Maple Cheesecake and Charred Pears: No Cracks!

This was my first official homemade cheesecake, and I'm proud to say there were no cracks! Granted, there were definitely some small air bubbles in the batter because I turned the mixer to high for 5 seconds before I remembered that was probably a bad idea...but still! Even if there were cracks to be found, I guess it wouldn't have mattered too much since I covered the whole thing with pears anyways.

Being me, I couldn't aspire to make a ~normal~ cheesecake for my first cheesecake attempt, but no some gorgeous one I found on the internet made with maple syrup and the most beautiful burnt pears delicately laid out on top in a circular pattern. While I don't think I "nailed it," I definitely didn't fail. The pears on top were all supposed to be 1/8th inch thick, but unless you have a mandolin and super skillz, it seems pretty impossible to get evenly thin slices of pears, which is why I have a smattering of burnt and not-so-burnt slices on top. I think that's a sign that I probably shouldn't go into anything surgical in the future.

 Speaking of future and completely not food related, I just wanted to share with the world that I've been accepted into some medical school programs after several months of interviewing (and one more month to go), so there's a lot in my life I'm very happy and thankful for at the moment. It's a great feeling knowing that you'll actually get to pursue what you want to do and that all your hard work paid off and that the faith that wonderful, intelligent randos put into you was worth it. Ok not randos, but you get the gist of that incredibly run-on sentence.

Anyways, back to food. While the cheesecake did taste, as I quote my sister, "pretty good" (which is a huge compliment from her), it didn't actually taste like maple cheesecake? More like a normal cheesecake, which was a bit disappointing. After all, what's the point of putting in some real grade A kirkland signature maple syrup into your batter if you can't actually taste it? The crust was also supposed to be made of digestive biscuits, but since we're in America and shopping at Vons, I only found butter cookies. I think there must have been salt in the cookies to begin with because the crust ended up being a little too salty, and a little short. Maybe double the crust recipe next time since more is probably better than not enough, even if it looks ~rustic~.

Recipe from SippitySup

Holiday Cookies: Seasonal Seasonings and an Apology

Contrary to my incredibly passive personality that some may consider weak-sauce, I can be incredibly judgmental about things. Like how sometimes food blogs will just go MIA for months on end, and then randomly return. Or just disappear and never come back. I do a lot of judging of online food people it seems (see food photo ramblings in earlier posts). And yet, it seems the more I judge, the more I end up doing the exact same thing. So clearly I need to cut the world of internet people some slack here (someone write up a Pride and Prejudice- Food Blogger Edition or something).

Anyways, while I haven't been posting recently due to a variety of excuses I can make, I have been baking and cooking regularly. I made things for thanksgiving, I failed spectacularly on some meringues, and even made a pot of soup large enough feed a small country's army. But for now, lets just focus on the holiday season that is coming up.



Even though I don't follow or believe the religious affiliations of Christmas, and nowadays not much of the whole gift giving consumerism thing, I still find holiday music and holiday decorations to be fantastic. Not so much nativity scenes, but I'm all about the lights, wreaths, and big fancy trees in all the buildings. It just makes everything so cheery regardless of what you may or may not believe. Then again, I've grown up in the US where Christmas traditions has become deeply embedded in just the general majority culture without much thought of exactly where they came from or why we do these things. I mean, the way we count years is also based off the birth of a guy? And presents come from a clearly unhealthy man?


Obviously being a food blog, I am mainly about the cookies, not the historical accuracy or cultural implications of the holidays. Ok, so that was totally grammatically incorrect, because I'm literally a person. Not a food blog. All of that is rather fascinating, and something I could/should google if I really wanted to delve into it.



Anyways, words. Look at these gingerbread and sugar cookies. Side note: molasses tastes terrible on its own even though gingerbread is delicious. I think I'll try making a gingerbread house at some point in the future--one of the classic holiday baking projects I have yet to complete.



Gingerbread recipe from food.com.
Sugar Cookie recipe from the kitchn.
Royal Icing from Bake at 350 (I used the one batch and was able to decorate with plenty of colors with no problems).

