The Abby/Betty Project is over, and I actually have become pretty good about cleaning up my mess. Please visit my new blog at fluffscakes.tumblr.com.
Thanks for reading!
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Monday, January 2, 2012
New Year's Weekend Cooking
We spent part of our New Year's weekend with my family back home. When we got back I started cooking! I made hoppin' John for New Year's luck (we had cole slaw for prosperity). I started to make a pound cake for dessert and realized we were out of vanilla, which ended up being a happy accident-- I subbed almond extract and dried cherries and made a wonderful cherry almond pound cake! Today I made TV dinners--Salisbury steak (Shane's TV dinner fave), carrot-potato mash, creamed spinach, and apple-cherry crisp. The idea and recipes were out of this month's issue of Martha Stewart Living. Enjoy the pictures!! :)
Thursday, December 29, 2011
starts tweeting!
Follow @abbybettyblog on Twitter! I have a lot of new ideas and I'm hoping to start blogging more often/regularly. Get excited! :D
Wednesday, December 28, 2011
fails to plan
I am back to not knowing exactly how to plan so we have enough healthy food for all of our meals for the week.
I started with meal -planning myself. This left me with way too much or too little food, leftovers that were too repetitive... With two people it is hard to cook four meals in a week. You will end up with way too many leftovers unless you do some major recipe-halving magic. If you cook two or three meals a week and try to eat leftovers, trust me, you will want something else by the time Thursday and Friday roll around.
I thought that http://www.thefresh20.com/ was the answer. We tried this for a while. This is a GREAT concept, but the recipes just aren't very tasty. After being burned several times-- buying all of the ingredients and making meals that were just too unappealing to eat--we ended up eating canned spaghetti sauce on pasta or going out for fast food more nights than I would have liked. I think for something like this to work it would have to be a lot more tailored to the preferences of the family (sounds a lot like meal-planning myself).
Lately I have been trying to get back to the gym. Until this week with a nasty cold, I have been pretty good about it, dutifully making the gym my first stop on the way home from work. This leaves me energized and feeling good about myself, but STARVING when I get home at 6 or7 p.m. and in no shape to whip up a home-cooked meal. We fell into our old rut of frozen entrees and eating out, so I tried http://www.myfitfoods.com/. This is a great crutch for weeks when you can't cook. It's pretty tasty, healthy food. It is reasonably priced ($60 bought us a week's worth of healthy dinners for way less than we would have paid eating out), but the food is a little too spicy and a little TOO healthy to be our everyday routine.
Here I am complaining, so let me use this four-step plan from this month's O Magazine:
1. Pushback: Planning myself week after week isn't working, and the easy ways out aren't tailored to our food preferences. They are too overly healthy for us to eat every day. I'm not interested in deprivation--we're not trying to lose weight, just be healthier and eat real food.
2. Possibilities: The most outrageously awesome possibility I can think of is having my own cooking classes (or maybe even a TV show!) for newlyweds and other newly grownups who need to learn to cook healthy everyday comfort food. It would be my full time job to plan out healthy meals, I would become awesome at it, and I would probably have a staff to cook my own recipes for me when I didn't feel like it ;).
3. Preferences: It seems like I prefer having the time to become more awesome at this. And I probably do. I think the secret is concentrating on the time that I WANT to spend cooking (and there is a lot of it) so we'll have something to eat when I DON'T want to cook. It could be a whole new project...
4. Pinpoints: These would be the little ways in which I could make the above happen. I can think of a couple:
a. spend time perfecting a few seasonal meal plans (3 each for winter, spring, summer, fall would cover a whole year!) that cater to our preferences. I could publish these here... maybe with some step-by-step instructions for basic techniques. The best way to learn to cook is to COOK! I have learned so much through Abby/Betty and this would be a good new project.
b. spend time when I do have time to cook making some easy, frozen, heat-uppable healthy meals for us. I like an idea from this month's issue of Martha Stewart Living (not yet available online that I can find) for making TV dinners to freeze--salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, spinach, berry crisp. This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say healthy comfort food. It's healthy enough (carrots, spinach) but comfort-foodie enough (because this girl grew up on meat and taters and I'll never feel satisfied by a diet of all steamed veggies and quinoa!!)
New project in the works for Abby?? Maybe...
I started with meal -planning myself. This left me with way too much or too little food, leftovers that were too repetitive... With two people it is hard to cook four meals in a week. You will end up with way too many leftovers unless you do some major recipe-halving magic. If you cook two or three meals a week and try to eat leftovers, trust me, you will want something else by the time Thursday and Friday roll around.
