Homesick for the Place I've Lived in the Least

So I am in the place that my undegrad advisor once called "God's Playground", yes Lake Tahoe, and I am feeling pretty miserable. I miss my mom dearly although she is only a few miles away. I miss my old house even though technically it's still ours. I miss my sense of summer freedom even though I am unemployed. I miss my youth even though I am only 22. I miss my optimism and my ability to not pity myself. Sheesh!! This whole entry is sounding pretty pathetic but I don't care, no one reads this anyways. I know it's supposed to be a cooking blog, but really my daily cooking is the last thing I wanna write about right now because I'm not doing it with that same love and enthusiasm that I do when I am...when I am HOME!!!

Sure, I'm in my hometown, but this place isn't my home anymore. It isn't. Home is where I'm happy, can wear whatever I want at whatever time of day, and just plain don't give a flying fuck what anyone else says or thinks. Truth be told--I am sick and tired of not being in charge around here! I live with my in-laws, which would be fine if that didn't include two unruly dogs and their (to say the least) finnicky owners. That combo along with my dumb sense of guilt over any situation constantly puts me in this sad little hole of misery and woe. Haha-- I liked that sentence. "Oh no! I live with people I don't like and my dog gets bullied so I feel bad!" Ahhh! Told ya this entry is pathetic. Okay, well I'm starting to feel slightly more at home with this blog, at least here I can publicly express how angry I am about my boring life being made intolerable. Ugh. Woe is me. Yeah right...

And I have cooked every day this past summer. Suck it. Poo, I have no pictures to prove it, god I am not having a good summer at all... I miss being little...

Chicken/Turkey Pot Pie.

So for pretty much the entire month of November, I cooked all sorts of new dishes using bits of other people's recipes and lots of luck. I don't even know how to get back on track with my blogs, so I'll just pick a different November recipe until I run out or decide to use recipes from the present haha. 

Some of my favorite dishes were chicken and turkey pot pies, using leftovers from either the oven-roasted chicken or turkey. Kevin and I bought special little ramekins specifically for pot-pies and they are adorable!

As for the recipe, I think for the most part it was very similar to Barefoot Contessa's, with the little pearl onions, frozen peas, mostly boiled potatoes, chopped carrots, celery and onion, as well as a sauce made from a traditional butter and flour rue and lots of good chicken stock (not homemade, because let's face it, it's a hassle and if it's not used quickly it goes to waste, sorry Ina). There were also the classic spices, pepper, salt, garlic powder, oregano, and a dash of crushed red pepper flakes. We cooked up all the hardy veggies first, then added them to the rue, and then added the chicken, pearl onions, potatoes, and peas. Then the seasonings, and finally, the chicken (or turkey). Once it was bubbling and we had considering skipping the baking part altogether (it looked so good we just wanted to eat it!), we spooned the thick and colorful filling into the ramekins.

We had made a traditional pastry dough, y'know-- flour, butter, water, and added spices to it to make it a more savory treat.So we rolled that out and cut it out to put on our pies. Rather than do the classic pot pie with pastry dough on all four sides, we only coated the top of the ramekin. 

We egg washed the sides of the dishes and tried to place the dough so that it would look like it had just fallen onto it, then egg washed it and made cute little shapes. Then we baked them in a 350 degree oven until the crust was golden brown. I'll just post the finished product recipes for both:

This batch had turkey and a savory crust, and as you can tell it was after thanksgiving so we had moved on to our Christmas decorations

Kevin's had a cute little candy cane on it.

 

Mine had a little snowman.

This is our chicken batch, we out little moons and heart shapes cut out free-hand because I didn't know where the cookie cutters were =]

This is how I picture an alternate universe in my dreams, Kevin and I are food.

This batch of pies had a pepper and salt crust unlike the savory crust that we made later.

MmmmM, my spoon fell in love.

Kevin tried to get a good representative spoonful of the filling. Neither of us wanted to destroy our pies right away.

Here's a little peek into the yummy world inside the dish. Oh it was delicious!

