Muffins, muffins everywhere

Well, I've gotten pretty far behind on updating, although I've done alright on the cooking new food front. My husband has been sick in a pretty serious way, although he is getting better now, so hopefully the rhythm of the house will go back to normal. (Edit: Aaaaand, now our son is sick...)

Recipe 7:  Blueberry Muffins Two Ways

I made these at the same time, so I'm going to count them as one recipe now, although I might come back and count them separately if I come up short at the end of the year.

Recipe 7.1:  Blueberry and Banana Whole Wheat Muffins

I like baking with whole wheat because it feels healthier and more satisfying. These muffins, however, did end up a bit heavy and mealy, which can be the downside of whole wheat. They were also bit bland. I'm not sure whether to blame that on the lack of additional sugar, or the complete lack of salt. They were fine, but more "mature", I guess, and tasted like health food. They also started to mold after only a few days on the counter.

Oh, final caveat: this recipe fit just fine in 12 muffin cups. If I had spread the batter between 18 cups as recommended, I think they would have been disappointingly small.

Recipe 7.2: Blueberry Applesauce Whole Wheat Muffins

These turned out much better. They were both sweeter (not surprising, since they have 3/4 cup sugar), and lighter. They had more of the springy, cake-like texture I want in a muffin. While I think the other recipe will be left on the shelf, this will probably make it into the pre-planned breakfast rotation.

Crafts: Magnets from Christmas 2014

This blog is the thing I do when I don't feel like cleaning my house, so I'm going to start a second update for this week.  I doubt that I'll finish it on the day I start it, so I'll get to avoid mopping for several days!  Lucky me! (Edit:  Yep, I started this update before Valentine's Day.)

Anyway!  On to the meat and potatoes of this update.  I want to bring this blog back to its roots with this one, and make an update on some of the crafts I've completed recently.

Since I stopped working, my husband and I have been a little bit more careful with our gift giving, and the past two years we hand made our Christmas gifts.  The year before last I baked biscotti, which went over well (although I forgot my sister is allergic to almonds ... sorry), but this past Christmas I wanted to step it up a notch and make something permanent.  When we brought out son up north to visit relatives last year, I had seen my mother-in-law do some decoupage, and it looked super fun. I had made my sister a decoupaged box for her birthday, so I figured I would do something similar for Christmas.

After much hemming and hawing (and wandering around the craft store), I decided to do magnets.  They are small enough to be easy to make, are nominally useful, and wouldn't be a big knickknack for the recipients to deal with storing or displaying.

I used sheets of foam as the backing, and to make various foreground images stand out.  The pictures were cut out of fashion magazines.  For all of the magnets, the base is wrapped with images to hide the foam, but the foam is visible on the sides of the raised images.  The magnets came as a roll with a paper backing and built in adhesive.  These were okay, but refused to be flattened even after being pressed under books.  I had to resort to super glue to get them to stop separating from the picture.  In the future, I would use the magnets that come in little sheets instead.

For:  My Brother

 

This one is the first one I made, and I'm afraid it shows in the wrinkly paper and foam peaking out from behind the letters.  Overall, though, I have to say I like it. The image (which I will credit if I can find the photographer) is just the strangest, coolest picture, and totally appropriate for my brother. The text, "PQMR" is kind of an inside joke.  I figured a weird picture and some nonsense deserved a background made a few different types of leopard print. Overall, it's not the most perfect magnet, but interesting.

For:  My Dad

 

This is a set of magnets on a piece of cardboard to make wrapping it easier.  I used origami paper for the background because I couldn't find an image in the magazines that looked nice, and I think the geometric pattern is more masculine anyway.  This one was hard to make because finding interesting looking words and letter is surprisingly difficult.  "Everything looks bad if you remember it" is from the Insanity Pepper episode of The Simpsons, and I remember it was a favorite of my father's.  So, there you go. 

