Thursday, January 31, 2008

Double dipping

This article in the New York Times shows you! And my coworkers think I'm weird for putting my snacks in a container they can't get their grubby little paws inside of! And why I feel the need for them to be sanitized! I feel vindicated. And I am not anal for doing that.

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Ugh

Well I'm no longer gonna-kill-someone pissed off, now I am just I-give-up-I'm-not-gonna-bother-trying pissed off so I guess that's good........

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Me and the ATM

I got my rebate check from my stand mixer. I don't have my stand mixer but at least I got the rebate? Anyway, so I went to the ATM after work today with 2 purposes in mind. To deposit the check and get cash. Well I got cash. The check is still sitting in my bag. Sadly, this is like the 4th time I've done this (with different checks, not just this one)

I Can Rename Tabs!!!!!

I got a copy of office 08 and now I can rename tabs!!!! Woohoo!!! This is the sole reason I had issues with open office. I am so cool!

Don't you wish that you were cool like me. Don't you wish that you were cool like me. Dontcha (imagine singing, you know the song)

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Firefox

I downloaded Firefox today. The whole not copy and pasting correctly in Safari was getting old. I am hoping that with Firefox I will be able to put the pics where I want them in here, not just at the top of the post like it seems to be the only way it would go in Safari. We shall see.

Garlic Onion Noodles


I saw this recipe on Steamy Kitchen and decided to make my own take on it.



6 balls of skinny egg noodles (that's what was in the bag that I decided to use)
1/4 cup onion, finely chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1/2 a carrot, julliened
2 T dark brown sugar
1 T fish sauce
3 T olive oil

I started with a large pan and heated it on medium low with the oil while I chopped the onion. Oh and I put the noodles in a pot to soak in cold water. The noodles are these balls of noodles. I got them from the China guys ages ago and just decided to start using them. I left them to soak about 2 minutes, like Jaden says (well, as long as it took me to chop the onion and garlic and go oh crap, I should take the noodles out) so I drained the noodles and let them sit in the empty pot. The noodles stayed in a ball so they held a lot of water so I dumped that out again a couple minutes later.

Back to the sauce. So there's the hot pan with the oil. I added the chopped onion. While that cooked I chopped the garlic and the carrots. To get the carrot super skinny I used a peeler to make planks. Then I chopped the planks into little pieces. That worked pretty well. Then I added the garlic and onion and turned the heat down to low and let that cook. That was probably about 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, I heated up 1.5 quarts of water in my new electric kettle (see my Aldi's post), which worked quite well by the way, took a few minutes for the water to heat up. I meant to time it but then I was busy chopping and making the sauce so I failed at that. Anyway, the water boiled and I poured it over the noodles for about 2.5 minutes.

While the noodles were sitting I put together the fish sauce and brown sugar and poured them into the pan with the aromatics and mixed it in. Maybe I didn't let it cook long enough after this because there are tiny flecks of brown sugar on my noodles but I kinda like them so I think it's OK.

We are almost there. I added the noodles, gave a quick mix, with tongs of course, put it in a bowl, took a picture and ate! (Actually I am still eating but you get the picture)

They are quite tasty. A serious garlicky bite (I guess that could be tamed by longer cooking or a little more heat if you want but I don't know why you'd want that) so it's a good thing I'm not planning on making out with anyone anytime soon. The noodles have a nice chewy texture and you can taste the difference with the egg noodles. This is definitely a quick easy tasty dish that I could make anytime and there isn't even anything that I don't always have in it. I probably could add more carrot or other vegetables to pretend it is a little more healthy but eh, why bother.

Aldi's

There is an Aldi's a couple miles from here, I drive by it all the time.  Yet for some reason I never went.  I saw someone on Chowhounds mention that they got good chocolate at Aldi's so I decided to go yesterday.  It was a bit different than a regular supermarket experience.  

