Yikes, it’s been awhile

Sorry about the lack of posts! I don’t want to get into details, but Chris and I suffered a Major with a capital M setback. Luckily, it was a major setback that, thanks to my AMAZING team of mortgage people, real estate lawyers, and realtors (both buyer and seller), is actually more of a minor setback. We are getting the condo still – it’s just that instead of closing on Tuesday (YES this coming Tuesday), we’re closing sometime a little later. Hopefully not more than a week later, but still, later.

I can’t stress this enough. If you ever buy a house, surround yourself with INCREDIBLE people. We had tried to use our regular bank for the mortgage as well, and the guy there just didn’t sit right with me. He was slow, rude, and rather unprofessional. He was doing what he needed to do in the end, but we made the executive decision right then and there to axe him and fine someone else. No hard feelings – you just need to find someone who is loyal to you and will work hard FOR you.

In the meantime, now that the weather is getting consistently warmer (today is supposed to be 79 and SUNNY oh my goodness), I’m trying to get back into eating right. The past week has been spent eating nothing but cheese, and after spending a solid month being fairly vegan, my body is crying in agony.

Exhibit A

So we’re trying to eat more vegetables and actually plan our meals. We’ve been getting home from work at 5:30, 6:00, and then being all, so what do you want to have for dinner? By then I’m starving and in physical pain, so we’ve been eating crap, pretty much. A few days ago, Chris ate an entire bag of barbecue chips by himself in one sitting.

I’m trying to change this by literally looking at pictures on foodie blogs. I hate foodie blogs because they’re usually ridiculous and rarely vegetarian, but it’s the only thing that’s working. To be honest, I actually hate cooking with the flaming passion of a thousand suns. I tried to like it, but the trouble is, by the time I get around to cooking, I’m generally starving. Cooking while starving is miserable.

How do you get inspired to cook again? We’ve started planning our meals and shopping ahead of time, but I’m worried it won’t be enough. Also, how do you find recipes?

Noodles!

No pictures, but I just wanted to tell you guys I LEARNED HOW TO MAKE NOODLES.  It was surprisingly easy! My first attempt was with an awesome recipe from a cookbook called (I think) Vegetarian Cooking which I can’t seem to find. Most of the recipes in this book are Really Complicated, but on Saturday I had the itch to make something, so I busted it out. The recipe was for spinach ricotta ravioli, but I decided not to use spinach. Instead I used… (dun dun dun) BROCCOLI.

Yes, I know what you’re thinking. But I am here to inform you you are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It was AMAZING.

The craziest part was making the noodles. I have a dough hook for my mixer but I did this all by hand the first time. You can find many recipes online, but the super basic recipe is just eggs, flour, and salt, with possibly a splash of water or some extra flour depending on consistency. You knead it well and roll it out, then make raviolis!

Because of this, and because my birthday is coming up, Chris bought me a set of Kitchenaid Pasta making attachments for the mixer. Now I’ve made noodles twice since my ravioli. It’s fun and so easy!

Cake!

Cake is my vice. It’s my favorite dessert by far, and it’s fantastic in all forms or flavors. Fun fact! Cake is my favorite way to eat chocolate. I’m actually not much of a chocolate person and I have some pretty strange rules about it:

1. Chocolate can’t touch ice cream ever in any way, shape, or form.
2. Straight-up chocolate bars are okay but only if they are plain, with nuts, or with caramel (no creams or other flavors)
3. Chocolate in cookies are edible, but not great
4. Any other kind of dessert is always preferable to chocolate

Yesterday I made a chocolate cake. This time I tossed a teaspoon of orange blossom water into the batter and it came out amazingly, with orange tones in the chocolate to give it a richness. It wasn’t so orangey to be a true “chocolate orange cake,” which was just perfect. It was so good!

I frosted it with whipped cream cheese frosting from this recipe. This is now my favorite non-vegan icing. It’s definitely cream cheesy, so if you’re not into that, it’s not a good recipe. I would say it’s the perfect alternative to traditional cream cheese frosting, like for carrot cake. It’s so light and good. We dyed it blue just for fun.

Next time I will definitely make a double layer cake because I know this single layer is going to disappear in no time at all!

Whoopie pies!

A few days ago, Chris and I made the mistake of walking into a Crate & Barrel (we’re trying to SAVE money, not spend it on expensive kitchen supplies and tea towels and really delicate wine glasses!). We didn’t do TOO badly – walked out with some silicone cupcake wrappers and a whoopie pie pan.

Chris had never even heard of whoopie pies, but I grew up in the Pittsburgh area, so not only am I familiar with them, but I was seriously craving some after I saw that pan. I got home and set to work making the gooiest, messiest, most disgustingly great whoopie pies in the universe.

My favorite part is that they’re little. I see them in bakeries all the time and they’re huge, but I wanted nice, little, oreo-sized ones for snacking, and partly because I knew I’d down the entire thing no matter what size it was. Portion control is important, see?

Winter is the perfect time for staying in and baking. I’ve made so many cookies and cakes this winter that I seriously need a sugar break!

Happy Thanksgiving!

This year is Chris’ and my first Thanksgiving together (last year we did Thanksgiving separately) and our first Thanksgiving without The Family. I’m trying to paint a dresser, beat Ocarina of Time, and fuddle with work stuff (argh), while trying to bake the following:

1 Pumpkin Pie
Sweet Potatoes with butter
Sage Stuffing
Vegan Mushroom Gravy
Smashed potatoes
Green beans

Just five minutes ago, Chris mentioned, “Our Trader Joe’s is good for basics, but it’s not good for people like me, whose career is homemaking.”

Maybe he’ll get a promotion this year, depending on whether he helps or not.

Tea Towels

Currently we use plain old hand towels as dish towels for drying dishes and hands, but what about some chic tea towels? I absolutely adore printed tea towels. They’re so classy and beautiful compared to solid pastel ones. Of course, this means that I have to be careful with them because they’re so beautiful! (can I do that? I’m pretty messy in the kitchen…)

Click the pictures for source!

Relaxing food

Wow, it’s been forever since I posted last! I’ve been busy with moving junk and also my birthday was on Sunday! I missed posting here a lot. I have so much to share!

For now, though, I wanted to share my quiet moments. I’m always so busy and rushed with moving plans these days that it’s nice to sit down and eat my favorite food. I always get obsessed with different types of food in a slow progression. First it was mushrooms – mushrooms in sauce, mushroom bolognese, mushrooms in pastry puffs. Then it was salad. Greek salads, salad with cheese, salad with tomatoes, salad with olive oil and vinegar, salad with cashew dressing. Now it’s asparagus, cooked in water with salt and crazy amounts of pepper.

And sparkling water, of course. The best kind of water. I’m trying to drink more because I keep forgetting and then I end up getting dehydrated and my muscles cramp up, but I hate regular water with a passion, so sparkling water and lightly flavored, very cold water it is.

I look forward to the quiet moments, when I can sit and relax. It seems I don’t get enough of those these days.

Making Caramel (cross-post to lunsh.net)

I realized awhile ago that I actually don’t like chocolate all that much. I couldn’t figure out why I was so picky about it – no chocolate near ice cream, on any fruit except strawberries, in mint, in sauces like mole sauce (gross), in milkshakes or smoothies, next to peanut butter, and so on. Then it hit me – chocolate is okay, but I could actually go for the rest of my life without having any ever. What I really like is caramel, and that’s why I was always so drawn to chocolates with caramel.

The other day I decided to try my hand at making some caramel, which turned out just great. I got the recipe here. I chose this particular recipe for several reasons:

1. I didn’t want to use corn syrup at all. Maybe it’s just me wigging out about high fructose corn syrup and Food Inc. with its whole “corn is in everything,” but I definitely didn’t want corn syrup. That eliminated a LOT of recipes.
2. I also kind of wanted to use honey. We picked up a ton of honey at the farmer’s market last Saturday and it is really decent, but moreover we have a lot. Also the lady kept saying that they had JUST harvested it from the honeycombs, which means my honey is still less than two weeks old. That’s pretty awesome.

My honey isn’t super strong, so I did one cup sugar, one cup honey, but next time I think I’ll just go with the 1 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup honey. It ended up tasting a little more like those Bit O’ Honeys than real caramel, which was fine, but next time, less honey. I also bought some fancy salt and sprinkled it on the top, which was perfect – salt is the best seasoning for sweet things.

I also wounded myself twice: I burned myself (do not touch a hot spoon, especially a spoon that is about 250F), and I stabbed myself with a knife cutting the caramel. Good times.

A++++ would make again.