For:  My Father-in-Law

Finding this image was a huge score, since my father-in-law likes The Wizard of Oz. For the background I used a scarf, a smear of lipstick, one of those lip balms that looks like an egg, and crushed blush.  I like how the different textures in the background work together to make the image pop.

For:  My Grandparents-in-Law

This is a combined gift for my husband's maternal grandparents.  They have a pretty good collection of "boozy" decorations around their house, including a pillow that reads "Life is too short to drink bad wine".  So I thought this would be appropriate.  You can also see how I started making magnets that were much too large as I started finding larger images. I think this one measures something like 3" by 4". So it's more a fridge decoration than a functional magnet.

For:  My Sister-in-Law

When I asked my husband what I should make for his sister, he said, "Anything with attitude."  This is another 3x4 behemoth, and really not for any good reason. I thought it would look crowded if I made the background smaller, but really, I could have put a quarter inch on each side and been fine. The picture is of Naomie Harris from a shoot she did after Skyfall. The background is a variety of sequined clothes. I should have probably used more blue/silver pieces for the background, because I think it looks a little flat. This was definitely a learning experience.

For:  My Mother-in-Law

All of the images in this magnet are hair, which I think is neat. I was hoping it would look a bit like wood, and I think to some extent it does. This is the only specifically holiday themed magnet I made - a holly and mistletoe wreath. I will admit that all of my knowledge of Yule comes from the internet, but my much more knowledgeable mother-in-law seemed pleased, so I must not have missed the mark too badly. The one thing I would do differently here is use lighter pieces for the holly leaves, so they pop a little more. 

For: My Sister

My sister and I weren't raised to be girly-girls, and while I still struggle to not dress myself like a teenage boy, she has blossomed into quite the fashionista. I liked how fancy the lipsticks looked, and the smile (I think it is from one of Pink's ads) is just so happy. This is another big one - three inches across - but I don't think it would look as cool if it were smaller.

For:  My Paternal Grandma

This was the second magnet I made. For my Dad's mom I wanted something simple and nice. This turned out a little "sweeter" than I wanted. I would also probably move the flower up a bit next time. I think I got the middle of the flower in the middle of the background, but because it is lopsided, it looks a bit off.

For:  Bunka (My Maternal Grandma)

I went with the same sort of design for this one as for my other Grandma, but with a little more edge. The background is all leather, which amuses me. I also drew and cut the oval background freehand, which turned out pretty nice, I think.

For: My Mom

This one is my favorite. Like the one for my mother-in-law, all of the pictures are hair. The heart in the middle of the tree say "GMA", for Grandma. The one issue I see with it is that the ground isn't straight, which is aggravating because I did draw guide lines. Other than that, I really couldn't be happier.

I will definitely be making more decoupage stuff in the future. It is really relaxing to gather the images, the process is pretty easy, and the results are nice.

A (Work) Week of Meat

I try to give the whole meat department a good once over, when I go to the store, and a few weeks ago that paid off when I found 7.5 lbs of Boston Butt pork roast for $13.30.  This was actually the smallest cut I could find, and I left without buying it on the first trip because that is a seriously daunting amount of meat.  I was lured back, though, by the promise of not having to cook more than once, and getting to brag about it on this blog.

Recipe 6:  Crock Pot Boston Butt Roast

I wanted to fuss with this thing as little as possible, and make it as versatile as I could, so I used this recipe.  It's so simple, I'll just paraphrase it here:  Put the roast into a pot with onions, crushed garlic, and Worcestershire sauce.   The recipe was for a 4 lb roast, so I doubled everything.

 

Here it is, in all of it's porky glory.  I put it in the crock pot with all of the wrapping still on, just to make sure it would fit. 

 

And it did.  Barely.  

The meat was marbled with fat, which meant that it turned out rather "rich" (read:  greasy) when everything melted.  Unlike with beef shoulder roasts, where I can generally remove a good amount of the fat after it has cooked, that wasn't really an option here.  While it was heavy, I didn't find it unpleasant.

Below are pictures of the meals we made with the behemoth.

Night 1:  Pork on a plate.

