Hey, you.

Why don't you check out my new baking blog, That's What She Bakes?  It's full of yummy things...or it will be soon, anyway.

House a-fire! Well, almost.

I was going to bake some cookies today, and as standard when baking, I turned on the oven to preheat to 375.

I was getting the dough all mixed up and had just put it in the fridge to chill for a few minutes. I was putting things away, wiping up around the stove, when the oven beeped at me. I glanced up, and it had turned itself off. I thought maybe I had accidentally bumped the buttons when I was wiping, so I turned it back on -- same thing happened again.

I opened the oven -- it was SO FREAKIN HOT. Had to be at least 500+ degrees. The element was glowing super-bright orange, and it was smoking. It was almost like it was on the auto-clean mode.

At this point, I was in a bit of a panic, and I went and retrieved Jon to come have a look. He was as baffled as I was, and despite the fact that the oven was OFF, it really seemed like it was getting hotter and hotter. It certainly wasn't cooling down any at this point.

We weren't sure how we were going to manage this, and I finally remembered -- the breaker! So Jon went out and flipped the breaker to cut the power to the oven, and it finally went off. It took a really long time to cool down and stop smoking, though.

Needless to say, I'm a little freaked out about using the oven now. We're going to get someone out to look at it, but I've got no idea when that might be, and I've got to bake for Ella's b-day party next weekend...UGH.   

Well, I *did* need to reorganize the pantry.

I especially like the idea of keeping the idea of keeping the canned goods on top of the trash can :)

Also, that same night, we had a unexpected guest in our salad:

It was alive -- although, I'm not sure if that's better or worse.

Cooking 101

So, it's been a little over a week since my grand cooking-at-home experiment started.

I haven't given anyone food poisoning yet, so I'd say it's going well.  We're not going hungry, anyway.

Aside from over-cooking some steak, and having some chicken come out a bit on the dry side, my stuff has turned out pretty reasonable. 

What have I been cooking, you ask?   Well, to name a few...

-tomato chicken parmesan
-lemon pepper cod
-the aforementioned (overdone) steaks
-baked chicken with garlic and sun-dried tomatoes
-spicy lime grilled shrimp
-homemade pizza (I even made the dough!)

I'm finding I actually look forward to cooking dinner -- how strange!  A foreign concept to be sure, but one I'm learning to enjoy. 

I also feel good about the fact that I'm actually cooking from scratch, and making things that are relatively healthy for us.  I can't remember if I'd blogged about it, but I'm making a big effort to stop buying foods with high fructose corn syrup  -- and believe me, that's harder than it sounds.  That junk is in EVERYTHING.   Cutting out HFCS cuts out a lot of super-processed foods, which in the long run, is better for us anyway.
 
We are cheating a bit tomorrow night, though.  Ella will be spending the night with Grandma and Pop, and Jon and I will be enjoying dinner at 1618 West.  Yum.

Here are two things that are true.

1) We eat out WAY too much.

and

2) I am not a good cook.

However, I'm going to make a serious effort to work on both of those problems.

Jon and I have decided that during the month of April, we're not going to eat out at all, with the exceptions of going out for our 7-year dating anniversary (which is April 10), and Jon getting food at work (although calling what they serve there "food" can be a bit of a stretch).

In addition to not being a good cook, I'm also a poor planner, and dinner usually comes about by me staring into the pantry and/or fridge, and hoping that something jumps out at me. So to that end, I'm going to be trying out some new recipes, so that I can actually HAVE stuff to cook next month.

Updates to follow!

I'm in love.

With cookware, of all things.

Isn't it gorgeous?

I guess I have some kind of thing about having purple stuff in my kitchen -- after all,  I painted the kitchen purple at our old house (and it looked great!).

Oh, it's so lovely.  Don't you think?

Definitely going onto my wish list.  Jon can deal with purple cookware, right?

