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Parmesan Cheese Bowls

How does a blogger know when it’s been way too long since their last post?

I bet there are a million answers for this, but in my case, among other things, it was when it took FOUR tries to log in to my blog. Eesh that’s no good.

I know I probably have a whopping 2 people still following my blog, but maybe someone else is still out there just waiting on the edge of their seats for a new post. Well, lone random person out there today is your lucky day because I’m posting wooohoo Lets all do a group happy dance.

I’ve been cooking more lately and have been thinking about posting again, but it wasn’t until I made the cutest little Parmesan cheese bowls today that I actually mustered up the desire to post.

This isn’t the most fantastic recipe or anything mind blowing. Cut me some slack I’m easing my way back into things, but it is uber adorable and easy … My two favorite things.

Look isn’t it cute?

These would be perfect for a dinner party. They’re easy, look impressive and can be made a bit in advance.

Of course, I didn’t take pics of the whole process, but here, in five easy steps is what I did.

1. Turn the oven on to around 325 degrees and put some parchment paper down on a baking sheet.

2. Sprinkle freshly grated parmasean cheese in circles on your parchment paper. You can make them as big or as small as you want, just make sure you use enough cheese to prevent having big holes in your bowl. If you just want to make little parmasean chips for a garnish you can make them small, but for bowls you’ll want the. A bit bigger. I fit two circles on my baking sheet.

3. Pop those bad boys in the oven for about five minutes. You want them slightly browned on the outside, but they’ll still be bubbly in the middle.

4. Once they’re done pull them out of the oven and use a spatula or your fingers to put them in whatever bowl you’ve choosen to use to shape them. Give them a few minutes to cool and you’re done.

5. Eat


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Day 3 - oops

Ok so I’ve done really good and we’ve pretty much been all about the burgers and beer/tequila that we have in the freezer, but today I may have made a bit of an oopsie.  See G is obsessed with William’s Sonoma’s hamburger spice.  It’s amazing.  I love it too, but he has a bit of a problem with it.  He loses it all the time.  Last year he lost a container so we bought a new one (he eventually found the old one and used it all) and of course he started off this summer losing the one we had in the pantry.  Well, I was at the mall today and ran into WS and they had the burger spice right at the front so I grabbed one, bought it and it wasn’t until I got home that I realized that technically this $10 effort to stop G from whining might have docked my $100.  Farking A.  So, I’ve made a compromise with myself.  Since we won’t use even close to all of it this month or in the next few months and really, it was necessary to prevent whineage I’m only deducting $5.  That’s fair enought right?  I think so.

So folks - we’re down to $95

Day 1

Ooops apparently I forgot to hit publish yesterday …

Well getting through day one wasn’t so bad.  I mean I probably would have spent $25 already if it weren’t for this little challenge, but that doesn’t matter because I haven’t spent a penny yet.

Lunch today was pretty basic.  We’re out of cold cuts for sandwiches :( going to have to get more of those.  G ended up grabbing a pack of trader joe’s burritos that have been sitting in the freezer waiting to meet up with the microwave for who knows how long.  I also had a yogurt (I am officially obsessed with raspberry lemonade yogurt, you MUST try it).  I have no idea what G packed for himself, but he packed something and that’s all I really care about.

Leaving work was where I would have slipped up.  See, I had a headache and was thirsty so when I stopped by the store I really wanted a drink, but no, I wasn’t going to waste 1/50th of my 28 day budget I could get for free when I got home in 10 minutes.  And then the headache came into play.  Tonight is one of those nights where I would have just gotten takeout.  I’m useless when I have a headache (thanks for waking me up and HOUR early this morning G) and I had no desire to cook.  G reminded me that we had some meatballs and sauce that have been chillin like a villan in the freezer for awhile from when we went to visit teach my grandmother how to use the interwebs and she repaid us with a yummy meal and leftovers.  So, I was all set to put that 10lb bag yes you read that right 10 pound BAG of angle hair pasta to use when G said he was stuck in traffic.  Well fark.  Now there was no chance I was going to be useful because I needed to lay down and wouldn’t want to do some half assed heating of pasta in an hour.

A grand total of 1hr 45 mins after leaving work G FINALLY got home.  My tummy was growling and any other month I would have had a roast beef sandwich in my hand the second he got home, but I put my monies away and sent G to the kitchen.  He is perfectly capable of using the microwave and heating up pasta … or so I thought.  Apparently he missed the memo that really thin pasta cooks really fast.  Mmm mushy pasta blech.  At least he had a good excuse.  He did some dishes and ran the dishwasher while the pasta turned to mush.

