Spinach Pizza: Easy Peasy Hello Again

Hello again! Things have been rather quiet around here since 2014. Its been a solid 2 months of 2015 with no new blog posts. Meanwhile its March, the start of springtime birthday seasons, and yet its still snowing here. I'm having a particularly bitter relationship with the snow this year. I still maintain that it is quite beautiful when its fresh and in abundant quantities, but it makes doing life things really difficult. I've been trying to go to Trader Joe's literally since New Year's. Trader Joe's is sadly not within walking distance so I have to zipcar, but every trip I have reserved has had to be canceled due to snow/winter storm weather. Granted, I think that I could probably learn how to drive in light snow, but its really not something I'd like to do while wasting time on a zipcar, you know? Anyways, the gist is that snow is making me starve (not really because I can walk through the icy tundra of unsalted sidewalks to get to Stop and Shop, but I'm just exaggerating for dramatic effect).

Despite being limited to walking distance grocery stores that stock items in a confusing way, cooking, baking, and eating have been occurring to a relative degree. January was my last month of traveling for interviews, so I'm just finally getting back into the swing of having a kitchen I can restock on a regular schedule. And regularly restocked kitchens generally mean better food for Helen, and fewer sad American cheese quesadillas (truly my low point of this past year of real adulthood).

While this spinach pizza is only marginally more difficult to make than an American cheese quesadilla, it tastes significantly more amazing. Unless I just got really lucky this time around, I think I've finally found a whole wheat pizza crust recipe that I really like! Its soft, with maybe not as much crunch as you may like for a crust, but definitely not as chewy and dense as my last batch. Spinach is still my favorite leafy green (sorry kale), and its kinda hard to go wrong when you have both goat and mozzarella cheese. And that's basically it-spinach and cheese. No giant can of sauce for one tiny pizza! The cheese itself mixes and melts with the spinach to create a pseudo-white sauce.

I added some caramelized onions and mushrooms I had in my fridge to make the pizza even more delicious. See- adding in random ingredients I have in my fridge was totally something I couldn't do a few months back, so kitchen stocking success!
Pizza recipe from BudgetBytes.
Whole Wheat Pizza Dough also from BudgetBytes.

As a generally blogging note, I think I'm going to start posting over weekends, ie Friday-Sunday rather than keeping myself to a strict 9AM Friday deadline. Thursday evenings can be kinda hard.

Bonus side note- Something I definitely don't need, but would totally want.

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.

Drunken Noodles: Or Drunkard Noodles?

A quick wiki search answers the question I know that we're all thinking (if you're thinking about like your cat instead or something, we're wondering here why the flip its called drunken noodles). And sadly the answer is rather unclear. Given that no wine is actually used in the original dish, I'd have to say I'm pro-the theory that the dish was first made by a drunk fool late one night who didn't have access to pizza. At least the name "drunken" appears to also be in the original thai name, so it's not some random Americanization of the dish. Or some random American invention (looking really judgmentally at you fortune cookies).

It took me a very long time between bookmarking this recipe in my little Cooking For Two book to actually making this. I had a surprisingly hard time finding wide rice noodles. I ended up just settling for some medium-sized rice noodles after my third trip to the Asian market here. That's another thing, I don't know why, but going to Asian markets alone always makes me a bit anxious. Probably the whole embarrassment of not really knowing Chinese or the culture. You know, all that stuff with being offspring of immigrants.

 Anyways, aside from the fact that I managed to load quite a bit of vegetables into this dish (hurray!), the only thing I really have to say is that this is probably the first and only time so far that I've taken semi-decent pictures of food on these ~Christmas~ themed plate. Not that I really had a high bar to pass given the many problems in my oh-so-professional non-existent photo studio. Sorry, was that too many modifiers? Oh well.

