New Tastes

The Bet has really opened some doors for me, and I don't only mean the weight loss. Eating out has been minimized since February 1, which means I've had to get creative cooking at home again. Thanks to Giraffe's help, I've been eating different meats and vegetables in an effort to get healthy. I've been eating a lot of tilapia, ground beef, steak, and chicken. Surprisingly though, it's not been boring so I don't feel like I used to with "I don't want the same old thing. Let's go out! (again)"

My favorite meal during this diet has been Giraffe's chopped steak, which I added sauteed onions to the top and recently, mushrooms. I used to not be the biggest fan of mushrooms, but I find that I love certain types now. There are these burgundy mushrooms at Chop House that are amazing! Which leads me to my next point: it seems that since I've completely altered the way I eat, my taste buds are playing tricks on me. I've been eating things that I never ate before (and for those who know me are about to be as shocked as I still am). For example:

- mushrooms
- fruit smoothies (Giraffe made me one that I loved and it even had banana in it)
- eggs (I know! But they have to be made a certain way)
- chili (I've only had a few bites of Chop House's and Texas Roadhouse's and I liked them both, but not sure if I'd order one for myself yet)

The eggs thing has completely thrown me for a loop since now breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. I whip up 2 large eggs, about a 1/4 cup of grated cheddar, and a heaping tablespoon of Pioneer Woman's pico de gallo. Then I fry it up in a skillet with some leftover bacon grease from the 2 pieces of bacon I've had in the oven while the skillet heats up. If I have the time and inclination, I crumble up one of the slices of bacon into the omelet as it cooks, but sometimes I just do it after the fact on my plate. It's wonderful!

I figure this is definitely the time to try new things to see what I like now. I'm wondering if because I eliminated such a large staple from my diet, my body is trying to find the same thing in other places, which means opening up to new flavors and tastes in things that I possibly didn't like before. It's all very bizarre and been a fascinating discovery to see how the body works.

Moving and Reconnection

As promised, I'm going to get back to updating my blog since I have now moved away from my friends that I have enjoyed getting to know for the past two years. I have moved back to my hometown, which is still surreal after being here almost a month, but I still feel like a part of me is still in Nashville. Although part of me is still there because I still have to move the rest of my things this weekend!

Since my things are mostly packed up and not at my parents' house, I've been having a hard time getting past the feeling of being home for the holidays. The kitchen is the same as it always was, but the things that I know are going to be in my kitchen are not there. I didn't do a whole lot of cooking on my own growing up aside from baking, so I'm having to learn my childhood kitchen. Isn't that weird? Now, I always hung out in the kitchen with Mom, but I would mostly talk or she'd hand me something to stir while we were chatting. I did know where a few staples were without question, like the lemon pepper, bouillon cubes, pots, measuring cups, and other things I used on a regular basis. Mom told me last week she bought some canned salmon and I should make salmon cakes. I got all excited for a moment before I started wondering, "Where are the breadcrumbs?" That was when I realized I'm out of touch.

Last night I decided to do a test run because I was missing the simple domesticity of my life, so I was going to cook some soup. I had recently had some delicious She Crab Soup and I wanted to try my hand at it. I went to Old Bay's website and in their recipe archive, I found a recipe for Cream of Crab soup. Close enough. Plus it's Old Bay, so how can I go wrong?

CREAM OF CRAB SOUP

INGREDIENTS

1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter

1 medium onion, coarsely chopped (1 cup)

1/3 cup flour

4 cup milk or half-and-half

1 tablespoon OLD BAY® Seasoning

1/2 teaspoon McCormick® Parsley Flakes

1 pound lump crabmeat

3 tablespoons dry sherry or cooking sherry (optional)

DIRECTIONS

Melt butter in 3-quart saucepan on medium heat. Add onion; cook and stir 5 minutes or until softened. Add flour and Old Bay; whisk until well blended. Whisking constantly, gradually add milk.

Stir in crabmeat. Reduce heat to low; simmer 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Stir in sherry, if desired. Heat 1 to 2 minutes. Sprinkle with additional Old Bay, if desired.

I didn't measure the sherry, but only added a little for fear of it overpowering the soup. I also didn't add any parsley flakes because I was in a hurry and kept reading the instructions over and over again without looking back up at the ingredients at the top. Additionally, I used a scant pound of crabmeat because I used two little cans of lump crabmeat rather than buying it fresh. The soup turned out delicious and made quite a bit. I used a quart of half and half to make it rich, so I recommend if you do the same, you only have a cup or so of soup with something else. I had a bowl of it and a garlic breadstick and was ready for a nap afterwards. I brought it for lunch today and we'll see how that goes in the afternoon slump.

With all the hoopla of moving and all, I hadn't been able to cook in a long time so it was nice to be able to come home, truly home, and have a recipe success.

Gravy School Dropout

So I get back on the phone with Deedar because I had it in my head to make country fried steak with white gravy last night. However, I ended up staying late at work, had a small lunch, and was famished by the time I got back, so that idea flew out the window. I thought I'd save it for another day. But I was going to go ahead and practice with the gravy since my previous gravy didn't turn out so great.

Deedar starts telling me to leave some oil in the pan from the steak, but like I said I didn't do that, so I just got out the ol' grease tin and spooned out some bacon grease. I think it was about two tablespoons worth. Then she says to add the milk. No quantity, just "the milk." I really truly admire those that can just whip something up with no recipe and it come out tasting fantastic, but I'm not one of those people yet. Anyway, I just throw some milk in there and start stirring. I'm always afraid of scalding milk, so as soon as I see a tiny bubble, I throw "some flour" in the mix and keep stirring. She tells me to try it, and try it I did. It tasted like paste. So I add some more milk and keep stirring. Now, it tastes like oil. Milk equals oil now? Geez.

I ended up throwing the "gravy" away because it was just awful! I didn't have the heart to call Deedar back up and say I failed the gravy lesson since she's already sounded exasperated that I had to call a second time. She's also threatening to school me in the ways of southern cooking. Although, let's face it. I could use it right about now. I can't even make a simple gravy. *shame*

My Sister, the Original

I visited my sister, Deedar, over the past weekend and reconnected with family I haven't seen in several years, which was nice. This family included my youngest brother Rock, my dad's sister, my niece (older sister's kid), and her two kids which are my great niece and nephew. That's fun to point out since I'm only in my 20s. That's what happens when your oldest sister is approximately 23 years older than you and her eldest daughter is 2-3 years older than you as well. Anyway, on this trip, stories were shared, recipes swapped, and the baby sister was made fun of immensely. That'd be me.

Rock and Deedar

Let me start by saying that my sister Deedar is the original tomboy housewife. I was completely unaware of this until last weekend. She's twenty years older than me and I've spent a collective 5 years around her since I was born, but we're pretty much identical. She would rather mess with cars than paint her nails, she used to get kicked out of school for fighting (never got kicked out of school and only got in one fight that ended after one punch), and she hates, above all else, shopping (don't mind it as long as I have a list and/or the time). Especially for groceries, which was why when I first arrived, I didn't eat until about 11 the following morning when her husband took pity on us and bought us Subway. Thanks, Croc. I owe you one. Well, two. He took me for a ride in his newly purchased 1968, in perfect condition, Camaro. I think there's still a pile of drool in their garage from when I first saw it.

Croc and his 1968 Camaro

When I had to leave on Sunday, the original intent was to grill, and Croc wanted steak. However, this meant that one of them was going to have to go the store again since I had already been out once and was still trying to enjoy my sister's company before I had to leave. So grilling was out. But after inventorying the previous night's purchases from Kroger, Deedar settled on pork chops.

Her secret is to completely cover the flour mixture with Tony Chacere's and garlic powder. In the egg mixture, she puts Paula Deen seasoning and hot sauce. Dip the chops in both of those and you're ready to throw them in the oil for frying.

My oldest niece and me

I decided I'd try this last night since I had seen it done and they were amazing. Sidenote: I actually don't like pork all that much, but a general rule of thumb with me is I'll eat anything fried. Anyway, everything's going great until I decide to slice into one and instead of staring into the other white meat, I'm looking at a basically raw pink pork chop center. So they had to go in the oven and lose all their crispy goodness.

The next plan was to make gravy like Deedar had taught me (with water of all things. This was a totally foreign concept.) since I had decided I was going to try my hand at my momma's biscuit recipe. Now, those turned out find except I rolled the dough out a little too thin and they were a little dense. Still ate them though. Anyway, back to the gravy. I'm stirring and I'm throwing stuff in the pan and everything's going smoothly because the roux is now the perfect gravy color. So I start adding water. The only lesson I got out of this gravy experience is water equals sludge. The gravy ended up looking like pudding. I added more oil and then more water, but never did get it to a pourable consistency. I'm going to try to pass it off on Giraffe and hope he likes chunky gravy. Blech.

Bread Bricks

This past weekend, I got the urge to make some bread for the office since I usually try to make something new to bring in every couple weeks or so. The recipes I had in my newly assembled cookbook (pictures to come) weren't speaking to me. Instead, I decided to make yeast rolls to go along with the already planned recreation of one of my favorite meals at Texas Roadhouse, Roadkill. Roadkill is chopped steak with onions and mushrooms smothered in either gravy or Monterey Jack cheese. I opt for cheese and no mushrooms. Usually, Giraffe gets a sweet potato, so I did sweet potato fries since I do not like sweet potatoes any other way. Now, the arguably best part of Texas Roadhouse is the butter that goes with the rolls. Cinnamon butter. *faint*

So I get to searching on my favorite recipe spots and find this one on All Recipes:

INGREDIENTS

• 2 cups hot water
• 1/2 cup margarine
• 1/3 cup white sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1/2 cup cold water
• 2 (.25 ounce) packages active dry yeast
• 5 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 eggs

DIRECTIONS

1. Melt margarine in hot water. Add sugar and salt and stir. Add cold water and yeast. Stir to dissolve yeast.
2. Add 3 cups flour and mix. Add eggs and 2 1/2 - 3 cups more flour. Mix, cover and let rise until dough doubles in size.
3. Punch down and let rise 30 more minutes or until doubles.
4. Make walnut size balls of dough. Place about 2 inches apart in well-buttered 9 x 13 inch pan. Bake in a preheated 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) oven for 30-45 minutes. Brush top of rolls with margarine while hot.
   

One of the cool things about this site is its ability to modify the recipes by changing the quantity and it adjust accordingly. I halfed it and was in for a surprise as I was adding the flour. Notice the second step where it says "add 3 cups of flour...and 2 1/2-3 cups more flour." This did not change when I modified the recipe to half. So right before I blindly did as the recipe asked, I did the oh-so-difficult math in my head.

"It asks for a total of 2 and 3/4 cups of flour...but it says to add 3 then 2 1/2-3 cups more...but...I only needed 2 and 3/4 cups flour...this can't be right."

So I changed the recipe back to its original form and found that it didn't change the directions to what I wanted. Not to bad-mouth All Recipes, because I really do like them, but just make sure you read your recipes thoroughly (preferably before you start cooking anything. I'm still learning that one.) so you don't ruin something that could have been avoided. And no, to answer your question, the gumbo couldn't have been avoided. I don't care what you say. Stop judging me!

After this hurdle, I managed to get the dough to seemingly the right texture before I set it out for the yeast to do its thing. Since I was confined to a time frame, I don't think I let the bread rise as much as it needed to. It rose some, but not quite enough in the end. I thought I was going to be real cute and roll up balls of dough and place them in my new muffin tins to make cloverleaf rolls. They turned out to be little misshapen bricks of destruction. They tasted okay to me. Just a very dense bread flavor. However, I made cinnamon butter! I smeared enough on each roll I ate, which made the rolls not so bad.

Cinnamon Butter

Ingredients:

butter, whipped (won't work well if not whipped...kinda like a man. I crack me up.)
honey
cinnamon

Mix ingredients together until it tastes good. Seriously.

I made two pans worth of rolls, so if nothing else, I can feed them to the geese. Provided I want them to sink all the way down to the bottom of the pond. Or I could use them in place of a softball. Softball season is coming up, after all.

To anyone who visits this site regularly (yeah, all of two of you), I'm trying out a new feature on the main page. Every week I do a Top 5 List a la High Fidelity. In case you don't know where it is, let me show you:


As you can see, it's right above the Flickr thingy on the left side of the page. I just throw something up there depending on what kind of mood I'm in. I'm always welcome to suggestion!

Vegetarians and Mountain Dew

I was given a recipe from a friend weeks ago and every time I vowed I was going to do it, something happened that prevented me from doing so. Some friends from home have been getting together to cook/learn to cook and the vegetarian of the group brought this nice entree. Not only is it vegetarian, it's pretty healthy, too. It contains a lot of cottage cheese, which I am not a fan of, but you whip it around in a food processor for a while making the texture more like ricotta cheese, which I do like. I did not capture any pictures of the making process, but I did get the end result.

Now, I know it's not that pretty, but I promise you it's really good. Not to mention, they're stuffed shells and are prone to run all over the place in the casserole dish.

The recipe is displayed below and is dictated by my friend Undy since she was at the cooking lesson.

Amy3's Stuffed Shells

Ingredients:

Box of Jumbo Pasta Shells
Large container of Fat-free Cottage Cheese
Jar of Spaghetti Sauce
Can of Diced tomatoes with garlic and basil (or some kinds of italian flavorings)
Assortment of vegetables. We used carrots and yellow squash, but you could also use zucchini or some other kind of veggie like that
Italian seasoning
Garlic powder
Spinach, optional


Preheat the oven to 375.

Put pasta on to boil. You'll want it not completely done because it will still bake in the oven.

I would see if you could drain some of the liquid off of the cottage cheese then put it in a food processor or blender until smooth. It will look kind of like sour cream. Grate vegetables and add italian spices and garlic powder. You'll pretty much just have to keep tasting it until it tastes good.

Put spaghetti sauce and diced tomatoes in a pan and let warm on low. The diced tomatoes are just to give the sauce a chunky consitency and to make the sauce stretch farther, so you don't have to use them, you just may need more than one jar of sauce. If you want the spinach, wait until the sauce is warm and then put the spinach in to let it wilt.

When the shells are done, drain them and let them cool until you can easily handle them. Spoon in the cheese mixture and try to close the shells and place in a casserole dish. Spoon in some sauce to cover the casserole dish and place shells in dish. Cover with rest of sauce. Cover the dish with a lid or tin foil and put in the oven for 45 to an hour. 45 minutes worked just fine for us.

I had plenty of cheese mixture and a few shells leftover and still made about 5 servings.

For dessert, I had seen a recipe for Apple Dumplings on the Pioneer Woman's cooking site. The ingredients grabbed my attention and the picture definitely held it.

Mmm. It's like mini apple pies sitting in a sea of butter and Mountain Dew. I know, crazy, right? I don't like Mountain Dew at all, but you don't taste it. It just adds a hint of bubbly citrus. One of those ingredients that when you're eating the finished product make you go, "Oooh...what is that bit of oomph?"

Also perfect with a scoop of vanilla ice cream. Dumplings a la mode. Yum.

The Gumbo Disaster

I used to be good at a lot of things. Then I met my Giraffe and I began to doubt my abilities. All the things I was able to take pride in: science, being the best at Street Fighter II for SNES...and the one that upset me the most, cooking. I had been trying my best to overcome this and just bull my way through it, including the first time I cooked for him which turned out very badly but that's another story. Everything was going okay...until the gumbo.

It still pains me to talk about it.

My mom had been given a recipe for gumbo that was extremely good and could either feed you for days or a small army. I had tried this at my parents' house and wanted to do it myself when the weather was starting to turn colder and/or I wanted a touch of home in my own place. I looked over the recipe and it seemed easy enough, just large quantities. Mom even got me a huge stock pot for the occasion.

Gumbo
(makes 2 gallons)

Roux

1 ½ cup oil
1 ½ cup flour
Cook (until color of old penny)

Add:

2 peppers, chopped
1 onion, chopped

Stock Pot

2 gallons water or stock
6 cups chicken, cooked and diced
1 cup uncooked rice
1/3 jar chicken base

2 cans diced tomatoes
6 cups celery, sliced
3 cups frozen okra
½ T. thyme
½ T. garlic
2 T. salt
2 T. Cajun seasoning

Hot sauce
File

Combine.

I decide to do this one Saturday so I go out and buy all the ingredients I need to begin this beast and only one thing gave me trouble: filé. Filé is ground sassafras leaves that aid in thickening as well as being a key ingredient to Creole cooking. I'm originally from Louisiana so I couldn't just skip this step. This gumbo needed it! And I, of course, didn't have any. Since you add filé close to when it's going to be served, I decided to get started and as everything cooked together, I'd go in search of my ground sassafras.

I get to chopping and boiling and throwing everything into my ginormous stock pot, which takes THREE HOURS. That's right. Three hours of my life was spent chopping ingredients for only one dish. I want those three hours back. Anyway, I get everything together and it's simmering away. Now, I've already told Giraffe that I'm making him gumbo and to get ready for one of the best things he's ever eaten. I figure since this dish was tested out by my own mother and it was a Louisiana dish that he had never made, this was the perfect opportunity for me to one-up him. Bring some of my upbringing to the table.

Then begins the filé search. We search all over town for it and by the end of the night, we find it hidden away on a shelf at Publix. So I do my victory dance in the aisle, then go pay so we can get back to feast on this magnificent gumbo! At this point, it had been cooking for a few hours so I just knew it was about ready to eat. Wrong.

I stirred it up and saw that all the heavy ingredients were waaaaay down in the bottom of the pot and all the spices were at the top. We're talking at least 6 inches between the two. I had thought to myself that 2 gallons of water seemed like an awful lot, but my mom swore that's what she did it. She kept saying the water would cook out and it would thicken up to the consistency that I knew it to be. In addition, the filé would help thicken it up as well. So I thank her, hang up, and rush to the filé powder to pull this gumbo back together. No amount of filé could have saved this gumbo.

Giraffe tried to make me feel better by saying to just let it sit on the stove overnight simmering to help cook it down and see how it was later.

Three days later, this gumbo didn't look any better. Now, my hopes and dreams of being the perfect housewife are dashed. I can't even follow a simple recipe. All my efforts of trying to cook better had been for naught. However, my Giraffe knew just what to do to make me feel better about this whole culinary disaster: he held the stock pot for me so I could flip the switch to activate the garbage disposal.

If that isn't true love, I don't know what is.