WE HAVE MOVED

It is true! We have moved! I moved the blog to wordpress (despite its convoluted set up) because there I am able to manage multiple blogs under one account. Also, at Wordpress you can sign up to get an email every time  I make a new entry. This is sooooooo much easier! So visit http://thruthelensandfryingpan.wordpress.com , sign up, and let's get this party moving! All blogs on here are present there. Thanks WordPress for an easy importing of the previous entries (that is the only easy part of the way that site is set up though. sheesh!)

True Life: I'm a picky eater (Week 9: 2/27- 3/5)

So for someone that is not very fond of snacking, I tend to not really sit down and eat full meals. So much so that, I find myself scrambling to finish using my meals for the week on Saturday and Sundays. How is it possible that I am not able to fully use a ten meal plan for seven days?! Yo no se! So I was thinking of healthy snacks to eat. I consider myself to be on a liquid diet. I will drink cans and cans of iced tea instead of eat things like chips, cookies and such. Those liquid calories can really fool ya! I was thinking of what to make for this week and I remember an interesting cracker topping a good friend of mine, Epiphany, made last year. I saw this as an opportunity to challenge myself. How? I really do not know what the dish is called, so I will have to recreate from memory. Apart from recipes I grew up wit, I have never really done that before but hey, let’s do it! This cracker topping contains greek yogurt, cut apples, golden raisins, onions, lime and lemon juices, and shredded rotisserie chicken. So I cubed (at least I tried to) the apples, then added lime + lemon juices and tossed it. I added the golden raisins, onions, and the chicken. I tossed it again and then added greek yogurt and mixed it all together.  It was very close to the recipe I had last year. Improvements I will make next time is usage of less apples and more chicken! But hurray for cracker toppings! I look forward to serving this when company comes over. Bam!

So the previous week, I make chocolate cookies and I mentioned that although it was ok, I was not entirely impressed. I went looking for another recipe on the lovely allrecipes.com. After many hours of perusing, I found a recipe that a lot of reviews swore by.  Of course that means very little in the execution of the recipe! I found a new recipe, Best Big, Fat, Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies. This time, I was no longer shocked at the amount of sugar used for these cookies hehe. I also had chocolate chips this time. I followed the recipe to the teeee! It came out awesome! For the second time, I allowed other to taste what I made (Shout out to D51 and Nemie). Thye actually enjoyed it. It was chewy! It was tasty! It was hmmm hmmm good! So much so that I am being TOLD to make 100 cookies for “someone’s” upcoming birthday (Shaking my head!). The improvement I will make on this recipe is smaller portioning of the dough.

From Scratch–> Noodles –> Cookies (Week 8: 2/20-2/26)

One of the biggest issues I have always had with food is that there are way too many “pop it into the microwave for 2 minutes and your food is ready” options/ “come in and five mins later walk out with your food” options. I love a good micky d’s run just like every other person, but I have hardly been able to sustain myself on just that. Mickey is good for sweet tea, an oreo mcflurry and a club chicken sandwich (yum!) but not as an everyday meal.  Plus my body takes offense to microwave dinner/lunch/breakfast/soup because it = intense stomachache with migraine. So I was randomly going through this thought process when I wondered what simple everyday foods I can make from scratch. There are certain foods that I always think of as only packaged. So I decided to make something that we are accustomed to getting out of cans. At this time, I had a weird fascination with soups, partly because I had lost my appetite for days and was looking for ways to keep my body sustained. So I decided to make chicken noodle soup….from scratch! By from scratch, I mean noodles from scratch too!  I have never made my own noodles before talk less of making chicken noodles soup. Now that I think of it, I have never made soup (in the non-Nigerian usage) before. You already know what I did first!!! Allrecipes.com! Yupzzzz! I did my search and there were so many easy recipes for noodles! It was slightly shocking but then again allrecipes is so vast that it really should not have been very surprising. Anyhoooolala, I used Grandma’s Noodles II recipe on that site and it was fairly simple! I followed the recipe but I had one stumbling block! I have no rolling pin! But fear not, common sense to the rescue!  I used a can of spray oil as make shift rolling pins. It did not work as well as a rolling pin, but it worked! Chea! I made the noodles. The biggest lesson from this experience is, patience. There were multiple periods of waiting. Not waiting, will lead to the noodles not coming out right. So what are you noodles? Are you waiting for them?

In addition to the noodles, I also wanted to  make cookies from scratch. Choco chip cookies! Hmmm! I am not a fan of sweets but I will eat a cookie, or two! I went to my trusty site and looked through many recipes. I settled on the recipe, Best Ever Chocolate Chip Cookies II. I did not have chocolate chips so as substitute,  I crushed Hershey’s milk chocolate bars. It was really an interesting experience because 1) I have never thought about how chocolate cookies get their brown color, and 2) I did not realize how much sugar is in cookies! Either way, I made them! I was not thoroughly pleased with them. They were not chewy but they still tasted good. Another thing that was different from this experience is that for the first time, I allowed others to taste my cooking.  I am starting small but I am getting there! Before I know it, I will be inviting people to dinner! I am excited about getting to that place where I share my cooking with others! Oh joy!

