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by Miss K

Friday Fuck-Up: Awful Waffle

First of all, did anyone catch the sweet Salute Your Shorts reference I just made? No? Okay. Moving on.

You know what bugs me? Recipes that use only part of a can of something. For example, I have a pizza sauce recipe that calls for 2 tablespoons of tomato paste. If I actually follow those instructions, I am left with most of a can of tomato paste to put in the fridge, where I will undoubtedly find it two weeks later covered with a layer of white, suspicious fuzz. Mmm.

So, it was with this in mind that, when I set out to make pumpkin waffles last week (that’s right, pumpkin waffles, not pumpkin spice waffles), and the recipe called for 2/3 of a can of pumpkin, I figured, what the heck? I dumped in the whole can. And…well, you can see what happened above.

In the annals of Friday F-ups, this one certainly won’t go down as one of the worst, as once I picked the waffle bits off the maker, the whole thing still tasted great. Plus, as I always say…

When life gives you runny waffle batter, make pancakes.

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by Miss K

Miss K’s Fourth Annual Stuffed Pumpkin: Soup’s On

So, here I am at the start of my fourth year at ES, and I must return once again to my roots, my own personal ES origin story: the stuffed pumpkin. I started off traditional, then took a slightly different tack, and last year went with a different course all together. This year, I decided to fill in the obvious gap: the app(etizer).

Inspired by Barbara Kingsolver’s semi-successful attempt in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I set out to make pumpkin soup in the pumpkin.

Here’s what I did:

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by Miss K

In Which I Succumb to Taco Tuesday

When I first moved to DC, I had the pleasure of living with not one but two lovely women who came from families with eight children. As a member of a modest two-child family, I was endlessly fascinated by their stories of growing up. One story that entered our household lore and has stuck with me going on six years later is the tale of the day that Rachel, who was near the end of her large family train, called her house on a Tuesday and talked to her mom. It came out that her mom, dad and brother, the only ones remaining at home, were having fish for dinner. Indignantly, Rachel exclaimed, “But Mom, it’s Taco Tuesday!” To which her mom replied something like, “You think that we still eat tacos every week now that it’s just the three of us?” It seems that Taco Tuesday was more a product of pragmatism than a reflection of her mother’s love of Tex-Mex cuisine.

For me, the food growing up was considerably less regimented. Sure, there were some favorite family dishes, but the level of predictability was considerably less pronounced. My mother would plan the week’s menu over the weekend, and each of us would have a say. New dishes were welcomed, particularly if the person suggesting it was also willing to cook it. After I flew the coop, I met a man whose tastes are as varied as mine, and together we embarked on many culinary adventures (think homemade gyros, doro wat, and pesto pizza). It seemed that Taco Tuesday, at least for me, was not to be.

But…I now find myself the parent of two kids two and under, one of whom eats every three hours around the clock, and the other who is disinclined to entertain himself for hours while I practice Advanced Menu Planning and Execution. That’s right. I have embraced not only Taco Tuesday, but Pasta Monday as well. But, I promise you this, ESers: There will never be a Turkey Surprise Thursday. I hope.

Oh yes, a recipe…so, when I am feeling particular adventurous and my mini-sous chef is willing, Taco Tuesday can become Enchilada Tuesday. It’s not too much more work, but looks considerably more impressive.

Easy Tuesday Enchiladas

by Miss K

Can this Banana Bread be Saved?

I have a confession to make. Despite my mostly-vegetarian, quinoa-loving, local-eating lifestyle, I just don’t like whole wheat flour. I think whole wheat pasta tastes just like the box it comes in, and every time I try to bake with whole wheat flour, I regret it. However, we came into several bags of the stuff the other week, and after making some extra nutritious play-dough, I was still left with far too much of the finely ground fiber-fest. I also had several black bananas, so the next step seemed obvious.

In retrospect, I should have used a combo of white and wheat flour, but in my zealous pursuit of using all of the WW flour, I went a little overboard. The result was nothing short of brick-like. It was so dense and dry that even putting a generous dollop of Nutella on every bite just made me wish I was eating the Nutella off a spoon.

Did I mention that I made two loaves of this nasty stuff? I contemplated just chucking the whole thing in the trash, but I have had a few too many Friday-you-know-what’s lately, so I decided to persevere.

The Joy of Cooking told me that for bread pudding, you should only use yeast breads, not ones leavened with baking soda, so I went online in search of a different recipe for bread pudding to redeem my sad banana bread. Just a heads up, it is pretty much exactly the same as the recipe in the Joy of Cooking. Oh, J of C, why you gotta lie like that?

Anyway, I cut the offending ‘nana bread into chunks, added a few other ingredients, and Voila! The sweet smell of redemption.

Banana Bread Bread Pudding

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by Miss K

Ironic Photo of the Day

What can I say? I’m a woman of diverse tastes.

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by Miss K

Eating Down the Fridge: OPP Edition

Several times in the past few months, our family has experienced an interesting phenomenon. I think I shall call it pre-dumpster diving. What has happened is that friends of ours, in one case on very short notice, have moved across the country or across the world, and have left the contents of their refrigerators and/or pantries with us. Even though our kitchen is short on space to begin with, I was powerless to resist these “gifts” given my love of free stuff, especially free food. The things we received fell into three basic categories: food we buy ourselves anyway (butter, mustard, produce), things that I would buy if I had the space and money (see above) and things that I would likely never buy, but now feel the obligation to do something with.

One outstanding item in the third category is a large bag of oat bran. Until today, it dwelt in the vegetable drawer of the fridge (lack of space, I tell you), eying me in a lonely manner each time I reached past it to grab the mushrooms/peppers/lettuce. I had considered making bran muffins, but then I would have to eat bran muffins or give them to someone else who would then have to eat them, and this seemed unfair.

Fortunately, I had been tossing around the idea of making some sort of homemade protein bar, mainly because one of the awesome side effects of pregnancy is waking up at 4 am and feeling like your stomach is consuming itself. Going all the way downstairs to make a PB and J was getting old.

Enter the peanut butter balls. Protein packed, no-bake, and sweet enough to hide half a cup of oat bran per batch. Take that, bag of oat bran. 10 more batches or so, and you and I will officially be over.

Peanut Butter Energy Balls

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by Miss K

Burns My Bacon: Waste-of-Space Recipes

Maybe I’m just grumpy these days, but I seem to find annoying food-related practices everywhere I look. Today I bring you: ridiculously inappropriate label recipes.

When it comes to cooking, I’ll take my ideas wherever I can find them: cookbooks (I own many too many), blogs, allrecipes.com, and on and on. And sometimes, on the food packaging itself. This seems highly logical at times. For example, if I have a bag of cornmeal and I want to make polenta, the first place I look is on the side of the bag. And–aha!–there it is. I’ll try it, and if it works, great, and if not, my next stop will probably be The Joy of Cooking, followed by the vast plain of the Internet. Sometimes, a recipe can be useful even if it does not directly utilize the enclosed ingredient, like a good dip recipe on the back of a bag of chips.

Let me tell you what has never happened to me, though. I have a can of olives in the pantry. I am trying to decide what to make for dinner. I pick up the olive can and notice, “Hey, look, a recipe for island chicken and rice! And all I need is…every ingredient on the list.” Because olives aren’t even included until the very last line, as a garnish. Seriously, I understand that you, label designer, had some space to fill, but really, that’s the best you could do? I think that an olive-themed word puzzle, a la the cereal box, would have been preferable to this lameness. But maybe it’s just me.

in Rants & Raves 1 comments