Veggies that are actually...tasty? What a world.

I am not a veggie lover. I'm that absolute catastrophe of a human who'll pick the carrots out of a stew or eat around the broccoli in a casserole. I can tolerate raw veggies a little better (dipped in ranch, obviously. What, you thought I was an actual functional grown-up, snacking on organic natural free-range unseasoned broccoli? Nah homes. Drench that shit in man-made sauce that's only even edible by the scantest of standards, then we'll talk), but it's still not something I'm gonna get excited about.

BUT. Since I got all married and settled down and junk, I figured I could stand to work a little more on being a respectable adult. That means making healthy meals a little more often. Gotta balance fun treat-yourself foods with the things that'll actually keep you alive and healthy and not riddled with vitamin deficiencies. Which leads us to a recipe I tried the other day. It was pretty ambitious, you see. It's not your average broccoli with cheese recipe. No no. It is....cauliflower. CAULIFLOWER. Arguably the least sexy of all vegetables. It even looks like broccoli's weird shut-in cousin that had polio as a kid and can't do much now and really lets it define him, you know? 

Hopefully I haven't lost you already, because I swear I'm gonna bring this back around. You know what makes almost everything tastier? Buffalo sauce. Yeah, we're talking buffalo cauliflower. The recipe I used was this one here, which I found on Pinterest. Admittedly, I was mostly making it for Chris. That weirdo likes cauliflower to begin with. So I figured it didn't really matter if I liked it or not, he'd probably eat it and pretend to enjoy it for the sake of my ego. 

But it was actually...good. Really good. Like, "would make it again of my own free will" good. Just look!

If you squint your tastebuds you can almost pretend that's cheese! Just kidding, it doesn't taste like cheese. It looks like it though. These actually taste very, very similar to chicken wings, just with the tiniest bit of cauliflowery taste at the end of each bite. But the flavor is very mild, and the texture is pretty spot on. It was really easy to make, too. Only took about 20 minutes, and even that's because I insist on doing things the difficult way, like chucking all the cauliflower into the batter at once and just mushing it around with my hands in the too-small mixing bowl (the recipe suggests dipping the pieces individually, but that sounded like more than my attention span could handle).

The end verdict? Chris loved it (heard him raving about it on the phone to his brother later that night). I was surprised that I actually liked it. Two thumbs up, would cook again!

When I dip, you dip, WE dip!

     If you don't immediately have that song stuck in your head then I don't even know what to do with you.Weep for your lack of turn-of-the-century cultural awareness, I guess? Anyway, since football season has started it's the time of the year where I finally have an excuse to try out ridiculously indulgent recipes all the time. Because food and football go together like...well, like food and football. Pretty straightforward, honestly, I don't think we really need a simile there. So here's what we had for the first Packers game last night: DIPS. 

     Apologies for the less than stellar picture, but I was really excited about eating these things. From the left, we have jalapeno popper dip (recipe here), which I've made before and could already confirm as delicious, graham crackers, pretzel sticks, and crackers for dipping, then peanut butter cookie dough dip up top (recipe here) (holy shit it's good. Especially with pretzels), and finally, white pizza dip (recipe here). The cookie dough dip, I actually ruined the first time around. When it says dissolve the brown sugar in the butter, they mean JUST BARELY. I left it on the heat for way too long, I guess, because it turned into a rather sweet-smelling door-stop. But on the second attempt it was totally fine and turned out stupid-tasty. 

Let's talk about cake!

     And for once I'm not just using that as a generic conversation starter (though it's a great one. Everyone has thoughts about cake). See, the twins are having their first birthday party on Sunday, and I have been tasked with making cakes. Yes, cakes, plural. In addition to the main cake for all the guests, there will be two little smash cakes for the kids to get into. It'll be their first time having something so sugary, so God help us all. Those will just be little white cake, white buttercream cakes, so they don't get colored icing all over everything under the sun and stain themselves rainbow. But the main cake will suit the theme: Yo Gabba Gabba! 

     If you haven't ever seen Yo Gabba Gabba, you should probably go Youtube it. The first time you watch it feels like an acid trip that you're not quite sure is going entirely well, but after that it's actually pretty tolerable as far as children's shows go. They always have guest stars that are actually interesting to grown-ups (Weird Al, MGMT, Biz Markie, Andy Samberg, to name a few), so it's a little less mind-numbing than some other kids' programming. Anyway, for the party I'm planning on making a Brobee cake, since the kids seem to have a particular fondness for him. Not that I blame them, he's fuzzy and striped, doesn't let the world shame his unibrow, and eats all the time. We could hang.  