For the first night, I just served a chunk of the roast on a plate with the onions on the side. It was extremely tender, and while the meat itself was a little bland, the onions soaked up the Worcestershire sauce nicely. A bite of the pork with a little onion and a little potato was a nice mouthful.

After the first meal, I shredded the rest, which left a good amount of shredded pork.

Night 2:  Pulled Pork Sandwiches

I love sandwiches to stretch meat, because you can use just a little and it still feels like a satisfying meal. 

Night 3:  Pulled Pork Sandwiches ... the Revenge!

I was actually smart enough to put barbecue sauce in the meat while I was reheating it this time.  I should mention that I also drained as much fat as possible from the meat while I was heating it.  That didn't prevent the last few bites of role from being soggy, but it helped.

For the next several days, I made taco meat out of the remaining pork.  To do this I heated it in the microwave enough to pour most of the fat off, then mixed in cumin, seasoning salt, chili powder, and garlic powder before heating it in the oven to finish drying it out.  The first night I let it sit a little too long in the oven, and the edges got too crispy.  Below is a picture of the more successful second attempt.

Night 4:  Taco Salad

Okay, I'll admit, this isn't much of a salad.  Most of the time, I'll put a lot more green in a salad, but I didn't realize we were almost out until after I was committed.  At least the pepper added a few more veggie points.

Night 5:  Quesadillas

And finally, the last of the pork went into quesadialls.  This was a pretty heavy meal, and I probably could have scraped one more dish out of it, but I figured it was time to just be done an move on.

At the end of the day, I would definitely pick up this cut of meat again.  The food all turned out fine, and it was nice to be able to throw something together each night, and not have too many dishes at the end of it. 

Sorry it took so long to write this update.  The boy has been sick, and he's been less tolerant of me using the computer while he sleeps, and I've been less willing to try to type all of this on my tablet.  I will try to put out at least one more post this week (I've already done the next set of recipes).  Thank you for all of the views - it has been very motivating to stick with this blog.

Curried Lentils

Some weeks, I have a lot of banter stored up, but not today, so I'll just cut to the chase:

Recipe 5:  Curried Lentils

For this recipe, I turned once again to Budget Bytes.  I had seen the recipe for curried lentils a few weeks ago, and kept it in mind. Last week I picked up a pack of chicken legs on sale, and had too many for one pot of chicken and dumplings, but too few for two meals with chicken as the main protien. Lentils + chicken seemed like the perfect solution.

I was happy to have an excuse to try the recipe, because we are a lentil eating family. Generally, I'll throw a bag of lentils in the crock pot with some carrots, onions, a bay leaf or oregano, and some broth or bullion. Top that with two pieces of bacon, and you've got a hearty, nutritious
(if somewhat unappealing looking) soup. We are moving out of winter, though, and soon earthy flavors will seem a bit heavy. So another use for lentils was very welcome.The dish went together pretty easily. Often, I find that my cooking times are longer than the recipe calls for, which I think is because I'm still getting used to cooking on stainless steel, so I use lower heat than I really should. In addition to cooking the vegitables longer, I had to boil the lentils maybe 10 minutes longer than recommended, and they were still a bit unevenly cooked. Next time, I might try using a bigger pot or keeping the temperature up a bit (I turned it down to three). I could just be overcooking my lentils when I do them in the crock pot, of course, so maybe they are supposed to retain a bit of resistance.

The flavor was very nice. Two tablespoons of curry powder is quite a bit, so each bite had a nice slow burn. Our son didn't have much that day, but did have some when I ate the leftovers cold as a snack (of course, that may have had more to do with needing to mooch on Mom's food than actually enjoying the flavor).

To me, the one flaw was the amount of tomato sauce. It ended up feeling a bit thick, and I thought the tomato flavor was a little overwhelming. Because the recipe calls for one can of sauce, the next time I make it, I might try doubling all of the other ingredients, and maybe save a little of the liquid the lentils cooked in to thin it a bit.