Drunken Noodles recipe from The Complete Cooking For Two Cookbook by America's Test Kitchen. I got this book as a graduation gift to help with my single-dome cooking because no one likes leftovers for an entire week. The book has some very helpful tips about how to store things to prevent mold and decay, but some of the recipes do seem to require a number of special tools that I'm just not into buying.

Pesto Braided Bread: Where Is the Rise

It always confused me how it was possible for some food bloggers to take "step by step" photos of baking projects. My hands are always covered in a fine layer of grease or powdered stuff, making my constant swipes at my laptop to check the recipes, rather dangerous. Add a really fancy camera with tiny knobs and adjustments, I may as well dunk my camera into a bag of flour.

After my little adventure in attempting to overcome my fear of yeast and get rid of some left over arugula pesto, I've had to come to the straight up conclusion that these bloggers have someone taking pictures of them while they are working. I even have evidence-- in one picture, you can clearly see two hands being held aloft in the background of the perfectly braided raw dough. Unless you have Mrs. Weasley-like magical abilities, you-dear blogger-have a friend in yo kitchen. Since I don't have that sort of life-partner or whatever who will take pictures of me while I attempt to figure out how to braid sticky dough, you'll have to deal with subpar "final" pictures since my iPhone/super fancy camera cannot be sacrificed for a casual baking/rambling blog.



Now, in huge bold letters, let me just say, this is a work in progress. I have yet to attain satisfactory bread from yeast. So technically my fear of yeast continues, but in different ways. I'm no longer scared of killing it, but rather figuring out how to let it rise and attain optimal fluff in bread. I'm unfortunately a stickler for using at least some whole wheat flour in any bread recipes (thanks mom and your whole wheat banana bread), so that makes my life slightly more difficult.

an extra artsy shot just for kicks

It turns out that proofing yeast before adding it to the flour mixture reduces a lot of my initial anxieties about yeast. It gives you solid evidence that your yeast is in fact alive and bubbling, and honestly, it smells amazing and looks awesome. Yeast is actually not as unforgiving as I though it would be. I used the old house-wifey-stick-your-wrist-under-the-spout method of testing the water's warmth, and while I have no idea how warm a baby bottle should be, my yeast did not die. I guess that means I can keep a baby alive! Not.

I ended up trying two recipes for this, one from Baked By Rachel, and the other from A Bread A Day. Since I made both on different days that ended up being very different temperatures, I think that also played a role in the results I got.

Version: Baked By Rachel

Day 1: Baked By Rachel

• Cooler day. Not much sun. Bread had a strugglebus attempting to rise.
• Dough was too sticky and I failed to add more dough till the 2nd rise, which may or may not be kosher.
• Failed to understand what kneading meant. Ended up pulling and breaking the dough while kneading, which it turns out is a big no no.
• Sticky dough meant very serious struggles rolling and braiding bread.
• In the end, dense, but successful swirls!

Version: A Bread A Day

Day 2: A Bread A Day

• Warmer day. Lots of sun. SO MUCH RISE. But I left for ice cream towards the end of the 2nd rise, and apparently there is such thing as letting your dough rise for too long because when I came back, the dough looked sad. The final result out of the oven confirmed the sad dense state. 
• Dough was less sticky! Must easier to successfully knead, and it actually felt like the gluten was doing things!
• The braiding technique for this recipe was more complicated. Ended up pulling the dough quite a bit as I tried to braid, but it turned out OK.
• Overall rise slightly higher than yesterday, but still dense.
• Successful swirls. 

At the end of the day, as several bread baking websites and my roommate assured, bread, no matter how dense or off, is still bread, which makes it delicious.
Recipes from Baked By Rachel, and A Bread A Day

TL;DR

• Proofing yeast= SO MUCH FUN
• Making fluffy bread= still a struggle
• Read lots of bread making websites like, The Fresh Loaf
• Apparently dough can rise for too long, and then it makes you very sad.
• Bread is still delicious

Bloomin' Onion Bread: Too Much Cheese? As If!

When my friend and I were making this bread, we were a little unsure how much cheese to put in the bread. How much exactly was 12 oz of cheese? We didn't know, so we decided, hey, it's not like there's such thing as too much cheese. So we started stuffing. But then we remembered there was that little thing called net wt on commercial packages of shredded cheese. Not that it matters, but 12 oz of cheese is a little less than 1 package of normal grocery store packaged shredded cheese. So that basically means you get to round up to the next integer value of a bag of shredded cheese for your bread!

Sorry. I need to work on my iPhone picture taking skills when it comes to blur still.

My family used to go to Outback Steakhouse quite a bit when I was younger. It was our "fancy celebration meal" go to place, next to Chili's before my parents got too hip for middle tier family sit-down restaurants. We never ordered an actual Bloomin' Onion, but I do remember my Mom telling us that the rye bread they give you at Outback was chocolate bread. Should have known better. Still, it's pretty delicious bread. Like the sourdough here.

Given my fear of yeast, I did not make a homemade loaf of sourdough. And, when you're focused on cheesy, onion-y goodness, who has time to feed microorganisms too? Well, we were certainly well fed. Add the last bottle of Fire and Blood Ommegang Game of Thrones beer, and I'd call this a pretty successful dinner. Oh to be in your twenties and call bread, cheese, and beer your dinner. Actually, that sounds like you're role-playing some medieval fantasy. Oh wait.

Recipe from The Girl Who Ate Everything. I added in some caramelized white onions in addition to the green onions in the original recipe, but the fun thing about cooking (unlike baking) is that you can kinda wing it with easy stuff like this. I will say that cutting bread into squares/a matrix is rather difficult if you're trying to maintain picturesque pockets of cheese. If not, hackaway in whatever 4-edged shapes you want.
Also, bonus points if you get the Clueless reference. If you're looking for some more modern adaptations of Emma, check out Emma Approved yo.

Honey Chili Beer Chicken: Try Saying that 5x Fast

Look! A wild savory dish appeared! Yes, contrary to what this blog may suggest, I do not spend most of my meals eating creme brulee and ice cream (though I would love some ice cream now that summer humidity has hit).  Even when I make desserts, rarely do either I or my family consume them. This is either a commentary on my baking skills or on my family's eating habits. You can decide for yourself. Regardless of why, often there's dessert just hanging out in our fridge, leading to wasted food and me forcing teenage brothers to consume cake (I know, its a real struggle to force a skinny teen to eat junk food).



So in an effort to curb food waste (sustainability!), my parents decided that I should establish a 1:1 ratio of dessert:real food baking/cooking while at home. Sadly, as you will see in this blog, I failed to maintain that ratio. However, rather than a ratio of 5:0, I made it a ratio of 5:1 this time around. Progress! Kinda.
Anyways, this Honey Chili Beer Chicken came into existence after extensive research (googling "chicken thigh recipes") and polling (siblings, please pick what you want to eat tonight).

I'm a huge fan of essentially everything in the namesake of this recipe, and I love baking with alcohol, so naturally, cooking with alcohol was the next logical step. Honey (or in this case agave) is a nice complement to the chili sauce and sweet onions, which are all rounded off with a note of beer. We only had some Hawaiian Island Surfer Lager around in our house, but I get the impression that any beer that isn't too dark/bitter will work. Then again, I don't really know much about beer sooooo, ya'll should check out the recipe on The Beeroness instead!

In other news, real food is much harder to take pretty pictures of. Something about the brown color of COOKED chicken is just not the same as the bright green of a green tea cupcake. Though we all kinda know for obvious reasons why you do not want your chicken to be a radioactive green color.

TL;DR

• Working on adding more savory into my cooking/blogging.
• Chicken is fun and easy to make!
• Beer! Onions! Honey! Chili! Yum!
• Savory plating is hard.

An Egg Sandwich Tale

This is again that part of the year where I don't really bake or cook because I'm occupied with eating in the dining halls and thinking about how happy I am to have gotten a 40/75 on an exam (only 2 points below average! hell yes!). 