Yummy/Cutie

First, the yummy:



And the cutie:

Odds and Ends.

Ever wondered what dishwashing liquid looks like when it freezes? Yeah, me neither, but I recently found out. It's kind of cool, actually.




And no, I didn't freeze it myself. It's been so cold recently that it arrived at my house in my most recent order from alice.com just like that. Alice.com, by the way -- best website I've discovered recently (I hesitate to say "best website ever"...that covers a lot of ground, really).

What else? Well, brace yourself, buster -- I've been baking! Bread, of all things. I'd been wanting to play with the Kitchenaid (woo, that thing is a beast!), and I finally went out and got a couple of loaf pans yesterday. It was a quick-rise recipe that I got right of the book that came with the mixer. For my first attempt, I was pretty pleased! It was a little denser than I'd like, but had a good flavor. I think if I just let it rise more next time, it'll be lighter.



One of the loaves was shaped a little wonky, but that was my fault for rushing through when I was making them.



It made the house smell GREAT too. Jon and I both had a piece right of of the oven with butter. Yum.

And to show you that I really can get excited about the little things in life -- we got a new mailbox yesterday, and I am just ticked to death about it. Since we moved to this house, the mailbox had been just hanging on by a thread -- no latch, rusted out, big dent in the side. Finally, it got to the point a few weeks ago where the door wouldn't shut anymore, and so if it rained, our mail would get soaked. So yesterday, we got a new one! It's white and shiny and not rusted and has a DOOR with a LATCH that SHUTS. Yeah!

Xmas Redux.

It's been a bit of a whirlwind holiday weekend, with baking and presents and last-minute shopping. I braved the grocery store on the 23rd to get all the necessities for our dinner, and for the cheesecake I was making for dessert on Christmas Eve. This was the first cheesecake I'd ever made, and I was really worried about how it would turn out...especially after it seemed rather custard-y after I pulled it out of the oven.



But it turned out great! It was an orange chocolate swirl cheesecake, and it was really, really yummy. I even made the crust (although I will admit I bought the graham cracker crumbs...I can never crush 'em as small as they need to be).

Christmas Eve was dinner and presents over at Mom and Dad's house....Mom made and awesome meal of lasagna, Caesar salad and garlic bread. Ella got completely spoiled by all the presents from Grandma and Pop, MawMaw (Ella's great-grandma) and great-aunt Carolyn and great-uncle Norman. She wasn't so much into opening the presents, but liked playing with stuff once it was unwrapped.

Speaking of spoiled, Jon and I got a gorgeous new KitchenAid mixer! We were not expecting it at all, and we were thrilled to get it. We'd been wanting one for so long, and just kept putting it off.



We actually came home and used it that same night -- or Jon did, anyway -- to make the Irish potato casserole for dinner the next day. It's bad-ass, I have to say. And gorgeous.

Santa was very good to Ella -- she got books, puzzles, alphabet blocks, stuffed animals, and her most favorite present:



Her comfy chair! She loves her chair. We've had a couple of tipping-over incidents from overenthusiastic sitting, but nothing more than a head bonk.

Dinner on Christmas Day was rib roast, the aforementioned Irish potato casserole, and Tuscan-style peas (Mario Batali's recipe). All deeeeelicious. Jon used Alton Brown's method of cooking the roast under a terra cotta pot (yes, we took the roast into Home Depot with us to make sure we bought a pot that it would fit in), and it came out SO tender and juicy. We bought way too much meat -- Jon looked like he had a Flintstones-size hunk of beef on his plate, bone and all. Needless to say, we had lots of leftovers for prime rib sammiches. Yum.

Originally, I was going to make a yule log for dessert -- it was a nightmare. Complete disaster. A couple of factors probably contributed to this: 1) I didn't really have a good recipe -- as I discovered once I started baking, 2) I was baking at around midnight, which probably isn't a good idea. This is what I wound up with:



Yeah. Not great. Luckily, we had leftover cheesecake.

