More food

I have continued my cooking quest from earlier by blowing through several food blogs in search of great recipes. I'm really it itching to try them out. I made a so-so spinach and cheese strata on last Tuesday that left me a little sad. It had sounded so delicious, instead it was kind of bland. You know when Matt says it's bland, it must be pretty bad *wink*. I think if I were to make it again I would cut the recipe in half, add a lot of basil and something more substantial like mushrooms and onions. Spinach just didn't really give off any flavor. I also made some really tasty chocolate chip cookies. I wasn't big on the texture, these were a little too flat and crispy for me, but the flavor was wonderful. The recipe called for a lot more vanilla than I'm used to seeing in a chocolate chip cookie recipe and I used dark chocolate chips instead of regular ones. I continued my new adventures in food with candied grapefruit peel. Surprisingly Matt really like them. I had to cut the peel very thin to get as much of the pith off as possible since that's where a lot of the bitterness comes from. I can tell I've gotten Matt caught up in the cooking too. After he finished cleaning the kitchen he started trying to figure out if we could do the same with orange peels(we can). He now also really wants me to do some lemon peels.
That stuff was all last week (week before?) and vie done some more cooking since then. My friend Sarah gave me a recipe for a panzanella caprese salad. Can I just say that caprese salad is one of my most favorite things as it is but adding toasted bread to it just makes it divine. I made it for Matt's coworker's going away party and it was a big hit. I also made the most disappointing cheesecake of my life. Before this I thought that I had a really amazing recipe, and I do but that is only half the story. When I cook my cheesecake I usually put the pan in a roasting pan of water. I learned the trick from Alton Brown which makes up for the worst cookie recipe I've ever used that is also his. It helps the cheesecake cook more evenly and allows it too heat up/cool off much more slowly. I've never made one without doing that and I decided that I was going to forgo it this time. Big mistake. The darn thing was burn-y around the edges, fell in the middle, and the texture was off. It still tasted fine but, it was not the divine thing I'm used to. Ah well, you live you learn. It also brings me to my next subject.
The reason that I didn't want to do the roasting pan of water is that it would be a huge pain to try and lift it would have been an awful idea. I fell about two weeks ago while stepping over the the doggy door at the top of the stairs. Not graceful but then I rarely am. We were pretty sure that I sprained my wrist but it wasn't really feeling better so Matt made me tell the doctor about it. She made me get an x-ray which didn't show any break. However, she tells me that it's quite possible that my wrist is broken because the bone that she was trying to look at is hard to see breaks in. So I'm too keep wrist wrapped and if it still hurts in two-ish weeks it still hurts I have to go to a bone doctor. At this point the pain keeps getting worse so Matt and I are pretty sure it's broken. So, as my dear friend Linda said, perhaps I should not try making bread by hand until we know for sure.

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One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating. ~Luciano Pavarotti

I've been on a cooking kick lately. I am currently scouring the internet and all my recipe books in search of tasty yet cheaply made meals. Sadly, so many of the ones I have found are either amazing and expensive or blah and cheap. Thankfully that isn't true about all of them. There are so many food blogs out there these days and some of them are quite good but the very best of the bunch is smitten kitchen. Oh how I love it. I've read it for a while but I decided just the other day that I was going to start putting her ideas to work. What got me was this recipe she had for tomato pie. Which is, apparently, a southern dish. I'd never even heard of it before but I am so glad that I have. She absolutely raved about it and her enthusiasm rubbed off on me and I decided to jump off my week of exciting new cooking with it. Really, at $3 for the tomatoes and $1 for corn, it seemed like a win/win situation. I don't even know if I can tell you how amazing it was. Really. That good. It all sounds so simple a little tomato, a little corn, a little cheese, all in a biscuit crust. But as with so many good recipes, it is way more than the sum of its parts. Next time I make it I'm going to put more basil and a little more mayo with a lot more lemon juice but other than that, fabulous. I'm so happy that I only had to share it with Matt because it means that I have leftovers for lunch today. I think lunch is going to come early today. I didn't take any pictures because her pictures where so much prettier, mine looked the same only messier. If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them. mmm, tomato pie