When you get there you have to have a quarter to get a cart.  They have those things where you put your quarter in and then you get your quarter back when you return the cart.  I remember seeing them at all the supermarkets when I was younger but then they went away.  I usually have all sorts of change everywhere but when I pulled in to their parking lot I had all sorts of trouble finding any.  Apparently I took most of it out of my car at some point and what I've got left did not include quarters.  I eventually found one in my purse.  Whew, that would have been sad if I had finally ventured over there and did'nt have a quarter for the cart.  So I got my cart outside and headed in.  They had all sorts of Valentines day stuff right by the door.  

I saw these boxes of truffles a lot like the ones they have at Whole Foods, same style box though obviously no Whole Foods logo on it so I got 2 boxes, one of regular truffles, one of cappuccino.  They were $2/box vs the 8 or so at Whole foods.  The regular truffles are pretty good, sweeter than the Whole Foods ones but it definitely is good chocolate.  Haven't tried the cappuccino ones yet.  I'll probably take them into work.

I got a thing of mixed peanuts.   I've been needing snacks in my office, it's been pretty sparse for a while now.

I got 4 boxes of cereal, one was Kellogg, the rest was their brand.  Their brand was $1.50 a box, I forget what the Kellogg one was.  I'll take them in to work and see how they are.  (are we picking up on a theme here?)

I got a few cans of tomato products, one of each, diced, sauce, paste to see how they are.  I'll use them... eventually... though apparently I really don't use that much tomato.

I got some frozen stuff, a frozen pizza, onion rings and texas toast, I expect those will be fine.

I thought about getting cheese, it looked fine and I read afterwards it is the same as Sargento's but I have tons of cheese in the fridge and it isn't exactly happy on the stomach so I decided not to.  Their milk was only in 1 gallon jugs and their eggs were the same price as the lady at the Renningers so I decided to stick with Renningers.

I also got a Crofton brand electric kettle.  It's 1.8 quart, the kettle comes off the base so it's portable and it was $10.  I haven't gotten my french press yet (and almost all of my tea is in my office) so I can't make a cup of tea.  It has the heating coils directly in your liquid in the kettle.  It looks OK, but obviously I haven't used it yet.  Maybe I'll make hard boiled eggs.

I think that's all I got.  They had 2 employees working, both at the registers.  Throughout the store, everything is in boxes, the way they are shipped.  I guess that's another one of their cost savings things, not having to pay someone to restock.

I think this may be a bad store for me because I am more inclined to impulse buy because it is so cheap.  Like I so didn't need 4 boxes of cereal but now I have them.  Well it's not like they go bad or anything.  It's a good store.  Can't get everything you need there but so far I am happy with what I got.

I did some more digging on chowhounds.  The canned goods are a bit questionable because they say they have more water filler in there than brand names but I don't buy canned veggies anyway.  

Things I will need to find and try: 
chocolate bars (they say they are good european chocolate, I didn't see them, I was focused on the truffles)
olive oil
ice cream bars
salad mix bags
frozen stuff

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Coconut Rice Pudding and Baby Back Ribs


Since I didn't get out like I had planned to this weekend I had time to cook.  I spent a while thinking about what I wanted to make but I wasn't really inspired.  Food network was doing a chili thing this weekend so everyone was making chili, which wasn't what I really wanted.  I thought about making ribs since I had plenty of time now and had no intention of going anywhere but I didn't see any at the farmer's market.  But then I went to Walmart and they had some vacuum packed ribs and I figured what the hell.  So I made baby back ribs and coconut rice pudding.  

For the rice pudding I based my making on this recipe.  Except I couldn't find light coconut milk so I used 3 cans of regular coconut milk.  And I stirred in the vanilla extract along with just a tiny bit of cinnamon just before I put it in the dish.  I would post a picture but I am a horrible food pornographer and couldn't get a decent picture.  I didn't follow their crispy coconut recipe, I just toasted some sweetened coconut flakes in a pan and sprinkled it on top.  I probably should have waited to put it on after the pudding cooled but I didn't think of it until I had put just about all of it on.  Flavorwise I'm pretty happy.  Not as coconutty as it smelled when it was cooking, which is probably good because while it was cooking I thought wow this is REALLY coconutty.  Pretty mild in flavor, pretty light, not as creamy as some other rice puddings I have made.  I am stopping eating it until after the ribs finish and I eat some real food.

