Shopping

So, Tene and I have been on a Paleo/Primal inspired diet for the last six months or so, and I thought I would talk about it.

I typically shop once a week, spending over $100 maybe every other week. The last time I went shopping (On Monday, July 4) I spent about $170, mainly on fruits, vegetables, and meat, between two stores - Trader Joe's and Safeway.

Last time I went to Trader Joe's I got green onions, six pounds of sweet potatoes (these will be gone within a week), garlic, plums, a 24 oz box of blueberries (already about half gone), mushrooms, bell peppers, bananas, 2 pounds strawberries, and nectarines (four of them, two are gone now). I love Trader Joe's. Everything there is organic, and it's a lot more affordable than, say, Whole Foods.

Then there's Safeway, where I got two dozen eggs (one dozen gone! I make waffles almost every morning, and for two waffles it takes four eggs ... so ... ), As well as eight pounds of frozen chicken breast, steak, asparagus, and Brussel's sprouts. I also got my non-Paleo/Primal food at Safeway: two types of hot cocoa, Nutella, a ton of olive oil, vanilla creamer, and vanilla extract.

In all, most of the food - especially the meat - will last us for a week and a half to two weeks, if not longer (the olive oil, for example, should last us a couple of months).

I think we eat pretty healthy around here. We try to eat mostly, if not completely, whole foods. It's not perfect, for example when I was sick over the last two weeks, and as a result I kind of let everything go. We ate out most days, usually at Chipotle (which isn't horrible, as far as "eating out" goes), and a lot of our fresh food went bad (which is another reason that my most recent shopping excursion cost so much). Also we obviously eat some not-as-healthy-as-could-be-foods (Nutella, hot cocoa, etc). But I think we do really well, over all.

Tonight's Dinner

Tonight's dinner is chicken that I cooked in the crockpot (I love my crockpot) and a salad!

The chicken is the same as last time, so tasty Crockpot Rotisserie Chicken. As the only side for tonight I made a Strawberry Salad - really the first salad I've ever really put together (I've traditionally not been a big fan of leafy greens).

This was a tasty meal, and again I'm proud of it.

Tonight's Dinner and Some Other Adventures

I'm hoping to start posting daily about the food I'm making for Tene and I every day. Tonight's Dinner: Steamed Artichokes, Slow-Cooker "Rotisserie" Chicken, and Baked Sweet Potatoes and Onions.


I'm quite pleased with tonight's dinner. It was filling, because I cooked a whole chicken (a bit more on that later) it has leftovers, and it was quite tasty. I'm still figuring out how to cook the sweet potatoes so that they're soft all the way through, though (they were less undercooked than the last time I made this dish).

This was also a paleo/primal dinner, which means it fit with our health goals.

I'm slowly becoming more and more accustomed to working with raw meat - particularly chicken - and specifically I'm finding it easier to work with whole poultry. Still gross, but I don't find myself hating every minute. This is a big change from making a turkey on Thanksgiving. Maybe it's in part because chicken are a lot smaller than turkey, so there was less to be grossed out by.

In other news, we're doing pretty well. Most of the news around here comes from me, in fact.

My jaw has been hurting pretty badly the last while, and has been getting increasingly worse. I'm taking the highest daily dosage allowed of naproxen sodium, which is barely helping. I went to a TMJ specialist two weeks ago, though, and he gave me an Aqualizer as a sort of diagnostic tool. Unfortunately the pain has only increased since then. I go back in tomorrow and hopefully my X-rays from a few years ago in Salt Lake will be there, and maybe we can discuss some other options of what might be causing this pain.

I also have been dealing with a cold this last week. Coughing, feeling generally down, stuffy nose, all of that. I was improving, but yesterday and today I woke up feeling worse. I'm not sure if I'm actually getting worse or not, though, and I feel (mostly) fine now.

I've fixed my laptop back up from it's Christmas misadventure - for the most part. On Christmas day I accidentally spilled hot chocolate all over my laptop keyboard (and my self, and my bed). Fortunately I acted quickly enough to save my laptop and there's not damage to the information or casing or hardware. Except for the keyboard. Even after a very thorough cleaning, some of the keys still stick. Hopefully my new keyboard will be here in a day or two, though, and all will be well.

