Sigh No More

I acknowledge that the title of this blog post is also the title of an album and a track from that album by Mumford and Sons. Who are my new musical obsession. Lyrically, instrumentally, everything. That music makes me want to go to the Scottish highlands, wear long skirts, white linen shirts, and boots and dance around like crazy.

But anyways. How are you? I hope you're well. I realize that I did not get a chance to post the photo and recipe for the last thing I made before I left home for school again. So here it is:

Whoa, in-your-face bundt cake! It's not just a bundt cake, though. It's really a chocolate root beer cake. More like a chocolate cake that was made with root beer and didn't taste much like root beer at all. Here's  a better picture below that doesn't make you feel like I'm stuffing your face with it.

In this picture, you can see that some of the glaze (consisting of root beer, confectioner's sugar, and vanilla) drizzled nicely over the cake. But, just like with the lemon poppyseed cake I made a while ago, the rest of it pooled around the bottom, making the bottom of the cake insanely sugary and sticky and moist.

It was a really tasty cake. Just not very root beer-like at all. I made it for my baby brother, who loves root beer. Next time I make it, I will try to add more root beer in the final root beer soaking phase, before glazing. Also, I think the next time I try to ice something with a glaze, I need to let the glaze dry a little bit before I add more. Hopefully that will reduce the mess I've had these two times. The recipe for the cake can be found right over here.

So there was your food thing. Hope the couple of pictures made you happy. Because that's all I've got on that front for now. As I have said before, I am going to experiment this semester with things you can make with boxed mixes and premade doughs- basically stuff you can get in a college convenience store. (Although, it turns out, mine does sell flour and baking soda, in addition to eggs and milk. So I could actually make something from scratch. But we'll see.) Upcoming projects include cake batter rice krispie treats (which I cannot get off my mind) and Oreo brownies- which are basically brownies with chopped up Oreos mixed in. I will also have to show you brownie chip cookies- a chocolate chip cookie made with brownie batter. I made them for my roommate's birthday last year, and they went over really well with her and her overworked architecture classmates. So yeah. I'll keep you posted. Stay tuned.

Are you ready for a heart-to-heart, dear readers? Yeah? Good.

(Holy crap, the song just changed over to Mumford's "White Blank Page." Intense. Excellent timing.)

So I'm the resolutions girl, right? I'm the one who sets goals for herself when seasons transition- New Year's, beginning of the school year, post fall-break, et cetera. Wanna know something else about me? I'm also moderately terrified of change. This is actually something I've just realized about myself in some less than pretty ways. 

Let me see if I can qualify that statement. I don't hate change. There are many things I'd like to change about myself and my life, and quickly, too. I think what I actually don't like is leaving my comfort zone.

(Now it's Mumford's "Timshel." The lyric is "You are not alone in this." Beautiful. You all need to listen to this music ASAP. Legally, please.)

Back on topic. I don't like leaving my comfort zone. I like safety. I really really need safety. Remind me to tell you a story about me a high ropes course sometime. That was a big step for me recently- getting up on that high ropes course. And I feel proud of myself for giving it a really good try, even though it didn't end as well as it could have. But that was a physical challenge. What I'm talking about here is different. 

I'm starting a new school year, all right? I have so much more that I want to do this year. I want to meet more people, go to more parties, lead some kind of project, maybe even run a half-marathon. That would be quite different from last year, in which I wasn't a terribly committed runner, I had few extracurriculars, I spent most weekends in, and I was with pretty much the same people from the beginning of the year onward. So I envision myself having a much more active, vibrant life than last year.

But here's the deal: I was extremely lucky in that the group of people around me didn't shift very much at all last year. I had to counsel a couple of other friends who were experiencing just that as their year went on. And I thought to myself how lucky I was that it wasn't happening to me.

Now, I'm nervous. We've all had a summer to reflect and think about where we're all going. And things could very well change. Which is not a bad thing! I am a big believer in the organic relationship: people come together and come apart naturally, tough as it may be sometimes. I'm a student. People change a whole heck of a lot during these years, as well they should. And I think that certain relationships serve certain purposes, and that not all of them last forever, and that's okay.