I followed Alton Brown's recipe (obviously) for the ribs.  Though I didn't have cayenne pepper, jalapeno seasoning, onion powder or thyme so I used a bit of paprika, italian seasoning mix and a beef seasoning mix that I had.  I also don't have wine so I used birch beer, cider wine vinegar and 3 cloves of garlic for one rack of ribs rather than the 2 cloves for 2 racks.  It was a bit too garlicky but that's ok.  Either my oven doesn't hold temp well enough or the cooktime was too short... I cooked them for 2.5 hours at 250, 30 mins at 350 and then broiled it with the sauce like his recipe... I know which one I think it is.  Not all of the collagen and fat had dissolved so the texture of the ribs was not fall off the bone like it was supposed to be.  I had a feeling when I looked at them after the 2.5 hours and they didn't look like enough of the collagen had dissolved so I stuck them in for the 30 mins while the sweet potato fries baked.  Since the sweet potato fries were done I figured I'd move on with the ribs as well.  It wasn't bad for a first try but there's definitely room for improvement.

As for the sweet potato fries, I did them like I always do them.  Tossed in a bit of oil then sprinkled with salt and my paprika-cumin-cinnamon blend.  They came out decent though I burned some of them because I baked them in a pyrex dish and had it on a low rack so I had room for the ribs too.

Friday, January 25, 2008

The Smoke Detector Grand Finale (hopefully)

So my landlord dropped off a new battery yesterday.  I put it in and put the smoke detector back up.  So far the battery he gave me seems to work.  I got the smoke detector up right, didn't even fall off my nightstand putting it up this time.  Woohoo!

FeedBurner

So I thought I set up a feedburning thing a couple days ago.  I totally did it so I can know who looked at my blog and when and such but apparently it doesn't work that way.  What use if that if I can't stalk the people stalking me?  It's rather upsetting.  Well not only that but apparently I didn't do something right when I set it up because it's not working at all.  I fail. :(

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

The Smoke Detector part 2

I beat the smoke detector!  I called my landlord after fighting with it some more last night.  He called me back and apparently there is a pin in the side that locks it in place so it doesn't fall out.  The other one I have clearly doesn't have one of these.  Well I got it down and took the battery out and shut up the beeping.  My landlord said he would come and replace the battery today.  He hasn't so far but so long as the beeping stopped I don't really care.  Not really sure why I need 2 smoke detectors right next to each other anyway.  Oh well.  The beeping stopped so I am happy.

Sunday, January 20, 2008

The Smoke Detector

Apparently I am being defeated by the smoke detector.  There is one in my bedroom that I didn't notice until I got home today and it was beeping.  So I go I stand on my night stand to get it down to change the battery.  Except I can't seem to twist it off to get to where the battery.  It even has a thing on the front saying which way to twist but it doesn't seem to want to budge.  So I am defeated by the smoke detector.  I don't have a replacement battery anyway but I could at least take it down and stop the beeping.  It might drive me insane tonight.  We shall see.

Vidalia

For our final restaurant week meal we went to Vidalia.

The place had a very modern look. They had a lot of mirrors which made it look real spacious but I found it a little weird because you look around and all you see is yourself from all different angles. It was pretty upscale, in the quiet proper rich people way. It was upscale enough that we felt weird taking our food porn shots and turned the flash off. Not weird enough to keep up from taking them, just weird enough to make it uncomfortable to take them. Service was good. One issue is that they are in the basement of a building so you have to go down the stairs to get to the restaurant. On the stairs there is a handrail. However, the supports for the hand rail go straight out the side of the hand rail rather than underneath which means if you actually use the hand rail you will smack your hand into the supports. Therefore the hand rails are just 'decorative' which i don't like.

The bathrooms kept with the simple modern look. The stalls were full rooms, floor to ceiling walls and door, which is so nice for the extra privacy when you are doing your business. The sinks were nice and stuck with the modern look. They had a mouthwash station, I guess in case you are on a first date or something and you are all worried about your breath. Can't say I care but whatever.

