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

Are you guys related? No...YES!!!! part 2

Oh how I love food. Another place that Chris fell in love with on his last visit was the Barbeque Joint. It is a crazy kind of little place. From what I understand it has the best Carolina BBQ around. Even better than the famed Allen Bros. Knowing this, one would expect that they would have little to offer a veggie like me. Nothing could be further from the truth. Along with their amazing traditional southern foods and BBQ they have a gourmet selection of vegetarian dishes. Weird, right? I usually get their eggplant but they were closing for renevations for a couple of weeks so they were running down the kitchen. I had to make due with their homemade rosemary mac and cheese. It was fantastic. Another night, another set of wonderfully, over full bellies.

Matt and I had decided long before they arrived that we wanted to take them to one of our favorite local eateries, Buns. I'm pretty sure I've posted about Buns before. They use all local ingrediants, bake their buns fresh daily, and have really delicious dipping sauces for their fries. I'm a creature of habit and I always end up getting the veggie burger with goat's cheese and a balsamic reduction. Pretty fancy for a burger joint, huh? I think Matt tried the chicken breast this time which we've heard was really good. It didn't disappoint. Do I need to addthat we went home with happily full tummies? I think its a theme for their visit.

I don't want you all thinking that we only ate out during their visit. Michelle and I are very good cooks and we managed to turn out a couple of good meals. We had a large Christmas Eve dinner, consisting of turkey breast, mashed potatoes, candied yams, gravy, and stuffing. It turned out pretty darn awesome, if I do say so myself. Michelle offer to make one of her's and Chris's favorite dinners, tomato and red pepper soup with grilled chesse sandwiches and a carrot salad. I helped by making a rosemary olive oil bread for the sandwiches. The salad was really good. So good that even Matt liked it despite the fact that it was made with ranch dressing and baby carrots. Moe is definitly an excellent cook. For Christmas day Moe and I prepared a buffet for everyone to graze on throughout the day, a tradition stared by my mom, Debbie. There were several kinds of dip and cream cheese spreads, two sweet cream cheese spreads, some cold cuts, a veggie platter, and of course, a cheese array consisting of no less than six kinds of cheese. It was a good day. And in case any of the moms are still unsure, our rag tag group still made it to midnight mass, full tummies or no.

We were sad to see them go. I love having my family around, even my crazy brother ;) teehee. We had a ton of fun while they were here. Even though Chris tried to pretend that he didn't like going shopping with Moe and I. Matt and Chris played a couple of games of Heroscape which Chris, or really the Hulk, won. We watched a couple of movies and took a lot of naps. It was a lovely weekand I wished that it could have been longer.

The night before Thanksgiving and no one was stirring not even the puppy

Its the night before and we have things a rollin.  I baked up the pumpkin this morning but I haven't gotten around to the seeds yet.  I baked the pumpkin pie already and it looks delicious.  I still have to make the apple pie in a little while.  The cheddar cheese ice cream is getting frozen right now.  I tasted teh base though and its amazing.  I love cheese.  I think its going to go wonderfully with the apple pie.  I also already baked the yams so that I only have to mix them up tomorrow when its their time.  Zelda has been lending me her support all day by sleeping for most of it.  When we took the turkey out of the fridge it was still frozen so we are doing what Alton Brown suggested and it seems to be working.  I still don't fully trust him but he's on a trial period now.  I'm not really in charge of the turkey though, thats all Matt's work.  I'm just here for moral support.  I think it'll work out just fine.  Its going to be a low stress day tomorrow.  At least thats what we're hoping for.  Hope you all have a great day tomorrow!!!

43 days till Christmas, not that I'm counting

SoI went ahead and decorated the whole spare room for Christmas. Yes, I know that its not even Thanksgiving yet but Christmas decorations are so beautiful. I think its a shame that we only get to see them for a month. Plus, they are helping to encourage me as I dig my heels in and make my Christmas presents. The tight budget this year means everyone is getting lovingly hand made presents. My poor little sewing machine is ready to give up. I've also been playing with paint and yarn and pretty soon I'm going to be drilling holes. Sorry to be cryptic but since my readers are most likely those people who would get a present from me, I don't want to ruin it for y'all. Zelda isn't too happy about my crafting. She wants me to pay more attention to her. When she realizes that I'll be at the machine a while she lays down in her little bed and naps. Like many adolescents, Zelda does a whole lot of sleeping these days.
On the cooking front, Matt and I are working on cutting our budget. This means that we must have less fancy dinners. Not that many extravagant ingredients. I feel like beans are going to become a oft seen dinner companion. Speaking of which, I made beans today. They not only have the benefit of being cheap to make but making them from scratch makes them taste so much better than getting them out of the can. Because we had fresh made beans I made Mexican food for dinner. It has been years and years since I made chile rellenos but I think they came out pretty darn good. Oh! I almost forgot. I made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies this weekend. They were super tasty. I made the pumpkin puree myself with a cute little pumpkin that Matt bought me. I still have more left and he has requested some pumpkin bread.
After a long day of crafting, cooking, and cleaning I need to relax. Thanks to my mother, I cannot sit and watch tv without feeling antsy so I generally have something to do in the evenings. I am currently spending my evening tv moments doing this pattern. I don't know what it is yet but its fun to see it take shape, bit by bit.

Some food pictures

I know, its been a lot of pictures lately. I remembered to finally take all these pictures off of the camera so while I still remember I'm showing you guys. I know I said I cook a lot and here are some of the dishes I've been doing.

This is an FLT (facon, lettuce, and tomato). I believe that the
tomatoes are from our garden and the bread is homemade
rosemary olive oil bread. Yum

This is what Matt calls fancy salad

I made my own pasta

Which made me want to make real fettuccine alfredo, not that cream stuff Americans usually make. This alfredo is only butter and cheese. Oh yeah!

