tomatoes and bread...

...and a new friend.

We had just gotten several loaves of french bread late Friday afternoon when it hit me, what else can I do with this loaf but to eat it all up as bruschetta? Plus, I had not thought of what to cook for dinner, so it seemed like the easiest solution (consider this the real reason). And right there in the car with my trusty iphone but not so trusty internet connection, came Pioneer Woman to the rescue. Her recipe came up at the top of the Google search. 

This did not disappoint. How can it with balsamic vinegar and basil thrown in the mix? I had used dried basil and it was still delicious. Add basil, salt and pepper. Taste. Add more pepper. Taste. Add a little more basil. Taste. Taste. Taste. Utterly. Yummy. In the tummy.

Resist the urge to dive into this bowl with your pajamas on.

I also added garlic powder to the butter before letting the french bread slices swim in the pan. I do not regret this. I am forever grateful to garlic powder. It is my new friend (I had known garlic salt was gooood a while back, so garlic it just...wonderful). A good friend. Almost my best friend.

Guess which one hung out a little too much with the butter?

Here's the first round:



Attack of the killer tomatoes

 And then we moved on to various combinations along with these:

In our house, light meals become...heavy.

And then the bread ran out.

And these came to the rescue:



Me thinks this is gooood.

YUM. I am still burping from breakfast as I am writing this and I'm still drooling over the bruschetta pics.

I am a pig,

Janice

an apology to our oven

Okay. So...I have not been shy to blame all my so-so baked creations on our 20-ish old oven. Cake not too moist? Oven was too hot. Brownies with a burnt top? Oven was dumb. And the list goes on. 

friend or foe?

I owe this oven the biggest apology given by a human to a non-living thing. I don't know how many other times this has happened in history, but as far as I'm concerned, this is the most important one. 


After giving us the best chipotle wings this side of town (I don't know how competitors there are either), and the most awesome red velvet brownies EVER (it's the first we've tasted but still...whatever... the BEST...on top of it was the best frosting EVER too), and most recently, moist and tasty chicken with olives, I should have known it was never the oven's fault. 


I. AM. AN. AIRHEAD. Let's take this in the general sense and not get into specific circumstances, eh? It boils down to me not reading recipes well enough. For example, there is a SLIGHT difference when recipes ask for degrees C or F in oven temperatures. Basic stuff like that. An average person would have known. But I ain't average. I am below that. Vertically. And otherwise. 


So I suppose, I should move on to the most recent gifts from this oven to close out this apology. I'll feature the most recent 2 which have given us so much joy, we've allotted a specific range of weight gain this month just so we can enjoy without guilt. 


First up, red velvet brownies. I don't even need to tell you more than my husband ate 6 of these before lunch. I got a text from him after Spanish class saying, "There is cheese cake no more :( sorry!!" Okay, to get this right, let me set 2 facts straight: one, they were brownies (he loved them so much they could have been called doogie-shmoo-poo and he would have eaten them anyway); and second, he didn't eat them ALL. He just ate all the contents of the first of two containers. And his justification when I called him to get an explanation: "BUT baaaaabe, you said to eat something before lunch because it wouldn't be until 130pm!!" 

moist inside with a delicious layer of crunch on top

oh yes, those are squiggly frostings. because I'm fancy like DAT. but i later decided to squish down all of them.

I would marry this brownie if I weren't already taken.

I married the most awesome dude. 


Sooooo...the reason lunch would not be until 130pm that day was because I made chicken with olives via a recipe by Pioneer Woman. The lady knows her dark meat is all I can say. This is a slightly more complex "prep and forget-about-it" meal. I still managed to lay down on the couch with my husband while the chicken was in the oven. So, I say it counts under this category. I'm trying to rack up a couple of these easy meals to make so I can still cook when I start working. I imagine our weekdays to be: get home, prep ingredients, stick it in the oven or leave on the stove, shower or email (ahem), take it out, eat, wash dishes, eat dessert, brush teeth, sneak another dessert, brush teeth, pass out with a cookie in one hand. PERFECT. 

chicken thigh heaven

thanks for being so good. 

