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how to make dinner.

13 Apr
With the return of high-speed internet comes the return of google reader and easy access to my favorite blogs with recipes, sewing tutorials, and ideas.  It feels good to be back.  I found this entry in my feed – Ten (Super Rad) Blog Post Ideas.  Challenge accepted.
Post #1: A how-to.  I thought for a long time today about what I could show you how to do.  Sew a curtain?  Eh.  Make cakepops?  Done.  [See the Cooking Pastor tab.] How to wear sea foam green sunglasses and not look silly?  I bought a pair last night on a whim and I still don’t know the answer to that.  Then I figured I had to make dinner anyways. I now present to you my first blog post idea challenge.  [Disclaimer: I don’t take this one seriously.]
How to make dinner.
Step the first: A recipe is good.  I chose a chicken risotto with asparagus from one of my favorite cookbooks.  I have only ate risotto a handful of times and never attempted to make it.  I like trying new things so here we go.  Risotto night.  [You may see in the photo that the recipe is to have saffron in it as well.  I learned today that saffron is super duper expensive.  Like $17 for a small jar expensive.  My risotto has no saffron.]
Step two: Turn on the radio.  Lately, I’ve been choosing dance/pop music as my favorite.  Turn it up louder than your mother would ever allow.  [Sorry, Mom.  It was loud.]  Dance and sing obnoxiously.  [Sorry, Mom.]
Step three: Follow the steps in the recipe.  That meant that I chopped, shredded and stirred a lot.  A lot.  I blame the lack of photos on the necessary constant stirring.
Step four: Eat.  I paired mine with a strawberry/egg/goat cheese spinach salad with a blackberry ginger basalmic vinaigrette, and a really cheap white wine.  It. was. delicious.  The risotto was better than I expected [but that doesn’t say a whole lot – I keep expectations of my cooking fairly low so as not to end the night in tears].  And it’s a mighty good thing I did enjoy it because when you cook for one, there is a week’s worth of left overs.  Now I know what I’ll be eating all week.
There you have it.  Now you know how to follow a recipe in a cookbook.  You’re welcome.
Coming up soon – blog post idea challenge number two: Inspired by!

crack me.

9 Apr

Kinder egg completion.

I shared them with my mom and sister who came to visit for the weekend.  We went shopping on Saturday [when I bought an old antique metal head board to a bed to hang on my bedroom wall – it’s yellow and odd so quite perfect] and then on Sunday, after church, we spent the day napping, watching movies, and deciphering the gardens at the Parsonage Place [here on out the name of my home/b&b].  We had a relatively easy meal of baked ham and oven roasted veggies.  Simplicity was the name of the game and it was quite wonderful.
Easter as a pastor is an interesting deal and, after year number one, I’m not sure I entirely enjoyed it.  It seemed I spent my hours worrying about having enough communion bread, feeling mediocre about my message, and setting three alarms to make sure I was awake at 4:30am.  It was … different.  It was work.  We’ll see how years two and beyond differ but for now, I’m thankful for a Monday off to celebrate in my own little ways the risen Christ and the end of Lent.  Alleluia.

iced deliciousness.

12 Mar
At the slightest hint of warmer temperatures, I’m all about coffee that’s iced.  There is something so delicious about cold brew coffee over ice with a splash of almond milk.  The only downfall is that it’s so easy to drink and I drink way too much of it on some days.
My new system won’t help this at all.  I received this nifty glass drink container from Lynn-baby in the fall  and it’s perfect to keep cold coffee in the fridge.  My brew is based on a recipe by my dream woman [yeah.  I said it.] – Pioneer Woman’s perfect iced coffee.
I don’t have a container large enough to make it like she does so I break it down and make 2 quarts at a time mixed with 4 oz. coffee grounds.  I also don’t have a strainer [noted.  can you tell I rarely eat pasta? it’s on my to-purchase list.] but a couple sheets of paper towel do the trick.  
Make your own or come visit.  I promise to share.

kitchen adventures.

29 Jan
The month of January has allowed for fun kitchen experiments.  I’ve already bragged about my macaron success [but you should probably know that out of a whole batch of macaron batter, that was the only cookie that looked like that].  I tried a few other kitchen adventures – some were a-to-the-awesome and a few weren’t so great.  Check out the links and if you try them yourself, let me know your thoughts!
Success:
. turkey taco chili [I loved this one so much I’ve made it twice now, freezing single portions for lunches.  I love it with a little cheddar and a spoon or two of cottage cheese instead of sour cream.]
. marshmallows [made for kicks. so incredibly delicious in hot chocolate.  and I don’t even normally like hot chocolate.  I admit – I drank it for the marshmallows.]
. finnish pancakes [Sara and I ate these with a lot of cinnamon and a little powdered sugar.]
. loads of roasted veggies [sweet potatoes, zucchini, yellow squash with pepper and garlic.  so good.]
. roasted chickpeas [surprisingly so much more delicious than expected]
. fruit and yogurt rollups [I did not do the sugar step as they suggest.  I spread yogurt on low-fat tortillas, added cinnamon, and then the fruit.]
Eh:
. cilantro lime rice [I did make this with brown rice and I’m a self-admitted poor rice cooker.  This might be better on a second attempt or by one who can properly make rice.]

happy national pb day!