     So here's how it'll go down: 

     Hopefully it'll look better than this hastily drawn sketchamaroo that I just threw together for illustrative purposes. But you get the idea, yeah? I'm excited to see how this one turns out, so be sure to come back Monday for a look at it! 

Friday Favorites: Five Senses Edition!

FAVORITE SIGHT: LOOKET THESE GREMLINS IN THE WAGON OF MY YOOOUTH

     This cracks me up, not least because of how it compares to this picture of me and Amanda when we were wee tykes. 

     Right? The mischievous goblin-face, it's apparently a family trait. 

FAVORITE SOUND: THE BOB'S BURGERS INTRO SONG

     Yep, that's a thing that's happening now. I remember when this show first aired I thought the ads for it looked incredibly stupid. But people kept telling me I would like it, so I did and here we are. I relate strongly to Louise, the somewhat psychotic youngest child, because of course I do. So yeah, it's kind of a cheat to slip in a favorite tv show under the heading of "sound," but I do walk around humming the theme song a lot, so it sort of counts. Just roll with it man, be cool for once!

FAVORITE SMELL: MIIIGHT HAVE TO BUY THIS PERFUME SOME DAY

     This was just one of the little stink-good pamphlets that falls out of every magazine on Earth, but for some reason I decided to smell it instead of chucking it immediately as per usual, and I'm really glad I did. It smells like a fancy grown-up lady with her shit together walking through a park in fall. Or something. I dunno, it's kind of cozy but also sweet? I just like it a lot. I'm thinking of getting the little rollerball size of it to wear in the cooler months.

FAVORITE FEEL: THE DRESS SO NICE I BOUGHT IT TWICE

     I liked this dress from Kohl's so much I bought it in black and white. Part of the reason for that is it's surprisingly soft and floaty. The other part is that it was on clearance for like NINE DOLLARS. That's ridiculous. I couldn't afford NOT to buy it in two colors. White for when I want to look like I'm going to a very casual hippie wedding, black for when I want to look like a sassy cool witch who's a big deal on Tumblr. 

FAVORITE TASTE: TRY NOT TO BE TOO SHOCKED BUT IMMA CHEAT AGAIN HERE AND PICK AN APP AS A TASTE

     Hear me out though. My favorite taste-related app is the Chipotle mobile ordering app. I downloaded it when it first became available for Android an absolute age ago, and it was so horrible and unusable that I ended up deleting it and just waiting in line for my burrito bowl like all the other plebes. But on a lark the other day I re-downloaded it and THANK GOD it is so much better now. It's much more streamlined and intuitive, so it's really easy to put in everyone's order, name them so you can save them for later, pay online, and just bust up in there half an hour later and skip the line to pick up your food like you're Oprah. Or Oprah's assistant, let's be honest. 

PIE.

     Basically what we have here is me forgetting that it was Tuesday, and on Tuesdays I generally write a post for Wednesday, until like 2:00 am Wednesday morning. Oooops. So upon realizing that I had nothing planned, I flipped through pictures on my phone looking for something mildly interesting to show you. And look! A pie I made but never told you about! So sneaky of me. Such stealth. At least I think I never told you about it? If I did just pretend I didn't. Not like having to look at pie more than once is a huge inconvenience anyway, right?

     It was even more amazing than it looks, if I'm honest. Like I made it for a cookout at Jen's house, but then regretted not just making it and keeping it all to myself. That good. 

     HERE is the recipe I used if you want to make it yourself (and I do recommend that you do. Only for yourself though. Sharing is overrated). 

I accomplished things.

     Let's do a quick run-through of things I did/tried this weekend so I can convince myself I was productive despite spending large chunks of said weekend on the couch playing Skyrim. I killed a dragon and absorbed its soul, how much more productive can you get? 

I MADE YUMMY BREAD

     I had a hankerin' for some bread the other day (yeah, a hankerin'. It was intense) so I decided I'd whip up some apple cheese bread. When I did a quick search it seemed like most people were using quick bread recipes so I followed suit, mixing up the basic batter and just stirring in my shredded granny smith apples and sharp cheddar cheese before I poured it into the loaf pan. It was tasty, but not really what I was going for. It kind of tasted like dumplings? Luckily I really like dumplings, so it wasn't a bust or anything. It also didn't rise much at all, so it was much denser than I expected. I think I'm gonna try again at some point and tweak a few things; namely I want to try it with a yeast dough. 

