chicken pot pie

I have spent seven winters in Southern California, and I'm still not used to them.  Having spent every winter in Minnesota, except for one in New York, I'm not at all used to the 60 or 70 degree "winter" days.  Anytime someone finds out I'm from Minnesota, s/he inevitably says something like "oh, you must love the winters here."  And then I go all Debbie Downer and say that I actually miss the cold and snow.  In fact, sometimes I deliberately under-dress (meaning that I don't wear a jacket or a sweatshirt) when I go outside just so I feel cold and can pretend I'm in Minnesota...on a fall day.

This winter was probably the "coldest" one since I moved here in 2006.  I had to buy a couple long sleeve running shirts, and I almost considered buying a pair of running pants.  On a handful of days in the early morning (meaning 7am), the air was cool and brisk; I could see my breath, and I found frost on the ground and on our car.  On some days, I even wore gloves while I ran.  

Though others complained that the 50 degree days were freezing, I was sad to see them go.  Aside from the beauty and peacefulness of freshly fallen snow, one of the things I love about winter is the comfort food.  Eating hearty soups and stews when its 70 degrees just doesn't feel right.  But, I adapt and eat these things anyway.  One of my favorites is chicken pot pie.       

The recipe is from Ashley English's "A Year of Pies," and of course, we vegetarianized it, which means that we used a bag of fake chicken strips instead of the shredded chicken.  The result was amazing, and my pie crust was better than usual.     

junk in da trunk

I bake a lot- about once a week (sometimes twice).  I think that this is baffling to some, but it's not to me.  When I first started grad school, some version of the following was not an uncommon refrain: "I wish I had time to bake." This really bothered me until one day (for some reason), I was telling one of my professors of this frustration, and he said "The thing is that when people think about baking, they're thinking about themselves baking, not you.  They're thinking about how long it would take them to bake something, not you." And this made me feel infinitely better.  It's true.  I enjoy baking, and it's not time consuming for me.  Just like anything else, with practice, you get better and more efficient.  

The upside to baking is that when you have a craving for say, brownies, you just go to the kitchen to bake them.  And they are significantly better than anything you'd buy in the store.

For me, the downside to being a proficient baker is that sometimes I just don't feel like baking the easy stuff- like chocolate chip cookies.  Sometimes I want more of a challenge, I want to bake something more interesting.  But I have to bake chocolate chip cookies because they are Drew's favorite and I won't let him buy them.  Correction, I won't let him buy most baked goods in the store.  The following is not an uncommon exchange in the grocery store:

Drew:  "oh look, (insert macaroons, cookies, whatever)." 

Me:  "Don't buy it, I can make it for you."

And sometimes I do, but sometimes I don't and I just make something else.  Except for chocolate chip cookies.  Most of the time, I make those, despite finding them to be a too simple and uninteresting baking project.  And so I am continuously trying to find interesting ways to spice up chocolate chip cookies.  Fortunately, Drew is open to variations and does not require chocolate chip cookies in their purest form.  

Enter the treat I bought myself the other day: Baking Out Loud by Hedy Goldsmith.  I checked out this cookbook from the library before purchasing it.  It's a fun, interesting cookbook and I'm drawn to the pictures (despite being a grad student, I apparently still prefer picture books).  Goldsmith shows you how to make stuff you'd normally buy in the store, like candy bars (I've already tried the peanut butter cups and the snickers bars), and she adds some nice twists to the classics (which is why I bought the cookbook).  Her recipe for chocolate chip cookies is called "Junk in Da Trunk."  The "junk" is mostly chocolate chips, but then you add anything you want.  Here, I've followed her recipe for the most part and added malted milk balls, butterscotch chips, pecans, walnuts, pretzels, and potato chips.      

That's a lot of junk.  The cookies are pretty big, but they have to be so as to accommodate all the junk.  