I thought that http://www.thefresh20.com/ was the answer. We tried this for a while. This is a GREAT concept, but the recipes just aren't very tasty. After being burned several times-- buying all of the ingredients and making meals that were just too unappealing to eat--we ended up eating canned spaghetti sauce on pasta or going out for fast food more nights than I would have liked. I think for something like this to work it would have to be a lot more tailored to the preferences of the family (sounds a lot like meal-planning myself).
Lately I have been trying to get back to the gym. Until this week with a nasty cold, I have been pretty good about it, dutifully making the gym my first stop on the way home from work. This leaves me energized and feeling good about myself, but STARVING when I get home at 6 or7 p.m. and in no shape to whip up a home-cooked meal. We fell into our old rut of frozen entrees and eating out, so I tried http://www.myfitfoods.com/. This is a great crutch for weeks when you can't cook. It's pretty tasty, healthy food. It is reasonably priced ($60 bought us a week's worth of healthy dinners for way less than we would have paid eating out), but the food is a little too spicy and a little TOO healthy to be our everyday routine.
Here I am complaining, so let me use this four-step plan from this month's O Magazine:
1. Pushback: Planning myself week after week isn't working, and the easy ways out aren't tailored to our food preferences. They are too overly healthy for us to eat every day. I'm not interested in deprivation--we're not trying to lose weight, just be healthier and eat real food.
2. Possibilities: The most outrageously awesome possibility I can think of is having my own cooking classes (or maybe even a TV show!) for newlyweds and other newly grownups who need to learn to cook healthy everyday comfort food. It would be my full time job to plan out healthy meals, I would become awesome at it, and I would probably have a staff to cook my own recipes for me when I didn't feel like it ;).
3. Preferences: It seems like I prefer having the time to become more awesome at this. And I probably do. I think the secret is concentrating on the time that I WANT to spend cooking (and there is a lot of it) so we'll have something to eat when I DON'T want to cook. It could be a whole new project...
4. Pinpoints: These would be the little ways in which I could make the above happen. I can think of a couple:
a. spend time perfecting a few seasonal meal plans (3 each for winter, spring, summer, fall would cover a whole year!) that cater to our preferences. I could publish these here... maybe with some step-by-step instructions for basic techniques. The best way to learn to cook is to COOK! I have learned so much through Abby/Betty and this would be a good new project.
b. spend time when I do have time to cook making some easy, frozen, heat-uppable healthy meals for us. I like an idea from this month's issue of Martha Stewart Living (not yet available online that I can find) for making TV dinners to freeze--salisbury steak, mashed potatoes, spinach, berry crisp. This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say healthy comfort food. It's healthy enough (carrots, spinach) but comfort-foodie enough (because this girl grew up on meat and taters and I'll never feel satisfied by a diet of all steamed veggies and quinoa!!)
New project in the works for Abby?? Maybe...
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
took lemons and made lemon squares
On my pre-Christmas trip to H-E-B, life gave me lemons. I needed one lemon for the lemon sage chicken, but I had to buy a bag of about 15 organic lemons because that was the only thing they had left. Mom gave me a Martha Stewart cookies calendar that came with 12 cookie recipes for Christmas--one of which was for lemon squares, so I made them tonight. I have a killer cold and can't smell at all, so I also pretty much can't taste... I'm pretty sure these are some REALLY lemony lemon squares, but I'll get back to you when I have a fully functioning upper respiratory tract :).
Monday, December 26, 2011
de-Christmases the apartment
I pretty much hate Christmas. I guess I would rather embrace the little things than be forced into mandatory fun, pressure to cook and decorate, and present-purchasing. I do enjoy the family time involved though, and had a great Christmas this year. Still, I was anxious to de-Christmas the apartment ASAP.
I took apart our pretty flower arrangement, took out all the red flowers and Christmas tree boughs, and re-assembled it. I took down all the Christmas decorations and put up some pretty new non-holiday ones. All this was fueled by a homemade whole-wheat bagel that I baked yesterday...
Also included in pictures today-- The slice I acquired when prepping lemon slices for my lemon-sage chicken yesterday. Woops!!
Sunday, December 25, 2011
our first Christmas dinner
Lemon sage chicken, sweet potatoes, onion rings, and table settings from Crate and Barrel and Williams-Sonoma :).
