Finals week and onward

Well, pictures are still more or less broken. I know what’s wrong, I just haven’t had the time to fix it.

I’m going to just wait it out until after finals week is over. That means no update today or Friday. However, by the end of Spring Break I will have the site completely fixed up, including the food tab.

Updates lined up:

• Latkes (potato pancakes).
• Pudding injected, glazed banana muffins.
• Biscuits.

I promise I haven’t forgotten you Internet, it’s just that I accidentally broke the site during maybe the worst possible week.

Tags: College, Personal, Web

Gallery Update: Garlic and onion Bagels

Poppy seeds get everywhere, by the way.

You know, for this being a bread that was originally based on making bread there is not a lot of bread here. In fact, this is only the second gallery update dealing with bread, the first being Focaccia Pizza. Bagels are, in case you’ve never had one, delicious. They are my favorite ring-shaped food. Why I have waited this long to make them is a mystery to me.

Anyway, about the bagels. They’re easy to make. If you can make yeast bread you can make bagels. All you have to do is send them through some boiling water before you bake them. Simple work.

It should be clear to anyone who reads regularly (and apparently about 30 of you do) that I can’t be satisfied with simple things. Clearly I had to make garlic and onion bagels, not just plain white bread bagels. That’s boring and easy. I would recommend starting with the boring and easy, because I think I just get lucky most of the time. Adding the garlic is simple enough; just add garlic. The onion is a different story though.

I basically pulped the onion by sending it through a fine grater. The nice thing is that the onion doesn’t grate into strips. It just sort of turns to pulp. (That’s good. We want that.) To get rid of the excess juice I put the pulp in some paper towels and gave it a good squeeze until all I had was onion bits.

If you have never made bagels and are looking for some sort of bread to make, I would suggest it. The recipe posted over in the Food tab is just a basic recipe. Feel free to send me pictures of variations you make.

Tags: Food, Gallery

(Baked) Corn dogs

Honestly, just fry them.

I improvised by just baking the corn dogs on a baking sheet. What resulted was, as anticipated, cornbread coated hot dogs. They were not really corn dogs. Honestly I would rather have chopped the hot dogs up and tossed them into the cornbread, but for an experiment they weren’t too bad. Next time  I will make sure that I have enough oil.

In other news, my plans for the site are moving slowly but surely. Hopefully by the end of my spring break I will have redone the Food page as well as the way posts show up here on the front page. Ideally there will be description of what was made (like the one you just read) followed by a continued link. Clicking the post title or the continued link will take you off to the full post, displaying the recipe and possibly gallery as well. I’m not sure yet.

Finals week is fast approaching though. School takes priority.

Tags: Dinner, Food, Gallery, Web

Pan-fried chicken and mashed potatoes

I don't recommend using a bowl with meals that must be cut.

I’m sorry that this update is a day late. Yesterday was particularly busy, studying for two midterms today. Anyway, this is the post that should have gone up yesterday.

I had some chicken breast sitting in the freezer slowly working their way toward a freezer burn last week, as well as half a dozen potatoes that were going to start sprouting soon. The logical thing to do was to make chicken and mashed potatoes. Oddly enough I had never made mashed potatoes before.

In the end this was a shockingly simple yet tasty meal. The key was the excessive amount of herbs I used on both the chicken and the potatoes. The chicken was just a little spicy with some chipotle and Caribbean jerk seasoning. The mashed potatoes had some of the skins left in as well as parsley, garlic and oregano added.

Boiling the potatoes was the most time consuming part of the meal, but it isn’t exactly difficult. You really just boil them until you can split them with a fork. It worked out pretty well, as it was both cheap and filling.

On a related note, the chicken was wonderful the next day. I sliced it thin and put it on a sandwich with some provolone and chipotle ranch dressing. It was be even better over a spinach salad though. make extra chicken and use the leftovers the next day. No reason to waste good chicken.

