Pumpkin Snickerdoodles!

I've been having some issues with the knitting front today. I went to wind a couple more balls of yarn and I encountered an enormous tangle in the first ball of Felici. Luckily, I managed to save most of the yarn and only had to cut 1/8th of an inch off of the ball of yarn.

Though, if I didn't spend two hours unwinding the and untangling the knot myself, I would have sworn that Monty had jumped up and broken the yarn himself. I adjusted his eyes today and he sure looks devious enough right now to do it himself!

So, instead of spending more time winding yarn, I decided to take a break and bake a little bit. When I was on the Loopy Ewe blog earlier this week, I managed to find a recipe for cream cheese filled pumpkin snickerdoodle cookies. They looked so good that I had to try them myself! Of course, that isn't the only reason why I wanted to make the cookies. They happen to be filled on the inside and I've never made a cookie with a filling before or even had a cookie with a filling. The closest to that I have ever had was a thumbprint cookie and you can see the filling on top of that one.

The verdict for the cookies is: tasty, but far too challenging to make.

They are big fluffy cookies with the cream cheese filling inside them. And I do mean big! Even when I tried to make them smaller they were still large cookies that took up at least half of a dessert plate. They are so fluffy that it is like eating pumpkin bread instead of pumpkin cookies.

The cookies were fairly difficult to make. The dough was so sticky that it would stick to everything even if you did chill it in the fridge for an hour. It made it really hard to flatten into pancake shapes and put the filling in the cookies. It is even more difficult if you tend to run warm and you can't get your hands cooled down enough to handle the dough without it sticking to everything. And the amount of filling you had to put in was too small an amount to actually see or really taste when you ate them.

I really, really love the idea of these cookies, but I don't think the recipe and I agreed with each other. I think I might take this as inspiration and try to make a more user friendly recipe. I would totally save the base cookie of this recipe though and just make them drop cookies for a big fluffy pumpkin cookie. They are good, but they just aren't what I was looking for.

 And as a final note about the yarn tangle disaster: I did manage to do a decent Russian Join on the two broken ends and then finish winding it into a ball. I think Monty approves too!

Breakfast: How Not to Be Boring

Breakfast can be the most repetitive meal of the day for the average American with minor cooking skills. A lot of us who don't have the luxury of eating out every day get stuck with the same foods over and over like cereal, bacon and eggs, sausage, toast, bagels, english muffins, and other reasonable breakfast-y type foods. Sometimes having scrambled eggs is the best thing in the world, but other times it just gets boring really fast.

I went out searching for interesting ways to cook eggs because eggs are delicious and keep me full throughout the day better than hot or cold cereal. I finally stumbled across little mini omelets baked in a muffin tin from Nerd Fitness and decided to try them.

Two eggs, a batch of diced up onions, and three slices of bacon later I had these lovely little egg cakes wrapped in bacon. Of course, I didn't stop there and had two slices of toast with butter and some Strawberry/Cocoa fruit spread that I got from our local Farmer's Market.

This filled me up all day! I didn't even have much of a lunch or dinner just because I wasn't hungry. I had a little chicken wrap for my lunch and some crackers as my home from work snack along with lots of water, but I really wasn't hungry. Best of all, it was really easy to do. The hardest part of making the meal was figuring out how long to cook the eggs for in the oven because it was my first time baking eggs.

The moral of this little story is to wake up earlier in the morning to prepare and bake these eggs for your family. They are delicious, easy to make, and the pay off is fantastic! I just have to remember I said that so I'll wake up earlier on Sunday and prepare these little things again for my entire family. They will love them.

The Phenomenon of Mug Cakes

Moistest Very Vanilla Mug Cake from Table for Two

Remember that one fateful day on the internet when you got really bored and started getting interested in cooking because your roommate could cook better than you?

I remember that day well. I have such a massive sweet tooth and I was looking for quick cakes and cookies. I stumbled upon the mug cake. It was quick and easy to make if you measured everything right. And it made the perfect amount for one person so you didn't have to share.

Then time passed and I forgot about the humble little mug cake. I had moved on to bigger cakes and fiddling with perfecting the proper cup of tea. Then cookies came out to play with a brief but still lingering interest in velvet cakes. Then the savory side of cooking called to me and the mug cake was all but forgotten. A novelty in a bookstore when you turned to your mom and scoffed that somebody actually published an entire cookbook on how to make different mug cakes.

