Wipeout

When I was up visiting my sister this past weekend, we somehow ended up watching the show “Winter Wipeout” for a few minutes. Don’t ask me how or why.

If you haven’t seen this show, it’s basically putting people through a ridiculous obstacle course so that you can laugh when they get beaned in the head by something, fall into a pool of water, and other hilarities (all without actually getting hurt, of course).

Why am I bringing this up? Because on Thursday, Philadelphia woke up to nearly 17 inches of snow. Really heavy snow. Laced with a nice sheet of ice in there to make everything even more interesting. After a day of working from home, I decided I needed to get out for some fresh air (and to treat myself to some Aveda hair products), and I swear, walking the five blocks to the Aveda store, I felt like a contestant in “Winter Wipeout”. But without the possibility of winning $50,000.

Between the signs warning for falling ice, the roads that were literal skating rinks, and the large swaths of pooled, icy water at every intersection, it was quite the demolition derby out there.

But I made it out and back safely, and it was nice to get out after my day of working from home - which is really what I wanted to post about, because while I still lament the fact that with the advent of being able to work from home, most adults don’t get true snow days anymore, it ended up being a really lovely day.

Sir T was also home in the morning, so we totally nerded it up, side by side laptop style on the sofa.

Phoebe was, obviously, in pure heaven with both of us there all morning.

Lunch was a throwback grilled cheese and Campbell’s tomato soup (made with milk and a little half-and-half….swoon) that I made to warm T up before he had to head out to school.

And then back to the sofa for the rest of the work day, where Phoebe again joined me, curled up, with her tongue stuck out in utter contentment.

Can you see her little tongue sticking out?

Not a bad work environment if you ask me.

Weekend

This weekend I went to Mount Pocono to visit my sister, brother-in-law, and my new little niece.

I love it up there, because when I visit I get to drink this:

Cuddle this:

Pet this:

And ride around in the backseat with this:



If it wasn't for my Mr. T, I'm pretty sure I'd ask if I could move in.

I cho-cho-choose you...

Reading on the train on the way home

My granddad loved trains. He worked on the railroad for much of his life, and kept a fascination for them long after he retired.  My family ended up with grandad's model train set, and my sister and I always looked forward to when it came time each year to put it up. Something about that miniature town, and the silhouettes of the people in the passenger cars entranced us. We loved making up stories about the people riding the train. We would turn off the lights in the basement and watch the glowing train go around the track, singing "City of New Orleans" over and over for hours.

My daily commute, like so many other parts of my life, has taken some getting used to living in Philadelphia. Gone are the days of hopping in my car and driving seven minutes to work. Now I don't even get in my car for days (sometime weeks) on end.

When I started work this summer, I would walk 25 minutes to a free shuttle provided by the college. With the nice weather and plentiful sunshine, the longish walk in the morning and the evening was a welcome addition to my day. On the other hand, the shuttle ride, albeit free, was not the best. The van we rode in was missing some much needed shocks, and the driver in the evening apparently was a fan of rollercoasters. I was also most often riding with medical students, who invariably would talk, really loudly, about veins, brains, cedavers, and other similarly glorious topics.

So as the weather became cooler (we're supposed to have highs in the low 20's the next couple of days), and I began to have to make the walk home in the dark, I started to think I should look at other options. And so I tried the train.

And I have to say that now that I've started taking the train, well - I'm hooked. I love it. And here's why:

- I can read on the train.  For some reason, even though I got really shuttle sick, I do not get train sick. Do you know how incredibly fantastic it is to get an extra 30 minutes of reading in a day? Do you know how many more books I will now be able to cram into a year? A lot. That's how many.

- The train is well lit. The shuttle on the way home was pitch black, so I couldn't do anything except for peer out the windows and hold on for dear life.

- I love being a part of the commuting masses. I haven't quite figured out why yet. Maybe it's being a part of a community. Maybe it's the quiet comraderie of being in the same routine with the same people every day, getting to imagine what the rest of their lives are like, all while enjoying the anonymity of never actually having to have a conversation. Then, of course, maybe it's the fact that I know this commute doesn't stretch in front of me for the next 20 years, so I'm taking in the novelty as much as I can.