Tags: Dinner, Food, Gallery

Gallery Update: Oreo Truffles

For Valentine’s Day I made Oreo Truffles. I have made chocolates with my mom in the past over Christmas, but before this I had never attempted to make chocolates myself.

Unfortunately I did not have some of the nicer kitchen supplies that my mom has back home, such as a double boiler or a dipping spoon. I also had to sneak around a bit, as I didn’t actually want anyone to know that I was making any chocolates before I was done, Devin. It would be annoying if they were found half done and I had to explain what exactly I was making and why no, you can’t have any yet. Really ruins the surprise. Luckily the truffles are actually fairly quick. They’re really no more complex than Oreos and cream cheese frozen and dunked in liquid chocolate.

They came out tasting as expected; chocolate covered Oreos. I think they went over pretty well. Had I not hid them I’m sure they would be long gone by now.

I imagine after how well this chocolate making went I will probably try something similar again. Thanks to Amanda for finding the recipe I based mine off of. This is a fairly short update, but I have a few backed up updates from last week that didn’t go up. Last week was midterms, so I couldn’t find the time to post. I have some corn dogs and corned beef hash as well as some non-food related updates coming. One on organization and another on exercise. Hope your Valentine’s days went well. Mine was pretty satisfying, giant party that happened to find my apartment aside.

Tags: Chocolate, Food, Gallery, Holidays

Gallery Update: Seven Fruit Smoothie

After the Goetta Hobo sandwich and a solid week of midterms I really just wanted to make something simple. My brother was down here for the weekend, Devin and Jake were hanging around, and all of my meats were frozen. I had picked up some fat-free, vanilla yogurt and frozen mixed berries for this specific purpose, so smoothies seemed like a pretty good idea.

The smoothie made enough for four people to have a decent 3/4 a glass. Smoothies are, thankfully, extremely simple. So simple in fact that I did not bother to take down measurements, so the recipe over at the gallery has estimations for measurements. It is possible to just add more frozen things, juice or yogurt to the mix as well, so it’s really just a matter of trial and error.

I know that my mom will add protein powder and things to her smoothies, and they seem to still be pretty darn good. Just something to keep in mind.

Expect a Valentine’s Day update and maybe one more during the week here.

Edit: Thank you, Devin. There is orange juice in the smoothie. In fact, it’s the base.

Edit: Outlaw is an internet hate machine.

Tags: College, Drinks, Food, Gallery

Gallery Update: Goetta Hobo sandwich

Great name, right? Anyway, if you are like me and from Cincinnati, OH, which I bet many of you are not, then you probably know what goetta is. If not you are seriously missing out. Goetta is a German peasant  dish that apparently doesn’t really exist outside of Cincinnati anywhere. I asked people about it in Munich, Germany and they looked at me like I was crazy.

Well, as it turns out, goetta is about the best breakfast meat out there. Imagine sausage with oats. It has a very distinctive flavor and is fairly filling. Egg in the (a) basket, more entertainingly known as Hobo Toast, is a little more widely known than goetta. It is also shockingly easy to make, so long as you understand how you like your eggs and how to get them that way. Trial and error is probably the best way to go about this, but a knife to stab with and low heat will work just as well. It’s hard to cook a yolk once it’s running all over your plate (or chin).

The hobo toast is probably nothing new to most of you. I imagine in fact that the goetta though is a wholly new concept. Maybe a scary one. I personally think that ground, seasoned meat and oats sounds wonderful. I have also had the benefit of actually eating it. If it hasn’t been made abundantly clear yet, I am not a picky eater.

I also feel obligated to mention that this is not exactly a light sandwich in terms of grease or how filling it is. Goetta and eggs are very filling. To be honest, making a sandwich out of this dish is really just an attempt to make it more portable. As you can see by the yolk all over my plate, I more or less failed. Ah well. The point of cooking for yourself is to make something that is tasty.

