i have a friend who is vegan, and his birthday was yesterday.  i used it as an excuse to try mark bittman's vegan mexican chocolate pie WHICH WAS OUT OF CONTROL GOOD.  as in, i was licking the blender.  as in, i would make this again and i am not vegan.  it was super easy to make and it came out of the pan pretty well (always my worry - whew) and people liked it!  i only told them it contained tofu after the fact. :)

and the best compliment at all...one of the spanish teachers at school - who grew up in mexico - said it tasted exactly like this hot chocolate that her grandma used to make when she was growing up in mexico.  victory!  thank you, mark bittman.

more stuff i've been cooking that has turned out great:

smitten kitchen's buttermilk salad dressing (i hate the chemical-y flavor and the gloop-y texture of store bought salad dressings, but that sometimes stops me from having salad at home because oil and vinegar is only so interesting.  this salad dressing is solving lots of problems!)

then i made pioneer woman's tomato tart and about died of happiness.  i made my own pie crust (because, people: it is so easy.  the best pie crust i've ever made - so now it's the only pie crust i make - is julia child's.  of course it is.  i am so classy).  but back to the tart: it's got a layer of caramelized onions!  and then a layer of delish roasted tomatoes!  and there's some cheese!  and julia child's pie crust underneath!  this is absolutely worth making immediately.  it is savory and perfect and reheated great for lunch the next day.

oh, that's right: the pie crust did not fill the pan that it was supposed to fill.  don't worry!  just have half of it be ugly.  that's my solution!

mark bittman's asparagus pesto is incredibly good and you should try it immediately.  i had some asparagus that was about to go bad in the fridge, but i didn't know how i wanted to eat it.  i imagined asparagus pesto would be good, and googled it and found this (so simple, so easy) recipe.  i ate it over pasta with peas and it was an excellent decision.  this is definitely going in my weeknight dinner rotation!

more cooking fun

i'm back at home for a day before heading back to houston tomorrow night.  there were five nearly-dead bananas on the kitchen table, so i went to smitten kitchen again for advice, and she told me to make jacked-up banana bread (on the left - it's your basic banana bread recipe, though presumably extra delicious) and double chocolate banana bread (on the right - which was really just single chocolate banana bread when i made it - only cocoa powder - no chocolate chips).

we put the regular banana bread in the freezer and are halfway through the chocolate one.  delish!  it's super moist and dessert-y without being overly sweet.  and there are bananas in it, so it's obviously good for us.  duh.

more farm cooking

i hate yellow squash, which is why making squash soup for my parents' freezer was so perfect, because i was getting rid of squash but i didn't have to eat it myself YAY.  but there is SO MUCH SQUASH in the garden, so i tried another smitten kitchen recipe (i heart that woman and her cooking) for herbed summer squash pasta bake and we had it for dinner last night and omg i actually liked it.  i think i liked it because the squash was cooked on high heat and thus scorched and not mushy (mushy squash is my enemy).  the sauce isn't like mac and cheese sauce - it's more subtle - and the parmesan on top made it crunchy and perfect.  good job once again, smitten kitchen!

stocking the freezer before i leave the hip replacement patient!

both are smitten kitchen recipes - zucchini fritters:

and summer squash soup:

so.  many.  squash.  in.  the.  garden.

birthdays at work are a big deal…as in, there must be a cake and a card and singing and eating.  so maybe that is an ordinary deal, but at my old job we didn't have this birthday tradition.  we went out to breakfast at waffle house on a work friend's birthday, which is a fantastic tradition in and of itself.  but i digress.

i am the birthday coordinator, because taking care of people with food gives me great happiness.  when i have time i bake a cake instead of buying one at the grocery store. for my colleague scott's birthday a few weeks ago, i made a banana pudding poke cake, which facebook had told me and scott about independently and we had decided it must be tried.  it felt pretty white trash but tasted pretty amazing.  yellow cake it poked with the handle of a wooden spoon and then banana pudding is poured over/into it, the cake is covered with cool whip, and then at the last minute you add fresh bananas and nilla wafers to the top.

