Snacky, Appetizer-y Thingies

It's been too hot to cook all freaking summer. I am so sick of spaghetti, eggs, bean burritos and other stupid easy things. Seriously, how many times can a person eat eggs sunny side up on garlic rubbed toast? (Answer: a LOT!) 

The past week we've had a WONDERFUL cold front come through that allowed me to turn on the oven without ratcheting up the temperature in my apartment to 95 degrees. Did I make some unbelievable lasagne (well, I did with friends once) or bake delicious scones and cupcakes? Did I throw in some crazy awesome pizzas? Did I maybe roast a chicken with some veggies? 

Not everything is complicated

Potatoes are so simple. You can do nearly anything to them and it will probably turn out. But all I want is salt so there's really only one thing to do. (And seriously, for some reason a salt lick sounds tasty right now...) With a purple potato that had gone a little too far for baking or roasting and a kitchen mandolin, it took 5 minutes to make the PERFECT snack.

You can see light through these! 

Chips. 

Look, if you need directions for this, I don't know what to say. Slice potatoes as thin as possible. Heat up oil til it's shimmering. Put a slice in. If it takes too long and gets soggy, turn the heat up. If it burns, turn it down. 

Fry the chips, put on a draining rack and hit with salt as soon as they come out. 

Eat. Stuff your face and lick the salt from your fingers. Sigh and enjoy life for those 5 minutes. 

A Sip of Summer

A couple years ago my friends Tim and Betony were having dinner for a bunch of people. I can't remember what the occasion was, but I definitely remember the drink. The drink was awesome. Sure, there was red wine and fancy craft beer - both of which I love. But Tim gave me a glass of summer that night. Seriously, it was like Summer hitting all my taste buds AND getting me drunk at the same time. 


How could it ever get any better than that?


It can't.


Beware, these are deceptively strong. They don't taste like a whole lot except lemonade and a tiny bit of weak beer, but that's the danger. Apologies for the lack of photos, but I don't want to expose the state of my coffee table or provide proof of how many of these this particular Monday night may contain.


So, here it is - Summer in a Glass, or Drinkable Summer, or A Sip of Summer - whatever you want to call it. 


Best served in a pint glass (the kind you'd use for beer). But, let's be honest, red solo cups work even better.


6 oz light beer
2-3 oz  plain vodka (a decent kind - seriously. No Burnetts!) 
Lemonade to fill (nothing too sweet)
1 Lime wedge


Note: the more vodka you use, the better (or worse) off you will be. I use Bud Light, New Amsterdam Vodka and Simply Lemonade. Mix in a glass with your preferred amount of ice and squeeze in the lime. If you're generous with your ice, you can get 2 drinks out of 1 beer.  Give it a light stir and be taken to the middle of July! 


Tim, you have given me a ton of things since April 2009. A community, a purpose, a soundtrack, a teeny tiny baby friend that is almost 3, this, and more. I thank you for all of them and love you so very much!

I have a bit of a crafty side...

This technically happened in my kitchen so I think it's fair game to post here.


Michael's is having a sale on scrapbook paper and I went a little crazy tonight. See, I like putting different papers into cheap frames because it's an easy and inexpensive way to add color to my massive white walls. (Ironically, I tend to like white frames.) They also make cool little message boards with dry erase markers. When the sheets that are normally $.59 are on sale for $.14 each, it's time to stock up. Holiday themed, seasonal, color themed - whatever it is, I bought it. 


I loved this multi-colored stripe, but it didn't really go well with any other sheets I picked up and is too busy to use as a whiteboard background. I had found this great frame with pieces that slide around. You can cut up one big picture to make a puzzle, use different pictures for a mosaic, or do what I did. I cut 8 consecutive pieces of the paper and put them in the frame in order. I figure I can switch it around a lot and give people a little puzzle to work on when they come over. Of course when I placed the tiles, I had the frame turned around wrong and it got messed up when turned up. The turquoise stripe is supposed to go vertical with the blank square at the top left. 


The challenge will be to get not only the stripe right, but the matching sides right. 


This should be fun.  

Sushi! (Bowl)

I get crazy sushi cravings sometimes. They last for about a week and I have to eat it at LEAST once to satisfy my craving. Problem is, sushi can be expensive, especially if the only reasonable sushi place in your town burned down a few months ago. What's left is overpriced and average tasting sushi or driving 45 minutes to a place in Fort Collins. Well, I did that last week but it wasn't enough. 


A couple years ago, I lived next to a girl from Hawaii. She was totally broke all the time and missed sushi something fierce, so we decided to make it together. It was cheaper than ordering out and since she knew how,  it really wasn't difficult. The best part was finding out that, where she's from, it's apparently totally acceptable to wrap sushi rolls and not cut them, eating them like a burrito instead of piece by piece. This cuts down on a LOT of work.


But even making rolls is too much work sometimes. That's when I make bowls. In fancy chef-speak, this would be called a "deconstructed California Roll". In real world-speak, I dumped all the ingredients in a bowl and hoovered it up as only an American can. 

Balsamic and Bacon Salad Dressing

For the longest time, I've had two slices of bacon in my refrigerator. What can a person possibly do with two pieces of bacon? Seriously.

Well, I was making a basil pesto and pea pasta dish for dinner tonight. I'd already decided to add crumbled bacon to the pasta to add a little crunch and protein and decided that a salad sounded nice (and responsible). However, I only have ranch and bleu cheese dressings - neither of which sounded terribly appetizing.  So....homemade dressing it is. Might as well not waste the bacon drippings! 


I'd put a little bit of brown sugar on the bacon while it was cooking, so my dressing was a tiny bit sweet. Brown sugar and balsamic go together wonderfully, though, so it worked. 

Heavenly Tomato Onion Butter Sauce

I don't know how or why, but despite my actual German/English/Scottish/Russian/Southern US ancestry, my favorite food is far-and-away Italian. There is NOTHING better than a mix of tomatoes, garlic, cheese, basil, and carbs. Pizza, spaghetti, caprese salads, garlic bread...all these things take me straight to food nirvana. 


Everyone has "their" red sauce. You know, the one that they grew up eating or learned to make in college. The only one that they will make for guests. The one they plan on teaching their children. I am lucky, because I have THREE sauces. There is the completely inauthentic one with ground beef and a seasoning packet that I grew up with. It was the first thing I learned to cook (besides boxed mac and cheese). I've made some slight improvements, including using real garlic and onions in olive oil instead of garlic and onion powders. 2 cans tomato sauce instead of 1 can paste and some water. I got rid of the disgustingly slimy canned mushrooms. But still, the McCormick's spaghetti sauce with mushrooms seasoning packet - I can never get rid of that. (No other brand is as good, either.) 


Then I have the basic pomodoro sauce. That's the marinara sauce with herbs and some soft garlic and onion. Once in awhile a tiny bit of red pepper flakes makes it in there just for a surprise. Left over red wine makes it luscious. Quick, easy, versatile, it is perfect for a surprise guest because I always have the ingredients. With eggplant or chicken parmigiana, as a dip for garlic bread or pizza rolls or even as a makeshift pizza sauce at the last minute. This will probably be the first thing my children learn.

Almond Poppy Seed Bread - ish

I've been aching for almond flavored things lately - especially after making a ton of lemon cakes and cupcakes for my friend Renee's birthday last week. A local coffee shop sells a pretty good almond poppy seed bread but it has a couple things against it: too expensive, first to sell out, and topped with chunks of almond that are way too thick for the delicate bread underneath. 


After my success with Tyler Florence's amazing banana bread, I wanted to try almond. I thought about adapting his banana bread somehow, but I couldn't get around how to take all the bananas out and still get something so good. I spent almost an entire day searching the interwebs for a good recipe and I narrowed it down to two. 

Good taste, delicate crumb and texture. Ok for a first try, I suppose.

Heads up!

I don't have a recipe box. I have recipe books that I rarely use, but mostly I have about 1,000 bookmarks in Google Chrome that I have to search through to find something I want. Lately I've taken to jotting stuff down in a cute little spiral notebook. The problem is, I used to use it for a journal. So somewhere between my Extreme Chocolate Cookie recipe and the notes I have written down for altitude adjustments is a 5 page long multi-colored missive about a guy that goes from pathetic to hopeful to truly ugly. 

Who wants to read recipes around this? No one. Not even me.

Somehow, I just don't feel like I should hand that to anyone when I want to share a recipe. 

I want something I can 1) add to easily 2) share easily 3) change easily (I hate scratching out and re-writing on cards) and 4) use to link to original content. So few of my recipes are truly my own. I mostly copy and adapt others and want to be able to share them with others in case you don't think my version is perfect. (Hint - it's not!) Pictures will be bonuses. My photographic skills aren't exceptional - I frequently have issues with the ISO and graininess - but sometimes it works. At the very least, they give you an idea of what my process and food look like along the way.

Sometime soon - a couple notes about how I cook and write. I have my own kitchen shorthand because I've been cooking for awhile. I know what it means to use the creaming method. You might not. I'll probably just link to an Alton Brown video for that. He explains way better than I do. 

Welcome. This won't get updated as often as it should. It won't always be well written or even understandable to anyone but me. Most of the time there will be no background or stories, just recipes and notes. But since I'm doing this for me, I think that's okay.