Oh, sweet little tasty mug cake, forgive me in my arrogance. I see now that you are something special. Something to be written down in every family cookbook just waiting to be played with and perfected in each passing generation. Small enough to have big disasters with and big enough to satisfy a sweet craving especially made for one or two people. And the perfect way to make a cake without an oven as long as you have a microwave.

I bet you would be the perfect venue for finally figuring out my perfect red velvet cake.

Leek & Potato Sadness

Today's supper was such a dismal failure that I just have to write about it. After all, it wasn't that big of a failure. The chicken salad with lime cilantro dressing was fairly good as was the iced tea.

The leek and potato soup was the sad failure of the meal. And it was the highlight of the meal.

This isn't the first time I have made leek and potato soup. I first made it during the winter and I did follow the instructions out of Mastering the Art of French Cooking (courtesy of my fantastic local library) It was wonderful! Light to taste, but hearty and filling all at the same time. It was also green instead of being the not-quite-white soup pictured.

This time the potato and leek soup came out watery and nearly flavorless. It was obvious that I did something wrong over here, but I think I figured it out.

1. I didn't put in enough potatoes. I only found four potatoes in the fridge and I didn't see the additional bag on the counter when I was prepping my potatoes before work. For the amount of water I used, I really needed at least six or seven or even eight potatoes.

2. I didn't prepare the leeks correctly. When I first made the soup, I cut the roots off of the leek and then peeled, rinsed, and cut the entire leek. Including the not really that tender dark green top. What I did this time was use almost only the white part of the leek and I didn't even cut into the light-green part that wasn't the dark green leaves. So the soup tasted watery and had very little leek-y flavor. The parts of the leek you are supposed to use is the white part up to the very very dark green tips. (Simply Recipes has an excellent post about how to clean leeks since I have no leek pictures to show you guys)

3. I didn't use any salt or pepper during the cooking process of the soup. I let people add it on the side. Normally that would be fine, but this time it made for a bland soup since I didn't even try to flavor it at all. This is a big culinary no-no that I should have realized. Always ( and I do mean ALWAYS) taste what you are cooking along the way. If I had, I would have realized something was off in my soup and fixed it.

The good news is that I can save all of my leftover soup! I have at least two servings left which is plenty enough to get it back to the flavors I fell in love with. Since I found the potatoes, I get to add another peeled and diced potato or two. I am out of leeks, but I can substitute in some onions for my fix to get a similar flavor (and the cookbook backs me up on it). I just need to re-heat the whole thing with the extra ingreedients and let that simmer until tender. From there I can either use my immersion blender to make it all creamy and consistent or just leave it chunkier since it is already blended. The extra water should evaporate out to make the base thicker. If it doesn't then I can add some cream or just mash up some of the new potatoes in the soup.

I think I will also make a variation of the soup while I am fixing it by adding some watercress to the mix. That will make it tasty and be enough of a change in the flavor profile to make me happy by not having the same soup two days in a row. I will let you guys know how that turns out.

Happy Cooking!

Culinary Temper-tantrum

Have you ever had one of those weeks where there is just nothing good in the house to eat? I have been living that nightmare for the past two weeks now. We had food in the house, but none of it was appealing. Everyone in the house would walk in during dinner time, look into the fridge, sigh, and leave without eating anything. Nobody wanted to try to figure out what to cook and that caused us to eat out or just nibble on whatever we could find.

While I do enjoy the occasional Big Mac, I got frustrated feeling like there was just nothing to eat. So, I did the only logical thing that I could think of. Have a temper-tantrum.

Instead of jumping up and down or yelling at my parents that they weren't cooking anything good, I decided to fix something that would appeal to me. After all, I am old enough that I have free range of all of the "dangerous" kitchen appliances. I found one serving of pasta hidden in the cabinet and decided that would go good with a sauce and some onions.

 I prepared the pasta according to the directions on the packet and chopped up an onion. Then I cooked the onions in a small pot with some butter until they were nice and tender. When the pasta was done, I drained it. Then I threw the pasta in with the onion and added another dab of butter, about 1/4 cup of Parmesan cheese, and two tablespoons almond milk. Since I didn't rinse the pasta, the starch from the pasta mixed with the cheese, onion, butter, and almond milk to make a nice Alfredo sauce type coating.

It tasted fantastic!

This would be a really nice meal to make for my family on a larger scale. It is quick and easy, but I would make a few minor changes. I would pick up a can of white kidney beans, drain them, and throw them in when I put the pasta in with the onion. I would lay off the extra butter since I cooked the onions in butter. And I would take the extra time to caramelize the onions. Fix that and put it on a table with a salad and you can convince your family that you do know how to cook.

Egg Nests

Taken with Instagram

“Cooking requires confident guesswork and improvisation-- experimentation and substitution, dealing with failure and uncertainty in a creative way” ― Paul Theroux, Sir Vidia's Shadow: A Friendship Across Five Continents

A while ago I stumbled across a recipe for egg nests. Being the curious person that I am, I followed the recipe to the letter and made an egg for my brother and me. If you remember having eggs in a basket when you were little, this is almost exactly like that. Only instead of using bread for your basket, you whip up the egg whites to create the basket. Since this recipe came from an old french children's cookbook originally, I don't think very many people know about it.  My mindset is if a child could do it, then I can do it. And I know that if I can do it, then other people can do it. I am still a beginner cook after all.

Step 1: Preheat oven to 450. Separate egg yolk and whip egg whites

In my opinion, the hardest part to do is the very first step. You have to separate the egg yolk from the egg white. This requires some hand-eye coordination to do and some patience. As you can see, I separated the egg well, but I wasn't very careful putting the egg yolk in a separate container. It broke and I had a little puddle of yolk instead of a whole yolk like I did the first time.

Whipping the egg isn't very difficult. The difficult part is knowing when to stop. You basically stop when the egg whites get nice and fluffy and you get stiff peaks hanging off of your beaters when you pull them out. It is fun watching the liquid whites turn into clouds. It is also the same technique that you use to make the meringue on top of the lemon meringue pies. I hope to make one of those one day since whipping the egg whites up into clouds is so easy.

Step 2: Fold in 1/4 cup of cheese and put on foil lined baking tray

The second part is where I decided to experiment a little this time. The recipe calls for Parmesan cheese and salt to keep the egg whites a pretty white. I didn't have any Parmesan on hand, so I decided to put in some cheddar cheese. I also ground up some rosemary and a little bit of sage go fold into the egg whites too. It doesn't make it look as pretty, but it was tasty.

The part you have to remember about this step is that you have to press a deep hole in the middle of your cloud. This will let you have an indent to put your yolk in so it won't slide out. The deeper you make this indentation, the more obvious it will be when you go to put the yolk in. The tin foil makes for very easy clean up later. You won't have to clean the baking tray because the egg won't even touch it. If it does stick, it will be on the tin foil. My mom keeps the non-stick tin foil in the house, so I didn't have any trouble with sticking at all.

Step 3: Bake for 3 minutes, pour in yolk, bake for 3 more minutes

The baking step actually takes place in two separate steps. First you bake just the egg whites for three minutes. Then you have to slide the tray out of the oven and carefully pour in the egg yolk.Then you cook the egg whites again with the yolk for another three minutes to get a light browning on the egg whites and to bake the egg yolk.

If you accidentally break the yolk like I did, it will still fit in the egg basket you have made. It will just cook up a little bit harder and won't be as runny as it would be if the entire yolk was in tact. You might want to experiment breaking the yolk on purpose if you are one of the people that doesn't like runny yolks. You could also bake the egg whites until browned and then scramble the egg yolk and put it in the egg white basket. That could also be a very yummy variation if you don't like runny yolks.

There are probably several other ways to take the basic recipe and make it your own. I do recommend following the recipe I linked to one time before branching out and trying different variations. That way you know what it is "supposed" to taste like. I think it tastes like a savory meringue with a very silky yolk.

Of course, half of the fun with cooking is experimenting and you won't learn anything new if you don't try. The one thing that I took away from making the egg nest for the second time is that the taste of sage covers up the taste of rosemary. I probably won't be using those two spices together again. I wouldn't have learned that if I didn't try it in the first place.

Socks and Cookies

Taken with Instagram

"I like making a piece of string into something I can wear."  ~Author Unknown

Today has been a fairly stressful day. I haven't been feeling that well today and I think that made my job searching go down the tubes. Instead I took the day to knit some. I have been working on these socks and I made it past the heel and they are currently zooming down the foot. I should be ready to start the toe within a day or two if I keep working on them at this pace.

Since it is August, the Sock Knitter's Anonymous (SKA) group on Ravelry has entered their yearly sock-finishing competition. The rules are simple: to finish as many pairs of uncompleted socks that you can that have been cast-on before July. Both of the socks I am working on right now qualify. These socks were cast-on June 2 and the Wedge socks for my mom were cast-on in June 27, 2011. I'm not sure if I want to participate in this one though. It just might add up to one more thing I would feel obligated to do and right now, I don't think I need that. I'll just wait for the end of the month and see what the schedule is for their monthly sock challenges and plan appropriately.

Taken with Instagram

Since I have been fairly bummed out recently because of my lack of finding a job, I decided that I needed to do something that I would have to focus on. So, I made cookies. Warm and gooey chocolate chip cookies.

Baking calms me down when it is something I have made several times before. There is also something with sharing something you have made with friends and family that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The cookies will also be a surprise for my parents because they don't know I'm making them.

The only thing that I find funny with making these cookies is I can never get the shape to come out fully circular. They are always a little wonky. At least people will know that they were made by hand because they were wonky and not store-bought. 

Confessions of an Emotional Eater

When I first re-vamped my blog, I was just getting into learning about the vegan and paleo eating styles. I was having problems with my gallbladder which I now know was causing me to be in pain when I ate too much fatty/greasy foods. Because I was learning all this new information, I wanted a place where I could share without feeling ashamed of the choices I was making. The college cafeteria was not the easiest place to share interesting facts about nutrition because my friends just didn't care.

As time went on, I kept most of this interesting knowledge to myself and I didn't talk about food. The truth was that I felt like I couldn't talk about food because for the longest time food had been my crutch. For most of my life I have been overweight. My parents were farm kids and wanted to give my brother and me the best of everything they could afford. This included everything from extra yummy homemade desserts to lots of pizza and other fast food staples because we were a busy family and it was difficult to prepare a home cooked meal for us every night.

When we moved to another state and away from our personal swimming pool, a few things started happening to me. First, I was starting to hit the age where I realized that I cared what people thought of me. Second, I started to put on some weight because I liked reading more than I liked running around and playing sports. I also didn't have very many friends when I first moved because the social order in school was already established by the time I hit middle school and I had to change school districts. So, I turned to food because it made me feel good.

I didn't realize what was happening at first. All I knew is that I was gaining more weight and being picked on more at school. I was not a morning person and I regularly skipped breakfast. By the time I hit high school, I had stopped eating lunch because I didn't want to deal with the lunch line and I thought it would help me manage my weight. By the time I got home, I was starving and ate snack foods from when I got home until dinner time. If I didn't like the "healthier" dinners that my parents were having, I would either not eat dinner or fix myself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

By the time I hit the end of my sophomore year of high school I was depressed and I turned to food to help cheer me up. It didn't help that I would compare myself to my younger brother who was super popular despite being disabled. The high school I was in was one of the ones that if you weren't part of the football team or the band, then you were worthless. It felt like I couldn't do anything right and the only thing that made me feel better was sweets and chocolate.

Luckily, in my junior year of high school we moved and I was put in a school where people didn't care if you were in the football team or if you were top of your grade. It was a high school with drama, but I didn't feel like I didn't belong. I made a small group of friends and really learned how to love myself for being me. When I was ready, I met a boy (my now fiancee) and he turned out to be one of the best friends I have ever had.

Slowly, I started to let go of food.  It was during my last two years of high school that I realized that I was an emotional eater. I still didn't eat lunch at school, but I started to make an effort to actually eat something that wasn't just junk food. I recognized the signs of when I was nosing around at food because I was bored and when I was actually hungry.

It wasn't until I got into college that I started to eat normally again.

I didn't feel like I could really talk about food until I confronted all of this. There are still times when I go nosing around in the fridge and the pantry because I am bored. I am now learning how to cook and a small part of me is afraid that I'm not going to resist the siren call of sweets, sugar, and unhealthy eating.

Food is a fascinating subject with tons of culture and history behind it. I can't be ruled by fear each time I enter the kitchen to cook something new. So, I'm going to start talking more about food like I intended to on this blog. Feel free to chime in. There is tons about cooking that I don't know yet. Maybe we will learn something together.