Don't get me wrong - riding the train isn't always perfect. My commute now costs me a monthly fee. The trains can be slow in inclement weather, it can be smelly, it can be loud. But despite this, I am now, officially, a train-riding commuter, and very happy to be so (did I mention the extra 30 minutes of time that I can read every day?)

And I'd like to think that granddad would be proud.

A discovery

We have just discovered that the fireplace in our little apartment does this when you plug it in (that's right, I said plug it in):

Phoebe discovered it right when I was trying to photograph it...

Can you see it glowing? Isn't it lovely?

It doesn't put off any heat, and it makes this very strange whirring noise (which is why Phoebe was so entranced), but I love it.

We're thinking about buying a bear skin rug to lay in front of it, which I just think would be perfect. Don't you?

A Suggestion

I would like to suggest that if you read yesterday's post, decide to make the fried eggplant and arugula pizza, and have some leftover arugula, you put about 3 ozs of it (the leftover arugula....not the pizza) in a food processor with 1 clove of garlic, 1/3 cup of olive oil, 1/4 cup of toasted pine nuts, 2 tsps of lemon juice, and some salt, and then whir it around.

You will end up with some fantastic arugula pesto that you can put over pasta.

Then you can take it to work, sit at your desk, eat it and end up with this:

AND some stellar garlic breath that just might keep your co-workers (and anyone else for that matter) at bay for the rest of the day.

Great idea, right?

Joy in the Process

As I mentioned before, I read a lot of blogs. And there are a lot of a blogs out there where every recipe and every photo is spectacular - but folks, this is not one of them. I hope that someday, every photo on this blog will be fantastic and every recipe will be to die for. For now, however, the truth is that my photos are not always going to be so great. I am not always going to have spectacular recipes to share. But that is not the point - and trust me, this is all for the BETTER!

The point is that I am sharing the process. I am sharing my successes and my failures in the hopes that I will better be able to learn from them and possibly help anyone who is reading along with me to do the same. Who knows, maybe I'll make a mistake before you have a chance to, and then be able to pass along something really fantastic that comes out of it. Maybe, this blog will end up being more about what NOT to do!

I can promise that there will be great stories, there will be lessons learned, I will be totally honest about the mistakes I've made and the process I've gone through - and sometimes there will even be fantastic photos and delicious food. And by God, there will be dancing.

Okay, maybe not so much with the dancing.

With that, I present to you the story of this past Pizza Sunday, complete with some really awful photos and food that turns out so-so.

How's that for a glowing review?

Mr. T and I love pizza. And I love my KitchenAid mixer. All of this love has brought about the advent of Pizza Sundays, where I make the pizza dough, T and I decide together what we want on it, and he puts the pizza together.

Recently, I discovered the really, really wonderful pizza dough recipe from The Pioneer Woman, so that has become a new staple for us. She reiterates that the dough is best if made at least 24 hours in advance, so Saturday saw me making the dough in preparation for our upcoming Pizza Sunday. Saturday also saw me making the fatal error of mixing in some whole wheat flour with the white flour.  

Oops.

The real error of my ways went unbeknownst to me until Sunday afternoon around 4:00 pm, when we were really hungry, the toppings for the pizza were ready, and Mr. T grabbed the dough from the fridge, and plunked it down on the cutting board. And when I say plunked, I mean PLUNKED. The thing weighed 30 pounds. At least.

So, in the spirit of learning from the process and carrying on through my mistakes, I made a new pizza dough and just accepted the fact that it would only have an hour to rise (did I mention we were really hungry?) and that would have to be okay. And it was.

The rest unfolded as such.

Mr. T and I decided that this week we would attempt a fried eggplant, ricotta, and arugula pizza. Yum.

I decided to make some homemade ricotta, which was super, super easy. I totally recommend making your own when you want something tasty and simple and impressive. The recipe I used was courtesy of the Barefoot Contessa (how could you go wrong?), and it is wonderful. I'll definitely be making more of that in my future.