Thanks Giving. Thiving.

I decided to go all out on Thursday and make Tene and myself a proper Thanksgiving feast. I think it turned out well!

The meal itself was completely Paleo, sticking with our newish diet. I was really proud of myself for being able to find so many tasty paleo dishes - and for making them all!

We also got to talk to my family over Skype, after some initial connectivity issues (due to my laptop running Linux, Tene had to help me set it up properly so it could use the microphone, and there were some troubles on my mother's end as well, but I'm not actually certain what those were). It was nice to see my grandparents and the step-siblings who were still around, even if it was just through a webcam. My grandmother tried to get me to promise to visit over Christmas - we're still working out what our plans are going to be for then.

But the feast! It was a marvelous feast, and I was quite proud of it (we still have leftovers!)

I started out with an appetizer (told you it was a feast) of spinach stuffed mushrooms - the recipe I used asked for panko bread crumbs, which I substituted out for a little bit of almond meal (which has almost the same consistency). These were gone by that night, 30 of them, eaten by Tene and me! They were really delicious, and are definitely something I want to try again.

Then for the main meal, we had the turkey (of course, what's Thanksgiving without a turkey?) that I roasted myself (first time I have ever tried to do anything like that). My first observation when I started doing stuff with the turkey, though, was a not entirely pleasant realization. Turkey is gross.

I find most raw meat to be unpleasant, but for my first time working with a whole bird ... well, I can't choose anything else except that turkey - as a whole - is nasty. Especially since they store the "giblets" and neck inside the thing for selling. I didn't want anything to do with those. And cleaning the turkey out? Yuck. That's definitely something I'm willing to not do very often.

But the turkey ended up very nice! I used a cheap roasting pan for it, put a couple of pieces of onion (amounting to about a half) and some fresh thyme inside, covered the thing with butter and salt and pepper, and then stuck it in the oven for three hours. It was still moist and was cooked all the way through and was just tasty.

I also made roasted Brussel's sprouts (a standby that I'm glad is a normal part of our eating habits), some baked honey carrots and oranges, asparagus with an interesting bacon vinaigrette, and another of our standbys - sweet potatoes and onions. None used any extra sugar (the carrots had a little bit of honey added, and I put some agave nectar on the sweet potatoes), and all ended up really delicious.

And then I broke Paleo for our desert - a really tasty, very dark chocolate and rich flourless chocolate cake. Because it didn't use flour I'm pretty sure it was gluten free - making our Thanksgiving definitely friendly to those who can't have gluten. The cake had an added cup of sugar in it, plus the slight dusting of powdered sugar on top. Then there was the whipped cream (whipped by Tene) made from sour cream, heavy cream, and some more powdered sugar.

Unfortunately I didn't bake the cake quite long enough. It was still delicious (and we ate the whole thing), but next time I'll need to remember to leave it in the oven a little longer - either that or flourless cakes are just normally a bit thicker, I'm not sure which.

I think I should add an electric mixer to the list of things I want, if only to save Tene's arm from all of that stirring and beating.

After having a lot of fun cooking all of this and feeling proud of myself for a job well done, I started thinking - I think I might want to host a dinner like this once a month, invite people to come and eat some good food and hang out. It would give me a chance to really practice my cooking and baking skills, and it would help Tene and I strengthen our social circle here, both of which are good things, I think. It would also be somewhat of a challenge (for me) to find the recipes I want to make, and then cook them and have them done in time for people to come share with us. The Thanksgiving meal I made was delicious, and I'm glad I did it, but I started late and we didn't actually get around to eating it until seven or eight Thursday night. Time management just isn't one of my strong suits.

The joke in today's title comes from a series called Look Around You, in which it is an ongoing thing. Specifically from the Water module. Bless you, ants. Blants.

June to August

So, the last time I posted anything meaningful was waaaay back in June. Even before Tene's birthday.

So, for Tene's birthday I made dinner and a cake. I, unfortunately, spent more time on the cake, when what Tene was looking forward to was me making him dinner and having it ready for him when he got home.

