"A piece of cake" actually isn't easy

Hey guys!

It's been just a little bit since I last posted. I've been meaning to post for a few days now, but I just started work on Monday and I've just been beat by the time I actually get time to write.

On Sunday morning, I made pancakes for Father's Day. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to take pictures before they were all gobbled up. I really wish I'd been able to because they were awesome: light, perfectly golden, and fluffy. There is no reason to burn or undercook pancakes. None. Get your pan to the right heat, and as soon as the edges are puffy and the tops are showing a few bubbles, flip them over! You might not be able to get them even on both sides, but they don't take that long to cook before they are done.

I meant to bake a yellow cake with chocolate frosting later in the day. Instead, we went fishing with my dad. While it was nice to see him enjoying himself and just relaxing, and fun to experience a slight mishap involving a live fish inside our little rowboat, I learned that boats do not agree with me. Granted, I didn't really get sick. But my equilibrium was off for a few hours, and my stomach and head were not happy.

So I baked the cake the next night, after my first day at work (which I'll talk about later!). Mixing and baking the cake was really easy. I used the Starlight Yellow Cake recipe found in the Betty Crocker cookbook. One recipe made enough for two eight-inch round pans. I baked them up, and here's what it looked like:

You can't really see from this picture, but one of the cakes did not bake evenly, by which I mean one of the cakes was lopsided. Yup, one side was higher than the other and spilled over the pan a tiny little bit. I don't know how that happened- the pan might have shifted when I checked on the cakes during baking, or maybe the batter was uneven in the pan and I just missed it. Either way, I wasn't thrilled with that.

It was so late by the time the cake cooled that there was no hope that I was going to be able to frost it and eat it that night. So the next night, I put together the frosting. I made Chocolate Buttercream Frosting, also from the Betty Crocker cookbook. Just powdered sugar, melted unsweetened Baker's Chocolate, butter, vanilla, and a few tablespoons of milk. I was very unconvinced that the frosting was actually coming together, but by using an electric mixer and a little bit of milk, it very quickly came together to frosting consistency:

That's the frosting. Eat it. You'll love it. See below for more.

It's a two layer cake, so first you "fill" the layers, or frost the top of the bottom layer with some frosting. Don't spread it all the way to the edge- leave a little space. It doesn't take much, unless you're a serious frosting junkie.

I basically couldn't frost this cake on my own. My lack of coordination and fine motor skill even extends to baking and frosting. My dad is rather visually-artistically talented and had lots of experience spreading pizza sauce on pizzas at Pizza Hut in college, so he taught me how to frost/basically frosted the cake for me. It really shouldn't be as hard as I made it. The gist of it is that you use a spatula or a butter knife (depending on the size of the cake and thickness of the frosting) and push with the flat edge against the cake. Spin the cake plate around so that the side of the cake you're frosting is facing you. Don't spread the frosting too much or else it'll start pulling the cake off. I have a few lumpy, patchy spots where you can see that happened. 

From this angle, you can see how lopsided the cake was. Yeah.

Hopefully you can see here a patchy spot where over-spreading the frosting started pulling the cake away.

I think the speed of this photo and the motion in it makes it look like I was actually successful at frosting.

Here's the good shot. The cake with a slice taken out so you can see the layers. The layers seemed pretty thick to me, thicker than I expected, but I did bake a recipe for 2 9-inch rounds in 2 8-inch rounds instead. So that probably made a difference.

But let's face it, how it looked really doesn't matter. What matters is how it tastes, right? And frankly, it tastes great. Just had a slice with some vanilla ice cream. :) The cake itself is nice and moist, with a thick crumb. It definitely tastes different than a boxed mix, so if you want to recreate that taste, just use the boxed mix instead. This had an "earthier" flavor, as my father described it. I think that means that it's not quite as oily and sugary as the boxed mix is. From-scratch cakes, like anything made from scratch, are great because you see exactly what is going into what you're eating. From-scratch frosting is even better. This frosting was incredible. To use indelicate language for a moment, basically, it's the shit. It's really sweet and kinda rich, but a lot less of that sickening-sweet that hurts your teeth, and way less oily, than the stuff you buy in a can. Another great thing- and a REALLY great thing- about from-scratch frosting is that there are no partially hydrogenated oils. Most of the Betty Crocker frosting products, including the counterpart of the stuff I just made, list partially hydrogenated oils as their second or third ingredient (followed by sugar and high fructose corn syrup, which is basically like sugar. And I won't lie, powdered/confectioner's sugar makes up most of the frosting recipe I used anyways. But that goes for all frosting.). I'm not usually one to freak out about additives, but I shudder at partially hydrogenated oils. They are the big bad wolf, because they are the basis of trans fats. Do yourself a favor: make yourself some homemade frosting. It's delicious and the only fat in it comes from butter, which is at least an animal product and a natural thing.