I ADDED SOME SEMBLANCE OF PRIVACY

      I know, oooh, that's a nice big window, what a lovely architectural feature! And yeah, it is, EXCEPT. Except it's in my closet. Which kind of makes no sense because isn't the whole point of a walk-in closet to function something like a little dressing area? Well that doesn't really work if you can't easily put shades on the window because it's funny-shaped. I had a shade in there for a while just held across the horizontal line of the top panes, but it was ugly from the outside, and it broke/fell off constantly. To remedy this situation, I popped into Lowe's and picked up a roll of window film. Once I got it home it only took about a half hour to decide how to apply it (settled on ending at the top horizontal line again, partly for aesthetic reasons, partly because that's way easier to apply and cut) and get it completely applied. Between that and the sheers on the window I think there's a reasonable amount of privacy, although I still wouldn't stand in front of it with the lights on at night and hula-hoop naked, so keep that in mind if you're looking for window treatment options for your naked hula-hoop room. 

COLD. BREWED. COFFEE.

     I've been meaning to try my hand at making cold-brew coffee for a while now, but just got around to actually doing it this weekend. It's really easy; all you have to do is mix coffee grounds and water in a jar, let it sit overnight in the fridge, then strain in the morning and drink it over ice, mixed with whatever you usually put in your coffee (vanilla soymilk. Lots of it). It's so delicioussssssssss. Yeah, so delicious I just lapsed into Parseltongue. It has none of the bitterness that regular coffee can have, it's just smooth and mild and creamy and ughhhh I want to drink it constantly. The added bonus is it's a lot cheaper than buying K-cups for the Keurig. 

     I feel like that's enough trying and accomplishing for one weekend, so I'm gonna leave it there. Hope you all tried some new things and got shit done this weekend too!

How about we just do this like NORMAL PEOPLE instead?

     I made chocolate madeleines the other day from a cookbook I picked up at the Green Valley Bookfair, called "Baking Style" by Lisa Yockelson. I won't lie, half the reason I bought it is because it has a pink cloth cover with swirly silver lettering and I imagined it looking right at home sitting on the shelf of my magical little benevolent-witch cottage where I will bake things and learn to whittle. But I did also think the recipes all looked pretty tasty. I didn't take any process shots, though, because this lady cray. Like I respect the commitment to the art and methodology of baking, but there are some things that I just -- come on, NO ONE IS GOING TO DO THAT. Like she wants you to clarify your butter and only use alkalized cocoa powder (the eff even is that? Cocoa powder should have no words on it that sound like battery terminology) and sift everything together onto a sheet of wax paper (why wax paper, Lisa? WHY WOULD YOU NOT USE A BOWL? We didn't even roll anything in it or do something that makes that make sense, you just wanted me to, what, destroy the kitchen when a stray breeze caught my DUNES of sifted sugar and cocoa?). 

     All that said, they did turn out very tasty, even though I didn't do any of the fancy-lady shit she told me to do. I just mixed things together all higgledy-piggledy and hoped for the best, cause I'm a normie like that. I also made the chocolate dipping sauce, but I only had half the required amount of chocolate and forgot to half the recipe (somewhere in the world, Lisa groans and holds her head like Harry Potter when Voldemort approaches. "Some plebeian ruined my recipe somewhere," she mutters). So I just made it up as I went and it turned out fine. Anyway, here's some pretty food pics to drool over before I get outta here. 

Friday...Food Brag?

     Jen brought the babies over the other day so we could help watch them while she got some work done, which means...foooood! See, I always make something extra delicious when she's coming over, because she's the only person I know who loves food as much as me. I don't just mean "ooh, the brownie looks good..." when you're at a restaurant, but the kind of "OOOH what if you got the brownie, then the cheesecake on top? WITH GANACHE? YES. MAKE IT SO" mad scientistery that makes disgustingly delicious discoveries and some mistakes that shall never be brought up again (ahem, chocolate pie with cheez-it crust pregnancy invention). So I mean, yeah, I could just be like "here, I made nachos," but that's just not how we do. I made NACHOS. 

I took this picture from above so it wouldn't look quite so towering and intimidating, but I was just being modest. It was a beast. 

     I don't even know how it happened, really. I was just cooking some ground beef and pinto beans, babies crawling up my legs, in my happy place (basically I was born to be a 1950s housewife, but with like...rights and opinions and no sexist bullshit and a less-high-maintenance hairstyle), then once I started layering everything together it got kind of meditative and I didn't realize how out of hand it had gotten until it was too late. Oh well, it happens. Deliciously. 