So instead, we have another long rambling food ode. This time, on the more savory side. This story is rather a star-crossed tale if you believe in the mildly endearing, alumni donation campaign better known as the Harvard-Yale rivalry. While my family is currently solidly in the dark blue camp of things (I mean, come on, dark blue is just such a swoon worthy color), there was once a period of time a few years back where we may have become a split H-Y household. My sister stood balanced between these two schools. One with a strong undergraduate community filled with student organizations and passions teetering at the edge of overpopulation and catastrophe, the other with the best damn egg sandwiches ever. Ok, so technically Crema Cafe, the location of said best egg sandwiches is not actually at Harvard, but Harvard square is approximately the same thing. Just with more tourists.

Egg sandwiches are a classic at any point in your life, but even more so during your college years. Late night snack, morning hangover "cure" (the eggs may help a little but thats about it), and you've basically covered the two most important meals for a college student. Unfortunately, the go-to place for egg and cheese sandwiches over here is no longer a place I can visit due to a they-don't-pay-their-workers kerfluffle. Nevertheless, even if those egg sandwiches were made by paid workers, they still wouldn't be as good.
The perfect egg sandwich must not only consist of bread, eggs, and cheese at a minimum, but also must combine said pieces in the appropriate ratio. Each component must also stand alone as an edible individual food. This means, perfectly toasted english muffin, fluffy eggs so light and perfectly shaped you'd think a special mold was needed to make then (which is true), sharp white cheddar cheese that cuts through your sandwich like a long, lost friend. And in this particular case, a perfect slice of tomato that doesn't get awkwardly pulled out in its entirety on your first bite.

There are few things quite as lovely as a perfect english muffin. No, those thomas english muffins are not the perfect english muffins. I don't have much experience with english muffins to be quite frank, but I want all my future english muffins to be like the ones from Crema. So flipping light and soft, with such a deliciously crispy outer layer. The perfect exterior for the perfect toasting--not too mushy, not too crumbly. Combined with my endless love for quality cheese and my immense appreciation for fluffy eggs, well, lets just say I would gladly accept warm egg sandwiches as payment in lieu of cash.
I may be a bulldog/yalie/whatever half endearing, half pretentious name you'd like to use today, but when it comes to egg sandwich loyalties, you'll see me up north in a square surrounded by crimson.

Quesadilla Remixes: The Infinite Playlist

By infinite, I mean exactly three. I was going to save this post for later after I've accumulated many more quesadillas that I have photographed. But then, I didn't bother to take pictures of my meh Pillsbury chocolate chip cookies stuffed with mini oreos since it felt mildly like cheating, and lighting at night in the student kitchen is mildly embarrassing. So instead, quesadillas! 

I already can tell. Quesadillas are the things that are gonna get me by next year when I am out in the big scary real adult world with no meal plan. You'd think a person running a food blog would be tizzy about the idea of getting to cook up elaborate, fun, fantastic meals. But this person running a food blog is also seriously lazy and has a hard time getting off the couch once she's sat down with her laptop for the evening.

Granny Smith Apples, Cheddar Cheese, and Pumpkin Butter

The best thing about quesadillas is that they can be endlessly varied and still taste great. After all, if you think about it, the tortilla is really just a vehicle for the ooey-gooey and whatever else inside. You could easily fill your daily meals with a breakfast quesadilla (eggs anyone?), two normal cheese quesadillas, and a dessert quesadilla (that melted pb and nutella guys) without much thought or effort.

Grilled Mushroom, Cheddar, and Avocado (yea its a repeat, sorry!)

And once you get bored of your most basics of basics, you can experiment with literally every part of the quesadilla. Tired of white flour tortillas? Try whole wheat! (they aren't that good tbh) Corn tortillas! Larger tortillas! Mini tortillas! Sick of cheddar? Stuff in every cheese you have ever loved for a giant oozy cheese party! Hell, you could even put ice cream in a tortilla (lightly baked with cinnamon sugar of course) and have yourself an ice cream quesadilla. 