After that, I moved on to preparing the eggplant. I decided on oven frying it to cut down on some of the fat. I sliced up a medium eggplant. Note: I really like the flesh of an eggplant - I just can never quite get over the bitter skin, so I also peeled mine. Call me crazy. And then do whatever you prefer.

Next, I whipped together three egg whites and a tablespoon of water until it was a little frothy. I mixed together a cup of bread crumbs, a 1/2 tblsp of grated parmesan cheese and 1 tsp of dried oregano on a plate. I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.

Each slice of eggplant got a little dip in the egg whites and a little roll in the breadcrumbs.

I put them in a 400 degree oven on a prepared baking sheet for about 15 minutes, pulled them out, flipped them over, and put them in for another 15 or so.

Somehow, I missed getting a picture of them as they came out all golden brown and fantastic looking. But trust me, they were. And they will be for you, too. And they will smell lovely.

An hour and a half and a new ball of dough later, Mr. T put some cornmeal down on a cookie sheet and spread out the dough. Since we've decided to be brave and enjoy the process, we were experimenting a little bit with this pie, so he put tomato sauce on one half and just drizzled olive oil on the other half.

Next came the fried eggplant slices, which I had cut into quarters.

And for the final mistake of this episode, when we went to put the ricotta on the pizza, I realized I had only made enough to make it over half. But if you hold on to your hat and keep reading, you'll see that this mistake was a happy one! We decided to put the homemade ricotta cheese on the half of the pizza with the olive oil, and shredded mozzarella on the half of the pizza with the tomato sauce (with a little overlap as you can see).



Wow. This photo is particularly awful. I promise I will work on this. 



The pizza went into the 400 degree oven.

After 12 minutes, we pulled it out, spread about two handfuls of arugula over the top, put it back into the oven, turned the oven off, and left the pizza in there for just a minute until the arugula wilted.

And this, ladies and gents, was what we ended up with.

And then we immediately cut into it... 

...and ate way, way too much. That's what happens when you have to wait for a second batch of dough to rise. You get very, very hungry. See how quickly he was cutting?!

And the verdict - definitely, definitely go with the tomato sauce, mozzarella, fried eggplant, and arugula combination on your next Pizza Sunday (You're already learning from my mistakes! The beauty of it!). The sweet of the sauce and the eggplant, along with the bite of the arugula and melted loveliness of the mozzarella cheese made for some really, really excellent pizza. So much so that T and I fought over the leftovers of this half of the pizza for lunch the next day.

See?! I told you there would sometimes be delicious food!

Maybe next time there will be dancing!

Exhibit A

I would like to offer up the following photographic evidence that you can indeed lull your fiance into a loving relationship with your cat with enough patience and cuteness.

That is all.

Except this: I promise that my blog is not going to be all about my cat, and the next post will actually be about food.

Resolve

I'm not really big on New Year's Resolutions. I think part of the issue is my general dislike of commitment, except for to my lovely fiance, of course. I blame this commitment aversion for why I've moved an average of once a year since I left home for college in 1997; why I can't get through more than one season of a tv show, even one that I really like; and why I rarely, if ever, make New Year's Resolutions.

But this year, I have resolved to do the following two things:

1. Start that blog I've been writing in my head for the past year.  Done and done.

2. Be much more like my cat.


Miss Phoebe in one of her rare quiet moments...


Miss Phoebe is NEVER at a loss for words. She meows when she's happy, she meows when she's hungry, she meows when she wants in a room, wants out of a room, wants petted, wants us to stop petting her......it goes on and on and on. There is never an emotion, a thought, or a feeling that she experiences that she doesn't meow very loudly about (we can talk about the fact that I think my cat has emotions, thoughts, and feelings at another time).

I, on the other hand am a very, very serious internalizer. I generally have to take any/all of my feelings, ideas, thoughts, and roll them around and around and around in my own head before I fully understand them or I am interested in expressing them.

