Wow, I can’t believe it’s been four years.  I’m not going to lie, despite sucking wind at finishing TWD quite some time ago my eyes are welling up and I’m about to make my way into the kitchen to finish up the last recipe.  There’s not a chance I can watch the end come and go without doing some baking.

Ok seriously though, 4 years?  That was so not 4 years ago was it?   I remember it like it was yesterday.  You see, L and I were kind of  in the same bloggy corner of the interwebs.  She was way cooler than me and I’m pretty sure barely knew who I was at that point, but whatevs.  She knows me now.  I thought she was amazing even then because she ran Cupcake Hero.  Seriously, how could you not fall in love with someone that ran the coolest monthly cupcake contest on the net?  She just made me swoon.   So, when she got “Baking” for Christmas and wanted to bake through it I was a bit intimidated at first.  It took me three weeks to sign up  (or however long into things 1/24/2008 was).  Seriously, I was intimidated and didn’t really feel like I knew L well enough at that point to join her teeny little group of friends that had decided it might be fun to join her in her little adventure.

I finally got up the courage to ask to join in this little undertaking.   Seriously, read this corny ass email.  Also, note that I had to clarify which Nikki I was.  Ya, L barely knew me.

Hey Laurie,

    I can never pass up a good excuse to bake more and buy another cookbook.  Can I join in on the Tuesdays with Dorie fun?

Nikki
(the Crazy Delicious Nikki )

Luckily, L is just the teeniest bit of crazy and let me into her baking group and life.  In the early days, long before the blog we communicated and picked recipes via email.   Those were some damn awesome email strings.  My first TWD week there were 37 emails and there were only like 5 of us.     I’m going through some of those old email strings now (like you couldn’t tell) and hot damn was I embarrassing.  I mean read this

And Laurie, how can you never find white chocolate?  Your grocery store needs to get a clue.

Did I actually say a grocery store needed to get a clue because there was no white chocolate?  There are so many things wrong with that.  One, who the fark says get a clue and two, white chocolate is gross.  I’m amending my comments …. L your grocery store was smart to not sell that crapola to customers it cares about.

After I joined it was freaking rapid fire.  It seemed like every day there were people asking to join.  Each week that email list got longer and eventually we moved on to the blog.  And then the group got huge.  Like seriously, huge.  At one point I was the staffer in charge of making sure people were baking.  Oh man, that was the most intense google spreadsheet you’ve ever seen, but fair is fair and we couldn’t have people joining and not baking.  L and I even took DNC’s (did not completes) for the week we went rogue and baked the cover cake.   I loved being a TWD staffer and I loved TWD, but as often happens.  Life gets crazy, things change and I started to suck at blogging and eventually TWD was no longer a part of my week.

Even though I stopped baking TWD recipes every week, they’re never far from my mind or my oven and my cookbook looks like I dunked it in a vat of flour, chocolate and something sticky.  So many of my favorite recipes come from that book.  Like seriously, so freaking many of them.  I’ll give you my top three even though there are way more than three favorites.  My number one favorite is the brioche snails (with chocolate chips not raisins).  Dorie’s pastry cream is To.Die.For. and her brioche is exceptional.  Like how I kinda sorta combined three of Dorie’s recipes into one?  If you need a cake that will ALWAYS impress people.  A cake that looks elegant and tastes expensive, look no further than Dorie’s Perfect Party cake .  She was right, it’s perfect.  And, last but certainly not least, if you’re looking for a simple quick treat look no further than Dorie’s World Peace Cookies.  No joke, Dorie could create world peace with them.

Just this morning I had a friend ask me for a good muffin recipe.  Without even really realizing today was the end (it was before noon, I was half asleep still) I pulled out Dorie’s Orange Berry Muffins.   My first TWD recipe.  Light and delicious blueberry muffins with the faintest hint of orange … the hint that just makes them delightful and ya I want them now.  Why do I not have oranges in my apartment right now?  Oh ya, back to what I was saying.  They were my very first TWD recipe.  So, today, as “Baking” is finishing up I’m still recommending and reminiscing over my very first recipe.

