The sun was out, and I’d powered through all the things around the house I needed to attend to… Like taking pictures of fallen (forsythia) flowers on our front stairs… and set my DSLR to manual setting for the first time evah!

One of which, make ricotta cheese – but I’ll get to that tomorrow in another post. The second, more impressive to me, was realize that it was the Kentucky Derby today, and make some white cupcakes with mint julep frosting. There are a few things that I will tweak if I make this again, but overall, I liked it.

I will skip right past the actual cupcake recipe, because aside from the fact that it’s made with separated eggs, it was total crap. I’ve made two cakes in the past week that I’ve whipped up eggs and folded them in, which is the only reason I’d mention it at all. I’m mostly unfamiliar with this way of cake making except for the 4 egg cake from the joy of cooking cookbook that is unbelievably popular in my family for birthday cakes.

I’ve been all too keen to use flaxseed as a replacement for eggs when baking, and I also used some pastry flour (whole wheat) which I was not all too happy with the last time I used it for baking. I should’ve used some good old fashioned all purpose flour, but I wanted to “use up” the pastry flour. Bad call, in the end.

These bad larrys were all kinds of fluffy, to the point where they fell all over the place when pulled out of the muffin tin. Seriously a shame. I figured that I’d save two of the least messed up ones to try my hand at frosting flowers, make some roses and knock a few out, and if I couldn’t hack it, I’d just dump um with the (literally) crumby cupcakes.

OH. HOT. DAAAAUUUUM. I did it! I didn’t need a “frosting nail” or whatever it’s called either! I used an upside-down cup, and a butter knife instead of scissors. This was my first try at a rose, and it actually looks like one, a messy one, but still —- I am seriously impressed with myself. I’ve tried this once before and that was the messiest most awful looking glob of icing… Ugh.

When your hands warm up the icing too much, this is what your flowers look like – a bit bubbly, or cartoony around the edges… I tossed the icing bag in the freezer for about 2 mins tops and I was able to make another good one before things warmed up too much again.

Oh, yeah, son. That’s two roses right there. Two roses and a weird lookin smaller failure on the side. Ok, I’ll stop patting myself on the back and get down to the real business. How I made this icing.

I would like to state for the record, though I know mint juleps are made with spearmint, I did use peppermint extract (dear southerners, please scrape yourself up off the floor?) but only a very little, a very very little. That still might not be ok, but I hope it makes it easier to read… and if I make it again, I plan to make it right, cause the two mints are distinctly different to my palate.

Mint Julep Icing

makes enough icing to make flowers to place on top of regular/plain buttercream iced cupcakes

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
2-1/2 cups powdered sugar
2-3/4 teaspoons bourbon
12-15 drops of mint extract
10-20 drops of food coloring of choice, I went with neon pink

In your stand mixer, or large bowl with hand mixer whisk butter together til it’s creamy, add sugar gradually until the butter starts to dry a little and ball up a bit. Add the bourbon, and then a few drops at a time of mint tasting as you go so you don’t overpower the flavor of the bourbon. You want 3 teaspoons of liquids total for this icing, so between the mint and bourbon, do what tastes good to you. I did almost all bourbon, with a few drops of mint, and it was still a little overwhelming.

I cut out a “2″ and an “8″ out of parchment paper, and pressed them lightly into the top layer of whipped cream and mascarpone mixture. I tossed some semi-sweet chocolate chips into my lil prep food processor and ground them down. Once I’d sprinkled the chocolate all over the cake I carefully peeled the parchment paper back up. Ta-dah! Happy 28th, buddy!

My heart is sick over todays events downtown at the finish line. My thoughts go out to those who’s lives were taken, who were injured or have lost touch with their loved ones – may you find eachother quickly and in good health.

This is a simple way to use up a lot of spinach – I usually have the majority of a bag left over once I make the handful or so into a salad or something (usually the handful is the reason that I bought the bag in the first place…) I found a recipe online, and for the life of me I can’t find the blog that this recipe is based off of. I changed and tweaked a bunch of items, but I would like to give credit to the original idea… I’ll keep searching and update with a link if I can find it.

