Food

Yes I'm sitting here in the dark, again. While I would like to be writing, it is really too dark in here to do it without straining my eyes. Believe me, I've tried. I was trying to think about things I could do but there are only so many recipes I can look at so now I'm still here so I thought of something else. I have recently had a lot of conversations with my friends about things that I love to do. I realized that as much as I love to cook, I don't talk about my creations that much on here. So I'm going to tell you about some of my recent culinary attempts.
Lets see...
Last week I made his awesome chicken/tofu dinner. I dipped each of them in egg and then a "breading" made of things I had in the house. It was matzo meal, crushed French's fried onions, garlic salt, lemon pepper, and freshly shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. I fried the tofu and chicken (separately) in a little bit of olive oil. When those were almost done, I boiled some soba noodles and then put them in a pan with more cheese, garlic salt, and a little more olive oil. We served it with the chicken or tofu on top of the noodles. It was fantastic. I didn't have any of the chicken but it smelled good and Matt assured me that it was very tasty.
When I first moved to Chapel Hill I bought myself some spring form pans with the intention of learning how to make cheesecake.  Well its nearly three years later and they hadn't been used yet.  This month in Bon Appétit had a bunch of delicious looking desserts, including a lemon cheesecake with brownie bottom.  I learned many things Easter weekend:  sometimes Alton Brown knows what he's talking about because to date none of my cheesecakes have cracked, my spring form pans are cheap and leak when following Mr. Browns directions, I'm really good at making cheesecake, sour cream mixed with sugar and baked is actually tasty. Don't worry about the leakage though, Matt saved the day by getting oven bags for the next cheesecake attempt.  At some point, I will get a nice pan from Williams Sonoma that won't leak when put in a water bath.  Since then I also made an Oreo cheesecake for Steph's wine party because I had a ton of Oreos left over from Catarina's going away party.  For that I made these Oreo truffles.  You grind up Oreos, mixed them with cream cheese, then dip them in chocolate.  MMMM, very good. This time I made three different kinds: regular Oreo, mint Oreo, and ones that were half regular Oreo half Nutter Butters.
Matt bought me an ice cream maker for my birthday, which I have been wanting for a long time.  I've made three batches of dark chocolate ice cream.  The most recent batch also had bits of reeses peanut butter cups.  I haven't really played around with it yet but I did make a mango lime sorbet that was pretty good.  I have plans to make Mexican chocolate ice cream next.  I think it'll be really good.  I have the base recipe down so now its just up to my imagination and Matt, Steph, and Linda's stomaches to come up with new ones.
I know I never talk about it, but I love cheese.  I made these really good bread thingys that were small slices of baguette topped with either goat's cheese and sauteed mushrooms or a mixture of fresh basil, blue cheese, and cream cheese.  This is bad, now I want cheese.  Well, I leave you with something that I learned yesterday while reading wikipedia entries about various cheeses that I like.  Yes I realize that is a pathetic sentence.  Apparently Spain and several Latin American countries like to put small chunks of white cheese in their hot chocolate and then when the cocoa is gone they eat the cheese.  I'm really excited to try this.  Spain generally uses manchego which is great because I love it.