The cookies are soft, and contrast nicely with the crunch of the pretzels, potato chips, and malted milk balls. I made a double batch and put most of them in the freezer so Drew can eat them whenever he'd like.  Okay, that's kind of a lie.  I really made a double batch so I'd be off the hook for baking chocolate chip cookies for a while.

veggie meatloaf

When I was in college (and I admit, a few years thereafter), I went through a phase in which I requested meatloaf anytime I went home to visit.  Considering that I don't recall my mom ever making meatloaf when I was a child, I have no idea where this fascination with meatloaf came from.  I made meatloaf once, but I was so horrified by the amount of ground beef required and all the grease that I never did it again.  I missed it from time to time, but it was so unhealthy that I couldn't justify eating it.  And I eventually stopped asking my mom to make it.  

It never crossed my mind to make a vegetarian meatloaf, but it was one of the first recipes Drew introduced me to.  This is obviously a meatloaf for vegetarians, but it is also a meatloaf for people who don't think they like meatloaf.  We have converted many non-meatloaf fans into fans.  The original recipe is from All Recipes, a recipe website that I normally would never visit (I'm a bit of a snob- I just don't trust sites in which anyone can post a recipe), but fortunately, Drew's parents already did the vetting.  I did some sleuthing, and I can't seem to find the original recipe, so I have to do the thing that I said I wouldn't do: post the recipe.  But seriously, it would be sacrilege not to share the recipe.    

You will need:

1/2 c butter (1 stick)

6 slices of bread, diced

1 onion, diced

1 green pepper, diced

3 garlic cloves, minced

2 c shredded cheddar cheese

4 eggs, lightly beaten

1 package veggie crumbles (we use Gardein or Morning Star)

1 tsp sage

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp thyme

1/2 c brown sugar

1/4 c ketchup

1/4 barbeque sauce

1/2 c water 

Melt the butter in a large pan over medium heat.  Saute the onion and green pepper for about 10 minutes, and then add the garlic and saute another minute.  Add the cubed bread, stir it around, let it sit for a few minutes, and then remove from the heat.

In a big mixing bowl, combine the cheese, veggie crumbles, sage, garlic powder, and thyme.  Add the bread cube-onion-green pepper mixture, and then add the eggs.  Mix it all together and then pour the mixture into a greased 9 x 9 glass baking dish.  Pack it down as best as you can. 

Stir together the brown sugar, ketchup, barbeque sauce, and water, and pour over the top of the meatloaf.

Bake 45-60 minutes at 350 degrees.  Let it set up for about 10 minutes before digging in.         

Enjoy!

sticky buns

Until fairly recently, Drew and I had a pretty strict division of baking labor.  If it contained yeast, it was Drew's domain.  It not, then it was mine.  He makes the bread, and I make the cookies, cupcakes, well, you get the general idea.  But then a couple months ago, I decided that I wanted to make cinnamon rolls, so now I've gone and muddied the division of baking labor.

Some people are intimidated by yeast, but working with it isn't so bad.  With some practice, you get the hang of it.  Homemade cinnamon rolls are actually quite easy to make and the results are far superior than (most) anything you'll find in a store.

Last weekend, I made Flour's Famous Sticky Buns.  Flour is a bakery in Boston, and I saw the baker, Joanne Chang, on an episode of Throwdown with Bobby Flay on the Food Network.  The "goo" (basically a caramel) makes these buns sickenly sweet.  The cinnamon rolls are actually a brioche, which required tons of butter and a ridiculous amount of kneading in the stand mixer.  

If ever you try out a recipe from the internet, it pays to take the time to scroll through the first few pages of the comments.  I certainly wish I would have done this before beginning, instead of halfway through.  Then I would have learned that I should have omitted the water in the goo (it makes it too runny).  However, scrolling through the comments was useful because I learned that the recipe mistakenly calls for 6 eggs instead of 5.  I also learned that instead of using half the brioche dough as the recipe instructs, I should just use it all.  

Anyway, the buns were really good, but I think I actually prefer the Cinnamon Sticky Buns from Simply Recipes.      

oatmeal fudge bars

There is a coffee shop on the Virginia Tech campus called Bollo's, and I make sure to patronize it every time Drew and I go to Blacksburg.  I don't think Drew is as enchanted with Bollo's as I am, because I have the feeling he didn't really go there when he was a student at Virginia Tech.  

