Time Suck

You know, because my life needs another time suck to go with Pinterest and Facebook.

It's embarrassing how long this took.

I found this website the other day through one of my favorite blogs, epbot.com.  It 's a site that lets you create your own steampunk characters.  It took me forever to create this one because I was trying to figure out how everything worked.  It would be a great activity for some night when you can't sleep.  Here's the link to the site.  Have fun!

Korean Beef with Marscapone Grits

This was an amazing dinner!  Back a few weeks ago Will and I hosted our school's food club at our house.  The theme was "small plates."  I made this Korean Beef for the party.  Will fell in love with it, so I wanted to make it again.  The great thing about this recipe is it is ready in about 15 minutes.  Plus- you can serve it with lettuce leaves or tortillas.  The recipe is available here.  I highly recommend you give it a try.  I was thinking you could do this with any ground meat, tofu, tempeh, grated veggies....almost anything!

I wanted a side dish to go with it, so I decided to make some stone ground grits.  I wanted to try out a recipe I found on Pinterest (which is where I get most of my new recipes to try).  The recipe is here.  This is very similar to the way Southerners make their grits.  My mom always used milk, so this method using heavy cream wasn't that strange to me.  I also love that it uses stone ground grits instead of quick cooking grits.  When you cook really good grits for a long time, they get so soft and flavorful.  I think quick grits always have a dry, gritty texture.  If more Yankees tried these grits, they wouldn't be just a Southern specialty.

I went with the original version and used marscapone- the person on the blog substituted cream cheese, which I'm sure was good, but I used the real thing because I had it on hand.  The only change I made was to throw in a handful of grated parmesan for a bit more salty, nutty flavor.

These two very different things went great together!  I will do this again soon.

Saturday Breakfast!

This was the start to my weekend.  I made hashbrowns with onions and mushrooms; toasted a bagel and fried 2 eggs.

So good.

Cold v.2

So I think I've come down with another cold.  I just had one about 3 weeks ago.  Sigh.

Today's eating journal:

Breakfast:  cheese quesadilla (stuffed with yesterday's fromage forte) with enchilada sauce, topped with a fried egg- earl grey tea.

Lunch:  Ramen noodles with home made seasonings (chicken base, soy, ginger, etc).

Dinner:  Jalapeno popper quiche and a strawberry/kale salad with balsamic vinaigrette.

Snack:  small snickerdoodle brownie

I'm not quite ready to share recipes for the cheese quesadilla with eggs or the jalapeno popper quiche.  I wasn't happy with the first versions.  After a little tweaking, I'll tell you all about them!

Spring Break- a great time for Fromage Fort!

Yay!  I know I started a blog eating diary, then promptly didn't post again for a week.  Believe it or not, there is a logical explanation for this.  I've been out of town, without access to the interwebz!  I figured I would hate it, but it turned into quite a restful experience.

Anyhoo- I will pick up where I left off.  The good news is, even though I haven't been blogging what I eat, I haven't had any fast food!

Today I had home made waffles, sausage and Earl Grey tea for breakfast, then a cheese quesadilla for lunch (filled with gruyere cheese).

When we got home earlier today, I realized I had a cheese drawer full of odds and ends of cheeses, all of which were very close to inedible.  Whilst trying to figure out what to do about them all, I remembered an old episode of Alton Brown's show "Good Eats."  In this particular episode, Alton uses up a bunch of cheeses by making Fromage Fort.  I figured I'd give it a try and see how I did.  He says you can use any cheeses.  I had these laying around:  gruyere, provolone, parmesan, Raspberry Bellavitano and Drunken Goat.  I used a Riesling because I didn't have any dry white wine around.

The spread turned out very well.  I predict we will be snacking on it happily for the rest of the week.  I'll take a pic of some later, when I feel like getting up off the couch!

Disgust

That's the only word I can think of to describe how I feel.

When I was younger, it seemed I had endless amounts of will power. I walked 3 miles a day after school and managed to understand and stick to reasonable portion sizes. Those days are gone.

In spite of my knowledge of cooking- and my militarism about food sourcing- I still manage to eat crap on a daily basis and talk myself out of most forms of exercise.

Maybe if I share what I eat daily on my blog, I will be shamed into making better choices. Lunch is my weakest time of day. I am usually hungry and aggravated. This is a perfect storm for an emotional eater like me.

Here's my first eating diary entry!

Breakfast- a juice glass of chocolate milk and a snicker doodle brownie ( in my defense it as made with unbleached organic flour!)

Lunch- beef taco salad from Taco Bell

Dinner- Tom Kha chicken soup and Tofu Pad Thai from Chang in Glenwood Springs. I shared green tea ice cream with Dev for dessert.

Dinner Last Night- BBQ Chicken Quesadilla

This dinner was a triumph over one of my biggest weaknesses when Dev is out of town- junk food.  I really wanted to order pizza and be done with it.  But a small voice inside me said "Don't do it."  I decided to make due with what I had.  And to be honest- it turned out to be one of the best quesadillas I've ever had.

I heated my small non-stick skillet over medium heat and added one large sliced shallot.  I let it caramelize for about 5 minutes, then chopped up the meat from on  roasted chicken leg quarter and added it to the carmelizing shallot.  I let those go for 5 more minutes, then dumped in about 1/8 a cup of bbq sauce (use whatever you have- I had Sweet Baby Ray's Spicy) and the juice of half a lemon.  I turned the heat on low and walked away.  Actually- "Diners, Drive-ins and Dives" was coming on and I like that show.  I let it sit and slowly bubble for probably 45 minutes.  Do you have to do that?  No.  Am I glad I did it?  Yes.  The bbq sauce got reduced and glazed the pieces of chicken.  There were little bits of crunchy, charred sauce on the edges.  Yum.

I took one 6" flour tortilla and put it in my cast iron skillet with already heated olive oil.  I put the quesadilla on the bottom of the skillet and sprinkled on a fair amount of grated mozzarella cheese.  I put the chicken mixture on that, and finished with more grated cheese.  I cooked it over medium heat for about 5 minutes, then flipped it and let it go until the cheese on the other side was melted.

I plated it up with half a sliced avocado.  The combination of the sweet, spicy, crunchy meat and tortilla with the creamy, cold avocado was life-changing.  Seriously- make this soon!