Day 130: Well I'll Brie Damned

After getting a variety of baking-related Christmas gifts, I feel obligated to make something every weekend. You may not think that's very often, but it's a big step up in the world for me. Dinners usually consist of easy things I already know how to make or are really really simple (a pasta, a couple veggies and a protein, in any combination, always makes a meal). So on the weekend I branch out.

This weekend, on Day 130, I made baked brie and it was the MOST delicious thing in the entire world.

Cheese lava upon opening the first slice...YUM

Between the two of us, we ate almost the entire thing and it was somewhere between embarrassing and the best decision to make at the time. That thing would cool down in an hour and be inedible. You have to get it while it's hot, literally, or we're being wasteful!

So I gorged, more than Mark. This tasty dish paired with a glass of red wine and I was passed out cold at 7:00 PM.

I woke up about an hour later and Mark and I went shoe shopping (I live the best life!).

Although this was the most delicious thing I've ever eaten, Mark said it best on our way up to DSW, "We have to do that again...next year."

Day 110: Peter Piper's (Stuffed) Peppers

On Day 110, I slow cooked stuffed peppers. As I may have mentioned before, I finally got some cookbooks for Christmas, so I'm putting them to use. Frankly, I don't know how to cook much of anything except boxed mac & cheese, so I'm truly seizing the opportunity to learn a couple things or two about cooking before I become a real adult. And yes, I'm still pretending I'm not a real adult yet.

And, because it begs to be asked, Mark fried up those plantains on the dish too. So. Delicious.

P.S. We love dinner guests :)

Day 105: New Thing Baking--Mark's Birthday Edition

After my ever-so-pathetic blog post on baking cookies for the holidays, it should come as no surprise that Mark and my family gave me bake ware...and lots of it :) Who needs to have a wedding to get great kitchen items? Just being young and complaining a little gets the job done.

Anyhoo, today presented an opportunity to use my new gifts. It was Mark's birthday and I decided that there was no better time to break in my mixer, measuring items and bake pans. His favorite cake is a carrot cake, so I used another gift--the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook to make him the "Best-Ever Carrot Cake." With a name like that, it's got to be good.

I say this shamefully, but I'm not sure that I've ever baked a cake before--and if I have, certainly not one from scratch. I'm a big cookie and brownie girl, but I can't remember a cake off the top of my head. I've made some with my parents and grandparents all along, but not just for the heck of it.

So yes, today I baked a cake, a birthday cake and a carrot cake--three New Things rolled into one, and a master use of Christmas presents.

Delicious!!

Day 101: Baking like it's the 1800's

When I started dating Mark, my list of people to buy presents more than doubled. See, I am the only child and only grandchild in my family, and when all of my immediate family, grandparents and all, is in one place, we total seven. Mark, on the other hand, is the youngest of three siblings, and the other two are married. Including his parents, that side totals eight.

Now, I am only 23 and make less than a manager at Wal-Mart despite my "professional" title, so this sudden rise in the number of gifts to give during the holiday season forces me to do the cop-out gift--cookies. I love baking cookies, and people generally like eating them, but I'm not unaware that they would rather have a cool new gadget or cute clothes or really, anything other than more food to put away.

This year, in thinking of making cookies, I realized that I didn't have a mixer and couldn't very well beat butter and sugar and eggs without it. I thought at first about going to my mother for making cookies, but after remembering that she established very clearly that she wouldn't allow me to get health insurance under her work policy ("You're a big girl now!") nor co-sign on my rent pending my potential entry to graduate school ("Time for baby bird to leave the nest!"), that I am totally on my own. Don't even think about asking to use a mixer there.

I was about ready to throw in the towel and buy the Break n' Bake cookies, until I saw the most recent episode of Top Chef: All Stars.

The chefs had to make a signature stuffing using zero kitchen equipment. There were images of the chefs mixing eggs together with their fingers, grating cheese on metal shelves and breaking down chickens with their bare hands.

If they can do that, I can make cookies with the stuff in my kitchen. So I bought the ingredients for Snickerdoodle cookies, a personal holiday favorite, and went to town.

Then I found myself, curled up in the fetal position on the couch with my arm in the cushion to stabilize the bowl, smashing and scraping and softening butter--thinking that my arm was about to fall off. Again, I almost threw in the towel, sure that if I did add all of the other ingredients that the cookies would turn out totally wrong. "Beat til light and fluffy?" Not possible. But I had already thrown all of my dry ingredients together and didn't think it prudent to throw out good ingredients and I had gone through all the trouble to turn the sticks of butter into mush, so I threw everything together anyway.

It was just like they did in the 1800's--putting love into the cookies with endless elbow grease.

So I cooked them, and although the cookies didn't turn out exactly how they have in the past, they're much higher, they turned out pretty good. Or at least Mark didn't die, so they're suitable.

Merry Christmas folks!

Day 62: The 24-Hour Vegan

Today, inspired by my friend and dietician-in-the-making Sam, I took on the challenge of being a vegan for a day.

I've gone vegetarian accidentally more often than I can count, but I'm pretty sure I've never endured a day without cheese or chocolate on my own volition.

I had a one-month stint with full-time vegetarianism in college, but it didn't stick. My grandmother offered me her beef burgundy, my favorite dish EVER, and I summarily resigned my veg ways and went back to my carnivorous self. I say that all to say that I knew I could go vegan, but I also know that I am, at heart, a meat and dairy eater to the core and that food habits die hard.

The whole point of this, for me, was to wholeheartedly invest myself in a vegan lifestyle for a day. If I was going to do it, I figured I should put forth all of the effort, research and planning that a real vegan would. I had a couple rules for myself:

1. Eat one vegan meal that I would normally eat
2. Order a vegan meal at a chain restaurant 
3. Cook with a meat substitute that isn't tofu (I've had tons of tofu in my life: I wanted to try something different)
4. Drink a milk-substitute that isn't soy milk (I switched entirely to soy milk throughout college, so that wasn't anything new)
5. Try a vegan ice cream

Overall, I'm proud of my one-day vegan accomplishments. Here was my meal plan:

Breakfast was pretty simple, just oatmeal with brown sugar, strawberries and almond milk. This meal fulfilled the requirements of number 4. Almond milk last is undeniably delicious, with a super-light, barely-there texture and taste that finishes sweet.

I went to Atlanta Bread Company to fulfill objective number 2 for lunch. I had Vegetarian Vegetable Soup (vegan too!) and the California Avocado Sandwich sans cheese & mayo. It was thoroughly enjoyable, but that may be my penchant for avocado.

For my afternoon snack, I had Planter's Nut-rition Antioxidant mix. Dried fruit and nuts, totally vegan, totally something I would normally eat, fulfilling objective number 1.

Now be honest, does this look vegan? For dinner I made baked tempeh enchiladas with rice and beans (and a salad too, not here in this picture)! 

I cooked this dish all by myself from a recipe, representing the first time I've cooked a meal with a meat substitute, which just so happened to not be tofu, fulfilling objective number 3. I was so skeptical about this dish because raw temeph looks like a totally unappetizing slice of brain, but I was so unbelievably pleased by the outcome. Tempeh, when cooked correctly, has the texture of pork. Mark loved it as much or more than I did (surprise!!) and said I could cook it for him any time. Not kidding. This dish was to die for.

 

For dessert I had organic and all-natural "ice cream" made from coconut milk--no soy, no dairy, no gluten. You could have fooled me entirely with this one. The Amaretto-Cherry frozen treat was packed with it's stated flavors and fully satisfying as a dessert. It had the same texture of ice cream and 200 calories per serving to boot.

I learned a ton from researching, planning for and eating vegan foods. The main lessons were that eating vegan doesn't mean that you eat low-fat, all-organic or all raw foods. This challenge also showed me that eating vegan incorporates a lot of things that I already love, but that just require an extra step of thought. For the big kicker, vegan eating proved itself to be extremely filling--I didn't feel deprived all day.

Eating vegan did, however, buck the trend that I've tried to observe recently about trying to eat non-processed and local foods. Many prepared vegan foods are highly processed, as you can see with most any meat substitute. I guess we all, vegan or otherwise, pick our food battles.

Overall, this New Thing was a big challenge, a ton of fun and revelatory of the vegan lifestyle. I actually thought at the end of the day that with all of the vegan options, I should have tried to do this for a week instead of a day. How's that for a change of heart?

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I do have a secret that I need to confess. I had to go to Whole Foods to get many of the elements of my tempeh enchiladas. There, the staff was giving away samples of baked brie with fig sauce. I couldn't resist. I am only human.