The Holidays Are Here!

The holidays are here, and we've all decorated our stockings above the fake fireplace. But alas, no one is here, they've all gone away to their selective regions. Which means, I must go back to Oakland! But before I do that let me tell you about the fantastic caramels I made. Now I've been trying to find enough time to make these, but my time has been limited to say the least, so finally when finals were done I went to the store and bought the items I needed to complete my task. I even bought a cooking thermometer so I could make these right. It was all fairly simple, mixed all of the ingredients and let it boil, then simmered it on a med-high heat and had my friend time it for 10 mins. Now I had a mishap where the thermometer fell into the caramel and I almost lost it forever! But I fished it out just in time. Then I poured the caramel into a pan with wax paper and let it cool.

The Cooling process...

As it was cooling I decided what I wanted to put on top of them, now See's candy has these delicious caramels with marshmallow on them, so I tried to find their secret recipe, but I couldn't find it. So... I winged it, I melted the marshmallows with some butter and added some honey, then i layered it on a third of the caramels. Then I bought some raw walnuts, toasted them and added them on top of the caramels. And finally I was ready to dip them in chocolate. I did a large batch in bittersweet Godiva chocolate, but then I ran out of chocolate! So.. I had to wait till the next day and I had to get semi-sweet for the rest. Both turned out delicious.

Covered in Chocolate...

Thats all that was left...
But It made about, 60 or so? And I am gifting them for Christmas, easy way to make gifts from the heart, that taste delicious. And if you got some wax paper and ribbon, your set.

Wrapped and ready to go...

And we had some left over that were not covered in chocolate so we just cut em' up, and wrapped them in some wax paper and gave those to people as well. Delicious.

Tomorrow is going to be full of homemade candy and delicious foods. Cant wait.

Happy Holidays!

Gourmet pancakes, Thai Curry and Catfish.

It's sure been a couple weeks, I know, and Im sorry! The end of the semester occurred and finally I had no time to cook, and no time to blog. I did get some cooking in though, before the finals hurricane hit me.

I've been looking at some delicious pancake recipes involving Ricotta cheese and blueberries. Mmmm just what I wanted for breakfast. So i prepared the night before for some tasty day starters. I started making the pancakes and the heat was on a little too high, they were delicate to say the least. So I changed to a lower burner and they came out a lot better! The batter made was really thick and strange, but i had faith it would turn out well. And boy was I right. If your looking for a great way to start the morning, eat these.

Lemon Ricotta Pancakes with Blueberry's

This Recipe takes a bit more time then normal pancakes:

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup part-skim ricotta cheese

1 large egg

2 large egg whites

1/2 cup lemon juice

2 teaspoons grated lemon zest

1 tablespoon

Later on I was cooking some chicken and rice, a typical meal here in the house and I wanted to spice it up a bit. I looked through our stuffed spice cabinet and found some Thai curry powder I bought awhile back and never did anything with. Now was my chance! I sprinkled some on my chicken along with some garlic powder and started cooking away. Now I have been looking at how to make flavored rice recently, and I figured it was the right time with this Thai curry. I throw some chicken brother, garlic powder, water and thai curry powder and let it cook. It turned out really delicious. Both the chicken and the rice had different flavors but they were great together.

Thai Curry Powder Chicken and Rice

So I bought some catfish the other day because I had this fleeting childhood memory of eating catfish and enjoying a lot. So I pan friend some catfish with a flour and corn meal breading, and paired it with some pan seared spinach with some garlic. It looked great, I plated it nicely and finally I bit into it. The first bite.... It didnt really tasted like the kind of fish I would like, but I gave it the benefit of the doubt and took a couple more bites. Nope. No way. It tasted like it sad on the bottom of the sea floor, oh... well Maybe thats because catfish live on the bottom of the ocean?
Anyways. It was gross for me. I opted to just eat the Spinach instead.

Pan Friend Catfish with Garlic Spinach

Last time i'll make Catfish for myself.

