Does not always share well with others.

So the brownies happened.  I feel ambivalent about them.  Probably because they are low-fat.  Also possibly because I put a little too much salt on them.  But I am thinking they might be salvageable if I drop a dollop of peanut butter on top of them.  I will test this theory out and let you know and then decide if the brownies are worth telling you about.  The best thing about them, thus far anyway, is that boyfriend totally ate one yesterday while I was at work.  I told him they were low-fat, but what I apparently neglected to tell him was that they were salty.  Teehee.  Boyfriend does NOT appreciate snacks that incorporate the salty-sweet dichotomy, like chocolate covered pretzels.  To me those are perfect and encompass everything I want in a snack food; satisfying all cravings in one shot.  So when I got home this is the exchange that happened:

Me: "Oh, so did you go and have dinner without me already tonight, or do you want me to cook?"
Boyfriend: "No, I just had one of those brownies you made the other day..." (frowns slightly)
Me: "Well, I told you they were low-fat, right?"
Boyfriend: "Yeeeeah..." (continues frowning)
Me: "Oh!  Did I tell you I made them salty?"
Boyfriend: "Nooooo....no wonder I thought they were gross"
Me: "And you ate it?  Bwhahahahahaha!"

Needless to say I have to make up for 'tricking' him into eating salted low-fat brownies with some cookie pie. This is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.  Now I, like most people, detest making pie crust, so I cheat and use store bought.  Why not?  It's perfectly good.  Unlike most people though, I can, if called up, make pie crust.  Because I conquered that beast years ago, I have given myself permission to cheat.  Plus store bought pie crust is fine and not totally disgusting, like buying frosting in a can at the store vs. making your own.

Also, I made a little mini apple crisp I wanted to share with you.  It was so mini that I pretty much ate the whole thing after my weekly long walk last week (I take several short hour long walks, and one almost three hour walk - at least that is the weekly goal these days).  It all started because I was asking boyfriend about fruit desserts (which are usually my fav) and he told me he had never had apple pie or crisp or anything.  I told him that was un-American.  More so, it is un-New England.  At least to the girl that grew up living within 15 minutes of 5 different apple orchards in the heart of Johnny Appleseed Country.  So seeing as how I avoid pie crust like the devil I was convinced I was going to get him to eat an apple crisp.  Except he won't eat anything with oats.  So then I was convinced I could make apple crisp sans oats.  It took a while and some serious thought.  But I settled on graham crackers.  And judging by the fact that I opted not to entice him to try any of it, and instead gorge myself and not share you could say it was pretty successful.

Mini Apple Crisp For Two (or one if you are me)
2 Apples (I used Granny Smith) peeled and thinly sliced
3 Tablespoons of water
4 grahams (from the Fresh Stacks packs) crushed
3 TBS sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
2 TBS cold butter

Place apples in greased 1/2 quart baking dish.  Place water over apples.  In a separate bowl combine graham cracker crumbs, sugar, and cinnamon and cut in butter.  Sprinkle over apples.  Bake roughly 30 minutes @ 350.  I think I let mine go another 5 minutes.

Back to Basics

Shhhhh....be vewy vewy quiet, I am being sneaky in the kitchen.  So I know I promised you something fun and exciting and sweet.  But, boyfriend, ever the traditionalist decided he had a cookie craving that only I could satisfy.  (That is probably not true, but we were out of E.L Fudge cookies and Oreos, so what could I do?)
So no cookie pie, no apple crisp (at least for the time being) because I can only deal with dirtying and then washing so many dishes per day.  The downside of not owning a dishwasher.  So I contended with good old-fashioned chocolate chip cookies.  I, like most experienced home cooks, have a go to recipe for chocolate chip cookies.  In fact, it's my go to cookie base in general.  I have tried others every so often, but I ALWAYS go back to the one I'm going to give you.  Now, when baking I don't normally mess around with the recipe because baking is like science you have to have things in the correct ratios otherwise things don't turn out; savory recipes I can't leave alone, but to me, they're like art - I always have to put my own touches on things and ultimately I can usually correct something like too much acid or salt, etc.  But I messed around with my go to cookie recipe today because it seems like boyfriend is having some inner turmoil.  Eating healthy vs. eating tasty.  So I wanted to help that out a little bit.  And I did that by subbing in whole wheat flour for half the flour - next time I'm betting I can get away with all whole wheat.