But that's where I get to worrying, guys. What if things are changing now, and I'm not getting a good sense of it? What if I'm being clingy? How do I seem to other people? Am I trying too hard? Am I too nosy? Am I too motherly and nice? Should I be more giving on my standards? Just how uncool am I? Can I even hang with that person the way we used to- or is it just weird? What about new people? How do I even handle that??

This is almost worse than being a freshman. Because as a freshman, everyone is trying to make friends and very few people already have ties to each other. Now, there are ties, and there are shared stories. We made friends. Now what if that all changes? Can I seriously build new relationships all over again? Is anyone else feeling this way? (Don't answer that. I don't want your pity or reassurance unless you actually mean it.) It doesn't seem like it to me. Am I overanalyzing things and thinking way too much? Is this all in my head? (Yeah. I know the answer to that one already.)

On top of all this, I'm sick of being stuck in a rut. That whole "breaking my pattern of risklessness" thing I talked about very early on this blog? Yeah. Hasn't really happened yet. Not the way I've wanted it to, I guess. I'm losing patience so very quickly. I mean, I've only been back here a week. And yet I feel like so many things are happening to other people and not to me. This is where the self-esteem crash comes in (which always makes me think of this post on the unbelievably funny blog called Hyperbole and a Half. Go read it. Especially if this post bums you out at all. I know it made me feel better last night.), where I start comparing myself to other people and come up with about a billion different reasons as to why their life is better than mine and all the things I've done wrong and the hamburger I shouldn't have eaten that day and the five more crunches I didn't do and blah blah blah. Whine whine whine. You know you've been there too. And it sucks. A lot. Because it feels real! Real enough that you end up having to do things like cry by yourself in the shower and then journal for half an hour about it in order to feel just a little bit better. You know how they say good things come to those who wait? Well, I've waited for a really long time.

So that's what's going on right now. And, since this jealousy and self-pity make me feel very ugly and ungrateful, this is what I'm doing to work through it:

1) Writing. Journaling, which is extremely free-form and raw. Then blogging, which is more polished and allows me to articulate what is going on in a more focused, controlled way. Both things are a big help in sorting stuff out. Journaling is a great cathartic release of emotions, and blogging takes enough time that along the way, you can sort a couple things out a little bit.

2) I run. With some really good music. 

3) I listen to more music. Really good music. Like Mumford & Sons. And Florence + the Machine. And The Rocket Summer.

4) I pray. A lot. For patience. For guidance. For a sign. For something.

5) I think about all the really wonderful things that happen to me every day. Because I do, in fact, have a really fabulous life. I am a lucky, blessed person.

6) I remind myself of this quote from Modern Family, my favorite TV show. For context: Younger sister Alex is giving the valedictory speech at her middle school graduation, and her speech focuses on the fact that she focused on grades rather than popularity and was shunned for it, and simultaneously rubs it in her classmates' faces that she is the valedictorian. Haley, in trying to persuade her to change the speech, says something to the effect of, "We all have our stuff." We all think the grass is greener on the other side. But really, we don't know. So comparing yourself to other people is just silly.

That's all I've got for now. I will leave you with a few quotes I'm meditating on lately.

Love,

Imara

"Be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars." 

- Max Ehrmann, "The Desiderata"

"Life is too short to wake up in the morning with regrets. So love the people that treat you right and forget the ones that don't and believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance, take it. If it changes your life, let it. Nobody said that it'd be easy, they only promised that it would be worth it."

- Anonymous

"And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding the way it should."

- Max Ehrmann, "The Desiderata"

"All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well."

- Julian of Norwich

P.S. I made the Oreo brownies. Here is the link to the original website. And here is a photo:

Delicious and chocolatey.

Food, glorious food!

Well hello there!

How are you? It's been a little while, hasn't it? I went out of town for a week. I fell in love with the Saratoga Raceway. I came back. I read some books. I cooked a bunch of stuff. And repeatedly failed to write about it.

So here goes nothing!