 So anyways, I hope you not only enjoyed that little picture show, but that you actually try to make some yummy pies on your own! I'll post the recipe as soon as I go and actually figure out how much of everything I used (I eyeball it when I'm cooking, but I'll look at the actual measurements and update soon!). Happy holidays and may you and your tummy stay warm and full!!!

I'm Coming Back!

So I realize I haven't updated in a while, but I somehow got busy! With the recent holidays I ended up doing alot more than I usually do and so even though I've been cooking like crazy, I haven't gotten a chance to post anything. Alas I have tons of pictures and recipes to share and will post them sometime this week. I guess I lost enthusiasm because I didn't think anyone was reading this, and let's face it, very few people do, but I appreciate the few that do, so hang in there strangers, i'll post something new real soon! I think I'm also going to add a link on my facebook page that way my friends can actually know about the existence of this page and I won't be relying solely on the random person to stumble on it (not that I mind that, it was my original intention). Also, I will continue to cook my random personal recipes rather than focus primarily on Ina's; although I love her I find it hard to cook only her food. She's a fancy lady, and I'm not as good, alas someday! Okay, well new posts to come! I promise!

Chicken Little got roasted =]

I am too lazy to write a complete blog, but a few nights ago I made this roasted chicken. I get into a frenzy when I eat roasted chicken, so I carefully documented the steps as I cooked this poor little fella. I think I ate 3/4 of it. Sorry veggie-only people, I like eating birds =]

Ina's Lemon Chicken:

Y'see all those little lemons? Yeah, them and the garlic cloves were all in for a little adventure in a very weird and unknown territory.

Only two lucky lemon wedges got to see the inside of my oven.

 

Then once it got cooked:

 

And it didn't go alone, noo, it had friends...

Aren't pearl onions the cutest?

Yummy caramelization and a wee bit of white wine didn't hurt ;)

Ta-Da!!! I wolfed this down in about 4 minutes. Glorious.

All for now. Hope you're staying warm and eating lots of yummies!

Self-Proclaimed Badass

So it's been a while. That I've written in here anyways. I look at this site almost everyday, keep up with the blogs I follow and such, but I haven't done much Ina. so I don't have much to say about my cooking experiences. The past three days alone I've cooked a lot, yesterday was a bigger cooking day since I teamed up with my brother and sister in law who live about an hour away and we made tamales using my mommy's recipe. I think they were okay, but still not as good as hers. I think the secret is in her homemade chicken stock, that stuff is so amazing, my taste buds can't look past it. Everyone else said they liked them and happily ate them as we watched How to Train Your Dragon, which was adorable although a little darker than I thought it would be at the end. It was cute.  Vikings and dragons unite!!! Haha. 

And tonight I made what Kevin called a "fancy goulash" haha. It was just his normal goulash with a little kick, well, more like celery, bell peppers, sauted garlic and onions as a base, slightly over-browned ground turkey, and lots and lots of spices. I can understand why explorer's traveled for spices so greedily. I used to think it was a bunch of lies, well, there must have been alterior motives, but still, a world without spices is just bland. =] I love, love, love having lots of flavors in my food, the more complex the better! Oooh, that brings me to my recent sushi-attacks. Oh my goodness. I have not craved sushi harder than I have the past three days. I have described those delicious little spicy dragon rolls to the point where my mouth watered and Kevin had to shake his head sadly at me for thinking so hard about something I just can't get. I mean there are sushi places here (who knows how the fish quality is), but I think it's more of the home experience that I miss. I want to go to sushi with people I love (Kevin doesn't eat seafood, so he can't really go to a sushi restaurant without me feeling guilty for making him sit in a place where everything around him will gross him out), so the idea of going to sushi in my current loner-Coloradoan state doesn't seem too appealing. So instead i've been mercilessly craving it, and I had to give in and have some from the little to-go trays in Whole Foods (ew, I can't believe I just advertised that over-rated store. Although have you tried their leaf-shaped chocolates? They're like crack!). So my sushi-need is very closely attached to my homesickness which has been looming like a sneaky little kid while I play in the sandbox of newlywed joy. Oh well, Christmas isn't that far away. Mid-December we'll be going back to my good old Cali and I cannot wait =] I want sushi, and some time with people I miss and I just wanna have friends that I can actually hug and stare at as they talk. =] I don't know how much I like people here.