All in all a good day.  I saved myself $25 and didn’t starve or even cook woo hoo I may be a food blogger, but I hate hate hate cooking betweent the time I get home from work and 11pm.   After 11pm is totally fair game and often referred to around here as baking hour.  I’m a night owl what can I say.

I think the one thing I’ve learned so far is that my freezer is going to LOVE me after this.  I have no problem eating leftovers.  I love them, but they somehow always end up in the freezer and never get eaten.  This month the reserves I’ve been stockpiling in my freezer and forgetting about are going to be eaten.  Just going through quickly I found a few muffins of spaghetti sauce or maybe pizza sauce (I didn’t read what I wrote on the bag), some marinated chicken, some non marinated chicken, burgers and hot dogs from the farmers market and some veggies that are already cut and bagged up ready to be tossed into my favorite burritos.  I just need some tortillias (which I can make myself on the cheap thanks to buying flour in massive quantities at Costco) and a bit of that chicken that’s waiting to be used up.

So, I consider this one winner of a day.

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Money Spent

I’m going to leave this post at the top because I am not ready to hop back into bed with html and css and all those other annoying things necessary for me to have a little counter box on the side.  So you get this post, deal with it.

.5 days down - $0 spent  (I’m kicking ass and taking names so far)

Day 1 - $0 spent woo hoo I’m so going to prove everyone wrong

$100 for the month

I knew there was a reason I shouldn’t drink a bottle of wine before 10pm.  I have signed myself up for G and I to only spend $100 on food for the next month .  I blame Doughmesstic.  She started this crazy idea … I’m not that drunk haha

This should be interesting.

I honestly couldn’t even tell you what I spend on food right now, but it’s a lot as in I probably spend more on food than I do on rent, but rent is cheapity cheap cheap.  Food is one of those areas where the budget flies out the window and I tell myself it’s necessary to live so I’ll spend what I spend.  Not anymore … at least for this month.   I could easily kill $100 in one night out for dinner (including booze of course) so this is going to take some will power.

Going in to this I’m going to give myself some rules err exceptions to the rule.  I have a few things coming up that I refuse to skimp on and they’re perfectly good excuses to splurge on food.  The first thing is my second anniversary.  Dude that’s a big deal.  We don’t do gifts or vacations, we do dinner.  I’m not giving up my anniversary dinner no way no how.  The second exception will be my friends bachelorette party.  Again, it’s a one off thing that’s a big deal and I’m not going to be the only a-hole out at dinner just drinking water so I can get through the rest of the month.   And last but not least, exception #3 …. Alcohol.  Since I can’t buy it at the grocery store or the sub shop and it would kill my budget or my summer bliss (fourth of July anyone?) it’s out. Everything else that is edible or drinkable is fair game.

I figure between my overflowing freezer and my similarly overflowing pantry this shouldn’t be too hard.  I think the hardest part is going to be actually forcing myself to not take the easy way out and grab something after a long day.  G and I have actually been doing really good bringing lunches so it’s not nearly as big of a leap as it would have been a few months ago.  I’m more worried about weekends because I get supremely lazy on the weekends when I’m recharging my batteries and I never want to cook, but that just means I’ll need to bribe G to cook and he’s pretty easy to bribe so I should be good.

Wish me luck (that means you beechy aka the pesimist)

Tomorrow I’ll post pictures of the randomness I have unlike Susan I have too much to list and not enough motivation to actually list it all

TWD: World Peace Cookies

Dorie has done it.  She has really found the secret to world peace.  Obama and friends need to bring a batch of these babies to the Middle East and those wars that have been going on since like the beginning of time would be over.  I’m sure Palestine and Israel could stop fighting if they just baked each other these cookies.  Seriously these are amazing.

I love love love undercooked cookies/brownies.  They’re my favorite, but usually there’s that whole salmonella thing that I have to worry about.  I would eat raw cookie dough all day if my husband would let me, BUT he had a run in with e-coli when he was little and well once you hear the stories of that hell you can understand why he’s over cautious.  With these cookies we both win because there aren’t any eggies in it.  W00t raw cookie heaven!  I recommend really undercooking these bad boys.  They’re so good when they’re ooey gooey and warm.  Yum!

Note:  My comp isn’t seeing my camera.  I’m sleeping and will deal with getting pics up tomorrow.  If we hadn’t eaten all the cookies I made I would just do another video.

TWD: Chocolate Gingerbread Cake

I was hoping that my camera batteries would charge.   As with most things, I can hope until the cows come home, but that’s not going to do me a damn bit of good when my battery/camera combo decided to flip me the bird.