Peanut Butter, Nutella, Banana

Qusadillas are the potatoes to my meal planning. I may not care for mashing, frying, baking potatoes or real food sometimes, but I've always got my quesadillas. And I could always just stuff one with a baked potato if I really wanted. Maybe.

California Cuisine: Some Dining Out

It's been a bit of a hard week in the staying positive and being self-confident area of things. I know its a bit toxic and not particularly healthy, but I also know that in the end it won't matter and where ever I end up in life, I'll be content with it. Which brings the question of why I should subjugate myself to so much self deprecation when the end is definitely not guaranteed and likely the same as if I just saved myself and everyone some disappointment. I guess the main difference, and the one I so bitterly (stubbornly?) believe in is the fact that at least one way I know I tried. Even if I'm often not exactly sure if I'm trying hard enough since a lot of my trying hard involves wasting time on the internet. 

Anyways, not much to talk about on the food end of things, even though this is supposed to be a food blog.  My parents have become quite enthusiastic fans of dining out as they pass through their mid-life. With most of the kids out of the house, and just one with three more years to go, I think that ~retirement~ horizon has got them in the fine dining mood. Lucky for us kids, our parents are really far too generous and take us along with them.
In this case, we went to Downey's, a classic California/American restaurant for a birthday this week. By "California," I mean the typical organic, locally sourced meat/poultry/fish cooked over beds of also organic, locally sourced vegetables and the likes all impeccably plattered. While everything tasted great, I'm not sure it was worth the price. We've definitely eaten at other places with slightly lower prices that were both better and not as formal. Formality, like, the whole three-five course French tradition fixed meal sort of thing is not something I'm particularly into. But hey, if you like that kind of dining mixed with some great fine dining California cuisine, try it out.

For my entree I had the duck, which was quite good, but again similar to what I've had at other restaurants while dining on the parent's money. I did find it charming that they gave out truffles rather than mints with the check. In this case, they added a candle and some birthday writing to make up for the fact that no one in our family had space in our stomaches for actual dessert.

My insistence to post once a week is eating away at the quality of posts, so if you didn't make it this far, don't worry, there wasn't much you missed.

CA Food: The Hits

By hits, I mean basically the most rapid-fire, condensed version possible of foods that embody California to me. There are some gross omissions, but thats due in part to my locking-myself-in-the-house-and-studying mode that I seem to always be in during spring break these days. I suppose this could be my suggested dining plan for someone who had only 1 day in CA and insisted on only eating 3 meals. Which is ridiculous when we all know there is second breakfast (fun fact, this is a real thing in Bavaria and Poland), mid-morning snack, mid-afternoon snack, lunner, linner, dessert, night cheese, midnight snack, late-night greasy food ect ect ect. But that more detailed dining list will have to come at a later date.

 Above are probably the two things that embody CA food the best. On the left, a berry-topped acai bowl from Backyard Bowls consumed by your stereotyped granola crunchy, goin' with the flow, health conscious (though hopefully scientific about it!), yogi/surfer/climber/runner-type. But, as I am only 30% that type of person, clearly the popularity of these types of fruit/smoothie bowls derives mainly from the fact that they're just flipping delicious. Plus, who wouldn't want to eat acai bowls every week if the weather was always sunshines and fresh fruit? Granted, your wallet might not like you a lot, but definitely worth at least a weekly visit!

On the right is the classic, the historic, the #vintage In-N-Out burger with a touch of intense LA #sunshine. Just look at that slightly charred, buttery bun, the gooey melted cheese, the slathering of "special sauce" at the bottom. Can you really say Shake Shack or Five Guys can beat this for only three dollars? No, I didn't think so. I mean, Shake Shack and Five Guys are great, but no one can beat In-N-Out for cost:quality ratio. Especially with that not so secret menu you guys all know about anyways thanks to buzzfeed.

