this and that

yeP, my blog has a few new things. I created a new image thingy for that space up there ^, whatever you want to call it. Now you can see my chef's knife, whisk, wooden spoon, and BASS (big ass silver spoon). I'm working on a few other things I may put in my layout, but for now this is it.

Last tuesday I made those pizzas I mentioned. They were pretty good. And I took pics, but they turned out kinda crappy, so I won't show you. One of the pizzas had artichoke hearts, parmesan, cheddar cheese, and thyme. The other had mushrooms and mozzarella. I mad a tomato sauce for both of them too, and the crust was a recipe I made up myself awhile back.

On saturday I made a bunch of stuff. After getting requests from family to bake more blueberry muffins and ship them their way, I made another batch and a half. I filled them up much fuller this time and they got nice and big. They don't look nearly as good in the pic as they do in rl...guess that's the price you must pay for reading my blog. Poor you. They taste excellent, too. My dad got one that was almost all blueberry, while, naturally, the one I ate had like one in it >:|

Oh yes, then I baked some peanut butter peanut chocolate chip cookies. They are like a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie with peanuts in them. Obviously, from the title you know that. Unless your slow, in which case I'll say it again, the cookies I made were peanut butter cookies with chocolate chips and peanuts in them. I hate 4, so I won't say it again. I made the cookies huge man-sized cookies, or at least I thought they would be, but they didn't spread out as much as I thought they would, so they were more like skinny-man cookies. hm. I don't like skinny men. But the cookies were awesome.

Also for dinner I made baked ziti, which is an italian dish. Basically just ziti noodles baked with mushrooms, tomato sauce, cheese, and some other stuff. I wish I had baked garlic in with it, but I didn't think of it until it was too late. But it was good anyways. Not so great as some people said it would've been, but it was good.

oh and I made garlic bread again to go with it. Only this time I added some sharp cheddar in with the dough, which ended up melting and blending with the dough so you couldn't really tell anyways. But it made it a whole lot more moist, verging on dense. And I noticed having cheese in the dough makes it break a whole lot easier. I baked it with cheese on the top too which was excellent. I've noticed each time I make this bread I tend to put more and more garlic each time. Which is great, because I love garlic. Theres a garlic plant in a town nearby, and every time we'd drive by when I was a kid I'd inhale it as much as I could, while my siblings all stared at me like I was a weirdo. hah! I know, the pic is crappy, but it was getting late in the day and all my natural light was leaving me. *grumbles*

I just made some truffles too, by the way. They are chillin in the fridge right now before I roll them into balls and coat em in cocoa. Someone gave the recipe out on the cheftalk forums, so I thought I'd try it because they said they were easy chocolate truffles that everyone loved. It only took three ingredients. Chocolate, sweetened condensed milk, and vanilla. We don't have any sweetened condensed milk at the moment, so I made some myself (isin't that always the easiest fix? for me anyways :D) So yeP, next time I'll tell how they turned out.

OH! I just remembered. I'm sure I've mentioned how stupid our oven is...if not, I'll just say it's pretty bad. You can't open or close the door all the way, and because of that it takes a million hours to heat up, and the handles for the stove are so worn down you can't touch them unless you burn your hand off. So we've got the dude coming to fix it tomorrow. But heres the thing, if he can't fix it (pray he cant) we get a brand new stove free. I'm tempted to go bang it up somehow so that he really can't fix it for sure. I really hope he can't. That'd be so cool to get a new oven! *giddy*

That's it for now. I'm tired of sitting here. I'll go check on the truffles and think of something else to make.

~lacey

"A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand"
-Unknown

pie crusts suck!

So like, last Saturday I cooked some more. I made all-day macaroni and cheese in my mom's crock pot, I made my garlic bread, and I made a butterscotch pie. I'd never made macaroni and cheese from anything but the box, but it's something I had wanted to try for a long time. Well my mom had found a recipe a few weeks before and was going to make it herself, but she had to go out of town to help my sister, so I made it instead. I was only supposed to put 2 cups of sharp cheddar cheese in it, but I added a bunch of velveeta cheese, which I really really hate, but added it anyways. Then of course I added much more than 2 cups of sharp cheddar, just to make it so much more cheesy. I added a can of milk and turned the heat up and let it go to town for several hours. It turned out great, and tasted pretty much like the most amazing macaroni I've ever eaten. No, I didn't take a picture of it. I was too hungry to take the time out to do so :D

So yeah, then I also made my garlic bread. It made me angry. First off, I dumped too much dried parsley in it so it turned the dough a slight green color. Then I let it rise much too long, and I killed the yeast in the process. So when I baked it, it got very ugly and flat and was stupid. It tasted pretty good, but I hated the way it looked. Oh well, when it comes down to it, the taste is the only part that really matters, right?

I made a butterscotch pie. I decided to make a butterscotch pie because my dad claims to hate chocolate, and the desserts we make usually have some sort of chocolate in them, so I decided to make something he'd really love. (my posts make my Dad sound like a really picky eater...well, he is :P)

Now, I've always had horrible luck with pie crusts. I can't ever figure out how to get the whole crust baked, including the center part, without the edges turning way too dark. Last year, I think during Thanksgiving, I made the perfect pie crust, and I was really excited for it. But I got lazy, and I lost the recipe. So I'm back on the hunt for a good pie crust recipe. The dough was pretty cool, the consistency was really nice and it formed a really good crust. However, I still ended up burning the edges before the center would bake, and after eating it later I realized with horror there was far too much salt in the crust. So, other than the edges and the taste...it was an awesome crust. Though that doesn't say much. Hahahaha.



The filling was pretty dang good, though. I've made a few butterscotch recipes in my lifetime, but this was one of the best. I cooked brown sugar, butter, cream of tartar, and a few other ingredients over the stove, poured it into the pie shell, then made a meringue topping for it. I'd never heard of putting a meringue on anything but a lemon meringue pie, but the few butterscotch pie recipes I researched all called for a meringue...so I made one. Lemon meringue pies are a specialty of mine at Thanksgiving, so I already have the whole meringue thing down pat. I baked it for a bit, until the meringue was a loverly golden brown color, then let it chill in the fridge for a few hours. Besides the ugly crust...and the saltiness of it...the pie was pretty dang good. I liked it.

Oh, also, I made those muffins I mentioned in my last post. I researched muffin recipes for a good hour or two, gathering general muffin information and such, and scribbled out an experiment to try. I was up until 1 am baking, and the outcome was a delicious blueberry-buttermilk-oatmeal giant muffin. The only thing I didn't like about them was that they didn't rise like I wanted them to. I want muffins that come up and out of the pans, like the kind you buy in a professional bakery. So I made them again the next night, reducing the liquid and adding more baking powder, but it didn't do much but make the muffin more dense. So I'm sticking with my original recipe, and next time I'm going to fill the cups up more and see how that works. Yeah, I took pics, but they all turned out crappy and we ate them all before I took anymore :)

For my next project, I have in mind something like a cupcake tower, but that's all I'm telling you for now. Oh, also, tomorrow after working at my church's v.b.s. program, I'm stopping by the market to get some fresh mushrooms and mozzarella, as well as maybe some artichoke hearts, depending on how far I can make my money go, and I'm going to make some pizzas tomorrow. Pizzas are one of my favorites. I'm excited.

Happy eating, foodies.

~lacey

"Life is a combination of magic and pasta."
Fellini