Food, but not about cooking

The other day I was at a friends' house for an impromptu dinner while our husbands played video games. Turns out, this family has an apple tree in their backyard, so the other wife and I decided to try our hand at shrunken heads this year.  I'm not big on Halloween in general, but this is part decorating, part craft, part food, and I really wanted to try it.   We were inspired by ourbestbites.com, because, lets face it, I get all my ideas from that site.

 Above are Krista's apples. Sorry for the bad quality DROID picture.

Above is my FrankenApple attempt. Well, Frank's hair is spiky and this is more like bangs, so, maybe notsomuch. 

Another side view.

One of mine (again, above) where I tried to give him/her a chin.

I'm not sure I exaggerated all the features enough for them to turn out, but so far I've been treating them to 20 minutes at 100 degrees in the oven every day and then a nice rest in there as the oven cools off.  I will post some updates soon!

Milestones: My first tri-tip

Hi again. Sorry all of my re-blogging posts are about food. But think about my life for a minute. I work. I see my husband. I get on planes. I cook for husband. I go to church. I see friends. I do not take pictures. So really, food adventures are all I've got right now. And after a month of eating out in the UK, I was kind of excited about cooking again. 

So here is my first tri-tip roast. We don't have a BBQ, so I planned to roast it. I scoured the internet for recipes and advice, and finally made up my own solution after reading how much work it could possibly be. This is a malt vinegar and soy sauce (mostly) marinade I made on the stove and marinated for a day or so.

 When I finally baked it, first I baked it for 10 or 15 minutes fat side up. Then I flipped it. Then I agonized for the remaining 40 minutes about overcooking it. Finally, when the internal temperature was 128 (per one blog) I let it rest for 5 or 10 minutes, then wrapped it in foil for another 10 or so while we waited for our dinner company to arrive.

Then I had to check with said dinner company the proper way to slice this. The slices are a little fat, but you can see we managed to achieve medium rare!! WOO HOO!!! 

Yum: Parchment Paper Salmon

Okay, so seriously. How many blogger friends are NOT using the new editing feature? I upload most of my phone photos (and camera, when the pics are random and being "saved" for a blog) to Picasa. Now it is so, so easy to just bring those in (in order!) to the blog. Love it.

So we had our good friends over for dinner, and I wanted to make salmon. Also, not pesto salmon, which is my only salmon dish I can make. So I resorted to looking at my 70's era "Salmon Recipes" garage sale cookbook and found parchment paper salmon.

Turns out this recipe is not "so easy" seeing as how you have to blanch the veggies (read: chop, boil, dry) in advance and such. But, we had a great time each making our own parchment package with our desired veggies, lemon slices, etc.

No really, zoom into that previous picture and look at all that tastiness in there. Here is what sold me on the parchment salmon: "The best part is, if you overcook the salmon, it does not dry out, because the steam cannot escape."  SOLD!

The after:

 Before stuffing our face with all that salmon:

Yum!

Homemade Bagels: How to really appreciate Noah's (and even Safeway)

Whoa...just figured out a waaaay better way to put pictures in! Nice. Okay, so bagels are pretty much my favorite breakfast.  So I thought - homemade bagels - must be even better, right? And I am ashamed to admit, on a night at home, I would rather try making bagels so I can have one the next day than just driving the .5 miles to Safeway and buying some.

 Also, I've been experimenting more with bread and such lately and my bread machine book had bagels. So I was interested in trying.
Turns out bagels are a ton of work. Rising. Water treatment. Burning fingers handling boiling hot bagels. Dipping. Geez.

 Finished product. Flat. Not too dry. Only ate them for 2 days. Trashed the rest. Couldn't love them like official bagels.

Tried again one more time, because I don't give up easily. Results were not improved. Verdict: buy bagels at the store. :(

Glass block Jello

I saw this recipe quite a while ago on my favorite food blog, and I've been eager to try it. Finally, with multiple large dinners on the agenda I decided to give this a whirl. Its not fancy, its all jello, but I wanted to know how tasty it was and see if is worthy of all the big family gathering-type events that our extended family (my side) often has.

It starts with lots and lots of jello. Jiggler style, meaning 1/2 the normal amount of water.
Then cut it all up and put it in a greased glass pan. (I mean, do I really have to say instructions? I know you'll jump right over to the real recipe for the details.)

Take another picture of the jello because you are trying to be artsy and cool on your blog.

Add the last ingredient and refrigerate some more. Hope you had a lot of space in your fridge for flat containers!

MMM!! Tastes like...jello!!!

Empty Kitchen Dilemma!

Last night was a great friday evening. Zach and I walked to the Library, where I was super excited to find some travel books on Ireland for our trip this summer. From there, we dropped off our rent check and got PINKBERRY!!! I have to say, I totally scoffed at them a year or two ago when they only had Original (tart) and Pomegranate flavors...now they also have chocolate and others and the chocolate is soooooo good. And don't even think about skipping the mochi topping. If you think it looks weird, at least give it a chance.

After dinner Zach and I played some video games then he got a text from his BFF about some video games at his house and he went over there. I was desparate for some cookie dough, but we only had one egg in the house. And I really wanted to make Zach some blueberry muffins. Which recipe should I use the egg for? Not to mention, we have around 1/4 cup of milk.

So...I found my trusty recipe site and decided to opt for the muffins and deny my cookie craving. I found this one-egg recipe and had BARELY enough milk to get by. I replaced the nugmeg with lemon rind and juice. I also replaced the white sugar with brown like some readers recommended.

As I was cleaning up, I was regretting my denial of cookie dough. UNTIL I REMEMBERED!! This site, homemademamas, is really fun. And I remembered that they posted a no-egg cookie dough recipe (this is purposely for not baking!) Let me tell you, they are not kidding when they say that this stuff is GOOD!!! It was a bit annoying to pound my softened margarine into the flour and sugar, but once the mindless mixing passed and I added some more water I had perfect dough! Of course I ate a bunch -- my fill really -- before it made it to the freezer, so I had to taste-test the frozen version later.

Moral of this post: You can make your husband his muffins and have your cookie dough too! lol.

Rummage Sale'd

In my jet-lagged state upon return from Scotland, I found myself at a local church rummage sale. I love these things! I didn't have a big budget for the day, but in the outdated electronics section I noticed this HANDSOME leather case.
And inside...a vintage video camera!!!!!!! Ohmygosh this is the coolest thing ever!!! And it still has the original instruction book??? How could someone still have all this and then give it up for a glorified garage sale???

Vintage 8-mm video camera. With new batteries -- this puppy actually WORKS when you hold down the trigger. I think we are going to try and get some film that fits and try it out, even if it is a 30 second video that is filmed in "Wonder Years" style.

Seriously I just think this is so cool. I mean, I bought it for ZACH. FOR ZACH. I thought it would be cool when we have in a bigger house to have in his office/mancave or as part of decor, given his education choice. Heck, if anything, the leather bag alone is easily worth the $7 I paid for it all.

One last look at the inside...that's for the film, baby!