Maybe I love Bollo's because the only coffee shops within walking distance of UCI are Peet's and Starbucks, which are serviceable, but lack personality.  Maybe I love it because it reminds me of my favorite coffee shops I frequented as a student at the University of Minnesota: Espresso Expose and the Purple Onion.  Maybe I love Bollo's because I adore the oatmeal fudge bars.  They're simple, but really quite good.  And they're not a muffin or a danish, which is usually what you find at coffee shops.  And they're homemade, or if they're not, Bollo's has me fooled.

I never actively searched for an oatmeal fudge bar recipe so that I could make my own, but I stumbled upon one last spring.  I made them for a friend's dissertation defense, and they were a big hit.  The other day, I found myself thinking about them, but after spending an embarrassing amount of time searching for the recipe (which I think came from Bon Appetit or Food & Wine), I could not locate it.  

And so I had to resort to something I don't like doing, which is taking my chances and using a recipe from a random food blog.  It's not that I dislike food blogs or trying new recipes from the internet.  The problem is that since anyone can post a recipe or have a blog, I don't know which ones are good and which ones are bad.  I have my trusty food blogs and am hesitant to try recipes from other sources, but after some sleuthing, I found one to try, from the Beantown Baker.   

I made these bars for a different friend's dissertation defense, which means that these might become the "dissertation defense bars."  And fortunately, they were a big hit, just like the last time I made them.  

eggplant parmesan

There are pretty much only 2 ways I eat eggplant: eggplant parmesan and baba ganoush.  And I don't make either one of them- Drew does.  I think I made eggplant parmesan once, but I failed pretty miserably because you need to use quite a bit of oil when you fry the eggplant and I just don't like doing that.  

Eggplant parmesan is one of Drew's family favorites, and we've got cooking it down to a science.  Drew takes care of the eggplant, while I make the accompanying pasta and usually a salad.  Sometimes we make our own marinara sauce, but last night we copped out and used the jarred kind.  

Drew slices the eggplant (we don't bother with salting it first to remove the moisture) and coats each slice in an egg and milk mixture and then in seasoned bread crumbs.  Then he fries the slices on the griddle, insisting that this requires quite a bit of oil, so I just turn my head and refuse to look.  After he finishes frying the eggplant, he drains the slices and then places them on a baking sheet so I can smother each one in marinara sauce and a slice of mozzarella.  The finishing touch is a sprinkle of garlic powder before going into the oven for about 15 minutes.    

pancakes

A year or so ago, I was reading a column in Bon Apetit called the BA Foodist, in which Andrew Knowlton  answered questions about...you guessed it, food!  I don't recall this reader's particular question, but I do remember Knowlton's answer.  The question was about brunch, and Knowlton kindly said that he doesn't know why anyone goes out for brunch, as it is the cheapest and easiest meal to make it home.  He has a good point, and it really resonated with me.  You see, prior to coming across Knowlton's answer, I was kind of trying to find a good brunch place in the area.  I liked the idea of going out for brunch, but there were few places around that were good and inexpensive (not that I was trying that hard, but I kind of was).   

Anyway, something clicked and I finally realized that the best place for brunch was in our very own kitchen, and Drew and I have given up finding a good brunch place elsewhere.  And so we've continued having brunch every Sunday, just as we've done since we began dating, but now we have it home pretty much every time.  Sometimes we try a new recipe, and other times we go with a trusty stand-by- pancakes, waffles, tofu scramble.

Last Sunday, we made pancakes.  And when I say 'we,' I mean 'I.'  I don't know how this happened, but it used to be that I would make the pancake batter and Drew would make the pancakes.  Then, about a year or so ago, for whatever reason, I happened to make the pancakes.  And Drew decided that I was much better at it (this could be true, but I don't recall being particularly dissatisfied with his pancakes), so ever since, I've been in charge of the pancakes, while he's in charge of the scrambled eggs and bacon or sausage that accompanies them.  