Now for the food. Appetizers were wild mushroom soup and big eye tuna and jumbo lump crab. The soup was pureed, with a red wine-truffle emulsion that gave it a bit of tartness and tiny little flecks of pancetta that gave you just a little salty bite, much better than the bacon in the braised cabbage at TenPenh. The big eye tuna was served raw and wrapped around the crab so it looked like a sushi roll. There was a $7 mark up for this dish. The big eye tuna was incredibly fresh and the pairing with the crab was great. It also had a sauce, the primary color came from avocado but I guess there was other stuff in it too and some sort of foam on top, can't so I know what that was either.



Entrees were the New York Strip Steak and Icelandic char. The icelandic char was good. Very light. It had the skin on and crisped nicely though I found the fat underneath it to be a bit much and took most of it off. There was bacon and shitake mushrooms on top that I thought went well with it though were pretty strong in flavor. The steak was a huge cut of good quality meat, well seared and all. Had some mushrooms and caramelized onions with it but it was really all about the steak. There was a $10 mark up on it.




Now for the best part, dessert. We had the Lemon Chess Pie ($4 mark up) and a chocolate panna cotta. The panna cotta was... firmer than expected. It had a real dark bitter chocolate, especially compared to the lemon chess tart that I had first. There were caramelized bananas, sliced real thin and they had been torched like a creme brulee. The only problem is the bananas were overripe so it tasted a bit off. They had vanilla bean whipped cream that had a perfect texture and not oversweetened. The lemon chess tart was amazing. I knew that was what I wanted from what they kept saying on Chowhound and it worked out wonderfully. It was nice and sweet and tart and smooth and ooh so good. It had the same whipped cream as they had with the panna cotta and a raspberry sauce on the side. There was also a berry compote that just seemed like finely diced strawberries. I can't say the compote did anything for me but the pie was so good it didn't matter. mmm that pie was good I could totally have more now.




Saturday, January 19, 2008

Filomena






So our next restaurant week choice was Filomena. Someone clearly needs to take some photography lessons but we won't point fingers here. We are clearly amateur food porn artists here. Don't really care enough to rotate the picture either.

Filomena is a much more casual restaurant than some of our other choices. We started with the bruscetta and Aranchini. The bruscetta was alright though nothing really all that amazing. The Aranchini is fried risotto balls stuffed with cheese and a bit of ground meat and served with a marinara sauce on the side. They were quite tasty though very rich. I actually gave up one of them so I would have room for the rest of the meal. Good thing I did.

For the entree we got the Salmon with mustard sauce and Cavatelli. The cavatelli was uber tasty. It was freshly made upstairs and served with a pink sauce, spinach mushrooms and roma tomatoes. The pasta was a little bigger than I would have made them. I would make them bite size whereas I cut each pasta piece in two for a more proper bite size. The pasta pieces were real thick, which gave them a nice chewiness and the sauce was tasty. I can't say the spinach, tomatoes or mushrooms did a lot but the pasta was tasty and that was the real point of the dish. They also gave you a ton of pasta. Like literally. There was still about half of it left when I quit. The salmon was alright but I wouldn't say amazing. They cooked the salmon fully, which was a little surprising and the mustard sauce was very mild. I was told the veggies were tasty though I didn't try them. I was busy with my pasta. mmm it was good.

Then dessert was a strawberry mousse cake and a chocolate mousse cake. I liked the strawberry one better because it was nice and bright after a huge appetizer and entree it seemed lighter and therefore I could keep going. But they were both tasty. They had a bunch of really pretty desserts in the dessert case in front too. mmmmm. The strawberry one had a raspberry sauce on the side and the chocolate one had a white chocolate and raspberry sauce that they made all decorative and such.

Service was decent. Nothing to complain of.