I started work on Monday. At the time I post this, I will have finished my first week. Right now I'm a teaching assistant for three theater classes of third and fourth graders. My specialty is voice, movement, and improv. I love the teacher I'm working with. She is super-enthusiastic and has an incredible amount of energy and patience and really does well with the kids. She told me today that she likes how I'm working with her too thus far, so I'm pretty happy with that! 

Here's the thing about working with kids, in case you don't know: teaching is a lot different from babysitting. When you teach, you see a whole different side of kids that you wouldn't see as a nightly or weekly babysitter, or maybe even a nanny. You see them all day long, but you have to keep them going and focusing on the activities. (That's a big word with my academy: focus.) There's a lesson plan, and with a class like ours where we have to cover three subjects in one period, you have to try and stick with it as much as possible. You have to keep them engaged in an activity, and you can't just skip around if they get bored. And some kids focus a lot better than others. It's a function of age and general attention span and if they're attention-seeking, as well. I have kids who are incredibly enthusiastic and generous and are just trying to help but kind of get in the way. I've got others who are very quiet and aren't very comfortable with sharing a lot. I've got a few who look for attention, and I can't quite tell if they want attention from me and the teacher (which means they aren't getting enough at home), or if they want attention from their classmates- which my dad told me means they're trying to be leaders. Because how else can you make yourself stand out in a classroom environment? They just haven't figured out that the best way to do it is just to be a really good example of great behavior and creativity. Once you earn that respect, then you can call some shots and stand out from your peers.

So I'm usually pretty beat when I come home after 5. I gotta be on and aware all day, every day from 8:40 to 4:40, and that's a long time. I do not know how my teacher does it, since she's even more on top of it than I am. I get home, try and wake myself up a bit, and do my workout, which I think really helps me to deal with any stress and frustration I'm having with the kids. By the time I'm done with dinner, it's often after 8 o' clock. Then I need to shower and try to wind down. I've been meaning to get to bed by 10 every night, but it just hasn't been happening. Once I'm done with Facebook and Foodgawker, it's been getting after eleven o' clock. Please send me good vibes for efficiency and energy in the weeks to come.

Much love. Hope your summer is going well!

Imara

"If you can give your son or daughter only one gift, let it be enthusiasm."

Bruce Barton

Is it summer yet?

Honestly, the weather has been so back and forth around here that it doesn't totally feel like summer yet. We had some really cool weather and rain, and now the sun seems to be sticking around...I hope it lasts!

How are you, lovelies? It is 11:02 PM on a Friday night. I hope that you are having/had much cooler nights than mine, sitting in my bed writing a blog post after babysitting for the evening.

So, what's new? Foodwise, I had a pretty successful week. Tuesday night I made Cornell chicken and roasted potatoes, which we enjoyed with watermelon. See pictures below!

The potatoes and the chicken are very easy to make. For the chicken: mix up red wine or apple cider vinegar, oil (I used vegetable oil, but olive oil may work), poultry seasoning (which is not the same as chicken rub, my mother informed me), salt, pepper, and a beaten egg. Marinate chicken pieces (try thighs and legs/drumsticks; they work really well) in the mixture for a while. This time, it only marinated for an hour or two and it was fine, but the original recipe suggests overnight. Heat up your grill. If you have a gas grill, turn off the middle burner and turn the outer burners to medium. Place the chicken in the middle, away from the burners- basically, cook on indirect heat- and leave it for about 45-50 minutes. You can flip them halfway through if you're picky about crispiness and grill marks.
For the potatoes: for four people, cut two to three medium-large potatoes into quarters or bite-sizeish pieces. Place in a large glass baking dish. Mix together half a cup of olive oil, salt, pepper (you know, "season to taste"), and a teaspoon each of rosemary and thyme. Pour that over the potatoes and turn to coat. Bake at 450 (I think) for about an hour. Check on the potatoes and stir a couple of times. Mine were probably done in less than a hour- a few pieces were a little darker than I would have liked. But they smell and taste delicious.

The next day was my friend Meagan's birthday. Meagan told me that her favorite dessert/baked good is lemon poppyseed cake, or anything flavored lemon. So I made a lemon poppyseed cake with a lemon glaze. Recipe courtesy of epicurious.com. It's a really easy recipe: just butter, flour, eggs, sugar, and lemon zest, I think. The glaze is confectioners' (aka powdered) sugar and lemon juice. Things I learned: confectioners' sugar is the same as powdered sugar- I always think that I have to buy it, when we actually have it in the house all the time. If you forget to soften your butter, don't worry; leave it out for an hour and it will be ready. And for this recipe- and maybe others!- a stick of butter can be swapped out for a 1/4 cup of applesauce. The original recipe called for two sticks (1/2 cup) of unsalted butter, but I saw in the comments section that someone suggested you swap out one stick for some applesauce. It is a great calorie and fat cutter, and especially good if, like me, you only have one stick of unsalted butter in the house and you hate to have to buy it since it's really only used to bake in your house. I don't know if you can cut the butter out completely- that might mess with the chemistry of the baked good a little bit. Plus fat adds flavor. And I'm not a huge fan of major substitutions, even for the sake of health. Just have a smaller piece. Honestly, don't go to the trouble of figuring out how you can substitute applesauce for butter and stevia for white sugar and all that stuff. You can eat dessert!

