Zucchini Pizza

Normally I'm a pepperoni pizza person. Just plain old pepperoni (or occasionally Hawaiian), but this zucchini pizza is fantastic! One of my old roommates used to make it occasionally and it made the apartment smell so good. So today I tried it. And I tried a new crust recipe, which at least so far has passed muster. Admittedly, I didn't use goat's cheese, but that was more because it was too expensive to actually buy. But next time, I think I'll spend the extra money.

Gingerbread houses

Ok, so I didn't really make a gingerbread house today, or even last week. But I did "make" some when I was home over Christmas, and now I'm posting about it.

My mom thought it would be a fun thing for my youngest brother and I do, to build this gingerbread village kit that she got somewhere. It was fun, but also incredibly difficult. It doesn't seem like it should be that hard, I mean it shouldn't be any hard than building with graham crackers, which we've all done before, but it was incredibly difficult. And so by the time we'd gotten them built we'd lost a lot of energy for decorating them. In fact, I bet you can't even tell which ones I decorated and which ones my nine year-old brother decorated.

 I'll give you a hint, I did the ones with white frosting.

So after we had decorated these, my brother came home from school, a couple days later, with a much cooler gingerbread house. (And it was a lot tastier too.)

Brigadeiros

I mentioned in my last post that I was preparing for a new adventure while using up all my food. I guess I'll tell you a little about my new adventure before I talk about how I finished up my canned goods. I am once again packing up all my junk (which never fails to amaze me at how much of it there is) and moving. (no surprise there, huh?--when am I not about to move?) And since moving within the same city or the same state gets boring after a while (though I'm not actually bored of Maryland, I love it here) I've opted for a new state. Massachusetts here I come!

Now, on to canned goods. So what are Brigadeiros you ask? They are a phenomenally delicious Brazilian treat that I learned to make while living in England two summers ago.  Basically they are sweetened condensed milk and chocolate powder. You boil them together until it's thick enough to more or less hold its shape and then you make little balls. (I let it cool enough so it didn't burn my hands and that helped it to thicken even more.) You can roll the balls in something if you like, but you don't have to. I rolled some in cocoa powder and some in plain sugar just because I could. Or if you feel like rolling things into balls is too much work you don't have to cook the milk as long and it makes a pretty awesome sauce on things like ice cream (which is how I had it the first time). 

Potato Pot Pie

We're all agreed that chicken pot pie is pretty delicious, right?  I mean, flaky crust, chicken, peas and carrots, what's not to like? I'd have to say the thing I don't like about chicken pot pie is the purchasing of the chicken. Why does meat have to be so expensive anyways?

In preparation for a new adventure (more on that later), I've been trying to use up all my food. Always a challenge. So I found myself with a whole bag of peas, and a couple carrots, but no chicken. However, I did have a potato.  (I discovered a while back that potato does make a tolerable chicken-substitute in Indian food, which is how I came to the following conclusion.) Potato pot pie anyone?

I had decided that I wanted to make this pot pie before I went home to visit my family for Christmas, and since I knew my potato would suffer during my two-week absence I decided I'd be all prepared and chop it and the carrots up before I left and freeze them. You can buy frozen vegetables so I assumed this would work. I came home and pulled my frozen veggies out of the freezer to find that my potatoes had turned black. Thinking about it, I know that potatoes turn brown after you cut them much like apples do, so I figured there was nothing wrong with blackened potatoes. So I still used them. (but I also got another fresh potato and used that too.)

What I've since learned is that potatoes don't freeze. When they thawed they were kind of mushy, which was weird, and when they were cooked in the pie they didn't taste like potatoes. Basically, they didn't look like potatoes and didn't taste like potatoes, so what I really ended up with was a pea-pot pie. (I also used far too many peas to be proportionate--why not use the whole bag up at once?) The fresh potatoes did taste like potatoes and were really quite delicious. So I do think that potatoes can work in pot pies. Just not frozen ones. And really, after you pick out the blackened bits the whole pie still turned out ok--though I still wish I didn't have to eat it all week.

Spiced Chipotle Sweet Potatoes

Well, as 2011 rapidly draws to a close I figure I better post once more this year. And just to show how on top of things I am I'll admit that I made these sweet potatoes about three weeks ago. You may remember me telling you about my awesome thanksgiving this year and how much I loved the sweet potatoes that my roommate served. So a couple of weeks ago when I got invited to a "Post-Thanksgiving, Pre-Christmas Turkey Dinner" I couldn't resist trying out these potatoes myself.

The very first time I had these it was with the chicken in the recipe--it's very good. But it's also good if you leave out the chicken (and who can afford to buy meat anyways?).  The spicy sweet potatoes seemed to go over well at the dinner (though they had a bit more kick than I had intended). And I really like them so I made them again for my family while I was home over Christmas--actually the real reason I made them while I was home was because my mom had chipotle chilis in the freezer. They didn't like them as much but in all fairness, my family doesn't really like sweet potatoes at all (don't ask me).

Cinnamon Banana Bread

Last time I made banana bread I forgot to add the baking soda (or maybe the baking powder, or maybe both, I can't remember) and the result as you can imagine was a loaf of bread that was extremely dense and about 3/4 of an inch tall (you wish I was exaggerating). Recently I found a recipe for Cinnamon Banana Bread on this blog and I decided that it sounded quite delicious. At length this week I found myself with two rather blackened bananas and really there are only a small handful of things to be done with blackened bananas--hence the time to try this recipe.

I made sure to add all of the leavening agents.

And you know. It turned out great. Light, and spongy, and moist, and banana-y.

Brie en Croute

Ok, since I live in DC it's a little far to fly home for Thanksgiving (read: too expensive). And since I'm not living near any relatives I had the pleasure of celebrating Thanksgiving with my roommates this year (and a few other awesome people). My roommate who planned this event did a fabulous job. (I brought the stuffing and a cherry pie.) But she started out our meal with a delicious Brie en Croute with Apple Compote for an Hors d'oeuvre. You may want to note just how awesome her Brie turned out. Mine doesn't look so pretty.

So anyways, yesterday was our Christmas party at work and I had planned on making this pie but after having eaten pie with almost every meal for the last week I just wasn't feeling it. (I'm realizing now that I don't think I've blogged about pie much. I will make every attempt to remedy that in the future.) And then I remembered the brie. My roommate readily shared the recipe with me and away I went. It turned out great. It tasted just like it should have, though my puff pastry did unfold rather a lot during baking and so it didn't look particularly pretty.

Now, someone who was thinking ahead would have taken pictures when the brie was fresh from the oven and gooey and delicious. As we all know I'm not that person. Me remember to take pictures? never. But I did remember enough to throw my camera in my bag to take with me to work. Unfortunately the lighting in my office is about a fluorescent as it gets and is pretty awful. I know I apologize for my photography more often than not, but bear with me. One of these days I'll cook during the day and actually snap a well lit photo. Just remember, it tasted delicious.