Filed under: Recipes | Tags: Cheese, Chicken, Dill, Easy, Herbs, One-Pot Dish, Pasta, Spring, Summer
I don’t know what’s going on here exactly, but even while it seems like, thanks to my last two posts, that all we’re eating in this house is pasta of various incarnations, we’ve actually been eyebrow-deep in summery foods like panzanella, grilled chicken sandwiches with various aiolis, and homemade caesar salad because truly, y’all, the warmth can’t come soon enough. And yet here I am with another pasta dish for you, holding on tight to the aforementioned dishes so that I have something to entertain you with come the seasons that start with the letter “S.”
Filed under: Recipes | Tags: Basil, Cheese, Chicken, Couscous, Easy, Feta, Herbs, One-Pot Dish, Salad, Spring, Summer
Before I moved to Minneapolis to come to school, I had spent my entire life on the East Coast, save for a trip to the unfortunate city of Phoenix for my uncle’s wedding when I was 11. My first 18 years, I lived in New Jersey (and have an occasional lingering accent to prove it), the next 4 in Western Massachusetts for college and then the two years that followed in Washington, D.C. My time in D.C. is not one I look back up on with a lot of fondness. I was one of those doe-eyed 22 year olds when I landed up there ready to take on the world and change politics to be more about the people. The reality of the situation was a 60-hours-a-week desk job, a salary that didn’t even crack $30,000, and superfluous amounts of guilt surrounding the mere mention of a sick day, god forbid a vacation day. Can you tell I wasn’t a fan? Two good things came out of living in that putrid swamp of a city though and one of them, I promise, involves food. 1) I met my beau there (and found in him my very best friend and, simultaneously, someone who hated/hates the District of Columbia even more than I do!) and 2) I had the opportunity to live with one of my dearest friends from college, Glynis, and feed her breakfast burritos every Sunday when we were hungover.
It goes without saying that this post has been a long time coming. School has been non-stop madness this semester, plus I’m on the Steering Committee for the upcoming Femme Conference (woot!) , so while I have to eat and have been cooking, posting the evidence has moved ever so slightly to the back burner. The good news is I just uploaded 5 recipes worth of photos to my computer, so I now have them ready to go whenever I have a free moment. For this first post in awhile, I’m giving you not only a new favorite dish, but also one I created myself! I know, I know, it’s marvel that I’ve not only brains and beauty, but creativity as well. Be jealous, dear readers! Or just copy this new tasty dish, a take on antipasto, and take all the credit yourself. I don’t mind.
This is going to be my shortest post to date because really there is only one thing for me to convey to you about these Oreo truffles: you need to stop whatever it is you’re doing right now and make these. Seriously. Right now.
Filed under: Recipes | Tags: Beef, Chuck Roast, Olives, One-Pot Dish, Raisins, Winter
Winter has once again been a total beast in the upper Midwest this season and with single-digit degree days and sub-zero nights, all I want to do is make slow-cooked, warm comfort food for my nearest and dearest. The boyfriend recently moved to Minnesota to be with me while I continue trudging through my Ph.D. program and when it snows here or the temperature gets real low, I feel the need to feed him warm, familiar things so that he doesn’t second guess his decision to move 1,227 miles across the country just for me! So far, so good, as his clothes continue to hang in the closet and as his toothbrush still sits next to mine on the bathroom shelf.
Filed under: Recipes | Tags: Cheese, Easy, Ham, Italian, Pepperoni, Vegetables
This post is titled “Stromboli,” but it should be titled “Stromboli-OMG-It’s-so-good-we-ate-all-of-it-before-we-took-pictures-of-it-finished.” My apologies in advance.
The mister and I had friends over to play some board games the other night and knowing we’d be here a while and drinking and smoking as if we were on Mad Men, I thought I’d make some easy treats to keep us satisified. The problem is that I couldn’t think of anything easy, as I tend to always try to challenge myself when cooking for guests; you can chalk this up to an over-achiever issue pruned by parents having only one child. So I went ahead and made the salted brown butter crispy treats from the Smitten Kitchen and then those fancy red velvet cupcakes that I posted about earlier this week and after laboring over the latter for what felt like hours, realized I still needed to actually feed my company something that wasn’t a dessert.
I’ve never met a cake I didn’t like, but red velvet would have to come the closest. I love it in theory – the kitsch of the cherry-red-colored cake, the longstanding battle about whether it should be topped with cream cheese frosting or vanilla buttercream frosting, and the tracking of its origins from cookbook to kitchen throughout the U.S. South. The history of red velvet cake is endearing and quaint and, let’s be honest, eating blood red dessert isn’t all that common, so red velvet cake has mass appeal…except for me. Except until recently.
When I was growing up, creamed spinach meant frozen spinach heated on the stove, cream of mushroom soup stirred in and c’est ca! While I can still muster interest in that version of creamed spinach, it’s usually only because of the nostalgia of it and not because I actually find it super delicious. This though? This spicy creamed spinach? It’s divine. This is actual creamed spinach, like with actual dairy involved…and a whole lot of it at that. Butter, monterey jack cheese, and evaporated milk all help in creating a velvety sauce for the spinach, which remains of the frozen variety and makes the dish fairly simple.
Split pea soup might seem like an odd choice to begin this adventure in food blogging. For one, pea soup seems to evoke for many memories of bad school cafeteria meals or forced feedings at the hands of parents. Aside from the mental trauma it may have imposed on some, pea soup also isn’t very much to look at; maybe because of the color, maybe because there isn’t a lot in it to make it, seemingly, exciting. There’s a method to my madness though, readers, in choosing pea soup for my introductory post. If one can make pea soup appealing, can make you crave a warm bowl of it in your hands, then maybe I have some business writing a blog about my (mis)adventures in the kitchen.