Lucky for you crazy cats, I’m resourceful.  Let’s just ignore the fact that it took me two days to figure out a plan and think of me as uber intelligent … K?  Good

My hubby got one of those little flip video cameras for Christmas soooo, instead of pictures you get a 5 second video of my hubby eating gingerbread cake.  That’s way better right?  It’s a little foggy looking thanks to my hubs bringing his camera to paintball and getting “paintball grease” on it and not telling me that it needed a mass cleaning.  Oh well … it’s still good enough.

As far as the cake itself, it was decent.  It definitely needed the chocolate.  WIthout the chocolate it was pretty bland, but once you put the chocolate on top it was pretty damn good.

Now … without further ado, I bring you Choco Gingerbread Cake the Movie

TWD: Choco Gingerbread

I’m finally getting back in the swing of thing eek I know it took me far too long.  I made my gingerbread, but my Mom has my nice camera and my rechargeable batteries werent’ charged enough to actually turn my crappy camera on so …. I’ll be taking pics and posting my full write up when I get home.

Strawberry Rhubarb Soup

I will use everything in my freezer!

I will use everything in my freezer!

I will use everything in my freezer!

My freezer has become an endless abyss of randomness.  I go to friends houses and they have 5 things in their freezer.  When you open mine you get attacked by fugicles and chocolate pasta … I know because they both attacked me last night.  Just for fun I’ll give you a brief list of what’s in my freezer.

I bring you the 12 days of freezer food …

On the twelth day of digging through my freezer my true love handed me…

12  muffins of pumpkin puree

11  containers of ice cream (don’t ask)

10  Choco raviolis

9  Spaghetti and meatball muffins

8   pounds of pork (thanks work)

7  types of cookies

6 pieces of rhubarb

5 kinds of Popciclesssssssssssssssssssssssss

4 frozen dinners (*gasp)

3 pounds of hamburg

2 packages of chicken

and a tray of ice-y cubes

So ya my freezer, it’s overstuffed and I need to deal with it so, like any intelligent person I went for the rhubarb aka one of the smallest space taker uppers in the freezer.   This soup was delicous and beyond easy to make.  Basically cut everything up, toss it in the pot and let it cook.  After it’s cooked you have to deal with the whole straining thing.  Easy peasy if you have a chinois.  Not so easy if you hung your chinois on one of the nails that your microplanes usually hang on and you keep walking by it until you resort to the most obnoxiously difficult methods of straining.  Anyway I love this soup.  It’s delicious and because of the sweetness from all the fruit it tastes like baking which is always a good thing!

The one thing I would do differently would be to add more strawberries and rhubarb.  The soup tasted a wee bit more orange-y than I would have liked, but all in all it was delish!

Strawberry Rhubarb Soup adapted from Earthbound Farms

1 pint strawberries, washed and hulled

1 pound rhubarb, sliced into 1/2-inch pieces

1 1/2 cups fresh orange juice

1/2 cup superfine sugar

1/4 cup strawberry brandy or fraise eau de vie, optional

1/4 cup mascarpone or creme fraiche

6 sprigs of fresh mint

Place the strawberries, rhubarb, and orange juice in a large pan and simmer for 15 minutes or until the rhubarb is soft. Remove the pan from the heat and add the sugar, stirring until it dissolves. Taste the mixture and add more sugar if desired.

When the mixture has cooled, puree in a food processor. Pass the puree through a fine mesh sieve or chinois.

Add the strawberry liqueur, if using. Refrigerate the soup until thoroughly chilled.

To serve, ladle soup into chilled bowls and garnish each serving with a dollop of mascarpone and a sprig of mint.

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Half-assed Risotto

I created (if you can even call it that) this “recipe” a few months ago when I was raiding the pantry for food at 10pm.  We had next to nothing in the pantry/fridge, but we did have risotto rice, chicken broth and Havarti cheese.  I decided to half ass the whole risotto thing.  Nope, there would be no onions or garlic to enhance flavors and all that nonsense.  This is the most basic bare bones risotto ever, but it’s still delicious. On the scale of all things risotto I like it better than your basic Parmesan risotto, but it has nothing on the delicious broccoli and cheese risotto I had in Croatia mmmmm

Ingredients

Risotto (Arborio) Rice

Chicken Broth

Havarti Cheese

Salt and Pepper

Directions

* put rice in pot with enough broth to just cover it.

*Stir constantly until broth has been absorbed.

*Each time the rice absorbs the broth add enough to just cover it until the rice is done and isn’t crunchy.

* Add some salt and pepper and a chunk of Harvarti Cheese.  I’m not good with exact amounts but I’m a huge fan of add a little … taste … add some more … taste etc etc

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