In other news, we just survived our first domestic disaster. I found it weird that there were flies around the kitchen. So we lit up candles (his 30th birthday ones) and put them on top of...an egg carton. My idea. OF COURSE. Soon enough, the whole thing lit on fire. Mr. G threw it out on the deck steps, managing to drop some burning bits of egg and carton on the couch and floor. Ergo...

and this is not even the worst burnt bit on the couch

this used to be my favorite pillow

I love how together, Mr. G and I manage to get into these comedic episodes. Anyway, time to get some more eggs! :)


xoxo,
Janice

genesis: first 4 chapters of our kitchen

Day 1: 

Cooking with bare minimum pantry items and kitchen equipment left by generations past. Produced a decent tuna pasta made of shell pasta, canned tuna, canned corn, salt & pepper, and MUSTARD. yum-o. and with some crushed tortilla chips and vietnamese hot sauce, this is heaven. perfect even when eaten cold from the fridge. make sure to put chips and hot sauce just before eating. 

this chips in pasta deal is something i learned from my husband and brother-in-law over the holidays. we were at a beach house and we would wait for the signal that the kids were done with their dinner and ATTACK their pasta bowls. with crushed barbeque doritos and that hot sauce, we were munching like there was a famine tomorrow. 

Day 2 (part 1): 

Pantry finally stocked. Eggs, dried herbs, condiments and basic baking ingredients purchased. I realized that stocking a pantry is not a cheap task. BUT still worth it - feels awesome to read recipes and know you have most, if not all, of the items and you can make it without 10 trips to the grocery store (so far, there has been no store here where you can get EVERYTHING. like amazon on land. or something. ANYWAY...). 

The result: herbed eggs by Ina Garten meets Ree Dummond's baked eggs (c/o of kindle edition cookbook) = baked herbed eggs on a bed of ham topped with cheddar cheese. without a clean oven, i made this in a toaster. 

thus, no picture because i was afraid it would be a a complete failure. 

who knew it could come out so awesome? i need to pay my respects to the women who gave us these recipes so i am going to make this for my husband on saturday morning in the oven. i promise. and with real garlic. (yes, i am an airhead. i proudly stocked the pantry but forgot things like garlic and butter. brain fart. blame it on gas.).

Day 2 (part 2): 

After walking away broken-hearted from the world's most perfect standing mixer, i went home with almost all the kitchen equipment and tools i had read to be needed when starting out (refer to the cookbook my sister had given to us in my previous post). also, a clean oven, thanks to the cleaning lady. within an hour, i was baking. and being the invincible creature that i am, i didn't prep anything and just followed the recipe and measuring, mixing, and beating as i read through it. smart huh? coupled with the world's most defective oven (i saw smoke after 5 minutes of pre-heating), i churned out a pretty decent red velvet sheet cake (thanks to my sister-in-law who dropped by and saved me from the chaos. she smartly adjusted the oven temperature) and pointed out the blood-like splatters all over the kitchen thanks to the red food coloring i had mixed in. 

 BUT I managed to make the the best frosting ever care of a recipe by Ree Dummond (aka The Pioneer Woman and my hero). try it. you won't regret the aching arms after needing to cream butter and sugar for that long of a time. 

Day 3: 

After eating the pasta salad for 2 days in a row, I was ready for new food. I decided to make a mushroom cream pasta from The Pioneer Woman (of course). And boy was it good and easy to make. Almost got drunk. Yes, I'm a cheap drunk. 

I had a mini panic attack though when I realized Ire had no wine cork to reseal the bottle and thought I would have to drink it all to avoid wasting the wine. I woke up from the insanity and just stuck it in the fridge in hopes of being able to buy the cork in the store (and boy did I search hard that afternoon. I got it. Yamuni saves the day). 

Oh, and because of some leftover frosting from the day before, I decided to make these chocolate cupcakes. Turned out looking perfect and tasting decent but the ground coffee didn't incorporate well and are still pretty much intact. 

There was leftover batter though, so I just dumped it in a sheet pan (I'm lazy) and made this pecan frosting from my hero. again. I promise to explore recipes from other sources. promise! this was SOOO good that i had some more when i woke up in the middle of the night. this is the problem when your husband is away on business trip and there is no one to make you stay in bed when you have midnight cravings. it's his fault. always. i digress. best to have this hot and with ice cream top. the gooey frosting will make make you moan. 

so that, in the longest blog entry this side of the farm, sums up my first three days in our kitchen. the biggest lesson learned is to bake in my mother-in-law's oven...30 meters away from ours. the exercise will justify eating half of whatever i bake from now on. 

xoxo, 

Janice