I used some hillshire brand sausages that I bought a while ago, and ended up freezing, because they had such a hot-doggy-type flavor that I didn’t want to use them for anything but I figured this would be a good use for them, since the lemon and cheese would probably beat out the sausage flavor a bit…

Do not, I repeat, do not use two lemons to make this. You will have a sourpuss face on while eating it, and have to find more spinach to toss into the dish to try to minimize the lemon flavor. The juice of like… one lemon, if that would suffice…

Lemony Spinach Pasta
Serves 4-6 as main dish

Three days into my challenge to stretch just under $100 as far as I knew how, and I decided not to follow my list. Well, not to a tee…

I bought Salmon, and I got parsley and a few other greens that I was going to try to make this other salmon dish with, but it just wasn’t sounding great, and instead I peeked into the cabinets to see if I had enough ingredients on “standby” to make up for this detour. I ended up deciding that this simple recipe would go over better on my stomach and my attention span than the recipe I had previously chosen.

The salmon is nothing special. It’s just got a little drizzle of olive oil, a bit of fresh squeezed lemon on it, and it’s broiled until it starts to fall apart and comes off it’s skin easily. This takes about, oh, 12 minutes? Salmon was on sale this week, so I got a nice sized piece for a decent price.

The thing that I always have to remember is if I am going to use parchment paper, I really need to fold it under on the sides so that it doesn’t get pulled up by the heat and start to smoke and smell up the house in awful ways. This is key. I somehow manage to forget this step, oh… 75% of the time? It’s really hard to fold over parchment paper when it’s really hot and has started to turn brown… Just so ya know..

Cheese Orzo

adapted from The Cutting Edge of Ordinary

serves 2-3 as a side

4 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, chopped small
2-3 medium cloves garlic, minced (to your taste, I really like garlic, so I went with 3 good sized ones)
2-1/2 cups chicken stock (I used bullion cubes and water, because I rarely have chicken stock in the house… shame on me…)
2 cups orzo pasta, uncooked
1/2 cup cheese, shredded (my fridge was void of all fancy or interesting cheeses, so I used 50/50 mozzarella and cheddar)
2 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped
salt and pepper to taste

Melt butter in a skillet or at least a 2 qt saucepan over medium-low heat. Add onion and cook until soft but not browned, about five or so minutes. Add garlic and cook 2 minutes more. Meanwhile, in a small-medium saucepan, heat chicken stock just until it begins to boil. Or be lame like me, and heat water in the microwave, and smash bullion cubes up in nearly boiling water until you have achieved “broth like” substance.

Add orzo to onion and garlic in main pot/skillet. Stir in hot chicken stock, bring to a boil, cover and remove from heat. Let stand, without removing cover, until all liquid is absorbed, about 20-25 minutes. Start prepping and cooking salmon at this point, so that the meal will be done all around the same time.

songza and something to hydrate with nearby, while waiting for orzo to absorb all broth…

Finally, stir in your cheese until it’s combined and melted. If not all the cheese melts, put pot/skillet back on low heat and stir until all cheese is melted in. Toss with fresh parsley, and serve immediately.

I can see why they suggest gruyere cheese, since it’s my favorite melting cheese of all time, I’ll have to try this again, and stick closer to the original recipe that I found, because while this was tasty, I know that the more distinct flavor of gruyere is unmistakably good…

When I talked to my little sister as I sat down to eat this, I described it as “lasagna with beans, poached eggs, greens and brown butter sauce” she said she was probably going to throw up in her mouth. Eeek, great start to this cooking challenge…

It’s description probably would have been more fitting, and less nauseating had I stressed/said lasagna noodles instead of having her think that I put all of these toppings inside a regular lasagna, which is, a pretty disgusting concept… I did have a panicky moment of thinking, oh, jesus, this isn’t gonna even look remotely edible to the boy when he gets home… But, what was done, was done.

