Making up for Lost Time (or How I Tried Five New Recipes in Less Than a Week!)

I didn't purposely set out to try so many recipes in such a short period of time (#73), but that's what happened.  So here's how it turned out...

Every week I write out a to-do list for that week, so in an effort to remind myself to eat a little healthier, I put "eat fish" on the week before last's list.  I had some ocean perch in the freezer, so I opted to thaw that out.  And my friend has repeatedly talked about a sour cream and onion recipe that she uses for fish on a regular basis.  Unfortunately, I didn't have the actual recipe, so I tried to make it up on my own.  For starters, it took a lot longer to bake than I expected.  So I ended up having a two-part dinner... broccoli and yellow rice to start, fish about 30 minutes later.

Gotta say that I wasn't that impressed.  But that could be due to the type of fish I used or that I didn't have the recipe quite right.  I'll probably give it another chance now that I have the actual recipe, and next time I'll use the same type of fish she uses.

Next up was Nigella Lawson's One-Pan Sage-and-Onion Chicken and Sausage from her cookbook Feast.  It had an average five out of five stars rating on the Food Network site which is pretty amazing.  And I have to admit that I love Nigella... everything of hers that I've ever made has been incredible.  The only problem with this recipe was that it required cutting up a whole chicken.  I have never been able to cut up a chicken.  My mother tried to show me once, but I never seemed to be able to "feel the joints" and "just pop them apart".  Normally I would get around this by buying a chicken that was already cut up, but I decided to grow up and cut up my own chicken.  It felt like that scene in Julie and Julia when Julie gets herself all worked up over boning the duck!  I put it off until about 11:30 at night, but I finally got up the nerve and lo and behold I ended up with ten separate (and only slightly mutilated) pieces!  It went into a marinade of olive oil, onion, worcestershire sauce, sage, English mustard, pepper, and lemon.  I don't generally like lemon and often leave it out or substitute lime, but kept it in this time and I am so glad.  The lemon itself was so sweet that it smelled like fresh lemonade!  After the whole thing sat in the fridge overnight, it went into a pan with some sausages and fresh sage to bake.  It smelled soooo good!  And it tasted great.  I've been eating the leftovers all this week, and it has reheated really well.  The juices are perfect sopped up with a nice piece of bread, too.  Yum!

soaking up all those yummy flavors

getting ready to go in the oven

 

too bad this isn't a scratch-and-sniff blog!


 The same day that I made the chicken and sausages, I also made ricotta cheese which I talked about in a separate post.  The ricotta cheese led to a Rachael Ray recipe for pizza topped with chicken, ricotta, sun-dried tomatoes, broccoli, mozzarella, and fresh basil.  With the exception of keeping track of all the ingredients, it was fairly easy to put together.  I used grilled chicken strips and fresh pizza dough from Trader Joe's and the leftover broccoli from my fish dinner a few nights before. 

The broccoli seemed out of place at first, but the more I ate, the better I liked it.  The whole thing was very filling... one-and-a-half pieces were plenty.  But it reheated great in the toaster oven, and the leftovers tasted even better than fresh out of the oven.  I think this recipe is a keeper, too!

The last recipe was pretty simple and just added fresh dill and chives to the rest of the ricotta.  That made a spread on toasted ciabatta bread which was served with greens in a little dressing (my favorite Trader Joe's Tuscan dressing).  I forgot to take a picture, but it made a nice light lunch.  Very fresh. 

So that's the saga of my week of cooking.  Without even meaning to, I think I've made up for all the months that I skipped last year.  It's gotten me in the mood to cook, though, so who knows what might be next?

Cheese!

Let me start by saying I love cheese.  Cheese is probably my favorite food.  When I was young, and I mean 5 or 6 years old, my favorite present was a gift certificate to Hickory Farms.  I would go taste all the different kinds of cheeses (this was back when there were actualy Hickory Farms stores), and then select little tiny pieces of two or three different kinds.  I could work a five or ten dollar gift certificate!  (but I laugh thinking of what those poor store clerks had to put up with!)

I love cheese.  So this is why, when I ran across a recipe for making your own ricotta cheese, I got very excited.  I can't say that ricotta is a cheese that I have any particular love for, but being able to make any kind of cheese is totally cool.  And that's why I put it on my list (#21). 

Here is the recipe (courtesy of The Barefoot Contessa and Food Network):

Ingredients

• 4 cups whole milk
• 2 cups heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon kosher salt
• 3 tablespoons good white wine vinegar

Directions

• Set a large sieve over a deep bowl. Dampen 2 layers of cheesecloth with water and line the sieve with the cheesecloth.
• Pour the milk and cream into a stainless-steel or enameled pot such as Le Creuset. Stir in the salt. Bring to a full boil over medium heat, stirring occasionally. Turn off the heat and stir in the vinegar. Allow the mixture to stand for 1 minute until it curdles. It will separate into thick parts (the curds) and milky parts (the whey).
• Pour the mixture into the cheesecloth-lined sieve and allow it to drain into the bowl at room temperature for 20 to 25 minutes, occasionally discarding the liquid that collects in the bowl. The longer you let the mixture drain, the thicker the ricotta. (I tend to like mine on the thicker side, but some prefer it moister.) Transfer the ricotta to a bowl, discarding the cheesecloth and any remaining whey. Use immediately or cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate. The ricotta will keep refrigerated for 4 to 5 days.