Basic Cookie Recipe
3 Cups flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
2 sticks butter melted and cooled
1 cup white sugar
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
3 large eggs
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
2 1/2 cups chocolate chips

Pre-heat oven to 375.  Sift (I know, I know, honestly I pretty much NEVER do this) flour, baking soda and set aside.  Beat together both sugars and butter until smooth.  Add in eggs and vanilla.  Beat.  Beat in flour mixture.  Stir in chips.  I don't measure my chips - I use a bag and a half.  This time it was 1 bag of semi-sweet and half a bag of white chocolate chips.  Also, I didn't have large eggs; I had teeny little medium eggs, so I used four of them instead of three.  I won't say it was a mistake, everything turned out ok in the end, but I ended up adding a little extra flour and setting the dough in the fridge for 20 minutes because it was looser and stickier than I usually work with.  This particular recipe makes ALOT of cookies.  Here is my downfall, I get tired of putting out sheet after sheet of cookies so the cookies gradually get larger so I have to make fewer of them.  Ultimately I ended up with roughly 40 large-ish cookies.  Had I made them "normal" size I would probably have around 60.  That rarely happens.  I know boyfriend likes it better because he has "lots" of cookies, but in my opinion, 40 is still lots of cookies, they're just freakishly huge now.

I promise.  To both you and myself that there will be something more exciting happening tomorrow.
Oh, and the steak - it was totally bad assly awesome.

oral fixation

Oh.  No.  Kate Spade sample sale.  Trouble beckons.  Well, it would if I had more money.  If I had another couple hundred bucks I could totally almost justify it to myself.  Especially because there is a bag named after my alma mater.  And in our school color!  Sigh.  I am coveting hardcore.  And I only just got over the Coach Factory sale.  (Which, in Coach's defense, is a way better deal - sorry KS!)