it was consumed with gusto.

strawberry cake

my friend elizabeth's birthday is tomorrow, and she had a little get-together this afternoon at one of our favorite casual bars.  i offered to make her a cake because no one should have to provide their own birthday cake.  she requested fresh strawberry cake, and i found a recipe on smitten kitchen, always my go-to for new recipes because the author makes delicious stuff, takes great pictures of it, and writes like you're her best friend and she's telling you what she made as you eat brunch together.  i. love. her.

i am not really a fan of strawberry-flavored cakes, so i was skeptical but willing to make elizabeth whatever she wanted.

step one: eat a healthy lunch (lentils with sautéed spinach and garlic) to make up for the obscene amount of frosting you are going to lick off of your fingers later.

step two: make the batter.  this recipe has a cup and a half of pureed strawberries in it, and just one drop of food coloring to make it nice and pink.  the recipe makes a three layer cake (but i just made two slightly thicker layers and some cupcakes since i only have two cake pans), and it tested the capacity of my medium-sized kitchenaid mixer.

step three: use this as an excuse to buy the cake carrier you have always wanted to buy.  yes!

step four: baked, frosted, and ready to go!

step five: eaten!  um, this cake is one of the best cakes i've ever made.  seriously.  top three.  i make a bad ass chocolate cake with chocolate ganache (secret ingredient: coffee), a bad ass carrot cake (secret ingredient: no gross nuts), and now a bad ass strawberry cake (secret ingredient: cake flour, which makes a super tender and delicate cake).  i am ready to open a cake shop.  who wants to fund me?!

the strawberry flavor tastes…like strawberries!  because it contains them!  the real thing has made me realize that previous strawberry cakes i've eaten have probably never been near a strawberry, relying on whatever the chemical strawberry "flavor" is.

it was a huge hit with elizabeth and her friends and i am feeling very proud of myself!  i'll be bringing the cupcakes to brunch* with a different group of friends tomorrow and am hopeful that they will go over just as well.


*who says you can't have cupcakes at brunch??

wild rice casserole

on friday we had a baby shower for a work friend, which was really fun!, and there was a fair amount of food left over.  i took home the remnants of the vegetable tray, and then got the idea to make a wild rice casserole with lots of the veggies in it.  um, smitten kitchen wins again.  the cheese sauce was AMAZING over the steamed broccoli and sautéed green onions and mushrooms and just-barely-done wild rice, and it only took 15 minutes in the oven to be great.  huge thumbs up - i'll be making this again soon.

spring salad

i made smitten kitchen's spring salad with new potatoes a year or so ago, and then (re-)fell in love with it this weekend.  i was in the grocery store and there was some gorgeous asparagus and then this salad popped back into my head.  thank you, internet, for (re-)finding the recipe for me while i stood in the produce section, assuring that i bought all the ingredients i needed.  and, caveat, i hate radishes, so i clearly omitted those.  this salad is fantastic because (a) potatoes are just one ingredient, not the whole story, and (b) the dressing isn't mayonnaise-based (i really like mayonnaise, but the fact that the dressing here is a vinaigrette makes it so much lighter).  i made it on saturday...and then again tonight.  but i made a half recipe each time…which is how i am justifying it.

you should make this salad, and then perhaps bring it for lunch alongside hummus and pita like i did.

vegetarian confessions

i'm sure all vegetarians crave some sort of meat, and for me the biggest temptation is shrimp cocktail.  when i became a vegetarian i didn't really like most meat, so giving it up wasn't hard (in fact, it was the goal).  but i did like seafood, and today, eighteen (yes, eighteen) years after giving up meat, i sometimes think about eating a bite of shrimp cocktail at parties (it looks so good!)…but then i imagine crunching my teeth through the body of a shrimp and the temptation goes away.