I love TWD.  It will always hold the most special of places in my heart.  L, you’re amazing and you created the most amazing of monsters with this group.

Now … to the kitchen.  I’ll update this later with my thumbprints.
-the Crazy Delicious Nikki

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Wow, it”s been awhile. Like a really really long while.  The over a year kind of while.  Oops

CSA Farm''s Resident Horsie

For starters, I”ll tell you the good news.   Last year, like most first year CSA-ers, I was totally overwhelmed.  It was so much food and I had no idea what to do with all of it.  This year is a whole new ballgame.  I admit, last year we threw a decent chunk of food away.  Not an embarrassingly large amount, but enough to feel bad about it.  This year we”ve made some serious progress.  A few things have been tossed and piles of eggplant have been given away, but I”ve let very very little spoil and I”m really proud of myself.  Come next year I may rock the CSA so hard that not a single bite goes uneaten (or frozen or canned).   This year, we”ve tossed smaller amounts of salad greens along  with 1 eggplant that wasn”t given away in time,  3 summer squash (I didn”t know WTF to do with the pretty freaky shaped ones so they just looked pretty and were never eaten) and 1 bunch of turnips that got buried and accidentally forgotten about (I would have used them I swear).  Not too shabby.  I think CSAs can be scary and you hear so many people that get better and better at being a CSA member over the years.  After last year all I could think was oh man I hope these people are right … and they were.  I”ve learned a lot now that year #2 is in progress.

Now, on to my absence …

Since, I always appreciate a good passing of the blame, I”m going to give a big ole shout out to  the back end of the site.  From January until probably May things were totally down for the count and even today I had to fix 18 things before I could get on.  Totally not motivating at ALL.  I also cheated on my once beloved cooking blog and created a new blog with my bestie CB, but we got lazy and Two Pink Hippos has been without a post for awhile too.

I think what it boils down to is I like having a blog, but I also really love being lazy.  Typing things up takes mere minutes, but the food photography totally gets in the way of my desire to be a lazy slug.

Rainbow Pancakes

5 Reasons Food Photography and I are Not Friends

1.  Light … there isn”t any during the winter and I don”t want a little light studio set up.  Just because I own one doesn”t mean I want to set it up and use it

2.  Food Styling … makes food photography the least fun kind of photography ever.   Give me some flowers or a cute puppy and I”m a happy camper, but food styling isn”t really my thing and that”s a huge part of food photography.

3.  Props … Seriously, my kitchen if bursting at the seams with things I actually really need to cook/bake.  I do not need to fill it with useless crap that”s only there to make a picture look pretty.

4.  I”m Hungry … usually, when I cook it”s because I need to food myself.  I don”t want to wait even 2 extra minutes to take pictures.  Are you crazy?  I want that food in my belly.

5.  I also want it warm when it reaches my belly …  Just say no to cold food.  It”s not cool.

The worst part of admitting this is that I do own an SLR, I use it on a regular basis and I know how to use every button on the camera.  I”m no pro, but over the last year I”ve fallen in love with photography, but it”s one of the main things that keeps me from my food blog.  Ridiculous I know especially because when I go through some of my pictures from the last year, there are some food photos.   Clearly, I should have at least posted those ones.  Oh well.  C”est la vie.  I”ve been cooking more and would really like to not lose the recipes, so I may start blogging again.  My SLR is getting fixed, so it will be all iphone pics all the time (until I get it back at which point it will probably be iphone pics 50% of the time).  Ahhh iphone pics make coming back sound so much easier.

Now, I leave with with another pretty picture, this time of Puddles.  How can you be mad I”ve been gone after seeing this cute face?