When you’re cooking for guests or for customers, then maybe it is time to learn how to make things look good. Cooking for your friends in college does not count as a situation that would require extremely pretty food, by the way. Just a reminder for the people I regularly cook for.

I digress. If you are going to venture into the world of hobo sandwiches, please remember to cook your goetta all the way through and not to burn the egg. A burnt egg is a terrible waste of breakfast.

P.s.: I justified all of the updates, because I think I like them better that way. Thoughts? concerns?

Tags: Breakfast, Food, Gallery

Spicy Chicken Stew

So last night at about 6 p.m. I decided that maybe it was time to make dinner. I had bow-tie pasta, chicken thighs and a variety of spices and vegetables on hand. The logical food to make was of course stew. If you’re going to make stew you might as well make cornbread as well.

I decided to make a spicy stew, using Jamaican jerk seasoning, chipotle and cajun seasoning for spice. I also added seasoning salt, a bay leaf, garlic powder and some black pepper. The spices gave the stew a nice heat. Not so spicy that it was unpleasant. Even Tim didn’t seem to mind the heat. Even with good spices, stew is nothing without vegetables. I added a little of everything I had on hand: potatoes, carrots, onion and celery.

The cornbread was simple enough. I prepared a box worth of jiffy cornbread to the recipe. Well, I baked it to the recipe. I added honey, butter, chipotle, a dash of seasoning salt and cajun seasoning. The result was a very sweet, somewhat hot cornbread. Beware though, the honey will make the muffins extra sticky. Prepare accordingly.

In the end I’m very pleased with how this stew came out. It seems to be one of those dishes (like red beans and rice) that is much better if you save it for the next day. Don’t misunderstand though. It was great to eat last night, but the little bit of leftovers I had today were even better.

The recipe made enough to give four people second helpings. Were I to do anything different I would use chicken breast instead of chicken thigh — which were very low quality — and start the cornbread much earlier. As it turned out everyone was well into their first bowl by the time the cornbread was done. This recipe was a spur-of-the-moment kind of thing, so if you make it please drop me a comment and let me know how it comes out.

Tags: Cajun, Dinner, Food, Gallery

Gallery Update: French Toast

Another gallery update, as well as a few fairly substantial changes to how the site operates. The food page is now more of a gallery hub. That may change in the future, but for now this is how things are going to be.

I actually like the way that the galleries are working. I have to rework the coding for the actual food page a bit though. Right now it’s just basic tables. A click on the picture will take you to a nice thumbnail gallery of the food as well as the recipe used to create it. Feel free to use and abuse that. If you click on any of the thumbnail pictures a sort of slideshow will pop up. If you click away it will disappear.

For now the only foods in the gallery are the red beans and rice, french toast and focaccia bread pizza. The actual focaccia bread gallery page (and recipe) aren’t quite finished yet. You can expect that to be done by the end of the week, if not sooner.

Please do let me know what you think of how I have things set up. Just because I like it doesn’t make it any good. If the site is hard to navigate or doesn’t display properly on one particular browser, then I have not done my job well enough. For the record, I have tested the site in firefox and seen it in Safari and IE. The colors appear to be off in Safari and the font sizes in IE. Otherwise I have not come across any issues yet.

Tags: Breakfast, Food, Gallery

Gallery Update: Red Beans

Just a quick update: I have completed my first gallery for the site.
You can hop over to the Food tab and look under sub-pages for now. Red Beans and Rice, to be specific. I am devising a better way to manage the galleries, but for now this will have to do. I imagine that I will have a gallery page up soon. Expect another update within the next few hours.

I will probably post my focaccia bread as both a gallery and a recipe as well as the french bread that I made for brunch over the weekend. Then again, I don’t know that brunch can be served at 2 p.m., even if it is french toast. Oh well. We’re not here to argue the definition of food terms. Yet.

Tags: Cajun, Dinner, Food, Gallery