Regardless, I had a lot of fun making dinner and a cake for Tene (or, rather, making .... four cakes. They continually failed, and I was trying to make a multiple-layered cake - three of the four layers ended up being useable, if broken in half), and I enjoyed making him dinner.

The cake I made, as I mentioned above, ended up being three layers - and was a very rich chocolate with a chocolate ganache frosting. I also made a little red marzipan robot to decorate it with! The end result wasn't the most beautiful of things, but I was happy with it anyway, because it was fun to make and it was special and everything. The robot ended up looking like the Pusher Robot (possibly the Shover Robot, I can't remember which one is red) - here to protect us from the Terrible Secret of Space. Or like the red robot. That wasn't intended, it just ended up happening. And ... Tene asked me for a red robot, and I only had so much chance to do anything special with him (I wanted him to be much more detailed, but ran out of time).

I've been doing better at cooking dinner nightly the last few months; missing fewer nights than before. I'm really proud of myself for that. My main-made meal is still rather plain - pasta with Parmesan chicken and some type of vegetable or green.

I've become very fond of artichokes, personally. Especially their delicious centers. We eat at least one a week, and usually two each within the course of seven days. Hooray Costco! Bringing us healthy food in bulk!

I've also found that I'm okay at making steak. This was my second attempt, and was better than the first. Although I didn't actually cook the steak (Tene did that for me), I did do all the preparation for it, though. I was focusing on steaming the artichokes, asparagus, and broccoli, as well as frying (and burning) the onions.

I prefer working with chicken to steak, perhaps because I prefer lighter meat to red meat. Chicken is also a lot cheaper (hellooooo Costco and buying waaaay more chicken than I need!), although a lot nastier when raw (I wash my hands a dozen times when cooking with chicken, a lot less when cooking almost anything else).

Which brings me to tonight! Parmesan chicken, baked potatoes, baked Brussels sprouts, baked asparagus, and steamed artichokes. Made way-too-late to be reasonable, but we needed dinner.

In the last few months we've also added some things to our home - Now we have three bookshelves (two are full: one with books, the other with DVDs and video games), and a dining room table and chairs. We also have a nice red couch! Soon I should be getting my craft desk and shelves (ordered them from Ikea today), and hopefully within a few weeks or a month I should also get my computer desk as well. I'm excited that our home is coming together and things are looking so nice. It makes me feel nice and at home.

Speaking of my crafts - I've started up on them again. Right now I'm focusing on soft toys and possibly making a quilt for us for Christmas (a gift for us). I've also been working on fixing Tene's favorite blanket - a quilt his mother gave him when he left for college. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately I suppose), it has been well-loved, and is falling apart.

I'm doing the best I can to repair it, but it's taking a while and is difficult.

I'm hoping to get a sewing machine in the next few weeks/month or so, which will make my soft-toy making a lot easier (and save my back).

Otherwise, not much has been happening the last couple of months. Tene's been working and I've been sticking around taking care of home (and loving it). I'm starting to take up Yoga again, and I've joined a couple of local groups for books, writing, and crafts. I'm hoping to start taking classes again,  but I know it will be a while before I can - I'm really getting impatient, though, and wanting to return to school.

Well, that's all that's been going on around here. I've managed to kill three more plants (two small roses and a flowering plant called an Orange Star - I had named them Rosie and Posie, and ... I never named the orange one), and the girls are doing well. I'm hoping to get something to make a play area for them soon, so that I can have more than one of them out of the cage at the same time - as it is right now I'm too afraid of them running off in two (or four) different directions at once - leaving me unable to find them again.

So, that's it! I'll try to post more regularly again from now on.

Dinners For Two

One day I will be a master cook and a great housewife. I will have a healthy and delicious dinner ready and waiting for Tene when he gets home from

That hasn't happened yet, and probably won't for a while. But I'm working on it.

These are two meals that I have put together for Tene and I, and that were very delicious.

First was this lovely looking meal. I call it the Green Meal. We ate this maybe two weeks ago?

