Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

In need of suggestions...

Shannon has a little less than two weeks at her job. Instead of focusing on the joblessness, I think we should celebrate her no longer having to work for her sociopath of a boss. And every good celebration needs a fancy dinner. The trick is considering what we're celebrating we should probably keep dinner a little on the economical side. My go-to for fancy dinners is always steak. While that is yummy, it's become a little predictable. So I'm looking for suggestions that may appear fancy (and taste delicious) but won't break the bank. Thoughts?

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Let the celebration commence!

I took a trip to my local Whole Foods. I had a bad experience with one on the way to the train station (ie- crap cupcakes and tiny aisles), but I was trying not to hold that against them. I have to admit, I'm smitten with them. Mostly because their produce section contained blood oranges, I have a weakness for them. I also picked up some beautiful strawberries. The hippy in me loves the idea that they're selling local products and the food is all natural. The broke barista in me wishes they didn't charge at least $.30 cents more for every product. A shopping cart for of $.30 adds up quickly. Plus some people who shall remain nameless aren't too keen on switching up their diets to include something as outrageous as natural peanut butter.

On to happier musings. I have a lot of leftovers from the candy making debacle of christmas '08 that I'd rather not keep around clogging up my smallish kitchen. Due to my inability to do math I had two containers of dipping chocolate leftover. So what better way to use it than to dip previously mentioned gorgeous strawberries in the chocolate? This is one of my favorite flavor combos. Mostly cause the fruit let's me pretend it's kind healthy.



Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Damn you Bourdain!

I'm watching an episode of Anthony Bourdain in Chicago. He's eating at some place called Doug's Sausage Superstore. I miss Chicago but mostly I miss hot dogs. I need to find a good hot dog joint in Boston. Either that or I need to make a weekend trip to Chicago and eat nothing but misc animal parts stuffed into a delicious casing.

Monday, February 2, 2009

Tiny cupcakes and doughnut holes, oh my

Couple of things to post today. The first is a recipe I got online for Spiced Chai Cake. I jut so happened to have some masala chai tea bags from work. I changed the recipe a bit since I didn't have ginger or cardamom in the house and the recipe called for a glaze but I opted for cream cheese frosting. They still turned out pretty yummy. Here's the recipe for anyone whose interested:

2 tea bags steeped in 2/3 cup boiling water
1 cup all purpose white flour
1.5 teaspoons baking powder
.5 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon apple pie spice (to replace 1/4 tsp each of ginger, cloves, and cardamom)
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
2 eggs
1 teaspoons vanilla extract

I made them in tiny cupcake form, though I think next time I'll opt for a proper cake. But I had a new tiny cupcake pan and couldn't resist.










Last night after work, Shannon made me dinner. And for dessert we made donut holes in my deep fryer. I'm a sucker for fried dough of any kind, plus they took a whole five minutes to make.

Take a tube of buttermilk biscuits (we used store brand since it was all they had)
Cut each biscuit into quarters
Put them into hot oil (we used canola since we had it already). You have to flip them after a minute or two
Once they're all golden brown, put them in a brown paper bag with sugar, cinnamon, and orange zest.

They were amazing. Like deep fried crack rolled in sugar.