Banana Chocolate Chip Pancakes: A Week Long Devotion

Do you ever build something up in your head to be this great, wonderful thing, only to find that when you've finally achieved that item, that its just an utter disappointment? And not because the thing sucks or anything. Rather, it can be pretty great objectively. But nothing can compete with the nonsense if your imagination. Except for yourself. When you just ~let it go~.

Well, yea, I kinda did that with pancakes this week. Banana chocolate chip pancakes to be exact. It all started with some depressingly cold weather, that ended up being only mildly cold later this week. The cold weather, plus, absolutely no desire to really think about my meals this week resulted in a very narrow mindset- pancakes, pancakes, pancakes.

So when I finally did get around to making these pancakes, needless to say there was a lot riding on them. I mean, I was eating american cheese. Yea, that plastic wrapped, floppy goodness thats really only good like once every 4 years when a wave of nostalgia hits for wonderbread and plastic cheese. And I didn't even have wonderbread! But thats another story.

After thinking about it, I believe this may have been the first time I've made pancakes from scratch. We usually have a very large, costco-sized bag of Krusteaz mix at home, so it delighted me to see the bubbles and rise that came out of these pancakes. I did substitute half the flour for whole wheat though, so my pancakes seemed to deflate quite a bit when I flipped.

And if you're noticing the rather er, burnt, tinge on these pancakes? Well, lets just say my stove has basically a very hot setting, and an off setting most of the time. Banana chocolate chip-flavor wise, the banana didn't really come through. Not sure if thats because I used frozen bananas or what. The pancakes did taste better the next day when I had them for breakfast. Anyways, pancake experimentation will continue the next time I harbor a week-long desire for ~pancakes~.

Recipe from All Recipes.

Pumpkin Sugar Cookies: Timely Halloween Post

The stars have aligned. Not only was I on top of the whole seasonal baking thing, but Halloween has fortuitously fallen on the day of my blog entry. So firstly, Happy Halloween and here have a foodie related-themed-tumblr photo.

ANYWAYS. While this post really should stop after that wonderful advice from Ina Garten, we'll continue on with cookies while not store-bought, also not summoned directly from the gates of cookie-doom. Unless you count my tiny little apartment kitchen as a doomsday scenario.

It's a little tragic (yet totally understandable) why as one gets older trick-o-treating no longer becomes a thing you participate in. Or rather, the role should transition from trick-o-treater to treat-giver. But there's that thing called college dorm living that seems to take a sharp turn into the lands of night club Halloween, which is significantly less sweet or cute. But I suppose has it's own charms. Mainly when it comes to punny costumes. Like 50 shades of gray. Or black mail. Or a fork in the road. Half of these were taken from my sister's current struggle to find 4 different Halloween costumes to be honest.



Since I don't exactly live in suburbia (yet), or an apartment full of small families, decorating Halloween-themed cookie is probably the closest I'll get to doing something juvenile for Halloween. The ~awesome~ thing about these cookies is that they aren't just normal sugar cookies with a sprinkle of vanilla and a dash of lemon zest. Rather, in the name of Fall spirit, they're ~pumpkin~ flavored.

And not just pumpkin spiced flavored, but pumpkin spiced AND pumpkin butter flavored. So yes, there is some real pumpkins in there. Pretty meta for those pumpkin decorated cookies. I actually didn't like the few pumpkin flavored sugar cookie recipes I found online, so I ended up modifying the same sugar cookie recipe I used for the Doctor Who cookies for these. Luckily, the cookies worked out really well, and I'm probably way more proud of these cookies than I really should be.

Bonus points if anyone can spot the nerdy/fandom-related cookies amongst the midst of normal Halloween cookies and anatomically inaccurate skeletons.

 

Sugar Cookies via The Kitchn with the following modifications:

-substitute almond and lemon zest for 2 teaspoons of pumpkin spice.

-add about 1 tablespoon of pumpkin butter to softened cream cheese.

Royal Icing via Bake at 350.

Orange Creamscicle Frozen Yogurt

When it comes to having bad weeks or being sad, I think its always useful to have some ice cream around. Not like an entire freezer full of emergency Ben and Jerry flavors (though you're certainly welcome to that lifestyle if you would like), but like one or two solid ice creams you can grab a scoop or two as you mope through it all.