We've got an artichoke, boiled, with some garlic-lemon-butter for dipping. Then .... there's baked/steamed potatoes (they were baked in the oven, but were wrapped in foil, leading to a more steam-like situation than a bake-like situation; asparagus, which was fried; and finally brussels sprouts, which were baked in the oven. It was a very tasty meal, and I really enjoyed it. We'll probably be having it - or something similar to it - again soon.

Then, tonight's dinner - Parmesan crusted chicken which was made from two chicken breast halves and that I'm finally getting into the habit of cooking. I tend to have trouble not burning it to the pan. Up next we have whole-grain spaghetti with a tasty spinach pesto that Tene made on it. Ingredients for that were spinach, some basil, some olive oil, garlic, etc. It's very tasty, and gave us a good reason to use our new food processor! I'm very happy with the food processor. It's exciting. And, again, artichokes. Steamed, this time, but again with the artichokes.

I like artichokes. Who would have thought that such a spiky plant would be so delicious, let alone even edible? To whoever in the far past first attempted to eat an artichoke - thank you. You have made my diet a little healthier!

In other news, Tene and I might be starting on the paleo diet for the month of July, as a simple test for allergens and to see if it actually makes us feel healthier and more energetic like we've been told. So ... the two dinners above have parts that are disallowed - potatoes in dinner one, the pasta and breading on the chicken in dinner two. I'm hoping we get something good out of it, but even if we don't - it'll be a new, good experience, and I'm happy with that.

I've also be playing with my hairstyles, trying to find pretty things to do. Recently I figured out this one, which I thought looks elegant and casual at the same time. I might be cutting my hair soon, I'll give before and after pictures if I end up deciding that.

Other than that, things are going well for us here in CA. As seen above, we're eating mostly healthy - and we're being social and all that. We're working on getting me stable emotionally and healthy (the newest thing to happen is that I've been getting headaches almost every day, ranging from annoying cluster-headaches to full-on migraines, I see the doctor again on Monday to talk to him about it; currently looking at sleep and/or anxiety as the culprits).

Valentine's Meal for My Valentine

Today was a whirlwind adventure of cooking and baking for me.

I've been planning to do something nice for Tene (due to it being Valentine's Day) for a week now. You'd think, having plenty of time to prepare, that I would have everything in the kitchen, just ready and waiting. But I didn't. We lacked a few things called for in the recipes I chose (lemon juice, paprika, chicken bullion, strawberries, and chocolate chips). So in the early afternoon Tene and I went shopping to get the missing ingredients - and a few other things (I was baking a cake, and needed two round cakepans - 9", and they barely fit in the oven together. Have I mentioned my oven/stove is tiny? Because it is). Then we came home, and the cooking began.

For our one meal of the day (bruchinner? We don't eat much around these parts) I made Chicken Piccata, which was very tasty, used too much butter. Like way too much butter. Maybe because I only made one breast (cut in half) instead of four? But still ... It was swimming in the butter. It was tasty though, and the chicken was nice and tender. I also made, as a sort of warm salad, some Garlic Bok Choy (I left out the ginger [which neither Tene nor I are huge fans of], oyster sauce [again: we're not really fans], and the red pepper flakes. and I put in an extra tablespoon of the soy sauce to make up for the missing oyster sauce. I also wasn't precise in measuring the brown sugar), which was also quite good. I found I prefer the taste of the leafy bits of the bok choy, which is good to know for future reference. I added a few strawberries as garnish and there it was! A healthy, delicious meal!

Tene didn't like how oily the chicken was, so I also heated up some leftover rice and mixed in some garlic power and salt, it worked well.

Then came desert. I had two deserts planned - one Tene knew about (a chocolate cake) and one he didn't (chocolate covered strawberries). The strawberries came from a conversation earlier in the week, when I asked Tene what he would enjoy as a desert. He didn't know, and said that what he likes from deserts is a mixture of sweetness and tartness - which I knew, but it was nice to be reminded. I thought about it for a while and it dawned on me - chocolate covered strawberries are absolutely perfect for those requirements. And so I decided to make them.

