Quick Fix: Peanut butter smoothie

It tasted like peanut butter and bananas

All right. Images are working again, the food page is almost finished, and I’m going to be reformatting old updates retroactively over the next couple of weeks. The way things will work is pretty simple. Instead of having two separate articles for each thing I make (a post on the front page and a food page) there will just be a link at the bottom of each post. Clicking on that will send you over to the fill post, which will contain all of the extra content that would otherwise appear on the food page. That would include the ingredients list and the recipe, more or less.

About this peanut butter smoothie. So far not one person I have described it to seems to think that it is a good idea, which I can understand. Mixing orange juice, peanut butter, strawberries and bananas sounds a little strange. It tastes a little strange too, but in a good way. I think.

The story behind it is pretty simple; I was hungry and thirsty and didn’t have anything frozen to thicken up a smoothie. The next logical choice was peanut butter. The only problem was that I had all of my fruit in the blender already and it was soaking in orange juice. There is no going back once there is orange juice in the blender.

As soon as the peanut butter was in the blender I was fairly positive that this was going to be a tragedy. Well, I probably wouldn’t be blogging about it if it was. The smoothie turned out extremely thick due to the peanut butter. It also ended up tasting like bananas dipped in peanut butter, which was actually very good. In fact, if you’ve never had bananas dipped in peanut butter I highly recommend it.

If in the future you find yourself with a bowl of fruit and nothing frozen to thicken up a smoothie, consider the stranger things in your pantry. Like peanut butter.

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Tags: Drinks, Food

Quick fix: Hard-boiled egg bagel

Hard-boiled eggs on a bagel. With cheese.

Hard-boiled eggs are delightfully simple. All you really need to hard-boil an egg is about 15 minutes, some boiling water and an egg. They are also fairly filling and can be utilized in a number of dishes such as deviled eggs and egg salad.

If you happen to be pressed for time or don’t have/like mayonnaise, just slice the egg thin and put it on some sort of bread. Maybe something like…leftover bagels. The egg bagels (Eggels?) to the right are simple; a cut and toasted bagel with a piece of cheese, one sliced, hard-boiled egg and some salt and pepper.

They make for a fairly substantial lunch and are easy. Plus you can add just about anything you want. A slice of tomato, light mayonnaise and some spinach would be good. Add a piece of goetta or bacon and you have a breakfast sandwich. Some chipotle ranch dressing and leftover chicken breast, maybe. The world is your oyster. Make a seafood bagel.

If you have never made a hard-boiled egg, fear not. I have. A hard-boiled egg will keep for a while, so you might as well make a few. Set your egg(s), shell intact, in a pot with at least enough water to cover them. Turn the stove on and get the pot up to a nice rolling boil. Depending on how fast your stove is it should take about 10 minutes (or a little less) of boiling to cook the egg through. They will be very, very hot.

The egg is less likely to crack due to sudden temperature change if you have it in the pot as it starts to boil. Adding an egg to a pot of boiling water can result in cracking and an annoying mess.

Set the eggs aside until they cool and put them back in the fridge until you need them. If you’re into instant gratification and want your egg now, put it in a bowl of cold water in the freezer for a few minutes.

There are a few ways to approach cracking a hard-boiled egg. If you don’t care whether or not it stays intact, just crack and peel. My personal favorite is to grip the egg in one hand to make a fist, then punching my open palm. The egg will crack (or squash if you use too much force) and you’ll probably feel a little cooler. Assuming you do care about the look of the egg, a little more care would be wise.  There will be a space of air at the bottom of the egg called an air cell. That is a good place to start if you’re not used to peeling an egg. Crack that and do your best to peel the entire shell away with the thin white skin that will be attached to the shell.

Slicing an egg is fairly simple. I find it’s best to take a very sharp paring knife and just press it through the egg. Be careful not to press it through your finger as well. A cutting board would be ideal. The yoke will provide some resistance, but that shouldn’t cause too much trouble.

Edit:

(The Real) Chris is right. Adding a little salt to the water as you boil it will make peeling the egg easier. Also older eggs are apparently easier to peel (as opposed to farm-fresh).

Tags: Food, Lunch, Web

Devin’s Red Velvet Cake Bites

A couple of weeks ago Devin went home. She promised that she would have some sort of surprise when she got back. The next day she was telling me that her hands were all red. I was, understandably, confused as to what in the world she could be making.

When she got back I was given a ball of chocolate and told to just eat it. Not one to turn down food, I of course did. It turns out she made chocolate truffles, or “cake bites” filled with red velvet cake. I love red velvet cake.

She had a few of the same problems I did when I made my Oreo truffles a few weeks back. Specifically, keeping the center cold and the chocolate hot. I made a second batch of Oreo truffles a week after I made my first batch. I took them out of the freezer five at a time instead of all at once, which kept the centers nice and solid. Devin and I both had to deal with horrible melting balls our first time around.