Overall, though, it was a nice dish that I think will make it into the regular rotation of recipes to make when meat is expensive.

It tastes like burning...

Hey there. I know I said that I would write again on Monday, but life has been a bit hectic. Our son is sick, and hasn't been napping well. I'm trying to be extra quiet so that this nap lasts as long as possible. Let's see if I can get a blog post out before he wakes up! (Edit: I didn't make it, but he is sleeping peacefully for the night after starting antibiotics for an ear infection.)

Recipe 4:  Caramelized Turnips

During my first search for new recipes, I came across one for something like pork shanks and turnips. It made me realize that in my thirty years on earth, I have never knowingly eaten a turnip. So last week when I was at the grocery store I decided to remedy that problem. It is pretty obvious that HEB does not do a brisk business in turnips. The tiny bin in the unfashionable corner of the produce department was half full of dented, topless bulbs, but I felt committed, so I took home four of the nicer looking specimens.

Turnips in hand, I found this recipe.  This is my kind of recipe. Simple ingredients, and the instructions are basically "don't let the food burn".
At this point, I realized that I don't really know if all of the turnip root is edible, so I once again turned to the Internet for answers. This site let me know that I didn't have to peal turnips ... and that I was probably in for some trouble. The mangy roots I had picked up didn't seem to fit the bill of firm, small, young turnips that they recommend. Still, maybe they would turn out okay with sugar on them.
The recipe went together just fine (the one real change I made was to use honey - based on a recommendation from the comments on allrecipes - instead of sugar).  My husband liked it enough to finish his serving. The texture came out like a firm potato or boiled carrot. The flavor as he described it was like a raw broccoli stem. I totally get that description. I also think "peppery" is fair. To my mouth, though, the best comparison is to poison. After about ten bites, I had to stop eating. As soon as I put a bite in, my body had a strong "this is not food" reaction.

So, I'm not going to be rushing out to try turnips again any time soon. I think the fault is mostly in these individual turnips. They were probably too old and too large for a turnip novice like me. At least according tomy favorite nutrition data site I'm not missing much. I'm pretty sure there are more fun ways to get vitamin C and fiber.

In Which the Author Realizes that She is a Creature of Habit.

So, over the weekend I tried my third NYR recipe, based on a Budget Bytes email.  I've been receiving these emails for over a year, and largely ignoring them.  That is one of the reasons I decided to make my New Year's Resolution to cook a new recipe every week.  It was starting to make me feel dumb that I was getting all kinds of new recipes sent to me, but I was still cooking the same handful of meals week after week.

I like Budget Bytes because the author really seems to try to present simple recipes.  She also breaks down what she paid for each ingredient, and calculates the cost per serving for her dishes.

So, without further ado...

Recipe 3:  White Beans with Tomato and Sausage

Here is the recipe.  I won't copy it out again here because I actually managed to make this dish without meaningful substitutions!


Wait a second, you are probably saying, what does "meaningful" mean?  Well, I didn't put whole wheat flour where only white belonged, or switch around a bunch of acids, so I consider my changes to be minimal.

The first change I made was to use dried great northern beans (btw, are these from Canada?  I can't think of them as anything other than "Great White Northern" beans) instead of canned.  Beth of Budget Bytes talks about how they are less expensive than cannellini beans, but I still couldn't find any for less than $2.50 a can at my grocery store.  Maybe they have a secret low class name with a cheaper price, or maybe Texans just don't eat them.  In any case, I went with the $.88 a pound dried beans instead.  I bought two 1 pound bags at the grocery store, but thankfully looked here and realized that just one pound dried beans would do the duty for two 15 oz cans.

Now, here we come to the inspiration for the title of this blog post.  I picked this recipe and bought the ingredients on Monday.  I planned to cook it over the weekend.  I thought about it all week.

Did I soak the beans on Friday, or even Saturday night?  Nope.  Apparently if I don't normally do something after dinner, I have to write myself a note backwards on my forehead to actually make sure it gets done.

