture and make sure it coats the spoon. After cooking, strain the mixture through a sieve. I divided mine into two bowls to make the two flavors.

For the pistachio flavor, mix 1/4 cup raw pistachios with 2 tablespoons sugar in a food processor. Stir this into the gelato base.

For the chocolate-hazlenut flavor, add 1/4 cup nutella to the gelato base and whisk until incorporated.

Cool on the counter for 30 minutes and then chill in the fridge for 3-4 hours. Place a piece of plastic wrap directly on the custard to prevent a skin forming on as it cools. Freeze the chilled custard in the ice cream maker for 30-40 minutes until frozen.

It was a little melty after just the ice cream freezer, but the second night it was BOSS. (Sorry, momentary channeling Juno moment.) Move over HagenDaaz - your spot in my freezer just got taken! The chocolate is that perfectly dense flavor, even Chris liked it! He's usually not a chocolate ice cream guy despite his tenure at Cold Stone! If you don't think you need an ice cream machine, you might want to rethink that... it's definitely worth it to make it yourself!

Sushi

2009-01-19T21:37:00.001-08:00

When your husband calls to tell you that he's eating dinner at work, what's a girl to do but treat herself?! I hardly ever go out to sushi, and I rarely pick up take out on the way home, but for some reason, it just sounded good! I got a shrimp tempura cruch roll and a vegetable roll. The sweet potato was awesome! Some organic edamame that was in the fridge from costco....

Just a little dinner for one.... Yum!

Totally gringo sushi, I know- but it's what I like! Let me know your favorite little splurge for moments like this!

Baked Quinoa with Roasted Vegetables

2009-01-18T11:52:00.000-08:00

If your New Year's resolutions include eating more healthfully, you have to try quinoa. This tiny grain is packed with protein as well as essential amino acids. This is an easy recipe which you can make without a lot of fussing. Start by sauteing a large onion and a couple cloves of garlic in a tablespoon of olive oil in a pan that you might use later in your meal for something else. (I hate getting something dirty for only one thing!)While that is on the stove, rinse the quinoa in a fine mesh sieve for a minute or two. Quinoa has a bitter outer coating which will dissolve once rinsed, so don't skip this step. It is fine if the quiona is a little damp when you get ready to cook it. I used about a cup and a half of quinoa, and once rinsed, spread it over the bottom of the dish which has been drizzled with a little bit of oil.The onions should be done at this point, so spread those over the top of the quinoa.

Top with vegetables of your choice, a favorite of mine includes zucchini and tomatoes, but since those are not loved by my husband, I went for crimini mushrooms. Feel free to improvise here! You can leave this in the fridge until you are ready to bake if you'd like. Once you are ready, add 3 cups of chicken or vegetable stock and cook, covered, for 30 minutes.
After cooking covered for 30 minutes, top with cheese of your choice and bake for a remaining 15 minutes uncovered until the cheese is browned.
I used mozzarella and Parmesan. Goat cheese, feta, or Gruyere would be good options too.
I served the quinoa with one of my new favorite recipes found here:http://www.thewednesdaychef.com/the_wednesday_chef/2009/01/melissa-clarks-roasted-broccoli-with-shrimp.html
Roasted broccoli is one of my favorite preparations, and adding the shrimp couldn't be easier. This was one of those "A ha!" recipes for me. All the ingredients were in my fridge and cupboards, but I never thought to combine them in just this way. Sprinkle the broccoli with olive oil, ground cumin, coriander, salt and pepper and roast for 10 minutes. In the meantime toss raw shrimp in olive oil, lemon zest, salt and pepper and add them for the last 8-10 minutes of baking until just cooked and firm. Everything was fantastic, and together with the quinoa, it was a perfect healthy weekend meal.

Cherry Lemon Frozen Yogurt

2009-01-12T19:30:00.000-08:00

I got a gelato machine for Christmas and I was sooo excited to try it out!! Chris and I love frozen yogurt, but we are hooked on a particular tart flavor. If you've had Pinkberry or Golden Spoon's Simply Tart then you know what I am talking about. Also, when we went to Hong Kong, there was a gelato shop that carried a yogurt blackberry gelato. It might have been the 90 degree heat plus the 90% humidity, but we were totally addicted that week! The gelato ladies started to recognize us! We found a similar thing in Tucson at Frost Gelato. (If you have a chance to go, do not miss it!!) I don't know what causes the obsession, but it might be kind of like sweet and sour candy. It's really tart, but then sweet and it makes you just want more. In any case, I couldn't wait to see if I could recreate it. Of course, I always want to make it better, and I think I did...

So you start with 1 large container of strained greek yogurt. I tried this both with the fat-free variety and the 2% variety. The 2% gives you something more like gelato, whereas the fat-free version is more like classic frozen yogurt. Both are fantastic. This is nice to have on hand when you want to skip the step of thickening your ice cream or gelato base. No waiting!

I was lucky to find cherries at the store- hooray! Above any other fruit, they are by far my absolute favorite. You can use other things if you can find them, strawberries, blackberries, or raspberries would work well substituted here if you can't find cherries. I pitted the cherries and chopped them roughly, making sure to scrape all the yummy juice into the bowl and not lose it!

I'd say that I had about a cup of cherries once I finished. To that I added some meyer lemon zest and the juice. I used the zest of 2 lemons and the juice of one. Finally, I added 1/3 cup agave nectar, which is not only better than sugar, it takes a step out of the process. If you can't find it, or want to use sugar, make sure to melt it into a simple syrup first. The sugar won't dissolve in your ice cream and you don't want the grittiness of sugar in this dessert.Add the yogurt to the bowl, and stir to combine. Freeze in your ice cream maker for 30-40 minutes or until it reaches the desired consistency. Place the finished dessert in a plastic container (just save the one that the yogurt came in) and freeze in the freezer for an hour or so before eating to firm it up.
Scoop and enjoy. Totally addictive, yummy, and healthy. Really healthy for a dessert. ;)

If you don't have an ice cream machine, check out this to see other ways of making ice cream. Just takes a little elbow grease!

Super Quick and Healthy Turkey Chili

2009-01-06T06:27:00.000-08:00

This chili is very healthy and super easy. Chop one large onion (or a couple small ones) and cook over medium heat in your biggest stock pot. You want the onion to cook until translucent, and not brown, about 5-10 minutes.Then chop a couple peppers of your choice- I used pasilla peppers which are a little bit more flavorful than green bell peppers. Chop these and add it to the onions, cook for about 5 more minutes. Once cooked, the onions and peppers should look like this:

To that, add 1 pound of ground turkey or ground turkey breast. I prefer ground turkey breast, but it is sometimes hard to find. Cook, breaking up any large pieces until browned throughout.Now it is time to season. I used 2 tablespoons ground cumin, 1 tablespoon chili powder, 1 tablespoon ground corriander, and 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, plus additional later to taste. Don't add the salt until the end. The beans will stay firm as long as they aren't too salted until the end.Add 3 cans of rinsed beans, I used 2 cans white beans (sometimes called cannellini) and 1 can black beans. If you want to make this vegetarian, add 1-2 more cans of beans. Use whatever combination that you like! To this, add 1 box of chicken broth, (4 cans) preferably low sodium if you have it. If not, just taste the chili before adding the salt at the end. After simmering for a while (as long as you like) I thicken the chili with a little roux. Melt 4 tablespoons of butter in a small saucepan.
Add 5 tablespoons (1/4 cup + 1 tablespoon) of flour to this once the butter has melted and cook over medium heat. Whisk to keep the mixture smooth. I love using whole wheat flour here, it adds a nice nuttiness to the chili and keeps the glycemic index a bit lower then white flour. If you can find whole wheat pastry flour, it's a great alternative to all purpose for these kinds of things.

Cook the roux until bubbly and completely incorporated. Cooking this simple mixture takes the flavor way above just butter and flour. This little bit of mixture will thicken the whole pot of chili remarkably.

Taste the chili, and season with salt, pepper, and more cayenne pepper if you like. I used about 1 teaspoon salt, 1 teaspoon ground black pepper (don't feel like you have to measure this) and an additional 1/4- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne. Squeeze the juice of 2 limes over the top of the chili and stir to combine.
Serve with chopped tomato, avocado, plain yogurt, shredded cheese, and any other toppings that you like. The chili can simmer indefinitely on the stove covered if you aren't ready to eat it right away. You can also freeze it, just defrost in the fridge before heating. Makes about 8-10 cups of prepared chili.
Cozy up to a warm bowl with a green salad, a quesedilla, or even just a toasted slice of bread. It's hearty and satisfying. Super Quick and easy!

Shopping List:

1 pound ground turkey or turkey breast

1-2 yellow onions

Peppers/chilies of your choice

3 cans beans (black, pinto, or cannellini are good choices)

1 box chicken broth, low sodium

2 limes

Cumin, Chili Powder, Ground Coriander, Cayenne Pepper

Toppings of your choice: Cheese, avocado, tomatoes, plain yogurt

Giada's Nutella Cookies

2009-01-02T06:58:00.000-08:00

If you like Nutella, these cookies are for you. If you like chocolate and hazelnuts, these cookies are for you.
I know, I know. You're thinking, "Wait!! It's the second of January. This is the time for New Year's Resolutions! This is the time for healthy eating! I promised to be good!" Well, don't get too worried. Yes, these are a dessert, but c'mon. Dieting without any dessert is just no fun. I promise that these are a yummy treat that will satisfy that chocolate craving and not completely un-do your post holiday hard work. Granted, you can't eat the whole batch in one sitting and still claim to be dieting- but a little reward now and then keeps us on track. So if you are ready to indulge a little, get out a bowl and here we go!
The recipe is happily basic and easy. Something you can whip up in a quick afternoon or evening. If you want to limit your consumption, you could freeze half of the dough and bake these later. There is only 1 cup of added sugar (granted the nutella is sugary) and only 1/2 cup of butter (granted the nutella is buttery). So start with your butter, sugars and nutella and beat until fluffy and fully incorporated. Like this:

To the creamed mixture, you add the eggs and vanilla and beat for a couple more minutes. Then add the baking powder, soda, and salt, followed by the flour. Once just barely combined stir in the chocolate chips (or nuts, if you prefer). We are not huge fans of nuts in our cookies, so I swapped them out for chocolate. I personally can never have too much chocolate, but if it isn't your favorite flavor, you might want to try the hazelnuts. Bake at 375 degrees for about 8-10 minutes for teaspoon sized cookies, or 12-15 minutes for tablespoon sized cookies.

Enjoy with a cold glass of milk- you will need it!

Adapted from:

Giada's Nutella Biscotti

(From her most recent book, Giada's Kitchen, Giada explains that her grandmother called these cookies biscotti, even though they are drop cookies. I think it was a good idea to go along with Grandma in this case, no matter what you call them, they are fantastic!)

1/2 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup nutella (about half of a small jar)

1/2 cup light brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

2 eggs

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt

1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips or toasted, chopped hazelnuts

Cranberry Lemon Scones

2008-12-30T20:46:00.000-08:00

This is one of those recipes that is totally worth it. You won't believe how good these are, and you'll be shocked at how little sugar it takes to make these beautiful fresh cranberries delectable. Part of the trick is chopping up the cranberries first. You'll need about a cup and a half.Once chopped, let them macerate in their own juices with some lemon juice and sugar- you only need 3 tablespoons, which was shocking to me. I thought with their reputation for being super-tart, that more sugar would be needed. Not so.

Meanwhile, they go in these fantastically flaky, crumbly yummy scones- which are really biscuits masquerading as a sweet breakfast treat. Be careful not to overwork the dough, you want it to kind of come together at the end- then stop. This will keep the scones flaky.

Roll out the dough to about a 1 inch thickness and using a biscuit cutter or a glass, cut out as many circles as you can. Keep re-rolling and cutting until you use up the dough. Place on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper spacing about 2 inches apart. You can bake them plain, sprinkle some coarse sugar on top, brush the tops with cream, but any option is yummy. Once baked, cool on a cooling rack then store in a airtight container. You'll want to eat these within a day or two, so if you don't think you will eat them all, just freeze the ones you won't use until you are ready for them again. It won't take long! Lemon and Fresh Cranberry Scones

http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/11/meyer-lemon-and-fresh-cranberry-scones/

Butternut Squash Soup

2008-12-05T17:15:00.000-08:00

I love butternut squash. I think it is one of those awesome vegetables that is just as hearty as potatoes with a meal, and so much better for you. Also, it couldn't get easier, really. Just halve open that bad boy and roast it for a while at whatever temperature you are already using your oven (or 375 degrees if it's in there solo) and in 35-40 minutes, it's perfectly tender. Slightly sweet, it only needs a sprinkling of salt and a pat of butter to make the perfect side dish.
Therefore, I hardly ever do anything else with it. I have a hard time getting past that preparation, especially when I am doing other, more complicated things. So, when I saw this soup, I thought, I should broaden my horizons. Combined with sweet yellow onions, garlic, and chicken broth, the idea of the soup had me ready to break with habit.

Now, it wasn't bad at all. I just felt like the amount of work required didn't measure up to the end product. I think the next time I will make a few adjustments. Also, if you really want to try this, I would recommend looking for the peeled and pre-cut squash in the refrigerated section of the market. I have seen this from time to time at Costco or Trader Joe's. While fresh squash is good, it was a lot of work to peel these guys.
With such beautiful color, you have to be getting a lot of nutrients from this soup. Finished off with a bit of cream and some toppings (see below) this is a comforting addition to any meal- or with a salad, it could probably be a meal by itself!

Butternut Squash Soup

Makes about 2 quarts

1 & 1/2 - 2 sweet yellow onions, diced

3 cloves garlic, crushed or minced fine

2 tablespoons butter

4 pounds butternut squash, peeled, seeded, diced and roasted slightly

2 teaspoons cumin

1 teaspoon ground coriander

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon cayenne powder

1 box (3 cans) low sodium chicken broth

1/4 cup cream (at room temperature)

1 teaspoon kosher salt (start with half if you aren't using low-sodium broth)

ground black pepper to taste

Saute the onions and garlic in the butter in the bottom of your largest stock pot over medium heat until translucent, but not brown, about 8-10 minutes. Add the squash and the spices, stir to coat. Add the chicken broth and bring to a simmer. Cook for about 30 minutes, or until the squash is very tender. Add the salt and pepper. Blend with an immersion blender until smooth. Add the cream and stir to combine.

Toppings: Dried cranberries, toasted chopped walnuts, chopped sage leaves, chopped flat parsley, and/or grated hard cheese such as Gruyere, Percorio Romano, or Parmesan.

Tucson

2008-12-03T20:00:00.000-08:00

If you haven't been to Tucson in a while, you are missing out. It's such a fun, funky town, and it moves at a totally different pace than the big cities. It's a great escape for us, and perfect for a 2 night stay, which we did the weekend before Thanksgiving. Watching sports at the U of A campus is usually what draws us there in the first place, but there are so many other things about Tucson that we enjoy. After the game- which was a heartbreaking loss to the Oregon State Beavers on a last minute field goal- we spent a couple days just enjoying the city.

We hiked at Sabino Canyon, which is really breathtaking. It's a national forest park and one of the most interesting ones at that. It's situated within the city of Tucson, unlike most parks you don't have to drive away from the city to get to it. It's a canyon, but instead of viewing it from the top down like the Grand Canyon, you walk in at the floor level and enjoy it from the bottom up.Arizona's national flower is the saguaro flower, but the saguaros aren't as prevalent throughout the state as they once were. These beautiful cacti are the iconic versions of the ones in westerns and cartoons- super green and huge, towering over the other desert flora.
Even though we were warned of mountain lion sightings, we braved the canyon to these spectacular views. We didn't really see any scary animals, luckily, but we did see a few deer relaxing in the shade. I think they picked a good spot to live!

We also checked out the house where Chris lived while going to school there. He and his mom, brother and sister fixed up this super cute house in the Sam Hughes neighborhood near the University. It still looks great, and the landscaping is thriving!

Finally, our trip would not be complete without a trip (or two) to my favorite, Beyond Bread. I got a good roll of the eyes when he spied me taking the camera in with me, so I didn't take as many pictures as I might have otherwise, but I think I picked a good subject for these two photos... would you agree??

Now that is a dessert!

More to come!

2008-12-02T07:00:00.000-08:00

Having trouble getting photos to upload, but I have lots to share with you. Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Anytime

2008-11-17T07:00:00.000-08:00

We had our own little mini Thanksgiving this weekend, and it was such a treat. The cool thing is, that it was so easy and healthy, I had to share it with you. I bought a boneless turkey breast roast at the grocery store. I had gone in looking for a bone-in turkey breast, but they didn't have any, just the full turkeys. We don't really like the dark meat, and that just seemed like a lot of work. I was a little bit nervous about the boneless one, but I shouldn't have been. The roast was simple, defrost (or not, if you have more roasting time) and bake at 325 degrees on a rack in the bottom of the oven. Et Voila, a perfect turkey breast, moist, fresh, lean and healthy.

We rounded out our meal with a trip to Trader Joe's, where the rest of the ingredients came effortlessly together. I wanted to keep it light, just to see if we really missed anything. Of course, since we just had a turkey breast, there was no stuffing, so it wasn't really Thanksgiving. We did, however have mashed potatoes, green beans, a spinach salad, and homemade cranberry sauce. I tried to keep each item true to it's roots, but update it just a tad. Here are the recipes, plenty for two with leftovers.

Creamy and Fluffy Mashed Potatoes with a little less guilt
3 large russet potatoes, peeled and sliced for boiling
1 cup 2% greek strained yogurt (recommended brand, FAGE at TJ's)
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons 2% milk
salt & fresh ground pepper to taste
Measure out the yogurt and leave on the counter to come to room temperature. Boil the potatoes until tender, drain and mash with the remaining ingredients.

Crisp-Tender Green Beans in a flash
1 package french green beans (pretrimmed is a bonus, look for them in the fridge section at TJ's)
Spray olive oil or cooking spray such as Pam
Salt, to taste
Line a baking sheet with foil. Spray with the olive oil and add the green beans in one layer. Sprinkle with salt, and mist with a light spray of oil. Bake with the turkey at 325 for about 10 minutes, or until crisp-tender.

Lower Sugar Cranberry Sauce
1 package (12 oz) fresh cranberries
zest & juice of 1 orange and 1 lemon
1 3-inch piece of vanilla bean, scraped
3/4 cup agave nectar (look in the baking section at TJ's)

Rinse the cranberries in a colander under cool water. Add to a medium saucepan. Zest and juice the lemon and orange into the pot. Add the vanilla bean seeds, and place the remaining pod in the pan with the fruit. Add the agave nectar (spritz your measuring cup for a second with cooking spray to make it easier to pour) and heat over medium heat until simmering. Simmer, uncovered, over medium-low heat for about 10-15 minutes, or until most of the cranberries have burst. Let stand at room temperature for a couple hours (while the turkey cooks) to thicken. Serve at room temperature, or chilled.

Pictures to come soon!

Finally free

2008-11-14T17:00:00.000-08:00

Don't you just love Fridays? Seriously, I think it is my favorite day of the week. If only there was sleeping in involved, it would be perfect. The actual working part of work aside, it is great, you get to see all your work friends, everyone is in a good mood, and then it's like the last day of highschool at the end. Freedom!! You've been saving up your "want to do list" all week and it's finally time. But really, there is usually only time on Friday evening for a nice meal, potentially a drink, and maybe some dessert. But that's all you need. 'Cause it's Friday. You've got time to get to all that other stuff. So relax, enjoy, and savor it tonight. I know that I will.

