NaNoBlogMo 30 - In Summary

Welp, I did it. This entry marks 30 entry for the 30 days in November (not counting the short entry about the name of my project). After this post, my self-imposed NaNoBlogMo challenge is complete.

I couldn't decide what I wanted my last entry to be about. I thought about doing some leftover bits that I had to talk about that didn't seem worth a full entry. I thought about talking about projects that I am currently working on. I thought about talking about upcoming stuff. So, in summary, I think I am going to do a little bit of all of that. Coherence be damned.

Here is a picture showing all my current knitting projects. Or at least all the ones that I could think of/find. Going clockwise starting from the top left we have the back of the body for my first attempt at knitted chainmail, a lengthwise knit scarf in a pattern called Henry made with a lovely baby camel blend yarn, my Pippin scarf (which I am thinking might be a bit too bright, but I'm ignoring that voice and keeping on with the knititng), and a simple garter stitch scarf with Homespun on my lightup needles that I started while watching a movie with friends and continued knitting since the lightup needles were helpful during the power outage.

For Thanksgiving, I made an apple pie. I wanted to try something a little bit different. I did my usual crust, tossed the apples in my usual dry mix (sugar/cornstarch/spices), but then before I did my lattice top I poured a bit of caramel sauce over the filling. Not sure how much of a difference it made, but the results were tasty.

On the improv front, Sea Tea is doing great. My teammates won the most recent improv cagematch, we have another monthly show at City Steam Brewery on December 11th (hosted by the fabulous Kate), we got our cast picture framed and hung on the wall of the comedy club (which we've been looking forward to forever), we just started some more long form classes with a pretty talented comedian/writer/actress as our teacher, and I will be making my City Steam hosting debut in January. Keep you eyes on THIS page for news about upcoming shows!

My friend Emily sent me these lovely pictures a few days ago. This scarf is one of the first 5 I ever made. I remember picking out yarn in the tiny yarn shop near my college before I even knew how to knit, planning out my first projects. I thought this warm orange color would be perfect for Emily and her sunny smile. Its been so long since I knit this that I can't really remember much, other than that this was made back when I used to wear each scarf I knitted out once when it was done, because I was so excited it was done.

So there are my leftover bits and bobs. I suppose I should be all reflective on this last month or something. Honestly, a huge part of me is going to be glad its done. I don't have too much free time to begin with, so giving myself a daily assignment was a bit much. I think my fledgling gym habit might have suffered a bit this month. And posting has given me another excuse to hide from my very sad (and full) inbox.

On the whole, though, I'm glad I did it. I set a goal for myself and I met it. It has been a great opportunity for me to collect pictures and stories from projects as recent as this weekend and as old as seven years ago. As for the reason I even started this project, to revamp my blogging mojo, whether or not it has worked remains to be seen. I did mention to a friend that I was slightly worried I would be so sick of blogging after this that it would have the opposite effect, but I don't think that will happen. I am again finding myself phrasing in my head the blog post to go with a project while I am still physically working on it. That's probably a good sign. It will probably be most effective if I give myself a new assignment, such as making sure to post at least once a week. I think that might be a schedule I can keep, as long as I keep busy enough with projects to write about. What do you think?

Thank you to everyone that helped, everyone that sent me pictures of old projects, everyone that suggested topics, everyone that has been commenting and reading. I really appreciate it. It helps a lot to know that I'm not just sending these posts out into nothing but that people are reading them. Thanks for coming along for the ride. I hope you'll stick around.

-S

NaNoBlogMo 24 - Pie Vignettes

Happy thanksgiving everyone! Although I wasn't the best at keeping up my blog before this crazy challenge, I did keep taking pictures of every pie I made. So for my thanksgiving entry I figured I would write a few mini-entries in one about three times earlier this year I made pie, with lots of lovely pictures to go along with them.

Cooking With Cori

The weekend of the New Year, my good friend Cori came over and asked me to teach her how to cook a few things. We took a bunch of pictures (partially because I figured I was going to be writing a blog entry about it at the time). For dinner, I showed her how to make my stuffed chicken breast. Or at least one variation of it. It pretty much always involves a mixture of cream cheese, spinach, shredded cheddar and bacon rolled up in flattened chicken breasts. Yum!