My girlfriend needed something for a potluck she was going to and wanted me to help her make something delicious for her. So we decided to make Cheesecake in cup cake form. Thank you grandma for showing me how to make this before! We made an oreo cookie crust and they came out great!

Little Cheese Cakes

They were delicious!

I'll post more when I'm less burnt out!

Thanksgiving Drank

I did not cook for Thanksgiving because I was terribly sick, and my family pretty much has the routine down. Now I'm not complaining, because the food is delicious. I had sent a recipe to my Aunt a month before and it was a spiced rum pumpkin drink, that was fairly complicated but looked worth the effort. But in my Robitussin induced state I did not get the ingredients and it did not happen. While I was at my grandmothers though I wanted to bring something to the mix, so I went online and looked up some recipes and found one that seemed like it would work. It contained a lot of schnapps and I was ready. Well we got to the store, which is smaller and way less stocked then the one I go to and was disappointed to find that one of the main ingredients was missing. So.. I had to wing it. I replaced my ingredient with a can of purred pumpkin and left, understanding that my creation was either going to be really gross, or really delicious. When I got back to my grandmas I started my concoction. I poured some apple juice into a pot and started heating it, added some pumpkin puree, and some Hot Damn Cinnamon Schnapps, I decided that it would be really good with some brandy as well so I rummaged through my grandmas liquor cabinet and found some good old E&J.

Spiced Pumpkin Apple Cider

some delicious ingredients

(Photo's by Maia Olmstead)

Recipe

4 Cups Apple Juice or Cider
1/2 Cup Purred Pumpkin
1 or 2 oz Of Hot Damn Burst (Cinnamon Schnapps)
3 or 4 oz Brandy

It's been awhile, but I'm here and cookin'

Well it's sure been awhile since I posted anything, but I swear its not my fault! I've been really busy, first I went to vegas which was out of control. I stayed at Caesar's palace, where I found out that Bobby Flay has a restaurant there. For those of you who don't know who Bobby Flay is, he is an Iron Chef on the Food Network and has two other shows. He is a great chef and someone I watch a lot on television. I was very enthused, but I wasn't able to eat there. I showed up after a show had just let out at about 9 at night and we were too starving to wait an hour to eat dinner. So I had to leave. It was very disappointing... maybe some day, Bobby Flay. So after maybe 36 hours of not sleeping, I came back to San Francisco, exhausted and ready to sleep. Throughout the week I cooked the most I could, but towards the end got terribly sick, and I've been sick ever since! I almost didn't make it to Thanksgiving at my grandmothers. So I have not cooked for over a week now, which has been really depressing, been eating top Ramen and canned soup, gourmet indeed. I'm feeling a bit better, still have an intense cough, but have enough energy to blog again.

I finally found the right pasta to make worms with! As you can see above.

So I went to the store at the beginning of the month and bought all the things I thought I would need for a couple weeks to cook. I bought a lot of Talapia because its a light fish, that's cheap and easy to cook. Now the other day I had bought bread crumbs, instead of Panko, because the store was all out of Panko. I did not use them though, but they were just sitting in the cabinet so I decided to try out a healthier adventure for them. I thawed out some Talapia that I had in the freezer and when it was still wet, I patted some bread crumbs onto it. I chopped up some garlic and started to cook it in Olive oil, finally I put the fillet in and cooked it with the garlic and olive oil. The fish came out crunchy and flavorful and I placed it with some mixed greens. Then I had a thought! I let the olive oil left in the pan cool enough and I put it on my salad with some balsamic vinegar, so I had a delicious garlic salad and talapia lunch. Light and great to eat.

Bread Crumb Talapia with a Garlic Olive Oil Salad

A fast and easy lunch.

Finally I was feeling really adventurous, I wanted to try something I'd never done before so I decided to make tempura. So I found a simple tempura recipe and could not wait to try it out! It seemed like a good idea at the time, but it really didnt seem to be working out, I kept burning the green beans! Which is terrible, because I love green beans, I dont want to burn them. So I tried and tried and eventually this is what came out of it.