I think the first thing I made since I last blogged, and for which I unfortunately have no pictures, were beer and ketchup pork chops. No, not gross at all. Cheap, easy, and really delicious. Get some pork chops. Mix up brown sugar, beer (we used light beer; I'm sure a stout or ale would really change the flavor), and ketchup. Brown the pork chops a little bit. Pour the sauce over it, bring it to a boil, and simmer for a while until the sauce reduces somewhat. They come out nice and juicy and tasty. Want more exact directions? The recipe is here, at Pip and Ebby. I think the pork chops were served with carrots and probably some kind of starch. My family really likes starch- bread, rice, potatoes, whatever.

On my last blog post before I went away, I mentioned making blueberry muffins from scratch. Well, I totally did. And they were un-frickin'-believable. This recipe I, unfortunately, cannot hyperlink for you. It is a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, which is a really great cooking show on PBS. Yes, PBS! Public television! They teach you how to cook real stuff in the best way. Go to their website and click around for The Best Blueberry Muffins to give this recipe a shot.

Picture time!

In fairness to the Test Kitchen website's access policy, I won't go into too great of detail. But above, I'm cooking blueberries down with a little bit of sugar.

This is the finished product. Keep stirring it constantly while it's in the saucepan, or it could burn. Which would, of course, be bad.

Mix your wet ingredients separately from your dry ingredients! If a recipe tells you to do them apart, DO IT. Not doing so will mess up the chemistry. I'm a chemistry geek. Trust me on this one.

Here's the batter with blueberries added in. I got some really spectacular blueberries from a gourmet market in town, and the berry flavor was really fresh and perfectly sweet and ripe. Let the batter be lumpy! I may have mentioned this when I made banana chocolate chip bread, but quick bread and muffin batters must be lumpy or else they will come out hard as rocks.

Here's a special secret from the recipe (but seriously, read the real recipe): add teaspoonfuls of the jam into the muffins and swirl it around. This maximizes berry flavor and distributes it evenly throughout the muffin. The things you can learn from public television...

The finished product! The muffins are also topped with lemon-zested sugar before baking. I thought I had a ton of extra topping, but it would not have hurt the muffins to have more of the sugar. They were incredible. Like, seriously. Stuff-in-your-face delicious. Sweet, fluffy, and juicy.

That same night, my dad assisted me with what was supposed to be dry rub barbecue shrimp. First, the idea of shrimp really being "barbecue" kinda throws me off, because I think of sweet, spicy, tangy, smoky, saucy stuff when I hear barbecue. And to me, shrimp does not go well with that kind of barbecue chicken or ribs flavor. So, I decided to use Old Bay, which is a classic general seasoning- like Mrs. Dash, but better. We sauteed the shrimp in a lot of olive oil and some butter. Why both? Because they have different smoke points. I forget whose is higher, but one keeps the other from burning. Always a good thing. After we cooked the shrimp (which, if you remember from a previous post, doesn't take long!), my dad took the shrimp out. He then added white wine and maybe some more garlic and seasonings to the leftover oil and made it into a sauce- basically let it reduce and simmer some. Then we put the shrimp back in, tossed to coat, and served.

Green beans and bread. Again, a vegetable and a starch. But see that golden stuff pooling in the side of my plate? That, my friends, was the sauce. And it was unreal. I was eating more bread just so I could sop that sauce up in something after the shrimp were gone. I cannot pinpoint what made it so good, but lordy, it was brilliant. My father could do this for a living.

One night I had to cook for myself, my brothers, and a friend. I had been hankering to try my dad's salmon recipe, so my mom was kind enough to pick up a gorgeous piece of Atlantic salmon from one of the better grocery stores around. I forgot to photograph the fish before I started putting junk on it, but a note: it should be clear and bright and glossy. Smell it. Seriously, smell it! If it smells very strongly of fish, like something that would make you plug your nose, it's going bad. It should smell a little bit fishy, but also fresh and clean. Basically, it shouldn't really smell.

Mix up mayonnaise and seven pepper blend, which is another seafood seasoning. You do NOT need a lot of mayonnaise! It just adds a little more oiliness to the salmon (which is pretty oily to begin with, in a good way) and gives you something to stick the topping to. For about 1.5 lbs of salmon, I only needed a quarter cup of mayo, if that. Then mix up some breadcrumbs (I used panko, because I like the texture better in fish), parmesan cheese (yes, you can use the Kraft powder stuff), chopped parsley, and some pepper to taste. NO SALT! Why no salt, you ask? Doesn't salt go with pepper? Yeah, but it's already in the fish. It was in saltwater before it got to your kitchen. And there's already salt in the mayo. So don't salt it! Sprinkle the topping on. Bake at 425 for 20-25 minutes, or until the fish is opaque and flakes easily (check the thickest part of the fish). Then turn on your broiler and let the broiler brown the breadcrumbs (just until golden, so keep your oven open to watch) for 5-10 minutes.

