I am an ADULT!

     Kind of.  Most of the time.  I work a decent job that's actually in my field (I train parrots!  They're adorable!).  My house is mostly clean most of the time.  I eat a lot of salad.  I work on my thesis.  To balance being an adult, I like to do small ridiculous things on a daily basis.  Sometimes (everyday) I will look at pictures of baby animals.  Sometimes I eat a bag of Peachios.  Yesterday, I danced around the apartment to "Gangnam Style."  Seriously, you can't be an adult all of the time.

     Here's a pic of the bf and me visiting my work.  That parrot is a blue and gold macaw named Dewey.  He is four years old and his interests include hanging upside down, nibbling on things, and being held like a baby.

     I do generally cook like an adult.  Especially since I have someone that appreciates my cooking and will also notice if I eat the same pot of soup for two weeks and call me out on how gross that is.  I've taken to experimenting with DIY food stuff.  Some of it has gone great.  Some of it needs more experimentation.  My sourdough starter started out fantastic!  Lots of bubbles and a nice sour smell meant that I had some pretty high expectations.  When I actually used my starter, I was less than impressed.  Here are a couple of pictures to demonstrate.

     See?!  That starter looks fantastic!  Look at it all bubbly and overflowing!  Other starters are so jealous of my starter!

     Here is how it baked up.  I am very disappoint...  Sourdough starter is on the back burner and I shall return to it later.

     Other experiments have gone a lot better.  I've gotten pretty good at making my own Greek yogurt and now have a cheap healthy breakfast food that goes great with honey, berries, and chocolate granola.  I have managed to master the art of a long-rise bread baked in a Dutch oven.  Seriously, this bread is easy and delicious.  There are websites everywhere for this recipe so I'm not going to type out all of the steps.  Here is someone else's blog that has it all written down. http://simplysogood.blogspot.com/2010/03/crusty-bread.html  Tada!  Pretty tasty.  For reference, my bread looks like that.  IT IS DELICIOUS.  

     I have made this bread a couple of times now and use it for everything.  Last week we used a few pieces to make French toast and IT WAS DELICIOUS.  This morning we popped it in the toaster, slathered it with butter, and shook some cinnamon sugar on it.  IT WAS DELICIOUS.  Incidentally, I ate my homemade cinnamon toast along with the aforementioned homemade Greek yogurt.  I am Betty Crocker.  I should also point out that the butter was also homemade.  The process is so easy that I'll actually type out the instructions.  1.  Let heavy cream sit out in an open mason jar for 12 hours so that it can sour.

                    2.  Put a lid on the jar and shake it until it turns into butter.

                    3.  Rinse and salt butter.

     We call it wizard butter.  A friend of my bf's sent him this video of an old dude making this butter and this dude looks like a wizard.  Here's the video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oropJD0CUxI
     Tonight, the homemade bread and wizard butter was turned into garlic bread.  I just buttered slices of bread with wizard butter, shook on some garlic power, grated on some parmesan, and baked it until it looked like garlic bread.  It paired nicely with the Italian wedding soup I made using our Dutch oven.
     I love our Dutch oven.  It is big and a pretty green color and gets used several times a month for various soups and bread.  Short story of how we acquired said Dutch oven:  before I even moved down to Texas, bf and I were visiting his parents.  The subject of Dutch ovens came up and his mom was all of a sudden all "OH!" and then walked off and came back with a brand new Dutch oven which we now have.  It was amazing.

     Anyway, we had Italian wedding soup and garlic bread for dinner and I forgot to take a picture to post here.  Here is the soup recipe! http://allrecipes.com/recipe/italian-wedding-soup/detail.aspx?event8=1&prop24=SR_Title&e11=italian%20wedding%20soup&e8=Quick%20Search&event10=1&e7=Home%20Page  It's pretty tasty and meatballs are always a good time.  Tomorrow, I'll make more garlic bread and set the food up all pretty so I can take a picture and post it here.  You all will know that I'm just posting pics of leftovers, but I'm pretty sure most of the people that read this blog are friends and family so I don't need to impress you anyway.  For the one or two other people that read it, I'm sorry.  I don't aim very high.

