Fruit Loops

It's funny the things people respond to.

I update my Twitter with all sorts of randomness almost daily. Same with my Gchat and Facebook statuses. Only occasionally do I get responses, and even less often do they come pouring in. I think I'm going to start tracking which updates get the most.

Stats for this week.

Fruit Loops
Last night my power went out. That's not the reason I ate Fruit Loops for dinner. I decided on my dinner pre-power loss. That is the reason, however, that I ate three bowls of Fruit Loops, and the reason that my teeth ached with a pain only brought on by too much processed sugar. My admission to eating three bowls, and the hopes that a power loss made up for the over indulgence got quite the response on Facebook. I wonder if that's because people love Fruit Loops or because everyone can secretly relate to doing the same thing. I know I'm relieved to find out someone else has the same secrets and vices as me. It's good to not be alone in my three bowl Fruit Loops eating world.

Pie...uhm Food...Catch Up

I've decided on a new name for my bakery: Piebelly.

I've been baking like a crazy woman lately. It relieves stress, and there's been plenty of stress in my work life lately. Chocolate chip and pecan-cranberry brown sugar cookies, strawberry rhubarb crisp, rum-soaked banana bread, hummingbird cupcakes, sugar cream pie, triple berry pie...

The triple berry pie I'm calling my best pie yet and so I'm sharing it after the jump. It's the perfect summer berry pie: Strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, though I'm sure you could easily substitute raspberries in there. I usually use flour to juice up my filling, but my aunt mentioned tapioca, so I thought I'd give it a try. Must've worked well, since the pie was so damn good. I also made some vanilla whipped cream, just softly whipped, to plerp on top. Delicious dessert for a few days.

In a way, this pie was also a 717 pie (the 717 being the magical yellow house that we lived in, with a fourth roommate whom we no longer speak of, in Bloomington for two years). The pie bird, a little guy with a hole in his beak that you settle in the center of your filling and then place your top crust over, was a gift from Samantha. The cheerfully purple-dotted pie dish was a gift from Marnie. Maybe that's why it was so good!


My weekend will be filled with rhubarb thanks to Smitten Kitchen. Moist and sweet rhubarb coffee cake and little rhubarb tarts. This has most definitely been the spring of rhubarb.

Pig in Boots

Hello Spring!

If rainy spring days mean piggies in boots, then I'll take them all with a smile.

Eggs. Have we discussed my love of runny-yolk eggs? There's just something about the buttery texture of an egg yolk. Poached eggs, over easy eggs, soft-boiled eggs. As long as I can cut into the middle, watch the yellow center flow, and dip my toast in it, I'll take it. When we were little, my mom used to make us soft-boiled eggs. She'd put them in these little egg cups (only ours stood on two little feet wearing shoes and striped socks instead of a pedestal), crack off the top like a little hat, and sprinkle a little salt and pepper on the yolk-y inside. We'd eat them with these little plastic reusable spoons. 

                                             

I thought this was a normal egg dish until one Sunday morning I asked Adam if he wanted one and he looked at me like I was crazy. We have some different family food traditions (sugar cream pie, potato chip cookies, chocolate sprinkles on toast), and I figured this was just another one. Though I guess I should've been clued in by the fact that all of my family food traditions are different because they're European. 

So today I'm browsing this site I've found called Domestic Sluttery, and I see that they've posted something about egg cups and eggy soldiers (see the egg cups link above). Intrigued, I googled "what is an eggy soldier" and came up with this recipe. So in England (and probably Holland), my thing for soft-boiled eggs wouldn't be weird. 

Eggy Soldiers are super easy to make. Bring a pot of water (enough to cover an egg) to a boil. Gently slide in your egg. Let it cook for about four minutes. Turn off the stove, and, using a spoon, take the egg out of the water. Set it in an egg cup. Now the egg is really hot, so be careful on this next part. Using a butter knife, tap the egg about one inch from the top of the narrow end. When the egg shell cracks, continue to cut through the entire top of the egg. You'll end up cutting off a little hat. Salt and pepper the inside of the egg and enjoy with a slice of buttered toast, maybe toasted in a teapot toaster.

                                               

Soon I am going to bake my eggs in tomato sauce.

In The Kitchen

Somehow this weekend turned into a cooking/baking party.

Last weekend I made pizza dough. It was insanely easy and good and now I think I can make somewhat healthy pizza. I was then inspired to try making bread. I've always thought of bread as one of the hardest things to make because of my dad's bread baking stories. In coll

ege he was known for making bread that was literally as hard and dense as a rock. He loved it. Everyone else (i.e. my mom and aunt and uncle) thought he was crazy.

My friend Renée made this no-knead bread though and claimed it was incredibly easy. Then I stumbled upon this blog, Smitten Kitchen, and amazingly enough she includes the same recipe on her site. OK so I decided this was the one to be my first attempt into the world of bread.

Not going to lie, it was time consuming, but not in a labor intensive sort of way, just in a waiting sort of way. The dough has to rise for 12-18 hours and then again for 2 hours. So it requires some planning ahead. Buuuut after a half an hour in the oven it tastes so good! Chewy inside and crusty crust. The recipe can be found here. And below:)

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting

¼ teaspoon instant yeast

1¼ teaspoons salt

Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed.