Rainbow

2008-11-13T07:00:00.000-08:00

I used to participate in a CSA- which stands for Community Sponsored Agriculture. For about $120 every couple months we would get a share of the produce from a local farm. I love this idea for so many reasons. 1. The produce is organic. 2. You're supporting local agriculture. 3. By not purchasing from a traditional grocery store, you are helping to conserve the use of fossil fuels. I know that we tend to think about cutting down on fossil fuels by driving a hybrid or carpooling, but we often forget about the miles logged on the things we buy. As nice as it is to be able to get asparagus in November, the fact that it is even at the store means that it probably took some jet fuel and truck fuel to get here. My last bunch said "Product of Peru", so that definitely is not a good thing. As much as I liked my CSA membership, we just weren't using all of the things that they gave us. I am not a big fan of swiss chard or kale, and Chris wasn't interested in the bok choy. The fruit was fantastic and there was always zucchini! Even though I stopped my membership, I did find one store that stocked my farm's produce. Win win.

I hadn't been going to Jimbo's lately, even though I love their selection of organic produce. They also tell you where the items are from, and whether or not they are organic. The majority of things are, but there are a few things where organic doesn't matter as much. I filled my cart with so many wonderful things, broccoli, butternut squash, red cabbage, celery, green leaf lettuce, yellow delicious apples, and these beauties:

Have you ever seen a purple carrot? Or a red one, for that matter? I could not pass these up. Grown right here in California, no jet fuel added. I can't say that I am always perfect, sometimes you just have to feed that craving and give in to the out of season items if it's what you really want. However, sometimes you find something that you didn't even know exists which is better than the other thing altogether. I guess we just have to keep looking- and every little bit helps. Hope you find an unexpected treasure sometime soon!

More info on CSAs, Farmer's markets, etc.:

http://www.localharvest.org/

http://www.slowfoodusa.org/

http://www.nrdc.org/health/foodmiles/?gclid=CP_2l4Dd8pYCFQkiagodsjsGXg

Rustic Apple Pie

2008-11-10T20:00:00.000-08:00

I was rearranging my freezer the other day when I came across a frozen homemade pie dough. I knew it was there, I hadn't really forgotten about it. However, I could have sworn that I had two of them in there. I took it out and put it in the fridge to defrost, not quite sure what I wanted to do with it. Then it occurred to me that I had a lot of apples in the fridge.

As much as I love apples on their own, I hadn't made an apple pie, and figured it would be a nice treat. I really wanted a double crust pie, a la the cherry pie I made earlier this year, but I decided my one pie crust would have to make do. However, I followed a trick that I learned from the King Arthur Flour website in which you just fold the overlapping crust over on top of the pie. You can leave it like this, or fill it in with a crumble topping. I opted for crumble, but it would be great any way.The nice thing about an apple pie is that you really don't need a lot of sugar, because the fruit is pretty sweet on it's own. I only used 1/4 cup of light brown sugar.
The crumble topping isn't necessary, but it's yummy. I used a half stick of butter, 1/4 cup flour, and 2 tablespoons brown sugar. There is no need to be too technical with this, I used a pastry blender to cut it all together, but you can also just use your fingertips. Just cube the butter into small dice and squish all the ingredients together. Sprinkle on top right before you bake.

I thought this pie was great, and I used 5 apples. Three granny smith, 1 figi, and 1 golden delicious. I think the trick is to slice them quite thin, and try to overlap the slices as much as possible. For the filling, I also used lemon juice and zest, as well as my favorite new spice blend, Chinese 5 spice blend. Chris liked the layers of apples overlapping each other. The flavors were right on, not classic apple pie, but it was a great update.

One pie crust, store bought or homemade.
For the filling:
5 large apples, peeled, cored, and sliced. Any combination of granny smith and other less tart apples, try figi or yellow delicious.
1/4 cup brown sugar
Zest and juice of 1 lemon
1 & 1/2 teaspoons Chinese 5 spice blend
1 & 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
For the crumble topping:
1/2 stick butter, cut into small dice
1/4 cup flour
2 tablespoons brown sugar

Butter a 9 inch pie plate and assemble the pie. Brush the crust which overlaps with a mixture of 1 egg, beaten with a little cream. Sprinkle with coarse sugar, if desired. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes, until filling is bubbly.

Oh and look at who is still hanging around... I thought I had to throw these away when I wrote about them last week, but Chris just suggested changing the water again. It worked! They are still here!

Get Fresh

2008-11-06T07:00:00.000-08:00

Remember those flowers that I couldn't pass up at the farmer's market? Well, I certainly got my money's worth! I think I am actually going to have to throw them away after work tonight, but they lasted a long time! They continued to look great almost two weeks after they were purchased. Makes me think that buying at the farmer's market was the way to go for freshness.

I also employed a couple tricks of my own, including a splash of bleach in the water, changed every 3 or 4 days, or when it starts to look cloudy. I only cut the stems once, after I changed the water the second time. The bleach inhibits growth of bacteria which prevent flowers from drinking. If they aren't drinking, they won't stay standing. I'll be sad to say goodbye this evening, but glad that I had their company for so long. Happy Thursday- we are almost to the weekend!

Better than Halloween Candy...

2008-10-31T07:00:00.000-07:00

If you like rice krispies...If you like caramel...Butter caramel, to be more precise...If you like chocolate and peanut butter....

Swirled together...

If you like chocolate icing...

Then you might think that these are better than any of the candy in your trick-or-treat bag! Find the recipe here. These are from this cookbook, which was in my Amazon cart for a while before it was released. I wish I would have given in and purchased it. I think cookbooks are my biggest weakness as far as "have to have it" kneejerk reactions. I will be thinking about this one all weekend- if I hadn't just bought two other ones this month, I would have ordered it already! Happy Halloween! Hope your holiday is wonderful!

Pumpkin Cheesecake

2008-10-29T21:04:00.000-07:00

The seasons are dictating my menus these days. Regardless of the weather outside, which changes from- 75 degrees and sunny to so foggy and cold outside I can barely see on my drive to work- it’s fall people. Fall, fall fall. The calendar is calling the shots these days regardless of what it really feels like. And in San Diego, if you went based on the weather, you would be mixed up quite a bit of the time!After the pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, I just wasn’t satisfied.

I wanted to do something else with pumpkin, but it had to have cream cheese involved. I don’t know what the obsession was, but they seemed to just need each other’s company. I really liked the cheesecake brownies the other day too, but wouldn’t they have been great with a pumpkin base rather than chocolate? I love the spices, and that is such a huge part of what I think makes pumpkin so great. It accepts all those warmy mulling spices so perfectly, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger. So it was set. There were prerequisites to this recipe: pumpkin, spices, and cream cheese. Enter, pumpkin cheesecake, which is a great idea on it’s own, but what if you made the two fillings separately and marbled the two together? Now, that is an idea! But what for a crust? Do you go with the classic, as a nod to the pie, or the graham, in keeping with the cheesecake? Decisions, decisions! Well, I decided to go with the graham, since it’s also kind of fall, and it has cinnamon in it, so it had to be a good compliment. I think the end result turned out great. If nothing else, it is a show stopper. The only problem is that you end up with half a can of pumpkin, and half a can of condensed milk. You could make a mini pumpkin pie with the remaining filling, you could even freeze it. You could use the half can of pumpkin for a half batch of cookies. So obviously this recipe isn’t perfect, but it’s not half bad, either!

For the crust:

1 and 1/2 packages of graham crackers

8 tablespoons butter, melted

3 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons cinnamon

For the cheesecake filling:

1 package cream cheese, softened

1 egg, at room temperature

1/3 cup sugar

the zest and juice of one lemon

a 3 inch piece of vanilla bean scraped or 2 teaspoons vanilla extract

For the pumpkin filling:

1/2 can of solid pack pumpkin

1/2 can condensed milk

1 egg, room temperature

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Pulse the graham crackers in a food processor until finely ground. Press into the bottom of a 10 inch buttered tart pan with a removable base. Using the bottom of a glass or a measuring cup, press the crust into the pan until it is an even thickness around and tightly packed. Bake the crust for 10 minutes.

Make the each layer in separate bowls by including all ingredients and blending with a hand mixer until combined. Once the crust has baked for 10 minutes, start with the cheesecake layer. Pour half the filling into the crust. Then pour half of the pumpkin in the center of the cheesecake layer. Continue with the remaining halves of the each mixture, creating concentric circles. Then using a knife, swirl the fillings together. Bake for 35 minutes or until the edges of the cake have lightly browned. Cool on a wire rack, then allow the cake to set in the fridge for at least 2 hours, or up to 1 day. Serves 10-12

Jealous much?

2008-10-28T07:00:00.000-07:00

I don't think that I get jealous all that often. I am so lucky, and I wouldn't change my lot in life, I know that I have it good. However, there are times when you just kind of ask yourself, "Hey! That's not fair, can I get in on some of that?!" I say this completely tongue-in-cheek, but when it comes to Giada DeLaurentiis, don't you kind of wonder sometimes? I mean, the tiny stature, the great accent and perfect pronunciation of beautiful Italian words, a husband that works for Anthropologie, a successful food career including some of the most loved shows on the food network, and a brand-new beautiful baby daughter, Jade. Okay, yea, I guess maybe I am a little "jelly". However, I can't get too mad, because she shares all this great stuff with us in so many ways. Her books are fantastic, her recipes well written, and her ideas unexpected. So I had to buy her new book. Hopefully some of this magic will rub off through osmosis!

The first recipe I tried caught my eye immediately. A raw salad with zucchini ribbons, asparagus, pecorio romano shavings, and a drizzle of lemon juice and olive oil and a sprinkling of salt and pepper. It was totally an ah-ha! moment, I mean all of these ingredients are always in my fridge, but I never use them together, and I rarely use any of them raw! A fantastic combination, totally unfussy and fresh.

Using a vegetable peeler, cut the zucchini across the grain lengthwise into long ribbons. Cut the asparagus on the angle, in about 2 inch slices. Toss both together with a splash of lemon juice, a drizzle of oil (I used my favorite walnut, actually), a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Using the same peeler, shave the wedge of romano over the combination. Serve immediately.

Giada's new book definitely does not disappoint. I have about half of the recipes (if not more) flagged to try. The thing I like about it is the focus on all the fresh ingredients. The photography is beautiful, which is always good for inspiration.

Ina Garten's Orange and Chocolate Cake

2008-10-27T07:00:00.000-07:00

I needed something chocolate, but different to take to my scrapbooking event last Friday. I usually bring brownies, which everyone seems to like, but I needed a change. I needed a challenge, and wanted to try something new. Enter Ina Garten, who is a dessert expert. I like her style, and I am intrigued by her new show on the Food Network- Back to Basics. Well, if you know me, that is definitely speaking my language. I love basic recipes that I can dress up or down, depending on my mood. This cake was a winner, moist and buttery, but zingy and acidic with the lemon and orange zests. Bright and flavorful, I will definitely make this again!

First you start by creaming the sugar and butter together until light and fluffy. Look for bakers sugar the next time you are at the grocery store. It’s recipes like this that really benefit from a smaller sugar crystal. The result is a fluffy, whipped base for your cake, which will keep everything aloft and avoid the cake tasting dry. Also, use the sugar called for by the recipe for a dessert. Even though I am a proponent of reducing sugar, this is a cake, not a breakfast. It isn’t coffee cake or a muffin, so you need the sugar to keep the cake moist. Also, your butter should be room temperature. Bakers call this consistency “plastic”. It should be pliable and soft, but should not be oozing or melting. Best bet is out of the fridge and onto the counter for at least an hour. When you don’t have that kind of time, try your microwave on a reduced power for less than 1 minute. If it’s still too cold, turn it around before microwaving it longer. Once you have these two things down, just beat for a little bit longer than normal to get this beautiful fluffiness. About 3 minutes should do.To the butter add the eggs, orange and lemon zests, and vanilla. Beat until mixed. Then you add the dry ingredients and the buttermilk, alternating each starting with and ending with the flour. Mix until just combined, using your rubber spatula to finish if necessary. This is a thick cake batter! Pour the batter into a buttered tube or Bundt pan.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. Then cool in the pan for 10 minutes before trying to turn out your cake onto a wire rack to cool completely.

For the frosting on this, a chocolate ganache is the perfect compliment. I love chocolate ganache. Chris makes fun of me for saying the name, but I think it’s the perfect chocolate icing. Denser than icing, and less sweet, it’s a great thing to use when you just want to pour icing on the cake. It’s the perfect choice for a Bundt cake, where it would be kind of silly to frost.

Start with a cup of chocolate chips in the top of a double boiler.I added one shot of espresso...
And a half-cup of heavy cream. Heat over barely simmering water whisking to combine the ingredients.
Once melted, pour over the cake slowly, going around the circle a couple times. You could do this over a cooling rack, but then you'd lose some of the ganache. Since it is so yummy, I recommend just doing this on the serving tray, being careful to not let too much flow in one spot and run off the tray. Don't worry about getting too much in the center of the cake. It gets trapped there and is a yummy treat on the slices with a little extra chocolate. Once ganached, place the cake in the fridge so that the chocolate sets. Slice and serve.

http://smittenkitchen.com/2006/09/this-cake-has-a-hole-in-it/

Note: I made a couple adaptations to this recipe. I didn't use the chocolate chips in the cake. I liked it this way, but if you think that would be good, by all means use them! Also, I skipped the orange sugar glaze. I made the cake a day before my event, and everyone remarked on how moist it was. I was worried that the glaze might make it gooey or sticky, so I avoided it.

Del Mar Farmers Market

2008-10-26T07:12:00.000-07:00

On Saturdays from 1:00pm to 4:00pm there is a farmers market in Del Mar. I have seen signs for it for a long time, but I hadn't checked it out until yesterday! It was pretty small, in fact the one in Little Italy was much bigger. It could be the time of year, too. I found some good things there, and it was a nice shopping environment. The most exciting thing at this, and probably most farmers markets, were the tomatoes. They were unbelievably big, and there were so many varieties to choose from. Since I am the only tomato eater in my house, I probably went overboard. It's hard to resist when you can feel the warm weight of a fresh and fully ripe tomato in your hand and know that you won't find the same thing elsewhere. I have had good luck with Costco's Roma tomatoes, and at $3.99 for a large 2 lb. package, they are totally a steal. I was amazed at how juicy the ones from the farmers market were, I had one for a salad last night and it was fantastic. I can only imagine what kind of tomato sauce it would make, I am guessing mine won't make it long enough to end up in sauce.
This was a peppery arugula that I made into a pesto last night as well. It was much stronger than the stuff I usually get, and I am not sure it would be great as a salad green, it might be too aggressive.

Finally, I guess this is evidence that my heart is perennially in Summer, no matter what the calendar says. These hot-red/pink gerber daisies just begged not to be left there, and I couldn't resist. I think it summed up to a successful Saturday afternoon at the farmer's market.

Fickle La Jolla Light

2008-10-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

We walked in La Jolla on Sunday afternoon. I love it down there, it's so beautiful and peaceful. We were very lucky to be married there about 3 years ago. This weekend the weather was a lot like it has been the past couple days. Cold and cloudy, windy, enough that you want to wear a jacket and jeans. Even Chris wore jeans... so that is really saying something.

These are probably technically very bad pictures, but honestly, that is what the light looked like that day. It perfectly captured what kind of day it was- being outside in it made you think that you should have something simmering on the stove back home, because pretty soon you were going to want to go inside and warm up. At least that is my Arizona/California girl logic- anything below 65 is COLD. It was probably in the 60s down there. At nights lately it has been getting down into the 50s! Brrr. It's totally sporadic though. I heard on the news tonight that we are having a "Red Flag Warning" tomorrow, which indicates a high fire danger. It's predicted to be in the 80s at the coast. So you never know.This is a color photo, I promise. You practically would not even know.
So the above pictures were all taken looking to the west, and I decided to take just one looking to the east. Funny how the light plays tricks on you, huh? From this one- it's just another day in sunny San Diego.

Spooky Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

2008-10-20T06:43:00.000-07:00

It seems that lately the combination of chocolate and pumpkin is all the rage. It's a little counter-intuitive, in my opinion. Pumpkin seems like a normal match for graham crackers, cream cheese, nutmeg, cinnamon, ground ginger, even Chinese 5 spice blend, one of my new favorites. Not, however chocolate. It's funny, it seems like there is a tipping point each year when we try to string along summer as much as possible, and finally, we give in to fall and start to really enjoy all the harvest specials. For me it happens pretty immediately, one night I am still savoring tomato salad with lemon olive oil and then the next I am ready for something like this. Once you start it's hard to stop. I have been researching all sorts of pumpkin recipes, and have a bunch flagged to try, only to find that last night, at the grocery store, they are out of solid pack pumpkin. Maybe I am not the only one who suddenly gets these cravings, and the grocery stores just can't keep up with all of our whims. I guess there is always the alternative of actually opening up a pumpkin for something other than a jack-o-lantern, but honestly, who has time or wants to spend the effort. If you do, I am sure it's a worthy undertaking, and I assume that whatever you are making is a million times better than the canned stuff that I am using, but I haven't gone there yet. So, if you can find canned pumpkin, or if you are willing to crack open one for eating, give this recipe a try. I made these for the kids in our cul-de-sac, but then I didn't see them for the rest of the weekend. So far the "kids" at work have only had rave reviews as well.

This is a recipe that was featured on the King Arthur Flour website recently. http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2008/10/16/make-your-own-halloween-fun-pumpkin-chocolate-chip-cookies/

You start with the classic cookie ingredients, 1 cup softened butter, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup packed brown sugar. Cream these together until smooth. Then add 1 15 ounce can of pumpkin, 2 eggs, the zest of 1 orange or lemon (I used lemon) and 1 tsp. vanilla. This mixture doesn't look very appetizing, but once you add the flour, it all comes together.
Add the flour and spices. I usually like things spicier than recipes call for, so I used the following:
2 & 1/4 cups flour, 1 tsp baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt and baking soda, 2 heaping teaspoons cinnamon, 1 tsp ground ginger, 1/2 heaping teaspoon of Chinese 5 spice blend. This is a great addition to your spice drawer if you haven't tried it yet. It has anise, ground ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and fennel. It adds something unexpected to this recipe and it's really tasty. Mix together until smooth, scraping down the sides of your working bowl once in a while. This should come together quickly.
To the batter (which is more like cake batter than cookie dough), add 2 cups chocolate chips.
If you have a cookie scoop, this is a great recipe to use it. If not, drop by rounded teaspoon-fulls onto prepared baking sheets. Parchment paper is very helpful here. The recipe called for a 375 degree oven, but I found that way too hot. 365 made a huge difference for me. Once baked, while still hot out of the oven, place 3 additional chocolate chips in the cookies for eyes and a mouth.
For the icing, which is really worth it, mix 1& 1/2 cups powdered sugar with 2 tablespoons milk or heavy cream. Since my cookies were small, I didn't do too much decorating, but the little border did make the face stand out a bit more. I am sure that you could make these more interesting than mine, especially given the ideas on the website above. They are yummy however you decide to embellish them!As good as these are, I am not finished in my quest for a perfect fall pumpkin dessert. I think that my ideal choice probably won't include chocolate, but maybe the chocolate part is the Halloween touch rather than the Thanksgiving touch. Luckily it seems that the season has just begun, so I will have ample opportunity to try some of the other ideas- as soon as I can find some more pumpkin! Happy haunting!

Classic Chicken Salad

2008-10-16T20:00:00.000-07:00

I am not sure if this truly qualifies as a "recipe" but I wanted to share it nonetheless, because I find the perfect chicken salad elusive, well I did, until now! I mentioned the fabulousness of having roast chicken in the fridge, and this is another example of why it is so great. Nothing out of a can or a grocery deli case can compare to this kind of homemade salad. Chunky and fresh tasting, a perfect melding of savory flavors. Feel free to dress it up with unconventional add ins- grapes, walnuts, raisins, but keep in mind, the classic version is something special in and of itself.