Of course, I might only be saying this because it gives me an excuse/reason to justify my continuous ice cream making. Not that you need an excuse to make ice cream, please. Though, orange creamsicle isn't exactly the type of ice cream or frozen yogurt one usually draws to for moping. And if you're going to froyo as your moping food, you're probably doing something wrong.



Orange creamsicle needs to have a renaissance. As a kid, we'd literally buy these huge bulk sized bags of creamsicle popsicles. They were the best. Icy, sweet orange juice on the outside. Soft creamy vanilla on the inside. And when it all starts slowly melting and mixing in that way only popsicles determined to drip all over the driveway do? Perfection.

My recent foray into the world of frozen yogurt may be related to my growing laziness at the worst possible time in terms of things I need to focus on in my life and work. That aside, frozen yogurt is literally the easiest thing ever. Just some sugar, yogurt, juice, whisk it all together. Add a dash of lemon and salt for tartness. Chill for like 10 minutes. Then churn churn churn. It definitely suits my minimal work style at the moment.
My frozen yogurt ended up with semi-large chunks of grated orange peel. Mainly because I don't actually have a grater or microzester but rather just a vegetable peeler and a knife. But I kinda like the bitterness you get from a small chunk of orange zest in this ice cream.

Bonus notinthekitchenoronatable photo because #naturallight is a thing people are into. I might have to stop making fun of people to set up absurd food photo shots on old crates because you know, I'm becoming one of them.

Recipe via the one and only Serious Eats.

White Wine Frozen Yogurt: Not Cersei

This is literally the opposite of Cersei. The opposite of that red wine berry sorbet I made a few months ago. Aside from the whole white wine thing, the fact that this is frozen yogurt means Cersei probably detests it with a burning passion. Probably reminds her too much of snow.

Being the well groomed adult I am, the only wine/beer/whatever glass I have is this fantastic Game of Thrones one. Not that I'm having large dinner parties where this is a problem or anything given my n=1 lifestyle at the moment.

This frozen yogurt is great. The white wine flavor is pretty strong at first, but it matches well with the tangy yogurt base. Plus, there's no egg tempering, and custard making, so it takes all of 5 minutes to mix it all together and start churning it.

It being October, it seems inevitable that seem form of pumpkin should leak into one of my posts (or be entirely dedicated to it), so lo and behold here we have it. Pumpkin butter and pumpkin macarons. Courtesy of our favorite trader name Joe. The macarons were decently good given that they are from a grocery store freezer aisle. The pumpkin butter is a perennial classic. There are many online who discuss their "I bought 10 jars of this stuff!" adventures, but I honestly have a hard time thinking what to put it on aside from yogurt and weird grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwiches, so I think I'm good with 1 jar to happily last me through my "ahhh must succumb to pumpkin phase."

Recipe via Serious Eats

Chocolate Lavender Ice Cream: Flower Power

I've slowly become increasingly resentful of my dedication to the world of food blogging. The part where you take pictures that is. The thing about working in research is that 5 PM is not a set in stone end of the work day hour. So sometimes its a bit later, which combined with fall/winter means darkness by the time I get around to actually taking pictures. The great thing about research is that I could theoretically just leave whenever, like at 3 PM. But I don't like the thought of myself with that much power.

That being said, even with questionable lighting, its not like I'm trying to make it onto foodgawker or get named one of Saveur's top food blogs of the year, so even with unpleasant shadows and bright yellow lights, its still fun. Though its so easy to get carried away into wanting to be ~food blog famous~. But I have other goals and aspirations I can aim to excel in. Food photography? Not so much.

As you can tell, my obsession with incorporating lavender into literally everything continues. I swear I'm going to have enough lavender to last for the next 20 years even if I do add lavender to every single recipe. If you're wondering, those flecks of green are pistachios, but chocolate lavender pistachio ice cream seems like a mouthful, but the pistachios are definitely a nice touch and a nice distraction if you're honestly getting sick of lavender like a certain someone typing this.

Even with my waning interest in lavender though, this was still a really great ice cream. Especially if you're looking to serve something esoteric. If you're not, this chocolate ice cream itself is super rich. It tasted more like fudge ice cream than chocolate ice cream. I'm personally very picky about chocolate in that the richer it is the better. So this chocolate ice cream was right up my alley. If you're not so into rich, dense, dark chocolate, I would suggest another recipe.

Chocolate lavender ice cream recipe from The Wholesome Pursuit, with ~1/4 cup of chopped, lightly roasted pistachios mixed in. Original chocolate ice cream recipe from David Lebovitz's The Perfect Scoop. Also, if anyone wants to buy me a present at some point, hint hint.

Green Tea, Cherries, and Galettes: A Bad Venn Diagram

This post has been sitting as an -emergency post-. And the emergency has arrived. Well, mainly a self imposed emergency since I failed to take pictures of either the snickerdoodles or lavender rose ice cream I recently made. I'm starting to build a little idea in my head that I should rent a go-pro camera to just take pictures automatically (hands free!) pictures for me. With you know, perfect lighting and everything that I can never accomplish at 9 PM under the icky yellow light of my kitchen.
So we're gonna get a little mathematical and discuss 2 types of desserts that I have had a n=2 failure in making- green tea and cherry flavors and galettes.



On one side, green tea and cherry combinations in baked goods and I seem to have a bad history together. Take these green tea cherry cupcakes I made once upon a time while my life was in a bit of a slump. I figured that baking would cheer me up, but I think that x famous cook was right when they said that you can taste the love and emotions that go into a work of food.
While I was not in a terrible mood while baking the galette version of this flavor, it does seem that green tea/cherries seem to not like me. Granted they are perfectly amiable to me and my attempts to bake/cook separately. But together they seem to become a sinister evil superhero villain. Ok, so that was kinda exaggerated.



On the other side, my two attempts at baking galettes this summer have both also ended in less than stellar ways, and I will blame my inexperience with pie crusts for that one. I might have been a little ambitious when my first galette attempt was a cherry galette with a green tea crust (like come on Helen). But then I tried a second time using, you know, normal-ish pie crust and some of the last sweet summer peaches I had left lying around. Alas, ear wax, was indeed probably something more delightful that whatever happened to that pie crust.



Unsavory image side, I might have to stick to less rustic or esoteric desserts for a little while. I would hate to have to make more venn diagrams of foods Helen can't bake related posts. I was going to insert a little venn diagram here, but pixlr just crashed on me so no venn diagrams for you. You'll just have to wait for more baking failures to crop for that!

Biscoff Stuffed Chocolate Cookies: Jetlag Cookies

Despite my ridiculously easy schedule that I have given myself for maintaining this blog, I forgot to take pictures of the most recent thing I have made that may deserve a post. So I'm stuck in a conundrum to either post a short and nonsubstantial post about chocolate cookies that lack any particularly good photos, or post a long winded introspection revolving around my bad luck with galettes and the cherry/green tea flavor combo. Currently I am chillaxing at an airport in front of a women who I witnessed consume several small bottles of Wild Turkey, and am now mildly worried about her. On a side note, there's the usual jetlag and trying to keep myself from falling asleep too early.

So instead of writing about a failure in baking, I'll keep this short with two questionable pictures of something I think all of us want/need when we're just a little bit tired and just want to take things a little easy. Mainly- soft baked cookies. Especially those that are warm, rich and with just a little bit ginger and cinnamon thanks to biscoff spread stuffed and melty in the center. No one wants a hard crunchy cookie when they seek a comfort food cookie. Well, at least I don't. Hard, crunchy cookies are for festive moments and tea. Or maybe I'm just getting cookie textures mixed up with actual emotions. Go figure.



Recipe adapted from Sally's Baking Addiction. The only different was rather than caramel candies in the center, I used biscoff spread. Chilling the biscoff in the fridge made it much easier to work with. You can easily substitute biscoff for peanut butter if you're into the whole dark chocolate peanut butter combo. And face it, who isn't?
Side note: the women across from me is now either taking odd pictures of the general airport, or more likely, selfies.

Cannoli Ice Cream: Toppings Megabus

If only pistachios were $5. Not that Megabus is even $5 dollars these days. Sorry Boston friends. You are definitely worth the $35 or whatever they charge these days though. Friendships are worth above money. Though there is a certain element of responsiveness and genuine communication that seems to falter despite all the forms of "talking" we seem to have these days.

quality photo right there. the makings of a true food photographer.

Anyways, to break the 4th or whatever wall I seem to avoid by trying to make my posts timeless, its already Friday at midnight, I'm rather sleepy and running on 22% battery-life, so I'll have to make this fast and not-so-cute. Basically, banana loaf lasagnas means left over ricotta. Which means cannoli ice cream. Which means an abundance of toppings. Probably a little too much-pistachio, chocolate chips, and crushed sugar cones. The original recipe called for actual homemade cannoli shells, but I don't have that kind of time, so sugar cones it was. The beauty of ice cream toppings is that you can add or subtract whatever you want without a major recipe make over.



 Unfortunately, I forgot that sugar cones get soggy. While the crunchy was great when the ice cream was freshly churned, it wasn't so awesome on the 3rd day or so. Not sure if homemade cannoli shells would have that same effect, but I'm curious now since that wasn't really a disclaimer in the original recipe. The ice cream itself is absurdly easy since all the richness derives from the ricotta and your typical mixture of milk and cream rather than cooking a custard. I was a bit skeptical about whether it would actually taste like a cannoli both because 1) There was a lack of mascarpone which seems like a necessary staple for most real cannolis, 2) I've only had 2-3 cannolis in my current existing life so can I really recognize cannoli in ice cream form?, and 3) My last few ice creams have been kind of a miss on the full flavor side.

This time around though, it was obvious that the ice cream base was creamy in that cannoli sort of way. I've never been a big fan of chocolate chips in ice cream, but added them in just to try it out. Still don't really like chocolate chips, but loved the ice cream anyways, especially the pistachios and sugar cones in their non-soggy state. Maybe next time I'll try chocolate flakes because chocolate is still delicious. Just not in crunchy rock hard chip form. Gosh, imagine if I used full sized chips and not mini ones. That would have been a disaster.

As a general update, I ended up running to reserve battery power at the beginning of that last paragraph, so I had to grab my charger. I could re-edit this so that you would never know that I was in the midst of a battery crisis, but I like adding an edge of danger to my posts. Sorry that was a bit too hyperbolic even for me.

Recipe from Cooking Classy (yay alliterations!). I used a hand mixer with a whisk to blend the base since my blender was a bit occupied by pesto. I was concerned I would make whipped cream, but mixing with a spoon when it got too foamy seemed to resolve this. The final base was a little grainy from the ricotta, but the final product was still creamy.

Red Bean Ice Cream: Summer Vacays to the Homeland

I want to say that this is the first time I've had red bean ice cream while in the US, but I feel like that isn't true. It's not like red bean is a super absurd flavor these days. Regardless of the accuracy of my memory, red bean ice cream is something I tend to affiliate with hot, dusty, humid summer days in China visiting family. Every 4ish years or so, we go back to China and, if you have any sense of what Chinese family reunions are like, its a big old time. So much food. So much nice dining. So much one uncle insisting over the other to pay. So much fish oil to bring from the US (and chocolate of course). So much cutesy mechanical pencils and stationary to bring back. It's great.

One of the memories I have from these visits is the reasonable, yet possibly absurd amount of ice cream my siblings and I would consume on a daily basis while being shuttled from one monument to the next. Sure there were some normal flavors, like drumsticks and plain vanillas, but there were also some (at first) fascinating flavors that we probably only tried after the insistence of our mother. Some classic flavors include red bean, green bean, and one that we called "green tongue jello," whose actual name still evades me as a semi-adult.

I'm not sure if this ice cream was a strongly red bean flavored as I would have liked. The super DIY-er in me bought red beans rather than just pre-cooked, sweetened red beans--definitely the easier route. In my defense, I was not deliberately trying to be a hipster or snob. I literally did not realize that pre-made red bean paste exists. This is probably also pretty telling of how terrible I am at grocery shopping if I didn't notice the red bean paste sitting a few shelves away from the dry red beans.

Thankfully, making your own red bean paste is not that difficult- and probably even better if you're particularly picking about the texture or sweetness of your paste. My stove is unnecessarily hot at times, so I did accidentally burn some of the beans when the water got dangerously low while "simmering." Its unclear if this is a placebo effect, but I do feel like after a few days, the ice cream has gotten richer in red bean flavor compared to when it was freshly churned. Orrrrr, I just have really really messed up taste buds from all that sugar.
Regardless, it may not be my best ice cream yet, but its definitely one I plan to try making again at some point. And as a side note, happy belated mid-autumn festival! Go eat some mooncakes!
Ice cream and red bean paste recipe from food52.

Conflict Kitchen: A Different Kind of Socially Conscious Eatery

I usually reserve the "eating out," and "flashback friday"-like posts to busy school times and family vacation times. However Conflict Kitchen, a little take-out eatery I visited in Pittsburgh, PA was just too cool for me to not write a post about it. Located along literally some of the most pristine outdoor open-space grass I have ever seen, Conflict Kitchen is a food stand that changes its menu every 6 months. Each half year, the eatery picks a nation that the US is currently in political conflict with and serves food from only that nation. Not only does the menu change up, but the entire stand goes through a makeover, with its decor and colors to match the nation, and a new name. Currently, its Venezuela. 

Now, there are plenty of socially conscious, politically active food eateries, restaurants, and general dining choices around the world. The ones I've visited, though, tend to circle around concepts like, sustainability, or locally sourced, organic, grass-fed, ect ect. You know, the things you think about when you think of a Californian hipster. Sometimes there's an occasional coffee shop that'll donate x percentage of profits to a local charity. They might even make a contest out of it if they're super into it! All of that rambling is to basically emphasize that none of these restaurants literally remake themselves twice a year to achieve their social activism ~twist~.

My Pabellon Criolos

Of course, as a food blog, I should probably comment on the food. I tried to get a picture of the menu (below), but the glare from the picture perfect park really makes it a bit hard to read. The menu for Venezuela was largely small eateries, like plantains, empanadas, arepas, and then two "large plates." I was super hungry, so I ordered the pabellon criolos, which basically consisted of really delicious shredded beef, beans, rice, and some perfectly sweet and not too soft, not too firm plantains. There were so many other things I wanted to try though too-like the arepas! If only I wasn't traveling alone that day. But kudos to an excellent combination of good food, good design, and really creative concept. Not that they needed or wanted my approval.

I will be the first to admit, sadly, that I don't think I actually learned a whole lot about Venezuela by visiting Conflict Kitchen. The eatery does do exhibitions and presentations with the public, but they seem to be few and far in between. There's a lot of small, cutesy, interesting stories about Venezuela on the website. However, I get the impression some basic background on the on-going conflict would be important, which I sadly lack. Then again, as a food eatery that serves ethnic cuisine, perhaps the point isn't to educate the eaters on the political puzzle, but rather to share the social and cultural experiences of each of the nations it features in a rather literal way.

Anyways, I'll end this post with a quote from an  NPR article that I think nicely summarizes Conflict Kitchen (written back in 2012 when the nation was Iran and I guess they were serving wraps):

"The eatery is an experimental public art project — and the medium is the sandwich wrap."

Doctor Who Cookies: No Jammie Dodgers Required

Ah yes. Fall. The peak of summer humidity has finally come to an end. The sleepy, lazy days of August are shaking off to the start of the new school year. But oh wait. For the first time in forever (since like I was 3 years old), I don't have school this fall or rather, year. And yes, you were supposed to read "for the first time in forever" with the melody of said song from Frozen. So, rather than celebrate the non-existent return of school, lets celebrate something more exciting-the return of Doctor Who to TVs all across ponds in the world!

Yes its been a rather long hiatus since December, with hardly any episodes last year-aside from the 50th anniversary special and Matt Smith's farewell. Doctor Who is a strange show. Or rather, my continued dedication to it is a bit strange. David Tennant will always be my favorite doctor (all the angst!). Matt Smith, and the show over the past few years under Moffat? Eh, lets just say it leaves a lot to be desired in terms of meaningful storytelling, and positive representations of women. Honestly, the combined terribleness that was Matt Smith's Christmas goodbye, the 50th anniversary, and plain shoddy writing last year made me embarrassed to say that I watched Doctor Who.