First was the cake. I've never really made a cake before, let alone a two-tiered one, but this one was pretty easy. Everything was just mixed together in one bowl - the dry ingredients first, then the wet ingredients, and then some boiling hot water. It made a relatively thin batter, which was easy to just pour into my new, well greased, cake pans. Then into the oven it went.

Then I went on to make the frosting. I didn't want to use buttercream (the only other frosting I've ever made), so I decided to try out a chocolate ganache. I found one that was really easy - two cups of heavy cream, warmed, and 16 oz of baker's chocolate. I used some really-dark-chocolate-chips, because there was no baker's chocolate left at the grocery store we went to. Brought the heavy cream to almost boiling, poured it over the chocolate chips, waiting for a few minutes (I covered the bowl the mixture was in to help trap some of the heat) and then stir until mixed! Then I just had to wait for the cakes to be done and the ganache to cool to a spreadable consistency.

So I worked on my strawberries! Really easy - I melted a decent amount of chocolate chips on the stove over a very low heat, Tene stirred it all the while. I added some milk (ended up being too much, but at least I know for next time) to make it a little smoother. Then I dipped the strawberries and set them out to harden on a cookie sheet.

Time passed, I took out the cakes to cool, flipped their pans over and had them slide out perfectly. More time passed, Tene and I ate the strawberries (I didn't get a picture of them). More time passed and I finally got around to frosting the cake.

I wasn't sure what to expect, but the ganache spread very smoothly. I wish I had leveled the sides of the cakes, but now I know what to do next time. Once the cake was nice and covered in a decent layer of frosting I decided to decorate. At first I considered sprinkles, since Tene and I got a little bottle of them at the store. But then I remembered my strawberries, and so I put 8 strawberries all around the edge of the cake.

Finally I cut two slices - one for me and one for Tene - and brought them up to him so we could eat them together.

It was delicious. The cake was rich and moist and chocolaty - but not overly sweet, and the frosting was a very appetizing bittersweet. I was only able to eat half of my slice (the other half is in the fridge, I will finish it off tomorrow).

All in all, I'm quite pleased with my Valentine's day meal. I hope to do more cooking, and baking, in the near future.

Parmesan Chicken, 4-cheese White Sauce, and Garlic-Cheese Bread

I don't want this blog to be primarily a baking blog - I've seen (and follow) a whole slew of those. Instead, I want it to be a food (and crafts) blog, following my adventures in learning to cook and bake.

Tonight I decided I wanted parmesan chicken. From there the meal expanded to include a 4-cheese white sauce on pasta and some garlic bread.

The parmesan chicken recipe I used was one that I found on allrecipes.com.  The only change I made to the recipe was halving it.

The four-cheese sauce was also found on allrecipes.com, and was also halved. I rather liked this recipe, and I'm glad I found it - the last one I tried used cream-cheese as it's base, and didn't have that little bit of a kick that I wanted. I also substituted a sharp cheddar for the provolone cheese on this one, due to not being able to find provolone.

Finally the garlic bread. We bought little demi baguettes from Costco, cut them in half, then layered them with mozarella and parmesan cheese and some garlic powder. Then we toasted them in the oven for a few minutes.

All in all, it was a tasty meal, and one I hope to have again - perhaps this time with some minor changes to the recipes.

Recipes below the break.

Four-Cheese Sauce
Yield: 2 cups

Ingredients

• 1 cup whipping cream
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
• 1/4 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
  
• 1/4 cup grated Romano cheese

In a saucepan combine the whipping cream and butter. Bring to a simmer over medium heat, stirring frequently until butter melts.

Gradually stir in the four cheeses and then reduce heat to low. Continue to stir until all the cheese is melted.

Sauce thickens upon standing, serve quickly.

Parmesan Chicken
Yield: 2 breasts

Ingredients

• 2 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves
• 1/4 cup Italian seasoned bread crumbs
• 1 tablespoon grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/4 teaspoon dried basil
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon butter or margarine
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

In a shallow bowl, combine bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese and basil. In another bowl, beat the egg.

Dip chicken into egg, then coat with crumb mixture.

In a large skillet, brown chicken in butter and oil over medium heat for 3-5 minutes on each side or until juices run clear.