The main event was the pie, though. Cori peeled and I sliced, like a well-oiled (if giggly) machine made to create tastiness. Our aim was to make three pies. One for Cori to bring home, one for my parents and one for me to bring to improv rehearsal.

There was enough crust and filing leftover to make one more tiny pie in a little dish. It was until later that my father pointed out to us that we had in fact, made pi pies, which had me dying with geeky laughter. You can see our creations (pre-baked) below. Cori's pie is on the left and for someone doing a lattice-work pie top for the first time I think she did AMAZING.

Fakes-giving Dinners

In March of this year, my mother invited some coworkers over to have a sort of faux-thanksgiving. We tried to go for some good traditional foods to show American culture and all that jazz. I made some creamed spinach that came out mighty tasty. I also made two pies (there was an ungodly amount of food for the 5 of us, so I guess we also showed off good ole' American excessiveness).

I wanted to try making something a little different from my usual apple pie recipe so I made Grandma Ople's Apple Pie from Allrecipes.com. It was ok, but nothing spectacular. I think the weird hardness that the sugar/syrup creates over the top of the pie wasn't really worth it. I might experiment with other apple pie recipes in the future, but I'll probably just keep coming back to the more traditional recipes.

I also made a pecan pie for the first time. I was warned multiple times to make sure to not cook it until the middle hardened unless I wanted to make a brick. I was surprised that everyone preferred the pecan pie over the apple, if for no other reason than that the pecan pie was easier to make (I guess I believe that effort should add tastiness?).

Sea Tea Falfün Day

My last and most recent pie vignette is from when I hosted the members of the improv group I am in over for dinner and pie after a "fall full day" (which later turned into our own made-up holiday called Falfün day). It was decided that Falfün is celebrated with many liquids as dinner included soup and stew and we had 5+ options for types of drinks.

I made two pies again (although this time we had 10 people, so it made sense to have a lot of food). I made pumpkin pie, and decided to give myself a break and just use canned pumpkin. I have gone all out and made fresh pumpkin puree before (using a toaster oven even), but I figured since I was making pies and dinner, I could take it easy.

Even though I did used canned pie, I did make the crusts from scratch, as I pretty much always do now that I have a crust recipe I really like. I decided to fancy up the top of the pie with some leaves since I had a good bit of crust leftover.

I also made pecan pie again, though this time using a completely different recipe (and I have forgotten which one, just use the one I linked above, its good). I DO remember that most of Sea Tea preferred one pie over the other, but I really can't remember which one. I THINK it was the pumpkin one.

I'll be making apple pie this Thanksgiving too. I am writing this entry ahead of time so its possible I am in the middle of baking a pie as this post publishes! Trippy! One last thing for all of you, I took this picture when I bought the apples for my Thanksgiving pie because it made me laugh. You can easily tell which apples are the most popular for making pies.

Hope you all have a lovely thanksgiving if you celebrate it, and a lovely fourth thursday in November if you don't!

NaNoBlogMo 14 - Superhero Cupcakes

This weekend I was invited to a super hero themed birthday party, where the guests were encouraged to come in costume (I might do another entry about my costume from this year, but here's a teaser...I won the costume contest!). I went last year where the theme was Disney (I went as Cruella DeVille), and I saw how much effort the birthday girl put into the party. So I volunteered to bring something and the first thing that came to mind was superhero cupcakes; cupcakes decorated with the logos/insignia of various superheros.

I knew I wanted vibrant colors and clear lines, something I probably wouldn't be able to get from icing/piping alone. I looked online for what other people had made before and there were examples of people using things like fondant, modeling chocolate or candy melts. I was still unsure what I was going to use when I went to the store. There my mother noticed Sugar Sheets, something neither of us had heard of before but looked promising. I bought a variety of bold colors (and some icing for details).

I made a batch of vanilla and a batch of chocolate cupcakes the day of the party and then settled down to try and make some logos. The sugar sheets are each about the size of a normal sheet of paper, individually wrapped and resealable so that you can use a bit at a time and keep the rest from drying out. They taste and feel a bit like dried out plain frosting.

The sheets aren't as thin or delicate as I was worried they might be, but I still had to be careful to keep from breaking or tearing them, especially when it came to smaller pieces or bits that came to sharp points. I was able to cut the shapes I wanted with a small knife, but I'm sure an exacto knife would work great. The website for them and the packaging also recommend using their specifically designed punches that cut shapes out for you.

It was a learning process working with this new medium. I learned that you really need to peel the sheets from their plastic backing BEFORE you cut the shape you want or it is going to be much more difficult to get it off in one pieces. I found that the sheets worked slightly like clay in that if I accidentally tore a bit I could press it back together with the heat and pressure of my fingertip for a non-perfect-but-it-will-do quick fix. Also, frosting made a good adhesive to stick sugar sheet on sugar sheet for the more layered designs.
I found out that my Pom glass was pretty much the same diameter as the top of a cupcake, so I used it as a guide to cut my bottom layer for each logo. I made two of each logo (one for the chocolate and one for vanilla) and worked on one logo at a time to prevent having too many sheets out and drying at the same time. That also meant that if I cut out a good symbol (such as the bat for Batman), I could just trace it for my second cupcake. I made all the logos first and kept them on waxed paper before I finally frosted and topped the cupcakes.

I had a few moments of "I can't believe I am actually spending this much time on each cupcake", but all in all I had a fun time. I kept my laptop open to make sure I got each logo right. Some I skipped over because I didn't have the right colors or because I thought they were too difficult, but I think I ended up with a good variety.

I was very happy with the end result. Can you name all of them? There was some slight bubbling with the tops since I forgot that cupcakes aren't really flat (and it didn't occur to me until later that maybe making nice flat sugar cookies would have been a better idea).

They were a hit at the party! I saw a few people taking pictures of them, which made me smile. I had to actually encourage a few people to eat them and that I wouldn't be offended if they ate my "art". Some people also debated over which to eat, although I know at least one cupcake (the Green Lantern) was eaten by a guy dressed as the Green Lantern (or more specifically, Hal Jordan). Personally, I think the Watchmen one is my favorite.

I would recommend the sugar sheets to people. They were pretty easy and fun to work with and they have a lot of different colors (although keep in mind that each sheet costs almost $4, so if you want a variety of colors it can add up!). I got my at JoAnne's. I plan to at least to come up with an excuse to use what I have leftover...I didn't even end up opening the purple sheet!

I would end this post with saying that I want to do more cake decorating, but since pretty much every post ends with me saying I want to do whatever I talk about more, its starting to get pretty cliche. Oh well!

Quiche!

People were asking me this weekend for my quiche recipe, but since I don't usually use recipes it was kind of hard to answer. But here I'm going to type up my basic method and then a more detailed version of what I did Saturday and hopefully that will help!

SUPER BASIC RECIPE/TIPS

The basic method I follow is cook up whatever veggies/meat/deliciousness I want in my quiche until it is cooked well enough to just eat on its own, toss it with whatever cheese I want and about half fill a frozen pastry crust with it. I beat together eggs, milk, salt, pepper (sometimes other stuff like onion/garlic salt or oregano) and sometimes additional cheese and pour it over the "stuffs" to just about fill up the rest of the crust (keep in mind the eggs expand), and cook in a 350F oven until the center is set (about 35-45 minutes).

Have fun mixing and matching your fillings. Below I typed up the quiche I made this weekend with the most "stuffs", but the other one just had steamed broccoli with a bit o' garlic and a ton of cheddar cheese.

ACTUAL DETAILED RECIPE

Ingredients:

Frozen pastry crust, deep dish means more STUFFS! (optional if you don't like crusts)

Butter

Onion, maybe a half or less depending on how much you want, cut into long thin strips

Garlic, 2-3 cloves minced

Mushrooms, about a cup, chopped into about 1/2" pieces

Sausage, 3-4 links or patties, fully cooked and chopped up

Feta

Eggs, 3-4 depending on how much stuff/how deep your crust is

Milk, about a half cup

Baby spinach, handful of leaves, chopped or torn into slightly smaller pieces

Shredded cheddar

Salt, pepper

Preheat oven to 350F.

Cook the onions in the butter over low heat for a while until they start getting really soft (you want them to end up caramelized or near enough by the time your whole veggie mixture is done). Add the garlic and cook a bit longer. Toss the mushrooms in and cook a bit more. Everything should be getting slightly golden/brown and soft. Toss the baby spinach in and cook just long enough to wilt it/coat it with butter. Note: I usually end up constantly adding butter in small bits to make sure it gets on everything. You don't want the food to burn but you don't want it to be swimming in butter either.When it looks good and cooked, remove from heat.

Toss your cooked veggie mixture with the chopped up sausage and feta and put it on the bottom of your pastry shell, or if you are going the crustless route, on the bottom of a greased pie dish. You want the filling stuff to about half fill your dish, if you have more than that it might not hold together with the egg, if you have too little it won't be overbrimming with delicious stuffs.

Beat your eggs and milk together with salt/pepper/any additional seasonings you want (I put in a little oregano on Saturday). Pour over the stuffs until your crust/dish is just about full. Sprinkle some cheddar over the top.

Pop the whole shebang in the middle of your oven and cook until the center is set (when you wiggle it, the center doesn't look liquidy). About 35-45 minutes.

Happy quiche-ing!

Magic Peanut Butter Middles

Some friends of mine are moving to a new apartment (in the same building but it still counts) so I thought I would make some cookies to bring as a housewarming snack. I wanted to try something new and I found a recipe for Magic Peanut Butter Middles on Allrecipes.com. Chocolate cookies with a surprise peanut butter center? I had to try it.

I figured it would be easier to work with the middles if I chilled them so after mixing together the peanut butter and confectioner's sugar for the centers I popped them in the freezer to harden a bit while I made the dough for the outside.

One of the reasons I really like websites like allrecipes.com and eatingwell.com is because often on recipes there will comments from other people who have already cooked it. I try to read through a couple before I make something to see what other people suggest. Some people suggested adding mini-chocolate chips to make the outside dough more chocolate-y, as well as some sour cream to make it a bit richer, so I did both. I had to add a lot of extra flour until it got to the right consistency, but it worked.

In order to work with the dough even though it was still a bit sticky, I just floured my hands. That way the dough could stay moist. I patted out a flat circle of the chocolate dough and put a cool peanut butter center in the middle and then rolled it up into a ball. I actually forgot to flatten the first batch before putting it into the oven, but I took them out before they were done and flattened them with no harm done.
I love that you can't see the peanut butter center at all from the outside, but there is a significant amount on the inside. When my mom first bit into one her reaction was "How did you do that??"

There is a good balance between the peanut butter center and the chocolate dough. The mini-chocolate chips melted so they are smooth chewy cookies with no crunch. I just wish they were a tiny bit more chocolately. If I were to make them again I think I might melt some chocolate chips and drizzle them on top of each cookie just to give it a tiny bit of something extra.

I brought a plate to my friends' new apartment and they were eaten quickly and with kind compliments. Relatively easy and delicious cookies with a big reaction. A+!

Dangerous Muffins

I love good butter rum muffins. I get them from Price Chopper and Shop Rite and both are delicious. I wanted to try and make my own. After some searching online I found a recipe.

The muffin you see at the left may seem harmless, but ended up being pretty dangerous. I was making the glaze, which involved heating up the rum on the stove and dissolving some sugar into it. I had the burner on low and was carefully keeping an eye on it when the whole thing went FWOOMPH and suddenly I had a flaming pot of sugary rum. And as I was stirring at the time, I suddenly had no hair left on my right hand. I quickly turned off the stove and blew out the firey rum of destruction and there was no real harm done.

Except for the tasteless muffins.

To add insult to injury, I finished making the muffins and they were terribly bland. I had even jazzed up the recipe a bit. I added eggnog instead of milk because I thought it would add an interesting dynamic to the flavor. I also added more seasoning than it called for. Blaaaaaand. Oh well, I can still buy good ones at the grocery store with a greatly diminished chance of setting myself on fire.

Lemon Coffee Cake

A while ago my mother got a lemon coffee cake from the Shop Rite that was AWESOME. When she realized that we had some lemon curd in the fridge, she asked me to try and recreate the delicious breakfast treat.
















This recipe from Martha Stewart seemed to me the best choice, although I did make some small changes. I followed the streusel recipe, glaze, and basic cake mix almost exactly. The only real difference was that instead of the layer of Meyer's lemons, I spread a layer of the lemon curd. I also supplemented the lemon rind with some fresh lemon juice in the cake batter because I only had one lemon, and used whole wheat flour instead of white.
















The cake ended up giving me quite a bit of trouble when it actually came to baking. It refused to cook all the way through. I think it might have been because of the layer of lemon curd I put in. Perhaps it seeped into the batter and kept it moist and uncooked. I ended up taking it out of the oven before it was done and putting the glaze on top before I realized it needed to be cooked more.














The cake ended up extremely dense. Additionally, I thought the lemon flavor was overpowering. The cake from Shop Rite had a perfect hint of lemon, but with this it was too strong for my tastes. My dad ended up eating most of it and seemed to enjoy it, but I was rather disappointed. I think this is definitely a cake that needs to be thinner, at the very least.

Oktoberfest Treats Part 2 - Pretzels and Black Forest Cake

Continuing my recap of what I made for Oktoberfest, which I started in my last entry, I shall continue today starting with soft pretzels. These were probably the most successful thing I made for the party, and not terribly difficult to make either.

I mixed together all the wet ingredients first and added the flour bit by bit until it got to the consistency I wanted. I ended up using FAR FAR less flour than the recipe called for. After a bit of kneading, I put the dough in a big slightly oiled bowl covered with saran wrap, a dry towel and then a hot slightly damp towel. I left it alone for an hour after giving it by best "RIIIIIIISE my child! RIIIIIIIIIIIIIISE" inspirational speech.

The dough was huge and had a delightfully "airy" quality to it when I came back. It was fun to work with. I can't remember the last time I worked with bread dough like that. I set to work making it into little pretzel bow-ties.

While looking at the recipe, I noticed that it called for each pretzel to be dunked in a bath of hot water and baking soda before being cooked. A commenter explained that this caused a chemical reaction which gives soft pretzels their crusty brown exteriors, but leaves the inside soft and chewy. I thought that was pretty cool and wanted to share. Also, apparently in the "olden days" they would use lye to get the same reaction. Yowzers. Learning is fun!

I ended up putting each pretzel on top of a slotted spatula to give them their baking soda dunk. so they would keep their shape. I put them all on a lightly greased baking pan and sprinkled a generous amount of kosher salt on top.

As soon as they came out of the oven, I brushed melted butter on top. They were certainly a hit! There was some arguing in jest at the end of the party who would get to bring the leftover pretzels home. I served them with honey mustard, a cheese sauce and an odd fruity mustard mix I put together as dip choices. I'm not the biggest fan of pretzels myself and I loved them too. Being a perfectionist my only complaint would be about the shape. I wanted them to look like the giant pretzels you get at the mall, but they ended up looking more like puffy knots. I am guessing that rolling them out longer and leaving bigger holes will get me the shape I want.

The last Oktoberfest treat I want to talk about is the Black Forest Cake. The recipe for the cake part was simple enough. I split it up as evenly as I could into two tins lined with wax paper, which made popping the finished cakes out SUPER EASY. I left them to cool and moved on.

I couldn't find any canned cherries that weren't in heavy syrup, so I bought pre-made cherry pie filling, figuring that it would be pretty much the same thing as the finished cherry mixture. I did make the whipped cream frosting from scratch though, which according to my German neighbor is the only REAL way to make Black Forest Cake. At left you can see my whole set up with the cake split into three layers and some crumbs, whipped frosting and mashed cherry filling.

I am going to let the next four pictures speak for themselves as a sort of picture essay of my cake building, just because I think they look cool.

























I am pretty sure this was the first layer cake I ever made. I think I did an good job of putting it together. I even went the whole nine yards and patted cake crumbs onto the sides, pipped more frosting along the edges and spread some of the cherry mix on top. Visually, I think it's the best cake I've ever made. I am unashamedly proud of how it looks.
Personally, though, I wasn't too pleased with how it tasted. It was good, but seemed a little bland to me. The cake itself also was a little dry. I saw a commenter who said on the recipe that they sprinkled some cherry liquor on the cakes before assembling the whole shebang. I bet that would give the dessert an extra kick and solve the dryness issue all at once.