The glaze was very sticky and gluey at first and necessitated the juice of a whole lemon. So it turned out to be quite tart, like a good lemonade. Pictures below!

From the top, unglazed.

From the side. This isn't a dessert that gets really puffy and tall. So don't worry if it doesn't rise much.

Glazed. Here is where I had problems. Maybe the cake was too warm or maybe the glaze was just a shade too liquid-y. I may have added a tad too much lemon juice because I wanted it to drizzle, like this:

The consistency before this was still too gloppy, like frosting, rather than a glaze. See the distinction I'm making? And I'm a perfectionist. And I do appreciate aesthetics. So I wanted the whole cake to look like that little pocket below: the cake is drizzled with glaze, but not totally covered by it. There is an attractive dripping of the glaze in this part of the cake.

 

Instead, pretty much all of the cake but that corner was just coated in glaze. It spread really, really quickly. Also, I may have had too much, since it all promptly slid off the cake and pooled around it. So the cake is coated and sitting in glaze. 

P.S. Those two photos are like the best photos I have ever taken with my dinky little digital camera. Look at the lighting and focus. Maybe I can do great things with it...

But, despite my frustration at the glaze's misbehavior, Meagan loved the cake and thought the glaze was especially delicious. So I guess it's good that we had a little extra around the cake! Like a glaze wreath; it was a bonus prize.

So those were my cooking adventures this week. I also made brownies out of a box. I undercooked them by about five minutes, and they are especially fudgy and moist. 

What else to talk about? Workouts and food have been all right. I've slacked a little bit running, partly due to time constraints, partly due to the fact that I thought I was going to be running a 5K race tomorrow (which means I lay off a bit in the days leading up to it), and partly due to exhaustion. For Meagan's birthday we went out to bingo at the local casino, and I didn't get home until 1:30, which is late for me. Plus, I had to be up at 7:30 to drop my dad off someplace and then get our rummage sale ready. Day 2 of the rummage sale is today, and my profits stand at almost $200! I also babysat tonight, so the money I made this week is more than I make in a week's worth of work at my job, which I start Monday. And this money is all cash- so no taxes! Thank goodness; my savings account really needs a bolster.

But, I did try to get back on track today by eating a little better and doing core and a quick run today. Hopefully I'll have some time in the afternoon tomorrow for a longer run and some weights. I'm really going to try to do a little core work and yoga every morning before I go to work these next four weeks, just so I have an energy boost and can say that I've done something, so I don't have to fit it all in after 5 o' clock. I've started food journaling again, so I can get a better idea of my caloric intake and nutrition. I also believe in doing the little things- a little less cheese on a sandwich, a few less chips, a smaller scoop of ice cream, a quick set of core exercises- which can be just the extra push you need to get somewhere. 

I also need to be more efficient with my time, and step up the intensity if I'm not willing to put in the time. Example: if I'm not going to run a full 3.1 miles, then I need to pick up the speed in intervals in a 2.7 or 1.9 mile run (yes, I run weird distances; those are just my routes). Also, I have to do the moves that I hate: bicycles (where you extend one leg and pull the other in and then touch the opposite elbow to your knee or whatever. I hate those.), lat raises, etc. I feel like I hate them because they're hard. And if they're hard, they can only be more efficient and better for me in the long run. Right?

Let's face it, I have to be more efficient with my time elsewhere, not just in workouts. Like, I don't need to spend twenty minutes dancing around in the morning, and then rush to get ready to go. Nor do I need to spend who knows how much time poring over Foodgawker (but Lord, how I love it), or sorting through the Health and Fitness and Beauty blogs on Glamour.com. There's a lot of stuff I do that is just filler. I would really love to work on that this summer so I have better habits at school- less Facebook, less dawdling- and can use my time more wisely- more time for workouts, homework, studying, rehearsals, meetings, etc. And then at the end of the night I'll have more free time! Maybe...

That's all I've got for now. This rummage sale has been demanding my attention for the past couple days. Today was really quiet, so I plowed through Freedom by Jonathan Franzen, and I may be about halfway in less than a week. The sale's over tomorrow, and then I go to work on Monday! Next week in food, I hope to have photos to you of a yellow cake with chocolate frosting I'm planning to make for Father's Day, and I may be doing a picnic with friends next weekend. I'd like to make it a little sophisticated, so we'll see if that works out.