Then I made mashed potatoes. Wash, peel, and chop potatoes. Boil them until tender, but not mushy. Add butter and mash up. Add milk and keep mashing. I also like to add cream cheese when we have it. Mash until you reach your desired consistency. Salt and pepper to taste.

Peas. Which I picked and shelled myself! Not really. They came from a bag in my freezer and were then microwaved back to life.

Here's the finished salmon! It was really, really good. I wish we'd had more to enjoy. I definitely stuck my landing on this one.

Before dinner that night, my friend and I decided we wanted to bake something for dessert. We browsed through my bookmarked recipes on my computer, and she decided on a mocha ice box cake. The original recipe is here, at Eat Good 4 Life.

This is just a basic chocolate cake recipe, so if you have one that you like to do from scratch, just use that. The original recipe calls for whole wheat pastry flour, but I just used all-purpose and it turned out just fine. You are also supposed to add 1 cup of strong brewed coffee to give the cake a coffee flavor (that's what mocha is, after all: coffee and chocolate). We had weak coffee, and the cake just tasted like chocolate. I would add coffee or coffee extract if you want a strong coffee flavor.

One more note about the cake: I don't know how it would work if you used a box mix. I suppose it could work, but this cake just had a great texture and flavor.

Here are the ingredients for the cream assembled. There's heavy whipping cream (which is what they mean when they ask for cream or heavy cream in recipes- NOT milk or half and half), unsweetened cocoa powder, sugar, mascarpone cheese, vanilla extract (which can be substituted for chocolate extract), and coffee extract, which I substituted for coffee liqueur.

I threw the whipping cream, sugar, coffee powder, and maybe the vanilla in a bowl and whipped until soft peaks form. Unless you have strong wrists and can whisk firmly and quickly for a long time, use electric beaters. I used the whisk attachments on my beaters.

Then you add the mascarpone cheese and a lot of coffee extract. Whip that up until stiff peaks form (that means the peaks will hold when you remove the beaters).

I don't think I quite whipped it smooth enough- compare my cake to the cake depicted in the original recipe. But it tasted incredible. Just like my chocolate frosting, this stuff was awesome. It had plenty of coffee flavor in it, even without the instant espresso powder the recipe originally called for. If you really love coffee flavors, then get instant espresso powder and add strong coffee to the cake batter. The balance of chocolate and coffee the way I did it was perfect for me.

So I divided the cake batter between two pans, and then split one of the cakes in half so that the cake would have three layers. You're supposed to drop one layer in a springform pan, then smooth cream over it, then add another layer, more cream, another layer, and then top with the remaining cream. We had a lot of cream left over for the top, which meant that we probably skimped on the layers somewhere. So then I removed the springform part of the pan (which the cake didn't fit into, anyways: the cake was not as wide as the pan and got too tall), and tried to smooth the excess cream over the sides as evenly as possible. As you can guess, given my lack of frosting aptitude, that didn't go so well. But whatever. I like messy things. I'm not into perfectly organized and tight presentation and aesthetics. Sloppy is extremely appealing to me.

Here's the finished cake!

Here's a view of the layers.

Then I made waffles the next morning. This was probably the biggest fail of that weekend. I used my dad's recipe, which necessitates whipping egg whites until stiff peaks form, and then folding them into the rest of the batter gently. I think I over mixed the batter when I added the egg whites, though, so the waffles didn't puff up and get evenly golden quite like my dad's do. But they tasted just great!

We're getting into the home stretch here, I promise! Next: pasta with pesto sauce. Pesto is one of my favorite Italian things. I'm a big fan of both garlic and basil, and pesto combines them in large ratios. 

