I Love My Kitchen!

Alex and I (well, more me, because he's been working 50-60 hours a week for the last few weeks, and I... haven't) have been cooking delicious things since I got back and started to come out of camp-induced kitchen withdrawal! Here are some of them.

One night, Carla cooked some salmon she had in the freezer, and I made a beurre blanc sauce (um, could anything be better than a sauce made primarily of butter? Well, actually, a sauce made of butter and cheese, probably. Also, it would have been more delicious if we had had a better white wine in the house than the leftover $5 champagne from a few nights before, and if I had actually had white wine vinegar, rather than regular white vinegar accented by a splash of apple cider vinegar. But it was still extremely delicious!)

Carla loved it, too!

Shortly thereafter, I tried making double chocolate chocolate chip cookies from the Sarabeth's Bakery cookbook, which had arrived in on hold from the library! I always have (always unwarrantedly) high hopes for homemade chocolate cupcakes - I just keep thinking that homemade things are more delicious than storebought things, and also I keep remembering one time when I made chocolate cupcakes and they were really really good, plus I had accidentally poured way too much vanilla into the buttercream frosting and they were vaguely alcoholic, but then I couldn't find the recipe anymore, and how sad is that? Because at this point I'm pretty sure I was just having a weird taste day, and those remembered cupcakes must not have been really all that great. Because it always turns out that cupcakes are just cupcakes - plain boring fluffy not-very-rich cake, with some good stuff on top. Homemade or purchased, I am always underwhelmed and they are never worth it.

However, everyone else always loves them, so I guess they were in fact worth making! Alex, Carla, and Skye were thrilled. Also, they were very beautiful!

Peanut butter chips, rainbow sprinkles, and cinnamon =

exciting ways to improve boring desserts

I was even enticed into eating one or two myself!

I chalk it up to the toppings.

Because the cupcakes were boring.

I think I finally give up on cupcakes.

Anyway, I also made lentil and brown rice soup! I really liked it, although next time I would actually put in a little less pepper and a little less parsley - it was a little hotter than I prefer for a soup.

I love how it was a little shiny in the light from the veggie stock,

and how great the parsley and bay leaves look amid the lentils!

Also, we made stuffed bell peppers - a little bland, but healthy, and the feta sauce on top blew our minds with deliciosity! It helped that we used a block of what seemed to be fresh feta, rather than the pre-crumbled-into-a-plastic-container kind. We have a bunch leftover and have been putting it on everything because it is so freaking good.

Alex plated the pepper and sauce beautifully.

I also just made great Moosewood enchiladas with bell peppers, onions, garlic, cumin, cheddar, cream cheese, and cottage cheese - not very Mexican, but unbelievably good! I used low-fat cream cheese and cottage cheese, and even cut the amount of cream cheese in half, and it was still ridiculously rich. We had some filling leftover, and used it as chip dip during Sunday football! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a picture.

I've also made coffee heath bar crunch ice cream (soooooo good), sourdough bread (of course), cornbread, pancakes, french toast, banana nut chocolate chip bread, and Sweetie Pie cookies out of Mrs. Fields (chocolate batter with semisweet, milk, and white chocolate - I bought some really high quality milk and white chocolate before I went to camp, to see how I would like it, and then forgot to stick it in the freezer before I left, so it is pretty old and you can tell by the taste, which means I can't tell if it was worth it and I'll have to buy it again, at least the milk chocolate [I made white chocolate ice cream with about a third of the brick of white chocolate before I left, and it was really good, but I am just not a white chocolate person. I'm not a milk chocolate person either, but the Vahlrona milk is surprisingly good when not super old, from what I remember from when Tom gave me a taste one time] - anyway, the cookies are ok. Everyone seems to like them, anyway. I could take 'em or leave 'em, although that could be because of the old chocolate. Do you think this parenthesis is long enough yet?), and probably some other stuff that I've forgotten.

I like to cook! I love to bake! I think I'll go use the last of the milk chocolate in a milk chocolate ice cream recipe, and see if that disguises the age of the chocolate! Even if it doesn't, ice cream is delicious virtually no matter what, and I can always make a dark chocolate or caramel or peanut butter or espresso sauce to throw on top and stuff it chock full of truffles or peanut butter cups or chocolate covered espresso beans or cookie pieces, and then it won't even matter what it tastes like! Or I can pour hot chocolate over it! The ice cream possibilities are endless!! Keep checking for future posts to see where this exciting path leads!

To be continued... (probably...).