     And theeeeeeen (there's always an "and then" with me) the real centerpiece. Jen's been wanting a dipped ice cream cone since we went to the beach at the beginning of the month, but apparently it cannot be procured at any eatery in the whole damn state (we looked). So I figured I'd make them! All I did was melt some semi-sweet chocolate chips with some coconut oil. The logic behind this is that coconut oil is solid below 76 degrees, so it gives the chocolate that instant-solidity it needs to stick on an ice cream cone. I stuck them in the freezer right after anyway, just to make sure it was nice and frozen. 

Looks like the ice cream cone from the episode of Spongebob where he thinks he turned Squidward into ice cream. No?

     And they were super tasty! Messy, but that's probably because I got over-ambitious (and had way too  much chocolate sauce) and coated the inside of the cones in chocolate too before freezing them. They were frozen at first, but holding them to eat them melted the chocolate so there was kind of a chocolate pool in the bottom of the cone. Not that you'll ever hear me complain about chocolate pools. That's still a win in my book!

Yellowcake Uranium.

     Cool, now that I'm moving up on a couple government watchlists, let me show you the cake I made for my brother-in-law's birthday over the weekend, which is like the real-life word puzzle version of that title. 

     For it is a cake. That is yellow. And radioactive. Well, not really. But then everything is a little radioactive. Anyway, I whipped this baby up real quicklike by frosting my usual white cake with yellow cream cheese frosting, then using a stencil to add the symbol for radioactivity on top with black sprinkles. It got a little outside the edges, but hey, maybe it's disintegrating in the midst of a nuclear meltdown. Who knows. Run with the theme. Oh, and I guess it's not entirely just my regular white cake, because obviously I had to make it nuclear-waste green on the inside. It just felt right. 

Evie is making that forlorn face because she BADLY wanted some. Like, crawled across the table with her tongue hanging out wanted some. 

     I'm kind of hoping we'll all develop radiation-induced superpowers, but failing that, at least it was super delicious. 

Mac and cheese smackdown (Mac-down? Just go with it)!

The time has come! To compare all the boxed macaroni and cheeses! Only one shall emerge victorious in these hunger games (see what I did there? eh? eh?)! 

     First, some ground rules: everything is kind of held against the standard of regular Kraft mac, because it's the American standard and whatnot. Also I didn't take calories or nutrition into account because I feel like if you're making mac and cheese health is obviously not your top priority, you just want delicious orange cheese-product. SO! Let's get to it. 

In one corner: NEW! Goldfish mac & cheese (cheddar version)

     They have other flavors of this, one of which I believe is pizza, but that's disgusting so no. We're sticking to basics here. If you want some horrifying bastardization of a classic, by all means, try the pizza flavor.

     This one wins points at least for having a cartoon on the back, so that's kind of fun. Unfortunately I think that's where the point-winning ends. 

     This picture obviously had the lens all fogged up from the steaminess of the mac, but I picked it anyway because it makes it look better than it actually was, and I'm charitable like that. This was...not great. The holes in the goldfish-shaped noodles close up once the noodles expand, so there's nothing to grab the cheese. There's a reason macaroni noodles are shaped like that: it holds cheese inside! So this ended up being a lot...noodlier tasting than I'd like. Also the cheese sauce wasn't great. If you think Kraft cheese sauce tastes artificial, try this and report back to me. Your stance will have changed. This sauce tasted like an approximation of cheese flavor, as engineered by a lonesome scientist who has never tasted cheese before and wants to punish those who have. I mean, real talk: it wasn't so bad that I didn't eat it. Amanda and I agreed that it kind of got better the more we had, sort of like tequila.

FINAL VERDICT: Doesn't compete with original Kraft mac. Is food in the technical sense that it will prolong your life slightly if you are starving to death. Thumbs down, would not eat on purpose. 

In the opposing corner: Betty Crocker Mac & Cheese (original)

     No cartoons on the back of this one (boo, hiss), but they do tell you all about how they do box tops for education, so...yay I guess? I dunno, I feel weird about the box tops program because I think it's kind of messed up that they'll only give money to schools if you send them a portion of their mangled packaging, like when a kidnapper sends the cops one of their hostage's pinky fingers to prove they've got them. Like, how about you just give schools money because obviously you have some to spare since you volunteered for this program anyway, then put on the back of your box "We're not a bunch of greedy bastards, we gave money to support education without having to have it extorted from us through old-school mob tactics" and then I'll buy it because hey, there's an attitude I can get behind. But whatever. 

I kind of want to make this my wallpaper? I dunno, I have food feelings.