Start with 1 roasted chicken breast, cut into medium dice. For those of you playing along at home that don't want to heat up your oven, try a rotisserie chicken. If you are going to use the whole chicken, double the other ingredients. To the chicken add half of a large, sweet onion and 2 ribs of celery, both also diced. I like the onion chopped a little smaller than the chicken dice. To this add a generous grinding of black pepper and salt, about a half teaspoon of each. Also add 2-3 rounded tablespoons of mayonnaise, and 1 heaping teaspoon of Dijon mustard. Mix to combine.
Finally, a sprinkling of finely chopped flat leaf parsley is the perfect finishing touch. You get the beautiful color and the zing! of the parsley brings all the flavors together.
Serve this over a classic green salad made of green leaf lettuce, purple cabbage, shredded carrot, tomatoes and a simple dressing. Skip any dressings that are mayo-based, you don't need it with the richness of the chicken salad. Like I said, feel free to mix it up, but always know that you can come back to this simple combination for success every time.

Giada's Marinara

2008-10-15T19:23:00.000-07:00

This is my favorite marinara to have on hand. I really like the basic tomato sauce that I made for you using fresh tomatoes, but this is classic red sauce. It is so much better than that stuff out of the jar, and rightfully so. All this goodness goes in there, and then you simmer for an hour. It sounds like a commitment, but honestly, you get so many things done in your kitchen or elsewhere during that time, it goes by so quickly. Plus your house smells like your Italian Grandma has been at work all day in there, so what's not to love?

This is from Giada's first (and best, in my opinion) book called Everyday Italian, just like her show. If you don't have it yet, it is a great addition to your collection. I thumbed through her new book at Costco and had to exercise extreme willpower not to buy it, her books are lovely and well written, and they don't include many weird, obscure ingredients that you have to search around for. Also, maybe most importantly, she doesn't waste your time or effort on some step that isn't worth it. So, the next time you reach for the Prego or Ragu, waltz your cart a little further down the aisle and grab two cans of crushed tomatoes and head over to the produce section for the few other things that make this sauce so great. You'll be glad you did!

Start with 2 small onions, chopped into medium dice. I opt for sweet yellow onions these days, but anything would work. I usually blend my sauce at the end, but if you wanted to leave this chunky, purple onions would be awfully pretty.
Into the pot with a little olive oil covering the bottom of the pan. I think she calls for 1/2 cup in the recipe, but I've never used that much. I didn't measure this last time, but I recall 1/3 being plenty. You just don't want your onions getting too brown, this isn't the time for that yummy caramelization that we were going for with the chicken tacos. (As much as I do love that!)While the onions cook, chop 2 carrots and 2 ribs of celery. Once the onions are translucent, add these to the pot.
In they go...While these cook, open up your tomatoes. I really like the San Marzano brand, which are imported from Italy. They seem to just be different than American tomatoes, but your sauce will blow you out of the water either way. Make sure you pick crushed, not diced or whole. 2 28 ounce cans should do it, but always feel free to add more, if you like.
There, once your vegetables have softened, it is time for the tomatoes. Just pour them in and reduce the heat and let it go for an hour.
Soon it will be bubbly and will thicken a bit. You don't really have to stir as long as you keep the heat pretty low for the hour. She recommends including a couple bay leaves during this time, and discarding them afterwards, but I usually skip that step. Once your sauce is cooked, let it cool uncovered on the stove or counter top for a little while before trying to handle it. It keeps beautifully in the freezer, and this is probably double what you need for a good pasta recipe. Use it in lasagna, spaghetti with meatballs, or whatever strikes your fancy.

David Lebovitz' Cheesecake Brownies

2008-10-12T20:00:00.000-07:00

So, just when I thought I had tried all the fabulous brownie variations, this one came along and totally caught me by surprise. I thought I had tried or thought of all the worthy brownie swirls- the favorites as of late being Dulce de Leche and peanut butter. This one is right up there with the others, though, and a great brownie base recipe from scratch which are hard to find. I usually think that making brownies from scratch is a waste of time, seing as the mixes are so good. If it ain't broke, don't make it more complicated, right? Well this one is straightforward and really yummy. I am sure that I will revisit this in some other variations in the near future. I have been brining the Dulce de Leche brownies into work so much that last Friday on the tour of our new building, a couple people had this comment about the oven in our much improved kitchen space: "Hey, maybe we can put Meagan's desk in here so she has easy access to bake us things!" Now that would be trouble!! Hope you had a great weekend. This recipe goes quickly, so don't be daunted to make it on a weeknight! :)

Start by making the cheesecake topping. Soften 8 ounces of cream cheese (I used the reduced fat variety called neufchatel) and add 1 egg yolk at room temperature, a splash of vanilla and 5 tablespoons of sugar.
Blend until mixed. Set aside while you make the brownie batter. Chop 4 ounces of semisweet or bittersweet chocolate (I used 3 semisweet baking squares and one unsweeted square) and add 6 tablespoons of butter, cut into pieces. Melt over low heat, stirring continuously with a silicon spatula.
As the chocolate and the butter melt, they will mix together. Make sure all chunks are fully melted before removing from the heat.
Just like this:
In the same pan, add the sugar and stir to incorporate. Then add the eggs, at room temperature. If you are anxious to make these and don't want to have to wait for your eggs to warm up, place them in a bowl of warm-ish tap water for a few minutes. They should be perfect after a little while. You don't want them to be cold, because as you add them to the warm ingredients, you don't want to cook the eggs. I am pretty sure that scrambled eggs are probably not one of the brownie add ins we want to try!

Bake at 350 degrees in the middle of the oven for about 35 minutes. Cool and cut into squares. Enjoy, another great brownie idea!

http://www.davidlebovitz.com/archives/2008/10/cheesecake_brownies.html

Walnut and Other Oils

2008-10-09T20:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I thought that you might think I am a little crazy to mention the walnut oil in the last post, but I did some more research and I thought you might be interested. Turns out the La Tourangelle website is pretty information packed. I learned some facts about the quality of their products and the health benefits of adding some different kinds of oil to your diet. So, even though this probably isn't a long post, I figured it was worth passing along. When you get delicious and nutritious together, it is worth a listen! The next oil on my to-buy list is the Roasted Hazelnut Oil, for a couple reasons. 1. there is a recipe that I have been wanting to try that calls for it, and 2. it just sounds fantastic, does it not?!

So these oils are great for you health wise because they are rich in omegas, 3, 6 and 9; depending on the variety you choose. Also, with different heats, different oils work better. Grapeseed is suitable for very high heat cooking like sauteing and grilling. I went to a seminar where the instructor explained that cooking at high heats with olive oil completely changes the chemical composition, thereby rendering its positive health benefits null. I have no scientific proof to confirm this, but it makes sense to me. I am swayed to agree with her because we know that cooking meats on the grill until charred creates a known carcinogen. It is recommended that if any of your meat gets too black it is best to cut that part away and just not eat it. Cooking at high heats with olive oil can cause it to smoke or burn. This probably explains why it isn't a good idea to use it for these methods. I wouldn't change my habits 100%, I will always have olive oil on hand and I'll continue to use it on the stove, but it is good to know and a good excuse to try some other options!

Another health reason why trying some of these other oils is a great idea is that they substitute for butter, and not just in cooking. There are recipes on La Tourangelle's site for all sorts of vegetables served after steaming with a little of their nut oils and vinegar, or a grate of parmesan cheese. If your oil tastes great on it's own, you will probably be more likely to use it instead of butter in these dishes. Automtaically you'll increase your intake of good saturated fats and decrease the bad ones. Not that I don't love butter, but change is good!

Finally, I have found that once I have these oils on hand (and I do keep them in the fridge) I find uses for them that I never would have thought of in the aisle at the grocery store. I used the walnut oil the other day to grease a pan for banana bread. A much better option than butter or oilve oil due to the heat of the oven, and the bread turned out perfectly. And if the flavor came through, it complimented rather than detracted from my final product. I have also found that in pestos, vinegarettes, drizzled on fresh vegetables, anything where the oil is a star, these shine brightly. So check out your options and splurge the next time you come across these in the baking aisle. You won't be disappointed!

Recommended: Grapeseed oil for the grill and sauteeing (not cold items, such as salad dressings). Walnut oil for anything and everything under 485 degrees F. I will update once I try the Hazelnut oil, it's on my shopping list!

Chicken Tacos with Caramelized Onions

2008-10-07T20:00:00.000-07:00

Sometimes you gotta mix it up. I made roasted chicken breasts the other night because I really like having them on hand during the week. They are a total time saver when you are making lunches because the chicken is perfectly cooked and you just shred what you are going to eat and make a salad to go underneath. Shredded chicken is also great to go in all sorts of entrees- and I find that by just removing the process of cooking the chicken gives me time to be more experimental with the other ingredients.

Like these onions. Seriously, to die for. I used sweet yellow onions, sliced thin. I heated a bit of walnut oil in my trusty small not non-stick pan. The walnut oil is so tasty and good for a little hotter cooking than olive, but you could sub in olive oil for sure. Keep an eye out at the store for the walnut oil, I promise your salad dressings alone will make it worth it. To the onions, add 1/2 tsp salt and freshly ground pepper, and 1 tsp of brown sugar, packed. The trick to perfect caramelization is to leave the pan alone. You can focus on the other things while the onions are cooking. I chopped purple cabbage, tomatoes, and shredded sharp cheddar for our toppings. I would have loved to have added an avocado to this combination, but I didn't have one on hand.
After a couple minutes, stir the onions and start adding the shredded chicken. You are aiming for a deep caramel color in the onions, and the flavor will come together and meld with the chicken. There is really no reason to add anything else at this point except salt and pepper to taste. For a real treat, bring the heat up to medium high right before serving and squeeze a quarter of a lemon or half of a lime's juice over the mixture.
We finished our tacos with black beans (recommended- Bush's seasoned recipe), the three toppings mentioned above, a dollop of sour cream, and a splash of green tabasco. YUM.

Where were we?

2008-09-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

I think we were discussing fruit sugars, or other sugar substitutes. Which I am still really interested in and I think we could explore that topic in a lot of depth. Unfortunately, I am more excited about some other things right now, so we'll get back to that one soon.

Gosh, where has the cooking gone? Don't you miss it? Well, I haven't stopped, but I did stop or significantly decrease the pictures of the stuff I have been making lately. I have been enjoying my kitchen and there have been successes (white bread that turned out great!) and failures (white bread that turned out really yummy, but looked funny), and then a lot of old standbys. I made lasagna about a week ago, I made biscotti the other night, I've been savoring the end of summer tomatoes in a simple salad, sliced with lemon olive oil, salt, pepper, and shavings of romano cheese. We had chicken picatta, mushroom risotto and spinach salads last night, and it has all been wonderful. I am sorry that I haven't shared these, I just needed to cook without thinking for a while. Please share the comfort foods you make when you don't want to think about it- sometimes those simple things are the best.

Okay, before there is a riot from all this teasing and no pictures, I do have something fun to share. Hope you enjoy...

Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake:

http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/08/chocolate-peanut-butter-cake/

Before you start thinking that you have to have an excuse to make this cake, you totally don't. I promise that your co-workers won't object! The cake is a one-bowl process, as you can see, I didn't even use my stand mixer. I was a little disappointed because I never like to over bake things, but then my cakes shrunk a bit, so I would keep them in the oven for the full time. The recipe gives a range, and I always check at the front end, but these could have used the extra 5 minutes. It's a sour cream based cake, which in my experience is always yummy and rich, but can benefit from a little longer in the oven without drying out. As a warning (which really shouldn't be a surprise), this cake is ultra rich.

Whipping the cream cheese, sugar, and butter for the PB frosting. I usually put my frostings in the fridge for a couple minutes before I start actually frosting the cake. It seems like that helps everything come together. I was worried that this might not be enough frosting, but there were leftovers (darn...).
This cookbook has been fun, most recipes are 3 layers of 8 inch round cakes. It's nice though, because unlike 2 9 inch layers that you have to slice, these you just layer one on top of the other. It keeps the layers nice and even, but still makes the cake fun and tall with no shortage of icing. Lots of the cakes in the book have a different filling or icing for in between the layers than on top, or unique topping and decorating ideas. It's a fun book to just look through, if nothing else!
Once you have frosted the cake, return it to the fridge to set, and then make the chocolate peanut butter glaze. Ummm, yea, that's what I said. Seriously, this was the best part of the cake in my opinion and I hopefully will find another place to use this in the future.
Once the glaze is finished, pour it over the top and spread it with a cake frosting spatula allowing it to drip down the sides. (In an oh-so-temptingly way, of course!) I recommend making the cakes 1-2 days ahead, wrapping them tightly and storing them in the fridge or freezer once completely cooled. Then make the frosting and assemble the night before your event so that everything has 1 full night in the fridge to stay together. Then drive very carefully to work the next day to share with your coworkers! It will be worth the effort.

Lan Kwai Fong

2008-09-19T20:00:00.000-07:00

Ahh the trendiness! So this is where they have been hiding it! You knew it when you saw these people... prim and proper for the most part, but maybe rocking some seriously adorable wedges, or just a hint of some crazy eyeliner, and that's not even talking about the boys! Oh the boys in Hong Kong are sooo fashionable. Chris and I were rather impressed. The attention to detail and the hair. Oh the hair. I'm telling you it was a sight to be seen. I know it isn't fair for me to talk about it and not provide examples, but I was in a foreign country and I did not want to get in a scuffle over taking someone's photograph. Teased, tousled, feathered- these guys were peacocks. It was rather impressive. So anyway, underneath their prim demeanor, I knew they were hiding this fun loving side somewhere close by. The neon lights are super big in HK, but by far the coolest example was the Coach Store on Queens' Road and D'Aguilar. Of course, I didn't find this until Chris and I went there together, so I didn't do any shopping, but it was really fun just to walk around and take it in.

This is where we found the best food- our favorite restaurant was appropriately named California, which apparently vaulted this area to its current status of hip nightlife hangout. I had the "Best Burger" which was a perfect patty, juicy with the normal fixings, but also included a portabello mushroom and garlic mayo. I had to cut it in half just to be able to lift this thing, and as the sign of great food- it was still steaming when I started in on the second half. We shared Thai crab cakes to start, which were so cute. They served them on little chinese soup spoons- you know the kind you get with your wonton soup? It went ginger/wasabi cream at the bottom of the spoon, then this tiny crab cake, topped with ginger, a teeny slice of cucumber (think the size of a dime in diameter), some pickled red cabbage and black and white sesame seeds. It was to die for. Chris had the coolest meal too- pecan and Parmesan crusted pork chops with apple-studded mashed potatoes. The presentation of everything was great, the food was innovative and delicious the service was attentive (for the first time) and we were the only ones eating dinner. Hah! We were like the early bird special people! We were eating at 8:30 at night and you would have thought we were nuts! There were lots of other people in the place, but they were at the bar, not the restaurant... which wasn't much of a division, just a small step up to the 'dining' area, and there were maybe 10 tables in the dining section. But it was okay, we were starving and the food was fantastic. We finished with crepes Suzette filled with bananas, grand marnier, and topped with orange slices and this coconut gelato. Even Chris, who I have never seen eat coconut willingly gave it a try. I think we both had to admit it complimented the dessert. HK is funny though. We wandered down this street because I wanted to have a looksee, and at the Tsui Wah Restaurant (the large pink neon sign) there was stuff hanging in the window that you really didn't need to see. Luckily we had already eaten! We headed to another place the next night that was an italian restaurant. It was also great, but not as cool as California. Then again... few things are.
But Hong Kong is definitely not short on the cool factor, for sure. Just check out the boys.

Mid Levels / Hollywood Road

2008-09-18T20:00:00.000-07:00

After we rode the Peak Tram, we wandered around Central. Central is basically the business district, and the Mid-Levels are the residential piece kind of directly behind Central. This is the view to the East near the tram station.The fashionable by day, party by night Lan Kwai Fong district. Some of the best restaurants in Hong Kong we found in this area... more on that later!Looking up towards the mid-levels in Lan Kwai Fong... The Mid-Levels Escalator! At last! We had heard rumors about this escalator, the longest covered outdoor escalator in the world. Since Hong Kong is so hilly and everyone walks everywhere, they figured this would help people get where they wanted to go! The escalator runs down from the mid-levels to central in the mornings until about 10am. Then it runs up the hills for the rest of the day and all night.
The escalator is basically a huge moving sidewalk, which stops at bisecting streets so you can get on and off where you please. It runs for 800 meters, and it would take about 20 minutes from start to finish if you just stand and ride the whole thing. It's completely free, which is kind of amazing, but it would probably take more time to charge people to ride it. It was really nice to be able to hop on and off at specific spots. The escalator has been running since 1993, and I am sure it has made a considerable difference in the mornings and afternoons of its riders!
As you ride, you also get an interesting perspective of the mid-levels themselves. I guess just like most urban cities, people live above retail space, and Hong Kong might rival any city with the amount of retail space here. Lots of interesting areas were intersecting the escalator. It was very helpful that so many signs are in English as well as Chinese. Most things seemed to default to English, except for shops, stores, or restaurants. We weren't really in the mood for shopping on this day, but enjoyed seeing what was there! When you see the street that you want to get off on, you just exit the escalator and take the stairs down to street level.

Hollywood Road. No, I'm not kidding. And there is even an area called SoHo (south of Hollywood Road) and NoHo (north of Hollywood Road). This was a cool part of town with all sorts of neat places. There were pubs, restaurants, huge apartment buildings, a busy street- Hollywood Road seemed like another major conduit, south (towards the middle of the island) of Queens Road. (Basically the escalator takes you in this direction.) But the interesting thing is that Hollywood Road wasn't named after Hollywood California. It was named in 1844 for the second British Governor of Hong Kong. Go figure! Well, true to form with the other Hollywood, this area is swanky and one of the shinier parts of HK. The street is wide, and the shops are interesting. Lots of antiques and housewares. Surprisingly (haha, not really) I saw some cool wine glasses in a store window that I wanted to take home with me. I did not get them however, because-oh my gosh- they were so fragile looking, I just knew they would never make it home in one piece. And that would have made me so sad!While we were walking, it was interesting to watch the people working on these super steep side streets. Guys would literally push wheeled carts up these hills at a running/crouching level. Sometimes the carts would be replaced by a rolling office chair where the object was secured with shrink wrap- pretty funny to imagine, but keep in mind its 90+ degrees and humid. So there were a lot of sweaty guys with no shirts on down these streets. They were working hard. Anything and everything you could imagine could be found in this area, fresh fruit stand to electronics, to bed sheets.Again, the English signs are so helpful....It just keeps going up and up. I don't think we went past Hollywood Road, but the escalator would take you as far as Robinson Road, and higher, possibly to Conduit Road. I think Robinson was the furthest up that we made it on our visit.

The Peak

2008-09-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

So Hong Kong Island has this ridiculously high mountain in the middle, called Victoria Peak (the harbor is Victoria Harbor, etc. etc. These British names are all from when it was annexed by the Brits back in 1842- or sometime around there.) The story goes that the govenor (appointed by the Queen of England, I suppose) decided one day that he needed to find a cooler place to live in the summers. So he decided to move up to the top of the Peak. Well, apparently it caught on, and all these wealthy British families decided to build houses up there. Getting up there was a chore, they had to have people esentially lug them up the hill, in which they built paths through the dense vegetation. It had to be a horrendous job if you were the one to drag these people up the mountain! It certainly didn't seem cooler up there to me, either! Well eventually they built a cable car system, and it has been updated over the years and is now the Peak Tram. Funny story about the tram- They used to reserve a seat for the Govenor until like 2 minutes before the tram left the station each time, just in case the Govenor arrived unnanounced. Then, if he wasn't there, someone could use that seat. There have also been multiple versions of the Peak Observation Deck from which we took these pictures. The newest one is about 7 or 8 stories high and it overlooks the whole island. Unfortunately it was really hazy the day that we were there, but we got some good pictures, nonetheless.