As always, comment away and share your stories, questions, criticisms, advice, etc. Also, if anyone knows how to get cool templates for Blogger, the engine powering this blog, let me know. I'd like it to look a little cooler.

With love,

Imara

In summer, the song sings itself.

William Carlos Williams

US poet (1883 - 1963)

Hello, my name is Imara, and I cannot stop reading foodgawker.com

Any of you who are friends with me on Facebook know that I have been posting extremely delicious photos and recipes off of a little website called foodgawker.com. Can you say internet crack? I cannot cannot cannot stop paging through their insanely large archive of photos and recipes. Today I somehow managed to complete all of my to-do list. Crazy, because I think I bookmarked like five more recipes today alone. I really want to be one of those food bloggers who can more or less buy all their own ingredients and just cook all day and take pictures of it. Oy.

Maybe I shouldn't be all stressed out about my education and what I'll be doing with the rest of my life. Maybe my newfound obsession with all things cooking and baking, and an enjoyment of household tasks, means that I'm just going to get married and stay at home with my eight million babies and cook and bake and clean and play and that's all. That sounds like a nice life.

This isn't very feminist of me, but I'm gonna need a really rich husband.

Anyways. Let's talk about the food that I actually cooked, and not the stuff that I am dreaming up. I didn't actually prepare three meals like I said I was going to. I already caught you up on my enchilada adventures. The next night I had the staff orientation for my teaching job, and so my mom and brothers got burgers while I was in the meeting. Then I had penne rosa from Noodles. (That's a recipe I should make up myself: a spicy tomato cream sauce, feta cheese, some good chicken or other protein, fresh spinach, maybe some basil...mmm)

We had sausage and peppers the next night, which I played no part in making. Which is silly, because all you have to do is grill the sausages and sauté bell peppers and onions up in a pan for a while.

But the night after that, I had my friend over to help me bake for another friend's graduation party. We made funfetti cookies and cream cheese brownies. All from a box. So nothing really ambitious or challenging, but hey, it's food and it went over great at the party.

Funfetti cookies are amazing. You just make them with Pillsbury Funfetti cake mix. The recipe is on the side of the box, and I know you can find it online. One box makes about 3 dozen, depending on how large you make the balls of dough. We tried the trick where you lay down brown paper bags on the cookie sheets to keep them from sticking (see my chocolate chip cookie post somewhere below), but it didn't seem to work here. :( But they did take well to the whole piece-of-bread-in-the-container thing, which kept them from drying out over three days. And then we got to the party, and our friend's friends (who we didn't know) just took the container and ate them all. Awesome!

I do have a recipe for cream cheese brownies from scratch, but I didn't feel like bugging my parents for another trip to the grocery store for all of the ingredients. You can totally just use regular boxed brownie mix. Find a recipe online for cream cheese brownies, and pretty much all you do is mix up cream cheese with softened butter, sugar, and eggs until it is a liquid. Drop it all over half the brownie batter in the pan. Then pour the rest of the brownie batter on top. Run a knife over it to make it all swirly and pretty.

Mine could have been prettier. Also, softened butter means softened butter! There's really no good way to soften butter (without melting it) besides letting it sit out all day. We did not soften the butter, so I had to resort to my family's Braun hand mixer, which I think was meant to be used to make baby food. It made really gross squishy, slurpy sounds as it mixed that goop together. But it finally worked. Also, we had a lot of extra cream cheese filling. We thought of trying to use it as a frosting, but it had raw eggs in it, and cream cheese frosting (and any frosting, actually) never has raw eggs in it. If I'd had graham crackers, I would have improvised a cheesecake. But alas, we had to throw it down the sink. The brownies were delicious- moist and really fudgy.

Mom went out to dinner with a friend that night, so I cooked for my brothers, my friend and myself. I made linguine with shrimp cooked in garlic and oil. Photo time!

Seen here is the pot of salted water getting ready to boil, and a pan heating up some olive oil. Once the oil was fairly hot, I stuck about three and half teaspoons of minced garlic (equivalent to three cloves) in the oil and let it become ever so slightly golden brown. DO NOT LET THE GARLIC BURN OR GET BROWN: it will be bitter and yucky and gross. I managed to avoid this, thank goodness.

(I'm just a little afraid of overcooking things. And yet I'm also afraid of E. coli and salmonella and cross-contamination. It's a delicate balance.)

Here is the shrimp. I love shrimp. I was terrified of screwing up the shrimp. The stuff cooks really really fast if you have the heat on high. So keep that in mind when you sauté shrimp: all of your junk has to be ready to go once that shrimp is in. I may have overcooked it just a tad, but not so badly that anyone really noticed besides me.

Pasta in the boiling water! I used linguine for this recipe. Set your timer for the recommended time on the box (usually it's less than ten minutes) and check it about a minute or two before it's done. Why? Salting the water doesn't actually make the water boil faster. It actually does the opposite: the addition of a compound with a higher boiling point will make the water boil at a higher temperature than normal. That means that the salted water is hotter than the normal boiling point. So your pasta will probably cook a little faster than the box time. You want it to be tender, but not mushy. That's called al dente, and it is beautiful. 