All in all, a great holiday. I'll wrap up my epic most with a few more random pictures:

Apple Dumplins, gang!

Using the apples I bought at the farmers market, I took my first stab at making apple dumplings earlier this week.


I started out with 4 Golden Delicious apples (mine were a little on the small site for what the recipe called for), dark brown sugar, heavy cream, cinnamon, 4 large biscuits brought to room temperature, and an egg (which I forget to stick in the picture).


I mixed 1/2 cup (packed) dark brown sugar and 1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon together.


To that mixture, I added 1 cup (less 3 tablespoons) of the heavy cream....


...then, I whipped. And whipped. AND whipped. Until I had this lovely cinnamon-sugar whipped cream. That went into the fridge for safe-keeping.


I cored out the apples using a melon baller, and microwaved them for 10 minutes at 50% power. Into the fridge to cool for 5 minutes after the nuking.


I rolled out the biscuits to (approx) 8" rounds. I used the buttermilk variety of biscuit, which seems to work fine, but the recipe calls for flaky, just in case you're a stickler.


Each apple got placed in the middle of the rolled-out biscuit, and filled in the middle with the cinnamon-sugar mixture.


The biscuit was folded up around the apple and twisted at the top...it was supposed to resemble an apple stem, I think, but mine didn't. Oh yeah, I used the egg to do a simple egg wash both on the inside and outside of the biscuit.


Into the oven for 18 minutes at 400°F...and delicious!


Serve with the cinammon-sugar whipped cream. Yum :)

As a side note, the recipe also called for raisins, but I left those out because, well, I don't like them. Jon said he thought it would have been better with them. He gave it a 7 out of 10.

Death By Garlic Pasta

I tried a new recipe tonight.

-1/2 cup olive oil
-10 cloves garlic, minced
-1/2 teaspoon salt
-1/2 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
-3 tablespoons chopped fresh parsley
-1 pound dry penne pasta
-1/3 cup grated Romano cheese

1. Cook pasta according to directions.
2. In a pan, brown garlic in oil. Add salt, pepper, and parsley and remove from heat.
3. Toss penne pasta with garlic mixture and Romano cheese and serve.

The prep and cooking was easy enough...all in all, it probably took about 20 minutes.

I was a little disappointed with the dish itself. It seemed like it was way too oily, it needed more salt (and seasoning in general, I thought). An overall rating of "eh".

Jon hasn't tried it yet, so I'm not sure what he'll think.

I'd try it again, but with some modifications.

A challenge of monumental proportions...for us, anyway.

Jon and I go out to eat way too much. Granted, it's slowed down a good deal since Ella was born, but it's still more than we should. It's not good for us, and it's not good for our wallet.

So for the month of August (with the exception of the week we're on vacation, or if Mom and Dad treat us), we're going to eat all our meals at home. If we can pull it off, it'll be quite a feat for us. I'm actually excited to see how much money we can wind up saving. I'm not as excited as coming up with things to cook, but that's easy enough to deal with.

If I hit upon any stellar recipes, maybe I'll get inspired and post 'em here.

Veggies live in the fridge.

We'd had this weird smell going on in the pantry for a few weeks. It was getting worse and worse over time, to the point that it would smack you in the face as soon as you opened the door, and it would linger after the door had been shut. You could even smell it in the living room. It was RANK.

Jon and I both had poked around in there a bit, and hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. We typically don't keep anything really perishable in there, so as the smell progressed, I began to really fear that there might be SOMETHING in there that I didn't want to see. Like something dead.

Today, it was SO bad that we decided start taking stuff out to try and find the culprit. Logic said to start at the bottom shelf, so Jon pulled everything out. Nothing down there but onion skins. Certainly not the source of the stench.

Next shelf up -- nothing. I was thinking that maybe something had gotten stuck towards the back, but we weren't finding anything.

The next shelf was the one we use most often, with the bulk of our canned goods. We occasionally keep some potatoes and garlic in there as well, but they go pretty fast. Jon rustled around for a minute -- I wasn't really expecting him to find anything on that shelf.

Suddenly, I hear Jon say, "Eww...we have a winner!". He pulled out a bag with the remains of what appeared to be 3 red onions. Oh, it was rancid. I have no idea how long they had been in there, or even WHY they were in there to begin with!

Seriously repugnant.

So, now I'll be taking care to make sure that any vegetables brought into the house go into the fridge. Maybe even the ones that don't even need to be in there. Just to be safe.

Obligatory update

I guess it's pretty bad when my own husband is telling me I haven't updated my blog in awhile.

I'm not meaning to be neglectful, it's just that there's not been anything to report. I've been working, Jon's been working, Ella's been crawling and pulling up on any and everything, and has even started cruising a tiny bit! So she's probably been the busiest of us all.

More teeth are starting to make their way in. This time, she's definitely noticing it, and is not particularly happy about it. Evenings tend to be rough, and last night, she woke up screaming about 45 minutes or so after we put her to bed (that *never* happens). I was working, so Jon sat in with her until she settled back again, which took about an hour and some Baby Tylenol.

I think I forgot to post about the 2nd trial cake I did the week after the first disaster. 100% improvement! I did sort of cheat and bought a shaped pan, but I made up for that by making my own fondant and buttercream icing! Looked good and tasted great! If I can pull it off again next weekend, I'll be in good shape!

Cake wreck indeed.

Let me say first, I have a new-found respect for all bakers everywhere.

In all my infinite wisdom, I decided it would be a good idea to bake a test cake before attempting Ella's actual birthday cake....just to make sure that I could do it like I wanted. I'd found a pretty simple idea online, and I felt like I could probably do it without much problem.

Unmitigated DISASTER.

Problem one: I couldn't get it out of the pan. I greased and floured the pan before baking. Did my cake care? Noooo. It wasn't budging.

After many smacks and drops of the pan onto the counter, I managed to dislodge a corner. From the rest of the cake. Well, that's okay. I can sort of fit it together and use a little frosting like mortar, and it'll work out. Fine.

Finally, the rest of the cake is out. It's got a huge bubble on the top from baking, so I grab my serrated knife, and proceed to smooth it out. I've seen this done 100 times on TV. This was actually the most successful part of the whole thing. I managed to get it pretty level.

Once that was done, I cut the cake into the shape I wanted. This went okay, aside from the part that was broken off from before. Jon was actually able to recognize what it was, so I figured that wasn't too bad.

Now it was time to frost. (I should mention here that I'm not making this from scratch -- cake was boxed, frosting was canned. I'm not completely crazy.) I know how to SPREAD things onto a surface. I know how. But when I started to frost this cake, it went downhill so fast, my head was swimming. Crumbs all through the frosting, holes being ripped in the cake...just awful.

This shouldn't be this hard. Should it? Is it possible that I'm so incompetent that I can't even FROST A CAKE? I thought momentarily about taking a picture to you can see the train wreck that it is, but it's THAT embarassing.

So it looks like Ella's first birthday cake will be a Costco special. At least they're yummy.

House a'fire (again)!

So, I set the stove on fire. In case you're keeping track, that would be the 2nd time since we've lived in this house that I've done that.

I'm not that bad of a cook, really. We just happen to have a super-crappy stove. (That's right, blame it on the equipment.)

I was actually in the kitchen (although back to the stove) when the fire broke out. Lucky thing, I guess, or the whole house might have gone up in smoke.

We now have a nicely singed dish towel, as I didn't have any baking soda to toss on it. Guess I'll pick some of that up at the store today.

Also, on a completely unrelated note, that toilet paper commercial where the puppy calls himself sexy really gets under my skin.

Crock Pot Cookery.