Puddles

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It’s that time of year and my CSA has just started up.  At the moment I am a mix of excited and terrified by the shear number of greens.  I mean whoa.  In one week how are G and I supposed to consume a head of lettuce, a head of escarole, a big bunch of mustard greens, 2/3rds of a big bag of spinach and 1/3rd of a bag of spinach.  Um ya, that’s a lot of greens and I’m not going to lie, it’s intimidating.  Luckily, we have my brother living with us this summer to help eat it all, but this is going to involve a lot of cooking.

I decided to blanch the escarole by sticking it in some boiling water for 3ish minutes and now it’s chilling in the freezer and I can use it to make some yummy escarole soup a little further into the summer when there’s a bit more variety in my share and I’m not overwhelmed with greens.

Next up was the spinach.  Last night as my mind was wondering I was contemplating making some type of spinach lasagna with a cream sauce.  As I began to search the interwebs for inspiration I came across this recipe and realized I had just bought leeks and being the leek lover I am dreams of lasagna became leekylicious.

As I was started cooking I was thinking, hmm I’m not sure if this is going to have enough flavor, I may need to alfredo this sauce up a bit and dump mounds of parmesan in.  So, I sent my sous chef to work grating some parmesan.  Turns out I was totally wrong.  When I tasted the cream sauce I was blown away.  It was delicious leeky creamy perfection.  Yum.  Of course a little parmesan on top never hurts anyone, so the cheese didn’t go to waste.

I have a feeling this summer may end up being an exercise in turning healthy food into creamy cheesy bad for you goodness.  Not exactly the goal, but damn this was good and I may need to make this every week.

Pasta with Creamed Leek, Spinach and Chicken Sausage.
(Adapted from Week of Recipes adaptation of a Food and Wine Recipe)

1 box of pasta I used cellentani aka my current pasta obsession
2 Leeks white and light green parts only (make sure to wash those suckers good, the get dirty)
1 small container of heavy cream
All of my Spinach … it was 2/3rds of a large produce bag … maybe 4-5 cups? Oops
1/2 cup-ish of fresh basil (I had a half dead basil plant that I murdered by using all of it)
3 garlic chicken sausages cubed
Salt and Pepper
Parmesan Cheese
Extra Virgin Olive Oil

-Start boiling water for your pasta.  Once it’s boiling, add the pasta and let it do it’s thing.

-Heat olive oil in a deep pan, then add the leeks and Sausage and cook until the leeks are soft.   Then add the cream and let it simmer until the sauce has thickened a bit.   Both steps are in the 5-10 minute range each.

-Once the sauce has reduced add the spinach and let it cook until it’s wilted.  This only takes a minute or two.

-Turn the heat off and mix it in with your cooked pasta.  Add some salt, pepper and your basil.  Put it in bowls, add some parmesan cheese and EAT!

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Macarons have been on my list of things to make for pretty much ever.  See the thing about macarons is they’re notoriously easy to screw up and when you make them and they work it’s a badge of honor.  I’ve had my fair share of failures over the years, but those can pretty much all attributed to my lack of paying attention not to my lack of skills.  I think I’ve held off on making them because I really didn’t want to screw them up.  They’re like the  holy grail of baking and dammit if I was going to bake them I was going to do it right and not screw them up.

After CB’s attempt last week and doing some “research” to help her figure out why she had problems macarons got back on my radar and since this is the first lazy weekend in what seems like forever I decided to go for it.

I’m delighted to announce that they were a success!  Woo hooo ::happy I really can bake dance::

Macarons don’t mess around.  Typically, I’m a half-assed measurer, but no, macarons would not allow for that I had to be on my measuring game so I busted out my scale and went to work.

The first thing I did was weight out my eggs.  As anyone that has made macarons knows eggs are pretty much the key to success.  Do you leave them out 1 day, 3 days, not at all because leaving eggs out skeeves you out?   I was happy to read that the microwave may be key to non sketchy eggs.  What I ended up doing was leaving the eggs out overnight, then, because they really hadn’t seemed to dry out at all, I put them in the microwave for 10 seconds.  Next time I would probably just zap them in the microwave for 10-15 seconds and skip the overnight dry out.