So two quick things.  Something dessert-y to come tomorrow.
First - I don't know about you guys, but I go through food fixation phases (score for alliteration!).  I went through a serious pickle phase while in college, and a (shut up, yes I know the next one will make some of you - boyfriend included - go ew) A1 steak sauce phase when I was around 11 or 12.  I've had bread and dip fixations, caper fixations (after many many years of caper hatred), buffalo sauce fixations, jam fixations (I'm pretty sure having five or six jars of different jams qualifies as having a problem), cilantro fixations, lemon (both sweet and savory uses) fixations, and Biscoff spread fixations (and before you think I'm jumping on the Biscoff bandwagon, I was eating that stuff well before it blew up across the food blogging world).  I still like (love even) all of these flavors, I just don't need everything I eat to be slathered in A1 or topped with pickles (including pickle flavored chips and cashews).  For the most part I'm more about variety and the spice of life and whatnot, although occasionally I need something spicy or tangy to accompany everything I eat in a week and will plow my way through a bottle of Frank's buffalo wing sauce.  It's true.  Some weeks I DO "put that shit on everything".  And sometimes all I can think about are capers, and build entire meals around them.
I love foods that are tasty by themselves but are also blank canvases in a way.  Like mac and cheese.  I have been having a love affair with mac and cheese since I was knee high to a grasshopper.  I eat significantly less of it these days because A) it is not so forgiving to my thighs and B) boyfriend thinks it is gross.  Don't ask.  I don't get it either.  Now some days all I want is plain mac and cheese (the ULTIMATE in comfort food, it's like eating a hug, if I'm eating mac and cheese I probably just want a snuggle buddy, and hugs and kisses) - either homemade or Velveeta reduced fat if I'm feeling lazy and guilty about my calorie intake.  But other days (like today) I want to gussy it up a bit.  Sometimes I stir in some canned tomatoes, some days turkey dogs, some days capers (by far the most winning combo in the list), some days buffalo sauce and a sprinkling of blue cheese.  But I was a little limited in ingredients today - that is on the whole I'm trying to buy fewer processed foods (and yes I know, Velveeta is a ridiculously processed food, I'm not dumb, but I AM willing to give in to a craving) so all I really had on hand was some fresh herbs.  Cilantro.  CilAAANNNtro.  I would rub it all over the house if I thought boyfriend wouldn't put the kaibosh on that.  It smells completely fantastical.  The smell alone reminds me of hundreds of tasty meals I've had.  Thai.  Mexican.  Things boyfriend turns up his nose at.  Yum.  And the taste...oooh baby.  I know cilantro is kind of a controversial herb.  Let's just say I have NEVER met anyone with blinding hatred and disgust for basil or rosemary or dill; cilantro on the other hand...I have met individuals (plural) that won't touch anything they even think has touched cilantro.  It boggles my mind how someone could refuse that earthy, pungent goodness.  Oh well.  More cilantro for me.  So that's what went into the mac and cheese today, and ooohhh it was sooo complimentary.  I get shivers just thinking about it again.
So there's that.  I think I was going to tell you about something else too.  Maybe the steak teriyaki?  Hmmm... well I could, but I haven't actually eaten it yet.  It's still marinading away in my fridge with some more cilantro. And Soy Vey Teriyaki sauce (only the best there is!), a little soy sauce, worcestershire, fresh lime juice and zest, brown sugar, and a splash of rice wine vinegar.  I have high hopes for this.  Although I haven't decided if it's going on the GF (George Foreman) or just in a pan.  Probably GF, although let me tell you, that thing is a bigger pain in the behind to clean than I ever anticipated.

Do you want to know a secret? Do you promise not to tell?

I will let you in on a secret.  I am not all sunshine and roses and unicorns and cupcakes all the time.  I have my faults.  Sometimes I am annoying.  Sometimes I am unnecessarily petulant when my annoying behavior is rebuffed.  After I am done feeling sorry for myself and being petulant I do apologize.  For what it is worth I can usually recognize unsavory behavior in myself.  And 99.5% of the time I will apologize.  (I'm not 100% perfect, so I probably don't always apologize).  But I do have my positives.  Like waffles.  Yeasty, crusty, fluffy, waffles with just a hint of sweetness.

Every week I ask boyfriend if there is anything special he wants for the week (aside from cookies, either store bought or scratch made those are a given to the point that they are not considered "special" any more), or if there is anything I haven't made in a while that he wants.  Some weeks it is chicken soup.  Others it is something involving bacon.  Pizza is always welcome, though not necessarily requested.  Because he gets up for work super early he doesn't usually have breakfast, but he loves breakfast foods.  Needless to say brinner (breakfast for dinner) is a given almost once a week around here.  Brinner offers me the variation I crave in my diet and offers boyfriend all the breakfast foods he is missing out on.  Usually it is pancakes.  He can eat pancakes like he's getting paid.  Last time it was some killer french toast (my secrets - use ridiculous bread, most people usually recommend challah or brioche.  I used a loaf of Portuguese sweet bread.  Other secret: I use french vanilla coffee creamer instead of milk in my custard mixture).  This time boyfriend asked for waffles.  It just so happens that I own a waffle iron, so I was game.  I was poking around for a waffle recipe that was different  enough to keep me interested and familiar enough to convince boyfriend to eat them.  I definitely succeeded.  If you're looking for a dessert waffle recipe, this is definitely not for you.  The only thing to lend any sweetness to it is maple syrup.  It is a yeasted waffle so it requires a little patience and pre-planning, though nothing crazy.