That is the finished shrimp with the garlicky oil from the pan. Shrimp are done when they are pink and just firm. Really, it doesn't take much on high heat.

My plate. Blah presentation. Could have used some color.

The whole table. I set out grapes and baked some frozen garlic bread. My friend and I had Sprite in wine glasses just to feel fancy.

My recipe needs some troubleshooting. I used a mix of recipes and some freestyling to put it all together. The major complaint/suggestion was that it needed more sauce and more garlic. This can be solved very easily by adding more oil and garlic to the pan (duh), maybe tossing in some white wine, and reserving some of the pasta water after the pasta has been drained. Some chopped parsley would have added some nice color and a little more taste to the plate as well. But all in all, not a failure. Very basic and solid and satisfying.

I've been making eggs all the time for lunch lately. Scrambled eggs and wheat toast. Sometimes a fried egg in a sandwich. Or a cheese omelet. This is what a typical lunch of mine looks like:

The fiber from the toast and the protein from the eggs keep me full for quite a while, which helps me to snack less in the afternoon- big plus. It's an awesome breakfast if you plan on going through a pretty tough workout before your lunch, or if you just have a long time between your breakfast and lunch. Eggs are not that hard to cook at all. Don't be afraid of them!

Anyways. I didn't make burgers like I'd planned. We'd just had them recently and I didn't want to bore anyone. I helped cook beer can chicken, but I did not do it myself nor did I get pictures. Super easy, though: butter up a whole chicken, season it (including its cavity) with salt, pepper, and chicken rub, and stand it up on a beer can with about a quarter to a third of the beer poured out (so 2/3-3/4 full), and holes pierced near the top. Stand them up on indirect heat on a grill for about an hour. And voila: juicy, tender chicken with crispy, delicious skin. The leftovers also make for great chicken salad.

Here's some of the music I listened to during my cooking adventures:

Judas, Lady Gaga

You've Got the Love, Florence + the Machine (and other selections from Florence; my friend needed to be introduced)

I'm in Love (I Wanna Do It), Alex Gaudino

Back to Where I Was, Eric Hutchinson

Run and Tell That, Elijah Kelly (from the Hairspray film soundtrack)

I know this is a long post, but stick with me; it's been like a week since I've posted and I've had "blog" on my to-do list every day since, but I just keep getting caught up with other things. I've picked up again a lot better with working out. I have run 3.1 miles for two consecutive days now- a big thing for me, since my regular running routine in years past has never gone further than about 2.7 miles, excluding benefit races. So I think I'll be in a good place for racing this summer! Our first one of the season may be this Saturday morning- so if we register, I'll let you know how it goes! 

I'm also trying to stay on board with core work and weights/resistance bands. I just want to get toned. That's all! Oh, and I did the Plyometrics workout from the P90X video series. Holy crap. I've been doing the yoga video every few days, and I really like it. It is definitely a good workout for anyone who wants something not too heart-pounding, but that still gets the job done. So then I figured, I'm in decent cardio shape- let's try Plyo! I don't know if I've ever sweated that much indoors...ever. Certainly not without the use of a machine. Plyometrics is all jumping and squatting and dancing around like a crazy person. It is intense. I made it through everything but the very last sequence of exercises because I could feel my sugar crashing and I didn't want to pass out. And then of course the next day I was very very sore- right in my quads, up by my knees (it's a very high-impact workout. Not recommended if you have knee or lower back problems.). And that's when I decided to run 3.1 miles. If my father can do it, so can I. If I could do Plyo, I'm definitely ready for a 5K. And I did it! Just keep telling yourself to run a little bit farther, to do one more rep. You'll be surprised- unless you have underlying health problems, your body likes to be pushed. That's how you really get results- at least that's what I keep reading...we'll see how I look in a few weeks or so!

In other news, I have actually been reading, which is always a plus. I finished Jonathan Franzen's ginormous and incredibly complex novel The Corrections, which I had started over last winter break. It is mind-boggling and depressing and discouraging, but an admirable work of writing nonetheless. I do not recommend it if you are looking for something frou-frou, uplifting, and mindless. Not at all. I also plowed through Maeve Binchy's Tara Road...not because I was so enthralled with the characters and the story and the writing, but because I had had it sitting by my bed for a while and I wanted to read it and finish it. Seriously? That was an Oprah's Book Club selection?? The writing was clumsy, sometimes abrupt, and rarely poetic, and the characters were often one-dimensional and fairly pathetic, or at least incomprehensible in their dependence, blindness, and simplicity. So now that that's over with, I'm going to start Franzen's next novel, Freedom, followed by John Steinbeck's East of Eden, and hopefully Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead if I can get my hands on a copy. 

