Cooking Baking Eating

Lately our lives have been one adventure after another. Not only have we been dealing with our day to day lives and everything that usually comes with it, but we made a hugely insane (but fantastic) decision to move ourselves out of the Pacific Northwest and back to sunny Southern California!

Seriously.

We made the “decision” to move early in the year, and I say that with quotation marks because we made a decision but I honestly didn’t think it would work out. There have been so many “decisions” that we’ve made over the years but they never panned out. But as I type this blog in warm and sunny California I would say it panned out!

We made it happen, threw all of our belongings into a moving truck and storage container with a hope and a prayer that everything will work out.

It’s been a bit of an adjustment for the both of us since 95% of our belongings are in storage and we are living with a very generous family member. I’m still trying to learn where she keeps everything in the kitchen, and there are so many of my kitchen things I would love to break out but there is either not enough room in the kitchen for my huge amount of kitchen crap, or I can’t find it because its buried in the abyss of the storage unit..

Mostly it’s all buried. Always an adventure. Read more »

Well, do you count something as a failure if you’ve learned something in the process? The Whole30 (elimination diet) I talked about before actually became a Whole8 instead, mostly because I was feeling sicker and sicker every day when I was doing the diet. Most people start an elimination diet because they’re trying to heal what makes them feel sick, where it just plain old made me sick.

So after a week, I decided I needed to not be so strict and pick one thing at a time to eliminate instead of more than one. The dominant theory between my husband and I is that it was too much of a shock to the system. Oh well. I still think the Whole30 is a great program, I just couldn’t deal with feeling sick any longer.

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My dear friend Marcy is a nutritionist, so I figure for the most part she’s a good influence on me when it comes to food. But I think that just comes with the territory of her job and her lovable hippy nature.

Once when we went to visit her and her husband, she mentioned making waffles with this recipe that involved buckwheat groats and steel cut oatmeal. It’s supposed to be for pancakes, but she was on a waffle kick and it still worked fine. She liked it because it’s supposed to be really nutritious and also the added bonus of being gluten free. Not that gluten is really a worry for her, but it still made her happy all the same.

After I heard about several of my friends having to change their diets to exclude gluten I asked her for the recipe, I figured it would be fun for me to try something gluten free, and then I could share it with those I care about! I thought finding buckwheat groats would be difficult, but they had them in the bulk section of my local store, yippee! Read more »

I would say my husband thinks I’m crazy, but in reality he already knows I’m crazy and to him this is just more proof.

I hadn’t tried a fried egg until earlier this year. I know. I must have lived such a sheltered life of only eating scrambled eggs. It wasn’t really sheltered though, more like stubborn and picky. I thought the yolk thing would be nasty, all oozy and gelatinous coming out of my eggs. But one day I got a wild hair to eat a fried egg like my dad used to make them for my sister and himself every Sunday.

When I finally made it, I was beside myself with glee. I couldn’t believe I had gone so long without trying this ooey gooey deliciousness.

I started eating them every day for breakfast. Usually over a slice of toast that I could use to soak up all of the yolk-y deliciousness. But then I had a craving for rice.

Yep, rice.

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I trust everyone had a very happy and healthy Thanksgiving this year. Since we celebrated Thanksgiving the weekend before, I really wasn’t in that big of a hurry to make any turkey for ourselves. Our dinner with friends was so delicious and I was almost turkey’ed out, but I did buy my own turkey because leftovers are just delicious and we needed those around for a while.

We did the obligatory calls to family on the holiday, but in the end just sat around and did our own thing. It was quite relaxing. The turkey I bought was still mostly frozen, so we decided to wait until Saturday to make turkey. We are such rebels.

One thing I hate about dealing with the turkey is… well dealing with the stupid turkey. I almost always misjudge the cooking times and have a habit of under cooking the bird. That kind of puts a damper on your holiday plans, and generally put me in a really bad mood for the dinner.

So last year I decided that I didn’t want to make the whole turkey, instead I lopped off the breast meat and legs and just cooked those. It drastically cut down on the cooking time and it turned out delicious!

This year I decided to do the same.
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I have decided that the slow cooker is not only a great kitchen appliance, it is also an excellent way to terrorize your husband. Especially if he works from home like mine does most of the time.

I had a wild hankering for fajitas the other day and decided I should find a recipe for the slow cooker. I got everything ready early in the morning before I went to work and had my husband put it on the slow cooker in the afternoon. By the time he left for his meeting in the afternoon he was salivating over the smells this chicken was giving off.

This chicken is to die for.

To. Die. For.

And its easy!
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Alright, early mornings are high on the “life sucks” list. I’ve been making due and actually got back in the kitchen for once. And even know I have to get up at the un-crack of dawn (my alarm goes off at 3:20am, ick) you still have to eat. So I’ve been trying to figure out easy and quick ways to have breakfast in the morning that still tastes good. Something I can make while still half asleep.

These pancakes really hit the mark on the tasty factor, plus they are high in fiber for sure! I don’t think they are really high in protein and I know they aren’t low fat, but they aren’t too bad for you.

