when he's away...I have churros

When you take Zac out of the picture, my life consists of food network, frozen dinners, looooong naps, unnecessary and frequent trips to the grocery store, and cleaning. I am freakishly obsessed with keeping my kitchen clean and since my husband has been out of town three times in the past month my kitchen has been deep cleaned and reorganized three times in the last month. A little crazy, I know.
This time, I branched out and actually cooked something...
Last night, as I laid in bed utterly bored out of mind I kept on thinking about the creme filled churro we had a couple days ago. While he was in Minneapolis, some coworkers introduced me to El Azteca, a beautiful Mexican restaurant in Provo. I had never been there and I was excited to expand my food experiences...The only authentic tacos I had ever had before were on the petite side so I ordered coconut shrimp tacos, carne asada tacos, al pastor tacos, carnitas, and french fries...I blame my coworkers who had been there before for neglecting to warn me that these tacos were going to be, and this is the only word I can think of to describe them,  massive. If I had 3 children and Zac were home, there would be enough food to feed us all and then some because they were that big. Anyways, as I was eating what seemed to be the largest Mexican meal of my life I caught a glimpse of the dessert menu plastered on the wall. And there it was: the creme filled churro. I am a sucker for deep fried things but nothing surpasses my love for creme filled churros. It't just not the same without the filling. I told him about my need to try to their churros the moment after I picked him up from the airport, and because he knows food is the way to my heart, we went. El Azteca's is quite delectable. You bite into the cinnamon sugar dipped cloud of deep fried donut and you literally feel like you are floating, and the creme! It oozes in your mouth and it's an explosion of silky, velvety, so-bad-for-you-but-so-good-richness. As I was in bed, my mouth was watering as I thought about those churros. So I got up and made some churros minus the creme. It was not nearly as good as what I have had before and i realized half way through making my pate a choux dough that I really should have just waited for the real thing or drove to the grocery store for a mix. But, I kept on, and every 4 inch fritter I ate was so worth the 691 calories allrecipes.com said they were worth.

So here it is my top three churro eateries:

1.Yeah, I talked about El Azteca, but as good as those churros are they are still not as good as the ones at La Churreria. It was originally Nolita's but has recently turned into La Churreria and I am dying to eat at the redone bakery. Having a churro from this place is like being on a getaway to Spain. When I went, I would get the churros for two and force who ever I was with to also get churros also in case I needed more or ran out of dipping sauce. Creme filled and dulce de leche filled were the best.

2.Dougnut Plant, also in New York. This place is dirt cheap, and amazing. Churros are only a buck fifty. A nice upgrade from Sam's or Costco's. They are simple and perfect. Super flaky, and oh my heavens the goat milk caramel sauce is unbelievable. Trust me, take someone on a date here and he or she will be hooked...not necessarily on you, but definitely the churro ;)

3. Malecon Port Churro lady...So while on our honey moon, we spent a couple days by the boardwalk in Malecon. One of those days, we indulged on some vendor food, one of which was the churro. No creme, no caramel sauce just a churro. And it was good.

Kitchen mishaps...and really good ribs.

Today started off with a trip to Walmart. I had initially planned on making enchiladas since our tortillas were drying out, but when I saw the slab of ribs on sale I could not resist. These babies looked beautiful and had a great fat to meat ratio. Thankfully, Zac did not stop me.

While Zac worked on his medical school applications all day I slaved over our memorial day meal. We had ribs, corn and sugar snap pea succotash, watermelon, rolls, and key lime pie, my favorite!
A couple mishaps arose though...
Mishap #1
I wanted to make the pie look pretty, but my pastry bag exploded on me while i was piping whip cream stars so I succumbed to the good old plop and spread method.

it went from pretty (as pretty as my extremely limited star piping skills could take me)

to major mid-pie explosion

to salvaged goodness

Mishap #2

 There were initially going to be mashed potatoes but I completely massacred those. I added some butter and cream and they were a bit on the thick side, so I thought about it and saw that I had just a little bit of milk left and I just wanted room in my fridge so i dumped it all in the potatoes thinking it would absorb it and thicken...I ended up with potato soup...so I tried salvaging it by adding potatoes I heated in the microwave...didn't work. I looked frantically for some instant mash potatoes...except as I was looking through pantry a memory flashed through my head of when I told Zac I refused to have "fake" potato flakes in my kitchen. As a last resort, I opened a box of dehydrated potato au gratin (which had to have been leftover from Zac's college food pile)...needless to say it turned into a big mess. So I made some rice instead. (And since we are poor college students, I have to figure out how I am going to use the potatoes for dinner tomorrow).

Mishap #3

Super Tart lemonade. I like zing, but my meyer lemon lemonade was over the top sour...When I reviewed the recipe i had switched the water to lemon juice ratio! So...we had ginger ale instead, and I will fix the lemonade for tomorrow.

Mishap # 4...I only put one layer of foil the my pan I baked the ribs in so it was a nightmare to clean...which is why I just threw the pan away (good thing I bought them at the dollar store).
After the craziness we had dinner and it was delicious. The ribs were so good and the sauce I used to baste them in was great, except I can't remember half the things I put in it.