Oh, that brings me to another things that happened over the last few days: so it was Wednesday night. I was sleeping, having the most beautiful, and well choreographed dream ever, when the music in my dream just wouldn't end, so the people were all breaking the fourth wall and looking around nervously, so I finally woke up and realized that I was still hearing loud music in my apartment. Apparently the downstairs neighbors thought that it was okay to blast music, at 2 in the morning, with their window wide open while they played videogames in the living room. I psychotically got dressed after listening to all ten remixes of the same song, followed by crazy mixes of techno music, and was looking for my flip flops when Kevin got up and decided to come down with me. So downstairs we marched, and he knocked and they didn't immediately open the door so I went latina-crazy and looked in through their open window and, much more politely than I had intended, asked them to turn down the music, the tall but lanky kid looking back at me had said he turned it off and that he was sorry. I kind of wanted to laugh then and there, but realized that would throw off my disgruntled neighbor front. So I said Thank You and went back upstairs. Once I had shed my clothes and jumped back into bed I realized that I had actually told neighbors to be quiet. I was so proud of me! I usually give people multiple chances, but something about getting a dream ruined just wasn't gonna let this slide. I guess I've been having too many nightmares to let my few dreams get away. =] So yes. I am officially a badass. Self-proclaimed, neighbor-scolding badass. Very proud. The girl from downstairs even ran into me on the stairs today and she smiled, without looking scared or sarcastic, more like a "Sorry we're such dickheads, we were just a little too stoned to know what time it was," (hey, it's Boulder).

Oh and on friday night Kevin and I went to this laser light show at the planetarium set to the music of The Beatles. It was good although they didn't let me bob around and giggle while softly singing "I wanna hold your haaand" to myself. Very dissapointing, but still nice. Although I told Kevin that perhaps a bit of a natural help *wink wink* would have made the experience a little more psychedelic. Maybe next time. Okay, snacks are calling me. Goodnight. 

NewlyWed Cutsies...

So this past Saturday was Kevin and mine's 4 month wedding anniversary and today I had one of those moments when I felt like photo-montage-scene from a movie depicting how cute having a newly-wed lifestyle is. Y'know the kind where the girl is cooking for the first time in her life and everything's burning (I don't understand how they go so long without cooking before that moment, but then again I don't know how I managed to set off the smoke alarm so many times, so that's embarrassing too). I smiled the first time the smoke detector went off like "aww" but the following 6 times just made me jump around angrily while trying to swat at the smoke detector. The worst part is that I didn't burn anything obvious, the bottom of my meatballs was a little blackened and "crispy" but not significantly burnt, so I dunno what the detector was thinking. I was so upset about its beeping that i forgot to take pictures of the actual meal so, all I have is a picture of peeled garlic cloves and garlic bread pre-baking. I don't know if that's worth posting, I'll decide by the end of typing this haha. So anyway, I made Ina's garlic bread recipe, minus the same bread, I used a french bread, and minus the basil, I looked at the wilty excuses for basil at the grocery store and decided not to spend $7 on weedy looking herbs. I turned to my dry herbs and mini-food chopper to create a delicious spreadable mush for my bread. Oh and we were also out of aluminum foil, so I just open faced baked it. It was hilarious, even the simplest recipe I feel like I just can't do it up to Ina's standrads, i mena even the aluminum foil decided to thwart me! We just ran out yesterday, very dissappointing. Alas in the end my husband and I happily munched away on our meal and when we were done eating our spaghetti and meatballs, garlic bread, and salad, Kevin leaned back and said that it was delicious, so I smiled and thought it was so worth it, even the seven smoke detector freak-outs. 

