All Purpose

I’ve got some experiments to catch on…

First, I made my own chicken stock a few weeks ago and it turned out pretty great I think!

I also made carnitas! I got the idea here, and boy they turned out great. It took a lot longer to get the the liquid cooked off, but I did accidentally stir it during the first couple of hours. I will definitely be making this again soon.

I also wanted to make homemade tortillas, but that was a bust. I made them too wet and couldn’t get them to come out of the tortilla press, even with saran wrap everywhere. So good thing we had our winter mainstay in stock.

1 Comment | In: baking, cooking, experiments | tags: carnitas, chicken, pork, stock, tortillas. | #

So it’s been a few weeks, sorry about that but I really will be making an effort to post here once a week. It should help keep me accountable for all my post 9 to 5 activities.

So what’s going on right now is we’re creeping ever closer to the demolition/construction of the house. We have a builder, but we need to finalize and sign the contract, but first we need him to look over our last changes to the plans and update his bid and then I’m sure we may need to revise some things after that to ensure the budget is in good shape. So we’ve got those three steps and we’re also trying to get the loan process started and going as quickly as possible.

Then there’s the whole where are we going to live during all this situation. We actually have a really good prospect that’s literally right around the corner from us, but we’ll have to see if the timing works out. If it does work out then we’ll definitely need some storage since the house is 200 sq ft smaller than our current house, but at least we’ll be close to the house during the build and can keep an eye on things.

I’m also really trying to get serious about this whole idea of a craft based business. I had pledged that I would begin working on my craft work if my regular work was slow and I started that and have taken it very seriously, but I got pretty busy at work from late October until this week really so I have only been able to make a few jewelry pieces so far.

On the weaving front I got 5 commissions from Ravelry and when I’m done with those I can do a few more pieces for the store opening.

I’m hoping to launch the store in mid December, maybe. I don’t really know how much stuff I need to start with so I’m kind of at a loss.

I’m feeling really low energy now that Thanksgiving is over. I know I need to finish this last commission and start making more jewelry. I have a ton of ideas for other accessories that would be quick for me to make, but I’m just. Blah. I will plow through though, I’m sure it may just take me a little longer to finish this last scarf. Then on to my own ideas, which will be much more exciting!

The one thing I am motivated about is cooking more and changing my diet. I have decided to try “clean” eating, and really it’s not a big stretch for me since we don’t eat a ton of processed stuff, but since I seem to still have lingering issues with some foods and I’ve been told I need to cleanse again and retest every season to get to the root of my ongoing allergy issues I figured this would be a good stepping stone and then if I find food issues hopefully I’ll be better equipped to deal with them if I’m already basically making most stuff myself. I think going off the refined sugar will be good for me too.

So one change is that I’m going to start eating a salad for lunch every day. I’ve decided to try the Salad in a Jar approach. I don’t have a FoodSaver (yet) though and I need to make my meals for work as grab and go as possible so I’ll be using some tips I picked up over at the Big Red Kitchen as well. I did pretty well this week and had salad 3 out of 4 days since I decided to start this on Tuesday.

I also decided to make my own chicken stock for the first time. This is a key point in clean eating, to make your own stuff so you control the ingredients and I’ve been thinking I should do this for a long time. I mean I eat a roasted chicken like every week so seriously I should be making my own stock. In fact I should have done a post just about this since it is an experiment in the kitchen. I’m rusty with this whole blogging thing I guess. I’ll get better though.

No Comments | In: cooking, experiments, life, ravelry, tangledart, weaving | | #

So I’ve been doing this cleanse thing since the beginning of May. It’s been very interesting and challenging. Basically, I spent a week eating veggies, fruit, and select grains while drinking green juice every day. Then the real work began and one by one I began adding foods back into my diet to test. It’s two months later and I’m still not finished with my reintegration stage. I’ve got several key things back into my diet (dairy, fish, chicken, turkey, tomatoes, nuts, garlic), but I’ve still got a lot of stuff left to test and I’ve got some things that didn’t work out so well.