I served at a meal program for the St. Vincent dePaul Society this evening. Service is always such a moving experience, especially when it's direct interaction with a poor and vulnerable population, like the one served at this meal program. First, you learn a lot of lessons about race and poverty, especially in a segregated city like my own. Second, you see that a notable number are mentally ill or disabled- which I know to be a truth in my city because its public mental health system was largely dissembled a decade or more ago. Third, you realize that the people coming through are certainly not bad people. Au contraire. I think that the criminals (who are a minority, of course) people associate with the inner city make their money somehow and don't need meal programs. Good people, on the other hand, are actively looking for work, trying to get promoted, and trying to feed their kids, and just cannot scrape together enough for a meal. (Side note: want to learn more about that? Read Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. Yeah, she's a little biased to the left. But she's not lying.) Everyone I served was friendly and thankful. Get out there and get in it- that is the only way you can really learn about the realities of poverty and urban America. At the very least, give thanks for what you have- that you have the resources to access the Internet and read this blog, that you ate a couple meals today, that you have a place to sleep and shower every day.

Almost done, guys. Thanks for sticking around! This is what's coming up: a very good friend's birthday is this Wednesday. Tuesday I may be helping her bake healthy chocolate and peanut butter cookies for her to bring into work as a birthday treat. Then on Wednesday I will be joining her for dinner, cake, and bingo at the local casino. I'm supposed to bake brownies with a dear elderly friend of our family later this week. I would like to make pizza, tomato sauce and meatballs, and apple crisp/pie/crumble soon. The apple pie is actually slightly urgent, because ideally I will bake an apple pie for the Fourth of July, and I don't want that one to be my first time with it. Oh, and Father's Day is Sunday, and my dad's favorite cake is a yellow cake with chocolate frosting. I will be attempting it from scratch! :) More grad parties are coming up as well, so we'll see if I can put any of my foodgawker bookmarks to use there.

Blessings on you and yours. Hope that the weather is satisfactorily summery out your way. As always, please comment and contact me with regards to the blog. I really appreciate and need your feedback.

Love,

Imara

Don't do what you want. Do what you don't want. Do what you're trained not to want. Do the things that scare you the most.

Chuck Palahniuk, Invisible Monsters, 1999
US writer (1962 - )

Guess what's cookin'?

Sorry. I thought that title was clever. Because this week, I am cooking dinner at least three nights. Tonight, I made my first meal. Chicken enchiladas.

I didn't make them totally from scratch. Meaning that I used canned red enchilada sauce instead of making it myself. To make it myself would have been a little labor intensive. Simmering onions, garlic, pureeing canned tomatoes, etc. Mostly I was scared that I would add too much chili powder and no one would be able to eat it because it'd be too spicy for everyone's taste. So I just bought a big can of La Victoria red enchilada sauce, heated it up, and followed this recipe:
http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/moms_chicken_enchiladas/ .

Here are photos of the enchilada-making process:

That's the big can of red enchilada sauce. It was just barely enough. So if you like your enchiladas really saucy, you'll want to make your own sauce or buy a larger can, if your store has it.

Heat up the red enchilada sauce. Not very sexy.

Cook the chicken breasts before you shred them up and toss them in sauce (obviously; you can't really shred raw chicken). That's what parboiled chicken looks like. Definitely not sexy.

Get corn tortillas and shredded cheese. Try Monterey Jack, or a Mexican/Taco mix. Taco mixes come seasoned, though, so if you don't want that, just pick something else. You could probably even make your own shredded mix if you want.

I think there are recipes for enchiladas using flour tortillas out there, if you don't like corn tortillas. Corn tortillas do have a different flavor and texture than flour tortillas. I would have preferred corn tortillas from our local Mexican grocery store, because they make them on site.. Unfortunately, it's not actually that local to me and I had no choice but to go with what they had at the supermarket.

I didn't get pictures of the tortilla preparation, because I was trying too hard not to get burned from oil and letting the tortillas get too dark and keeping the tortillas from falling apart in the sauce. Do this after you prep the chicken (see below). Heat up about a tablespoon-ish of oil in a pan. When hot (and really, make it pretty hot), stick a corn tortilla in there until the edges get crispy and the tortilla starts bubbling a bit. Flip it and do the same on the other side. Then dip each side of the tortilla in enchilada sauce.

After the chicken is parboiled and has cooled enough to handle, shred it up with forks. Toss in about half a cup of sauce (or whatever you think is enough; that's what it took for 3 chicken breasts) and maybe half a cup of cheese (again, depends on your preferences). Mix it up and set aside.

Slap a couple spoonfuls of chicken into the saucy tortilla. Roll it up, stick it in a pan.

Snug as a bug in a rug. :) Slather with leftover sauce and dump cheese on it. Bake at 350F in a glass dish for ten minutes.