This is the view of Victoria Harbor and Central Hong Kong from the Peak. The tall building is the International Financial Center 2. The one under construction across the harbor is going to mirror this one. If you saw the latest Batman movie, this is the building in the movie that he jumps off to save the day. There is a smaller IFC (IFC 1) directly left and down from the IFC2 in the picture. It's about half the size with a measly 38 stories. (Which would probably make IFC1 one of the tallest if not the tallest bulding in San Diego, just for comparison's sake!) Looking across the harbor is the Kowloon side. This is actually the peninsula of mainland China. This area and the surrounding peninsula and islands were also annexed by the British and are collectively called the "New Territories". If it were clearer, you could see all the buildings across the way. That side of the Harbor is much flatter and even more densly populated than Hong Kong Island. There are ferries that run multiple routes between the sides daily and the subway also goes under the harbor.
We are lucky that these pictures don't show how truly sweltering it was that day. It was almost unbearable to be outside. You couldn't touch the metal railing, it was too hot! It was generally 93 degrees for the high the week that we were there, and about 100% humidity.
I wanted to share some of these images so that you can get an idea of just how densly populated this city is. It is unbelieveable. Most of the tall buildings are around 50 stories, and some are much more. The IFC2 is 88 stories.

Approximately 7 million people live in Hong Kong, which is just about a million less than live in New York City. Hong Kong is the 4th most densely populated country, behind only Macau, Monaco, and Singapore. The city is only about 60% the size of New York City, and has almost as many residents. The Peak Tram runs throughout the day, and it takes about a half-hour to get to the top of the Peak. The Tickets were HK$48, or about $6.50 each. This included access to the Sky Terrace, which is where we took these pictures. Inside it is like a mall, there are shops, restaurants, even a video game arcade. There is another mall at the top as well, but it was mostly restaurants. The shops at both were pretty souvenier-y so we didn't spend much time at them.
View from the windows of the tram going up...
This is the West side of the Island.
This is the middle of the island, the low building with the pointy front is the Hong Kong Convention Center.
Looking to the East side of the island.

Walking in Hong Kong

2008-09-15T20:00:00.000-07:00

You know that song, "Walking in LA, Walking in LA-A, nobody walks in LA..." Well, everybody walks in Hong Kong! ;) As did we, and quite a bit!! These were taken outside our hotel, it is in the foreground of this photo. I didn't venture too far while Chris was in meetings, so I basically just stayed close to the hotel which was a pretty business-centric district. The street below is Queen's Boulevard. It was always super busy. Look at how much higher the buildings on the right are than those on the left- the island is just so steep and this was less than a mile from the coastline. This building might not look that cool during the day, it is really tall of course, but the cool thing is that at night, the parts where you see white color are lighted up and the lights change colors and formation throughout the night. Really cool.
I liked the juxtaposition of the old and new here in the skyline. The building on the left was right across the street from our hotel and there was a courtyard where people were eating lunch when I took this picture. The tall building on the right has some of the PwC offices in it, but it wasn't the building that Chris' meetings were in.
Fountain in the courtyard near that older building...A relatively new sight in Hong Kong- the Chinese flag. Technically Hong Kong is considered a "Special Administrative Region" and there are still 40 years until we will know whether it will become fully incorporated into China. The British had annexed the territory for 100 years which expired in 1997, so they have only been part of China for the last 10 years. Everything is in English and Chinese as far as street signs, names of buildings, etc.
This is the building that Chris' meetings were in. It was connected to our hotel via a skybridge. The cool thing about Hong Kong is that pretty much all of the buildings in this part of town are connected, either via a skybridge or underground through the MTR stations. Also, there are covered walkways all the way from where the ferries dock at the shore to these buildings as well. Therefore walkers are kept out of the sun and rain on their way to and from work.

Initial snippets... more to come, I promise!

Hong Kong- Monday Night and Tuesday Morning

2008-09-08T18:32:00.001-07:00

Good morning! It is about 9:30 here on Tuesday morning in Hong Kong, and it is Monday night, around 6:30 back home. It really does feel funny to be on a totally different day. After our long flight, however, it was really nice to know that a good night's sleep wasn't far away. I can only describe the flight as this- the whole time, you are counting down the hours. With about 10 hours to go, you think, okay, 10 more hours, okay, that makes sense. Wow, 10 hours. What am I going to do with 10 more hours!! At only 4 hours left you are starting to see the light, however, you're still thinking, wow 4 more hours!? With only and hour and a half left, they served a final meal... and you are kind of thinking 'We made it! We made it!!' I wasn't sure if I wanted to eat that meal, but it is a good thing that we did, because it took a while to get through immigration and get our bags, pick up some Hong Kong dollars, flag a red/urban taxi, speed through the streets on the left side (a little unnerving), pass enormous buildings with all kinds of different light effects, to arrive at our sparkly hotel. Everyone is sooo nice. Everyone is 100% agreeable. Even in negotiations, they say that they will agree with you until the end when you realize that you are at an impasse. So it is interesting. It is strange to turn on the tv and see that there are American stations, but there's a lot of other ones too.

This morning we ordered room service, and it was impeccable. It was classic English breakfast, 2 eggs poached, sausage, ham, and fresh tomatoes, fresh fruit- papaya, pineapple, kiwi, strawberries, cantaloupe and honeydew, chocolate croissants, tea, coffee, and orange juice. I should have taken pictures of it, but we couldn't help ourselves... We dug in. I can't upload pictures here, so I might have to wait to share images when I get back. The guy who brought it all up was so cute. He was so nice and he had such an attention to detail. He poured the tea into a small strainer, swirled it around to get the last drops out, placed everything perfectly by the window -which we left closed, considering it looks directly into an office building! There was even two cute little glass containers of lemon yogurt, which we have saved for later in our room fridge. He asked about our visit in Hong Kong, to which we replied, "Our first time!" and he asked if it was a little "buggy" for us, but I think that meant "muggy" which it is! A little hot and humid, in the high 80s with a lot of humidity.

Chris' office is right across the street, and accesible by an overpass from our hotel, which is really nice. They keep showing views of the harbour on tv this morning, and I just think the city is beautiful. You have to like high-rises, but it is really stunning. It was quite impressive as we flew overhead last night. We are looking forward to what the city will reveal on our first full day here. I have a couple things on my agenda. 1. Finding some shopping- There is "shopping" near our hotel, Prada, Chanel, Cartier, Van Cleef & Arpels... so I will have to find some other shopping as well! 2. Staying close as possible, I won't be venturing too far until we can go together. Hope your Monday was wonderful!

Fruit sugars

2008-09-05T20:48:00.000-07:00

Fruit sugars- This isn't anything ground-breaking, but using sweet-tasting fruits with other things can help cut down on the need for added sugars. Good examples are strawberries, mango, apples, peaches, and bananas. Think about your recipe and what enhancements make sense for what you are making. For baked goods, mashed bananas not only add a sweetness and moistness to the crumb, it also adds a wonderful, unmistakable flavor as well as lots of potassium that you wouldn't get otherwise. Mango is wonderful with steak as a salsa and peaches compliment pork tenderloin and chicken fantastically. Even simmering these fruits in the skillet while you are finishing meat adds a depth of flavor to the dish which can be enjoyed alongside the vegetables that you are making with your dinner.

Example recipe:

Banana Bread - Adapted from Molly Wizenberg, Orangette
Fruit Sugars, honey, and Agave Nectar
3 bananas
1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup agave nectar
2 eggs
1/4 cup water
1 & 1/2 cups all purpose flour

Topping:
2 & 1/2 tablespoons brown sugar, packed
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tablespoon of sugar

In the bowl of a stand mixer, break up the banana into small pieces. Leave chunky for sticky pieces of banana in the bread, or mash if you prefer an even texture.
Add the oil, sugar, eggs, cinnamon, honey and agave nectar. Trick- whenever you are measuring honey, always grease the measuring spoon with a little oil. In this case, I just measured both the honey and the agave nectar in the same measuring cup immediately after I used it to measure the oil. Works perfectly- you aren't left scraping it out. I hesitated on whether to post this, because I still thought this bread was awfully sweet. I think the next time I make it I will reduce the sugar to a 1/2 cup. I considered omitting it all together, but I am hesitant to given that the honey and agave nectar will yield a different crumb than the sugar. There is a possibility that it will be quite dense. If you are really trying to limit sugar, and want to give it a try I would use the following ratio: 1/4 cup honey, 1/2 - 3/4 cup agave nectar.
Mix on low speed until just blended. Then sift in the flour, baking soda and salt. Again mix until just incorporated and then stop. It will be thin, like this:Pour the batter into a prepared bread pan, I used a 9x5 inch pan. Mix the sugars and cinnamon in a bowl for the topping. This also helps you cut down the sugar in the recipe. You use a lot less of sugar in a sugar topping that you would usually add to the recipe. Plus the person enjoying the bread gets that sweet kick right up front, so it is missed less in the rest of the bread. Sprinkle the mixture over the top of the bread, and bake at 350 for about an hour.

The bread has a nice texture, and the crumbly topping makes it feel like dessert. I kind of like the chunks of banana that find their way to the bottom, but if that bothers you, just mash the banana more before you start adding the other ingredients, or use frozen bananas.Enjoy all on its own- it doesn't need anything. although it would be great with marscapone or cream cheese. : )

I know that this isn't a "low sugar" recipe, but it does make some nice swaps, and I think the end result is better than the other. The flavor of the agave nectar is so clean and nice. I have another recipe that I used it in that I will share next. Keep an eye out for it in the Trader Joe's baking section. You will end up using it more than you can imagine!

I will keep adding to this category going forward. Hope it provides some good ideas, and I hope that you will share your strategies as well! I probably won't add anything for a week or so, but I am sure I will have lots to share when I get back!

On my mind...

2008-09-04T21:12:00.000-07:00

Natural sweeteners. You know that I love dessert. I have no problem with granulated, caster/superfine, light brown, dark brown, even powdered sugar. There is something special about dessert, and I love that. But what I don't like is sugar where it isn't necessary. I hate to think about the wasted tablespoons of it in things like packets of oatmeal, breakfast cereal, baked goods, especially whole wheat or "health" breads. I just don't like people being tricked into eating sugar when they aren't expecting it. So, I avoid these things, and I try to use alternatives in my cooking where they are appropriate. Here are some of my strategies, including honey, avage nectar, nuts, nut butters and fruit sugars. Also, I think that many recipes today are written to appeal to the sweet-addicted tastes of most Americans. Sometimes I think the sweet flavor is considered a substitute for flavor. When you add depth of flavor and multiple tastes, the need to have that sweet sensation diminishes. Feel free to pick and choose the ones that work for you. I will never be able to cut out white sugar completely from my diet, but I hope that I can cut it out in places where it won't be missed, and enjoy it to its fullest extent in the cakes, pies, cookies, and tarts that I love making for my family and friends.

Cheesecake tart with fresh fruit

2008-09-04T07:35:00.000-07:00

I wanted to try a tart with a dense graham cracker crust. I love my tart pan, so it seemed like a no brainer to try making a cheesecake like tart in it. I started with most of a sleeve of regular graham crackers, which I processed until fine in the food processor. To this you add about 6 tablespoons of melted butter, 1/2-2/3 cup sugar, and 2 teaspoons of cinnamon. Press into the buttered pan using a metal dry measuring cup. Bake at 350 degrees for about 8-10 minutes. While that bakes, prepare the filling to pour into the hot crust. I used 1 cup softened marscapone cheese, 1 8-oz package of softened cream cheese, 2 eggs, 2/3 cup sugar, the juice and zest of 1 lemon, and half a vanilla bean, split and scraped. Blend these together using a hand or stand mixer, then pour the filling into the crust once it finishes baking. Return to the oven for 20-25 minutes. The tart will puff up, but should not overflow. As it cools, it will return to the normal size.
Fruit topping. This was a great trick that I learned in order to make glazed fruit for the topping. What I love about it is that you can use whatever fruit you have on hand. Using a little bit of apricot jam, microwave for about 30 seconds until warm and gooey. Then toss your fruit of choice in the bowl and arrange on the tart.
I had beautiful fresh strawberries and blackberries on hand, so I used those. The jam gives that beautiful shiny coating to the fruit, and you would swear that this dessert was purchased at a fancy boutique! This is a great dessert to make ahead of time, because it benefits from spending a night in the fridge to chill. Once it is time to serve, remove from the fridge about a half hour before you want to use it. To separate the metal edge from the pan, invert a bowl on the counter and set the tart on top. Gently press down on the metal as you turn the pan on the bowl. It might take a little while for the crust to release, but try to be careful to not push too much in one spot. After a while, gravity kicks in and will help the ring fall away.
Cut into 10-12 wedges. It would be especially pretty served with fresh mint sprigs. This one came to work with me. Needless to say, my coworkers were happy to see me that day! It went out on the counter around 8:30 am and was gone before lunch.

Other fruit ideas: sliced nectarines, raspberries, kiwi and mango.

Festival of Sail

2008-08-27T07:46:00.000-07:00

The tall ships came to San Diego this past weekend. We had seen them a couple years back, but they totally changed the format of the event this year. You used to be able to walk around the ships but not on them for free. Which was perfect. You could see everything, you felt like you were there. Not so much this year. It was all the same boats, but you really couldn't get close to them at all unless you purchased the passport- $20 admission for each person. We weren't really interested in it enough to do that, so we tried to see what we could scope out from the shore!
And discovered some even more interesting and fun things about San Diego Harbor. (Modern sailboat in the foreground, tall ship in the background of this picture.) I suppose that having a sailboat of your own would allow you to see these historic ships from an even more interesting angle. Unfortunately, we don't have a sailboat or friends with one, but they are fun to watch from the shore, also!San Diego has been working on keeping the Embarcadero area upkept, which is the area where the tall ships were docked. This is also the place where cruise ships take off, and if you are on a cruise that docks in San Diego for the day, this is probably the place that you would choose to get off the boat and walk around. They have added some neat artwork to the parks near the harbor. The statue in this picture is a huge replica of that famous photo from WWII. It's big! I don't know any of the specifics, but I thought this photo might help you get an idea: And this one shows you what it looks like up close. It was cute, couples were posing in this same position to have their photos taken in front of the statue.
There was also a bronze collection showing soldiers watching Bob Hope. It is great to see this kind of thing in San Diego which is home to so many military families. We are truly grateful for the sacrifices that they make daily so we can enjoy this way of life. We enjoyed these parts of San Diego that are here all of the time more than even the ships this year. So hopefully we'll get to take you by this area the next time you are in town. I am sure you would like it as well!

Coming soon!

2008-08-26T07:31:00.000-07:00

Gah!! I know that I am terribly behind and I have so much I want to share with you! I have been spending all my time baking and none sharing it!

I also have some fun "about San Diego" excursions to share. We had a beautiful walk around the bay over the weekend, and I have some great pictures to show you! I just have to get them off of the camera and on to the computer!

Thanks for your patience... it will be rewarded soon! In the meantime. You might enjoy:
http://orangette.blogspot.com/
http://www.shutterbean.com/
http://www.latartinegourmande.com/

Roasted Tomatoes and Whole-Wheat Flatbread

2008-08-19T20:57:00.000-07:00

I am not a fan of sun-dried tomatoes. However I decided to take a little of my own advice and try making something on my own if I don't like it. Maybe it's really great, and I just don't like it because I had a couple bad experiences with over processed products. I had beautiful grape tomatoes on hand. I haven't bought grape tomatoes for months. I think I overdosed on them a while back while we were having a million salads. I really like them, but I have been buying roma and tomatoes on the vine lately. These little guys just seemed like more work than they were worth. After an appropriate separation period, I guess I was ready to have them back in my life, as they caught my eye again last weekend. It's amazing to me how perfectly waxy they look raw. Nice, firm texture. Love it when produce is at its peak.
After quickly halved and tossed in olive oil, they were ready to lay out and roast.
My little sunbathing beauties were getting their tan from the oven, 225 degrees for a little over 2 hours. They smelled fantastic while baking.
In the meantime, I had made this whole wheat dough on Sunday because I couldn't find any good-looking pita or lavosh at the grocery store. I couldn't stomach the idea of spending $4 on a package of pita that already looked hard. I wanted whole wheat, I wanted healthy, I wanted fresh. The only option was to make it myself. Basically the same recipe as my pizza dough, and pretty much the same process. I was worried because my dough seemed a little dense. For me, this needed minimal kneading, but a nice long rise time. Sometimes the rise time does what kneading can't. The fermentation process smoothed out this dough and it came together beautifully. I used a pizza cutter and cut the dough into about 10 pieces. Then I rolled each into a small ball.
Then press the ball flat into a disk and roll it out paper thin.Pick it up gently and drop it onto a large skillet coated with olive oil spray. Sprinkle with kosher salt if you like.Cook over medium heat, browning on both sides. Basically like cooking a tortilla, but they are thicker, definitely bread.
Enjoy the bread with hummus, Italian white bean dip, pesto, or use as bread for wrap sandwiches. And just like that, my tomatoes were done. Given that it was late night, I haven't tried them yet, but I think I will use them in salads or into a sauce while cooking meat, supposedly they are great to snack on. They are resting in a little olive oil in the fridge right now. More to come on where they end up!Whole-Wheat Flatbread Pita Dough
2 cups whole wheat pastry flour or King Arthur white whole wheat flour
1 cup of all purpose flour
2 teaspoons of instant yeast, or 1 pkg active dry yeast
1/2 cup white wine
1/2-3/4 warm water
2 tsp sugar
2 tsp salt

If using active dry yeast, proof the yeast in the warm wine/water mixture using the smaller quantity. Once proofed and foamy, transfer the bowl of a stand mixer. Continue by adding all ingredients except salt. If using instant yeast : Combine all ingredients with the lower quantity of water in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment. If the dough looks dry, add the additional water a little bit at a time with the mixer running. Add the salt once the dough pulls together. After a shaggy ball has formed, switch to the dough hook attachment and knead for about 5-10 minutes. No need to overknead, dough will not look smooth. Transfer to a lightly oiled bowl or sealable bag. Leave on the counter to rise for about 2 hours. Refrigerate overnight. Remove from the fridge and let come to room temperature. Cut into about 8-10 pieces and roll into balls. (about the size of a plum to an orange) If dough is resisting forming a cohesive ball. cover the balls with a towel and let stand for about 30 minutes. Once ready, press down with flour and roll out as thin as possible. Cook in a large skillet sprayed with olive oil over a medium flame until browned on both sides. Stack finished breads between two towels to prevent them from drying out. Note: Flatbreads will not pop like commercial pita, so if you want to use them for sandwiches, wrap your finished breads around the filling instead of trying to split them in half.

Shredded Chicken Tacos and Tortilla Soup

2008-08-19T05:00:00.000-07:00

Okay, I didn't take any pictures of this, because I didn't realize that it was going to turn out so good! I wanted to share though, because it was a pretty easy and healthy dinner, and it was something totally different for us! I wish that I would have taken some pictures, and I am sure that I will the next time. I will hopefully describe it well enough that you can try it yourself!