Before

After

I guess you could say apart from grocery shopping all I really did for the day was cook and eat. A dangerous and common combination since I am not taking classes and it happens almost everyday.

Bon Appétit

Here some pictures from the day of cooking, and eating.

It is so worth it to make this from scratch

The secret to keeping my ribs moist

Cast Iron Skillets make the best roast chicken

Lately, I have been obsessed with cast iron cooking...I've never actually made anything apart from cornbread and steak in a cast iron skillet but Michael Symon (Iron chef/Lolita executive chef) convinced me that my kitchen was incomplete without one. Tonight I made roast chicken in our 11" cast iron skillet, it was pretty darn good, but still a far second from my grandpa's crispy and moist cornish hens.

A little funny aside, I initially wanted to butterfly the chicken and remove the backbone, but that went terribly south (especially since my strongest kitchen sheers snapped after the first attempted snip). I hoped and prayed it would still cook evenly... thankfully it did!

Symon said the secret to crispy skin and moist meat is consistent basting...and so every 20 minutes or so I opened that scorching, hot, 425 degree oven to baste away. His advice was completely inspired.

And yes, I scooped the fat that dripped from the chicken and cooked the potatoes in it. Sinfully savory and luscious. 

If I were in New York I would get my roast chicken fix at Pio Pio. Have you been? If not, repent and amend. You MUST taste their chicken. It comes with this green sauce that is fantastic. Probably in my top three places to eat in the world. My family would buy two whole roast chickens when it was Pio Pio night. One for my mom and dad to share, and another for my brother and I to share. I think I may have gotten the best deal because my brother hardly eats enough food to pass as enough for the recommended portion size....so I usually got most of the chicken. It was perfect. Add some fried plantains on the side and it was heaven. 

The next cast iron kitchen item I need is a stove stop griddle.... and an iron press weight for the day I can finally butterfly a chicken and make it like Booby Flay does in his Bold America Cookbook...which, if you haven't scanned or read, you should. It is life changing. 

Bon Appétit 

Bean night...that's how we pay for olive oil

In the past eight months of marriage I've spent more money on groceries than I ever have in my entire life. Take my bottle of olive oil for example. The olives are hand picked and certified from Tuscany, and while this may mean nothing to anyone else, the olives are cold pressed! Cold pressed! My excitement rests on this very fact. Allow me to explain, olives are harvested in the winter. The best oil pressers will keep their olives cold as the oil is extracted to prevent any degradation of flavor and quality. This kind of oil which Homer rightly described as "liquid gold" is rich, with grassy and slightly spicy and citrus tones. It costs about 25 bucks for every 250 mL (8.4 oz). Yeah, I know expensive. But so worth it. If our apartment ever goes on fire we are not leaving that bottle of olive oil behind!

Anyways, back to the beans. We have a pretty strict (college student) budget, yet somehow I convinced Zac that expenses for recreation, miscellaneous, clothing, and even emergency fund should either contribute to or completely be dissolved into the groceries fund.  Marriage has brought out the food obsessed person within me. It has made me want to cook everything from scratch even though I am sure children will change that desire soon after their arrival. But, most of all it has made it so that the highlight of my day, everyday, is based on whether Zac wants seconds for dinner. Food expenditures have been a little high lately to fulfill the daily high I get from cooking dinner. It gets a little crazy when I rather buy a pound of chantarelles or a 25lb. bag of flour than go out for the night to the movies or something else most people think is so much more worth the money. So, I've compromised. I get to buy ingredients if once a week we have a rice and beans night. It's genius. These nights dinner costs about 30 cents a person. Which means we will probably have more than one bean night a week in the near future since I have a duck project coming up.

To be honest, I did NOT want to do have bean nights. But Zac convinced me that I could still make something I was pleased with. So we are giving it a try. We've done lima beans, black beans, pinto beans, red kidney beans, but my favorite is the lentil. Technically its not a bean...but both are seeds from specific legumes, and both are super rich in protein, fiber, and nutrients.

Lentils with carrots is so good and simple. It really is an upgrade to most rice and bean dishes I've made, which really isn't saying very much since I'm not very creative on these nights. If you're looking for a money saving, tasty, vegetarian meal this is the one!

2 cloves of minced garlic
1/4 onion
1 Tbsp. Olive oil
1 cup green lentils
1-2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste
2 cups chicken/beef/vegetable stock ( I buy mine at dollar stores, best deal ever)
1-3cups (as needed) water
3 medium sized carrots - diced
parsley to garnish

Soak lentils 30 min

saute garlic and diced onions in olive oil until translucent (careful not to burn garlic)
add bay leaf, season salt and pepper

add lentils and stock, let simmer at low boil for about 12 min, then add the carrots

allow to cook on medium low for another 15 min, adding water as needed.
Taste for some quality control and add s&p as needed.
When it is done, it should be tender and most of the liquid absorbed.
Serve over rice and feed to hungry husbands!