This, by the way, does not lend itself to being a good conversationalist, which requires being able to think and respond in a fairly expedient manner. If I could have my way, every conversation would allow for intermittent breaks where I could take 15 minutes to think through something before I had to discuss it.

You're just dying to call me up right now and have a really long, intermittently silent, totally awkward conversation, aren't you?

As one can imagine, this leads to interesting times in our household. I generally am not ready to discuss something with Mr. T until at least a good half an hour after it first happens or is brought up, resulting in a lot of confusion and blank stares, and comments such as "You've been thinking about that this whole time?" This can also lead to me not always discussing something that's on my mind, because by the time I have it figured out in my head, the best time for discussing it has passed, and it's 3 a.m., or I'm at work, or he's in the shower, or something else inconvenient to having a serious discussion is happening. While I have actually become much better at talking through what I'm ruminating on endlessly in my head with Mr. T, instead of trying to wait until I have it all figured out, I am still not so great at it in most of my other relationships.

And what all of this really results in is me not being as open as I would like to be with the people I am close to, and especially people I am just getting to know - which is not so great for building better, more meaningful relationships.

And SO, ladies and gentleman, this year I am resolving to be much more like my extremely vocal cat. I am going to put forth the serious effort to converse more, share more, and internalize way less.

I'm even clever enough to have my two New Year's resolutions acting together, as I hope for this blog to be just another avenue for me to totally overshare through.

Lucky you.

Spam

Even though the main gist of this blog is going to be about food, this title is not referring to the canned wonder. It is referring to me. I am an accidental spammer.


I read a lot of blogs. A LOT of blogs. I take blog breaks throughout the day like people take smoke breaks.


One of my favorite blogs, Marriage Confessions, had an excellent entry written by the fantastic Katie, on how to start a blog. She offered up the advice that if you wanted to attract readers to your own blog, the best thing to do was to start submitting comments on other blogs and insert your own blog as a link.


This sounds like a fantastic idea.


However, there are two problems with this for me. The first is that I'm not a fantastic self-promoter. I never have been - I never will be. While I love to write, and hope that some day people will actually want to read what I write, I still really suffer from the idea that....well....maybe I'm just not that interesting? And so putting myself out there is a little tough for me. So this is me being bold!


The second problem is that in all of the time I've been reading blogs, in all of the thousands of blog entries I've read, I have never once left a comment. Not once (see above for why)!


So yesterday, in my current spirit of being bold, I decided to leave a comment on another of my favorite blogs, The Pioneer Woman. I tried to craft something witty....I entered my blog web address....and I hit submit! I had done it!


I was so excited about my boldness that I proceeded to check every 15 minutes to see if my comment had been posted....and it hadn't. An hour later.....it still hadn't. Two hours? Nope. I decided that maybe, somehow, I forgot to hit submit? So I should try and submit again! Surely, something must have gone wrong. Surely it would have posted by now? So I summoned up my strength and submitted again. And two hours later? NOTHING.


So what would any sane person do? Try again, of course!


And then finally, an hour after I submitted my third comment, it finally appeared! I was thrilled! I was a real member of the blogging world!


This elation lasted only until I started to page through the other comments, and to my horror, saw that in fact all THREE of my comments had finally been posted.


Sigh.


I'm still not sure what happened here, but I do know that I inadvertantly SPAMMED the Pioneer Woman. The blogger of all bloggers. Does she really read all of her comments? Do you suppose she'll think I'm a crazy person? Do you see now why I tend to avoid the whole putting-myself-out-there, self-promotion thing?


Sigh.


I'm not going to let this stop me though - I'm going to continue being bold!


Just not so impatient.


Lesson learned.

Immersion Success - "Cream" of broccoli soup

Immersion success sounds like something out of a sci-fi film, doesn't it?


First, I'll explain the odd occurrence of my making a cream-less broccoli soup when I started out this blog by saying that I'm hoping to venture into the world of meat, cream, and butter. The truth is that I have done nothing but set up camp and make myself right at home in that world for the last two weeks, so I'm starting out 2011 with a little cleansing. Hence the cream-less recipe.