3 half chicken breasts with skin and bone in
1 yellow onion, sliced in chunky slices
1 shallot, minced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 carrot, shredded
1 fresh lime, quartered
1 box (4 cups) chicken broth
Spices: Cumin, Ground Coriander, Chili Powder, and Cayenne Powder

In your largest pot heat 1-2 teaspoons of olive oil over a medium to high flame. Wash the chicken and pat dry. Place the chicken in the pot, skin side down to brown. Brown for about 10-15 minutes adding the onion, shallot, and garlic while that is cooking. Sprinkle the backs of the chicken breasts with all of the seasonings, generously with the cumin, coriander and chili powder, but just lightly with the cayenne, it's spicy! Once the chicken is browned, flip the pieces over and sprinkle the tops with the same seasonings. Brown the other sides for about 5 minutes, then add the 1/2 of the lime juice and chicken broth and cover. Bring to a boil, then cook at a high simmer until the chicken is cooked through and the onions are soft and translucent. (About 30 minutes) Remove the chicken breasts from the mixture and pull of the meat and transfer it into a medium bowl. Discard the bones and skin. Shred the meat with two forks. Add the shredded carrot to the broth and keep simmering while you shred the chicken. Add 1/4 of the chicken back to the broth for the soup. To the remaining chicken, sprinkle with salt, pepper, and the 4 seasonings to taste. Add a little bit of the broth to moisten the meat. Skim the broth for any pieces of skin, and discard. Serve the shredded chicken for tacos or over salad. Spoon the soup into bowls and top with tortilla strips, avocado, cilantro and/or scallions. Serve with the remaining lime wedges.

There are probably those out there that are wondering why I didn't just add water instead of adding more chicken broth. I felt that the relatively short cooking time wasn't really going to allow the water to become brothy enough, and I thought it would have tasted too bland. It was a full bodied soup, so if you have more time, I would recommend trying the water route. If you finish and your soup is just too bland, here are some ideas to thicken and spice it up:

1 can of beans, rinsed and partially pureed or whole (recommended: cannelini, black, or pinto)
Tomatoes- canned or fresh, quartered or diced
Jalapenos
Corn- fresh or frozen (canned would probably work too, just watch the salt content) pureed here might work nicely too
Make a quick roux- melt 2 tablespoons of butter with 3 tablespoons of flour (whole wheat is really tasty in something like this) in a small saucepan. Let the mixture bubble for a minute or two without burning before you add it into the soup.

Let me know if you try any of these. I am looking forward to an excuse to make this again soon!

CAKE cake

2008-08-17T21:38:00.001-07:00

We celebrated another part of our anniversary this weekend. Our cake baker, CAKE was able to make us a mini one for our anniversary. It was beautiful.
Banana cake and chocolate truffle layer. I would love the recipe for this, but I know it's so perfect as it is, I don't think that I could even try to make it at home... it would be a disappointment!
Thank you everyone for all of the wonderful birthday wishes! We had a fantastic time at Disneyland on Friday. We then had a great relaxing weekend, and can't believe that it is already Sunday evening!! Where does the time go?? Hope yours was great as well!

Summertime Lasagna

2008-08-11T06:52:00.000-07:00

I decided the other weekend that I wanted to try to lighten up my traditional lasagna recipe for summer. These summer vegetables are so beautiful, juicy, and fragrant, I might change my recipe for good! I use Giada's recipe but I made these changes:

Ground turkey breast instead of ground chuck
2% milk and whole wheat flour for the bechamel sauce
Grilled Zucchini
Fresh Tomato
Spinach

I am also interested in trying her vegetarian recipe. This worked out great for us and was so tasty.
Maybe a little bit bigger pan next time!
Comfort on a plate...

Anniversary weekend

2008-08-08T07:44:00.000-07:00

Thought you might enjoy snippets of glimpes into our anniversary weekend spent in downtown. It's funny, our hotel had a lot of blue accents, and these two blue paint colors used throughout. With a lot of white-white. I love blue and white together!

We walked through Little Italy for a while once we got downtown. I love it there, it never gets old to me. This part of town was pretty much a dump when we first moved here. All the tall buildings are new.

How cool is it that you can see the bay down the street? I love that. This is also a sidewalk cover where there is a tree planted. Such attention to detail! Makes it special.
This Little Italy sign was the only updated thing that I can remember when we first moved here. It's still pretty cool. There is some story about Little Italy and it was supposedly founded by two fishermen that named their boats the same name and ended up getting married and living right next door to one another. I can't remember the specifics, but it was something like that! Cute history, and great food down there. There are shops too, but mostly it is just fun to walk.

Our hotel had a chalkboard... so fun. And this cool blue light. I loved it. I want one for my office! This was the view from our window. The building with the curve on top was my old EY office... how random!! Look, you can see the bay and Coronado from here in the distance!

If you are reading this, chances are you were present in La Jolla 3 years ago to witness our wedding. Thank you for being involved in our lives and helping us along this path together. We have been so lucky to have such a wonderful, supportive, and loving network of friends and family. We love you all!

Red Velvet Cupcakes

2008-08-04T22:12:00.003-07:00

I started my research for the Red Velvet Cupcakes and decided on a mix of a couple recipes. One was from Paula Deen on the foodnetwork.com that I had actually seen her making one time. The other was from smitten kitchen. They were similar, each with a few tweaks. I used the bones of Paula's recipe, but I dressed it up a bit with some ideas from Deb and some of my own preferences.

I was interested in using cake flour, since I had it on hand and I thought it would lend to a lighter cupcake. It's hard to know what the dominant flavor in this cake is. I think it should be the cocoa, although as you know, it's not a chocolate cake.

I usually bake exclusively with olive oil, but I was worried since there aren't a lot of strong flavors in this, that it might stand out. Therefore I bought a canola oil blend that was supposed to be somewhat healthy. It worked perfectly. Here is a shot of the eggs, sugar, and oil, which you blend together to start the cake. To this you add the red food coloring. Little did I realize how much food coloring that this recipe calls for. Wow!! I was really surprised. I only had one of those kits of food coloring with the 4 small vials of color. Those have about 2 teaspoons of color in each. The recipe calls for 6 teaspoons of food coloring. As a result, my cake wasn't quite as red as it probably should have been. But it seemed pretty red to me!

Once you have the vinegar, food coloring and vanilla incorporated in the egg/sugar/oil mixture, add in the dry ingredients. I sifted my cake flour, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder together into a bowl. Cake flour is particularly susceptible to being really dense in the package, so it's a good idea to sift it before you measure it. Scooping and leveling off the top is the safest way to make sure that you aren't adding too much flour. My batter was really thin, which concerned me. It ended up being great. I actually had more than I could fit in my muffin tins, because I only have 12. The thin batter made for these really light and moist cupcakes.

I filled the tins with about 1/3 cup of batter. This is about 1/3 of the strength of the red the recipe called for.

And after about 20-25 minutes in a 350 degree oven, they were puffed up and ready to come out and cool. On to the frosting...

I combined 8 oz. of cream cheese and one stick of butter in a large bowl. Once softened, I beat these together with an electric mixer. Then I added about 3 cups, maybe a little more of powdered sugar. Once I got the consistency of frosting that I wanted, I put the bowl back in the fridge to chill everything down just a bit before frosting. This helps to get a nice thick swath of frosting on the cupcake.

The final product, cake + frosting was really delicious. I never really thought much about red velvet cake before, but I could see these really appealing to a wide variety of people. I kicked up the cocoa content, especially becuase I still had some wonderful organic dagoba cocoa powder on hand. I used 3 tablespoons, which was 3 times the amount that Paula specified in her recipe. I am a chocolate person, so this was perfect for me, but if you want the true to form red velvet cake, you probably could go with 2 tablespoons. So finally, here is the recipe.

Red Velvet Cupcakes (yield, about 18 cupcakes)

3 cups of cake flour

3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 & 1/2 cups sugar

1 & 1/2 cups canola oil

1 cup buttermilk

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vinegar

1 teaspoon vanilla

at least 2 and up to 6 teaspoons of red food coloring

Sift together the dry ingredients. In a stand mixer, or with an electric mixer, beat together the oil and sugar until fully incorporated. Beat in the eggs one at a time. Add the vanilla, vinegar, and food coloring and beat slowly until incorporated, taking care not to splash the red food coloring. Add about half of the buttermilk and half of the dry ingredients and mix to incorporate. Add the remaining half of each and mix until almost incoporated. Using a silicon spatula, fold the remaining dry ingredients into the wet until just incorporated. Using a 1/3 cup measure, pour batter into prepared muffin tins. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes. Cool on wire racks for at least 1 hour before icing.

Cream Cheese Frosting

8 oz softened cream cheese

1 stick butter

3 cups to 1 pound of confectioners sugar

Cream softened butter and cream cheese together with an electric mixer. Add the sugar a cup at a time, until a thick icing forms. Chill for 20 minutes before using.

Red Velvet Cupcakes

2008-08-04T22:12:00.001-07:00

The (cup)cakes have been baked. I couldn't help but tease, just a little. More to come tomorrow!

Blueberry Crumble Bars

2008-08-01T07:25:00.000-07:00

So far good reviews all around for these guys from the work crowd today! I got the recipe from one of my favorite place, Smitten Kitchen. Another really nice, straightforward recipe. I love that. I very seriously considered adding one more layer, a cream cheese layer in between the bottom crust and the blueberries. I think it would have added a little bit of fun to these. However, they are awesome just this way too. Start with the flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and lemon zest in a bowl. Cut in the butter in pieces until just crumbly. Then add the egg and cut that in until just moistened. I used a pastry blender. It's okay to have some really chunky pieces and some flour that isn't quite incorporated. Having the inconsistent sizes makes that really nice sandy texture that you are going for here.
Then measure about 4 cups of fresh blueberries, picking over for stems. I love my big 4 cup measuring cup for fruit pies and tarts. It always comes in handy.
Spread half of the flour mixture into the prepared pan (I just used parchment paper, my favorite). Press this down into a thin crust.

In a separate bowl mix the cornstarch, sugar, and lemon juice. Stir to combine. Then fold in the blueberries. Spread this mixture over the crust.
Top with the remaining flour mixture. I picked up handfuls and pressed them together before crumbling over the top. If your home is very hot, you might want to put the remaining half of the flour mix back in the fridge while you do the berries. This keeps the butter from melting into the other ingredients.
Bake until brown on top. This smells amazing while it is baking.
Easier to cut once cooled in the fridge. I used a pizza wheel to cut these.
Enjoy!! This makes a lot to share with your friends, so that is always encouraged. You could probably also use frozen blueberries if you can't find fresh. I would just leave them frozen until you incorporate them into the sugar, lemon and cornstarch mixture. They will bake just the same, I would think. I will get back to you on the cream cheese layer. It would have to be pretty spreadable- probably similar to the middle layer of the cheesecake recipe that I posted a while back.

On deck- Red Velvet Cupcakes... as per request... we'll see what I can come up with for these!! Happy Friday and Welcome Weekend! Hope yours is fantastic!

Shaking

2008-07-30T06:56:00.000-07:00

Did you feel it? There was a 5.4 magnitude earthquake yesterday in Los Angeles. Chris and I both felt the shaking around lunch time. It was pretty mild down here in San Diego, so it wasn't too scary. It is weird though to see the walls and your desk moving around. It lasted about 15 seconds, and it was a gentle rocking motion, like you were moving back and forth in your chair, except that you weren't.

Growing up, I my sister and I used to lie awake in the summers watching the monsoon storms. We thought it was so cool to see all the lightning, and listen to the wind and the rain. I think I feel about the same about the California earthquakes. Sometimes the perspective gained from seeing the awesome power of nature is quite grounding. Hopefully these little tremors will continue to be that and not something more dangerous.

Ciabatta

2008-07-29T23:00:00.000-07:00

I have been trying to make good yeast bread for a while now. I have made a few good loaves, I have tried all different kinds of recipes, some from family and friends, some from cookbooks, blogs, websites, you name it. However, nothing has been great. Recently, I decided to get a new cookbook devoted completely to yeast breads, specifically artisan breads. It had a lengthy introduction, in which the author described the process of fermentation, of the different stages of rising, how to pull more flavor out of the basic ingredients of yeast, flour, water, and salt. I'm a total sucker for great bread like this, so I was certain that finally, this would be my ticket to learning how to make great bread. I would no longer have to choose what type of loaf I wanted to treat myself to in the supermarket or the special bread store. I would be able to make most of them, so I could concentrate on the really specialty items. Well, that was the plan anyways.

I started out with a pre-ferment, Reinhart explains that in order to get more flavor out of the basic ingredients, you really need to give them more time to work together. I picked the ciabatta recipe becuase it seemed straightforward, it was a lean bread, it would benefit from a long rise, and I had never done it before. In order to truly practice, I did not halve or reduce the recipe in any way, shape or form. I didn't want to wonder if I messed it up, although the author does specify that you should be able to learn to do this eventually, he encourages learning the recipe's formula as ratios so that you can always increase (or in my case, decrease) the yield.

The pre-ferment is just a mixture of a tiny amount of yeast, flour, and water which you let sit on the counter for about 3-4 hours. You then refrigerate it for at least 1 day to stop the fermentation and coax the flavor out of the flour. Here is my pre-ferment on the morning of baking day:This is mixed into the recipe for the rest of the bread, which has more yeast, flour, water, and salt. Supposedly the old and new doughs will combine to give you all the layers of beautiful taste between crust and crumb in these specialty breads.
They stress not over-kneading, and the dough will always look shaggy because a lot of work happens durring the multiple rises and rests that you give it after kneading.
To make the classic ciabatta, you fold the dough over itself in a bed of flour a few times to allow it to rise. I think the idea here is that in order to get those beautiful big holes in the bread, you really need to let the gasses develop in the dough during these phases. Mine rose significantly, but I am not sure now if they were really ready to go into the oven at this point. However, the time was right, and I was trying to be really careful to follow directions.

I even dragged Chris to Home Depot with me to look for tiles to put in our oven to simulate hearth baking. I tried to do the steam thing that the book and others have specified. I basically freaked myself out by doing all of this and cooking at 500 degrees. I am much more comfortable at a lower temp. And the result was a disaster. Totally and completely burned on the bottom, and very dense inside. They looked close to correct, but I can't lie, they weren't really good at all.
So what is the moral to the story? I did this a couple weeks ago, and I have honestly thought a lot about what to post about this experience. There is a part of me that seriously could be done with bread baking all together, aside from pizza, flatbreads, rolls, cinnamon rolls, etc. I have taken my oven stone out, and I am not sure if I will put it back in. I have really struggled with the fact that this went so poorly.

And I know that this is a silly thing to get worked up over. It is not realistic to think that you will ever be able to replicate at home what they do in commercial settings with specified equipment and a totally different environment. I keep telling myself that I have had great success with the things that I have tried, there has to be a margin for error, you aren't going to be great at everything you put your mind to. The logical side of my brain totally accepts this. The emotional side is still frustrated. It's screaming out, "WHY??" What did I do or not do?" (and maybe a touch of "It's not fair!!" thrown in there.) And it is OKAY. If I never learn to make great yeast breads I think I will be able to accept that. I hope so. It doesn't mean that I will necessarily stop trying. Hopefully I will learn from my mistakes and not expect perfection on the first try. But it is a typical case of letting the one thing that you can't do or have detract from everything you can do or do have. I decided to post this because I wanted to be honest with you about my successes and failures. I wanted to share a moment of personal learning that I have experienced more than once. Sometimes you have to step back and breathe.

Striped Layer Cake

2008-07-27T21:17:00.000-07:00

Do you ever run home from work excited that you have 3 hours before your significant other will be home to take you out to dinner? I wasn't excited that I had to wait 3 hours to see him, however since he was going to take me out to dinner, that meant I had 3 hours to myself to make whatever I wanted. Woo hoo! So, if you do have this kind of time, what would you make? Well I decided to make a layer cake. And I was thrilled to do it. This was a fun one too, because it was a yellow and chocolate layer cake. KAF had a great post a while back about a birthday cake for fence sitters... If you can't remember if people prefer yellow cake or chocolate, why not combine the two? And it was a great idea. Both cakes were pretty easy mix-and-go varieties, no separating egg yolks from egg whites, no folding ingredients gently together, no these were no fuss, no muss cakes. And delicious at that.

I will definitely use these recipes again for cupcakes. They made a beautiful, thick batter.
Both baked at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes.
The recipe specifies that the chocolate can come out before the yellow, which is true. However, mine were done at the same time. I think I might cook these at a little lower temperature for longer next time, because the yellow rose significantly in the middle. This is fine if you are a pro at leveling everything out before you assemble the layers, but mine weren't really thick enough to do so, and I am not a pro at that!
The recipe calls for a chocolate ganache filling and frosting. I used it only for the filling and frosted it with a vanilla frosting. Both options were good. I think the ganache over all would be great if you have a lot of choco-holics, but possibly too chocolatey for some folks. (Who are said people??? Do they exist and where in the world can they be found??? I am actually married to one, believe it or not. Crazy, but true.) So the ganache is super easy to make. Combine the cream and chocolate chips in a microwave safe bowl and microwave for a couple minutes.
Stir, or use a wire whisk to incorporate the chocolate into the cream.Keep stirring until you have a smooth, even consistency of chocolate ganache.Cut your cakes in half horizontally. This is the part that I am definitely not a pro at! As you can see the middle is a lot higher than the sides on my cake. My cutting probably leaves a lot to be desired too! Once you have the 4 pieces of round cake layers, spread the ganache almost to the edges of the layers, then layer the cakes, offsetting the flavors.

Then it's on to the frosting. I decided that I wanted to try the swiss buttercream that Smitten has been raving about. What really interested me in this frosting was the idea that it wasn't super-sweet. First you start by making a meringue in the double boiler, egg whites and sugar.

Once that is fully incorporated, and the sugar is completely dissolved, you transfer the whole thing to your stand mixer and add the butter. Then you let your stand mixer do all of the work. This takes a while, and despite all of the warnings, I didn't think it was going to come together.
Started out pretty runny.You have to walk away from it. It took me about 15 minutes or so, and I wonder if my batch was just too small for the mixer. I doubled her 'tiny' recipe, since I had already filled my cake and it was a 9 inch round. I would make more next time... I ran out of frosting. Also, in looking back on her pictures, I probably could have let the machine whip for a little bit longer. I never got to the chunky stage she shows, so that should have been a sign. I think I might have been a little anxious to get my cake frosted. So, for future reference for me, and for you too, I guess I would suggest not trying to do this step after the aforementioned dinner out at 8:00pm and before bed that same night. (smile) Ahem, well, then you proceed to frost the cake.

And finally, enjoy! Even if you don't have quite enough frosting. Good thing this cake was just for fun and for practice. But it tasted great.

Chocolate Crinkle Cookies & Chocolate tips

2008-07-22T22:00:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons that I always love having Droste dutch process cocoa powder on hand is that it instantly turns a recipe into the most ooey-gooey, fudgy, chocolatey yumminess that you can imagine. This recipe has a good dose of that, melted chocolate, and chocolate chips! It totally hits the spot when you are having that chocolate craving. I made these the first time for Christmas 2006 and they were a huge hit. Chris calls them- "those little brownie cookies" and they are a lot like a brownie in a cookie outfit. This was a half-batch that I did when I got the craving for these but didn't have enough friends around to share the love. The dough does really well refrigerated after mixing and will roll into these balls better after a quick respite in the cool air. This will get your hands dirty, not to mention your dishtowels, counter, and anything else you might come in contact with while shaping the cookies. I always laugh when I go to my favorite pizza place in San Diego because the have their tv remote control wrapped in plastic wrap. I should probably do that at home. Not sure how well it would work on the phone, but that should probably get wrapped too!
Once they are shaped, you roll them in powdered sugar to coat. A generous coat is required to get the crinkly look you are going for.
Once baked, they spread out and look like this. Good luck keeping them around for long afterwards!

If you can't find Dutch Process cocoa powder, the best bet is unsweetened baking chocolate. It's good stuff, I usually use Baker's brand because it's what my store carries and I think it tastes great. I am sure that there are other gourmet brands out there, but I usually have a box or two on hand. Inside, the baking squares are wrapped in paper and each square is 1 oz. of chocolate. You can substitute this for 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder and supposedly a little of the fat (the chocolate has cocoa butter in it where the powder does not). I never have been able to figure out exactly how much fat to cut out of the recipe, so I usually just substitute the chocolate for the cocoa powder and leave the butter or oil the same as what the recipe calls for. I have never noticed a problem, or even a difference.

If you don't have a double boiler, or if you don't want to get yours dirty that day (ahem... I certainly fall in that camp most of the time) melt your chocolate in the microwave. To temper the chocolate (for example if you're melting it for a recipe that calls for a shiny chocolate coating, like chocolate covered strawberries) melt 2/3 of the specified amount in the microwave, then add the rest, stir and the melted chocolate will melt the reserved third leaving you with perfectly tempered chocolate. If it's still a tad on the sticky side after it has set, a half-hour in the fridge or freezer works wonders.

Bittersweet/ Semisweet / Milk Chocolate- what's the difference? Bittersweet usually covers the range from milk chocolate to unsweetened chocolate. I have found that when my recipes call for bitterweet however, that usually this means a little more cacao content than the amount in my bag of semi-sweet morsels that I always have on hand for chocolate chip cookies. I usually buy both kinds, and in my opinion, you need at least 60% cacao content for it to truly be 'bittersweet'. While most of us like milk chocolate on it's own, it is too sweet for chocolate chip cookies. I have tried all kinds of variations with double chocolate chips and the only combination that I have found to be worth it is half semi-sweet and half bittersweet. Semisweet is probably around 40-50% cacao, but it can be as little as 35%. Try a few different brands and you will get a feel for what you like and where they differ. I ususally buy 60% cacao Ghiradelli chips for my bittersweet equivalent, and Nestle Toll House morsels for my semisweet. I would probably go up to 70% if the cookies were just for me, but with my sweetheart around the 60% works well for both of us. The Nestle toll house semisweets are the total classic flavor.

If you are making a recipe that calls for bittersweet chocolate and it needs to be melted, you can mix a couple of unsweetened squares in with your semi sweet baking squares or chips. It will bring that chocolatey content up and probably improve the flavor. Keep in mind however that unsweetened chocolate has to be mixed with sugar at some point, otherwise it just doesn't taste good at all. It can be very deceiving- especially once melted, you are going to want to lick the bowl, and I promise, even though it looks good, it doesn't taste good!

Shopping Sprees

2008-07-22T07:11:00.000-07:00

When you think about a shopping spree, you probably think about a trip to the mall. Perhaps spending some time at various boutiques, maybe perusing online vendors and getting something that you can't find in your home town. You probably don't consider rationing your shopping habit at the grocery store. I on the other hand, do. I try to keep my grocery shopping to one store a week, but I find that difficult. Each place that I shop has different things that I can't find at the other one. I am also not a big fan of meal planning, I prefer to cook whatever hits my mood at the moment, which requires having more stuff on hand. Do you have any quirks like this and what are your 'special splurge items' that you get excited to have on hand or you know you'll get if you have a chance to go to a certain store? I'll share if you'll share!

Trader Joes:
Marscapone Cheese
Basil
Arugula
Hummus
Ginger-Oatmeal soap
KAF flour
Cashew butter
Baguette
Fresh mozzarella- boccini or perlini are my favorites

Whole Foods:
Droste Dutch Process Cocoa Powder
Sliced mango
Classic Chicken Salad

Jimbos:
Whole-wheat pastry flour
Quinoa
Sushi Rice
Nori
Wasabi
Sesame seeds
Hazlenuts
Blood Oranges
7th Generation dish soap
Jason organic hand soap

Don't get me wrong, I also have shopping spree urges for the mall, I can't resist heels from J.Crew, jeans at Nordstrom, tees from Anthropologie... the list could go on and on here as well! Hope you are having a great Tuesday.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ERIN!! I am waiting to call you until my lunch break because if I was a teacher on summer break, I definitely would not get up early on my birthday! Love you!

Little Italy Mercato

2008-07-14T06:41:00.000-07:00

We finally made it to the Mercato! It was a great place to spend a Saturday morning (unless of course your other plans were to spend it sleeping, which is always good) especially since I was able to pick up some willing participants at the airport which is really just down the road from the market. It was a little smaller than I had anticipated, but there were lots of cool vendors and some amazing views of the San Diego Bay. The willing participants were my parents, which was fabulous to spend time with them fresh off the plane from AZ soaking up the San Diego air. It's a little hard to see in this picture, but that is the San Diego bay in the background...

And drooling over all of the gorgeous offerings! The produce was unbelievable, all organic and many interesting things that you don't see at the grocery store. These were purple and white onions with the greens still attached. I bought 'spicy' garlic from this stand and we had it crushed and smeared on roast chicken with rosemary last night. Persian cucumbers and nectarines in the background. I think the green fruit is apples. We had so much fun spending the weekend together and celebrating my parents' 35th wedding anniversary. We went to Del Mar for dinner on Saturday and ate at a great restaurant overlooking the ocean, we watched the sun set at the beach, Chris and my dad enjoyed the Padres vs. the Braves game on Sunday, and we introduced them to Phil's BBQ. The two days went really fast, but it was great to have some relaxing time together. This was by far our favorite vendor. Many places had strawberries. But these were so juicy and tasty- They weren't huge berries, not too small either, but juicy to the point of it running down your chin kind of juicy. They were fantastic with breakfast the next morning.
There were things other than food too, this vendor was selling all kinds of colorful tablecloths. They looked so pretty hanging there. There were also food vendors of all types, one was a creperie, which was making sweet and savory crepes. It was still time for a late breakfast, so people were having different kinds of eggs, bacon, and spinach in the crepes that we saw. I also saw bananas and nutella at the creperie, which sounded more like dessert than breakfast, but I liked the idea. They were also making and/or selling roastisserie chickens, hummus, quiches, fruit leather, specialized salts, homespun angora yarn, natural pet foods, pesto, all sorts of things! The lady spinning the angora yarn literally had the rabbit on her lap while she added the fur to her thread.
We spied these artichoke flowers from across the way, I can't say that I had ever seen an artichoke blossom, and I had been clearly missing out! We bought some bunches of asparagus from this vendor which we also enjoyed last night. It was great, and had so many different sizes in the bunch. Overall they were more thin and tender than the regular asparagus this time of year, but there were some strands that were barely thicker than a french green bean. Most were about the size around of a pencil.
On Saturday I my newest cookbook arrived. I know you are wondering why I need another, and where it is going to fit, but so far I love it. I posted about it a while ago, it's the Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart. I am about 60 pages in and haven't read a recipe yet, but it is great. Lots of background and teaching so far in there. I am hoping I will get far enough to make something by the weekend. They mention King Arthur Flour in the book as well as the bakers catalouge as a resource. Good thing that the Mercato had a stand with bread from Bread and Cie, so we got a couple amazing loaves. Otherwise I would probably be speed reading to try to get to the part where we can start baking. It has been really nice to spend the time trying to understand the background so that I can utilize this knowledge as much as possible.

Hope your week is off to a good start and you have good weekend memories to share. I hope to hear about them if you have a chance!

All things grilled...

2008-07-11T07:15:00.000-07:00

I can't pinpoint when the urge struck me... but it has been lingering there for a while now. It might have been due to David Lebovitz' recent post about eating pesto every day... or it might have been because it was the focus of Williams-Sonoma's latest catalogue, or it could just be that it is summer! I was dying to make Mediterranean food! Pesto, zucchini, fresh tomatoes, I was ready for all of it. I just needed to get some good basil and I would be ready to go. For me, that always means Trader Joes! So I headed there on my lunch break yesterday, and to my dismay, no basil. They had big plants of it in front, but the plant wasn't going to stand a chance. I found some wild arugula, and changed my course. Upon leaving, the friendly checkout guy asked me if I had found everything I was looking for- which I told him, yes, but then commented on the no basil issue. Well, turns out it had been right there under my nose the whole time! Now I had both arugula and basil. This was going to be some pesto!

Arugula and Basil washed and ready to go. I think there is probably about 2 tightly packed cups here, maybe a little bit more. You can use whatever ratio you have on hand or prefer, mine was a little more arugula than basil.

Everything into the food processor! I also minced a clove of garlic, but you can use 2 if you are brave. A little under 1 tsp of kosher salt, and some lemon zest on top. (The lemon zest is not traditional, but I like it.) Also grind some fresh black pepper over the top.

Puree until you have finely chopped the greens. You might have to scrape down the sides a couple times, but this should go quickly. The classic addition to pesto is the pine nuts. Very Mediterranean, smooth flavor, grinds to the perfect texture. I was out. Never fear, there are a lot of good substitutes. Walnuts are beautiful with the arugula, but I didn't have those either. I opted for shelled raw pistachios instead of almonds. Upped the green factor too! (Probably about 1/4-1/3 of a cup)
A little parmesan or romano cheese shredded, about a half cup.
Process until the nuts are ground, then drizzle olive oil with the machine running until it all comes together into a beautiful bright green sauce.
While I was making my pesto, I let some chicken breasts and zucchini grill. Before:

After:Okay, so here is the twist. Thursdays have basically become an unofficial pizza night in our house. To blend the pizza with the grilling and mediteranean flavors, I decided to make grilled pizza. I know. Sounds crazy. But I have heard it can be done! I took my regular pizza dough and divided it into two balls. I had let this rise in the fridge (straight from kneading to the fridge on Wednesday night). So it had been in there for about 20 hours or so. No 150 degree oven for these babies. I wanted the dough a little more raw. If you are having trouble getting it to roll out, walk away from it for a minute or two. It will be happier once it rests a bit. Once rolled out, a sprayed it with a generous spray of olive oil, a dash of kosher salt and straight onto the grill.
It cooked fast! Cook one side, (about 5 minutes or so) then top it and cook the other side. However, after doing this, I don't think I would try cooking the toppings on the grill. It was a pain. I would do the dough, but then cook the toppings under the broiler. Which is what we ended up doing after realizing that the crust cooked way too fast to melt the cheese. It did add a really good flavor to the pizza though...

Topped and ready to go on the grill. I used the grilled zucchini, chicken, tomatoes, mozzerella, and romano shavings.Not to be left out, I also decided to try grilling romaine. A little olive oil, salt and pepper was all that went on these.I served it with more shredded romano cheese and grilled plums. It was an interesting flavor. It was a good twist on a normal romaine salad. The finale: The pizza was great, thanks to my fabulous pesto. I can't begin to tell you how good that stuff is, you have to try making it yourself! So yummy.
Edited to add: So the toppings came to work with me today as a salad, and can I just say... there is nothing quite a fabulous the next day as grilled zucchini. Especially with a little vinaigrette and goat cheese. Seriously, it is sooo good! I have a good recipe for a salad with the two, I should post that sometime soon...

Horse of a different color...

2008-07-09T22:00:00.000-07:00

KAF just rocked my world. Again. Just when you think you know something, be prepared to have the rules changed. I ordered some Italian-style flour from King Arthur Flour. It's supposed to be the antihesis of American flour. With a protien content of around 8% vs. the American 12%, I expected a change. Just not this much of a change!! The flour is super soft, it feels almost like cake flour with more body. It made for a super-soft dough, and I've only gotten to the first rise stage.

I fear that I may have scared some of you off with my pizza dough recipe. I didn't mean to... I have tried so many variations, and really all of them work. So there is a lot of play in that recipe for you to try what you like. I could go on and on about things to change, but I don't want to scare you even more! Please let me know if you have any questions and I will answer then on a one-on-one basis. Also, as with anything, play with it. I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I have had to throw away the whole thing because it turned out horribly. If anything, you will probably have a lot of things turn out less than perfect, but not awful.

Back to my new pizza dough... It was truly a beauty.

At first a bit shaggy... I have never gotten this "look" with my other flour. Uh oh! I was a little nervous... After more kneading... starting to look a little bit more like normal. Still looks wet as compared to my other flour.

In the bag to rise. Cooking spray works wonders here.Wow! It rose really fast! Only about an hour later.... Look at those puffy edges. The inside was soft and chewy while the outside was crisp, but not hard at all. When the pizza extends beyond the pan, I roll up the crust with a little cheese stuffed in the middle... not pizza hut's stuffed crust, but it sure is good.
This was our buffalo chicken pizza. Yummm.

Vanilla Bean Cheesecake

2008-07-07T22:01:00.000-07:00

Isn't it funny how sometimes the simplest recipes are really the best? No unnecessary ingredients, no weird techniques, just basic flavors that compliment one another and make sense together. I love that. This is what happened with the perfect cheesecake recipe that was shared with me a couple weeks ago. I finally had a good opportunity to make it- Erin and Reed joined us for the holiday weekend. This is going to be my favorite cheesecake recipe going forward, I just know it. I think it will be easily changed, if you get the craving for a flavored cheesecake. However, the original was definitely the best this weekend.

Here are the graham crackers in my tiny food processor... I had to do them in batches, but it worked!

Once finely ground, you add some cinnamon and sugar to the crackers.
Then you mix in some melted butter until you have a crumbly mixture. This goes in the bottom of the pie plate. I packed it down quite firmly. Bake for about 8-10 minutes.Next for the filling. Here are those vanilla beans I mentioned- they were great. Slice down the middle and scrape out the vanilla. You can get quite a bit out of them so go back a few times with your sharp knife. Also try the dull edge to see if there is any left in there. Once you have scraped everything you can out of the bean, don't throw away that pod!! Fill a small canister with sugar and leave it in there- voila, vanilla sugar! I used it later in the weekend in a recipe and omitted the vanilla and you never would have known!
Another kitchen relic- I brought out the hand mixer. Worked like a charm as well! This layer has cream cheese, eggs, sugar, vanilla, lemon juice and lemon zest.
Finally I topped the cake off with a cream layer, which was tangy and sweet. It was so good that I don't have any pictures of it after this! It is best made a day ahead so that it can fully chill. It was a little hard getting the first few pieces out of the pan, I would recommend letting it come to room temperature a bit first. A springform pan would probably be preferable, but once the first quarter of the cake was out of the pan, the rest went perfectly.After our cheesecake on Friday night, we bundled up and headed down to La Jolla to watch the fireworks. They were perfect, as always. We watched from the beach where Chris and I got married. It was fun to have visitors for the first time for the fourth of July, we really enjoyed our weekend. Hope you had a wonderful holiday as well!

Blurry!!! Oh well...

Baking kick-off

2008-07-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

Look what arrived in the mail two Thursdays ago! My first order from the King Arthur Flour Baker's catalogue. I ordered Italian flour, instant yeast, Vital Wheat Gluten, and sparkling sugar.

I had been looking for instant yeast here in San Diego and I couldn't find it. It seemed kind of silly to order it online, but I really couldn't find it anywhere. I have been a fan of King Arthur flours for a few years, and had heard that they were the best place to find special things for baking. Indeed they are! Unfortunately, with my order, also came a printed catalogue, as if I needed more encouragement to fuel this hobby! I have at least two more orders worth of items flagged. First thing to try was getting some rolls to rise. I have tried making sandwich rolls or hamburger buns before, but I just couldn't get them to rise enough. They were tasty little hockey-puck type rolls- the flavor was perfect, but they were super dense. Chris choked one down without complaining, but I know that he was internally wondering- I hope she gets this out of her system soon! Well, since that wasn't going to happen, I decided that something was wrong with my yeast, and I was ready to trade up and try the stuff that supposedly the professionals use.

So with this yeast, you just throw it into the mix dry with the other ingredients. Here is the start to my dough.

Add the other ingredients and let the mixer combine and continue to knead. Knead for about 10 minutes until the dough is soft and smooth. It won't be sticky.

Place the dough, once kneaded into an oiled bowl, turn a couple times so that the top is oiled also, then cover with plastic wrap and let rise. (Sorry this photo is dark.)

I let mine rise in the oven, heated to 150 degrees and then turned off. This was the dough after about an hour. Another good way to check for proper rising is to insert a couple fingers and see if the dough bounces back. If the indentation stays, then it's ready to go. I decided that I was going to use half of my dough to make cinnamon rolls. Since this was a lean dough, I brushed melted sugar over the rolled out dough and then sprinkled it with a sugar, cinnamon, and flour mix. Just mix whatever quantities of the three you want, this is a good place to 'wing it' while you are baking. The small amount of flour mixed in with the sugar and cinnamon keeps the spiral from opening up while it is baking. Kind of acts like glue between the layers.

I made the rolls at night and then let them rise in the morning while I got the rest of breakfast ready. Here they are after another 20 minutes in a 150 degree-heated oven. After that, it was time to make the glaze. Just a mixture of powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla. Whisk until smooth.The rolls baked at 350 for about 20 minutes. And the other part of breakfast- the healthy part! A fritatta with Canadian bacon, broccoli, and cheddar. I can already tell I will be ordering from KAF again soon!!

Here is the link to the roll dough. The other half were for sandwich rolls, but I didn't do the onion thing, although I am sure it was good. I just knew that Chris and I didn't need all those sandwich buns, but the cinnamon rolls ended up being great. There is another recipe on the site for cinnamon rolls as well, but this worked great.

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/blog/2008/06/20/onion-buns/

Rainier Cherry Pie

2008-07-01T07:07:00.000-07:00

I've been bitten by the pie making bug...

These cherries were just too pretty to not be made into dessert. I am short on time at the moment, so hopefully the pictures will suffice until I can add in the dialouge. I didn't want to keep this from you though!

Edited to add:

Okay, first things first, I guess. Well, I was dying to know if I could make the crust with only butter and have any sort of success. Also, I had always only known of pie dough recipes that you could use your food processor to start. I hadn't really heard of using a stand mixer. Well, I went on King Arthur Flour's website and they did both. PERFECT. Exactly what I was looking for. I simply swapped out an equal amount of pure butter in my pie dough recipe and mixed it in the stand mixer. Easy as, well, I guess, PIE. Yikes.
The trick to a flaky crust, so they say, is to leave some decent sized pieces of butter in the dough not fully incorporated. Also, the chilling for a day or two helps, because you mellow out all the gluten in the flour. That's the stuff that makes the flour have 'get-up-and-go' power when you are trying to get dough to rise. Good for breads, not for pies. After mixing the dough, I separated it into two halves and shaped each into these hockey-puck shaped balls. Those went into plastic bread bags and then into the fridge.

Then it was on to filling. I went for 2 lbs of rainier cherries. They were delicious on their own, so I had a feeling that the pie would be good.
Little shower...
Pitting process
Beautiful new pie plate. I almost got this the day I made the strawberry peach pie. I should have taken the plunge, becuase it haunted my dreams for days afterwards. It needed me to take it home....
After letting the dough come to room temperature for about 10 minutes, it was time to roll. On a floured countertop, this dough was a D-R-E-A-M. I loved the butter so much more than the shortening. So much more mangeable!
Folded it in quarters for easy transfer to the buttered pie plate. (Are you sensing a trend here? Yes, this dessert requires a lot of butter! Not for the faint of heart, but your trip to the gym afterwards is worth it! I promise!)

In goes the filling.

I baked at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes. It said to start it at 400, but I found that was just too hot for all that butter. Shortening has a much higher flashpoint (or it might not even have a flashpoint, I am not sure if you can even really melt that stuff...) but anyways, 350 worked perfectly.