This meal cost less than 1.50 and yielded a significant amount of left overs!
My mom would have made the lentils with ham hocks and spinach...now theres an idea.
Bon Appétit

A night of kitchen organization

Going without school for the spring term has been SO nice. Yes, I have gained another 2lbs. due to the ridiculous amount of time on my hands for eating, and cooking, and snacking, and grocery shopping. We are exercising four times a week so that is helping tons. Zac spends about twenty minutes running hardcore on the treadmill before he lifts weights while I am on the elliptical. It's definitely not as intense as running, but my 35 minutes on the elliptical allows me to burn 200 calories towards my inevitable after dinner splurges.

Anyways, back to the subject of this post. KITCHEN ORGANIZATION. These past few days, Zac has locked himself in our study to take practice MCAT exams. Sometimes he goes to the library to study, which is impressive considering we normally avoid the library during the semester. Tonight, he had a practice test, and I had 3 hours and 30 minutes to organize. My kitchen has been a disaster for the past few weeks and has been screaming for some spring cleaning.

This is what was accomplished:

Refrigerator and Freezer cleaning/organization and inventory. (There is usually an inventory list in the kitchen to avoid any food wastage, but this had not been done for weeks!)

All the cupboards cleaned and reorganized

Spice rack moved from my magnetic easel board to the side of my fridge (this was my favorite change)

Pantry dusted, cleaned and reorganized

Microwave cleaned

Dishes washed and put away

Baking canisters for flour, white sugar, brown sugar refilled

Floor swept and mopped
Snack cupboards reorganized (I finally got all of our snack stuff off the counters)

It felt so good to get all this done. But my body is sore. For one, weight lifting has made most movements painful and uncomfortable. Two, cleaning is hard work! As for as organization is concerned, everything I have is alphabetized so it's easier to find and return things. Some people call it OCD, but I think it's the best time saving, ingredient finding, kitchen habit anyone can have. That said, I do know many great kitcheneers who have no rhyme or reason to their kitchen organization, and are still in total control of their kitchen. I am not nearly as coordinated to do so without the ABCs. Someday, I dream that I will have enough cupboard and kitchen space to have designated (contained) areas for things like...olive oils, vinegars, finishing salts, grains, etc. Until then, I am very content with out kitchen.

Trip to Home Depot

My husband was not expecting that our trip to Home Depot was going to turn into a kitchen shopping adventure. And, I don't think he would use that word to describe it either. Earlier this week I watched dozens of videos on croissant making and almost all of them had a pastry marble board for kneading their doughs. Julia Child had convinced me that without one, my croissant baking dreams would be unreachable. So, I looked some up and soon realized I could only afford marble tiles, which run about 1.50 to 15.00 dollars/square foot. My budget was at the lower end of that spectrum and my slab of marble cost 2.97! I was pretty psyched. It's a little smaller than I would have wanted but for now I am sure it will do just fine.

I have also been looking for a storage unit to go under my kitchen counter with all the baking pans and cupcake molds I own. Just this week I got some sweet cake pans from DI. They were overcrowding the kitchen counter, and if their is one thing I cannot stand in the kitchen it is clutter. It was completely unexpected but as we walked through the storage aisle and found a unit that was the perfect size (and price). This was not how Zac thought our wedding gift card to Home Depot would be spent. He loves building things and I am sure he was expecting this trip to be a testosterone building experience. It was not at all, and like the wonderful husband he is, he was okay with that. This picture may say other wise, but trust me, that pout on his face just shows how excited he is to assemble my new kitchen unit.

My excitement was expressed a little differently...

A few more hours researching croissants and I will make an attempt at it. 

Ole!

Happy day after Cinco De Mayo. Yesterday I had to work all day so our festivities did not start until after six. We cooked dinner together which makes it a very special occasion since we hardly cook together. I work at the BYU bookstore. Today was extraordinary because I sat at a register that only got about 5 customers all day for 8 straight hours (with a half hour lunch break in between of course). It would have been excruciatingly terrible had it not been for the shelves of cookbooks that surrounded me. I rummaged through a few Mexican cookbooks and decided we would have chili and cumin spiced lime chicken with rice and beans. I called Zac during my break to ask him to take out the chicken for defrosting. The rest of the day was spent preparing a lesson for the 5 year olds at primary, meal planning and cookbook reading at my register. Some serious cleaning and lysol wiping of all the crevices there may have also took place, multiple times. So, time passed by quite nicely.

When I got home we made dinner, ate, and watched the Real Salt Lake game against New England. I am not much of a soccer person, but I am slowly enjoying it more and more. Yes, I tend to have minor panic attacks when everyone in Zac's family is cheering and I am not sure why, but it is a sport I am genuinely beginning to enjoy. Offsides is still foreign to me, but I just act like I am mad at the ref when Zac is mad and it disguises my confusion very well.

The Chicken turned out really well... so i will share the spice blend

1 teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon cayenne peper
1 teaspoon chili powder
1 teaspoon cumin
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Rub it on the chicken (we used boneless skinless chicken breasts that were about 1/2 an inch thick, and if there is any rub left I just toss that in with the rice and beans). Cook on medium high heat for 3 min. Flip and squeeze half a lime on both halves. Allow to cook for another 2-3 min. Flip, squeeze remaining half on chicken. Take of heat. Let rest for about 4-5 min. Slice. Bon Appetit.