     This one tasted pretty much exactly like Kraft. The amounts of butter and milk are the same, even. It had a little less of that day-glo orange Kraft has that makes you feel like if you ate enough of it you'd probably get radiation-induced superpowers, so that's either a pro or a con depending on your worldview. It brought me back to my childhood spent eating noodles that Jennie had flung at the wall (if they stick they're done) and having contests to see who could swallow the biggest bite without chewing (she was a great babysitter; I still have to consciously force myself to chew sometimes). 

FINAL VERDICT: Pretty good. If Kraft does something stupid and horrible and you have to boycott them, this is a totally passable substitution. I hope that doesn't happen though because they'd actually be kind of impossible to boycott; Kraft owns EVERYTHING. They're the Google of the supermarket. One thumb up, would eat if someone else made it and I didn't have something else in mind already. 

In...another corner? How many corners are supposed to be occupied in this analogy? Oh well: Kraft Macaroni & Cheese (Thick and Creamy)

    I didn't actually get around to making this because after the last two trials I was kind of mac'd out and felt like I should eat something for dinner in which none of the first five ingredients were "color." Color is not a food. Color is light interacting with your eyeballs. It has no nutritional value. You cannot eat color. 

     That said, I've had the Thick and Creamy Kraft dozens of times before and it is easily the best boxed mac you can buy. It's exactly what it says on the box: thicker and creamier than the original. The noodles are bigger and you don't end up with that three tablespoons of weird orange water at the bottom of the pot. It's probably even worse for you than the original somehow (I don't really know how, you don't add more milk or butter than the original, and the cheese is still just a packet of astronaut food, but it tastes more caloric somehow). It's also more satisfying to eat because of the bigger noodles, I think. 

FINAL VERDICT: Ultimate comfort food, a win for being super delicious but still really fast and easy. Two thumbs up, elicits "MAN YOU KNOW I WANT SOME MAC AND CHEESE" response when asked to partake. 

BONUS ROUND, let's mix all the metaphors! 

     If you want the best mac and cheese around, you'll have to put in a little more work. This recipe is the best, best, best macaroni, this is it. I make it for cookouts and special dinners because people ask for it all the time. It's got all the goodness and creaminess and cheesiness of boxed mac, with the added texture and flavor of gooey melted cheese on top. It's also a lot more substantial -- sometimes with boxed macaroni you eat a bowl of it and then go "That...was not filling." This stuff will fill you up. If you're a lover of mac & cheese, you absolutely have to try this recipe sometime. You'll thank me later! 

Cinco de...well, no, not really.

     As you are probably aware, today is the 5th of May, aka Cinco de Mayo! While as a person of your typical hodge-podge European descent I have no cultural ties to the holiday, I observe it in the same way I would any other holiday belonging to a group I'm not a part of. Kind of a general "Cool, that's cool." In this case, "Good for you Mexico, I'm glad things came up your way at the Battle of Puebla and you eventually won independence. You do you." A friendly hat tip and I'm on my way. That said, though it's not my holiday, I got a ton of emails from various recipe newsletters saying "MAKE THESE DELICIOUS-LOOKING THINGS FOR YOUR CINCO DE MAYO PARTY!" and I'm only human, so it did make me want Mexican food. Here's some of the recipes I tried out!

     For the main dish I picked these spicy pork kebabs, which were delicious. They were served with homemade guacamole, pico de gallo (store-bought because I didn't want to stand around chopping things for that long), and warm tortillas, so you could just unskewer the kebab directly into fajita-town. Mmmm. 

     Then I made some grilled corn inspired by this recipe. I say "inspired by" because I mixed up the mayo mixture that it talks about, but then forgot about it while I was cooking other things and playing with Ollie and Evie, and I let it sit on the counter a little too long. I wasn't sure if it was ok or not, but I've already been sick more times this year than I'd like, so I wasn't about to risk it. I just used butter instead, grilling the corn then buttering it before rolling it in the crumbled cheese. This one got good reviews from the family too, but then, it's corn with butter and cheese. How could it not. 

     I also assembled this glorious-looking "salad", which is only a salad in the loosest definition (it does have a layer of lettuce).

Side note: Why are these grape tomatoes called "Cherubs?" Are they trying to tie in with "Halos," those little clementines? Dear marketers: I don't need my produce to be spiritually superior, you can take it down a notch.  

     And I can't forget the appetizer, which was this tasty tasty dip. 

     I wanted blue tortilla chips like they have in the recipe picture, because those look delightful, but I live in an area where the only chips you can buy are official partners of NASCAR, so it was not meant to be. 

     Thus ends our feast! All these recipes were winners, but particularly the marinade on the kebabs and the dip (but I'm biased, I love all forms of dip. Except if you're including in that the sort of slang term for chewing tobacco because OH MY GOD THAT IS SO DISGUSTING HOW DARE YOU DEFILE THE GOOD NAME OF DIP WITH YOUR DEBAUCHERY). One of the things I love about Mexican food is that it gets you to eat more vegetables than you otherwise might: in this meal there was corn, black beans, tomatoes, green chiles, avocados, red pepper, and onion. So underneath all the cheese there's actually some nutrition present. Speaking of nutrition, I couldn't end this post without showing what Amanda made for dessert: 

    Yeah, just kidding, there's nothing nutritious about these. But they sure were tasty and good for my soul. They're a box variety, Duncan Hines...filled cupcakes of some sort? I dunno, but me likey. They tasted like Hostess cakes, but fresher and better. And in case you were wondering, they were nicely frosted, all piped out, but then I said they looked like the smiling poop emoji and when I came back they had been squashed. I didn't mean it as a bad thing. Whatever.

     I hope you all had much delicious eating over the weekend! 

I am more guacamole than human now.

     I've been on a guacamole kick lately. A serious one. One that requires me to buy avocados every single time I'm out of the house. But when I went to mix some up to go with dinner last night, I realized we didn't have any chips. Quelle horreur! So I decided it was as good a time as any to try making my own chips from tortillas, which I've wanted to do for a while now anyway. Let's see how it turned out! 

     Pretty edible! All I did was brush some lime juice over corn tortillas, sprinkle them with salt, cut them with a pizza cutter, and throw them into a pan with a bit of vegetable oil and butter. It was kind of tricky to get the frying time right -- it has to land somewhere between not long enough (chewy chips) and too long (burnt). My final verdict though? They were tasty enough in a pinch, but not much better than any corn tortilla chips you could buy in the store, so not really worth the effort in my opinion. Maybe you have to make your own tortillas too for the chips to turn out amazing. I couldn't say, because I don't have the patience for that. 

     Anyway, since we're on the subject, lemme tell you how I make my guac (in case you're curious)! 

     I don't use a recipe because I don't like to measure things. First I chop up some red onion and cilantro (or ask Amanda to do it for me because red onions don't make her cry like they do to me -- I form too much of an emotional attachment I guess), then add a bit of garlic (I use the pre-minced stuff most of the time out of laziness), red pepper flakes, and lime juice (again, mine comes from a bottle. Running theme here: I'm lazy when it comes to my snack foods). The first time I made this I used a jalapeno too, but I hate hate hate handling hot peppers because I can't be trusted to not stick my fingers in my eyes an hour later like an idiot and set them on fire, so I don't bother anymore. The red pepper flakes add enough heat in place of the fresh jalapeno for me since I don't like my guacamole too spicy anyway. 

      Ok, gratuitous ingredient shot (I dunno, I guess I thought I'd include it in case you don't know what cilantro looks like?) aside, then all that's left is to add the avocados and mash it all together. Tangent time: I find scooping avocados out of their skins to be ridiculously therapeutic. Like, I kind of feel like I need to keep a stash of them around so when I'm feeling all rage-y and so anxious I want to peel my face off I can just go scoop some avocados. People would come looking for me and just find me sitting on the floor in the middle of a pile of avocado skins, eating a fistful of avocado out of my hand. Am I alone in this? Nah, I'm sure there's a corner of the internet somewhere devoted to avocado scooping. I'm not gonna google it though. Too scared of what I'd find. Anyway, here's what the guacamole looks like all mashed up and staged in a faux-artsy way with a chip dunked in it, because that's what I'm here for. 

     Ta-da! I realize that guacamole is one of those things that isn't very appealing based on looks alone, so you'll just have to take my word for it that it's good. Trust, it's what's for dinner tonight! 

Recipe Review: Pizza Pasta!

     For this weekend's Sunday dinner, I thought I'd try out this recipe for Crockpot Pizza Pasta. I didn't change much, I just omitted the ground beef so Amanda could eat it (damned picky eaters) and the mushrooms because ew (hi, I'm a hypocrite).  So basically you mix together some uncooked pasta with two jars of pasta sauce and your seasonings in a bowl, then throw that into the Crockpot and top it with some peppers...

     Then pile some cooked Italian sausage, cheese, and pepperoni on top of that...

     Then heat it all up on low for a few hours. Since everything but the pasta's already cooked, you just need to let it go until the pasta is tender and the cheese is melty, which doesn't take long. I didn't remember to take a picture of it when it was all done and gooey and tasty because I'm a ding-dong and I got way too excited about eating to think about taking a picture first, but here's what it looked like all assembled anyway. 