Pesto is really simple to make, too: take a lot of fresh basil- I used around a cup. Throw it in a food processor with three to four cloves of garlic. Add about five tablespoons of olive oil. If you want a little more texture and a little bit of nuttiness, add a few tablespoons of pine nuts or other nuts, like walnuts. I omitted them here because our pine nuts were, incidentally, expired two years and not refrigerated after opening. Also add half a teaspoon of salt.

Grind it up in the food processor until it reaches a sauce-like consistency. It won't be smooth- it will be rather pasty and gloppy. Then you add half a cup of parmesan cheese (you can use the Kraft powdered stuff, but I think real stuff grated off a wedge would probably taste a little bit better) and mix it up. You'll see that the pesto will bulk up. Then you'll think that out with four tablespoons of reserved pasta water, and toss with your cooked pasta. Trust me- it doesn't look like enough sauce to coat a pound of pasta, but it definitely does. That much basil and garlic packs a bite. You don't want the pasta to be thickly covered with this stuff.

For dessert that night, I made a nectarine clafoutis. A clafoutis is a French dessert, made with eggs and cream, that resembles a flan or a custard. It is really simple to make and very attractive. See the original recipe here.

I bought two very large nectarines. Make sure they're ripe but not soft or they will fall apart while cooking. I only needed one of them to yield the approximately two cups of nectarines the recipe called for.

Arrange them in a buttered dish. Preheat the oven to 350, and mix up a batter of milk, eggs, cream, honey, and a little flour. Whisk until smooth. Note: I had a few small pieces of flour floating around in there, but it came out just fine. Just don't let the batter be lumpy. 

Slowly pour the batter over the nectarines, taking care to ensure that the fruit is not totally covered. I managed to rearrange the nectarines so that they kind of floated in the batter.

Ta-da! The finished product. My first French dessert! It puffs up really nicely. Serve warm with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream. We whipped up the leftover whipping cream with a little sugar, and it was delicious.

This is probably the most aesthetically pleasing dessert I've made yet. Look at how nicely the nectarines fell together!

This is how it looked on my plate. Again, I like sloppy. The clafoutis may seem a little runny or wet, but that's okay- the nectarines will release juices. But those eggs are cooked after being in the oven for 40 minutes. Just test it with a toothpick- if it comes out clean and the batter is set, then you're okay.

My baking and cooking will be winding down soon, since I go back to school in just one week! But I am going to make an effort to take on a couple baking projects while I am there- various things that can be made with boxed mixes and easy to find ingredients. I will be purchasing my own baking materials before I go, so I'm never caught without something I need in the dorm. You'll probably be seeing a lot of very bake sale-y type things on the blog: cake batter Rice Krispie treats, chocolate chip cookies (from pre-packaged dough) with candy bars added, cookies made from cake mix, et cetera. Nevertheless, I still really want to make baking a part of my lifestyle and keep my hand in it. When I come back home in October, you'll see some fall dishes, probably including lots of apples and cinnamon and maybe my first stew or roast. Many of my favorite dishes are things that are warm, meaty, and slow-cooked, and those are more suitable for the fall and winter. Get excited for the holiday season- when I'm on break in December, you can bet that I will be baking like crazy. Seriously, I already have a list going of things that are more appropriate to the holidays.

I don't think I've talked about fitness in a while. I didn't do any exercising except a brief kayaking trip while I was on vacation. However, we went to the Saratoga Raceway twice, and that involved quite a bit of walking around. I didn't eat quite as crazily as I could have- road trips usually kill me. But I came right back home, detoxed with lots of water, green tea, and "clean foods", and got running again. I did weigh myself while I was on the road, and according to a couple different scales, I'm at least six pounds lighter than I was the last time I weighed myself. So I'm definitely doing something right! I'm excited to get back to school and try a Zumba or cycling class. And eat more vegetables. I eat very little vegetables at home, I realized. I'm kind of excited to eat broccoli every day again.

But for now, I'm just wrapping it up here at home. It's been a good summer. I learned a lot; I made a little money; I made myself some really good food; and I've been with the people I love. Soon I'll be making a new set of resolutions for the school year. And I'll be sure to keep you in the loop!

We'll see if I can get in another blog entry before I leave for school. Until then, I hope you're enjoying your summer and are getting closer to your goals, too.

Love,

Imara