Anyway, I realized (too late) that this would be have been good blog fodder but I had a lot going on and missed that opportunity. I will try to document the things I have left to test though since I still do have a ways to go and it feels as though the process has gotten murky lately

So I added gluten (second try) on Tuesday and my first meal was cooked greens (stir fried in olive oil with garlic and olives) with whole wheat orzo and finished with a dusting of parmesan. It was delicious, but I was looking for something else.

The day before I added gluten I happened to surf on over to Smitten Kitchen and see her recipe for Cherry Pie Crumble and I knew I wanted to make that during my gluten test. So I made the crust on Tuesday night and then after procuring a cherry/olive pitter from Target I made the pie last night.

Normally, since I’m still on the cleanse, I would have substituted the sugar with agave but since I haven’t done any baking in forever and I’ve never baked with agave I decided to just go with the recipe. In hindsight, I should have gotten some raw, organic sugar at least to use since it’s less processed and I know that refined sugar can sometimes be processed with corn syrup and corn is a big no-no for me (it failed its test big time).

I also could not find sour cherries, perhaps this is an East coast thing? I got regular cherries and cut the sugar I used in the filling to a little over 1/4 of a cup. I also used arrowroot instead of corn starch.

I also cut the sugar used in the crumble in half, since I was trying to mitigate the use of sugar and any side effects it might have.

Overall, it turned out really good, it had a nice cherry flavor without being too sweet and the crust was awesome (I did use the vodka trick). When I cut into it it was a bit messier than I wanted, but I may not have let it cool enough or maybe the arrowroot didn’t thicken as much as cornstarch would (more experiments needed).

I did miss at least one pit though, I think I’d probably be eliminated from Top Chef for this, but hey I wouldn’t complain about making a dessert.

No Comments | In: baking, experiments | tags: cherry, cleanse, gluten, pie. | #

I’ve been trying to force myself to do a little more cooking and to try some new things in the kitchen. This is probably the second Experiments in the Kitchen, but my first foray (croissants from scratch) happened before I had a name for it.

My second experiment is learning the art of the soufflé. I got Mastering the Art of French Cooking for Christmas this year and that’s one of the main things I wanted to really try. Plus we went to this amazing salon de souffé called Rise while we were in Dallas for my birthday and now I’m hooked on soufflés. The non-dairy thing was stopping me though, but since I took a break from no dairy at Easter it turned out to be a perfect time to try soufflés!

So I actually didn’t use a MtAoFC recipe for my soufflé because I really wanted to do something that was light on the cheese and milk. I used the Goat Cheese and Herb Soufflé recipe from Epicurious.

I halved the recipe and made some other changes, like WAY less Parmesan and goat cheese and used So Delicious Coconut Milk instead of regular milk. For the record, this kind of coconut milk is not like the canned coconut milk you find, it’s much thinner like the consistency of 2% or skim milk and does not taste like coconut at all. I use the cream (non-flavored) in my coffee everyday now.

So when I cook I like to get everything ready and then do the cooking. So I get everything set up and chopped and I might mix some things then everything is ready to go. I guess I watch too many cooking shows, maybe?

I prepped the dishes with maybe a teaspoon of Parmesan for dusting the pans and just a bare minimum of butter to cut the dairy content. Then I got the base ready to go.

I used probably a little less than a full cup of the goat cheese and I barely put any Parmesan into the base. I got the eggs to the right place but when I added the eggs to the base I think the base might have been slightly too hot. Everything seemed fine though and while the soufflés baked I made a Spinach Salad with Raspberry Champagne Vinaigrette.

The dressing was a little tart since I left out the sugar, will remember that next time and add some agave nectar. The soufflés did puff, but not like they were supposed to, but I blame the fact that the dishes I used were a bit too big for the amount of soufflé. I’ll try again soon with smaller dishes.

They were delicious though, really yummy and I’d definitely make this again or some other soufflé variation. So this was a good experiment, but I have not mastered this yet so I’ll be trying again soon.

No Comments | In: cooking, experiments | | #