2 cups AP flour
2 eggs
1 1/12 cups warm milk
1 1/2 ts active yeast
1 ts vanilla
3/4 ts salt
6 tb melted butter
2 tb maple syrup

Mix all ingredients together and cover bowl with plastic wrap.  Leave at room temp at least one hour so the yeast can do its thing.  NB: the longer you leave the batter hanging out, the more of a nutty, yeasty almost umami flavor will develop.  And after sitting out for an hour, if not using straight away, stick it in the fridge.  After the hour the batter will be kind of bubbly and slightly thicker.  It reminded me of looser, runnier pizza dough.  My particular waffle iron took slightly less than 3/4 of a cup per waffle and produced 7 waffles from this recipe.  I enjoyed mine with butter and raspberry jam and boyfriend drown his in maple syrup.  And when you're topping your waffles like that do you really need more sweetness in the waffle itself?

a muffin is just a bald cupcake. that's okay, I like bald things.

I am having reasonably good karma at the moment.  This is concerning.  Also I'm pretty sure boyfriend has made sure there is a spirit of sorts haunting me while he is at work.

So first - the karma thing.  I worked on Saturday and in a flurry to get out the door and on the road I didn't grab anything to eat except an apple.  I knew that would not be enough for a 9 hour shift while I am in full on musteatmorefoodnowbottomlesspit mode (aka, taking care of lady business).  So I made my way to work, and after I got off the highway stopped at a little convenience store that I frequent and hooked myself up with an AP (Arnold Palmer) and Nutrigrain bar.  I completed my transaction, went back outside into the howling wind and into my car.  I was preparing to pull out of the parking lot when I was sneak-attack-accosted by a gentleman knocking on my window.  He claimed he needed to get back to NH from MA and was out of gas and needed money.  I had only put my window down a hair, but the whole situation felt warning.warning.wrong.wrong.WRONG.  So I apologized and said I had no cash and continued on my way to work.  I immediately felt guilty.  Now don't get me wrong, I've been hit up for money before - it happens pretty much whenever I go to Boston or NYC or Philly.  And I employ my tried and true method of "Do Not Engage.  Do Not Make Eye Contact."  And it has served me and countless millions well.  This however, was decidedly NOT Boston.  More like the middle of nowhere, plus apple trees, and a few people.  

Maybe you think my methods are cruel, and maybe they are.  But maybe I'm lucky to work 12 hours a week and still have to be responsible for phone bill, electric bill, gas bill, and grocery bill for two people as well as putting gas in my car to get to the 12hr/wk job that is 35 minutes away.  Let's just say yes, I did have $10 in my wallet, but I am not necessarily in a position to just give it up considering there is a looming unpaid credit card bill, that has and will continue to loom until I get a real job (which is looking optimistic these days).  So despite my refusal, I did pretty much immediately feel guilty and certain that bad things would befall me.  They haven't.  (knock on wood)  

Second - and this is just kind of a funny aside - boyfriend loves to harass me and interrupt my internet surfing. I normally enjoy this activity on the sofa next to him with my laptop perched on my lap.  He takes this as an invitation to reach over and press as many buttons on my keyboard as possible.  Especially the calculator button.  Yes, there is a button on my keyboard whose sole function is to open up the calculator.  I know, it seems superfluous.  But I didn't choose this computer because of its keyboard attributes.  I chose it because it was cheap.  And I had spilled a glass of iced tea on my last one.  So this morning I am checking email, perusing recipes and meal planning for the week, and I get up to procure some breakfast (more about that in a minute) and return with breakfast to the sofa and laptop only to find about five calculator windows open, something boyfriend is immensely fond of doing, but clearly incapable of because he has a real job and is working hard at the moment.  Curious.

Anyway, breakfast.  Breakfast!  Chocolate!  You too can have it all in one neat package.  Yay!  Three cheers for me!

Chocolate Chip Muffins

Born from boyfriend's infinite capacity to consume chocolate chip cookies, and my indifference to making chocolate chip cookies.  Again.  (I tend to to lose interest after the first sheet of them go in the oven, so the cookies get progressively larger because of my laziness.)