Obviously no blitz summary of CA food is really complete unless something Mexican is included. In this case, a garlic-mushroom, avocado, cheddar quesadilla. Not really the classic queso-oozing to the brink of coronary bypass status of a quesadilla you'd probably find at a restaurant, but hey, part of the charm of a quesadilla is its flexibility. Breakfast quesadillas, dessert quesadillas, so many options! But obviously, any quesadilla (except for dessert I guess) is always infinitely better with a slathering of avocado and salsa when possible.

I should mention, Happy Pi Day! Gotta love 3.14. Sad fact about myself, I really only have pi memorized up to 3.14. I think there's a quiz game you can play to improve your memorization. Though honestly, memorizing pi was one of those nerd skills that only gave you cool points back in high school. Except, if you do know pi out to a large number of digits, you get gold stars from me if not cool points. And specifically on this year's pi day, 3.14.14, the Veronica Mars movie comes out! The one that made history in online crowd funding and broke Kickstarter's record for most money raised for a project! I mention all of this to you because if I had the time to bake, there probably would have been a marshmallow pie post instead for Pi day and Veronica Mars day. You know, since Veronica is really just an adorable marshmallow under all that tough crime-busting stuff she normally does. But seriously, for anyone who is just chilling during their spring break or wants a break from work/studying, check out Veronica Mars! Here are some links to the trailer and the opening scene  of the movie which gives a pretty quick and fast overview of the tv seasons. Not convinced? Kristen Bell (most recently, Anna in Frozen) is just straight up adorable.

Roasted Brussels Sprouts: Oh look something green

that isn't food coloring on this blog.

To kick-off the slowly drawing out everything I made over thanksgiving posts, we'll do it the way my mother taught me--green things first. This method of eating is somewhat of a problem in the dining hall because by the time I finish the gosh darn salad, the rest of my food is cold. And let's face it, dining hall food wasn't that amazing warm to begin with.
Funnily enough though, it was in the dining hall sophomore year when I first dared to try brussels sprouts. AND I LIKED THEM.
Except then the next 10 times they made them, they tasted terrible. So I started not liking them again.

And then it was Thanksgiving 2013. And my sister said she liked the dining hall brussels sprouts. So literally the thought process was like: "fine, I'll make brussels sprouts for Thanksgiving since I need to learn how to cook real food anyways and maybe I'll actually like them."

And guess what? I LIKED THEM! They were charmingly easy to make. Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Shallots with Balsamic Vinegar recipe from my number favorite Serious Eats. A few modifications:

• no shallots, so just diced up some onions.
• I didn't quite scale the balsamic vinegar correctly, so they ended up being a little on the sour side, which was a loss for my mother. But I like the taste of balsamic vinegar anyways, so I was ok with it. 

And my cousin who was also visiting? HE LIKED THEM TOO.

(sorry, this was a weird post filled with lots of caps. its finals)

Simplicity: Plain Old Biscuits

Simplicity is a word deeply twisted in the notion of nostalgia. We all feel that looking back, things were easier, less complicated. But it's only because we're looking at them through rosy hued glasses, to use a cliche. But at the end of the day, things were hard and not simple then, and nor are they now.

 I mean, when I see biscuits I think, oh, Little House on the Prairie, Laura Ingalls Wilder, well mainly when she was still just Laura Ingalls. And man, those were not simple times. Come on. But even Laura wished for easier days. One story line that sticks out to me from the series was in the books after she married Almanzo, they move in and start a life together that is essentially a struggle bus. I think this was in the book The First Four Years, but basically their farm is a total fail, Almanzo gets sick, one of their babies dies, and there's a huge ass fire that burns everything, and the most important thing that Laura saves is this huge shiny plate they got as a wedding present. I really don't know why I remember that plate. But yea, those were hard years. And I'm pretty sure I thought they would have gotten a divorce at some point, but I guess divorce wasn't really a thing back then.

