Category Archives: cooking

This week FoodDay’s cover story is about making pretty cakes. They recruited a couple of pastry chefs, a floral designer, an artist and a couple of small children to remodel a frozen food section cake. The idea is for the busy person to have a simple way to make a pretty cake. They include a cake recipe as well, for when you’re feeling extra ambitious.

I can’t decide whether I should save this or not. I save something out of the food sections of both papers pretty much every week. Sometimes I save the entire section. I have a drawer in the laundry room and when it’s bursting, I go through and wonder why I keep saving all these things. I toss a bunch but I always refile a bunch because I know I still want to make them. Back in the drawer they go.

I’m not sure about the cake thing. I rarely make cakes. If I’m going to bake I’d usually rather make a pie. Or I make some chocolately thing for Bob.

But these cakes are so pretty. I could bring one to a party and everyone would be impressed at what a pretty cake I made. But I never go to parties. And if I do, I don’t always have time to make something and I get irritated with Bob if he volunteers me.

But they look so good. Might as well keep it for now.

Also an article about mangoes. My sister has a terrible allergy to mangoes. She can’t even think about them. Hopefully, she isn’t reading this because her eyes might swell shut. For years and years I avoided mangoes because of this however I am not allergic and don’t share a kitchen with her and it’s not like she even knows what I eat or would care if she did.

Last year I ate some mango sorbet and then I bought a mango at the grocery store and turns out: mangoes are yummy. I like mangoes. (Family in-joke here: Mongo like candy.) I do not like papayas. I think they smell like barf. Not sure where I was going with that. Better see if there are any other articles I need to save.

Yesterday’s FoodDay had a feature on people describing their favorite kitchen tool.

The Microplane grater is a big favorite. I love mine too, but honestly, how often do you need citrus zest? We also use ours for parmesan cheese but still, I don’t use it enough to call it my favorite. Several people mentioned items I have, but hardly ever use like a silicone mat which I am going to put into more regular rotation.

My favorite kitchen tool is my silicone spatula. I use it for everything. Scraping the last of the batter from the mixing bowl, stirring the vegetables in the saute pan, finishing off the yogurt in the big carton. I have the old school plastic spatulas too, in several sizes and depending on the job, those get used a lot too.

But I love the silicone one because you can use it for hot stuff without fear of it melting.

My other favorite kitchen tool is my chef’s knife but it desperately needs a trip to the sharpener. I’ve been meaning to do this for about 2 years now and never seem to remember to bring it with me to work. Or I do remember it (carefully wrapped in a towel and stuffed in the bottom of my bag) and then I don’t have time to get to the place. Then I have to take it back home because what if I need it?

I bought a Santuko last November when Mom and Erin were coming for Thanksgiving because I figured with that many cooks, we’d better have plenty of good knives. I like it a lot too but the chef’s is my favorite.

Bob drives me crazy when I find him chopping carrots with a paring knife or maybe the boning knife that came with our woodblock set of knives that we got when we got married. When I explain how much better it would be to use the chef’s knife, he thinks I’m being bossy and trying to make him do it my way.

Excellent long weekend. Today was a cooking day and I made my super gumbo recipe. The one that takes half the day. It’s ready now, and smells too good. I just have to wait until half time … or do they call it something else in basketball? I also made cornbread. Yesterday I made cookies so I can have homebaked in my lunch and on Friday I make cream cheese brownies and a pot of soup. I’m done with cooking for at least a day or two. I finally upgraded my system software so I’m running 10.3.4 and I got the security patch. I also upgraded my stuffit and I read the ebook I bought about customizing Panther or Tiger or Wildcat or whatever the bitchin name of my OS is. Bob and I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in the theater — liked it a lot, didn’t love it and Phonebooth on DVD — it was fun but, um, what was the bad guy’s motivation again? We also got the yard cleaned up and mowed and weed-eated (thanks mostly to Bob) and I caught up on some odds and ends like writing a snail mail to Kim and cleaning out a couple of cupboards. And I read a story by Dave Eggers about climbing Kilimanjaro and I will state yet again, with great confidence, that I never want to take up mountain climbing. It’s such a relief to not have that on the list.

You can’t reheat refried beans in the microwave. It doesn’t work. I try all kinds of tricks like spreading them really thin on the tortilla — but by the time you get them hot enough through and through (you know, not cold in the middle) the tortilla is tough and chewy in the parts where it’s not hard and crispy. I’ve also tried heating them in the plastic container I’ve stored them in (since they are leftovers) and by the time you get them hot enough the plastic container become scarily soft and bendy and is no doubt leaching carcinogenic plastic into your food. Also the beans pop and spray making crusty bits all over the inside that smell like the food center at a mini-mart and are really gross. Generally, I will just go ahead and use a pan on the stovetop but it’s so tempting to keep it easy — I think maybe this time the microwave won’t be so bad.

For Valentine’s Day I made Bob triple chocolate brownies with a recipe from a magazine. I’ve never made this recipe before and it said to be careful not to overbake so I guess I underbaked because the resulting treats were like chocolate sludge and not sliceable. They tasted great. Now that they’ve been in the fridge you can sort of cut a wedge off.

I also made a roast chicken (which I have never done before) and I used three different recipes for reference. One recipe had photos and suggested trussing the bird using string. I didn’t have any string. We have twine for the garden and that didn’t seem appropriate so I asked my sister if I could use dental floss and if it would be okay if the floss was mint flavored because that was all we had. She said it sounded pretty Bridget Jones.

This week I had a food magazine with a bunch of recipes for carrots. I like carrots but have never made a recipe that was only carrots. I like carrot sticks, or carrots in things, but not a whole dish with just carrots. This whole line of thinking made me remember when I lived in the dorms at UCSB they always had this gigantic dish of carrot salad. I’m not sure what was in it but it looked like just shredded carrots and raisins. At every lunch and every dinner there was always about 5 pounds of this salad and it didn’t look like people were gobbling it up and I don’t think I ever even tried it. I’m wondering if this was the same 5 pounds of salad my entire freshman year.

I was the total domestic queen today — where’s my blue ribbon? I wrote in the morning and then did the 30 minute gardener routine and then I spent hours on kitchen projects. I cleaned out the various spices and made a Penzey’s list. I also cleaned out the cupboards and threw out old stuff. I processed the last of my tomatoes into two big jugs of pasta sauce. I made a big bucket of cran-applesauce and stuck half in the freezer. I made an apple pie and tried a new crust recipe and still came out with crumbling pastry. I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. I also cleaned out the fridge and made a jar of salsa verde with the tomatillos. I’ve used my extra hour well.

Earlier this week I made some fabulous pizza sauce. I roasted a huge tray of tomatoes along with a big red onion and about 8 cloves of garlic. I ground the whole thing up in the food processor and then ran it through the ricer. That ricer is handy — I need to find a better place to put it so I can grab it more often. When I was ready to make my pizza I put the sauce in a pan and added several teaspoons of Penzey’s pizza spice and let the thing cook down for over an hour. For the crust I used the Cook’s Illustrated recipe for deep dish — the one with a potato. And for my topping I roasted a bunch of squash and zucchini with Italian spices and then stirred in some marinated artichoke hearts – spread that on the pizza and sprinkled the whole thing with Parmesan cheese. Came out excellent.