3 cups AP flour (I'm interested to use cake flour next time, we shall see)

1/2 white sugar

1/2 brown sugar

1 1/2 sticks butter softened

1/4 ts baking soda

2 3/4 ts baking powder

2 1/2 ts vanilla

3 eggs

1 cup milk

2 cups choc. chips (I had chunks on hand and they worked fine)

Oven @ 375

For future reference I would add more sugar next time.  Or change the sugar ratio to 3/4 cup white and 1/4 brown.  I understand the brown is there to give it that cookie like taste, but had the muffin base had anything other than chocolate (like fruit) it would not have been sweet enough.

Get the dry together - flour, baking soda, baking powder.  The original recipe also called for salt, but I never add salt, because I never use unsalted butter.  I figure the salted butter compensates for the salt in the recipe.  Unsalted butter is for buttercream only.

Cream together sugars and butter.  Then add eggs and vanilla.  Cream.  Alternate adding dry ingredient mix and milk.  Stir in chips.  Et Voila!

Bake 20 minutes.  No way does this need 30 minutes.  Also, the muffins will rise.  Alot.  That's what you get with almost 3 teaspoons of baking soda.

Things to look forward to this week, yeasted waffles, brined pork chops, chicken soup, homemade naan, probably some sort of mexican food, and hopefully a margarita the size of my face.  YES!

i'm back in the saddle again

Gosh, I haven't written in months and months and months and months.  Ooops.  Badbad.  And SO much has happened.  SO.  MUCH.

Here is a last season recap - main things only: I moved in with the man, work was crazy busy and good, and then crazy and bad, things were rocky with the man, things are better, might be getting a new job, and there is so much food happening.

So basically, I am relocated and master of my own kitchen, because the boy can rarely be bothered to be in there unless eating, and my current job has decided to treat me like crap and I have basically decided to smile and take it.  Because that is how I roll.  Doormat style.  Not really.  I just don't really have millions of employment opportunities and can't afford to leave.

So I should probably start talking about the food.  There were definitely hits and misses and you will get to know about ALLLL of them.

Let's start on an easy and positive note.  I like those kinds of notes.


Crock-pot Buffalo Chicken Dip

2 oz blocks cream cheese
2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
3/4 cup buffalo wing/hot sauce
1 cup ranch dressing
2 10oz cans of chicken***

***NB: I totally think this might be kind of grody.  I obtained a whole cold rotisserie chicken from the grocery store and stripped about half of it for the dip.  Basically one breast, thigh, drum stick.  Meat from a can just seems so wrong to me.

Dump everything in crock pot.  Turn crock pot on to your desired heat level depending on how quickly you need the dip to be ready.  It will get sufficiently melty asap if you crank that baby up.  I kept mine on warm for about two hours and then upped it to low about a half hour before I had to leave the house with it for a party.  It was a HUGE hit.  Along with the strawberry cupcakes with champagne buttercream I brought.

bridal-stravaganza dessert trio

One of my very good friends recently married.  This was not her first marriage so she decided to keep the ceremony short and sweet and very very small.  I was one of two non-family members invited.  But even though this was the second time around and she and he were already living together in a well established, well furnished household, some of my work friends and I decided to hold a bridal shower type event for her.  Initially, I was planning to bring a pasta salad (which in retrospect would have been SO much less work than what I did), but I found out there was going to be a green salad and a potato salad and probably wouldn't have been much need for a pasta salad.  So I fell back on dessert, which is where I always seem to end up with these types of things.
It did not help that the week of the shower eastern Massachusetts weather decided to be around 80-90 degrees with 70% and up humidity.  And my kitchen has almost no ventilation of any kind.  It was like baking in a sauna.  I would hurriedly sweat my tookis off and shove something in the oven and quickly retreat to the dark cool of my bedroom.  It took me the better part of two days to make three desserts this way.