They have put some thought into the bathroom although a few things just didn't seem to go together. Like they had decorative flower painting type things on the door into the bathroom, on the stall doors and in the stalls. They were marked Ladies and Gentlemen. They had florescent overhead lights but they were in the sink area. They had really dark wood stalls and since there was no light in them you were practically going to the bathroom in the dark. The toilet seat was very utilitarian... one that you would find in a public rest room with an auto flush thing and those Scott 1000 sheets per roll toilet paper. They had decent sinks that had pumps on the side for soap but when I hit the pump what came out looked and felt like water. No sign of soap that I could find. That is a bit upsetting. They had a paper towel dispenser like the ones at work, functional but nothing special. Their bathroom was functional, a few attempts at making it nice but nothing amazing.

Their prices on their regular menu are not that high, $10-15 for an entree so for Restaurant week it maybe wasn't the best deal but it was a good meal.

TenPenh

Went to TenPenh last night for Restaurant week.  I had the Chicken Roti, Chilean Sea Bass and the Milk Chocolate Brownie.  Karthik had the Calamari Salad, Scallops and Pumpkin bread.  

The service was pretty good.  There was a coat check in front and everyone wore those chinese jacket thingys.  They came and gave you hot towels to start to clean your hands though they had a slightly weird smell.  Within a minute of when we finished anything someone was there to take away the plate or clean up or something.  The tables were set with 2 forks, 2 knives, plate and napkin with chopsticks folded inside.  Karthik's chopsticks matched but mine were different lengths and thicknesses.  This is a problem.  Not huge because we never used the chopsticks but a problem nonetheless.

After we ordered there was a little amuse-bouche that was this really creamy butternut squash with Kefir lime soup.  It was incredibly smooth and served warm.  The only other time I'd had Kefir lime was in a chocolate from Kee's and I didn't really like it.  This was good.  

The Chicken Roti was great: crisp, tasty and had this real sweet dipping sauce, Karthik seemed to notice the cardamom more than the sweetness, the first thing I thought was wow this is sweet.  But it was quite tasty, unlike Karthik's icky choice the Calamari.  First of all, Calamari is just yuck to begin with.  If I want something chewy like that I'd chew on a rubber band.  Their preparation of it wasn't bad, relatively tender but definitely still calamari.  It had some real spicy sauce that they used as a dressing for the salad, which also had baby spinach.  I guess they didn't go together all that well but I had enough when I tried the calamari.  

My sea bass was good, really moist and tender though the sear on it was not as perfect as the one at Corduroy, which will probably forever be the standard for perfectly seared fish.  It came with what they described as braised cabbage, bacon and a red wine XO sauce.  This didn't seem to match with the fish all that well to me.  The fish was very mild and when you had some of the cabbage and bacon it overwhelmed the fish and all you really tasted was the bacon.  The scallops were quite good, very nice sear on those.  They came with some sort of mashed potatoes and a little piece of braised pork belly.  The pork belly was really sweet and had that big chunk of fat that I knew better than to eat though apparently Karthik did not (it was funny, you should have seen the pained look on his face when he realized there was a big chunk of fat there).   

My brownie was alright.  The highlight was really the Kona coffee ice cream that was uber coffee goodness and really smooth and yum.  The brownie had real distinct flavor though I don't know what it is (no I don't mean chocolate, something else).  The ice cream had this chocolate curl on top of it but with the cold of the ice cream it just tasted waxy.  The pumpkin bread was something between a quick bread and a cake.  It wasn't very sweet but had a cream cheese icing on it that was real sweet that balanced it out.  The highlight of this dish was really the coconut flan.  When I saw it on someone elses table it didn't look that appealing but it was really smooth and creamy and tasty, with a mild coconut flavor.

The atmosphere of the restaurant was nice.  It was pretty crowded even at 10:30 at night.  It was a bit loud though, I think they could do more to damp down the sound.  We could hear everyone else in the room's conversations quite clearly.