Fresh Pasta, cannelloni beans, poached eggs, wilted greens in a brown butter sauce
adapted from The Kitchn
Serves 2 hungry people, or three not so hungry people…

fresh large flat noodles (see recipe below)

2-4 eggs, poached (depending on how hungry you are, I made 2 per person)

1 bunch, swiss chard,washed, stems removed and slice leaves widthwise
1/2 (clearly a full can was too many beans…) can cannelloni beans, drained and rinsed
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 pinch red pepper flakes

1/4 cup unsalted butter
2 tablespoons lemon juice
salt and pepper

When noodles are cooked, transfer them to a bowl of hot tap water until ready to use. I cooked mine until they were just on the verge of being al dente so that while sitting a few minutes they didn’t get crazy over-cooked. In the same (or separate, however you’ve thought this out, or however many appropriately sized pots/pans you have…) small pot, bring water to simmer for poaching eggs. I like to (or just out of force of habit?) add a bit of white vinegar to the water – my dad always did when he made them, I’m not sure if it makes a difference… Poach your eggs for about 4 minutes each – transfer them (using a large slotted spoon, carefully) to the same bowl of warm water the noodles are sitting in until ready to plate your meal.

While your eggs are cooking, begin wilting the greens. Warm a teaspoon of olive oil in a medium – large skillet over medium heat. Add the greens and pinch of salt, sauté them until the chard wilts, turns a bright green, add in your 1/2 can of beans and mix in to heat completely- cook until chard becomes tender, roughly three minutes. Stir in the garlic and red pepper flakes and stir until fragrant, and just combined. Quickly transfer the chard to a plate.

To make the sauce, bring the skillet back up to medium-high heat, melting the butter, swirl the butter around in the pan until the butter darkens in color, remove from heat and whisk in the lemon juice and a pinch of salt. The lemon juice will sizzle and spatter a bit before it cools down, so keep your face away, even though you might want to smell this closely…

Take noodles from bowl, and pat them dry. Place them on your derving dishes. Drain the water from the prep bowl, and place poached eggs on top of noodles. Top with the remaining pieces of noodles and cover with wilted greens, and beans. Drizzle butter sauce on top of everything, and serve immediately before sauce getts cold.

Lasagna Noodle Recipe
makes enough noodles for one 9×13 lasagna
(I only made half the recipe for this dish)

2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 large eggs
3 large egg yolks
pinch of salt

Make a mound of flour on the counter and mix in the salt. Make a well in the center of it for the eggs. Break the eggs and add yolks to the well and start to scramble each egg as you add it – use a large fork to mix. When enough flour is incorporated so that the eggs are no longer really runny, you can start mixing with your hands (be sure to remove any or ALL jewelry at this point as it gets seriously sticky…) until fully combined.

Kneed the dough until you have a soft, satiny ball of fough. Wrap in plastic wrap and let it sit for 30 mins. Roll out either by hand or with a machine until it’s about 1/8″ thick (I think that would be #6 on the machine?) I did this batch by hand, so it was a little uneven and a bit thicker… Cut into strips (I cut into jagged squares for this meal, and cooked until al dente) and if using for lasagna, cook in boiling water for 30 seconds and then bathe in ice water until ready to assemble lasagna.

In the end, I really just should’ve held back a bit on the beans. 1/2 a can of beans is more than enough for two plates – I’m not sure why I didn’t actually think that one through… And the boy? He liked it a lot. He’s big on poached eggs, and fresh pasta, his only suggestion was… fewer beans. Oy! Totally edible, and one of the more interesting recipes I’ve tried with fresh pasta. I can’t wait to make a lasagna with these noodles, since now I’m more experienced with making them.

I will be counting this as 4 meals, because we ate it twice (some leftovers, but mostly the night I made it) and there’s enough filling and pie crust to send two home with my little sister, and have one to defrost later for us.

It’s also always so much easier to start your challenge with something that you know wil be an easy success, it’ll keep the motivation there for the next experiment or meal. Plus, we had what I thought would be one of the coldest nights left (I was wrong…) so it seemed appropriate that we would have some comfort food.