First were key lime cupcakes with blackberry buttercream.  I ended up making both of these on day one and decided to assemble right before leaving for fear of melting (which I was ultimately right to fear).  Day two I made red velvet cake truffles and strawberry brown butter bettys.  The truffles sounded SO easy, but were a pain.  The bettys sounded painful, but ended up being so so simple.  Go figure.  Initially I wasn't going to make the bettys, I had the ingredients for a no-bake chocolate mint bar, but realized at the last minute that I might want to make something that wouldn't melt.

So the cake truffles.  I had SUCH high hopes for these, but they seriously left me wanting.  Maybe it was because I cheated and used canned frosting?  Who knows?  I felt ok in using box cake mix (I actually have no issues with box cake mix, though I will go from scratch 60% of the time, I have HUGE issues with canned frosting as I have mentioned before.  BLECCCHHH!!!!)  Basically all I did was bake the cake, cool the cake, crumble the cake up into a very fine crumb, mix the cake with a can of frosting so that it was moist-ish and would hold a shape, roll cake balls, chill and set cake balls for several hours in the fridge and then dip cake balls into melted chocolate.  I think my first issue was that I needed more chocolate than I had; I think it would have been easier and neater looking if I was able to completely submerge the cake ball.  My second issue was trying to cut corners and melt the chocolate in the microwave (which I find never works as well as a double boiler).  My third issue was kind of a generalized problem I have when it comes to baking (especially when making cookies) - when I have to form things by hand I get really lazy and start making things too big.  My final issue was something I should have recognized before even attempting this - my chocolate melting issue.  Any time I am in a hurry to do something my chocolate NEVER EVER EVER tempers/melts properly.    If I can take my time with it, it comes out beautifully.

So clearly bridal stravaganza is complete.  I have sufficiently celebrated them (for the time being - they are having a much larger reception/party in August).  And I'm happy for them.  I am the one, after all, who forced them to suck it up and get together in the first place because I knew they were both interested in the other and I was tired of chasing sketchy guys away from her when we would go out to the bar.  I told him to man up and get off his ass and if he wanted her to do something about it already.  And here it is almost a year later and they're married.

The man in my life of course accompanied me to the wedding and pointed out that while I am happy, I will probably not be sincerely happy for anyone getting married until I do the same.  This is probably truer than he realizes as I've lost out on the whole wedding/marriage thing once before when my ex-fiance had a mental bipolar breakdown.  And as much as I love my guy and believe that good things are headed for us down the road (we're moving in together by August 1st), I have kind of lost or given up or buried that idea of a wedding, etc.  I honestly don't care if I ever get married as long as I feel like he'll always be there and be reliable and love me and father my children someday.  I've given up the dream of the white dress and the party and everything that goes with that because last time I was that excited and happy and secure in something I lost it.  Not only did I lose that, I lost almost everything else in my life structurally speaking.  It has definitely taken me sometime to come to terms with that and accept the fact that my path will be bumpier than I anticipated.  I'm actually really scared of getting engaged this time around, even though I can picture the two of us having a strong marriage.  Almost like, once that happens I'll lose everything again.  Put it this way: I want the marriage, the strong permanent relationship and everything good and bad that goes with it.  The idea of a wedding scares me and just seems too surreal.  I mean even after I was engaged the first time, my ex basically flat out refused to discuss any tangible wedding plans with me, no date, no location, no number of guests, etc.  To the point where I had given up trying to get him to talk about it and anytime I told anyone that I was engaged I was almost more embarrassed than had I been single.  We were engaged for over a year before he ultimately broke it off.  I had actually reached the point of thinking "What's the point of being engaged if we're never actually going to get married?"  I was actually the first among all my friends to get engaged.  Now they're almost all married, and I'm not.  Very, very rarely this fact bothers me.  The vast majority of days I'm thankful I'm not married to the other guy (and bound to a lifetime of stress and trouble and his mental illness that he refused to properly address) and that I have found my current guy - someone who has told me that I am his soul mate and better half.