     I'd give this recipe two thumbs up! It was super easy to get ready, was nice and cheesy, and had easy cleanup since I used a Crockpot liner. I think it would definitely be better with the hamburger, and I'd like to try mixing up the extras (I'm thinking ham and pineapple), but the basic recipe is a winner, I'd say. 

Faux-potle!

     For this Super Bowl Sunday, I had a simple vision in mind: build-it-yourself Chipotle food bar. I wanted to track down a bunch of copycat recipes and try them out to see if any of them came close to producing the same magical taste sensation that is Chipotle. Here are the recipes I tried (the titles will be clickable links) and what I thought of them! Also, apologies in advance for the fact that all the pictures are hastily taken cellphone pics. I was gonna send them off to the lab from CSI: Miami so they could be all "Enhance!" and they'd suddenly be HD photos, but they're closed on Sundays, so... 

CHICKEN MARINADE (USED FOR CHICKEN AND PORK)

Verdict: Tasty, and very tender, but not quite like Chipotle. It probably would have helped if I'd actually grilled the chicken instead of cooking it in a pan, but whatever, it's winter. 

RICE

Verdict: It's... rice-y? I can't tell you if this tastes like Chipotle rice or not because I've never eaten Chipotle rice by itself, only as part of a massive eight-ingredient food bomb. But it was good?

CORN SALSA

Verdict: Real talk, I don't order this at Chipotle and I didn't eat it yesterday because I don't really like corn. I only made it because my mom loves it. She said it was good, but something was missing so it didn't taste quite like Chipotle. I think grilling the corn fresh would be a step in the right direction, but that wasn't an option because, again, it's winter, so I used frozen corn. 

PICO DE GALLO (AKA MILD SALSA)

Verdict: Spot on. The recipe says to let the flavors marry in the fridge for a few hours, and I made this a day and a half ahead, so the flavors were settled down into a nice single family home with a baby and a dog by the time we ate it. Very tasty. 

GUACAMOLE 

Verdict: DING DING DING! Winner! This was deliciousssssssssss. Yes, I just said that in Parseltongue, I got that excited. I doubled this recipe and wished I had quadrupled it so I could just eat a whole bunch of it with chips. I'll definitely be making it again as soon as I can get to the grocery store to buy avocados. 

Friday Favorites: TV Binge Edition!

     I guess I kind of gave away the nature of one of this week's favorites right in the title, but so it goes. Let's do this! I present to you this week's favorites. 

SHOW I'VE BEEN WATCHING OBSESSIVELY

     I started watching Elementary this week because Jen has told me several times over several months that I'd really like it. I knew she was probably right, given that I'll watch any show that's a variation on a Sherlock Holmes theme (except the Mentalist, because the lead in that looks too much like Gilderoy Lockhart and for that reason alone I simply can't deal), and that if she likes it I probably will too because we're basically the same Lego minifig, just wearing two different snap-on hairs. But I have to be in a certain mood to start a new show, so it took me a long time to get around to it. Part of that is it has to be when I know I have a few days free, because I cannot be trusted to start a new show without binge-watching every season in a span of days. I can't help it; I do the same thing with books. Put it off for months and months, then read an entire trilogy in a few days. Anyway, I'm enjoying that this version of the Sherlock theme is less depressing than the BBC version (which I do love, but come on, my heart still hurts), and that Watson isn't such a sad-sack (again, I love Watson. I do. But it's nice to have a version where Watson isn't quite as much of a tragic puppy). 

FOOD I SUDDENLY REMEMBERED IS REALLY FREAKING DELICIOUS

     Lindt white chocolate truffles (I'll pause here while you imagine the sound of a choir of angels parting the clouds on a dreary day, because I don't know how to spell that sound. I picked up a bag of these the other day because I just thought "Oh, haven't had one of these in a while!" and OH MY GOD IT ISN'T EVEN FAIR HOW GOOD THESE ARE. Granted I'm biased, because white chocolate has always been my favorite chocolate (yes, I know technically it's not even real chocolate. Whatever, don't tell me who to be). But what I really want is the one this guy is whipping up with a maniacal look on his face on the back of the package. You know, the one the size of my FIST?