I have to say I didn't miss the cream at all. But I DID miss the butter on the bread that I used to basically eat the soup with. Who needs spoons when you have wheat oatmeal bread?


Here's how it went.


I first chopped up half of a yellow onion.

You could definitely add a whole onion to this, but Mr. T and I aren't the biggest onion fans, so I always cut back a little bit.


I then added this to a large soup pan with a good dollop of olive oil, and grated three garlic cloves in there with them. Yes, I said grated - I told my mom the other day that I was resorting to grating my garlic cloves because I was too lazy or inept to chop garlic finely enough and she looked at me like I had garlic growing out of my ears. Is it really such a bad thing to grate your garlic?

You know the next drill - I let it cook until the onions turned translucent.

Meanwhile, I cut up my heads of broccoli. I was hoping to make enough soup to serve four (this recipe ended up being about that), so I used three small heads of broccoli.

No, that isn't furry broccoli, it's just my really poor photography skills.

I chopped the broccoli up pretty small so that it would cook quickly and blend easily.

I then added it to the pot along with one cup of low-sodium vegetable broth and let it steam for about 10 minutes.



Once the broccoli was soft, I added about three more cups of broth and one 15 oz can of butter beans (you could really use any white bean here - cannellini, great northern, etc)



And then, ladies and gentleman, I did something so exciting that I had to do a little dance to celebrate. I used my new immersion blender (thank you to my sister for the Christmas present) to blend the soup smooth! Gone are the days of the dreaded "blend in small batches" in my soup recipes thanks to this most wonderful of kitchen tools! I have no pictures of this because I was too busy being ridiculously excited, blending, and dancing all at once. But after all of that I ended up with this:

And it was good.


Then came the magic - salt, black pepper and red pepper to taste, and a 1/2 teaspoon of ground ginger.


I let the soup simmer for a few minutes to combine the tastes and bring it up to a good temperature, then served it in a large bowl with a slice of (alas) un-buttered wheat oatmeal bread - which Mr. T proceeded to devour in a record breaking 30 seconds.

And that was that! Delish!


So - what have I learned from this post? That I really, really need to work on my photography skills (I'm sure practice will make perfect, right?), that cream of broccoli soup can be REALLY good without the cream, and if I want to have a nice, leisurely dinner with Mr. T, make the soup a little hotter so it takes him a little longer to get it down.

Immersion

So, tonight's experiment (er...dinner) is going to be an interesting one. I am attempting to make a creamy broccoli soup with OUT using.....wait for it......cream*! But I WILL be using my new immersion blender - a must have for making blended soups while avoiding dirtying several extra pots with the inevitable "blend in small batches" step. For which Mr. T (fiance and default dish washer) will be very grateful!


The exciting results tomorrow!


*Note: I understand the discrepancy here with my previous post about how I intend to use a lot more cream in my upcoming culinary adventures. However, I will (attempt to) explain this discrepancy away in my next post, so hang tight......

And so it begins...

And with this....I'm off! I am so excited to be finally crossing over from the world of blog-reader (stalker) to blog-writer!


I write blog entries in my head almost daily - so I finally decided to take the leap into actually creating them and getting them "out there". Sure, noone may ever read them, but I'll at least be honing my writing craft and entertaining myself in the process. And if Perez can do it, well, goshdarnit so can I. So here goes nothing!


In August, my fiance, Mr. T, my super fat cat, Phoebe, and I moved into a small, downtown Philly apartment, that has an equally small galley kitchen. This kitchen is now the scene of numerous culinary adventures as I learn the art of cooking in a tiny kitchen while venturing into the new world of cooking with meat (and butter!) from my days as a strict vegetarian (and non-butter user) Hilarity is sure to ensue as I perfect recipes and probably grow my waistline, learn my way around a new city and city-life, and enjoy every bite.....and I'm sure if you're reading this that you're hooked already!


So here it is - the first glance of my galley kitchen, piles of dishes, messy refrigerator and all: