Vacation!

I'm attempting on finding the best place to vacation, problem is, I don't really like doing "vacation-y" things most people do. That is, except for eating. That's always what I want to do.

But is is very expensive and can be hard when you don't know the insider information on the places to go.

This article may help, 10 Best Food Festivals. I went to Chicago for the Taste of Chicago last year, sort of a giant disappointment. Chicago was great, it's just that the Taste was just like the Iowa State Fair w/o the hog smell. The Union Square Farmer's Market in New York City was so far the best food related outdoor occurrence (you can't exactly call a regular farmer's market a festival) and we didn't even expect to stumble on when we were visiting The Husband's Family about a year and a half ago.

After watching the Winter Olympics I'm craving some North Western scenery, so we'll see.

Foodie Tee's

Being a former graphic tee obsessee I still sift through pages of clever t-shirt designs, and of course when there is an article about t-shirts, especially when it's not specifically about only t-shirts, I tend to listen.

Whilst getting my Epicurious fix I came across a foodie t-shirt article where the t-shirts sold gave 5% of the profits to some pretty great charities. (The Food Studies Institute, Two Angry Moms, and Better School Food) I'm a big fan of all three, especially the Food Studies Institute.

Well, anyway, I was looking through the clever t-shirts, and nothing really stood out as something I'd like to wear.

Until the last page!


Too bad there is no organic cotton t-shirt available. Instead I'll just donate directly to the Food Science Institute, but I could see myself wearing this one, and I am totally rad.

Playing with Food

I made the discovery last night that while the husband doesn't like marshmallow, he does in fact love cripsie treats. I had been under the impression that he did not like them, so I haven't ever made them. I love rice crispy treats.(by the way- too many ways to spell the word "crispy" when referring to the treats.)

So I've decided to be crazy creative and go nuts today. I have cookie cutters, molds, a new cupcake tin, a rolling pin, and multiple flavorings and/or add ins to make them extra great.

Jumbo Box of Rice Kripsies, here I come!

Sweet Cream Cheese and Strawberry Biscuits

I love strawberries and whipped cream. Give it to me on a waffle, add some ice cream, chocolate sauce....whatever you've got. It's one of my most favorite pairings. I almost always have a bag or two of frozen strawberries in the freezer, I like to randomly buy things like this when I have a little more wiggle room in my food budget to boost my pantry power during the slim times. Today I looked outside my window to see that I have a flat tire on my car. So it's walk or bus this week, and I'm lazy. So when the sweet tooth craving kicked in I went to creating in the kitchen.

I had some left over sweetened condensed milk that I knew I needed to get rid of, and I was going through the possibilities of what I could do with it. Normally my brain goes to chocolate first, however I don't even have any cocoa powder, let alone baking chocolate or chocolate chips. I thought I might be able to whip up the sweetened condensed milk...about four minutes with the immersion blender told me NO. So I decided to soften up the 1/4 cup (or so, who knows, really) of the cream cheese and add about three to four tablespoons of the sweetened condensed milk, and whip this with a little drizzle of vanilla extract. It took on a nice sweet, rich cheesecake flavor, but it wasn't too thick so it would work well as a sauce or a really heavy glaze.

I still had about a half of a can of the sweetened condensed milk and I remember seeing or hearing something, somewhere about slowly heating the sweetened sticky stuff until it turned to really good caramel, or Dulce de Leche. (next time I'll take the advice of one of the two links posted on how to!) So I stuck the rest of it in a tiny non stick saucepan and got to boiling. I heated it too quickly and the bottom turned very brown and clumpy. After whipping it for a while and keeping it on much lower heat, it eventually turned a nice shade of brown. I may play with this more, as the finished product wasn't very pliable or smooth. It was, however delicious. So I was equipped with a cheesecake-like cream cheese sauce and a chunky caramel sauce. I'd thought I'd make some sort of ...cake? to top it with. But then I realized I had frozen biscuits in the freezer. Now this is something I've fought with for the past year or so. I can't make biscuits. I've tried, I've made lumpy tasteless ones, super salty flaky ones, and burnt flat ones. I hate that I can't make them, and I plan to continue my experiments, but for now I have found a decent replacement. The 'Southern Style' Pillsbury Biscuits from the freezer are the only frozen or refrigerated dough I've had that doesn't have that....refrigerated dough taste I hate. I don't know what causes that taste, but I hate it. HATE IT. So I decided to play the strawberry shortcake angle, and biscuits were browned! To quickly thaw the strawberries, which I always buy unsweetened, I put them in a large skillet on low heat and snipped the still frosty berries into slices, sprinkling with a few pinches of sugar when I'd finished just to draw the water away from the berries and make a nice tart juice to counter the EXTREMELY sweet and rich caramel and cheesecake sauces. At this point Marco drifted into the kitchen to see what I was up to. He sneered at the cheesecake-y sauce, he sniffed at the caramel, and he couldn't fathom how sweet things would go on a biscuit. "You know what REALLY goes good on a biscuit, Gravy." my pouty little husband said, disappointed that there was no chocolate. Then he ate one, and then he ate another one, and he marveled at how good they were. This was the seconds! A fun little aside, I have four cats, and two of the cats wanted the cream cheese and sweetened condensed milk very, very badly. Every time I turned my back Loki would attempt to steal things from me, and Squeak decided that he was my best friend and was constantly under my feet. This is normally not normal behavior for Squeak, as he's somewhat of a loner cat. Loki is normally a kitchen companion, but she's not normally as bold as she was today. Here are my two little helpers I had to shoo from the kitechen about twelve times in the short time I was cooking. Loki's the one trying to be cute and unassuming, Squeak is licking his lips and meowing at the same time for a share of the booty. I don't know what I'd ever do without my constant kitten companions.

The Impossible Dream

So often do I come across articles and how to's on the subject of pantries, or I should say, the organizing of pantries. I don't even actually have a full on pantry in my home, just lots of cabinets I'd really like to re configure somehow.

While I was making sure I wasn't ripping off some one's idea with this blog concept and or title I came across this image.

The article is a short guide to keeping your cabinets and/or pantries clutter free. Just look at that top shelf! Even if I were to get this exact set up, within two weeks two of the cats would of made beds up there! Not long after that all of the dishes would be either knocked down by said cats and broken or piled in the sink awaiting the next time we washed.

Let's just say my 'pantry' (as I will always call it because I will have one, one day...) is very unorganized. And it is kept unorganized by a whole host of factors beyond my control. My husband for one, who throws things asunder much like a toddler digging to the bottom of his toy box. My cats are of no help, especially the naughtiest one, Loki who will take the opportunity of a turned back to jump into the cabinet and refuse to leave without being extracted forcefully. And then there is the forces I can control, namely me. But I'm lazy and also have a tendency to leave a mess whenever I'm in the kitchen, with the intention of coming back to clean up, but I never do.

I still long for the glossy pictures of perfection, a styled and coordinated living room, a neat and organized kitchen, a bedroom that doesn't look like it's a dorm room....I'll just have to realize I'll never get it.

The first posts are always the silly-est

I would suppose the first post is where one would set up the mission statement and details of the fantastic photos you'd planned to share. To set forth the manifest destiny of inflated importance and total web recognition. It seems that if you were to ever share such a thing it would be here, in the first post, with its air of possibility and promise.

However, if you're like me and you mock the whole concept of blogging, the goal is to sound detached and/or cool. Using big words and thrice spell checked paragraphs to show that you're smarter than this (I promise!) and that you may actually have a small talent in writing. Not going to happen I realize, (the detached and cool part) as I am the one who clicked "create blog" and for weeks tried to nail down the perfect name. Neither have I, on any occasion, ever been considered cool. Cheers, and here's hoping I don't abandon this in three weeks!