   To wrap everything up, we got all fancy and drank red wine with our dinner which actually paired great with the soup and with dessert.  It's a sweet red from California called LaDiDa.  For being less than $5 it is surprisingly tasty.  Dessert was chocolate "mousse" (melted dark chocolate with sugar whipped into heavy whipping cream until thick and topped with whipped cream).  So fancy!  So adult!

*Note-Waste not, want not!  To make Greek yogurt you have to drain off the whey.  Since whey is packed full of protein and other good things and since I'm hyper frugal, I cannot justify dumping it down the sink.  Therefore, whey waters my basil plant (the Texas sun has killed all my other herbs) and has started making its way into baked goods.  The bread I'm eating was made with leftover whey from last week's yogurt.

**Update:  For a long time, my camera was stuck on zoom and I thought it was broken.  In an attempt to fix the camera, I accidentally delete all the pictures.  So, no soup pictures.  I am sad.  Luckily, my tech savvy bf took a look and fixed it in about 5 minutes.  Yeah, it was just on the wrong setting.

More Fancy (Crab Croquettes and Schmancy Restaurants)

    

 So, cooking with someone and sharing food is a heck of a lot more fun than cooking and eating by yourself.  Also, it's a lot more fun to go out to eat with people than by yourself.  Go figure.
     Since moving to Texas, life has gotten fancy.  I live in an apartment building that wasn't built during WWII and so the paint is fresh, the rooms are spacious, and it doesn't smell weird.  Fantastic!  Also, San Antonio has fancier restaurants than I am used to (I am used to Pablo's quesadillas) so bf and I are getting all sorts of ideas for fancy food that we want to make.  Just last weekend, for instance, we made homemade cheesecake out of the "Ad Hoc at Home" cookbook by Thomas Keller with from-scratch raspberry sauce made from fresh raspberries!  I did not take pictures of this cheesecake so you will have to just take my word that it was delicious.
     A couple weeks ago, we went with a group of people to a fancy pants restaurant called Bin 555 (http://www.bin555.com/).  I'll just tell you what we ate.  Bf and I ordered an appetizer of crab croquettes with lemon aioli sauce (more on this later).  Both of us ordered duck confit and cauliflower gruyere gratin as our main meal.  Let me just take a moment to say that I love duck.  I love the crispy skin and the rich meat and whatever the grainy sugary stuff and oniony things that was served with taste and feel in my mouth.  That said, I have looked at recipes for duck confit.  It looks expensive.  I probably will not be making it any time soon.  We finished off dinner with a Nutella tart which was amazingly chocolaty and rich and I WILL be trying to make that someday.  We drank a table wine (Recuerde), but I honestly know nothing about wine so I can't really get into too much detail.  We liked it!  I don't remember what the rest of the table got as main courses but one person ordered both bone marrow and grilled cheese as his appetizers.  Someday, I shall try bone marrow.  Every time I see it my mouth waters.  I did get to the try the grilled cheese and HOLY COW I WANT TO EAT THESE EVERY DAY.  They're simple enough.  Little baguette looking things with goat cheese and jam.  I WILL MAKE THESE.
     Back to the crab croquettes.  .  They are crispy on the outside and creamy on the inside and the aioli was delightfully zesty.  Bf absolutely loved them.  He has been talking about making them every since.  And today we did.  And in the process used three fry pans, one sauce pain, and a ton of plates, bowls, and utensils.  Worth it.
Here's a site with the recipe we used!  We got our recipe from "Izakaya:  the Japanese Pub Cookbook," but so did the author of this blog.  Read their blog and enjoy the recipe! http://chubbyhubby.net/blog/?p=571  We also made lemon aioli.  Neither of us liked it so I won't include the recipe for that.  We ended up dipping our crab croquettes in the ginger dressing that we used on the spinach salad.  Speaking of ginger dressing....here's the recipe for that, too!  Enjoy! http://www.cdkitchen.com/recipes/recs/10/Benihana-Ginger-Salad-Dressing75170.shtml

Getting Fancy

     Just stopping by to present the recipe I'm experimenting with tonight.
http://lipstickblogspot.blogspot.com/2010/06/roasted-salmon-with-pea-puree-in-light.html
     I am trying that and it sounds amazing.  Being me, however, I can't actually follow the exact recipe.  So, here are my changes:

• Side of peas instead of puree.  Don't want to dirty food processor.
• We do not have shallots.  We do, however, have part of a red onion that needs used.  Not the same, but it will work tonight.
• No mint involved.  Fresh mint will not be present in this household until after I move and can get my baby herbs started.
• No chicken broth involved.  I realize that broth would add flavor but I only have enough salmon for one serving each for my bf and I.  So, I don't want to open up chicken broth just for small amounts.
• No nutmeg in the rub.  Didn't have it.  Subbed cinnamon (I know it's not the same!)
• Didn't measure anything in the rub.  Just dumped.  I do that.
• That might be it for changes...

     I've already made the rub.  Dumping resulted in a little over half a cup which is more than we need for this recipe obviously.  However, I tried a pinch or two of it and I bet you one million dollars it would taste great on shrimp, chicken, pork, in burgers, etc.  The possibilities are endless.
     Also serving this with side of baby carrots with Beaumonde dip because the carrots keep freezing in the fridge so we need to get them eaten.  My bf always has a bowl of this made because he absolutely adores it and being home all day, I'm pretty much addicted.  Bf is pretty handy in the kitchen.
     Anyway, I was just pretty excited for this recipe (even though I'm not strictly following it) because it looks super tasty and super fancy.  I'll let you know how it turns out.

*Ok, so about the time my bf was leaving work and I was starting to get dinner together, I realized that all the sour cream had gone into the Boaumonde dip.  Wanting to get dinner started and not wanting to go out in the rain, I subbed sour cream with dip.  The issue is that there's mayonaise in the dip and that flavor came through, otherwise it actually tasted good.  I dolloped the sauce over the salmon fillets and that was a bit much flavor-wise.  Both of us scrapped off the sauce and just dipped bites of salmon in it and that was tasty.  The rub was fantastic.  Will try this recipe again with regular sour cream some other time.

I Moved!

     Ok, so I have not posted in several months.  I've been busy with that whole grad student thing.  I do not want to get into that here because talking about it would probably be very boring to any readers and because it would just make me go "UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH."  And we don't need that right now.
     Suffice it to say that I have finished the coursework for my program and am now solely in the thesis writing portion which is actually the most frustrating part.  Hence the long drawn out "UGH."  Also, I have moved twice in as many months.  First from my apartment to my parents's house at the end of the year.  Next from my parents' house to San Antonio into my bf's apartment.  After almost a year living 2/3 across the country, I'm pretty stoked about this move.  I'm going to say my bf is, too.  Also, in mid-March we'll be moving again.  But this time just across the parking lot to a smaller (more affordable) apartment.
     So, now my current full-time job is thesis writing which I need to get on a bit more.  I don't currently have a job job and probably won't look too hard until I turn the next chapter of my thesis in to my adviser (hence the "getting on that").  It's kind of nice for the moment.  I've started an exercise routine as we have a work-out center in our apartment complex.  Hopefully my inner sexy svelte self will emerge in time.  I've taken up jewelry making again and am considering starting an Etsy shop except that means my parents need to find my camera among the gigantic pile of personal belongings that didn't fit in my Impala and ship it to me.
   Being the half of the couple that's not bringing home the bacon, I've started to keep on top of things like laundry, cleaning, cooking, etc.  It's only fair (or about as fair as I can make it at the moment).  If I had my camera here, I'd post some pics of the rad food I've made thus far.  But since it's still in Iowa I'll just list some off:  wacky cake (which bf had never had and I overcooked in the oven which runs a bit hot), balsamic roasted vegetables with goat cheese pasta (set the fire alarm off, boiled over the pasta, turned out delicious anyway), Cook's Illustrated chocolate chip cookies (what the frick was up with that recipe?!  Not nearly enough flour called for in recipe resulted in melted mess on cookie sheet.  Dumped melted mess into dough and added about a whole extra cup of flour.  Chocolate chips from first batch melted thus creating chocolate chocolate chip cookies.  Actually a success.  But what. The. Frick.), and have plans to make some roasted cauliflower parmesan pasta thing tomorrow.  I'm on a roast vegetable and pasta kick at the moment and I like it.  Also, bf likes cheese so we have some super rad smoked gouda and multigrain crackers kicking around.  I approve.
  Current lifestyle:  awesomesauce.

  Also, since I don't have any food pics here is a photo of a llama that I stole from some stranger's blog.  Thanks, Stranger!