I used to use Mark Bittman's pancake recipe from How to Make Everything Vegetarian, but about half a year or so, I started using Pioneer Woman's recipe.  I found Bittman's version to be too dense, but to be fair, that could be my fault.  He tells you to separate the eggs and beat the whites separately, and I'm just too lazy to give that a try.  So instead, I found a different recipe, and so far, it's been working out well.  Pioneer Woman uses cake flour, but I use all purpose instead because the pancakes seem to hold up a bit better (I thought the cake flour made the pancakes a bit on the crumbly side).  These pancakes are light, airy, and fluffy.  

As for making the pancakes, we use a two-burner griddle, so cooking them up goes pretty fast.  I think that the trick is to make sure the pan is not too hot (I suspect this may have been the problem when Drew was in charge of making pancakes).  If the pan is too hot, the outside of the pancake cooks too quickly and burns, and the interior remains dough-y and raw (okay, so it appears that I was a bit dissatisfied with his pancakes).  I also don't use butter on the griddle (gasp!  this is probably sacrilege) like most recipes instruct you to do since I try to do as little as possible to give us heart attacks, and instead use cooking spray (which may not be better for you, but I imagine that it is).    

soyrizo, black bean, and corn enchiladas

This was a planned, yet unplanned dinner.  A few weeks ago, I picked up some breakfast burritos at Chronic Taco after running group and then stopped at Trader Joe's to get some soyrizo in case Drew wanted some in his burrito (I got chorizo in mine and didn't want him to feel left out).  He didn't, electing to go with the fake bacon we had at home instead.  Anyway, we also had some leftover enchilada sauce in the refrigerator, so we decided it was time to make enchiladas.  That's the unplanned part of dinner. 

I almost never cook without a recipe, but that's exactly what I did last night.  I sauteed an onion, jalapenos, and garlic, and then added the soyrizo.  I dumped in some black beans, corn, the remaining bottle of enchilada sauce, and cilantro and then let it simmer.  Drew made the enchilada sauce, which is based on a recipe from Simply Recipes and can be found here.  We also roasted red potatoes (usually we make beans and rice, but I wasn't feeling it), which Drew mixed with jalapenos, onions, and chipotle powder, I believe.

Though we make enchiladas a lot, we don't actually make enchiladas.  Instead, we make an enchilada lasagna.  We're ambitious enough to make enchilada sauce and cook black beans (as opposed to using the canned stuff- the bean juice weirds me out), but we can't be bothered with making enchiladas.  It's too much work, so instead, we layer enchilada sauce, corn tortillas, filling, and cheese (cheddar and queso fresco this time).  

After about 30 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees, we have this:      

tofu banh mi

I have a strange fascination with banh mi.  I say "strange" because I really haven't had authentic banh mi.  The only ones I've eaten are the ones at Native Foods and at Lee's sandwiches.  This is embarrassing to admit,  Please don't give me grief, and if you have a recommendation for a place to get good banh mi, please post it in the comments.

Earlier in the week, Drew and I made tofu banh mi, using the recipe from Post Punk Kitchen.    

It was easy to make, and making the pickled veggies earlier in the day really helped.  The pickled veggies were really good, but too salty, even on the sandwich.  I would not hesitate to use this recipe again, but I would cut the salt in half.  Also, I couldn't find star anise in the store last weekend, so I used fennel seed instead.   

Don't be scared off by the tofu; if it's made properly, it can be really good.  (I will note that the recipe calls for scrambled tofu, but we ignored that part.  Basically, the only part of the recipe we used was the part for the pickled veggies.)  Not surprisingly, I think we do a pretty good job, and by "we," I really mean Drew (he is always in charge of the tofu because I'm not good at making marinades without a recipe).  I'm sure there are many ways to make tofu, but there are only two ways that we make it: scrambling it (for breakfast burritos) or baking it.  We first press it for about 30 minutes to expel as much water as possible.  Then Drew makes up some sort of marinade (this time it consisted of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, garlic powder, onion powder) and brushes it on the tofu before popping it in the oven.  We never bake the tofu in the marinade; doing so doesn't allow the tofu to firm up and it remains on the mushy side, which we don't care for.  

The sandwich was really good, and the pickled veggies offered a nice crunch to contrast the tofu.  We ate the banh mi with roasted brussel sprouts, tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper.

galumpkis pie

Before I tell you about the dish that inspired the dinner diary project, let me back up and tell you more about my cooking background.  After moving out of the dorms in college, I decided I wanted to learn to cook.  I mean, I knew how to do this more or less, but having lived at home and later in the dorms, I had never been fully responsible for my meals.  So I got started with family recipes (which, being from Minnesota, means they probably involved a lot of condensed soup) and boxed meals like Hamburger Helper.  In the period of time between graduating from college and attending graduate school, I also decided that I wanted to learn to bake.  Convinced that I would never have time to do either of these things as a graduate student (oh how wrong I was about that), I decided that that was the time to learn to cook and bake.  

When I got to grad school, I graduated from cooking with condensed soup and Hamburger Helper to cooking with real food- meaning, not processed.  I went to the farmer's market for the first time.  One of the first recipe source I used was Simply Recipes.  I planned my meals and grocery shopped once a week.  Have you ever gone to the grocery store and seen someone walking through the aisles with a list, checking off items and wondered what sort of people do that?  Well, people like me, that's who.  I continued to bake, plying my friends with cookies and cupcakes.

When Drew and I started dating, we began cooking together almost immediately.  The first meal he made me was an old family favorite: spaghetti and veggie meatballs.  I wish I could say that the first meal I made for him was something that also had great meaning, but I can't.  I think I had a recipe for lasagna rolls with gorgonzola cream sauce (courtesy of Rachael Ray) that I wanted to try, so I made that.  And while we've made veggie meatballs many times since, I can't say the same for Rachael's lasagna rolls.  Sorry Rachael, in case you're reading this.  You're probably not.  

Drew and I continue to share cooking and meal planning responsibilities.  We usually make a main dish and a side dish for each meal (usually the side is less cumbersome than the main one), and we cook 2 or 3 times a week, eating leftovers on the days we don't cook.  Sometimes meal ideas come easily; I might come across recipes while reading food magazines or blogs.  Other times, we each select a meal, so as to not burden one person with all the meal planning.  Eating a variety of good, quality food is important to us, which is why we both cook- it is very, very rare that only one of us cooks any entire dinner for the both of us.  In four years, I can't even count on one hand how many times this has happened.  And even though we keep an emergency box of chicken nuggets and bag of frozen ravioli in the freezer, we steer clear of processed foods.          

The dish that launched this project is Galumpkis Pie, from A Year of Pies by Ashley English, her fifth cookbook.  Her other cookbooks are about canning and preserving, dairy, bees, and chickens, and blogs over at Small Measure.  While I have never looked at her books on keeping chickens or bees, as I have no use or desire for doing either, I have perused her books on canning and dairy.  I checked out A Year of Pies from the Newport Beach Public Library, and immediately fell in love- the text and pictures are captivating, but the recipes- a mix of sweet and savory- are interesting and creative.  

I had never heard of Galumpkis Pie, which is an adaptation of a Polish dish, but I was intrigued.  The dish was easy to make and came together easily.  The bottom layer is a pie crust, and the rest consists of alternate layers of boiled cabbage and a ground beef-tomato filling (we substituted veggie crumbles).  At first, I thought it would be a pain, but it was not.  After rolling out the crust, I let it rest in the refrigerator while I prepared the filling and while the cabbage was cooking.

Advance planning really helped with this dish and made it so easy to make.  The filling contains cooked rice, which I made a few days earlier.  And the pie crust was already prepared too; I made a double crust a few weeks earlier for a quiche and popped half of it in the freezer for a later use.

Usually our dinner rotation contains dishes from a limited number of cuisines- Italian, American, Mexican, and Asian- so this dish was a welcome break from our usual routine.  The filling was really interesting- the cloves, a surprising addition, turned out to be a pleasant one, and one that mellowed over time.

I think Drew made carrots to go with this, but I can't remember how he seasoned them.

I also don't have a picture because I didn't know this would inspire the Dinner Diary project.  

Dinner Diary

As a child, whenever my mom cooked us something that we really enjoyed, my dad would jokingly say that she would probably never make it again.  He was usually right, and I think I may have inherited this habit.  

Drew and I cook about 2 or 3 times a week and I bake about once a week, yet we rarely revisit the things we have made.  Brace yourself, because all that is about to change.  During dinner the other day, in between mouthfuls, Drew said "You know, this is really good, but I'm not sure that I would ever think to make it again."  This is a common refrain, and I just nodded my head like I normally do.  But then he said, "You know, you should blog about everything we cook so we have a record and can return to our favorites."  

Well, I immediately vetoed that idea.  

But not for long.  

I think you can see where this is going.        

Today, I resolved to keep a dinner diary on my blog.  You, lucky reader, will be privy to everything we cook for dinner and brunch (we do this every Sunday), and everything I bake (don't be offended if I don't share).  I won't post every day- we always have leftovers, and you don't need to see those.  I'm not exactly sure what my vision is- I anticipate sharing pictures, reviewing recipes and cookbooks, providing meal ideas- but I do know exactly what my dinner diary will not do:

I will share helpful hints here and there, but I will not teach you how to cook.  I'm just not qualified to teach you how to julienne carrots or chiffonade basil.      

I will always cite my recipe sources, and if a recipe comes from the internet, I will provide the link.  If I make any adjustments, I'll let you know.  But I'm not going to repost a recipe, or worse, make some tweaks and pass it off as my own.  That is my biggest pet peeve, and even when people state that it is adapted from another source and cite that source, I still consider this some sort of plagiarism.  And in my line of work, that is a huge no-no.  

I do not plan to post any recipes, not even original ones.  I am not a recipe developer and I have no time to become one.  I'm just an avid home cook/baker who wants someone else to go to the trouble of figuring how much baking soda to add to a cake or how long to simmer marinara sauce.  I love trying out new recipes, but I don't have the patience to develop my own.  

I'm not sure if I have a mission beyond recording what we cook and bake, but I guess a secondary goal of the dinner diary is to show that vegetarian food is easy, accessible, and most of all, really tasty.  As you may know, Drew is a vegetarian and while I'm not, we always cook vegetarian and keep a vegetarian home.  Sometimes we make meals that are intended to be vegetarian and other times we adapt non-vegetarian recipes.  You will see that a vegetarian diet does not relegate one to nothing but deprivation and salads.  We eat a variety of foods, and I like to think we eat really well.  Stay tuned.

Surf City Half Marathon

I have taken quite the hiatus here, and for that, I apologize.  I also promise to blog about more than just running.  

But in the meantime...let's talk about...running!

Since we last talked, I ran my 1000th mile since taking up the sport in September 2011.  And last weekend, I ran the Surf City Half Marathon in Huntington Beach.  Overall, it was a lackluster experience, but my running group made it a good day.  

The race was flat, which is good, but it was pretty boring.  We ran on the Pacific Coast Highway, save for a few miles through one of the residential neighborhoods.  I know the ocean was right next to me, but it was nowhere in sight.  I was good for the first 10 miles, but then my mind starts playing tricks on me, and no matter how hard I try to convince myself that I have only a 5K (3.1 miles) left to go, I can't forget that I've already run 10 miles.  I also got a foot cramp and side stitches around the 11th mile, which made it difficult to know whether or not I should kick it up a notch in the final 5K (as I'd planned) or go easy so as to not make things worse.  I used to think that race strategy was such a silly concept; when I'd read about runners talking about it in Runner's World, I used to think "Isn't the plan to just run as fast as possible and hope for the best?"  But now I realize that this is a real thing, and so my strategy in the last 5K was to go easy, take walk breaks, and then go all out when I reached the final mile (I figured that any ensuing pain would be bearable for just a mile).

And for the most part, this strategy worked.  I PRed again, finishing in 2:32 down from 2:35 in the Long Beach Half.  Again, my goal was to finish in under 2:30, but I was thwarted by my tiny bladder and the pit stop after only the 2nd mile.      

This was my third consecutive race in the Beach Cities Challenge (OC, Long Beach, Surf City), so I got a fancy, special medal.