One of the things that I am frequently guilty of, cheaping it out – and I mean, subbing in things that are in the same “family”, but not exactly the same because it seems wasteful to buy an ingredient that is more expensive and that I’ll only be using for this one meal. Heavy cream is rarely something that I’m willing to buy, I know that it’s only about $2, but I rarely buy milk so when I am making a recipe like this, I’d rather buy the more versatile half gallon of milk than the smaller, heavy cream. This means that my chicken pot pie isn’t always as creamy and thick the first time you cook it – but it will thicken up for reheating, and the taste is still there.

Chicken Pot Pie
adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

this makes a LOT of filling for about 4 pies, but I usually just cook one and then freeze the rest, or give it away

prep chicken and potatoes beforehand if possible

1 whole chicken, boiled, cooled, shredded (or use leftover turkey from thanksgiving since you’ll probably have carrots, celery, onions kicking around too, if you are like me…) reserve 4 cups shredded meat for this recipe freeze the rest for later
3-4 good sized potatoes, peeled, chopped to just larger than bite-sized pieces, cooked until almost tender (or use leftover baked potatoes)

1 stick of butter
2 small-medium onions, diced
5-6 medium-large carrots, peeled washed and diced
4-6 stalks celery, washed and diced (depending on your taste sometimes people hate celery…)
1/2-3/4 cup frozen peas
1/2-3/4 cup frozen corn (or fresh if available/in season)
4 cups shredded chicken
1 cup all purpose flour (sometimes I add up to a few tablespoons more if I know I won’t be using heavy cream)
4 cups chicken broth
2 chicken or vegetable bullion cubes
1/4-1/2 cup white wine (if I have it open and available, I use it otherwise I go without)
2 cups heavy cream (mostly I use whole milk, or do 1 cup of each if they are both handy…)
salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste

In a dutch oven, or large pasta pot melt the butter (sometimes I add a tablespoon or so if I’m using milk instead of heavy cream to keep fat content up, but most of the time I forget and just use the called for amount…) add onions, carrots, celery, peas and corn – cook on a medium-low flame until the onions become translucent.

Add chicken and potatoes, mix until combined – sprinkle with flour and mix gently to coat all the ingredients in flour. This thickens the broth base, so make sure it’s not all clumpy and weird. Add broth, bullion and wine – mix until combined and sort of soupy. Cook for about 5-7 minutes stirring frequently. Add cream/milk, and turn to low heat and continue stirring until the broth thickens up - another 5-7 minutes, roughly. Remove from heat, and season well – make sure to taste so that it doesn’t end up being under-seasoned.

Fill your pie dish, but leave some room so that things don’t overflow when you cover with crust (see recipe below) preheat oven to 400F let the rest of the pot pie filling cool down enough to store in containers to freeze. You can prep pies and put them in fridge, or freezer, but I don’t have that many pie pans anymore, and it seems less precarious to have quart containers in the freezer than actual pies…

Pie Crust
adapted from The Pioneer Woman Cooks

makes 4-6 pie crusts
these are easily frozen, and recipe easily halved/doubled

6 cups all purtpose flour (I’ve used as much as 60/40 apf/whole wheat)
1-1/2 – 2 teaspoons salt
3 cups vegetable shortening
2 large eggs, room temp
9-10 tablespoons cold water
2 tablespoons white vinegar

In a large bowl, mix flour and salt. Add shortening, and cut in with large for, pastry cuter, or hell, even a potato masher (sometimes things get desperate around here, I’ll try whatever is handy…)  until the mixture is combined, but gets a little clumpy. In a small prep bowl, lightly beat the eggs, check for shells, and then add to flour with water and vinegar. Mix until just combined.

Separate into loose balls for the amount of crusts you are preparing. I will usually go for 5 crusts with this recipe, that way they are nice and thick for pot pie, which I always like to have a somewhat hefty crust on.

To freeze: put balls of dough in ziploc bags, roll out a little so they fill most of the end of the gallon bag, then seal up bag for easy freezing/defrosting/rolling when ready to use.