Vegetable and Shrimp Tempura

Oh how pretty it looks! Too bad it tasted terrible. It was really really soggy and just... kinda gross. So I failed that test, but I really tried. Do you like the plate? I found it on the street in a box... Its fairly awesome. I dont really know what it's for but I like it. Dont worry guys, I'll try again in the Tempura, once I get a deep fryer and a better recipe.

I bought a lot of tomatoes while I was at the store, some canned and some fresh. I wanted to make a quick dinner for my girlfriend and my friend but I didnt just want to eat chicken and rice. So I decided to make a sauce, that consisted of Olive oil, garlic, tomatoes and cream. In the end it was so delicious to eat with the rice and greatly successful. I really am happy that i can put together some sauces nowadays, it really helps.

Chicken and Tomato Cream Sauce

I had a lot of left over rice from the dish above. When I was growing up and would sleep over at my sisters house her mom used to make us something in the mornings we called Rice cereal. It was just left over rice with milk, sugar and raisins, and it was extremely delicious and a great way to use the left over rice. But the next morning I didn't have any raisins, so i replaced it with sliced almonds and ate it just the same. It was delicious and reminded me of childhood!

Rice Cereal

I really wanted some Floutas from Chevys, if you've ever had them, they are awesome! Especially at happy hour, because you have the giant margaritas and the chicken floutas and they are all half off. So good, way better then making margaritas at home with the overly sugary margarita mix. Anyways, I found the recipe for the Chevys floutas online and couldn't get all of the ingredients but I got as many as I could and added extra cheese. I mean... who doesn't like extra cheese? I also wanted to make some mexican rice, now my friend tried to explain to me it was not as easy as it sound, but i was more confident then that. But... a lot of my rice got burned around the sides, like... terribly burned but the rice in the middle turned out delicious!

Chicken and Cheese Floutas

I should make these more often!

Muffin Disaster, BBQ and Scones

What you see to your left, is my disaster for this week. I didn't do as much cooking as I wanted to, because I was really tired from the past couple weeks I've been studying and taking exams, so I only got to make a couple of things, and this unfortunate mess is one of them. For a couple days I'd been raving about this cool recipe I found online called "Donut Muffins" and apparently they were little baby muffins that tasted like donuts. I love donuts, but alas since I've moved to San Francisco I have not found a donut shop like the one in Oakland we love so dearly, and have made so many late night trips to. Anyways, i attempted these muffins, added some extra ingredients, because we all know how I like to put random extras in. Well it seemed as if it was going well enough, the cooking process looked like it was going well, they had a texture I had never seen before. Finally they were cooked all the way through, success! So I took them out and let them cook for a little bit. Thats when the trouble started, I tried to take one out to taste it, but it would not budge. Oh my... In the end I had to take them out with my bare hands, and the above is the end results. Though we did eat them anyways and they were really good. Tasted a lot like corn bread though. But like... stickey. Anyways it was really strange.

Earlier in the week I bought some delicious tri tip (for some reason its always on sale here) and I've decided I really just dont like tri tip that much unless I BBQ it. So I marinated it in BBQ sauce and some chili pepper flakes for a day and was excited to grill it up. Also, I decided to use my melon baller that I got at the salvation army. So exciting. So I balled some cucumbers and used the left over cucumber to make a little dressing for them. I mixed up olive oil, balsamic vinegar and a little salt and pepper, through in the cucumber and blended it up. I really like it. I also made some mashed potatos, because I felt like I'd been missing those recently.

Tri Tip with BBQ Chili Marinade, Mashed Potatoes And A Cucumber Salad

Balled cucumbers are so strange.

So I was a big discouraged by my last baking experience, obviously it had not been that successful, but tonight I had some free time on my hands, and I decided I had enough energy to try a baking recipe. I have a whole section of recipes in my book marks that I look through to try, and I wanted to make something I never had before, so I picked a scone recipe. It called for rasberrys.. but I didnt have any, but I did have a Pomegranate! So I cracked that baby open and started to take those little morsels out. So... what I forgot was the little pomegranate morsels have seeds in them! So I decided to wing it, I put them in the blender and decided to include the seeds (which apparently are good for you and high in fiber, thank you Google). I also used our kitchen aid mixer for the first time which was really awesome. Anyways, throughout the process I was fairly weary, I felt like scones were a hard task, but alas I manned up and powered through. To create these delicious babies.

Pomegranate Scones

before..

Recipe:
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp salt
8 tbsp butter, cut into small pieces and chilled
1/2 cup cream
1 large egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 Pomegranate

I will totally be eating those for breakfast.

Flower Bowls and much more.

I wish there was more time in the day to blog and less time to do homework. I did a lot of cooking this week, no specific Halloween themed though, but a lot non the less. Yesterday I went to the Salvation Army to see if they had any cool plates for a couple dollars that I could purchase to maybe spice up how my pictures look. I found these pretty little flower bowls, you can see on the right, that are perfect cup of soup, or rice. To say the least I was very excited when I found them, I think they were even brand new (but of course we'll never know). I really wanted to get some nice plates as well, but I couldnt really find any that struck my fancy, there were some more bowls, but I didnt even need to buy the flowers ones. Anyways, hopefully you will see more pictures with these delightful little things (on a different colored surface then the counter). I will continue my thrift store, interesting plating mission, dont worry.

So I have really been wanting something spicy, and I keep buying these green beans that I leave in the fridge for too long, and then they are gross. So I knew I needed to include my recently purchased beans in my meal. I wanted to do some sort of szechuan or Asian style green bean, but alas I'm always missing some fish juice or clam juice or something that I never feel the energy to go out and get. So I used what I had around the house, some garlic chili sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar to create some sort of sauce for the beans and chicken I was going to cook. Turns out I made it way too spicy, to the point where in the end I couldnt feel my mouth. It was damn worth it though.

Spicy Chili Green Beans and Chicken

After I had burned my mouth off for the night I was really craving some chips, just to munch on. Now I dont buy chips, because it is really easy for me to eat way too many in one sitting, so easy prevention, I dont buy them. But I really wanted them! So my mind flashed back to this one time in highschool, I was at a party with some vegitarian hipster kids and in a drunken stupor they decided to cut up potatoes and fry them, and we ate them as chips. Long shot? No way, it was totally going to work. So without warning I started to peal a potatoe, and cut it up as thin as possible, while heating up some oil for frying. I made a bunch of them to share and mixed up some sour cream and onion dip.

Homemade Potato Chips with Seasalt

Lets just say once the chips were polished off my other roomate started cutting up more potato and reheating the oil for a second round.

The erractic weather in San Francisco had decided to be cold the next day and I really wanted something that would heat me up. Browsing recipes I came accross a Chili recipe that sounded easy. I decided to make it spicier then the recipe had called for, and instead of using ground beef, I decided to take the healthier route and use ground turkey. Which worked out well, since our guest who was staying with us doesnt eat red meat, which i found out when he walked in mid-chili making and explained he was glad he could eat it.

Spicy Turkey Chili


The cooking process

As you can see there was no seafood included in this week, so I really wanted to make some catfish, but alas my girlfriend wanted to eat shrimp, so I opted out of the catfish for the night... but it's coming! Strangely there was not a large shrimp selection at the store that night, so we bought some butterfly shrimp, a pound to be exact and made a couple differnt things. I fried some up with Panko crumbs, make some into gyoza with spinach and my girlfriend cooked the rest up with some garlic. It was quite an adventure.

Shrimp and Spinach Gyoza


fry, fry, fry....


Garlic Shrimp and Spinach (Cooked by Maia)


Panko Shrimp

It was like binging in a seafood marathon.

Days passed and I returned to school once again, but not without the craving of a dearest soup calling my name. Finally when I didnt have any work to do (or was putting it off, either way) I had some free time. I decided to had a second go at the South African Mealie, feeling more confident then the first time. I did the same rountine and it came out just as delicious as last time, success! (I froze it so that I will be able to have it anytime I want).

South African Crab Mealie 2

Finally I've been trying to complete this very simple cinnamon twist recipe. Now I grew up next to a bakery that had the BEST cinnamon twists there ever were. Now I've recently revisted that bakery to make sure I was correct... and I still am. So good. Anyways, I found an easy recipe that used Pilsberry bread sticks, egg and cinnamon sugar. Unfortionitly our mega-safeway didnt have any breadsticks so i opted for cresant rolls or something? Whatever. Anyways, they turned out delicious, but still Im going to need a lot of work, to perfect this... maybe even some homemade dough.

Cinnamon Twists

Talapia, Sauces, and the Ice Cream Adventures.

This week has been a really busy for me, I had a huge exam, a literature review due and an anti smoking campaign to work on. It was really stressful, and I cooked a lot to let myself relax as much as possible. I've had a couple recipes I've been needing to try out, and some that I found to work with what I had in the house. I recently bought some Taplapia because it was on sale for $3.99 a pound... so What to do with a pound of Talaplia? Well other then make some healthy quick meals, they are deliciously compatible with lots of things. I found this delicious recipe that works with the Panko crumbs I had left over and a sauce that seemed easy enough and worked for me, since I've been trying to cook with Tomatoes recently. So I started on the sauce and it seemed to be going better then the others I have made so far, it was a cream based sauce, delicious and easy. Just olive oil, garlic, Cherry tomatoes, cream and Parmesan. The recipe told me to wait until the sauce turned pink... it never turned pink but it did turn orange. I figured it was done at that point so I started in on the Talapia. Now I froze all the fillets together and... I couldn't just defrost one, I had to do them all, so I made more food then I needed. The talapia recipe wanted me to bread them with parmesian, but i opted out. Cooked them in olive oil!

Panko Talapia with a Parmesian Tomato Cream Sauce


Delicious Sauce

Recipe for sauce:
1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
2 Cloves garlic minced
10-12 Cherry Tomatoes
1/2 Cup cream
1 Cup Spinach
1/4 Cup Parmesan Cheese

I wanted to bake something earlier on in the week, but I had no chocolate chips, so I decided I would put candy in them! What candy do you ask? Why Japanese chocolate mushroom candy (no real mushrooms involved) of course. So I made some cookie batter, didn't have enough flour for them (which didnt go well first time around so I had to add some whole wheat flour in later on) and chopped up some candies. They turned out chewy and crunchy.

Japanese Mushroom Candy Cookies

Tasty mushrooms..

I used to go to High school in Berkeley and it was right by this food place that was called the Gourmet Ghetto, and there was one pasta place called Gypsies I always used to go to. I used to eat this Gorgonzola Penne pasta all the time and I really enjoyed it, and the sauce seemed simple enough so I figured i could try it on my own. I found a simple Gorgonzola sauce recipe and tried it out, added some tomatoes, spinach and chicken to spice it up a bit. This was my first cheese sauce I made on the stove that didnt get grainy, gotta use those low burners man. The dish was easy enough to make and fed all of my roomies.

Gorgonzola Pasta with Spinach, Chicken and Tomatoes


Dreamy sauce...

Recipe:
1 Cup white wine
1 1/4 Cups Heavy Cream
5 oz Gorgonzola Cheese
Pinch of Black pepper

I stumbled recently upon a recipe for making ice cream, that explained to me how to make it without an ice cream maker. Now I'm hoping to get an ice cream maker for Christmas, and I really have wanted to make ice cream, so when I found this recipe, I was delighted. Obviously I was avoiding homework as usual, and so this seemed like a great choice. I started out making this recipe for Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and it seemed easy enough, but of course i screwed up the first step. I burned the butter and used all my half and half on the burnt batch... what was I to do? Then i remembered I had some cream and some normal milk, so I just evaporated the milk (the trustee technique I learned when making curried salmon) and added it to the cream and restarted with some new, not burned butter. I then whisked it together with sugar and egg whites (I later reread the recipe and it required egg yolks not whites.. FAIL) till it was nice and fluffy. The heated it up till it was scolding and transferred it to the fridge to cool. After it was cook I put it in a cake pan and shoved it in the freezer. Every 20 mins I churned so the frozen sides would mix in. Eventually after a couple hours once it was a bit more solid i added in a lot of chocolate chips and let it freeze overnight. It turned out really good, not as creamy as I wanted but thats alright, it tastes just like cookie dough.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Ice Cream


Freezing process...

Recipe:
1 Cup Chopped Chocolate chips

2/3 cup dark brown sugar

4 large egg yolks (I used whites)

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

2 cups half and half (I used evaporated milk plus some heavy cream)

2 cups whole milk (I used 2%)

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

pinch of salt

Soup, Curry, Fish and a little baking.

I have not done as much cooking as I wanted this week, I was away for the weekend and tormented myself by watching the food network while staying in a Bed and Breakfast with no kitchen for me to cook in. Eventually I made my way home and decided to make some soup since a storm was supposed to come in that week, and its been colder and colder these days. I used to work at Noah's Bagels back in high school and they always had this broccoli cheddar soup that I loved to eat and so I decided to make my own this time. I've noticed that a lot of soups start with an onion base and some delicious butter. It was fairly easy to make though pretty time consuming. It involved some half and half, chicken stock, flour, cheddar, carrots, broccoli and some salt and pepper. Turned out really delicious, a comfort food not to be missed!

Broccoli Cheddar Soup

Recipe:
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1/4 cup melted butter
1/4 cup flour
2 cups half-and-half
2 cups chicken stock or bouillon
1/2 pound fresh broccoli
1 cup carrots, julienned
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
8 ounces grated sharp cheddar

Once again I was ready to start baking and I was determined to try and make something with puff pastry dough. What shall I make? Turnovers!
So I started in on making them and I didnt want to make just one kind, so i made 3 different kinds. I made strawberry, cherry and banana chocolate caramel. Delicious? I think so. Now I did have some troubles, when I took them out the first time I bit into one and it was still doughy on the inside. Gross. So I put them back in until they were fully done, and once they were, everyone in the house ate them. Now they arnt as good as the ones my grandma used to give me, but they're a start towards it.

Cherry, Strawberry and Banana Caramel Chocolate Turnovers

They disappeared very quickly.
I have been thinking about cooking halibut for awhile now but I bought some awhile back an defrosted it and it smelled bad. I was decided to cook halibut with some spinach and I really wanted some sort of gravy on it. I was going to make a tomato gravy and I started to make it but it turned out funky, it did not taste like it would go on a halibut. So I restarted and took some chicken gravy (I know chicken gravy on fish sounds controversial!) I thinned out the gravy and added some garlic and a little butter and some water. Now I dont know how to cook halibut, I dont know when its done (I assumed when its flaky) and I dont know what to cook it with to give it flavor. My aunt was telling me about how my mom would pan sear halibut with lemon juice and butter and so I decided to make some garlic butter, and once infused added a little lemon juiced. It really gave the fish little kick, less plain then most halibut. I then cooked some spinach in the same pan and put the dish together. One of the best halibuts I've even had.

Garlic Butter Halibut with Spinach and Gravy

I hope to make it again soon.
Last night I really wanted some Japanese curry. My girlfriend always makes it for me and I pleadingly tried to convince her to come over and make it for me. No luck. I had to make it myself. I went to the store and bought some Japanese curry, not the same kind we usually eat but same brand I figured it would do.
Oh! Also I tend to fail at making rice on the stove. And I hoped this time, because I really needed it for the curry, I would make it a little more cautiously. I cooked everything up, the chicken, onions potatoes and carrots and finally made the curry from the strange curry blocks that were in the curry package. And I was trying to do 4 things at once and i forgot the rice was cooking! Damnit.
Mid email I remember that my rice was almost done last time I looked at, it which was awhile ago. So I ran to the stove and turned it off, tried the rice and it was perfect! How could this have happened?
Im not going to question it.
It wasn't as fantastic as my girlfriends curry, but it was really good none the less. AND it was spicier then her curry, and everyone knows I like spicy foods.
I waited for my roommate to get home and we feasted!

Spicy Japanese Curry

Gotta practice making my Japanese curry but so gooood.

Apple Balsamic Pork Chops, Lemon Cream Cheese Cupcakes and a Dash of Buffalo Wing Sauce

Well a day without school is a day full of cooking for me. I really like buffalo wings and I've been wondering how to make buffalo wing sauce, but I have really had no luck in finding out how to make it. Everyone always says use Franks Hot Sauce, so I went to the store and got some. I only had some chicken breasts so I decided to make some Buffalo wing chicken strips to see how it would go. I mixed up the eggs that I use when frying with the hot sauce so that it would thoroughly coat the chicken and taste like buffalo sauce, but it was a lot lighter then I would have wanted. I should have let it sit longer in the sauce so that it could really soak up the flavor. I made a good amount, and with some pieces the coating fell off while I was frying it, but some came out really well coated. We for sure dipped it in the sauce after it was done.

Buffalo Wing Sauce Chicken Strips

Who doesn't love fried chicken?!
Anyways, I grew up in a very Midwestern family. Whenever we had family affairs we always eat a good old combination of meat a potatoes. The best combination I'd say. Now I've mastered the potato section, I can make a killer scalloped potato and my girlfriend and I figured out how to make the best garlic mashed potatoes you'll ever taste, but I've never tried my hand at the meat portion. I decided that I was going to make a pork chop, two in fact. While watching top chef on the cooking channel they were cooking apples for something and I decided I really wanted to cook apples, and what goes with apples? Pork. This is what spawned the whole pork chop idea. The night before I experimented with a marinade of balsamic vinegar, brown sugar and some salt. Later I added a little red wine into the mix. I bought two pork chops, learned about brining (which is really strange) and marinaded the pork. I dried the chops after the marinade, patted it down with a flour brown sugar mixture and cooked it in some vegetable oil. I then created a sauce with some green apples and a variation of the marinade, cooked it until the apples were a bit tender and the flavor had seeped into the sauce.

Balsamic Apple Pork Chop

Not only did I feed my roommate her first pork chop, but it turned out fantastic!
Later on in the night on this cooking binge, I wanted to bake something, but with no chocolate chips and limited supplies I had to conjure something. I looked up some simple cupcake recipes and had just the right amount of cream cheese to make these cup cakes. They were a simple lemon cup cake made with flour, eggs, butter, cream cheese, sugar and lemon zest, but I jazzed it up added a little more cream cheese, threw in some lemon juice and added a little vanilla. Now i had to figure out what kind of frosting to put on the cupcakes. My grandma always makes brown sugar frosting for the cakes she makes for us, and its one of my favorite things. So I looked up a brown sugar frosting recipe and found a simple one. I started to make it, melted the brown sugar into the butter.... and then I realized, I had no milk. What am I gonna do without milk? So I hoped maybe I could just add a little water and a tiny bit more butter and it would become creamy? I started to add in the powdered sugar and a disaster started to form. My sugar was starting to clump together and it was just turned into sugar candy. I took it out of the pan and it started to harden, what was I to do?! I couldn't add eggs, they would just cook immediately because it was so hot! So I grabbed the first liquid I could spot in the fridge that wasn't salad dressing or hot sauce. Lemonade to the rescue! I figured at this point the frosting was fairly dead, and what would lemonade hurt? I pour some in and started stirring and instantly it became easier to stir, I added a bit more and then added some more powdered sugar... and Ta da! Frosting. Who? What? Where? When? How? I barely know. But I'm sure glad I didn't grab the Ranch Dressing.
Finally after stirring vigorously I put it in the fridge to cool.

Lemon Cream Cheese Cupcakes with Brown Sugar Lemonade Frosting

Lets just say you cant just eat one.