We went to the grocery store for some late-night grocery store cruising, and ended up purchasing some desert, sorry Ina but I cannot make cookies as delicious as these store-bought brownie M&M cookies! They're amazing. And I refuse to use the oven until I figure out what the smoke detector's problem is (ugh, i'm ending that sentence with an "is").

As for the rest of my day. It started off with me doing some yoga off of my OnDemand menu. I love it. I want to master the firefly pose. I'm going to have to order a new set of dvds and get serious about really incorporating the workout into my daily schedule. My goodness I will lose ten pounds even if it kills me! Well, not not really, just until I feel like I look ten pounds lighter haha. 

As for my card creations, well I worked on trying to figure out how to make a true business letter with a real mission statement and all that so that the hospitals wont think I'm just some lunatic that sprinkled itching powder on the paper or something. You never know these days, so hopefully my letter will make the hospital excited and happy to know that there are caring people in the world who just want to make kids smile. =] Ah! I will post pictures of the cards real soon, tomorrow's entry for sure. But for now I need some sleep and hangout time with my hubby, so off to bed for me. Goodnight!

It's Raining Back Home and that Makes Me Jealous...

So it's been raining all weekend in my hometown of South Lake Tahoe. I really wish it would rain here. Rain is my favorite thing to watch, listen, smell, feel, and yeah even taste. I like eating things that may be possibly polluted or cause some sort of virus, hence my sushi eating and my lack of concern for organic food. Alas, I don't think I'll be ingesting any infectious rain drops anytime soon unless the gods listen to me and actually grant me my wish of rain. AhhhHh! 

Anyway, I made some of Ina's chicken piccata (not from her first cookbook, but still Ina). I made smashed potatoes and steamed baby carrots and broccoli; not gonna lie the whole meal kinda looked like a frozen tv dinner when it was all together, let me show before I continue to explain how funky it looked: Okay, so you see how even the lemon slices didn't class it up? Haha, and the chopped baby carrots would have not gained Ina's approval. I should have added a fresh bunch of basil or something. Or maybe some really good gravy. Or just added a glass of wine to make it look fancy. Haha. Actually I think there may have been more wine drenched in my sauce than I would have actually drank. Y'see I added some wine after the sauce had already reduced, so basically it was just a shot of wine at the end of the cooking and it tasted like a lemony wine. It was amazing haha. 

Wait, I forgot that I did attempt to add something, a, oh my goodness I'm slightly ashamed to say it, a store-bought onion roll!!! Ahhh!!! My husband brought it home so I was tempted! =] It was delicious! Oh and if you can see my husband's plate peeking in the upper left corner, that's my husband's parmesean chicken which he made with my deliciously breaded and baked chicken. But see how little cheese it has? Yeah, we hate grating cheese and we always buy huge bricks of cheese because it holds up better, but really we eat it so fast it doesn't really matter how long it holds up. 

This is a shot of my lemon massacre. Although it kinda looks like the lemons won, the way that the knife is just lying there all defeated looking. I like how the bottle of wine just reads "WINE" haha. It's actually called "House Wine" and it's not dry white wine as the recipe calls (gosh I'm just full of disappointment today haha), instead it's a mixture of white wine with reisling and other stuff, like I said I'm not picky as long as it tastes good. Mm.

Oh and here's the mostly alcoholic sauce I made to coat the chicken with: Well, that's boiling and reducing away, I guess it wasn't drunk at this point, just funny looking. Oh and please ignore my electric stove top =[ Some day I'll have a gas stove again! ahhh! The plight of not owning your own house. And being unemployed I suppose. Yes, post-grad hobo-ness is everything I ever dreamed it to be. 

Oh and interestingly enough, I found my old diary entries and I cried, laughed, and can't wait to be 65 and dying (due to my bad fooding choices), and look back and can't believe that I ever purchased a fuzzy green diary. Haha. Anywho. I am done for now, there's a fruit salad in my line of sight and I intend of eating every last chunk of sugary goodness!