Roll one out large enough to cover a 9″ pie pan completely, set aside on parchment paper. Cover your pie completely. Poke LOTS of holes in the top so that heat can escape while cooking, and things don’t get crazy messy in your oven. I usually put a baking sheet until the pot pie just in case things overflow, because there is nothing less exciting than cleaning an oven… But if you don’t over fill the pie dish, then you should be good.

Bake pies at 400F for about 30 minutes or until golden brown on top. Let them cool a little so it’s not hard to serve, we like to top ours with hot sauce and a bit more fresh ground black pepper.

If you are defrosting filling and pie, I suggest putting it in the fridge the day before you want to use it, making sure to put them on a big dish or something to catch all the condensation (something I am often faulted for forgetting…) and then when the filling is fully defrosted in fridge, you can leave the crust chilled a bit until ready to use.

This Sunday I bookmarked about 12 websites for ideas for meals. This is not really surprising, because I frewuenlty bookmark food blogs or recipes to use for future use and never really end up doing anything with them.

Then, the strangest thing happened, I found motivation. I shit you not. It happened. On Monday after work, I went to the grocery store and managed to get almost everything I would need for all these recipes, I spent $96.00.

Here’s the plan (recipes and separate posts to come – for the moment, I’ll just guilt myself into completing this goal for the week by posting this before anything else…) I am going to make all of the below items for meals this week and beyond, and then some extras to freeze for later.

Breakfasts:
COFFEE!
cereal with bananas
greek yogurt with fruits
pancakes
french toast

Lunches:
greek yogurt with fruits
leftovers
sandwiches (PB and honey, or tuna)
Frittata
Dinners:
Chicken Pot Pie
Fresh pasta, with poached eggs, cannelloni beans, swiss chard with brown butter sauce
Salmon with orzo
Linguini al carbonara
Soprano’s Sunday Gravy
Winter Pesto (depending on available greens)
Broccoli/Cheddar Soup
Boiled dinner

Drinks:
Basil and Blackberry caipirinhas

Misc:
Blood orange simple syrup
Lasagna (to freeze)

Basically, I want to see how far I can stretch about $100 for the two of us, my hopes are that it will make it up to 15 full meals, but I don’t know how well this will all pan out. I will hopefully be able to catch up with myself in the next little while.

It can’t be that I’m old enough to not be reproducing taste buds as fast as I should, cause even though I feel decrepit at times, I’m not even thirty yet.

I don’t like to categorize myself as a “picky eater” but when it comes to my taste buds, those guys are kinda hard to impress.

I constantly want to taste salty foods, but try (read: except while inhaling family sized bags of these tragically tasty chips) to watch my sodium intake. Even when I’ve just had something sweet to eat, I want it to be followed up with something strong or savory. This is a complex situation while snacking, since I struggle past the chip/cracker/junk foods aisle every time I shop.

I’ve finally begun to figure out a good “meal replacement” for these bags’o'food colored chips.

Plus it’s a dead giveaway that you’ve just had them, cause the tips of your fingers stay dyed orange until scrubbed. If that’s what it does to my fingers, what the hell is it doing to my guts…?

For the weekend, I like to try to clear out space in the fridge, pantry, freezer, you name it- lets use it up. This is sometimes effective and sometimes yields less than awesome meals.

I can’t remember what I bought spinach for, cause I honestly can’t remember (aside from when purposely hidden in lasagna) a time when Mr Julia was a willing participant in eating spinach…

Spinach, Anjou, Feta and Cran salad
serves one

2 handfuls of spinach, washed, spun out, stems removed ( used kitchen shears, which made it wicked easy)
1 Anjou pear, pitted (is that what you call it when it’s a fruit?) and chopped up into bite sized pieces
2 (+/-) tablespoons crumbled feta cheese, or add to your taste
2 (+/-) pinches of dried cranberries (I used up the rest of the craisins I had left over from making cookies)

Dressing

In a small cup, bowl or jar mix (and alter once you taste it)
1 part olive oil
1 part white wine vinegar
1/2 part honey
1/2 clove garlic, minced well
Add to taste:
Salt
Pepper
teensy bit of fresh minced parsley (or preferred herbs, dried or fresh, whatever is on hand)

This managed to hit the points of my palate that needed some attention. Just sweet enough, with a kick of vinegar that favored that kick I usually search for in a bag of chips. The bonus, it didn’t cost $4.99, I didn’t have to leave the house to get it, and I didn’t have to feel the over-full-guilt of poor food choices that always accompanies my usual snacking choices.

