New Camera..err..Phone

Both my and Nick's cameras have been malfunctioning recently. I thought of buying a new camera after Christmas, but Nick had the ingenious idea of getting fancy new phones with higher quality cameras included. Brilliant, said I, since my then current phone was about two years old. So we got HTC Evos. They're indeed very fancy.

Unfortunately the camera lens sticks out on the back, so if you put it down on a table, it could get scratched.
We bought cases for our phones, but they would take a while to arrive, so I made some quick and dirty little pouches for our phones.

Mine is made of fabric remnants of a dress I made las summer. Someone saw it and thought it was a Vere Bradley design. I don't know about that, but it is easy to find in a big black bag.

Nick's is made out of remnants from a pair of PJ pants I made him last year.

I think these each took me about 15 minutes to make using my sewing machine, but because they are so small, you could probably make them entirely by hand too. If anyone is interested in seeing a tutorial for how to make these, post a comment and I'll write out the tutorial.

Birthday Dinner

Every year, my birthday sucks. Not because anything goes wrong, but because it never feels special enough. Maybe it's because my birthday is right around the corner from Thanksgiving and no one is around to celebrate. When I was younger (read: still able to stay up past 2am) I used to throw these wild parties. Every person who walked in the door (and there were dozens) would wish me a happy birthday, and look honestly happy to say it. Now, I get one real smile (my husband) and one excited phone call (my mom) and two pages of "happy birthday" on my facebook wall. Um, that doesn't count. So I tried to make my friend Kaitlin's birthday a bit exciting for her. With cake. YES!

She watched our cats while we were stuck in the blizzard over Christmas break, so we had her and our friend Jen over for dinner. I tried an old recipe I had never used before, "chicken pilaf" and it had way too much tomato paste. Also, in my excitement, I forgot to take pictures while I cooked, or even before I ate, so here is my half eaten plate:

And here are the half gone serving dishes

The chicken may not really be that exciting, but the Brussels sprouts were very tasty. So far, I have converted two people to a vegetable they thought they hated with this recipe. I always feel so powerful when that happens.

Golden Brussels Sprouts
1. Clean up the sprouts by rinsing them, and peeling off the outside layer of gross leaves. Cut out any other gross bits, and trip the ends.

2. Cut sprouts in half. This makes caramelizing them in a pan easier.

3. Steam sprouts for about 5 minutes. They should still be a bit crunchy.

4. BUTTER! Put some butter in your sauté pan. If you really want to be healthy, olive oil works OK too, but it doesn't taste nearly as delicious.

5. Sauté the sprouts for 5 to 10 minutes, until they've gotten nice and golden brown in spots.

6. Season to taste: I used salt, pepper, and slivered almonds, but you can use whatever you like best.

That's it! If you have always hated Brussels sprouts, consider giving this recipe a try. I have never witnessed anyone not like these.

Prelim Defense

OK, so it's been a while. In my defense, I've had a lot going on. One of those things was my prelim defense. After 20 hours of exams, I had to defend my answers to my committee. Sounds fun, right? I was stressed nearly to the point of tears - in public! But it's over now, and I passed, so I can look back and tell you all about the lovely spread that I made for people to snack on.

I thought that if I made tasty snacks, I could improve my committee members' moods, and even possibly distract them from asking their most difficult questions. Hah! Was I ever wrong. They didn't even eat anything! I had to force cookies in their hands on the way out to get rid of a few things.
But Nick and I ate very well that night. We had a roasted red pepper white bean dip, from smitten kitchen, some fromage blanc with garden herbs I've been saving from the last farmer's market of the season, carrots and fresh bread to dip, and a caramelized onion tart, which fell apart on the way to school, but tasted very delicious. I also made my signature chocolate chip cookies.

The onion tart was really very lovely, and completely uneaten at the end of my defense. I guess I must have actually deserved to pass, because if they had eaten the tart, they may have just agreed to just about anything - so delicious.
I started by slicing about 5 yellow onions nice and thin. I caramelized them which took about 30 or 40 minutes.

I used a pre-made pie crust. I know some people are into making their own pie crust, but really, I don't taste the difference, and the pre-rolled stuff is just so easy.

With the onions in the crust, I filled the tart with a combination of about 3 eggs and a cup of whole milk and some salt and pepper.

This went in the oven at 350 degrees for about half an hour. There it is. So delicious.

Thanksgiving Pie

I know that Thanksgiving is a foodie's favorite holiday since the entire celebration revolves around food. However, it's probably one of my least favorites because it's not something my family really celebrated all out when I was growing up. Lately, I also feel as though much of the preparation and cooking lands on my shoulders, and turkeys and mashed potatoes are really not my thing.
So this year, we ordered dinner. Really. Purdue University's dining services makes turkeys along with all the trimmings to order. So for $30, we got enough turkey, gravy, stuffing, organic mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes with pecans, sweet corn souffle, green bean casserole, cranberry sauce, and dinner rolls to feed 3 people for 3 days. And it was all very good.

You'll notice that the list of food does not include desert. You can order desert if you like, but baking is definitely a joy of mine, so I thought I would make apple pie.

I even got help peeling the apples! I sliced them nice and thin, maybe 1/8 of an inch thick? Maybe thinner.

Mixed them in a bowl with about 1/3 cup of dark brown sugar, a pinch of salt, a pinch of nutmeg, and a pinch of allspice (my husband does not like cinnamon, and I do feel it's overused myself) and about a tablespoon of cornstarch. I let them sit for at least an hour until they're soft and pliable. I pull out the ready made pie dough, stick it in the pie place, and start laying out the apple slices.


I save the thinnest, softest slices for the middle because I roll up a single slice up on itself.