“My first batch that I started dipping was a small disaster and turned out pretty ugly looking. I had problems with the temperature of the cake; they weren’t cold enough. So even before half-way through the batch was dipped the cake started to get room temperature and began crumbling a little bit in the chocolate…”

Double boilers are a wonderful way to melt chocolate, sure. The problem is keeping the chocolate molten enough that it coats evenly but not so hot that it burns and double boilers use indirect heat. The chocolate (or cheese) sit about a pot of boiling water, meaning that the steam does all the work. It takes a bit of time for the water to get up to a high enough temperature to create steam. At the same time it is difficult to get the chocolate away from the heat, as the steam is going to keep rising for a while after the stove is turned off.

If the chocolate starts to burn your best bet is to just start over. Devin has more experience with chocolate than I do, so her chocolate came out much nicer than mine. The trick I learned is to just watch the chocolate. If it starts to get a bit lumpy as it dries or doesn’t stir smooth in the double boiler, get some heat back under it until it does. At the same time though the chocolate should not be so hot that it scalds you if you dip your finger in it.

Go take a look at Devin’s blog and give her cake bites a try. Devin has a better grasp of sweet treats than I do, so I’m thinking about outsourcing the chocolate making to her.

Tags: Chocolate, Food

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

Smoked Sausage and Spaghetti

Smoked sausage and spaghetti

For the last several days I have been making some modifications to the site. A few one them are obvious, like the random gallery and the little ad block on the right. A few changes have more to do with streamlining and formatting and are less obvious. Well, because I have spent more time on the site than cooking I don’t have any gallery or recipe today. Instead I have a simple meal suggestion.

Pasta is almost as easy as it gets when it comes to feeding yourself in college. It’s fairly filling and about as easy as boiling water. The problem is that it gets monotonous. Unless you happen to be Josh. It’s easy enough to add some variety to spaghetti and pasta sauce. Meat is probably the most obvious route. Whatever you happen to have in the freezer, 1lb of smoked sausage or a few chicken breasts, will go well with pasta.

Assuming that your meat of choice is not frozen, cut it into bite-size pieces and cook them however you see fit. I usually put either chicken or sausage with some spices in a skillet with some oil. In fact, this chicken will work just fine. Be sure that the meat is cooked through to your satisfaction before you go eating it though. While the meat is cooking get the water for the pasta boiling and the sauce warming in a saucepan. Once the meat is done just drain the oil and put the meat in the sauce with anything else you might want over spaghetti. Maybe some finely chopped onions or shredded cheese.

Different meats or vegetables added to pasta changes the flavor and provided some variety, which is apparently the spice of life. It’s also a good way to use up leftovers.

Tags: College, Dinner, Food, Web

(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

Sometimes Ease trumps Creativity

Sometimes a full meal takes too long

Four days a week, Monday through Thursday, Jake and I go to the gym at 9 a.m. to lift weights. We have been doing it long enough now that it has become habit. The day doesn’t quite feel right if I miss a day. When I get back at 10 a.m. I generally check the news and some other RSS feeds while eating breakfast and then take a shower.

The past few weeks I have been eating instant oatmeal almost every morning. It’s fairly quick and tasty, but no matter what you add to something like oatmeal it’s going to get boring after a while. Today instead of a bowl of cereal or some oatmeal I had a single large orange. Citrus fruits are some of my personal favorites. I have a bag of maybe 8 oranges in my refrigerator right now, and I am certain that I will eat all of them before they go bad. The bananas, however, will be going to some banana bread later tonight.

Anyway, there is a benefit to keeping breakfast simple. When I make oatmeal I have to keep an eye on how much of anything I’m using and how long it goes in the microwave. Considering I bake bread and make dishes that have to stew for hours, you would think that a few minutes of work every day would not bother me. I think it’s the repetition. I just wanted something different. Something easier. Fruit is perfect.

Now, I am certain that there are plenty of people out there who do not believe that oranges are easy. They are probably the same people who scape off all of the pith. (The white stuff.) The pith is good for you, stop doing that. It has fiber. Anyway, a good sized fruit such as an apple or an orange is plenty filling. I can go until lunch easy with an orange.

Granted, there are easier fruits to deal with. Bananas and apples are about as easy as it gets when it comes to fruit. Incidentally, I am also opposed to peeling the skin off of apples, pesticides be damned. Wash them. If I had remembered to buy any, this post would probably be about grapefruit. Another of my personal favorite breakfast fruits.

I will still be eating oatmeal and cereal most days, but sometimes a good piece of fruit is plenty.

Tags: Breakfast, College, Food, Personal, Time

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