Chris even asked if he could take a cherry out of the middle while it cooled. I said no, of course! Haha, poor guy. However, his patience was rewarded, and mine was broken once we decided it had cooled enough after about 50 minutes. It was worth the wait. Recipe can be found here: http://smittenkitchen.com/2008/06/sweet-cherry-pie/

Pizza Dough

2008-06-25T09:17:00.000-07:00

I promised that I would post the long-awaited pizza dough recipe. I have delayed, because I have tried many, and have yet to settle on my 'perfect' recipe. This is the best one that I have been using a lot lately, so I figured it is high time to share it. However, I will add this caveat: I placed an order on King Arthur Flour's bakers catalogue and it hasn't arrived yet. I might have to update my recipe here once I get my items and start experimenting with them. I am excited to see how that goes, but this works every time.

Pizza Dough

3/4 cup of white wine (I usually use pinot grigio, and it doesn't have to be a freshly opened bottle. NEVER buy cooking wine! Keep any leftover wine in your fridge to use in cooking. Especially in baking, it doesn't matter if it isn't brand new.)

1/4 water

2 & 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast

1 -2 teaspoons of sugar

1 tablespoon of olive oil

2 & 1/2 cups t0 3 cups of flour

1 teaspoon of salt

Heat the wine and water for about 25 seconds in the microwave until around 100-110 degrees Fahrenheit. I recently read on the King Arthur website that yeast is kind of like you. If you don't have a thermometer, test the water on the inside of your wrist to see if it is warm enough. If it feels hot to you, it's probably too hot for the yeast. Once you determine that the water is the right temperature, sprinkle the yeast on the surface of the water and let stand for 5 minutes. (I have found that it helps to walk away at this point- you can leave the yeast for longer than 5 minutes, it is probably pretty happy at this point. The water should be foamy and fragrant before you do anything else to it.)

Add the sugar, olive oil, and 1 cup of flour to the mixture. It's important to never add the salt until you have at least added one cup of flour. Salt and yeast are not friends, and the flour acts as a buffer between them.

Another interesting thing that I have recently learned- Most of us are using WAY too much flour in our recipes. Unless you are sifting before you measure, you are probably scooping up to 6 ounces per cup of flour. Most recipes in cookbooks are tested with a 4 ounce cup of flour. Sounds minimal, but I have noticed that this makes a HUGE difference. If you don't want to sift, fluff up your flour with a spoon and spoon it into your measuring cup then tap and level off the top. Also, sometimes it helps to use the half-cup measure throughout the process. This prevents you from dumping in too much flour all at once and then you are past the point of no return.

So you now have 1 cup of flour mixed in. Go ahead and add the salt and 1 additional cup of flour. Mix all of the ingredients together to form a rough ball of dough. Add the remaining 1/2 to 1 cup of flour gradually just until the dough is not sticky. Then stop. Knead for about 15 minutes. If kneading by hand, sprinkle flour on the work surface only to prevent sticking. After 15 minutes, let the dough rest for 5 minutes, then check for elasticity. If the dough doesn't feel elastic (windowpane test- Tear off a piece of dough and see if you can see a membrane when stretched.) knead for about 10 more minutes. Oil a bowl and place the dough inside and cover with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least 12 hours.

Remove from the fridge and let come to room temperature. Also, you can heat your oven up to 150 degrees, place the bowl (keep the plastic on) inside, and then turn off the oven to speed up this process. After doing either step, remove the dough and gently deflate all of the gas. You are now ready to roll out your pizza!

I use a baking sheet covered with foil. I usually heat my oven to 415 degrees and place the rack in the lowest setting. I mist the foil with cooking spray and sprinkle it with kosher salt. Top your pizza and slide into the oven. I don't usually set a timer, but I think it takes about 15 minutes to bake. If your crust is brown on the bottom, but you want to brown your toppings a bit more, place it under the broiler for 2-3 minutes. Remove promptly, slice, and serve! You are going to love it!

Books

2008-06-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

Has anyone read these cookbooks and do you have an opinion on either?

http://www.amazon.com/Sky-High-Irresistible-Triple-Layer-Cakes/dp/0811854485/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214418781&sr=1-1

http://www.amazon.com/Bread-Bakers-Apprentice-Mastering-Extraordinary/dp/1580082688/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214418812&sr=1-2

Soo excited!

2008-06-22T21:27:00.000-07:00

I got a letter in the mail today. It was from one of the guests at Dan's wedding. We sat with the Ramakers at the rehearsal dinner on Friday night. We had a great time discussing Tucson, where they live now, and hearing about their lives which had taken them from Washington state to Wisconsin, and finally now to Tucson. We had a lovely time and really got to know these special people. Kathy and I discussed our love of baking, and she told me that she had a foolproof recipe for cheesecake. I told her that I would love to try it and that I didn't have a go-to cheesecake recipe. She said that she would send it to me.

After we got back, our fridge decided to stop working. So after purging everything from the fridge, I had done a costco run a couple weeks ago. I came across these vanilla beans, not knowing exactly what I would use them for, but knowing that I had wanted to try something with real vanilla beans for a while. I had forgotten about the cheesecake recipe, not realizing that this is the perfect kind of thing for real vanilla beans.

It's funny when happy accidents like this happen. I can't wait to make my cheesecake, but since it serves 10 easily, we will need some help eating it. Any takers??

More from Milwaukee

2008-06-18T05:00:00.000-07:00

The beautiful cake- it was white cake with a raspberry layer and a cream cheese layer. Fitting with the dairy theme, the cream cheese layer was incredible. K for Kinsfogel...

The wedding, reception, rehersal, rehearsal dinner, all events were pretty much within walking distance in downtown Milwaukee. We hadn't gotten a car, we took a couple cabs, but mostly we were walking wherever we went. One of my favorite ways to vacation!
The MAC- Milwaukee Athletic Club. The reception was here in a huge ballroom.
I didn't bring a lens with a zoom, so this turned out pretty blurry. The room had huge crystal chandelliers and a white ornate ceiling with pink and green hues.

The top of the room had these pretty iron faux balconies from the windows above. If you went up to the 4th floor, you could actually look down into the room from these windows. The photographer actually went up there and took some pictures of everyone dancing.

After a lot of dancing!

Such a fun party! It's always funny to see what songs really get the crowd going and up on the dance floor. The funniest song to me was actually a New Kids on the Block song... haha, when was the last time you heard one of those?! The even funnier thing, was that the bride and one of her friends are going to the concert in Portland when they come there. It was cute to see them totally rocking out to NKOTB. Of course, those of us girls of a certain age were then prompted to share stories of our favorite NKOTB member from 'back in the day'. Hilarious.

The group went out to a couple different places after the wedding. We made it to the first one for about a half-hour, and then we called it a night around 12:30am. We had an 8:00am flight back to San Diego, which was way too long and cramped, so we didn't want to be too miserable on it. All in all, it was a fantastic weekend.

Peach and Strawberry Pie

2008-06-17T05:00:00.000-07:00

So I had my first foray into pie making this weekend. Chris' dad was in town for the US Open, and I had asked Chris what kind of dessert he would like for Father's day. Chris suggested a peach pie, not knowing that I had never made a pie, or how much work it can be! However, I had been eyeing a pie recipe for a couple weeks, so this was a perfect excuse to dive in!

I am pretty well versed in tarts, I have made a couple different ones even just in the past few days. I took a Chocolate Carmel tart to work last Friday and I made a quiche when our friend Adam was visiting a couple weekends ago. But pies, no, I hadn't gone there yet.

So I did my research and decided to use a pastry blender rather than my food processor. My food processor is getting old and is pretty small. I didn't want to have to do two batches to get my two crusts. So I bought this pastry blender at Crate and Barrel. I did some research on Smitten Kitchen to see how to make the crusts. I really would like to try a recipe with only butter and no shortening, but since I didn't want any meltdowns for a special event, I figured better safe than sorry. If anyone has experience with butter only, can you tell me if it works?

To make the filling, I had bought some peaches, but I was pressed for time, so I defaulted to frozen peaches. They were great, and the boys never knew that I didn't spend all that time pitting and peeling peaches. The strawberries were huge and the flavor was unbelievably flowery. They were in the peak of ripeness.

After mixing, and chilling for an hour, the dough was ready to go.

I was looking for a fluted pastry edger at C&B, but they didn't have one. Luckily Williams-Sonoma had this one.

I wove the lattice over the top and crimped the edges. Not as perfect as Mom's usually are... but it tasted good. I am excited to work on perfecting the crust. I might have to bring you out Mom just for a quick refresher course on that! I am sure we would have fun trying different pies. Chris has requested a lemon meringue and a banana cream pie at some point. Looks like I will have no problem practicing!

Peach and Strawberry Pie

Crust:

3 cups of all purpose flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon of salt

2/3 cup chilled vegetable shortening, diced

1 stick plus 2 tablespoons chilled butter, diced

10 tablespoons ice water (I didn't use all of the water, but wondered if I would have had less cracking of the dough as I was rolling it out if I had. Does anyone know?)

For the filling:

4 cups frozen peaches (about 1-2 bags from the grocery store)

3 cups of fresh strawberries, hulled and quartered

1/2 cup golden brown sugar, packed

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup cornstarch (I increased this by a teaspoon or two, and probably could have increased it even more.)

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 egg, beaten with a splash of water for the glaze

Combine crust ingredients in a large bowl and cut in the shortening with the pastry blender. Add the water 2 tablespoons at a time until the dough starts to come together. Once fully moistened, gather the dough into a ball and cut it in two. Form each half into a ball and place them in separate plastic bread bags. Press down to flatten balls slightly into disks. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour until chilled. Can be done in advance.

Mix the filling ingredients in a large bowl and stir to combine. I let this defrost on the counter for about an hour and a half before baking.

Assembly: Take the first dough disk out of the fridge and remove from bag onto a generously floured counter. Allow to come to room temperature for about 10 minutes. Flouring the rolling pin and gently roll out the dough to approximately 13" in diameter. Place into a buttered pie dish letting the sides hang over the edge. Spoon the filling evenly into the crust. Roll out the second dough disk in the same manner as the first. Using your fluted pastry edger or a pizza cutter, slice 3/4 inch strips of the dough. Place the longer strips across the middle of the pie, saving two. Place five strips across the top of the pie. Working one at a time, start on one side and fold back 3 of the 5 strips. Lay a new strip across the 2 remaining strips, then fold back the 3 strips to cover. Continue, alternating folding back the 2 or 3 strips as you weave the lattice top. Trim the excess dough and strips around the sides leaving about an inch overall. Press the bottom crust and strips together and crimp with your fingertips. Brush with the egg glaze and sprinkle with coarse-ground sugar.

Bake at 400 degrees for 20 minutes, then reduce to 350 degrees for 50 minutes to 1 hour. Cool in the pan on a rack for an hour before serving.

Images from Milwaukee

2008-06-16T19:21:00.000-07:00

Bridal party- Hard to see but Chris is kneeling in the front: I couldn't get real close to any of the real picture taking. Hopefully the photographer and Dan will post their photos soon.

Stained glass in the church and the outline of Chris. The glass was really pretty, and it looked almost like it had been painted on. I didn't frame this one, I just took what the camera gave me. Sometimes that works out!
Reception hall.
Marc Kreisler helped me play with the time delay feature on my camera. It was so cool! This photo was actually taken over 20 seconds, which is why you can see the candle flickering. You really need a tripod, because over that much time, any movement is going to cause a blur. I didn't have a tripod, so I set my camera down on the table and went for it. Again, a lucky accident. I am so excited to play around with this feature going forward! (PS: Did you notice the whipped butter? That was an individual serving. No kidding! It was super good too. I swear I didn't eat the whole thing, but I was tempted!) Action shot of the cha-cha, or perhaps the entrance dance. The happy couple entered to Justin Timberlake's I'm bringing Sexy Back which sort of set the tone for the rest of the night. They actually learned the cha-cha for their first dance, which was to a traditional song. It was really cool to see how intricate the moves were on the dance floor. It wasn't long before we all made it onto the dance floor!

Having trouble adding more pictures. I will add more as soon as it starts working again!

Torrey Pines in the spotlight

2008-06-13T07:14:00.000-07:00

If you haven't seen it on tv yet, this is where we will be spending our weekend:

We are truly so lucky to live in such a beautiful place. It has been so much fun to see everything that has been going on around the golf tournament. I have been working so close to the event, and you would think it would just be a madhouse up here, but it has been amazingly managable. I avoided the traffic on Tuesday and Thursday, but braved it today because Tiger and Phil aren't teeing off until 1:30 pm. I am so excited to go see the action this weekend. We won't be able to take in cameras, but I did get these fun shots during the practice round on Wednesday afternoon.

This is the back of the leaderboard: Looks like it is still a pretty manual process!

Hope you enjoy the tv coverage and Happy Father's Day on Sunday! I love you Dad!!

If you live in San Diego

2008-06-05T22:47:00.000-07:00

Or if you come to visit us this summer... Perhaps we will go to the Little Italy Mercato! This outside street market is set to open this weekend. I can't wait to check it out. The market will feature local vendors and organic produce and other foods. Local chefs will be on hand as well to provide information about the food and ways to prepare it. Should be interesting!! I will update once we have a chance to check it out!! It might not be this weekend, but hopefully soon!

I clicked over to Emily Falconbrige's blog today and noticed something familiar... she and her family are in italy, and they took a picture of some pizza that they had in naples. I swear, the pizza I made last night looked a lot like this! Now, if only I didn't have to work and had the gelato shoppe as well, I would be set! hehe. I would love to go to Italy sometime soon. I think I will make it down to Little Italy first, but the photos look great.

Walking in... er, Milwaukee

2008-06-05T07:06:00.000-07:00

So while the guys played softball and toured Miller Park, I took to the streets of Milwaukee to see what the city is like. I stayed downtown, once I left the hotel I spotted a Borders in the distance and figured it was as good a direction as any. It was cool and breezy, and the city was pretty clean. The river runs right through the area that I was in, and that was pretty cool. There were a few boats on it here and there, and I even saw this water cleaning boat that scooped up trash as it buzzed by.

The city is pretty old, so there was some cool architecture all around. I particularly liked this building, even though it probably didn't really fit in with most of the rest of the city.

I couldn't imagine my luck when I stumbled on this fruit stand. Total jackpot when you have been travelling. I love having fresh fruit on the plane and in the hotel room. For a cool $1.87 I got a green apple, a yellow delicious apple, an orange, and four bananas. Okay, for someone who says that they don't complain about flying... here I go again. I mean, honestly, what is up with airport/airplane food options? It's like, ah ha! We have you captive, and now we are going to make you eat all this awful stuff because, guess what, that's your only option! Ugh. We got lucky on the way home, the magazine shop in the terminal had packs of Wisconsin cheese that you could take home. We got some string cheese and it was fabulous. I really did notice that all the dairy while we were there was exceptional. Especially the butter. Yum. So anyway, I thought I would take a shot of the fruit, because, it basically made my day.

PS: The yellow delicious apple was amazing.

Fly, fly away

2008-06-02T19:34:00.000-07:00

Amazing what you can see from 30,000 feet. I can't wait to tell you all about our trip to Milwaukee! I have to organize my thoughts and photos, so that will be coming soon. I can't believe this picture worked so well from the airplane window. Wow. Fun stuff. I will probably be bothering sleeping passengers in the future as I snap from the windows going forward! We had a great flight going to Milwaukee- but just an okay one coming back. I try not to complain about flying, because it seems like as long as it is event-free, it's good. However, that being said, airplanes are one place in life that being tall is so not an advantage! Chris literally had the back seat of the guy in front of him in his lap on the way home for about an hour straight. I actually asked the person to put their seat up a little bit, he seriously couldn't do anything! Not fair. I think they should stop making the seats recline at all. I know it's nice if there is no one behind you, but it sucks if the person in front of you does it. So uncomfortable. Okay, I said I wasn't going to complain about flying, so that's it. ;)

Okay- Milwaukee pics to come soon. See you later!

Windansea Sunday

2008-05-27T07:06:00.000-07:00

We decided to take in the beach on Sunday afternoon. We got up early and pulled out our old kitchen faucet then made the trip up to Home Depot to get a new one and all the paraphenila needed to replace it. Chris did an amazing job, it really needed to be replaced. We figured after all that work, we deserved a relaxing stroll on the beach. We parked near where we had our wedding, and walked south on the beach. We had never been down that way, and it was beautiful. The sand was so soft and white, like sugar. You couldn't get anywhere quickly, because you kind of sunk in with each step, but it was gorgeous.

Morning Light

2008-05-21T20:42:00.000-07:00

Some call it "May Gray"...
And next month they will say it's "June Gloom"...
But this morning it was just beautiful.
There is something so peaceful when it's gray outside. It's kind of the antithesis of what you think of when you think of Southern California. It's a nice break after our hot weekend last weekend. It was sunny and windy later today- but the morning was just fantastic.

PS: It's something other than cooking too! ;)

Did this become a cooking blog?

2008-05-20T07:02:00.000-07:00

So, I have been meaning to try to post about something other than cooking. It's probably the one constant thing that I try to do even when I am busy at work. Chris and I went down to La Jolla on Sunday night for a stroll because the weather was just sooo hot and our house was not going to cool down until the sun went down. Even after that it was pretty steamy. Unfortunately, I didn't take my camera. I was totally bummed, because there were some amazing waves. Everytime we go down there, we are just so impressed by how beautiful it is there and how much we love being on the coast in La Jolla. So pretty.

So even though I don't have pictures of that, I do have some pictures of a yummy chicken dish that I made a few weeks ago. We had this on a Friday night, after a long week of work. It was really good, I served it with a big pot of steamed broccolini and a salad. Click on the link to see Tyler Florence's recipe. Hope you enjoy it too!

Pizza

2008-05-12T06:46:00.000-07:00

So, you all know that I love to make pizza at home. Well, it never occurred to me that even though I make the crust from scratch, I should try to make the sauce from scratch too. I think there is something daunting about the thought of peeling endless tomatoes to make fresh tomato sauce. I also have never been a big "red sauce" person, but I do like pizza sauce because it ususally tastes lighter to me. Well, as with many things- if you think you don't like something, you should try making it yourself. You will probably tweak it in just the right ways that you will realize what you've been missing all along.

So the sauce is actually really easy to make. I grabbed a big package of tomatoes at costco. You probably need about 4 roma tomatoes or about 6 small tomatoes on the vine. I've made this with both- the roma are probably the perfect tomato for this, but if you don't like a chunky sauce, you will have to blend it before you use it. The smaller ones just disintegrated into gorgeous yummy sauce. (More tomatoes to peel, but honestly, this part is sooo much easier than you'd think!) Fill your pot with water deep enough to submerge the tomatoes and bring it to a boil. Then drop them in and boil for only one minute. Strain and return the pot over the medium flame until dry, then add a couple tablespoons of olive oil. (Extra Virgin Olive Oil, of course!) Crush two cloves of garlic into the oil using a garlic press and sautee lightly, don't let the garlic brown. Then add 1/2 tsp (or more or less, depending how much spice you enjoy) of red pepper flakes. Take a look at your red pepper flakes- if they are not a bright red color, toss them and grab a new package at the store. They have lost their kick unless they are bright red in color. While the garlic sautees, quickly peel the tomatoes. I wrapped them in a paper towel and just twisted with my fingers a bit, and the peel came right off. Sometimes the roma tomatoes required a little slit in the skin, but then the peels come right off. Add the peeled tomatoes to the pot with a splash or two of white wine and bring simmer for about 30 minutes. Using a wooden spoon, break up the tomatoes as they cook. They will break down further as you simmer. Use a store bought crust or make your own- it is really very simple. (recipe to come)
Line a baking sheet with foil and spray with cooking spray. Sprinkle with a little kosher salt before spreading the dough on top. You can sprinkle with cornmeal if you like, but I don't like the texture of that on my pizza so I avoid it. If your oven is hot enough, you don't need it. Heat the oven to at least 415 degrees, some people say as high as it will go. I usually don't go past 435, but I am always a wimp when it comes to oven temperatures. I hate burning things. Cook on the lowest rack for about 15 minutes. If you like, broil for the last 2 minutes to brown the top of the cheese. (This might happen automaticallly if you use a higher setting to begin with, but I haven't tried it.) Once you have the consistency of the sauce you want, pour it over the prepared pizza dough.Add some cheese- this was fantastic fresh mozzerella that I also got at costco. They have a lot of surprising things when you look past your staples. The buffalo mozzerella was definitely the better choice for this recipe. When it melts it just gets ooey-gooey as opposed to chewy. I tore these pieces up, but if you want an authentic look, use the circles whole and your pizza will just have spots of cheese. Sprinkle with a little fresh grated parmesan also. If you are using toppings, place them on top of the cheese. They will cook more this way and be more tasty.