Look at that. Look. At. That. A little bit cheesy, a little bit saucy. Deliciousness. I used mild sauce. It had basically no heat and was just savory. If you like things a little bit hot, either make it yourself, try to find medium or hot sauce (they didn't have it at my supermarket), or add chili powder a teaspoon at a time until it suits your taste. I would suggest serving it with rice. However, we actually didn't because apparently we were out of rice and I didn't grab it at the  store when I ran in. So we had enchiladas with cut up fruit. Yummy.

I also made brownies. From a box. So no great achievement there. A friend of mine is having a graduation party this weekend, so I am planning to make more baked goodies for her. On the docket: cream cheese brownies. Chocolate chip cookies (yet again). Funfetti cookies (from a box mix). So nothing terribly daring, but I can make them in large quantities, fairly easily, and they're crowd pleasers. Keep that in mind for parties: make lots of things that lots of people like. Especially if you're just a bunch of teenagers. Save the lofty aspirations for stuffed grape leaves, cherry clafoutis, and kale salad with lemon feta dressing for when you're older, have money, and know people who really like that stuff.

(I've been reading a lot of food blogs lately. Mostly from foodgawker.com. I'm a little obsessed. Actually, a lot obsessed. That's where I got the cherry clafoutis and kale salad from. I can't even tell you what a clafoutis really is, but it looks delicious, and I saw a lot of them because I guess cherries are in season someplace.)

Dinner tomorrow night: either burgers, for which I want to sauté mushrooms and onions as toppings, or linguine in garlic and oil with shrimp. I'm thinking maybe the pasta because you cook that stuff inside, and we have a heat advisory out here from noon until 8 pm. Which means I need to finish this soon and get to bed, because I intend to be running early in the morning tomorrow, before it gets too hot. When it's supposed to hit 75 at 7 am, you know it's gonna be hot and you need to hang around in the air conditioning. Or stay in your pool.

In other news, I have a job offer! Today, as I was just starting to get really desperate, I got a phone call from the theater academy where I took classes for basically my whole life. They offered me a job as a teacher's assistant with first through fourth graders for a month. I am very excited about it and hope that it works out. Go figure, I did not apply for this job. It may have been a conversation I had over the weekend with a friend who works there, in which I may have mentioned (like I have been to everybody, of course) that I was jobless and poor. It may have been the fact that my Facebook status was: "all the places I have applied to: Please hire me. I promise that I won't spend the money irresponsibly. 3/4 of it will be going straight into savings. Really! I am friendly and hardworking and I like people. You won't be wasting your money on me." Given that I am Facebook friends with a couple people who work at the academy as well, it is possible that someone took pity on me and suggested me to the man who is hiring for the summer, whom I actually don't know, of course. I'll go over the reasons why I didn't apply there in the first place. But for now, I'm going to attend the teachers' meeting tomorrow, check out the pay, and hopefully sign on!

Right now, I've been doing a lot of praying and reflection and trying to look for signs and figure out what this all means, if it even means anything. I hope you have a happy, wonderful week. If it's hot out by you, please drink lots and lots of water and try to put off your outdoor workout to the early evening, or get up and do it in the morning. If I want to do the latter tomorrow, I have to get to bed now.

Love,

Imara

Every day, in every way, I am getting better and better.

Emile Coue
French psychotherapist (1857 - 1926)

Progress? Maybe?

Hey kids,

It is Friday. Hip hip hooray! Hope you're all looking forward to a weekend partying with friends, enjoying (hopefully) beautiful weather and the arrival of summer, or just relaxing if you are fortunate enough to have a job and are getting a break this weekend. I am sitting out on my deck right now, basking in a warm, breezy, sunny afternoon with my music and my calendars and my book.

Still no job. This is very frustrating. And it's really getting to be summertime, when I need to start having money available to go out and enjoy my city. I feel very lucky, though, that I am not a provider for my family or for anyone else. I cannot imagine what it must be like to be jobless and not just need it to build up your savings, but also to feed, clothe, and shelter others. So every time I start complaining about not having gotten any calls yet, I say a little prayer for those who need work a lot more than I actually do. On the bright side, a lady in my neighborhood has one little one, and another one due next week, who needs babysitting, so she'll be calling me once the next one has been born. She is also going to do me the favor of referring her sister and her busy family to me. So I am expecting a little money coming in soon. In the meantime, I'm just laying low, checking my email obsessively and praying for my phone to ring.

(It actually did ring for me today, but it was a collection agency asking about some old doctor's bill that hasn't been cleared up yet. Those dudes are scary! No worries; the bill just probably got lost in the shuffle of my parents' stuff. Anyways...)

I really miss having a desk and a planner and a space of my own to have as my home base and to keep things organized. My big mirror dresser and night stand are just not cutting it, nor are iCal and Stickies adequate replacements for my planner and its minimum three Post-It notes per day, and my wall calendar and planner calendars. I feel really disorganized. I have come to realize that I like having structure and a schedule. I am not motivated enough to just get stuff done unless there's a deadline.

