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By Emily, September 3, 2010 5:10 pm

Last week, Rachel Wilkerson challenged her readers to own the things they feel guilty about, especially if they’re not actually sorry.   Sometimes I get caught up in the health blogging world and don’t want to post everything I’ve cooked because not everything I’ve made is healthy.  But this is a food blog.  It’s not a health blog, or a vegetarian blog, or a weight loss blog.  It’s about what happens in my kitchen.  Granted, that’s usually healthy, vegetarian food because that’s what we usually eat.  But not always.

Everyone likes butter and fat and sweet treats.  But unlike some people I know, I haven’t cut them out of my diet.  Just because we don’t really eat meat, it doesn’t mean we don’t eat cookies.  Michael Pollan, author of Food Rules, says “Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.”.  It may be my favorite rule in the book.

I love making baked goods and comfort food.  And I’m not giving them up any time soon.

Two of my all time, absolute favorite food bloggers are Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman, and Deb Perelman of smitten kitchen.  Sorry I’m Not Sorry.

What sorts of recipes do these lovely women post?  From their “About” pages:  ”A lot of comfort foods stepped up a bit” (Deb) and “… all the cowboy-friendly dishes I’ve taught myself to cook through the years. There’s butter involved.” (Ree).   Their recipes are amazing and I’m going to continue making them.

That’s right:  no substitutions, agave, stevia, vegan cheese or fake butter here.  Just like grandma made ‘em.

So, with that said:

Wednesday I made Deb’s snickerdoodles.  It’s  the same recipe I used last September when I was out of work, which makes me wonder if they’re the official cookies of my unemployment.  Anyway, they’re awesome.  And I didn’t bother to halve the recipe.

Yesterday I made Mac and Cheese…and Panko a la Ree for dinner.  We ate about a third of it, and I expect the rest won’t last long.  The tomatoes make the dish.  (That’s summer squash in the background, I know it’s hard to tell.)  I hadn’t made mac and cheese for awhile and it’s so good!  By the way, once you start cooking for yourself, the stuff in the box with the powdery orange “cheese” doesn’t taste so great.

This morning I made the Peach Shortbread from smitten kitchen, for no other reason than it appeared in my Reader, I love peaches, we had peaches that were past their prime, and I didn’t have any other plans for the day.   There aren’t too many things I like better in this world than peaches or shortbread, so the recipe struck me as pretty genius.  Did I mention I’ve got time on my hands?

How do we do it?

We love our freezer, for one thing.  The cookies are hanging out there and we’re taking out a few every day to eat-a little trick I learned from my mother-in-law.  It’s the perfect way to always have fresh cookies.  Moderation still matters (but you knew that).

And I don’t always cook like this, only when I actually get some free time (thanks unemployment!).  Soon it’ll be back to vegetable soup, rice and beans, and pasta with tomato sauce.  But sometimes life (and meal planning) need a change of pace.  And I’m not going to not avoid posting something delicious because it’s not “healthy”.

I asked Brian the other day if we could open a bakery (because it’s as much about the creation as it is about the eating).  He said no.  So I guess I’ll just keep making things for the two of us.

I love making baked goods and comfort food.  And I’m not giving them up any time soon.

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By Emily, September 1, 2010 10:15 am

I am in love with galettes.  How did this happen?

A few weeks ago I needed to use up some zucchini and summer squash. (I know I’m not the only one with that problem.)  This 3-step recipe for a Summer Squash and Ricotta Galette from Serious Eats seemed like a nice change of pace from our standard pizza/calzone routine.

Two problems:

1. I’d never made a galette before and it looked a little tricky.
2. I have this thing about buying premade pie crust: I won’t do it. Why buy something you can make yourself?

So, I followed the link to the original Smitten Kitchen recipe (have I mentioned I love the internet?) and grabbed the pastry instructions.  This was the ultimate, beautiful, final result:

A few things to note:

1. It’s not that hard.  This was my first galette.  My first experience with this dough recipe.  It turned out fine.  If you’ve made any sort of dough before (pizza, cookie, pie), you can do this.  I think you get a lot of visual “bang” for your time and effort “buck”.  And I think the more I make this recipe, the more attractive it will become.
2. My Pastry Cutter is my friend.  I don’t know what I did without it (oh yes, made mediocre shortbread).
3. This recipe takes time.  If you make your own crust (and why wouldn’t you????), it needs to hang out in the fridge for at least an hour.  Baking the galette takes another 30-40 minutes.   So, you need to plan ahead if you want to make this.  At the same time, most of the time needed is unattended.
4. The crust is flaky, buttery, amazing and addicting.  Consider yourself warned.
5. The recipe is supposed to serve 6.  In our house, it was more like 2.  It was that good (and we were that hungry?)

Fast forward to a couple weeks later:

I stumble upon this recipe for Zucchini and Sun Dried Tomato Pesto Parmesan Tart on Closet Cooking.  It looks pretty darn delicious.

One problem: I have this thing about buying premade puff pastry dough: I won’t do it (this time because I think it’s over-priced).

Solution: make another galette:

The same Smitten Kitchen crust, filled with the ingredients from the Closet Kitchen recipe.  So good.  Making the dough the second time was even easier than the first and I thought it was better looking. too.

Employment Update:

So…I didn’t get the job.  I’ve recovered pretty well from the initial shock and, instead of the first day of school I was looking forward to, I’m spending the day reorganizing my recipe binder (a “summer” project), baking cookies, cleaning up the apartment, perhaps doing some behind the scenes blog work, watching Veronica Mars on Netflix and pondering what my next move might be.  Last year, despite initial unemployment, I was working everyday starting in October.  Things have a habit of working out, even if not the way initially planned.

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By Emily, July 29, 2010 2:53 pm

I sometimes decide to make random things I’ve never made (or had) before and can’t stop thinking about it until I do so.  This week, it was stuffed peppers.  Tuesday’s trip to the CSA yielded 6 green bell peppers, among other things and last night I put my (rather spontaneous, recipe-less) plan into action.

For a meal created without a recipe, these peppers came out pretty good.  We ended up adding a bit of salt and they could’ve used more herbs, but they definitely weren’t bad.  An even better, and unintended, result was that my husband felt completely full afterwards, which is apparently a rarity.  I guess I need to work on making more filling meals for the poor guy.

There are a million stuffed pepper variations, this is mine.  They’re sort of Italian-style…with black beans.  Stuffed peppers are a fabulous way to use up bits of ingredients in your pantry.  The half an onion, leftover beans, half box of pasta and that bit of cheese you don’t know what to do with?  This is it.  If you’ve got rice or quinoa or other vegetables, use those.  I didn’t buy anything specifically for this recipe besides the peppers and they turned out really well.

Also, I would like it apologize in advance for our harsh kitchen lighting.  It is very non-conductive to food photography.

“Whatever’s In The Pantry” Stuffed Peppers

Serves 4

You’ll need:

• 6 bell peppers
• 4 oz uncooked orzo pasta
• 1 tomato
• 1 cup black beans (or whatever beans you have on hand)
• 1/2 of an onion
• 1/2 cup ricotta cheese
• salt
• fresh basil
• fresh oregano
• mozzarella cheeese

1.  Cook the orzo according to package directions.

2.  While the orzo cooks, cut the tops off the peppers and remove the seeds.

3. Dice the tomato and onion.  Finely chop the basil and oregano.

4.  Drain the orzo and transfer it to a mixing bowl.  Add the tomato, onion, ricotta, black beans, salt and herbs to the bowl.  Mix well.

5. Stuff each of the peppers full of the orzo filling.

6.  Top each pepper with a bit of shredded mozzarella cheese.  Cover with foil and  cook at 350° for 30 minutes.  Remove the foil and cook for another 10-15 minutes until the cheese has browned a bit (or, in our case, until you can’t wait any more)

7.  Serve and enjoy!

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By Emily, June 23, 2010 10:58 am

When Brian and I went to Caretaker Farm last week on distribution day, I was super-excited to see a big box of garlic scapes with no limit on how many we could take.  Clearly it’s a side effect of reading so many food blogs: I read all the posts about seasonal foods and get really excited when I manage to find them (or, when they manage to find me, since I didn’t really seek out the scapes, they were just sitting in the box.)

Anyway…garlic scapes are the green shoots that grow out of the middle of the garlic plant in early summer.  They have a milder flavor than garlic and a great crunch.  I love garlic and even though I had no idea how I was going to use them, I knew I had to have some.

So what did we do with all of our garlic scapes?

Whole wheat pasta with garlic scape pesto, originally based on this recipe:

White Bean and Garlic Scapes Dip, from the NY Times was a bit hit, so much so that we made 2 batches this week.  Much less strong than the pesto, Brian pronounced the dip “better than hummus” (!).  Moreover, making dip is so ridiculously easy.

In an effort to use more than 1 of our CSA items in a single meal, I made a modified version of this Black Bean Salad with Green Garlic and Scapes Pesto from Cheap Healthy Good.  Instead of using the pesto recipe, I substituted a few tablespoons  of the pesto I’d already made for the pasta.  It wasn’t quite as amazing as CHG claimed, but it was still pretty delicious–and filling.  I also added some baby turnip greens to the salad because we had much less arugula than I thought.  Side dish: roasted red potatoes, baby turnips and carrots.  My first time roasting vegetables (crazy, I know) and our first time eating turnips.  It turned out amazingly well.  So good that we grabbed more turnips this week!

Garlic scapes also made appearances in all of our salads, an omelette and probably a few other things I can’t remember.  Have I mentioned that I love garlic?

One last thing: whenever possible, eat outside.  We don’t do this nearly enough.

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By Emily, April 27, 2010 8:49 pm

Nothing I have done in the past 16 months of changing my eating habits has aroused as much suspicion and curiosity as my decision to make vegan brownies last weekend.

Yes, you read that right: I made vegan brownies.  No milk, no butter, no eggs.

I didn’t start out with the intention of doing something “crazy”.  One of our friends was coming to visit for the weekend and Brian suggested that it might be nice to have something in the house for dessert (and I think we both wanted to overload on sugar, given our recent day without).  That idea led to brownies, which, it was decided, should be made from scratch.  Then I remembered that I had saved a recipe for vegan brownies which had appeared on No Meat Athlete awhile back.

Bless my poor husband, he actually let me make them, despite the fact that (and he literally just admitted this to me) they sounded “vile”.

Christine’s recipe for Black Bean Brownies may be vegan, but fear not– there’s plenty of sugar, cocoa, hazelnuts and instant coffee contained within.  And, as the name suggests, a can of black beans for moisture, texture and…protein?  I followed the directions, poured the batter into a pan and half an hour later, produced my first vegan black bean brownies.

I was so pleased with my creation (okay, Christine’s creation that I made) that I shared the news with my mother.  “What’s the point of vegan brownies?” she inquired.  I replied with something about using less animal products and that some people are vegan and that it was an experiment.  Then I convinced her that I wasn’t vegan, but I think that just confused the issue more.

When our friend Josh arrived (bringing, ironically, brownies) we made him try one, without warning him about the vegan-ness.  He ate that one, and several more over the course of the weekend.

Why?  Because they’re surprisingly delicious. And, if I didn’t tell you, you wouldn’t know they were vegan.  Would I make them again?  Probably.

Still, I may wait a few weeks before I try making White Bean Blondies.

Have an interesting recipe to share?  Ever trick anyone into eating vegan?

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By Emily, March 21, 2010 7:11 pm

As I mentioned this morning, yesterday was just an awesome day.  The awesomeness culminating in a meal so good I could barely believe I’d cooked it.  I make a lot of so-so recipes, but last night’s broccoli lasagna was perfect.

I used Real Simple’s recipe for Three Cheese Broccoli Lasagna.  Often Real Simple recipes (at least the ones in their emails) don’t really appeal to me, but since lasagna is one of Brian’s favorite foods, I grabbed the recipe and added it to my Evernote account.  Yesterday I decided to try it (it helped that mozzarella and ricotta were on sale).  It was the first time I’d made lasagna and I realized I cheated a little by using no-boil noodles (in my defense: the recipe says to!) but it’s really not that hard, and this recipe’s definitely worth it.

I’m sure that the recipe would be great as written, but I decided to make one change and take it a step further by making my own marinara sauce.  Slashfood posted a recipe for All-Purpose Marinara back in September and this seemed a good opportunity to try it out.  I halved the recipe because I knew it was going to make way too much sauce, substituted petite diced tomatoes for whole and used less chili flakes than suggested (I didn’t measure).  I only simmered it for an hour or so.  The sauce has nice spice to it and halving the recipe provided us with about 6 cups of deliciousness.  I froze the sauce we didn’t use for the lasagna and look forward to defrosting it for pasta or some other creation.

In short: Delicious vegetarian lasagna, made even better by homemade sauce.

That, and the fact that it was such a beautiful day out that Brian and I enjoyed our supper outside on our balcony.  Hopefully that’ll happen a frequently over the next 6 months or so.

Enjoy!

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By Emily, March 17, 2010 7:19 pm

I don’t eat meat too often anymore.  I almost never buy beef.

But there are reasons to make exceptions, and St. Patrick’s Day is one of them.

I’m a little bit Irish, but if you want to be technical, I just love corned beef.  I used to make my mother make it every year, even though some of my other family members weren’t big fans.  We never had cabbage.

I had never actually made corned beef myself before.  My best friend and I made it once in college, but she did the cooking.  And my husband says he has never even had corned beef! (If he’s wrong on this, Carol, let me know!  I can’t believe it!)  So, for my first St. Patrick’s Day, I had to come up with a way to make corned beef.  Because its not St. Patrick’s Day without it.

So, for my first corned beef, I bought a $3 cut of meat ($3! How could I say no?!) and followed this  recipe for Slow Cooker Corned Beef and Vegetables. Always use the slow cooker when you can–I don’t use mine nearly enough.

The corned beef came out great!  The vegetables, as you can probably tell, are pretty well cooked, but they tasted good.  I made some drop biscuits as sides.  As predicted, Brian loved the corned beef.  I’m satisfied for another year (its so good though!)

If you’re not into corned beef, check out these other St. Pats Day posts from around the web:

Serious Eats has been especially busy:

What to Eat and Drink on St. Patrick’s Day

Quiz: How Much Do You Know About Irish Food?

Green Fried Chicken–coated with wasabi!

Chocolate Stout Cupcakes with Irish Whiskey Filling

Irish Whiskey Cake from All We Can Eat

Guiness Milkshake from yumsugar

Nigella’s St. Patrick’s Baking Tip: Just Add Guinness from NPR

Beef and Guinness Stew from Shedding It and Getting It

From mental_floss: The Quick 10: 10 Pats Born on St. Patrick’s Day

10 St. Patrick’s Day Parades

Enjoy what remains of St. Patrick’s Day!

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By Emily, March 14, 2010 5:13 pm

No one’s going to argue with me that my life’s been busier than usual lately.  It’s hard learning and teaching content at the same time, for one thing.  It’s unfortunate though, because then I don’t get to spend time on the other things I love–cooking, blogging and reading (I do love teaching…its just consumed every waking hour of my life last week).

This morning, however, I managed to get my act together early enough before church to cook a really neat looking breakfast I’d seen in Slashfood’s Feast Your Eyes column this week.

The recipe for eggs and mushrooms in Black Forest ham crisps, found on Frim-Fram Sauce’s blog and modified from a Gourmet recipe, was super-simple to adjust to the ingredients I already had.  I used the sliced ham and American cheese that  I bought for Brian’s lunch this week and eggs–3 ingredients!

For something so pretty (and Frim-Fram’s are much prettier than mine), they’re super easy.  And it didn’t require any extra thought to reduce the recipe to just make 4 egg-cheese-ham cups.  If I were you, I’d definitely try this one next time you’ve got a quiet morning.  I’m already looking forward to varying the ingredient combination.

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By Emily, March 3, 2010 7:36 pm

I made up for the past couple weeks of not cooking by spending the better part of the past weekend and yesterday afternoon in the kitchen.  I tried out a bunch of new recipes and had a great time trying some things that were more complicated than my recent fare.

A rundown, with links to recipes where appropriate:

Wine Braised Lentils Over Toast with Kale and Pearl Onions
This was my first try making (or eating!) lentils and it was definitely a success.  Would I make it again?  Absolutely.  Do I need to find more lentil recipes?  Yes, and soon!

Black Bean and Jalapeno Soup
Vegetarian and adapted from a Bobby Flay recipe, this simple soup was pretty delicious, if not a little spicy for my taste.

Cornbread–from scratch! What would I do without How to Cook Everything Vegetarian?

Baked Pasta with Gruyere and Mushrooms
So what if it’s elevated mac-n-cheese?  It was still mighty tasty!  Plus Brian, who’s not a fan of mushrooms, ate it.

I would write more, but I’ve somehow contracted my third cold of the winter.  It’s pretty much kicking my butt.  I was okay over the weekend (hence all the cooking), but last night I was in bed by 7:30.  Plus being sick has dulled my taste buds so much that I can’t taste anything, so that’s uncool. Here’s hoping I’m feeling better soon, for the sake of my students, my sanity and this blog!

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By Emily, February 23, 2010 7:14 pm

Fresh on the heels of my super-yummy polenta casserole (which was less mushy after a couple nights in the fridge), I tried out another never before made (by me) recipe.  Yes, I tried 2 new recipes in one week!  I told you I was returning to the kitchen!  It’s about freakin’ time.

The recipe for Tortilla and Black Bean Torte from Planet Green appeared in my reader last week and sounded like a neat way to make vegetarian Mexican food that isn’t tacos or burritos.  You sandwich a cheese and bean/spice/corn/onion filling between tortillas and bake it in the oven.

Okay, so, this looks kind of like mush too.  But, remember, I specialize in delicious mush.  My tortillas were a little small for the pan so I didn’t fill them to the edge so that contributes to the whole creation being a little sad looking.  Still, the taste was pretty awesome and surprisingly rich and filling.  I adjusted the recipe and only used 1/3 or so of a chipotle pepper–those things are hot!  And I left out the scallions, cilantro, and sour cream because I’m realizing sometimes it’s not worth tracking down ingredients you don’t already have in your cupboard.

Would I make it again?  Absolutely.  I might even tweak it a bit more and see what I can come up with.

When all was said and done, I was left with just 2 questions:

1) Anyone have a fool-proof method for resurrecting dried beans? I soaked mine overnight and then cooked them for a little bit and they came out pretty well, but I still feel like I’m missing something that’s making the whole process more difficult than it’s supposed to be.

2) What should I do with the rest of my chipotle peppers? I’ve still got a half dozen or so in my freezer and they’re so spicy I can’t figure out how to use them up!