This whole winter thing has kinda got me down, it’s got my poor little plants feeling dumpy too. I suppose you could sit back and say you’ve only had about four snow storms and I would unfortunately have to agree with you. But I wouldn’t like anything about that statement.

But I would probably counter with : Nemo, about 3′ of snow overnight. That should count as more than one. And again, yesterday – I woke up to snow. By 6:30 I was on the road, creeping ever closer to work. An hour later, I got a few miles closer to work had to stop at our shop and look for a shovel to extract my truck.

By 9am, I had found my way to a Home Depot with a semi-plowed parking lot, bought one of their TWO shovels ($30, thanks for the rip off!) and finally SLOWLY got back to my truck and began shoveling. After I had cleared most of the snow, I got the call that we had a … you guessed it, snow day. Mmmhmm. After I had shoveled for quite some time.

I finally got home, shoveled my way into the driveway and house, which took over an hour to drive there, and an hour, fourty-five mins to clear away the snow. I have decided that I’m completely over it. I’m done. I need some sunshine and at the very least, LESS snow.

Once I curled up into my heating pad, typed up a million things for work, and worked up my appetite watching some food being made on tv. I decided that the end of the week should be dedicated to cleaning out the fridge and the cabinets. I had this left over bisquick from when I made chicken & dumplings, and since I’d only ever used it once for that meal, I decided I should try to use it up so it wouldn’t be taking up so much real estate in the cabinets.

I had just made myself a massive mug of Earl Grey tea, and since I didn’t want to have to add cleaning my cast iron skillet to my ever growing list of things to do, I decided to make pancakes in the shape of muffins. I had already lifted enough heavy snow all morning, so I decided that lifting that skillet was the last thing that I wanted to do.

I realized that my shopping list wasn’t really up-to-date, because I failed to add maple syrup to the list, and we had since run out. I thought I should just sweeten them up while mixing them so that I could be happy with just a bit of butter on them.

I’m not crazy about chocolate chips in my pancakes. I’m more of a purest when it comes to pancakes, but I’m willing to branch out and toss a few things in to try and see how they work out. This time it was more out of necessity that I added the chips, since I didn’t have much else to sweeten, or top them with after they were cooked.

Filling the liners only half-way seemed to be a solid choice. I wasn’t sure how much these would raise, so just to be safe, I moved the top shelf in the oven down a notch, which really wasn’t necessary, but it did make it a little easier to get a toothpick in there to test for doneness in the end.

What I learned from all of this is that when you forget to buy maple syrup, and add chocolate chips to these bad boys, they all sink to the very bottom. If you are as impatient as I was the other day, then you will try to eat these before they are fully cooled. When they are a little warm, the liner doesn’t come off all that well and the chips come off with it. If you chill them and then toast them to warm them up you are able to keep the chips inside the muffin/pancakes.

Chocolate Chip Pancake Muffin
Makes 16-18 muffins

(preheat oven to 350F)

In a medium/large size mixing bowl combine

2 cups bisquick mixture (or whatever it’s called)
1 cup whole milk
2 large eggs (room temp)
2 tablespoons sugar
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup chocolate chips (semi sweet)

Mix until there are as few as possible lumps in the mixture. Line your muffin tins with papers, spoon in the batter until they are about 1/2 way full.

Bake for 18-20 minutes, depending on your oven – I checked mine around 10 minutes and turned the trays around on the rack so that they would brown as evenly as possible. At 18 minutes I stuck a toothpick in them and they were fully cooked. Put them on a cooling rack until cooled thoroughly.

I stored mine in an airtight container in the fridge overnight, and this morning, I peeled them out of the liners and cut them down the middle, toasted them until they warmed fully and put a little bit of butter on them and enjoyed them with my cup of coffee.