But what you really wanna know about it is the food I've been making, right? Of course you do. Actually, the only thing I've made since I last posted was another batch of chocolate chip cookies and banana chocolate chip bread. I decided not to taunt you with more pictures of the cookies, because they were monster-sized and uber-gooey and deadly. After I baked them, my father specifically requested that I stop. Too bad, Daddy! I have lots more things to make this summer, and you're going to love all of it.

So I made banana chocolate chip bread yesterday. I was really craving something sweet to eat, and we had bananas that were getting really ripe and unappealing- really soft, very strong-smelling, black skins, etc. Those, my friends, are perfect bananas for variations of banana bread. I made banana chocolate chip bread. Just follow a basic recipe for banana bread and add chocolate chips to the batter. You can also add nuts. Or not have any chocolate at all and just nuts. Or no extras and just bananas. In that case, have some big bananas, because that will make it really sweet and soft and moist. I skimped a little bit on the sugar because bananas are incredibly starchy and sugary (the only downside to bananas; they're a serious superfood), and I figured they could probably make up for my sugar measurements being a little bit short.

Moment of panic: when I just threw all the ingredients in the bowl and started beating it with electric beaters, before stirring all the ingredients together first. It started getting all crumbly and doughy, and I knew that was very, very wrong, because I've made banana bread before, and the batter is usually pretty mushy and wet, like a brownie batter, almost. With quick breads and muffins, you have to be SUPER careful of overmixing, because that will kill the chemistry of the ingredients and make your product hard. Like a doorstop. That's what I was afraid of happening, plus I wouldn't know what the heck to do with banana dough, so I turned the beaters off and started mixing with a wooden spoon. Then I used the beaters for just a few seconds to smooth it out, folded the chocolate chips in, and baked it.

Result:

Mmm. Nice, crunchy crust, with sweet and chocolate-y insides. I always feel better about eating banana chocolate chip bread than other desserts because a) it's bread. Not cookies or cake or pie. Bread isn't dessert. ;) ; b) it has bananas in it. And bananas are really good for you. ; and c) you can eat it for breakfast. This wasn't the moistest banana chocolate chip bread I've made or had. It may have been the bananas. I used two medium-large ones, when you're really supposed to use three medium or two to three large. Also, it may have been the whole beating-before-mixing, overmixing thing I worried about. But as a whole, still perfectly edible, delicious, and bread-like.

Here's some of the music I listened to while baking:
Take On Me, a-ha
It's Five O' Clock Somewhere, Alan Jackson
We've Got It Goin' On, Backstreet Boys
Everyday, Dave Matthews Band
Drumming Song, Florence + The Machine (have I discussed how in love I am with her music?)
Dancing with Myself, Glee Cast Version
Broken Hearted Hoover Fixer Sucker Guy, Glen Hansard (from the soundtrack to the movie Once)
Amigone, Goo Goo Dolls (which I strongly recommend to anyone who secretly likes the Goo Goo Dolls but prefers harder stuff: find their early albums and anything that Robby Takac sings lead on)
Save Me, San Francisco, Train

I have had a pretty disciplined week as far as eating and exercising go (thank goodness, considering I was out of town at a party and ate like crap for three days). I'm trying to eat cleaner, avoiding processed foods as much as possible, or choosing less processed options, and drinking lots of water and a cup of green tea in the morning to boost my metabolism and get extra antioxidants. Healthy food is expensive, though! I asked for whole grain bread, and it cost probably double what the regular white and wheat options are at the store. Really?? And then only way I can get berries is on sale. I may have to chip in for my foods this summer. People talk a big game about trying to eat healthily, but seriously, where do you get the money to feed a whole family organically? Just check out the cost of whole grain bread compared to store brand white bread, or the cost of a pound of vegetables to a couple bags of chips. There is clearly a problem with food pricing in this country. People don't necessarily eat what they want or what is good for them; they eat what they can afford. And I think that that is a very, very large part of the obesity problem plaguing the United States.

All right. Rant off. Back to happy things. My dad is going out of town next week, so my mom has allowed to make a few meals while he is gone. That's great, because I'm trying to play catch-up from last week when I did nothing new. I will be making:
Pasta (linguine) with sautéed shrimp, garlic, and oil
Beer can chicken
Burgers (simple, I know, but I have pretty much no experience with a grill whatsoever)
Oatmeal cookies
Cream cheese brownies
Probably some more cookies for various events
Assorted sides to accompany the meals
I promise that I will post photos.

Live it up this weekend! Be with people you like and who like you back. Get caught checking out a hot guy or girl and give them a smile. Break a sweat.  Take a deep breath of fresh air. It's June!

Love,
Imara

"I have learned that to be with those I like is enough."

Walt Whitman, 

US poet (1819 - 1892)