Thankfully, there was a "quick soak" cooking method listed on the package.  So, now I can pass this mistake off as wanting to provide extra information to my blog readers.  The method they recommended was to rinse the beans, put them in a pot with 2" of water covering them, then boil for two minutes and let sit covered for an hour.  I had to repeat this twice, draining the water in between, to get them to cook, and even then they were a little more firm than I think they should have been.  This was my first time cooking great northern beans, though, so it's possible it is how they are supposed to be.  (They also way more than doubled in volume, creating probably three and a half cups of leftover beans.) In any case, I'm glad I was able to proceed with the recipe, but I'll have to be extra careful the next time I want to do something with dried beans.

Once I had fixed my bean mistake, the recipe went together with relatively little fuss.  I used stewed tomatoes instead of crushed, because that is what I keep in my pantry.  I think this added to the cooking time because I had to chop up the tomatoes after adding them to the pan, and I believe they are packed in a little more liquid than crushed tomatoes are.

Overall, I think the dish came together well, and made a good meal.  There are just two things I am disappointed about with this recipe.  First, there isn't enough meat.  Two sausage links, especially cut into rounds, made it seem like most bites didn't have meat in them.  In the future, I think I'll either cook the sausage without the casing, so that it distributes more evenly, or just put more in.  The second complaint is a bit of a nit-pick.  I went with extra finely chopped frozen spinach, because I couldn't find the big blocks of spinach in the freezer case. The spinach basically dissolved, turning the lovely red sauce into a murky brown. Not a huge problem, but a little annoying.

To wrap this up, I want to apologize for publishing this so late. I started writing it on Monday, but the kiddo has been getting up really early and there has been a lot of housework to do. I also started The Red Queen by Phillippa Gregory, and of course a new book can be a time suck.  I tried my next recipe last night, so I'll try to get another update out tomorrow.

Mini Update: Cauliflower, websites, and NYR #1 Update

Just a mini update to justify sitting on my butt instead of mopping. It's supposed to rain today anyway, so why mop before the dogs come through and put paw and belly prints all over the ground anyway?

When I made my last recipe I bought a head of cauliflower, then didn't get around to cooking it because I had my son with me while I got everything ready for the oven. He wasn't going to play quietly while I cut vegetables, so it had to be put off. I made it up yesterday, and it turned out okay. I cut it up in the morning, put olive oil and salt and pepper on it, and put it back in the fridge. Last night I cooked it in a 400 degree oven for about 25 minutes, stirring every 10 or so minutes.

It was still a bit crunchy, and tasted mostly of pepper. I don't think this is how it was supposed to turn out. I suspect that oiling it ahead of time allowed the oil to soak in, and probably changed how the heat effected the veggies. The dish it cooked in was also cold from the fridge, which probably also had an effect. It is hard for me to remember sometimes that cooking is science, and you can't just throw the right ingredients together, the conditions also have to be right. I have about one serving left, so I might look into chopping it up and putting it on some spaghetti sauce I'm going to make for dinner.

So you've probably read this far and are thinking, "Is this all I'm going to get? She's just going to tell us she botched roasting cauliflower?"

To make this post worth your time, I also wanted to share a website I like to look at sometimes. Self.com has this fun nutrition data, which includes (if you have flash player) some fun colorful graphs. I have gone there in past to check if/how nutritious various foods, especially vegetables, are. It isn't perfect; as you can see, they didn't have roasted cauliflower listed, just boiled cauliflower.  But I went from having no idea what nutrients I was consuming to knowing I got some decent vitamin A, so that's something.

Finally, I thawed one of the newton cookie loafs I made for my first NYR recipe. It turned out just fine, in my opinion - no more soggy or crumbly than it was before I froze it. That is a huge plus, and means I will probably make that recipe again. If it hadn't frozen well, it would have been far too big a recipe to eat everything before it went bad.

I have my next recipe picked out, but I'm going to wait until the weekend to make it, in case it is a pain in the butt. So have a good weekend, and see you Monday.