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Thumb print cookies
Monday, October 10, 2011
Even Julia Child Ruins Dinner Sometimes :)
I am reading "The Kitchen Counter Cooking School" by Kathleen Flinn (who also wrote "The Sharper Your Knife, the Less You Cry" which I just read). I came across this quote today, which I think warrants a post. Kathleen Flinn is a Cordon Bleu Paris trained chef. Her first book is about her time in Paris, and her second book is about her time teaching 9 women how to cook. In this quote, she is speaking to Donna, an otherwise confident newlywed who is reduced to a shaky mess when cooking for company:
"'Hey, I screw things up and I went to culinary school,' I said, approaching her. I gave her a quick hug around the shoulder. 'I burned toast this morning. I overcooked a steak the other night. I mean, it happens. Even Julia Child screwed up sauces and dropped potatoes, right on TV.'"
I have to say, the frequency of complete failure for me has actually increased as I have learned to cook. As I start to try ingredients that I have never worked with and more complicated recipes, I occasionally make something that leads to a string of cuss words, an incoming rescue by my wonderful dish-washing husband, and a pot of boiled spaghetti with a jar of Newman's Own for dinner.
Throughout my experience with learning how to cook, my mom (also a Cordon Bleu trained chef) has been a great help. She is a 24-hour cooking advice hotline and has helped me avert many a disaster (what can I substitute? why is this burning? will this recipe work??). Even when dinner is already ruined and there isn't any advice left to give, she tells me what Kathleen told Donna. Even the best cooks in the world still screw it up sometimes. This is classic mom advice, but also means a lot coming from a trained chef.
And here I go getting all sentimental. This is a big part of what cooking does for me. Even when I first started I noticed this. It is so therapeutic to have a domain in life where it is okay to screw up. Where even a total failure isn't a huge disaster. Having spent so much of my life in competitive school and work environments, with constant worry and stress about whether my efforts would get me to the next level, it is so heavenly to have one thing where I can take risks and fully enjoy my successes and happily learn from my mistakes. This is a lesson that I have carried over into other parts of my life and I hope to continue to do so. But it will always be one of the things that has me utterly addicted to cooking.
"'Hey, I screw things up and I went to culinary school,' I said, approaching her. I gave her a quick hug around the shoulder. 'I burned toast this morning. I overcooked a steak the other night. I mean, it happens. Even Julia Child screwed up sauces and dropped potatoes, right on TV.'"
I have to say, the frequency of complete failure for me has actually increased as I have learned to cook. As I start to try ingredients that I have never worked with and more complicated recipes, I occasionally make something that leads to a string of cuss words, an incoming rescue by my wonderful dish-washing husband, and a pot of boiled spaghetti with a jar of Newman's Own for dinner.
Throughout my experience with learning how to cook, my mom (also a Cordon Bleu trained chef) has been a great help. She is a 24-hour cooking advice hotline and has helped me avert many a disaster (what can I substitute? why is this burning? will this recipe work??). Even when dinner is already ruined and there isn't any advice left to give, she tells me what Kathleen told Donna. Even the best cooks in the world still screw it up sometimes. This is classic mom advice, but also means a lot coming from a trained chef.
And here I go getting all sentimental. This is a big part of what cooking does for me. Even when I first started I noticed this. It is so therapeutic to have a domain in life where it is okay to screw up. Where even a total failure isn't a huge disaster. Having spent so much of my life in competitive school and work environments, with constant worry and stress about whether my efforts would get me to the next level, it is so heavenly to have one thing where I can take risks and fully enjoy my successes and happily learn from my mistakes. This is a lesson that I have carried over into other parts of my life and I hope to continue to do so. But it will always be one of the things that has me utterly addicted to cooking.
Monday, September 12, 2011
Ribeyes, veggies, and couscous!
I surprised myself with this one! This steak is actually really good! I made some extra and it will go into a steak salad later this week. These veggies are delicious, too, because I cooked fresh carrots and zucchini in the juice from the steak in the pan. I added frozen steam-in-the-bag green beans and salt and pepper. It's funny to think that so many people are eating this tonight, because it is the Fresh 20 meal for tonight!
Friday, September 9, 2011
Monday, August 29, 2011
It's so easy when you know what you're doooo-in'...
It's so easy when you know hooo-ooow.
Today I signed up for The Fresh 20. It was $50 for a year of:
-seasonal grocery lists (with like, 20 Fresh items! get it??)
-recipes for 5 meals per week
-prep instructions to get ready ahead of time for quick weeknight cooking
I think they're really onto something... If the recipes are good, that is. I like their idea because: 1. It's only 5 meals per week, leaving time for leftovers, other meals made on a whim, and eating out without wasting food. 2. As I have discussed before, most of the work of providing healthy food goes into the planning!
At the very least it's a year's worth of recipes... 250 things that I get to learn how to make!
Sunday, August 28, 2011
Real Food
I want to work my way toward this: http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/.