Then dot the pie with butter (two tablespoons is all you need) and it goes in the oven at 400 F for about 20 minutes.

Ta da! Desert is ready. But after the huge dinner we had, we only had enough room for tiny little slivers. With ice cream, of course.

Cranberry Upside-down Deliciousness

Do you read smitten kitchen? Because I do. A lot. Like, I check it everyday. Recently, Deb posted a recipe for cranberry upside-down cake that looked so delicious that I had to make it. Then, yesterday morning, I watched an episode of America's Test Kitchen where they made an apple upside-down cake (different spellings for different folks). The recipe is hidden for non-members, but you can still watch the video.

Well, after a day of prelim writing yesterday (I hit 1000 words in one day, and I am rather happy with that), I decided to reward myself with some tasty baking. So I made this cake with Smitten Kitchen's topping (caramel and cranberries) and America's Test Kitchen's cake, but I substituted vanilla yogurt for the sour cream because that is what I had on hand. Cook's illustrated recently told me not to do that, but whatever, I don't care, I did it anyway. OMG this was so good.

First, while I was making it, I though, are we really going to eat a whole cake ourselves, just the two of us? So we asked some friends if they wanted us to bring them a slice. Thank goodness they said no because we would have had to share! In one night, this is how much we ate:

So, I think it'll be gone by tomorrow. It reminds me of a cake that my mom used to make, only better. Way way better. I think I'm going to have a slice for lunch. And then, back to the prelims. One a couple more thousand words!

Cookies to Forgive and Unwind

I have not been posting recently because I am in the midst of my prelims. If you are unfamiliar with this concept, preliminary exams are a series of tests that a graduate student must complete and defend in order to move on to writing a dissertation. Fun, right? It's pretty time consuming and stressful on its own, but add it to a schedule full of teaching, fundraising for the grad student association (we've got T-shirts!), and general living-life stuff (um, long overdue dentist appointments anyone?), it's basically taken over any free time.
This whole being busy thing may have led me to totally forget about an appointmetI made just days earlier with one of my committee members. It's never good to stand up people who are way more important and well established than you are. So, to make up for it, I thought I would make some cookies, because people always seem to like my cookies. And for good reason, they are very tasty.

I have been working on this recipe for over 3 years now. I took Alton Brown's Chewy recipe, some random flax-seed cookie recipe I found before I even knew that food blogs existed, and just started playing with the amounts and proportions and all these things. Well, I think I have perfected them.

The secret is really getting them out of the oven earlier than you would think, and then cooling them on the cookie sheet for about 10 minutes.

Well, after I made some for my committee member, I realized that I had finally perfected the recipe, and had to make another batch for us to eat. We've been holding back, only eating 2 or 3 each day, and they've held up for a week now, and are still deliciously chewy, despite sitting in a jar that is nowhere near air-tight. Making these is definitely enjoyable, but eating them is even better. Perfect for consumption after writing my 3 hour prelim question about the ecological rationality of biased conflict responses.

Wet ingredients:
1 stick butter, melted and cooled (or, use that Smart Balance half butter omega-3 stuff)
1 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 Tbsp heavy cream
1 tsp vanilla extract

Dry ingredients:
1/2 cup bread flour
1/2 cup whole wheat four
1/2 cup oatmeal, ground (I use a coffee grinder for this)
1/4 cup flax meal (I grind my own, again in the coffee grinder)
1/4 cup almond meal (you can find it at Trader Joe's, or grind your own)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking soda

1 cup chocolate chips

Recipe:
I do all this in a stand mixer with the paddle attachment, but you can mix it all by hand with a wooden spoon, or whatever sturdy instrument you prefer.

1. Adjust racks in top and bottom thirds of the oven. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Combine butter and sugar
3. Add all other wet ingredients
4. Combine all dry ingredients
5. Slowly (but really, it doesn't need to be that slow) incorporate the dry ingredients to the wet
6. Add chocolate chips
7. Scoop large tablespoonfuls of dough onto parchment paper-lined baking sheets, about 2 inches apart
8. Bake 8 to 9 minutes, switching and rotating baking sheets halfway through cooking. (You could also bake one sheet at a time.)
9. Cookies should look slightly underdone. Cool baking sheets on cooling rack for 10 minutes.
10. Move cookies directly to cooling racks until room temperature, or eat right away.

Leek Tartelettes

About six years ago, I did not know what a leek looked like. I knew that they tasted good in soup, but I had never seen a full fledged fresh leek. They basically look like giant green onions.

They are really much tastier, though, and very mild. My aunt Nadia made a leek tarte, and I absolutely fell in love. What's even better, though, is mini leek tartelettes. They're such fun and easy finger food. I chop up the leeks, whites and light greens only. (Use the dark stuff for stock.)

You've got to rinse them, otherwise there's nothing but nasty sand in your food.

Then cook 'em up in a big frying pan. If you want you can add bacon. Very delicious combination. If I don't have many leeks, I'll sometimes also add some onion. Stay away from the garlic, though, because leeks have such a subtle taste.

Then with a wide glass, can, or other round object, trace and cut out as many circles as you can.Put each dough circle into your muffin tin, and fill halfway with cooked leeks.Then fill up each cup with a roughly half and half combination of eggs and dairy. I tend to combine heavy cream, half and half, and fat free milk to get a sort of full-fat milk equivalent, but if you want to just use low-fat milk, or just cream, that's fine too. It depends how creamy you want your tartelettes to be.
Finally bake at 350F for about 45 minutes, and you've got the perfect appetizer, or light dinner with a couple on each plate and a side of salad.

Apparently there's a booth at our farmer's market that should be getting leeks again soon! Strange season, but I'll take them. Maybe I'll make soup.