For the almonds, I bought a bag of blanched almonds and stuck them in my food processor with my powdered sugar.  I figured buying my own and chopping them up myself left less room for problems.   I was a wee bit concerned because I could still feel the grainy texture of them.  The only sifter I could find was my hand held one that looks like a mug and goes back and forth when you pull the handle thingy … you know what I’m talking about right?  No? How do you not understand that amazing description?  No matter, all you need to know is that I broke it about 1/16th of the way onto sifting and sifting was no longer an option.

For flavor I decided to take the easy way out and not mess with anything I thought could screw up the batter.  I mean these are finicky suckers. I wanted a basic success over wowing the world with my flavor/color combo.  I ended up going with vanilla beans.  I tossed my old ones when I moved last month and just got a new batch in the mail that I’ve been itching to use.  For those of you that don’t know, ebay is the place to go for quality, fresh, cheap vanilla beans.  No more of that McCormick $8 for two beans, no folks I got 25 Madagascar vanilla beans plus about 12 lower quality freebie beans perfect for making vanilla sugar or extract for $13.  Anyway, back to putting the vanilla goodness in.  I scraped out the delicious caviar and put it in the food processor with the almonds and  powdered sugar.  Good call Nicole, it worked.

The eggs got whipped with sugar and it was time to put everything in the same bowl.  Eeep scary macaronage.  Everyone kept talking about how it should be molten lava-y.  WTF is molten lava?  I’ll tell you what molten lava is.  It’s sludge. I piped them out and they flattened on their own like they were supposed to so that seemed like a good sign.

After leaving them out for an hour they definitely had a “shell”.  I even cracked one or two of those shells because I couldn’t keep my hands off my macarons.  They were the only two that cracked in the oven.  Clearly, that was not a problem with my baking, but with my childlike inability to just leave things alone and not touch.

For the first time, probably ever, I actually let my oven preheat.   I’m an impatient baker and preheating is usually last on my list of things to do unless I’m thinking about it, but this time I was determined to follow the instructions.

From there I put the macarons in and walked away.  I figured staring at them for 10-12 minutes was going to be too stressful.  So, I crossed my fingers, hoped for the best and walked away.  Eight minutes later when I wondered back into the kitchen, put the on oven light and saw feet I almost died.  No breakage (we’re ignoring the two I messed with) and feet!  I grabbed my iphone and headed to twitter then proceeded to jump around the kitchen for the last few minutes.

When it came to getting the macarons off the parchment paper I ran into my first problems.  They didn’t want to come off, so I put a few drops of water under the parchment paper and stuck them back in the oven for another minute or two.  I had three that never really wanted to come off so I just ate those on their own and called it a success.

For the filling I just used a basic chocolate ganache.   Easy peasy lemon cheesy.

Seriously, if you’re looking to make macarons read Tartlette’s article from Dessert’s e-mag on her blog (it’s on the right hand side of the blog right under the blog archive).  It’s long, detailed, and if you follow her instructions you have a pretty good chance of success.

French Macarons adapted from Tartlette

100g egg whites (it was exactly 3 eggs for me)
50g sugar
200g powdered sugar
110g blanched almonds
Innards of 2 vanilla beans

1.  Combine powdered sugar, almonds and vanilla bean caviar.  Put in food processor and let it go for about 2 minutes

2.  Using a stand mixer whip the egg whites while gradually adding sugar until they form stiff shiny peaks

3.  Combine egg whites and dry ingredients.  Fold quickly at first then slow down until you have a molten sludge.

4.  Put your macaron mix in a pastry bag and pipe 1.5″ circles.  Let sit for 1 hr

5.  Preheat your oven to 300 degrees and cook for 10-12 minutes

6. Add your filling and eat.

Chocolate Ganache

2/3rds cup of Heavy Cream
1 Cup dark chocolate

Bring heavy cream to a boil.  Add in chocolate.  Stir.  Chill in fridge until spreadable

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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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Tags: cheese, Random

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

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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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

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

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.