Lucky for me and my random impulses to bake biscuits, biscuits are 20000 times easier to make than farming or running a little house on the prairie. Probably because they needed all that time to well,  actually farm instead of whip up intricate macarons or something.

Recipe from Joy of Baking. As one would expect, best served hot. Also #nofilter #toolazytoiphotoediteven #suchapro.

Mac and Cheese Pizza: a la Parks and Rec

If Ron Swanson were here, he wouldn't even call my Mac and Cheese Pizza real food, let alone pizza. He'd probably call it rabbit-food, or no, Magikarp-food. Well, if he was into pokemon. Which he wouldn't be. Because, you know, real men hunt real animals.
Anyways, this pizza isn't about Ron Swanson. Maybe next time I'll make a bacon pizza with bacon-infused cheese with a bacon stuffed crust, but this pizza is for Leslie.

As a principle, I don't usually go for the carbs on carbs food combinations. Its typically way too bland for my taste. More specifically, mashed potato pizza is the worst. Even when its garlic mashed potato. Fortunately for mac and cheese, its cheesy goodness helps makes up for the carbs and carbs dilemma on this pizza. Oh, and the spinach and mushrooms I needed to get rid of anyways that I tossed in probably helped too.

Flattening out the pizza dough was probably the biggest struggle bus of the entire process. I bought premade dough, but it still needed to be rolled, or in this case stretched, tugged, yanked out into some semblance of a pizza shape. I then proceeded to not oil the foil enough and then slightly overcooked the pizza, resulting, in another struggle bus of cutting the pizza and peeling away the flow.

check out those poorly distributed breadcrumbs, yo.

Nonetheless, if I ever want carbs on carbs again, this is the way to do it. With maybe even more cheese next time. Man Leslie Knope is lucky to have Ben Wyatt.
Mac and Cheese recipe from SkinnyTaste (sorry, I couldn't bear the idea of whole-milk mac and cheese AND pizza).

Belgian Yogurt + Oats: Mason Jar Style

This is awkward. I started this blog post about a week ago when I was actually in Belgium. But now have been back for officially 15 hours, so this is all a bit outdated. However, since I am very very lazy, and have quite a number of food related things to blog about from Belgium and in the future (baking!), we will just have to play a little bit of lets-time-travel-as-we-read-this. But, oh wait, isn't that what reading kinda does all the time? Takes you to new times and places?

-----

My lack of postings about all the wonderful foods of Belgium clearly mean that I am starving. Actually not. But its a little boring and not particularly aesthetically pleasing to post picture of my dinner everyday of a fried egg with sauteed vegetables. Just envision something foodgawker worthy.

One thing that I was initially very aversive about in Belgium was milk and yogurt. I can say I have never had milk while in Belgium. The predominant form of milk that they drink there is whole milk. Like, hard core full-fat milk. And, worst of all maybe, buttermilk. 2 of the 3 other people living in the same building as me that I know from school had unpleasant experiences involving accidentally buying buttermilk. And not for baking. For drinking. Straight.

However, that aside, I'm glad I decided to try belgium/european/whatever it is...?-style yogurt before I left. The yogurt is sold in milk cartons essentially and is way way way more liquidy than any yogurt I've seen in america. You can essentially eat it with cereal as milk. Which I did. Except by cereal I mean quick cooking oats. Its actually tastes pretty good to eat uncooked oats. Particularly the quick cooking ones tend to absorb liquids pretty fast anyways, so you get some fun textures while eating.

Furthermore, Belgium likes to sell everything in glass jars (yet fails to give you recycling bags for glass when they have ones for 1-trash 2-plastic bottles and 3-compost), so check out me being hipster with my mason jar!