Try to let it cool a little before eating it. This is the hardest step, but burning the roof of your mouth really ruins the experience! Thank you to smitten kitchen for the above recipes (which I modified only slightly) and giving me the courage to try making my own sauce. I am so happy that I did!

Mike and Juli

2008-05-09T07:21:00.000-07:00

I wanted to let you know that the photos from Mike and Juli's wedding are up, here is a link to them. http://www.mikeandjuli.com/ Thanks to Mike and Juli for sharing their beautiful flowers with us after the wedding. We really enjoyed them!

Also, Chris' good friend Ornob Roy got engaged last m0nth to his girlfriend in Paris. Congrats to him and what a fantastic place to propose!

Hoping that this Friday brings you time to relax and spend some time with your mom... We wanted to tell all of our moms and grandmas that we love you and wish we could be spending the weekend with all of you!

Shared weekend

2008-05-05T19:32:00.000-07:00

We had an awesome weekend. Chris' family was in town for the weekend and stayed with us. I was a little worried about everyone feeling like they had enough room in our San Diego house, but it all worked out great. On Friday night, we all went to Phil's BBQ and had some amazing BBQ. Then we went down to Balboa park and wandered around the park a little bit. We checked out the rose garden, which I had never been to. (Or even really knew existed.) There were all sorts of roses, and they were almost all in full bloom. They were fragrant and beautiful. We also enjoyed trying to identify all the different flora around the park. It's such a special place in San Diego... I could go there many different times and always have a different experience there. We had all really wanted to check out the Pompeii exhibit, but it was too late to catch it, and before we knew it, the weekend flew by and we didn't get to see it. Hopefully we will all get to see it sometime soon.

On Saturday morning, we got up, had a continental breakfast, and took off to Costco to get new tires on Jennifer's car before the long trip back to Phoenix. They were super-nice and understood that she was in a rush being out of town, and took care of it really quickly. Then we were off to the races- the Red Bull Air Races, that is. It was really neat and there were a lot of folks in downtown at the Embarcadero for the event. The pilots flew in stunt planes through an obstacle course over San Diego bay at speeds around 230 mph. AMAZING. They supposedly were subject to 9 G-Force pressures, which would basically be 9 times the pressure of gravity on your body. The equation they gave us was if you weigh 200 pounds, it would be as if you weighed 1800 pounds. Unbelievable. After the races, we wandered around downtown a little bit, took in the ballpark, and headed back home. Once Chris finished with work, we all went to dinner at Fidel's in Solana Beach. It was soo good! I always love Fidel's, but it was especially good this Saturday night. I'm not sure if they just had their game faces on for Cinco de Mayo weekend, or what, but it was phenomenal. After that we relaxed at home and watched Into the Wild. Which I love... but it is a sad movie. Spoiler Alert: It's pretty profound, the crux of the movie is basically, that happiness is only real if it is shared. Which made me think about the weekend. We all had such a great time together, but really, the best part about it was that we were able to share our experiences with each other. Chris and I love all the parts of San Diego that we took everyone too, but they were even better for us over the weekend because we got to share them with others, special people in our lives. That was why the food tasted so good, the races were so cool, even the costco trip was fun! And it made the weekend what it was- Special and Shared. Perfect. Except for one small detail. I didn't take any pictures. Not a one! :( Oh, I am always so bummed when I realize we did all these things and yet, no photos. (If you didn't take a photo- did it really happen??) I tend to avoid taking them sometimes when I am really in the moment, because I worry that it will change the mood, but I always miss them and wish that I would have taken some afterwards. So that is the only thing that I would have changed about the weekend!

And by the way... Happy Cinco de Mayo! Hope you get to share it with someone you care about tonight!

Heat Wave

2008-04-29T07:16:00.000-07:00

It has been super-hot here since last Friday. It's so unusual to have anything over 80 degrees in San Diego, especially at the coast. Or at least we have usually only felt it in the middle of summer, and even then, it's usually only for a week or so. We've already had a couple of these days this year, and it has been so surprising, occurring in March and April. Now, I know all you Arizona people are rolling your eyes and thinking, "Poor babies!" But keep in mind that we don't have air conditioning.... and we couldn't go into the water this weekend because of the shark attack. It's so sad and shocking that there was a shark attack here- you just never hear about that kind of thing happening. I talked with some friends about it on Sunday night, and I think we were all just so surprised and disturbed that it happened. The victim was a man in great physical shape, just sounds like it was totally random and unlucky. So I just wanted to say that I was thinking about him and his family over the past few days and wishing them well.

On a more positive note, since it feels like summer, it got me thinking about summery things. Vacations, iced lattes, shorts... So I thought I'd ask you a question. What are you thinking about doing this summer that you are looking forward to. It can be anything- there are no wrong answers. I would love to hear what you are getting excited about. Please leave a comment if you have a minute or two!

Chocolate Shortbread

2008-04-23T19:00:00.000-07:00

You can't begin to imagine how good this is. Sooooo simple. And yet... fantastic. I really like shortbread plain. I have been wanting to try it topped with melted chocolate, but I was worried about the textures. The chocolate is hard once it chills and the shortbread is crumbly. I thought that I would just end up with little pieces of shortbread stuck to the chocolate sheets. And it's not perfect. Oh, it's pretty here in these pictures, but once you cut into it, it is going to crumble a little bit. So it's not a party cookie, unless you are cool with asymetrical cookies that might be all different sizes. But for a weekend treat that you will enjoy all week it's great. I used the shortbread recipe in the Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Baking and just covered it with melted chocolate. It probably took less than 1 cup of chocolate chips... I didn't want it too thick. I used the leftover melted chocolate to cover strawberries. Also super simple and divine. Seriously- they are so easy, so good, and not that bad for you. I wonder why I don't make them more. They didn't make it to the picture-taking stage... we ate them! ;) I will post the recipe for the shortbread when I do the Chocolate and Zucchini cake... sorry, I know I am behind! Happy Wednesday- we are more than halfway there my friends!

Classic Shortbread
1 & 1/2 Cups of all purpose flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1/8 teaspoon salt
3/4 cups of unsalted butter at room temperature
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Combine the butter and sugar in a large bowl, beat on medium until smooth and light in color, about 3 minutes. Mix in the vanilla. Add the dry ingredients and beat on a low speed until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. Using an offset spatula, spread the dough evenly into a 9 & 1/2 inch tart pan with a removable bottom. Prick lightly over the top with a fork. Bake at 300 degrees F for 55-65 minutes. Remove from the oven and cut the warm shortbread into 12 wedges. Let the shortbread cool completely in the pan on a wire rack. Once cool, melt the chocolate in a double boiler or the microwave. Pour over the top of the shortbread, and place the shortbread in the freezer to set. Once set, place the pan on top of an inverted bowl. Gently ease the sides of the pan away from the bottom. Cut into wedges and enjoy.

Williams-Sonoma The Essentials of Baking

Wedding Flowers

2008-04-22T06:48:00.000-07:00

This lovely centerpiece adorned our table at the Brown wedding. On April 12, Julie Hanley and Mike Brown were married in Poway. It was a beautiful wedding with all sorts of shades of green spiked with pink and magenta flowers. I didn't take my camera, so I'm hoping that she will share a link to the photos when she is back from her honeymoon. We actually got to take home this centerpiece- it looked so pretty on our table for a few days.

We had a great time with a lot of Chris' co-workers. He works with so many wonderful people, we are lucky to know them.

Hope you are having a wonderful start to your Tuesday!

Would you like some Zucchini with your Chocolate?

2008-04-21T14:59:00.000-07:00

I think I might have mentioned to a few of you that I made the Chocolate and Zucchini cake from the cookbook by the same name a couple weeks ago. It turned out great, and of course, I have some adjustments that I will try the next time, but I just thought that some of these photo were too good to pass by without sharing!

I will post the recipe, I don't have it with me at the moment. But it includes 2 cups of grated, unpeeled zucchini:

Unsweetened dutch-process cocoa powder- I haven't been able to find this anywhere lately! I used to buy Droste at my happy neighborhood VONS, but they haven't been carrying it. It's pretty pricey- about $10 per small box, but oh-so-fabulous. I am having a tough time living without it. As a result, I have been substituting unsweetened chocolate baking squares, but I totally made this cake on a whim and didn't even have any more of those on hand. So, I pulled out the stops and just used melted 60% cocoa ghiradelli chocolate chips. Does this picture make you want to lick this bowl or what?
The final step before putting the cake in a springform pan (or in my case, a cake pan lined with parchment paper) is to fold the zucchini and chocolate chips into the cake batter. Well, let's just say that is no easy task. This batter is THICK. I think a lot of the cake's moisture comes from the zucchini, so you don't want a real wet batter. However, that makes incorporating anything evenly a chore. Probably made more difficult by my addition of melted chocolate when the recipe didn't call for it. However, the green is gorgeous with the brown.
The Grand Finale: Clothide recommends trying olive oil instead of the butter, and I am totally going to do that next time. I think it will yield a cushionier cake- this was heavenly and densely chocolately, but I think the butter makes things puff up more and get a little drier. Not bad, just different. More cakey than brownie-y and I think brownie-y would be better. I doubt that it will take me long to try it again. YUM.

Recipe to come! I promise. Hope you are having a great Monday!

Gateau Chocolate& Courgette

1/2 Cup butter at room temperature or 1/2 Cup Olive Oil, plus 1 pat for greasing

2 cups of all-purpose flour (I recommend King Arthur's unbleached)

1/2 cup of unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1 cup (packed) light brown sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 teaspoon instant coffee granules (I used a shot of espresso)

3 large eggs

2 cups unpeeled grated zucchini (about 1 & 1/2 medium zucchinis)

1 cup bitersweet chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F and grease a 10-inch springform pan. (Or line it with parchment paper)

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. In a food processor, process the sugar and butter until creamy (or do it by hand with a sturdy spatula (I added the espresso here). Add the vanilla coffee granules, and eggs, mixing well between each addition. Add the zucchini and chocolate chips, fold into the batter and bblend with a wooden spoon. Don't overmix. Pour into the prepared cake pan and level the surface with a spatula. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes, until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Transfer to a rack to cool for 10 minutes, run a knife around the pan to loosen the cake and unclasp the sides of the pan. Enjoy.

Clotilde Dusoulier Chocolate and Zucchini

Celebrate the everyday

2008-04-18T14:07:00.000-07:00

I am so sorry that I haven't been posting. I hope that you haven't been looking back too often only to realize there is nothing new here. It's funny, I read Ali's blog quickly today, and realized, as I often do when I think about scrapbooking/life art/journaling/etc.- It is the everyday stuff, the seemingly mundane details that we will not remember from our lives. I think we remember bits and pieces, but unless you are writing some of this down, you won't really appreciate it when you look back upon it.

I have been very busy with work the last couple weeks, and I have used that as an excuse to not write. What I have been going through isn't interesting... I haven't made anything interesting to eat, nor have I gone anywhere interesting, why should I write about it. Then this morning I thought about something from U of A, so I grabbed a photo album to flip through it while I ate breakfast. I literally looked at it for maybe 10 minutes, max. But I realized... the everyday stories were almost lost. I have the photos, and I know that a picture is worth a lot of words, but honestly, don't you wonder what your thoughts were? What were you doing from 8am to 9pm most days? What stressed you out? What did you get excited about? Who did you see daily? Who did you see only occasionally? What restaurants did you go to often? What did you cook at home? What tv shows did you watch? What movies did you see that year? etc, etc. And wouldn't you be interested to know now? I know that I would, and I wish that I had written more. So, I guess all you can do is stop wishing and start writing. Keep records for yourself first and for all the other people who might wonder about your life later, second. You'll be surprised how much they will probably mean in the future to both of you.

This is mostly a lecture to me, but click on over to Ali's blog and you will probably be inspired, like I am (yet again). So as a start... this week I have spent from 8:30am until as late as 10:00pm or as early as 7:30pm at work. But I had dinner with Chris at Fidel's last night, I saw some of American Idol on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I am excited to have a weekend. I am going to watch the finale of John Adams (which, we only know most of the things we do because John and Abigail Adams wrote extensive letters to each other) on Sunday, we're going to have BBQ one day this weekend, and try to see the ocean at least once. And I might scrapbook. Or not. But if not, I am going to try to write down what I did. 'Cause I am going to want to know someday. And maybe someone else will want to know too.

Happy Friday.

I've missed you too!

2008-04-09T16:59:00.000-07:00

Wow. It has been a whirlwind of a week. And last week. And the weekend! I have been going non-stop since last Tuesday, which I took off because I was sick. And I worked until 11pm last night. Which was not a super-marathon of years past, but I was feeling it this morning. And today was busy, and the rest of the week will be too, but I can see light at the end of the tunnel. It may just be a glimmer, but it's there!

Well, I hope that you have been busy too and not checking back here too often since I seriously lagged in my plogging lately. I don't know if you are like me, but when you are slammed, do you sometimes wish with all your heart to be able to do something so opposite of what you have been doing? I peeked at Smitten today and my heart just fills up at the thought of locking myself in my kitchen for a couple days. Not sure when that will happen next, I don't think I will have that kind of time until Thanksgiving... but you never know! I am dying to cook. I miss my kitchen things and I miss making my food. I know that all I need is a basic, great, 'sum of the parts is so much less than the completed product' kind of meal. I am too tired to go all out, but sometimes that's the only thing I want. I have also been starving all day despite letting myself snack quite a bit. I think there is a lot of logic behind the whole eating is more than physical thing. I think we tend to eat more when we aren't full emotionally. WOW. Deep. I might be a little sleep deprived! Haha, well, before I get too prophetic, and completely lose you, take a gander at the beautiful recipes at smitten. Since I haven't cooked for a while, and miss it so, I will leave you with some photos of the last 'real' meal that I made. Funny that those gorgeous purple potatoes weren't just tempting me! :)

Butternut squash pieces ready for roasting:

Purple potatoes with rosemary ready for roasting:

Nicoise salad (with chicken since I am not a fan of tuna and neither is Chris. Is it still okay to call it nicoise??)

Finished buttnernut squash soup with yougurt drizzle:

Hope your day is filled with color, Enjoy, happy eating!

Want to go on a hike with us?

2008-03-31T08:51:00.000-07:00

We headed to Torrey Pines yesterday (are you detecting a pattern here?) and we decided on the way there that we were going to try to park close to the reserve side of the park so that we could do a hilly walk rather than a beach walk. The weather was nice, but not the pure summer weather that we have been having. Some clouds here and there, warm, but breezy. We couldn't find parking so we had to park kind of far away. It was okay though.

We started by the train tracks.... The fields have been filled with yellow flowers lately. It's like everything bloomed at once.

Then we walked along the beach down to the entrance to Torrey Pines State Park... It was so windy people were flying kites! So colorful! And this one that looks like a seagull! How funny! It's really a kite I promise! Hard to tell from the picture, but it really was. I don't really like the seagulls at all, and there are a lot of them on the beach. I'm never really tempted to take pictures of them, but I thought that this was just so funny!

We then trudged up the hill and found this little path that cuts back west to the water. Not a strenuous hike at all, this was pretty flat once we were on the trail.

We passed a dad with two kids, a boy and a girl. The boy asked the dad, "Dad, if you were a bee, what kind of bee would you want to be? A carpenter bee, honey bee, or a worker bee?" and the dad responded, "A honey bee, for sure!" And the kid said, "I'd want to be a carpenter bee..." and continued to discuss this with his dad, which I thought was pretty cute.

Then we got to where we could see the water ahead of us again:

and it got windy and cold!! But so pretty! That's La Jolla in the distance...

Here are the waves below where are when we walk along the beach:

After that path we decided to head back to the main road and continue all the way to the top of the hill. There is a Torrey Pines Lodge up there! We never knew about that. We made it to the top, turned around and started back down to the beach. On the way we saw a hang glider:

Then we got a better view of him as we turned the corner:

We walked back along the beach and under the train tracks back to our car. It was a really nice break in the middle of the day and a memorable part of the weekend. Hope you had a great one too!

Hearst Castle

2008-03-27T14:45:00.000-07:00

I try to rotate the pictures on my desktop every couple days or so, but I usually keep pretty recent photos on there, a lot of them are some of the ones I've put up here. However, I recently put some pictures up from our trip last summer to Hearst Castle. It was really gorgeous and I thought I'd share it with you as well. Here is a link to the castle's website. It's not very convenient to get to, there aren't a lot of places to stay close by. We were staying in Morro Bay, which was nice, but definitely a sleepy town. We took the experience tour, which is the basic tour you should takle if it's your first visit to the castle, but a friend told me that they had been to the evening tour, which sounds like it would be really cool. They have actors dress up in period costumes and wander around the castle, so you can see it in what it must have looked like "back in the day". San Luis was great too. We ate twice (on our way up and our way back) at this little organic cafe in town. Big Sky Cafe- it was really yummy and felt good to be enjoying the local, organic agriculture. Friends have also said that you can go to farmers markets there on Thursdays and it's supposedly a cool event, local bands, great food stalls, people just getting together and lining the town streets. We had a super time there, and I think we'd go back in a heartbeat. The only annoyance is the drive through LA. The traffic is totally unpredictable. The trip was totally worth that little hiccup though. So as I turn my attention back to work and power through the last few hours today, I will be reminiscing about our little trip this summer. Please share a great trip memory if you are thinking about something in the comments section! Have a great Thursday afternoon

New new!

2008-03-25T17:57:00.000-07:00

Did you see the new D. Reeves albums?? Pink, and white, and pink, oh my! Ummm, when you thought that you never could want anything other than clear... they certainly threw that theory out the window! I am drooling over here. Trying to decide what sizes.... I think the mini albums are so cute, but I struggle with getting everything I want in that little space. I have a hard time doing a 12x12 1-page layout! Any ideas to help? Crop, crop, crop, I guess. Don't even know when these are going to be available, they have not hit http://www.scrapbook.com/ yet. I have a question into Diane at D. Reeves, so I will let you know if I find out. Ali is doing a super cool 4x6 album with the white. Looks very do-able, so maybe I could try the 4x6. Might have to increase it to a 6x6 but I should probably try to break out of my square little box! Rectangles can be cool...

I had a dentist appointment tonight, and I got 3 sealants. They are much better than cavities, so I can't complain too much. However I am thinking I need to parlay this into the golden spoon treat that we missed on Sunday. We shall see. Hope you had a good Tuesday!! Just think, by this time tomorrow we are 1/2 way to the weekend. (Sorry Mom and Erin, don't mean to be wishing away your spring break!! You have a ton of time to enjoy off!) Love you guys! Talk to you soon!