Overall, a decent restaurant but not the best.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

Kitchenaid Rant part 2

Woohoo!! I convinced Kitchenaid to give me a new stand mixer!   I played my recording for the customer service lady and she said she couldn't really hear it but between that and everything falling off of it they are sending me a shipping label so I can send mine back and then sending me a new one!!!!  Yay!  Me and kitchenaid are on good terms again!  (I have nothing to take a picture of today to post, maybe next time i'll do a video because I'm super cool like that and I know where the little video button thing is on this site, though I don't actually know how to record a video from my camera yet)

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Oatmeal cookies


mmmmm those cookies are so sexy.... well at least until someone finds the ceramic chip off the paddle from my stand mixer..... It's the recipe from the Quaker Oats box plus chocolate and dried cranberries.... Totally makes up for the ridiculous 2+ hour dinner that didn't include dessert and my food coming after everyone else had finished eating because they made the wrong dish and getting yelled at by the waitress. At least she apologized when she realized they made the wrong thing. And I have lotsa cookies..... Though I didn't get a chance to call Kitchenaid today and yell at them.

Monday, January 14, 2008

My Kitchenaid Rant



So I finally bought a Kitchenaid stand mixer about a month ago.  I was all proud of myself because I got a 325 Watt 5 quart mixer for 200 plus a mail in rebate that took it down to 180.  That's a picture of it, nice and pretty red.  I know that's a can of instant oatmeal in the background.  Don't worry, they are for oatmeal cookies (we'll get to them eventually) not for eating oatmeal (blech).  
I haven't gotten my rebate check yet and I am already thoroughly annoyed. 

It came the day before heading to Vegas so I didn't have a chance to take it out and test it and all.  So it sat there in the box until the weekend after I got back.  It was kinda sad bit I was so tired from the trip and trying to catch back up at work I didn't have time.

First off, I had a real disagreement with the box and the styrofoam inserts holding it in place.  The styrofoam has a really tight fit in the box.  I mean REALLY tight.  Perhaps I was a little over zealous so this one I maybe can't blame on the mixer but I will anyway.  So eventually I got the thing out of the box.  Then I turned my apartment upside down in search for a 3 to 2 adapter because all of my outlets in my kitchen are 2 prong and the mixer is obviously 3 prong. Eventually I stole it off my air conditioner.  It was December so I didn't need the A/C for a while.  So I finally got the mixer set up on my counter.  Yay!  Go me!

So I turn the mixer on with nothing in it, play with the speed adjuster, the lock for the head, check out the lock down for the bowl... it's looking OK.  Then I hear this clunk.  I look in the bowl and there is a screw laying there.  Fortunately I didn't have any of the mixing attachments on yet.  So I pick up the screw and see that it's from the underside of the mixer head.  I find this a little suspicious but I get my screwdriver, screw it back in and tighten up the other screws as well.  A little odd but no biggie.  I take the bowl, all the mixing attachments, and wash them and wiped down the mixer.  Woohoo, I'm ready to make cinnamon buns!  At least so I think.

So I start my cinnamon bun dough, of course the one from Good Eats, my tried and true recipe but this time my shoulders won't be tired from kneading the dough!  So I add all the liquids get them going and add the first batch of flour and yeast.  That's when I looked in the bowl and I see these black flecks.  And every time the mixer goes around I see a clump of them.  So I stopped the mixer and looked and found there was a bit of grease right at the base of the mixing arm that I didn't get under when I wiped the thing down.  I know, I know, I should have seen the grease when I was wiping it down but I was only wiping for dust, didn't anticipate grease in a little crevice.

So I dump my dough, take everything apart and clean everything again.  This time more carefully.  Back to making my dough.  So this time I make it all the way through adding all the ingredients and I switched over to the dough hook.  That's when the squeak started.  Every time the planetary head went around it squeaked.  I was a little suspicious and I played around with it for a bit at different speeds, thinking maybe I had it too fast or too slow.  It still squeaked every pass of the mixing head, regardless of the squeak.  Well it still worked so I didn't worry too much about it.

Next I made a cookie dough.  I guess it was a lighter dough or something but I didn't hear the squeak again so I thought it maybe was just a fluke.  