White Asparagus: I Still Can't Cook Savory

My attempts to embrace the food culture of Belgium is happening with varying success. I'm loving all the fantastic bread and cheese that exists here, not to mention the excellent waffles and jars and jars of speculoos. However, I'm struggle-busing a bit with being unable to tell if the meat I am buying is chicken or pork or salami and "bruin" does not mean brown bread apparently. Thankfully, I have not bought milk here, which I hear from my fellow Yalies is oftentimes buttermilk or fullfat instead of our delightfully 2% in America.
One of the most confusing things foodwise I saw when I first got here (minus all the freaking processed deli meats) was white asparagus. It was everywhere at the farmers markets and I couldn't figure out for the life of me what it was. It couldn't be bamboo, I mean, bamboo in Europe? No....Turned out it was asparagus. My PI (principle investigator, aka the boss of a research lab) waxed poetically about it one day at lunch for me though and his fine cooking methods for it that involved steaming it and serving it with a butter sauce and lemon if there were any at home.

I've never cooked asparagus, not even the green variety, but I've grown pretty fond of it whilst roasted. Unlike green asparagus, white asparagus has to be peeled before cooking. The asparagus is grown underground and harvested just before it breaks the surface (it turns purple if exposed to the sun). My first attempt to cook white asparagus was pretty embarrassing, so lets just say it was like eating chewy sticks. This time, it was at least mildly edible. I tried to do a basic steamed asparagus with a brown butter vinaigrette  Needless to say, as evidence by these photos, the sauce was really not mixed all that well. I didn't have most of the things the recipe I loosely followed asked for, so I basically made what seemed like my go to olive oil, balsamic, and dijon mustard salad dressing--except with brown butter instead of olive oil. The brown butter didn't seem to add much in my opinion though. Although, as I may have already mentioned, I'm terrible at cooking real food.

I don't think I've mastered the "art" (lol) of boiling asparagus, as some of the stalks were still a little chewy. While the tops of the asparagus were deliciously soft and a delight to eat, the lower halves of the stalks were a bit more fibrous, to put it gently. Still edible, but only because I have the food standards of a dog when it comes to my own cooking.
White Asparagus with Brown Butter Vinaigrette adapted from Gastronomer's Guide.

Avocado Mac and Cheese: The Most Delicious Way to Consume Fats

Macaroni and cheese itself is full of those swoon worthy flavors of salty creamy cheesiness (even in powdered form). Add avocado to the mix? I think I died a little and went to foodie heaven tonight. I don't think I could have cooked a happier dinner for myself to celebrate having a kitchen again for the summer.

 Along the way, I also got some new cooking experiences! Since I'm a literal n00b at cooking.

• Minced fresh garlic for the first time. I normally buy the pre-chopped stuff because I used to be scared of chopping garlic, but it was definitely not actually too difficult. There's something strangely satisfying about crushing that tiny clove with the side of a knife.
• Made cheese sauce on the stove top. It was really really surprisingly thick. The sauce was not, well, saucy, and more like moist dough. I was so worried I added MORE milk and butter to the mix, which only marginally helped and just made the entire sauce probably excessively decent, but its ok.
• Cooked chicken breast on the stove top. So not a new experience, but definitely still a scary experience. Sorry, I'm terrified of meats. But it turned out ok too. Probably because it was mixed with the mac and cheese and smoothered in avocado and cheese.

garnishes for the iPhone camera

The recipe was from Two Peas and Their Pod. I made a few changes to the recipe based on items in my kitchen (there is no pepper in this kitchen...I'm serious).

• The use of whole milk is probably not necessary. I used it, because I assumed that all mac and cheese should be as creamy as possibly, but I don't think I would have noticed if I used skim or something.
• Paprika=really delicious addition if you don't have pepper.
• I used whole wheat pasta. I usually hate whole wheat pasta, but since this stuff was so gooey and flavorful, you really don't notice.
• Added in some chicken for extra protein (though the cheese and milk does have protein in it)
• Did I mention the gummy cheese sauce that turned out to work perfectly?