Since the premier last weekend, I've gained a small glimmer of hope that this season, Doctor Who will return to some of its roots in meaningful, angst-filled, morally challenging stories that aren't solved with buttons or quick resets. Peter Capaldi has taken on the role now as the Doctor, and word has it that he's been resisting some of Moffat's less than savory story directions, such as any flirty boyfriend-girlfriend interactions with his companion, the young, oh-so-horribly characterized Clara. Seriously, I think I learned more about her personality in this first episode than in all of last season. Maybe its a commentary on just how bad Doctor Who had gotten, but this new episode has breathed new life into my enthusiasm for Doctor Who (haha ged it? no you probably don't).

I realize that this "food" blog post, that probably should be detailing more about the process of making sugar cookies and decorating them using awesome food color dyes and food markers has been completely hijacked by a rambling story about how I lost my faith in Doctor Who and am slowly hoping it will return. But like the long storied history of Doctor Who, sometimes episodes just don't make sense and you have to roll with it. So for non-Doctor Who fans, bear with me, as I promise there will likely be a ~holiday~ sugar cookie post at some point in the distant future.

Some quick comments about sugar cookies. The recipe I used tasted great, but I found that it helped to freeze the cookie dough for a quick 3-4 minutes after cutting out shapes to facilitate their movement to a baking sheet.

Sugar cookie recipe from The Kitchn. Royal icing and pro-decorating tips from Bake at 350. Doctor Who cookie cutters from We the Sciencey.

Lasagna for Deux: If the Pan Fits

When I think about loaf pans, I think exclusively of banana bread. Whole-wheat banana bread with walnuts and occasionally chocolate chips to be exact. To blog as a stereotype, my mother is well known amongst our little community of family and friends for her banana bread. She always makes two loafs at a time-- one to share, one to keep at home. The one that is kept at home is usually on a wooden cutting board, quickly consumed till the last piece sits sadly around for two or three days. Then, someone honorable soul always makes it his or her duty to pop it into the toaster and get on with eating the last piece. I know, its an unbearable burden, but must be done.

See, that story was literally a text-book food/family blog narrative. Sure, food is obviously strongly tied to family and identity in a way that makes it pretty clear why everyone tells stories about their mamma's and father's home cooking and the childhood memories that go along. However, it really does seem like after the 100th Chopped episode or 500th ~best homemade shortbread (now vegan!)~ that everyone has the same story. It's like dreams and conversations. You find your dream fascinating and deep, but others find it just to be their down sleep and consequently dream inducer.
Perhaps unlike a normal, rational, well-thought out blog, this post is not actually about banana bread. No, I am not going to share my mother's recipe. One, because it is printed in a cookbook we bought at Costco. Two, it's pretty obvious that this is a post about lasagna by now. Unless you're using the speech-to-text feature to listen to my blog as your eyes focus elsewhere.

So technically this is out of order- should be noodle, ricotta cheese mix, then turkey-tomato sauce.

This little loafpan turkey lasagna was from my The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook by America's Test Kitchen. Lasagna noodles really do fit quite perfectly into a loaf pan. While this lasagna is mini in size, it isn't so mini in prep time. However, it's hard to resist the beautiful, delicious layers of noodles, cheese, turkey and tomato sauce. Oh the cheese. This was my first time buying parmesan by the block and grating it myself, but it was so easy. I'm happy to spend half my groceries on cheese if I can eat like this all the time. Seriously, you just throw a chunk of parmesan into your food processor and you have powdery parmesan in seconds. It's a beautiful thing. 

As I alluded to earlier, despite all the work that goes into making a lasagna and the bubbling burnt goop that makes your oven want to cry, I was so elated by my first lasagna, that I made another a week later. Plus, I have like a gazillion no boil lasagna noodles I need to get rid of (#cookingforone). This time, I made a chicken pesto lasagna. Winging a few things, it turned out less flavorful, but the extra veggies and basil made me happy. Plus, I added a cookie tray to keep the bubbling goop from hissing onto my oven, which saved me from the stress of worrying about my fire alarm. Lasagna may not be an easy weeknight meal, but sometimes you gotta do the right thing in the name of bubbly, melty cheese.

Recipe from The Complete Cooking for Two Cookbook by America's Test Kitchen.