I am inspired by this quote from "Cooking for Geeks":
Michael Pollan wrote in the New York Times (“Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch,” August 2, 2009): I asked [food-marketing researcher Harry Balzer] how, in an ideal world, Americans might begin to undo the damage that the modern diet of industrial preparedfood has done to our health. “Easy. You want Americans to eat less? I have the diet for you. It’s short and it’s simple. Here’s my diet plan: Cook it yourself. That’s it. Eat anything you want—just as long as you’re willing to cook it yourself.”
So many Americans aren't able to achieve this because they never learned the skills and in the midst of their busy lives, they do not have the time to go back and change the way they get their food.
My long-term goal is to (almost) never eat anything that we do not cook ourselves. There are a lot of skills that I am working to develop to make this happen-- time management, planning, cooking, and maybe even delegation to my sweet husband.
But, baby steps, right? A while back I started making sure that we bought at least three types of fruit per week and made a point to eat them before they went bad. This week, to work toward healthier, more "real" food, I'm going to add a vegetable to each of our meals-- mainly by purchasing plain frozen veggies that will be easy to prepare.
Thursday, August 25, 2011
Wilton Flowers and Cake Design Graduation!
Today's project: layered cake with basket weave on the sides, rope on the top, and royal icing daffodils, violets and leaves. :)
Shane wants to bring it to work, but I'm not so sure it's first-impression-of-my-wife's-baked-goods worthy. Especially because Shane's next shift at the hospital is Saturday, so this will be positively leftovers by then!
The Wilton buttercream is more of a lookin' icing than an eatin' icing, although the cake inside is a grade A yellow cake made from scratch. After these classes are over I'm on the search for the perfect buttercream recipe that's yummy and will also hold up under decorating pressure.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Birthday Cupcakes!!
Birthday bouquet for April and dinosaur sprinkles for Shane. Both are Martha Stewart Raspberry Cupcakes (white cake with delicious fresh raspberries mixed in) with very simple cream cheese frosting --2 cups powdered sugar and 2 8 oz. packages of cream cheese. (FYI don't try to make the frosting that Martha Stewart pairs with these cupcakes if you are a beginner. It is a difficult recipe!) I iced them with the cake icer tip from Wilton. The flowers are made from royal icing and I made them today in my flowers and cake design class. Enjoy with your eyes! Also making a cameo in these photos is my cupcake packaging, the cardboard cupcake box with a "from the kitchen of" sticker from Tiny Prints.
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
5 fish recipes every cook should know!!
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Legos and Bagels :)
Shane has been studying all the time lately, so today we decided to de-stress with some Legos. We made this house, complete with lawnmower, basketball goal, and apple tree in the yard. And this evening I made some bagels for Sunday morning breakfast :). I also made pizza today. I made the dough, used H-E-B canned pizza sauce, and we topped them with mozzarella and black olives. I thought it was disgusting, but Shane liked it. Notice a pattern here?? :)
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Final Cake!!
Today, I graduated from Wilton Cake Decorating Basics. I even got a diploma! Here is my final cake. What do you think, should I open up Fluff's Cakes after September first, when the Baker's Bill makes it legal to sell homemade cakes? After I take Flowers and Cake Design and Fondant and Gum Paste classes, natch.
Pretzels!
OMG these pretzels were soo good! (I made them last night and I am already referring to them in the past tense because they are GONE.) I used the pretzel recipe from Joy of Cooking.
This week I totally lost my motivation to cook actual food. I am pretty sure this happens to everyone, so I'm trying not to stress that my cute little weekly meal plan complete with grocery list did not turn out the way I planned. I think even the best cooks should reserve the right to call "get your own" night. I did manage to get through the week with at least something on the table each night... My laziness led me to make a lot of eggs/breakfast for dinner and I ended up discovering that delicious hash browns are easy to make!
I also have a cake-in-progress. I am trying to use my cake for Wilton class for a party that we are having tomorrow for a friend's fiance who just moved to Houston AND finished the Bar Exam. We are making cakes decorated with roses tonight in class, so I made a yellow cake and iced it Tiffany-blue-ish and I'm planning to decorate it with some white roses. If that fails, I have a back up plan (cupcakes :)! Unfortunately, even if my cake does turn out it looks like the sky is supposed to fall here tomorrow because of Tropical Storm Don, so our party might be cancelled. In that case, maybe I'll use my renewed cooking energy to make that pizza I've been promising Shane :).
Thursday, July 21, 2011
Cupcakes!!!
These are my cupcakes from Wilton class. We did some with "roses" on top and some with "shaggy mums." They are white cupcakes with white chocolate ganache filling. Yumm... :)
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