Blueberry bread pudding with a lemon rum sauce. The blueberries were hand picked by Matt and me.

All about Zelda

You would think that not working would leave me lots of time to update the blog. However, I have chosen to clean and cook and nap instead. I have been told that I am sorely lacking in Zelda updates. I have lots to post but I'll start with that. Zelda is now 5 months old. My hands and arms were incredibly thankful that she had stopped biting for a while. Sadly, now that she's teething she has started biting again. *sigh* So I'm working all over again to break her of it. I think its starting to work. Her coat is coming along nicely, her little tail has a line of fur like a long flag. Zelda hasn't been eating much lately because of the whole teething thing. There is supposed to be an all natural version of baby orajel that I can give her but I can't seem to find it. In the mean time Matt figured out that if we give her one of her frozen teething toys to play with for a little while before meals she'll eat more. This past weekend we took her to the Durham dog park for a play date. We joined a meet-up group for owners of dachshunds. It was really cute to see them all playing together. It turns out that Zelda is very submissive. She didn't know what to do with the other dogs but she managed to have every person there rub her belly. Some of them picked her up and gave her kisses as well.
We've signed up for senior puppy classes at the local ASPCA and they start tonight. The first class is just an orientation for the puppy parents so Zelda is hanging out by herself tonight. But starting next week she's going to be socializing and professionally training once a week. They offer lots of different classes there so we'll see how we like this one first and then maybe continue on with some of their more advanced classes.
As I said in the beginning I've been doing a lot of cooking/baking lately. I've been making my own pizza. I started off just using the premade dough from Trader Joes but I decided to go more adventurous and make my own. Matt will tell you it wasn't the best consistancy but the flavor was fantastic. So I need to work on that. I want to experiment with some other toppings as well. I've been making BLTs too. Or FLTs for me. We used up the last of our home grown tomatoes so I'm back to using bought ones. I am making my own bread to make the sandwhiches, Matt loves the rosemary olive oil bread. I think he's right it goes really well with the other flavors. I've been making these restaurant quality salads too. Matt gets chicken with his, I get blue cheese, mmm cheese. I've been experimenting with that too. I think so far the best chicken I made was the tequila lime one. I make nachoes for us sometimes. I've been making the beans from scratch because not only is it like 50x cheaper that way, its also 50x better tasting. I'm making my own pasta this week too. Tomorrow actually. I'm kind of nervous but the internet and Nigella Lawson tell me that its no big deal. So I'm going for it. I'll let you know how it comes out. Last night's dinner was pumpkin pancakes with (f/b)acon and an egg scramble with sauteed mushrooms, onions and tomatoes. Pumpkin pancakes are one of the best things ever invented.
On the baking front, I've been into cakes lately. A couple of week's ago I made a modified version of Nigella's quadruple chocolate cake. Tasty. Last week I went with a chocolate stout cake and homemade frosting. Also delicious. Today I'm going to make what I'm calling a strawberry lemonade cake. Its going to be a twist on a recipe that my Tia Joann gave me a while ago. The regular cake is phenomenal so I'm hoping this will be too. You're probably thinking, "maybe you should be eating all those sweets" and you're probably right. So to keep that from happening Steph and I have started a weekly baking exchange. That way we don't have too much to eat. Steph has recently taken up baking in an attempt not to bug Linda while she's studying. The cookies she gave us last week were amazing so I fully encourage the new hobby. I'll try and do a craft update next time but I want to eat my lunch (leftovers, yum!) I'll post pictures too once I get my cord from upstairs, the layer of the beast.

We're almost there!

As I must these days, I'll start with a Zelda update. She gets her final parvo shot this weekend. That means that her exile from the outdoors and other dogs is almost over. YAY!!! This also means that we will be able to start taking her on walks. I've convinced myself that this will cut down on a lot of her biting Matt and I. She does it the most when she gets really excited and playful. If she's exhausted from walking she won't get like that, plus she gets more exercise than we can give her right now. I don't know if I mentioned it before but the medicine the vet gave her did it's job and her poop is now lovely and firm. Just what you wanted to know. She does this silly little dance when its feeding time that Matt just loves. I'm going to have to get a video of it this weekend because it is pretty cute.
Steph is out of town this week for a Ladies Family Weekend. Linda couldn't go because she started her new grad program this week (go Linda!). So we invited her over to watch So You Think You Can Dance. Its our favorite show, this also includes Matt who has learned quite a bit about critiqueing dances now. To go along with the show I made a delicious blueberry bread pudding with brown sugar rum sauce. It was divine. Linda brought some vanilla ice cream to go with it. mmmm, I love dessert. We had a great time and she might be joining us for the results show tonight if she gets all her work done. If you haven't seen the show let me break it down for you. Its kind of like American Idol, except with dancers, and way better. You can only do so much with singing but dancing can be completely different from one dance to the next. They start off with twenty people-- ten guys, ten girls. Each week they're assigned a random dance style and they get five hours with a choreographer that shows them what they'll be doing. Its pretty amazing. My favorite girl got voted off last week which was really sad but her partner, Brandon, is still on and going strong. Let me direct you to some of the dances from this season. Brandon/Janette tango (hot!!) Brandon/Janette jazz (seriously awsome) and let me warn you about this last one, it made everyone on the show cry, I cried, Jacob cried, its very touching and beautiful Ade/Melissa contemporary piece about breast cancer. Don't say I didn't warn you (I'm getting a little misty thinking about it).
I have two weeks of work left which is insane. Looking for a job sucks, especially in this economy. Nobody is hiring. Oh well, maybe I'll just get started on my Esty.com career sooner than I had dreamed of.

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.