It was so easy! 

watched milk takes a while to boil

 

curds starting to form

 

letting the whey drain

it's cheese!

I didn't have any kosher salt, and I didn't exactly measure what I used.  It could have used a little more salt in my opinion, but all in all it was good!  Very creamy and very fresh tasting.  I ended up with more than two cups worth, so part of it went on a pizza and part of it got mixed with fresh herbs and became a spread.  Yum!  The whole process was totally fascinating, especially watching the curds start to form as soon as the vinegar was added.  And then seeing the whey drain off and leave something that looked like actual cheese was pretty amazing.  I am definitely doing this again sometime!

Why do things have to be so difficult?

January 5 - changing windshield wipers

This is my picture from last Thursday, which was my day off for working this past weekend.  The weather was gorgeous and after running some errands, I remembered as I was pulling into the garage that I had bought new windshield wipers over a month ago which I kept forgetting about.  I realized that I really needed to take advantage of the nice weather and go ahead and change the wipers before I got to the point of really wretched wipers, freezing rain or snow, and trying to change them with gloves on (which is what I ended up doing last year!).

Now I have been replacing my own windshield wipers since I was in college, but with my swiss cheese memory, I can never remember from time to time exactly how it works.  I did buy the same brand as last time thinking that this should make the process a little easier.  So I started with the passenger side, opened the package, pulled out the little instruction paper and studied the paper and studied my wiper and studied the paper and studied the wiper and studied the paper and studied the wiper.  Flipped the wiper over, held down the little tab, popped the old wiper off, and slid the new wiper on.  Success!  I confidently moved over to the driver side, opened the package, pulled out the new wiper, briefly consulted the little paper, tried to flip the wiper over... and came to a screeching halt.  The wiper wouldn't flip.  I studied the paper, then studied the wiper, then studied the paper, then studied the wiper, tried to flip it again, studied the paper, studied the wiper, looked at the passenger side wiper, studied the package, tried to flip it again (and again and again, because you never know when it might just decide to work!), and collapsed across the hood of my car.

I am not a stupid person.  I pride myself on being able to problem-solve and work out complicated situations.  But the damn wiper wouldn't flip over!!!  I ended up breaking the old wiper apart, so that just the bracket was left attached to the arm and just yanking on it so hard that somehow I must have hit that magic angle and the whole thing slid out.  I was so shocked that I just stood there for a minute, and that's when I noticed that it was facing the wrong direction.  In some bizarre twist of auto mechanics, I had managed to install the bracket upside down last time!  The new one popped right on just like it should (right side up this time) like it was just mocking me.  Stupid windshield wipers.  Bah!  I know that I was out there for more than 45 minutes.  It was ridiculous.  Why do things have to be so difficult?

Pictures

So I officially started my 365-day photo challenge (#37) on December 31st.  It seemed appropriate since that was the one-year mark for starting the whole 101 in 1001 project.  But, obviously, you have not seen any photos on here!  Well, I was trying to figure out how best to archive the photos and make sure that it was easy for anyone who was interested to see them and follow the flow of the days.  I initially started out with Picasa and within an hour or two decided that I hated it.  I also accidentally deleted a bunch of pictures off my blog and had to repost them.  It was not a good time.  Picasa is officially not part of my happy place.

So, I have been searching the web for another site.  This resulted in my opening accounts on several different sites, posting a couple of pictures, deleting the pictures, and cancelling my accounts.  I went back to Picasa and this time noticed that just in the course of the past year, I have already used up 16% of the allotted free storage space!  Well that was a shocker, and I quickly realized that there was no way I could post 365 photos plus all the other photos that I would normally post just as part of the regular blog without completely filling up the space.  And I had already read about someone else's nightmare story where they lost all the photos off their blog because of that exact problem.  I must have my camera set for a high resolution, so most of my photos are kind of large on the memory side.

Finally, this evening, I came across another article that mentioned Wordpress and the fact that they give you 3GB of free storage space (compared the 1GB on Blogger/Picasa -- because, yes, they are tied together, even if you didn't realize it, which I did not).  After giving it a trial run, the uploading process is definitely faster on Wordpress, and it's much easier to add captions.  So the result is that I have created a separate blog on Wordpress to be used strictly for the 365 day photo challenge.  As it stands right now, each post will be titled with the date of the photo and have a brief caption.  Then if I want to tell more of a story about a particular photo, I will post it here and blog about it.  Confused yet?  Welcome to my world!  At any rate, here is the link to my new companion blog...  http://thelist365photos.wordpress.com/.  If anything changes, I'll be sure to let you know!  Oh, and feel free to post comments about the photos on either blog.