24 Jan
Did you know?  It’s national peanut butter day!  Grab a spoon, walk to your cupboard/frig, and take a bite.  Go ahead.  I’ll wait.
[enter early-90s easy listening radio]
Good.  You’re back.  Now tell me – isn’t peanut butter a wonderful thing?
I had a meeting this morning in Rochester.  It happened to lead me right past the Trader Joe’s in Roch.  On the way home, my car automatically pulled into the parking lot; I couldn’t stop it.  I had a short list of things [peanut butter being one of them] so I made a quick grocery stop.  I love Trader Joe’s natural peanut butter.  I’ve tried other natural pbs and they just don’t measure up on my tongue.  nomnomnom.  Mr. Saltgnomeshaker and Mr. Peppergnomeshaker agree.
To celebrate the day, I opened it up and gave it a stir when I got home.  I grabbed a knife, found Mabel’s kong, and stuffed that sucker with small bones and topped it off with peanut butter.  Mabel loves this treat … but what you need to know is that Trader Joe’s natural pb [any natural pb really] has a certain tongue-smacking tendancy.  It isn’t quite as smooth or easy to swallow as the peanut butters like JIF.  Let me tell you – Mabel noticed the difference.  It took quite the [hilarious] effort to eat that peanut butter.  I plan to continue to torture her with such in the future.  [At this point, I would like to say that I’m still much kinder than my dad to dogs.  He used to take a saltine cracker, cover it with peanut butter, and then stick it to the roof of the mouth of my grandma’s dog.  Let me tell you – Stormy earned her treat with all the effort it required to get that off the roof of her mouth!  Cruel.  And hilarious.]
21 Jan

This is what I did today. Shook a can of SPAM’s hand. More to come tomorrow.

edible bananagrams.

12 Jan
Did you know they make Scrabble Cheez-Its?  Maybe I’m way behind on my knowledge of types of crackers and should make it a point to study the cracker/cookie aisle more thoroughly, but when I saw them at the grocery store, I decided they would make a perfect confirmation snack.  Before we began our lesson, we played bananagrams with them.
After that brief, unrelated activity, we dived into our lesson.  This January, we’re all about the 10 Commandments.  To begin, we each took five minutes, a scratch sheet of paper, and wrote them in our own words.  We compiled our answers and this was our collaborated conclusion:
My favorite part?  The “urself” and “u” and “ur” and “r.”   For this, it’s cute.  [I told them text language was fair game.]  However, in regards to general society, it’s a bit sad.  I have a friend who teaches at a junior high and he says that teachers regularly get papers and homework turned in with such abbreviations.  It makes the grammar nerd in me cry on the inside.

#bakeoff2011 results

28 Nov
I know you’re wondering.  You’re really curious.  I’ve kept in suspense long enough.
How did #bakeoff2011 go?
My entry was low quality.  It was store-bought dough and frosting.  The goal was to do something as easy and as quickly as possible the night before I drove home.  I didn’t have the creative energy or time to do anything real extensive.  
I made these.
Can you tell what they are?
It’s okay.  No one else could either.
It’s a thanksgiving plate.  You’ve got your turkey, your mashed potatoes, peas, and cranberries.  The plate would be round and likely make more sense but it couldn’t be a circle.  That was a part of the rule.
But in the end, it didn’t really matter.
Because my opponent and sworn bake-off enemy, Connor, didn’t bring anything!
And that, my friends, is how my crappy, last-minute, not-homemade entry won the sixth annual Thanksgiving day bake off of 2011.

#bakeoff2011

22 Nov
It’s official.  So official that it has its own hashtag in the twitter-verse.
Year six.  Here we go.  Those born on December 8th [my 18 year old cousin, Connor, and I share the same birthday] are matching their baking and creative skills against one another once again.  Any and everything more you want to know about this year’s bake-off can be found in the following photos of my iphone screen:

thankful with scones [3].

17 Nov
I’m being unconventional.  [That’s code for lazy and procrastinating.]
I didn’t say thank you with paper this week.  I said thank you with lemon scones.  These lemon scones.

I said thank you to Marilyn, the administrative extraordinaire at ROG.  She’s awesome.  She puts together the bulletin and listens to my questions, my tears, and my outbursts.  Marilyn has had a bit of a crazy week and another crazy one ahead of her as her husband has surgery.  I figured scones were necessary.  We had a staff meeting with a scone and coffee, and I sent the rest home with Marilyn.  She deserves them and more for all she does for me and for the office.  
In other Thursday news, I think I might have pink eye …
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