IMPROMPTU ROOM SWITCH-UP THAT I THOUGHT I'D HATE BUT DIDN'T

      Yeah, so... I have a glowing headboard now. See, the other day I was sitting around, being Pinterest in human form, and decided I wanted to incorporate the whole "white string lights behind a sheer fabric" thing that I see everywhere online, lookin' all pretty and junk. I grabbed some lights from the attic and my summertime sheer curtains, then set about holding them up and laying them out in different configurations waiting for inspiration to strike. It occurred to me that a sheer, lit-up headboard could be kind of cool. So I strung the lights on, then started having doubts. It was looking a little...dorm-room-esque? But once I threw the curtain on there and turned on the lights, I decided I actually really like it. It gives a nice ambient glow that's enough to, say, plug in my phone or see the buttons on the tv remote by, but it's not quite so bright as to prevent me from getting sleepy, like a reading lamp can be. Obviously I unplug it before I go to sleep at night, because it is too bright to sleep in, but it's nice for that wind-down time before I'm ready to get serious about sleeping. The lights are the LED kind that are designed to stay cool so you don't burn your house down with a Christmas tree, so I'm not worried about any fire hazardry there. As for that curtain, it's literally just tossed on there right now, so if I decide to keep this set-up I'll figure out some way to make it look more polished. Right now though, it's just a fun little change. I may keep it, I may not, but I'm enjoying it right now. 

Painted Puppy Cake!

     Now for the second of those custom cake orders I mentioned on Monday: the Painted Puppy Cake! This one was for a little girl's birthday party at a pottery painting place. She wanted a fluffy white puppy, with rainbow layers and a bow. Beyond that, Amanda had the idea to make paint splotches on the pup, like it had gotten into the paint at the party location. I loved the idea, so I ran with it! 

     If you're thinking "Hey, that reminds me of the Kitty cake you did recently!" that's because the birthday girl was there when that cake was presented, and decided she wanted one like it, but a dog instead of a cat. So I went for the same general style (piped white "fluffy" looking frosting all over, cute cartoony eyes), just with some more canine features. The white is my usual favorite buttercream recipe, and the eyes, nose, bow, brush, and paint splotches are all shaped from hand-made fondant. The inside was made of five different colored layers: pink, purple, green, teal, and yellow. I'd show you a picture, but obviously I couldn't slice into it to snap a photo! 

     This one was so fun to make -- with the rainbow layers inside and the splashes of color on top, it was the cake-making equivalent of getting to use all the crayons in the box! 

I'm not overly...fond...of fondant. Ba-dum-chhhh.

     Since I've got a few custom cake orders coming up that are going to involve a fair amount of fondant-ing, I thought I'd get some practice in this weekend with making marshmallow fondant from scratch (rather than buying it pre-made, which I've done when I only needed one color) and coloring it myself. I wanted to do a test run for a few particular colors because I have very specific hues in mind, so I figured if I tried them out ahead of time I could get the color ratios right ahead of time so I wouldn't have to experiment and end up with weird gray slabs of sugary ick when it's go time for the real cakes. Let's see how it turned out! 

     First thing's first: I melted about 4 cups of marshmallows with two tablespoons of water in the microwave. This part's fun, because it's like you're exploding Mr. Staypuft. I mean, hopefully not actually exploding, the marshmallows should just puff up and then melt together into sweet sugary goo. 

     Then I added 4 cups of powdered sugar, one cup at a time, and stirred it up until I couldn't stir no' mo'. Once I had a big sugary sticky mess that I couldn't do a damn thing with, I dumped it out onto a cutting board and kept kneading until I'd incorporated all the sugar. It took a while, but eventually I just looked down at it and said "Holy crap, that's beautiful!" 

     Then comes the fun-but-also-a-little-miserable part: adding color. It's fun in that it's cool to see the colors develop as you knead; they come through in streaks so the fondant gets kind of marbled before it gets fully colored. It just takes a LOT of kneading. I mean a lot. So this was the part where I always think that fondant is kind of a bitch. 

     That one ended up being black; you can see the coloring folded into the inside at the top left of the...glob? What's a nicer-sounding word for glob? I dunno, you think of one and pretend I wrote that. 

     Here's the colors I ended up with, including the finished black fondant on the right.  

     I don't know why I didn't think to take this picture before I wrapped them up in plastic wrap, but here we are. No regrets. Ok, some, but minimal. Minimal regrets! Anyway, you can see that the black actually turned out delightfully dark, which pleasantly surprised me. I wrapped them up and vacuum sealed them, since I have no real use for them but didn't want to throw all my hard work away, but who knows if they'll even keep overnight. It's all just practice anyway, so I'm not too worried. And in case you were wondering, they did turn out tasting much better than the store-bought pre-made stuff! Taste is my highest priority when I make cakes (obviously I want it to look amazing, too, but if it looks amazing and tastes weird, what was the point?), so I'm quite pleased!