the #2 thing i crave?  tuna salad sandwiches.  perhaps this is weird, but i really liked tuna when i ate meat.  and people: i have now fixed that craving!  chickpea of the sea is tuna salad with chopped up chickpeas instead of tuna.  i made it for dinner last night and it was SO GOOD!  it doesn't taste like tuna, but it has the perfect consistency and is delicious in its own right.  plus, lots of protein.  win-win.

sick/rainy weekend

on thursday my throat started to hurt.  sign #1 that i'm getting a cold.  on friday i had a headache.  friday night i spent entirely in bed from 5pm until i fell asleep.  tv in bed.  knitting in bed.  dinner in bed.  cough, sneeze, sniffle.

on saturday i had to proctor a standardized test at school (ugh), so i was up at 7:15, and that was actually kind of good because it got me going for the day.  it rained all day saturday, so i decided to make baguettes and from-scratch black bean soup, the kind that cooks for four hours on top of the stove.  i'd never made black beans from scratch before, and had kind of poo-pooed the idea (sure, the bag of black beans is $1, but the same amount of canned black beans would be just a few dollars more - why waste all day cooking them?).  but man - this soup is GOOD.  i omitted the ham, obviously, and served it with a big dollop of sour cream and it was creamy and delicious.  it made a ton of soup, so i froze some for another rainy weekend.

today i slept until 10:30 (thank you, nyquil), but i'm back in bed again.  more knitting/reading/tv watching from under the covers, hoping to take care of myself this weekend and store up energy for the week of work ahead.  ruby's in bed - how could i say no to snuggling with her?

go away, rain.  you're not making this any better.

while visiting my sister in dallas this week, i made two new pioneer woman recipes that were awesome: rose sangria (subbing in cherries for the peaches, since the peaches at the grocery store weren't ripe - and the wine-soaked cherries were awesome!) and mushrooms stuffed with brie, which were every bit as good as you are imagining.

yum.

i love cooking.

blue and red berry ricotta galette

making this twice in 24 hours?  don't mind if i do.  the crust is tender and flavorful and the berries inside are perfect - i used frozen berries, but i don't think you could ever tell.  mixed berry galette yesterday, peach galette today.  you NEED to make this!  smitten kitchen is my jam.

last week i made smitten kitchen's miso sweet potato and broccoli bowl and it was SO. GOOD.  it's definitely going into a regular rotation at my house.  strike that.  it already HAS gone into a regular rotation; i've made the dressing twice more since then and poured it over bowls of wild rice and vegetables.  it is gingery and miso-y and the kind of food i consider a little miraculous because i've only ever had those flavors at restaurants.  but now i own a slowly emptying container of miso and a piece of ginger that lives in the freezer when i'm not making this dressing, and life is better for it.  do it.  buy these kind of weird ingredients and make an awesome dressing.

a photo a day

last night i made a carrot cake for a coworker's birthday, and this is what the pan looked like after our party/staff meeting today.  no sight could make a baker happier!  it was an awesome recipe and the cake turned out really moist and the frosting the perfect amount of sweet (i used less sugar than was called for, which was a good move).  baking success!

kale salad

a woman i work with passed on this kale salad recipe to me and it's so good!  i've been eating pretty badly recently (work meetings that ran from 3-8:30pm two nights in a row with dinner provided meant i had more than my fair share both evenings because i was stuck in a room and kind of bored)…so this was a welcome dinner for me tonight.  she calls this two servings but i definitely ate it all.

roasted eggplant curry

last night i made baingan bharta, which is roasted eggplant curry, and it was AMAZING.  i order this in restaurants sometimes, and i'm telling you: what i made was restaurant-quality.  mark bittman, you did not let me down!