1. In a large bowl combine flour, yeast and salt. Add 1 5/8 cups water, and stir until blended; dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let dough rest at least 12 hours, preferably about 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. Dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it; sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rest about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep dough from sticking to work surface or to your fingers, gently and quickly shape dough into a ball. Generously coat a cotton towel (not terry cloth) with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal; put dough seam side down on towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another cotton towel and let rise for about 2 hours. When it is ready, dough will be more than double in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least a half-hour before dough is ready, heat oven to 450 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in oven as it heats. When dough is ready, carefully remove pot from oven. Slide your hand under towel and turn dough over into pot, seam side up; it may look like a mess, but that is O.K. Shake pan once or twice if dough is unevenly distributed; it will straighten out as it bakes. Cover with lid and bake 30 minutes, then remove lid and bake another 15 to 30 minutes, until loaf is beautifully browned. Cool on a rack.

I also made some blondies, recipe found again on the Smitten Kitchen site, to take to my parents' house for dinner last night. I really want to put dried fruit of some sort in them but since I didn't have any I went for espresso and peanut butter (because peanut butter makes everything SO TASTY duh). Not bad.

Also got duck last week at Goose (ahaha duck and goose) because they didn't have chicken breasts. Never made duck before but I figured everything's good stirfried right? Satay sauce, duck, rice, onions, and green peppers. Did you know duck is fatty? And fat makes things greasy? It was greasy but good stirfry. The best part of dinner? FAT TIRE! Bought right here at my local Marsh!

Umbrellas

Yesterday was the rainiest of rainy Sundays. Big rain drops for most of the day, thunder, and lightening. The driveway turned into a giant pond. I'm sure some fish have taken up residence there. The weather was not conducive to dog walking, so poor Mira got two pees all day and got drenched in the process (so did I...). I kept hoping that we would get a window of no rain when I could take her out for a brief walk. No luck so around 9pm I broke down and got ready to take her out in the rain. As I put on her leash, Adam and I had this exchange.

Me: We're going to get so wet.

A: Well take an umbrella (said UMbrella) and then at least

you'll be dry.

Me: I don't own an umbrella.

A: What?! But you have like 40 scarves!

Me: When did scarves and umbrellas become synonymous?

Still no apartment pictures, but it's really awesome, trust me!

I do have pictures of this glorious giant strawberries n cream cupcake we made for Sam's

birthday. I baked, Adam decorated.

All things holiday

Thanksgiving is officially two weeks away. This means I can officially start getting excited about the holidays.

I plan to:
~decorate my apartment in a classy but excessive manner
~bake pie pie pie
~have a cookie extravaganza in which all of my friends will get cookies
~receive the 12 days of cookies newsletter from Food Network again this year
~have a holiday tea party at work
~wear my candy cane knee highs
~make a holidays playlist on itunes and listen to it at work
~dress my dog up like an elf

My friends and I plan to (and these were discussed last night at the Rosebuds and Megafaun show):
~have a secret santa
~have a holiday party....erm many holiday parties
~festive martinis and cider and eggnog

Oh, Megafaun? They are excellent. Check 'em out. Here, let me just help you out. They're from Raleigh/Durham!

Princess Puppies and Cupcakes

It's fall!! Does a season require capitalization? If so, then...It's Fall!! I celebrated by drinking lots of hot tea and making chai tea cupcakes. The cupcakes are pretty good. Not fabulous but the icing is phenomenal. Plus, I think they're pretty!

The recipe is from a cupcake book Sam let me borrow. 500 cupcake recipes. I foresee much baking in my future.

In other photo news, we played dress up with one of my boss's dogs last week. Toby makes a very lovely princess, don't you think? I hope we haven't contributed to any gender confusion on his part...though I have a feeling he's already confused since his dog buddy Yoda humps him.

Top 10

Turns out I have slowly been turning into something of a foodie. Most likely on the lower end of the foodie chain, but nonetheless, I'm there. (As a sidenote we got this book in at work, Foodie Babies Wear Bibs. I love this series of books. I got Eco Babies Wear Green for a friend. I want babies for the sole purpose of buying all these books for them.)

Anyway, I was searching for Indianapolis Dine, a food magazine, when I came across a message board post of Indy folks' top 10 reasons for loving this city. A well timed web find as I thought to myself earlier today that, in all reality, I do like Indianapolis, despite all the North Carolina moving talk I do. So I'm going to make my own top 10 list.

Reasons to Love Indianapolis
1. My parents. They live the perfect 20 minute distance from me. I can do laundry there, watch the occasional movie and have them watch Mira. Plus, I love my parents:)

2. My friends. I've found myself a wonderful little circle of great friends who I wouldn't trade for the world.

3. Downtown. I truly appreciate it. (and hate it at the same time.) I'm going to list a few things within this one that are downtown. The city market, the canal, White River State Park, yummy restaurants like Buggs, Yats, Hoaglins, Barcelona Tapas, Bazbeaux and Mojo's Coffee.

4. Cheap living. Really, I live in a super cute neighborhoood (true, it's surrounded by semi-sketchiness) in a cute and small but nice apartment for practically nothing.

5. Goose the Market. Hands down my favorite new place in town. Great local butcher/market. All Indiana meat and produce plus fresh fish on Fridays plus gelatto plus sandwiches and coffee. And the owners are super nice.

6. Not too far from Chicago, which, if I need a big city fix, is perfect. Oh plus Marnie and Mere live there.

7. The music scene. It's actually really good. Radio Radio! The Vogue usually has decent shows too. And Luna? Best record store ever.

8. The art scene. For realz. It's growing. First Friday downtown every month, one in Zionsville(!) now, lots of galleries on Mass Ave and in Fountain Square. Penrod, the IMA, the Herron Art School.

9. The weather. Yes I hate how muggy it can get in the summer and how cold it can get in the winter but the spring and fall more than make up for those less than pefect seasons. Besides I like a little sweat and some cozy sweaters.

10. I grew up here. My dad grew up here. We have roots and we know people. This is home and will always be home no matter where else I go. Even if North Carolina is my other home:)