Cooking Baking Eating

I have a new love. The bulk bins at our local Winco Supermarket. I’ve never shopped bulk before but I find I now am in love.

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There are days when I think I just kick ass in the kitchen, I’m the greatest cook and make the greatest stuff.

Then some days I think the only thing I can make is the greatest mess!

Frustrating, huh?

I’m lazy.

Really lazy. So in order to feed my need of being lazy, especially with the really yucky schedule I’m on, I do things like cook for an army.

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I normally don’t stray too far out of my comfort zone in the kitchen. I stay mostly with American, Mexican, or Italian food. But for some crazy reason I had decided I wanted to make Indian curry. My friend and I used to go to a great Indian place every once in a while and binge on curry, since then I haven’t been able to find a great curry sauce that I like in the stores.

So I decided to make it at home. Or try to. Oh what a fool I am.

The recipe involved a spiced yogurt marinade for the chicken, and then a tomato and cream based curry sauce. Sounds simple enough, right?

In went the yogurt and spices…

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Sometimes at night we get horrible sweet cravings. Since I’m more sensitive to sugar now and I’m trying to make healthier eating habits we don’t keep as much sweet stuff in the house anymore. But there are those nights/days where we think “gotta have sugar!”

One of those days I found a cake mix and frosting in my pantry. Awesome. However, weird things happen when I decide to get creative in the kitchen.

I get a little obsessive. And slightly crazy.

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When I first started at my job a few years ago, I worked the early shift (same as I work now most days of the week) which meant I had to be at work at 5:00am, or sometimes even earlier depending on the day and how much work was ahead of us. I think the earliest I got to work at one point was 3:30am. That’s just obscene but at the same time I would go in that early and not get up until 10:00am, then I finally realized “wait, I’ve been sitting for almost 7 hours without getting up…ugh.”

There is always an upside to that type of situation though. You learn new ways to deal with your new life.

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Since giving up soda, I’ve been reduced to water and tea. There is only so much water or tea you can drink before you just become tired of it, even with all of the nifty flavored teas out there.

And now it seems I’ve given up caffeine too! Since being sick a while ago I haven’t still had caffeine, and now I really feel the effects of it whenever I try to drink it. This is especially hard when I have to get up at 3:00AM to go to work. That early and no legal chemical stimulants? People must think I’ve gone crazy!

Well, “gone” not really, I always was crazy.

So lately I’ve been drinking this unfiltered gala apple juice, trying to find something else besides water, but sadly its horribly sweet.
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Sometimes there are things that you do on a day to day basis that seem so natural, so obvious, that sometimes it escapes you that others might not know something that you think is… Well obvious.

One of them was brought to my attention some time ago when I went to a new-ish friend’s house for dinner. We had made them tacos one night and they were returning the favor, having a nice spread of fixin’s for making our own tacos. You really can’t go wrong with having a Make-It-Your-Self taco bar. But there was one problem. They were trying to use corn tortillas, but they didn’t cook them first.

Yeah, you actually have to cook the tortillas to get them to be that soft and pliable texture so you can fold them around your favorite food. They kept going on about how messy and unreliable they were so they just switched back to their flour tortillas (cold out the package also). I didn’t have the courage to bring up the fact that you actually had to warm or cook them before they were usable, the fear of sounding like I was preaching or being snide wouldn’t let me do it. I liked them, I didn’t want them to start hating me so soon in our new friendship.

It didn’t strike me until much later that maybe they just didn’t know. Not everyone is an obsessive-must-know-everything person and researches until they find the answer. Plus I just grew up with having a taco night with my parents, using corn tortillas never flour. Maybe they just didn’t know you had to cook them.

So maybe others don’t know either? That’s pretty much what’s prompting me in this one. Maybe they just didn’t know. So here we go.

Its easy!
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I’m spoiled. I admit that. And unfortunately its painfully obvious to me.

Not long ago I decided to try my hand at baking yeast breads. It was definitely a learning experience. In the end I came across The Fresh Loaf and found this delicious thing.

Forgive the weird neon picture, it was taken with an old camera.

Berry Cream Cheese Braid. Holy Mother is it wonderful! I made this for Christmas presents for people, and actually had reports back that when it was shared with their family they didn’t believe someone made this and didn’t buy it from a store. Craziness I tell you. It tastes great with either raspberries or blue berries, but husband and I prefer the raspberries.

So I really am spoiled, because I got used to the wonderful, fresh, not too sweet flavor of this treat.

Well I haven’t made it in a little while and I was hankering for some sweet bread at the store the other day. We picked up this raspberry danish.

It looks tasty and smells good. I can’t eat it. It’s too sweet, the raspberry is like a raspberry gel thing that I really don’t think actually came from a fruit. The bread is dry and lacks flavor other than chemical.

I am so sad because I spoiled myself. Mass processed things just don’t appeal to me anymore! This is good and bad since now I wont be tempted to eat processed sweets nearly as much. But bad because when I get a hankering for something sweet it just wont appeal to me.

Berry Cream Cheese Braid recipe to come later.

Damn you, home baked tastiness!

Something terrible has been happening to me lately. I’ve noticed differences in my mind, taste, and body that are impossible to ignore.

It’s changing.

In general, I HATE CHANGE with a vengeance. But this change seems to be something my body wants to do, and therefore is enforcing on me without my real knowing.
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