i've been intimidated by making indian food at home because it seems like it requires a lot of spices…but this recipe only requires turmeric (which i bought recently for a different recipe) and garam masala, which whole foods had.  and man - using all the spices makes a difference.  i sometimes just omit one if i don't want to buy it.  do not do that if you make this recipe!

i warn you that this curry never looks good (even in restaurants), because roasted eggplant is grey…but trust me: it was incredible.  add some rice and a piece of naan (thank you, trader joe's frozen foods section) and you have a perfect meal.

thanksgiving

my grandma's fruit cobbler recipe is DELISH.  blueberry cobbler is the best kind of cobbler (do not argue with me), and becky's boyfriend really likes cobbler, so we made some for thanksgiving alongside a pecan pie.  the dish was scraped clean, but thankfully not before i woke up from my nap (whew).  do yourself a favor and make this ASAP!

action shot on thanksgiving day: becky's making mashed potatoes (her specialty - secret ingredient: cream cheese) and i'm assembling the cobbler!  (thanks to laura for this great sisters picture.)

cookbooks

when my grandma died last year, among her belongings that were passed down were a bunch of cookbooks.  i love to cook, as this blog can attest, and i have a lot of food memories of my grandma: being forced to eat this gross ground beef/potato/apple (is this memory even correct?) casserole as a child, making cookies with her in the kitchen on many occasions, being taught to make the fruit cake recipe for my dad.

both before and after she passed away i got some of her cookbooks.  today you get a tour of them.

cookbook 1: the new york times cookbook from 1961

for about the last 10 years of her life, my grandma kept trying to give away some of her belongings.  "look through the bookshelf and take some books!"  "would you have any use for…?"  her belongings had already been condensed to fit into a tiny apartment and were being reduced even more to fit into her room when she moved into the skilled nursing facility.  this is a book that i took during my last visit to see her before she died, when it was clear that, yes, there wasn't room for all her books anymore.

cookbook 2: staples' treasure of personal recipes from 1952

grandma grew up in staples, minnesota, and this is a cookbook that the women in her parents' church put together.  she gave me this book even earlier - maybe 7 or 8 years ago when i went to visit.  inside - and shown below - is mrs. kenneth kingsley's recipe for fruit cake, which must be made around the holidays.  grandma showed my sister and i how to make it - measuring crisco from a can into a measuring cup because that's what the recipe said - and then gave me the book.  (don't worry, when i remember to make this for dad, who loves it, we use margarine instead of crisco.)  i love that this recipe says to cook the fruit cake "in lower oven in 3 coffee cans."  below my grandma has translated this: 325 degrees.

cookbook 3: betty crocker's picture cookbook from 1950

this is a book i was incredibly touched to receive.  after my grandma died, we held a memorial service for her at my parents' farm.  we set up a little exhibition of her things in one of the rooms of our house, and family members took things as the weekend ended.  this cookbook was left behind, i thought accidentally, but my aunt monica wanted me to have it.  this was grandma's daily cookbook, and it is so well-loved...stained from years of cooking with it open on the counter...with handwritten notes...duct-taped back together...extra recipes shoved between pages.

ruby likes the illustrations.

the cookies page was definitely the most well-used.

cookbook 4: gold medal flour cookbook from 1910

this little paper cookbook was my great-grandmother's and is 103 years old.  i was baking this morning (peach muffins to bring to a meeting that i'm leading tomorrow), and thought this was a fitting picture.  i should be in an ad.  gold medal flour people: call me.

i think this cookbook must have been one you sent away for after buying so many bags of flour; it's personalized with my great-grandmother's name (lilah poore) on the cover.  this cookbook, too, is well-loved: stained and taped together and a little crumbly at the corners from its age.

it's one big advertisement for the flour, but has tons of recipes, too.  gold medal people: i will even stand in this pose for our TV ad if you want me to.

this thanksgiving we'll have my grandma's green bean casserole and blueberry cobbler on the table.  we'll keep eating the same things that have been eaten in our family for years and years…and years and years to come.