All it all it was a fun party and the food all came out well. I can't wait for the next excuse to go overboard and create another party menu. Maybe friends of mine aren't joking when they say I should look into catering....

Until next time!

Oktoberfest Treats Part 1- Kielbasa in Beer and Onion Pie

So this past Saturday my parents hosted an Oktoberfest/beer tasting party. The idea came about during a wine tasting party they held a month prior, at which I had gone a bit overboard in terms of the food I prepared (including a layered goat cheese spread, mini-artichoke tarts and lava cakes). So of course I had to make some more themed food. I ended up making four dishes, which I'll cover in two entries.

First up is the first dish I made and by far the easiest. What you see below are literally all of the ingredients I used. I chopped up three pounds of kielbasa and put it in the Crock-pot with three pounds of sauerkraut and two bottles of Sam Adam's 'Oktoberfest" (seemed fitting). Done and done!

If you want to make it, just keep in mind how much sauerkraut you want. If you just want it as a bit of flavoring, I would cut it down to half or even less the total amount of kielbasa. Then again, I don't like sauerkraut at all, so I'm biased. The kielbasa came out wonderfully moist and flavorful. The taste of beer was certainly present but not overpowering.

Next up was "traditional" German Onion Pie. I put traditional in quotes only because our neighbor is from Germany and she had never heard of it before. Regardless, the dish was a tasty success. The first order of business was to chop up roughly 5-6 pounds of onions. Even though it was a bit chilly out, I decided to do the chopping outside. Didn't really feel like destroying the kitchen with the noxious fumes from a zillion onions. I had to cook them up in two different batches because I couldn't fit them all in the pan at the same time.

I chopped up and fried some bacon to start the cooking. I used a bit more than the recipe calls for cuz I like bacon, then cooked the first batch of onions in the bacon grease for added flavor. The second batch I cooked up in butter and added some chopped garlic (not in the recipe, but everything is better with garlic!). All the bacon and onions were mixed together with some sour cream, eggs and cheddar cheese (also not in the recipe, but how could I make something like this without at least a little cheese in it??). The whole delicious mixture fit almost perfectly into two frozen pastry crusts.

Allrecipes said to add some caraway seeds on top. I ended up grinding up some caraway seeds with a bit of pepper and some various onion/garlic seasonings in the motor and lightly sprinkling the whole mix on top.

I think The temperature and/or time on the recipe is off quite a bit. I ended up turning down the heat and also cooking the pies for less time than the directions called for and I was still sad to see they came out darker than I wanted. Ah well.

The pies/quiches were very good. It was literally like a big pile of caramelized onions with just enough "stuff" to hold it all together served on top of a crust...with bacon in it. Delicious! I will probably go have a big slice of the leftovers as brunch when I am done with this entry.

Stay tuned for part two where I talk about the pretzels and my black forest cake!

Unemployment Leads to Fancy Pie

So a while back I wrote about an apple pie I
had made with apples from the tree in the yard. I didn't get around to writing about it yet, but shortly afterward I made another apple pie, this time with a mixture of apples from the yard and apples from the store (braeburn I think...) just because. Also just because, I decided to make this the fanciest pie I had ever made. There is a picture of it on the right pre-eggwash and pre-baking. That's right...I made a lattice top pie out of leaves. And I would like to mention that I did not have a cookie cutter or anything of the sort (although I did try to make one out of various materials, but that is another hilariously bad and embarassing story). I hand cut each leaf, which explains the asymmetry and varying sizes. I blame the fact that I am currently unemployed entirely for this far too fancy pie.

Better than being fancy, though, it adhered to my "pie should not be stew" rule. Look how nicely it held it's shape after being cut. Better still, the general opinion was that this pie was better than the last one because the first was a bit on the dry side, whereas this one was moist and tasty without becoming runny.

Mmmm...baking success. Maybe this season I will try making pumpkin or pecan pie.


Tomorrow I am going to be having one heck of a cook-a-thon to make some yummy things for an Oktoberfest style party, and then I have to throw together the rest of my self-made costume for Sea Tea's costumed Halloween Show (which everyone should come to this Sunday), so I should have some interesting posts up soon-ish about those.