I've tried two new Crock Pot recipes in the past 2 days! Just call me Kelly Homemaker...I can throw ingredients in a pot and let 'em cook.

Recipe #1 was Garlic Crock Pot Chicken:

1-1 1/2 lbs. chicken pieces
1 c. packed brown sugar
2/3 c. vinegar
1/4 c. lemon-lime soda (7UP diet or regular)
2-3 T. minced garlic
2 T. soy sauce
1 t. pepper

Place chicken in crockpot. Combine other ingredients and pour over chicken. Cook on low for 6-8 hours.

This would have turned out better than it did, except for the fact that when I wrote the recipe down, I wrote a TABLESPOON of pepper. In case you'd never had a look at a tablespoon of pepper, it's a lot. So it turned out really, um, peppery. Aside from that, thought, it wasn't bad. The chicken was a little dry (I used 3 breasts), so next time, I'll probably add a little chicken broth as well. Despite my heavy-handedness with the pepper, Jon thought this one was good. "Three and a half stars," he says.

Today, I tried Amazing Pork Tenderloin in the Slow Cooker:

1 (2 pound) pork tenderloin
1 (1 ounce) envelope dry onion soup mix
1 cup water
3/4 cup red wine
3 tablespoons minced garlic
3 tablespoons soy sauce
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Place pork tenderloin in a slow cooker with the contents of the soup packet. Pour water, wine, and soy sauce over the top, turning the pork to coat. Carefully spread garlic over the pork, leaving as much on top of the roast during cooking as possible. Sprinkle with pepper, cover, and cook on low setting for 4 hours. Serve with cooking liquid on the side as au jus.

I thought this one was better than the chicken, although I wouldn't call it amazing. I couldn't find our fresh garlic, so I just used garlic powder. I went a little easier on the pepper after the previous day's experience. The pork came out tender, and had a good flavor. Even though I was happier with this meal, Jon wasn’t as impressed, and actually preferred the chicken. “Two stars” was the rating for the pork.

I would cook both recipes again, with a few tweaks.

The tupperware cabinet.

A perpetual mess:



I'm going to make a really concerted effort to keep it tidy. There's nothing more frustrating than trying to dig through piles of plastic to find the matching lid that you KNOW is in there somewhere. (Well, there are lots more frustrating things, but you see my point.)



Ella has seemingly discovered the fun of throwing the rattle on the floor over and over and over again so Mommy can pick it up :) She also has learned to beat it against whatever surface is available to make a happy WHACK-WHACK sound.

The Junk Drawer.

You know the one. It's in the kitchen, and when you don't have anywhere else to put anything, that's where it goes. If you're anything like me, your junk drawer probably has (at some point) looked something like this:



I will freely admit I had no clue what all was in there. I had an idea that there were some random tools, and I would sometimes dig around in there if I needed a nail or something like that, but otherwise, not a clue.

A lot of it went in the trash. Clearly, we didn't use it since we didn't even know we had it. The rest of it got tidied up and now we can see what we have:



That was the only decluttering I did today, as I've been supremely lazy.

Ella has been going through a bit of a phase where she seemingly doesn't want anyone to do anything for her other than me. While it's nice to be popular and all, it's a bit tiring for me and a bit frustrating for Jon. Let's hope this comes to an end sooner rather than later.

Today task:

The pantry. Our house is old, and doesn't have a proper pantry per se, so what we use as our pantry is a converted coat closet right by the kitchen. It's not ideal, but we had to make it work. It was getting to be a big ol' pile of mess, and was practically impossible to tell what foods we had, or how much there was. Not to mention that we store all of our board games in there, as well as dog food/rawhides/meds.



It didn't take me nearly as long to organize it as I had anticipated. I wound up chucking a few things that had expired, have a bag of stuff to go to the food kitchen, and have a much more tidy pantry in which I can actually FIND things. Should make cooking (and deciding what to cook!) a bit easier: