De Baking Psychopath

This is going to be the last post for awhile, due to a conglomerate of circumstances. The next eight weeks are going to be a flurry of activity: scrambling to write a grant proposal due in early August (and all the references, protocols, documentations, and hassle that come with it), in the middle of which taking a 2-week international trip back to the ROC in mid-late July for my grandmother's 80th B-day bash, closely followed by two conferences/retreats in mid-August that run right into each other (so that I have to leave the first one early and hightail it back just in time for the second one)... ...just wake me up when it's all over. I'm going to so need a vacation after all of that. A good friend of mine from high school was in town this weekend, and I wanted to have an edible gift for her to take home. Not only that, I wanted something that would travel well for a long road trip home and would go well with a good cup of tea, as my friend is a fiend for tea. So I wh...

I love quickbreads and muffins. It's the number one food label/tag on this blog. I'm perhaps more than slightly obsessed by finding recipes for moist, soft, not-too-sweet muffin-y goodness (as evidenced by the disproportionate number of recipes I have of quickbreads of various sorts versus other types of baked goods). They're quick and easy, often don't require a mixer, are crowd-pleasers, and freeze up beautifully for months of delicious, homemade breakfasts. But I have a somewhat shameful admission to make as a baker and as a quickbread/muffin-lover: I don't like banana bread. Heresy, I know, I know... One of the most versatile base recipes ever, rich in nutrients, moist... everything a good quickbread should be. I just don't like the taste, or the smell. I barely like eating fresh bananas. (And let's all ignore the phallic implications of bananas... ) But wait, hear me out. (Don't burn me yet). I humbly offer as a replacement delic...

I've seen baking bloggers get dissed/blasted for having too many chocolate chip cookie recipes (no joke, I couldn't believe someone would be so spiteful), and some bloggers themselves post new chocolate chip cookie recipes with a sheepish and remorseful tone, as if to say "Sorry to subject you readers to more chocolate chip cookies, but I can't help myself!" But I'm here to say that there are good reasons for trying different chocolate chip recipes: 1) the same recipe can turn out slightly different from person to person due to differences in climate, equipment, source of ingredients, etc., and 2) even the slightest variations in the ratios of ingredients amongst different recipes can make for a very different end product. Case in point: these chocolate chip cookies. Just a tiny bit more butter and sugar to flour than most recipes. One less yolk. Brown sugar only; no white sugar. These small changes made for a cookie that spread like no other basic chocola...

It was one of those days that I was craving a cookie, but I didn't want to end up with dozens of chocolate chip cookies that would tempt me continuously and nullify my running with one bite. So I thought I'd make some "healthy cookies." And really, if you had to award that title to a cookie, it might as well be this one. There's only 1/2 cup of oil in the whole recipe, none of it saturated. There's only natural, unrefined sweeteners (agave nectar and honey). The grains are also unrefined (whole wheat pastry flour, oats, wheat germ). You can add whatever dried "superfoods" you want, like dried berries or raisins, or nuts. I am not sure what I was expecting on texture, but they came out quite cakey. They're moist, and there's some natural chew from the oats, but Michael's description of them is probably the best way for me to convey how they taste: "They're like mini-scones--more fluffy and crumbly than normal cookies." ...

Michael recently decided to buy a bunch of hot dogs but didn't buy buns to go with them, so he was eating his hot dogs with sliced bread. Sliced bread. Women, tell me I'm not wrong in giving him an evil eye, heaving a big sigh...and baking him some hot dog buns. Now he can eat a proper hot dog! And stop wasting the nice sliced bread. The recipe I used has some personal history behind it: it's originally a recipe for hamburger buns and has been tried twice in this household in the past, both times being failures. The taste was fine, but the omission of the second rise (proofing) of the formed buns just before baking resulted in tasty but tough little buggers, way too small for any respectable burger. I'm not naming any names, but *somebody* overlooked that step in the two times he made the recipe...and now I have been delegated the job of making all the yeast breads in the house. So I went back to give this recipe one more shot and shaped them for hot dogs instead ...

We tend to put more emphasis on our dating anniversary. To me, it's a better landmark of when our lives and destinies became bound together and seems somewhat more significant than the day we signed a piece of paper to make legal what was by then already a reality. Of course it's also that we've grown accustomed to celebrating this day, and to not do so would seem almost a denial of how significant this day is in our relationship. We're almost to double digits here (next year will be the big 10), and we went all out at home with the food to celebrate. Two gigantic ribeye steaks, a healthy portion of buttery boiled potatoes, and our favorite salad (inspired by one of our favorite local restaurants, Girasole ). The cooking can largely be attributed to Michael. The steaks were a beautiful medium-rare to medium, tender, juicy, and well-seasoned. The salad is composed of baby greens, chickpeas (canned), cherry tomatoes, sunflower seeds, Gorgonzola crumbles (not enough t...