A couple weeks later I was making a heavier cookie dough and the squeak is back.  This is upsetting but customer service was not available at the time so I figured I'd call some other time.  I then decided to send an email to them since I am not usually home in time for their hours.  They never answered my email.

I decided to call them tonight at work since I was never going to find a good time to call.  After going through all their menus I finally got to a person.  Tony.  I told her my issue and she said she had to hear it to do anything.  Slightly annoying but I can accept that.

So Gary came up from Richmond today.  He stopped by and we chatted and he mentioned he'd be here all week and would be all sorts of excited if I brought in some baked goods sometime this week.  So I asked him for an idea since I was uninspired this weekend and he suggested oatmeal cookies.  There we go, I have an inspiration!

So I get home and start making the dough.  I use the one on the Quaker oats can except I added dark chocolate and dried cranberries as well.  Pretty simple.  I'm mixing along when suddenly *CLUNK*!!!! and the mixer pretty much stops.  That stupid metal thing on the front that says Kitchenaid on it that's for the grinder attachment came off!  Not only that it came off and fell in the bowl!!! Not only that, it damaged my paddle!!! See that big chip out of the pic!!!!!!! (I don't know how to make the pic in the middle of the blog or how to change the orders of the pics at the top but you can figure out which one is which)  So this is an unhappy moment although since the dough is all over the place I didn't know it yet.

So I start adding in all the mix ins, the oats, raisins etc when I hear the squeak.  So I'm kinda excited and I bring over my laptop and try to figure out what to use to record the squeak.  Since this thing is only a couple weeks old too I haven't found all the stuff on it and I didn't know what would work for recording.  I figured Garageband would do it but every time I tried to record something and play it back I didn't hear anything.  Eventually I realized I had to turn the speakers on (I know, I'm just a computer genius like that)  So I got it recorded (Yay!) and converted to mp3 and saved on my email so I can play it for the kitchenaid people tomorrow.  I would post the squeak but it seems like too much effort right now.

And this on top of finding out at 4PM that I have to be in an all day meeting tomorrow and I have to have stuff put together for it.  At least I'm ready to call Kitchenaid.  They better be happy with my squeak recording.  It's only about 5 seconds because I didn't want to overmix my dough lol.  I'll have to make cinnamon buns this weekend if they need to hear more.

Saturday, January 12, 2008

Indian Potatoes, Cauliflower and Peas attempt #1

So putting my new shelf in my kitchen resulted in me finding the whole stash of spices I got from the indian spice store. Being that I got all the spices, I figure I should try and use them. I started with this recipe from epicurious with my own tweaks and stuff. It came out very mild and I don't understand why. This is the second recipe that I have tried that came out really mild even though I doubled the amount of all the spices that were called for in the original recipe. I'll have to play around some more and figure out what my issue is. My first pic using my new laptop! Also notice my pretty new Calphalon pan.

Ingredients:
vegetable oil - enough to coat the pan
1 T ginger
6 small russet potatoes, large dice
1 bag broccoli and cauliflower florets, thawed
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 t chili powder
1 t paprika
2 t turmeric
water, enough to cover everything in about an inch
1/2 cup frozen peas

Recipe:
Coat a large nonstick skillet with vegetable oil and heat over medium heat. Add the potatoes and ginger. I had added the garlic at this point although in retrospect I think it would have been better to wait to make sure the garlic doesn't burn. Toss to coat and cook for a few minutes until potatoes begin to soften. The epicurious recipe called for browning but mine didn't brown after about 10 minutes and the garlic was close to burning so I decided to move on. Add the broccoli, cauliflower and all the spices. Add water so that it comes up about an inch from the bottom of the pan. The vegetables are not completely covered. Stir so the spices are well mixed and cover. Allow to cook for about 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are cooked through. Add the peas and stir together. The starch from the potatoes starts to break down and thicken the water to create a sauce.

And viola, you have a really bland version of a tasty indian dish (the name of which I don't know). Now what sort of sugary goodness should I make?

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

Why am I starting a blog?

I don't really know.  Karthik is making me so now I have one.  Yay!