I can’t eat wheat germ or a lot of nuts or seeds, I seem to have a skin “allergy” that makes me break out if I have any of those. But from what I can tell, I seem to have with no problem is oats. So now everything I eat has oats in it. I especially love the granola in the mornings but I’ve been getting a little burned out by it. Read more »

The love affair with bacon is hard to deal with when you really don’t want to be eating a whole pound of bacon at one time because you don’t want it to go bad, especially when there are only two people living in your house.

The Husband was trying to be a good man and cook me dinner one night. Dinner was bacon sandwiches. His version of a BLT is just bacon, bread and mayo. I appreciated it, gave him a hug and told him never to do that again.

I can’t eat that much bacon. I need balance. I need veggies!

So I’ve found a great way to store bacon when I know we won’t get to that much bacon in one sitting.

Well… Ok we COULD get through that much bacon in one night but we really don’t need to be doing that to our poor arteries.

I saw this method somewhere, I don’t remember and its been a while, but I LOVE it. The idea of individually frozen pieces of bacon just make my life better. And easier!

Take some parchment paper, and place a piece of bacon down. Fold over. Place another piece on top. Fold over. Place, fold, repeat, then freeze! Forgive the lack of picture, lighting has been weird lately with the weather/time changes.

This way you can pull out as many pieces as you need. Only have to unroll and stick them in the oven or pan. You don’t really need to defrost bacon, it just goes with the flow. Just store it in a freezer safe zip-top bag and squeeze out as you can. It’ll stay good for probably a few months, but then again I wouldn’t know since it doesn’t last that long in my house!

Husband calls bacon the gateway meat. It has to be one of the most addictive meat products you can buy in the market. I’ve known a few vegetarians who would randomly crave bacon from time to time.

It’s an addictive substance that I am so glad is socially acceptable.

The one thing I really hate about cooking bacon is the splattering, popping and eventual burning flesh and running away from the angry grease. So I’ve been looking for a way to make bacon without the fear I have of the burny fleshyness.

And the time. It takes too long for the bacon to cook in my opinion.

So after watching so many foodie shows on TV I’ve decided to start baking my bacon. Awesomeness. I don’t have to worry about splattering grease on myself and it’ll have it all be cooked and done at the same time!

Mmmmm… Bacon…

I bought this nice and wonderful contraption at Kohl’s before Christmas, an oven safe cooling/baking rack, and it has truly been my favorite thing ever to lower the fat in cooking. It can handle up to 475F I believe, but you don’t really have to use this, you can just lay the bacon on the tray and it’ll work great also.

Always line your baking sheet with a large piece of heavy duty foil, this way you don’t have to do much clean up at all and you wont mess up your pans with all that bacon grease. To bake your bacon, always start with a cold oven. That’s my opinion at least. It seems to cut down on the splattering and grease craziness in the oven. It also helps your meat strips to lay flat.

Lay as much as you can in your pan without overlapping the bacon, the more bacon the better my life.

Cook the bacon at 375F for about 15-20 minutes or until the crispness that you want. Thin bacon cooks MUCH faster than thicker cut, so you really have to watch your bacon the first few times until you get the hang of it. It also seems to take a little longer to cook on the rack, probably because its not cooking in the grease.

There is a definite texture difference if you cook it on the rack rather than just on the pan, it still tastes great but it does feel different in your mouth. Cooking it without the rack will produce bacon very similar to cooking on the stove. Either way its great. I think I just like the fact that the grease is draining off as it goes. It probably doesn’t make much of a difference calorie wise but it makes me feel better.

Balsamic vinegar is one of my favorite things that I really don’t know what to do with half the time. It has the greatest sweet and tangy flavor to it that is fantastic when you dip garlic bread in it.

There is only one main dish I’ve ever had made with balsamic in the actual main dish and as a main flavor. It was someone in college who decided to make us all dinner, and it was awesome. I’ve been trying to figure out how he made it so tasty but I didn’t know how to cook then.

So now I’ve made my own version of it and its pretty darn good. Simple but very tasty.

I also love cooking this in my glass pan. Sometimes I just want to do something different and cook in glass. It wont sear very well but that’s not too much of a problem when I make this dish since I’m just trying to infuse the chicken with the balsamic flavor.

I tend to use a lot of balsamic, mostly because of how I cook this in the pan it gets slightly watered down from the chicken and steam. My house has been really steamy the last few times I’ve cooked, I guess its just been cold in here?

Cooking the chicken slowly also helps the acidic vinegar to really infuse into the chicken and keep it tender. I mostly serve this over pasta, but it would also be good over mashed potatoes. I’m one of those weird ones that likes balsamic drizzled on real mashed potatoes.

I add tomatoes near the end, so that they don’t break down horribly and keep their texture. This time I didn’t cook them at all since they were going in the microwave later and will end up cooking extra there.

I reserve the sauce and juices from the chicken to reduce into a nice and thicker sauce. The balsamic reduces really nicely and I like to add another big splash of vinegar as its reducing to give it an even stronger flavor.

I don’t think there is anything much better than reduced balsamic on tomatoes, it really is the best thing ever.

Top with mozzarella cheese and everything will be right in the world. Mushrooms added with the chicken also makes a great addition and gives it a little more “meat” to it.
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