Out of the Box. Thin as paper. (Week 7: 2/13- 2/19)

Sometimes you just want a change. Since I started on this journey, I have made a habit of having certain food materials on hand. Some of which are flour, oil, butter, chicken, cream cheese, pasta and such. After a while, it seems that what you can do with these materials are limited  i.e the recipes become redundant. I definitely was feeling that way and I did not want to see another stir fry or another baked chicken with garlic and black pepper. But what to do?! I did not want to fry the chicken either. So I was browsing my fave recipe site  “allrecipes.com”, I was reading about some interesting things people do with cream crease, sour cream, butter and lime. All of which I had. I read a few different recipes and I pulled from each recipe a component I would like my chicken to “express”. To start off, I melted some butter and added some freshly squeezed lemon juice. I then added broccoli to the simmering melted butter and allowed the butter to cook the brocoli. I added sour cream and cream cheese to this mixture. The mixture was then placed in the fridge to chill. I tenderized some thawed chicken breast and seasoned it. The chilled mixture was rolled up in each slice of chicken breast. This rolled up chicken breast, which is held together with a toothpick, was dipped into beaten egg and was then browned on the stove. After browning, the chicken rolls were placed in the oven. There were some chicken pieces left over because they were not large enough to be rolled up. Since I had some of the broccoli mixture and beaten egg left over as well, I decided to bake the chicken pieces with the remaining mixture. This resulted in two different kind of chicken and I must say, both were very enjoyable. I made a side of tomato and pepper linguine to complement the lemony, veggie, cream cheesy, sour creamy-ness of the chicken. The yum-vidence is below.

So on Saturday night I had an intense craving for crepes. I blame this craving on the excessive amount of stress I have been under. Work, school, life can certainly make you want to eat. I wanted to reward myself for all my hard work ( forrealz!). I actually wanted to make crepes about 2 weeks ago but there was a flour situation at walmart that got in the way. Anyhoo, I went to my trust recipe site, allrecipes.com (<--- This site is the awesome!) and got a fairly simple crepe recipe that was accompanied by a cream cheese filling recipe for the crepe. Crepe are tough and easy to make. The easy part is throwing all the ingredients into the blender and pressing blend. Oh about that, I learned a very important lesson concerning blending dry stuff the blender. If u need to blend dry and wet materials, put the wet material in the blender first. Why do you think I say that? (answer below in the comment section if u so please). Anyway, after the blending process has taking place, you are left with this salt and extremely thin liquid mixture. Get yo pans out son! I used a small pan so that it wil be easier to control the shape of my crepe. Let the pan heat up under medium heat and once it is hot enough, spray some pam on that joint! ( or in my case, some great value cooking spray hehe). Pour about 1/8 cup of your mixture into the pan, from the side. Immediately move your pan in a semicircular motion in both directions to get a thing flat circular structure. Bam! There goes yo crepe girl! (boy!) But seriously, there you have it. As I mentioned, I used made some cream cheese filling to complement my crepe.It basically contained cream cheese, confectioners sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla extract. It was goood but I am not a fan of too sweet stuff so next time I make it, it will be with half the sugar but double the love! hehe!

This week I really stepped out of my comfort zone with these dishes and I am getting closer to being ready to entertain! Stay tuned folks!

Meat ‘o’ the sea? (Week 6: 2/6- 2/12)

I’m talking about fish of course! Fish? I LOVE IT! Yup. I actually went through a phase that I required my mom to make my own stew for me because I was not eating chicken. Of course she laughed at my request but she did indulge me occasionally by making fresh fish stew! HMMMMMMM! As much as I love fish stew I also love my fish being cooked in different ways and I enjoy different types of fish. This week I cooked my personal favorite….(wait for it!!!!!!)… SALMON! Now salmon should really be bought fresh, not frozen but I am not making bank, so the frozen one will have to do. For the frozen one, the ones that come in the air tight bags are muchhhhhh better! A note on thawing frozen meat or fish, you don’t want to thaw a frozen meat or fish in hot water. Use barely cold water and just let it sit. What does this teach us? Thaw your meat or fish, hours before to you need them! Another fool proof way to thaw is to move it from freezer to fridge at least 12hours before you need it (Of course this varies based on the weight of the meat) Ok enough  about thawing. I baked salmon and accompanied it with what I would like to call lemon tomato rice. I actually did not follow any recipe with this. I just decided what kind of taste my taste buds were going for. At the time this meal was made. I wanted something lemony.  I diced some tomatoes, onions, some red and green peppers and stirred them in some tomato paste, then added half a squeeze of lemon juice. I layered baking pan with some of this, placed the salmon on top, dotted the salmon with butter and placed slices lemon on top of the salmon. I popped this in the oven at 350 degrees and just let it ride! I semi fried the remaining mixture and added some precooked rice and just RTS (reduced to simmer). This is the final result! This meal MINISTERED to my spirit! I repeat MINISTERED!

Country Time? ( Week 5: 1/30- 2/5)

At the risk of perpetrating stereotypes, that is the mildest I can make that title. I was inspired by the constant talk of corn bread, so I decided to make some. Then I started to think about soul food, so I made some chicken wings to go along. This week I was really busy so I had almost no time to cook. I tried a cornbread recipe I found on *drumroll* allrecipes.com The recipe was pretty straight forward and it was quite successful if you ask me. The problem with baking is unless u have a group of people that will consume the food, it tends to go to waste. I did not even attempt to eat all that cornbread by myself!

As I said, I also made some wings. I have to say, I am not a fan of certain chicken meat. I baked the wings because with all the cooking I do, I also need to take little precautions to not make completely unhealthy food. I did not exactly enjoy the chicken. It had tooo much seasonings. I put too much in the black pepper/salt marinade I put it in the night b4. I t was edible but I definitely would not got for seconds.

This week was definitely not a personal favorite but I learned some lessons from it.

Let’s STIR it up! (Week 4 1/23- 1/29)

Back in school! This semester feels great, although it would have felt more awesome if it was my last here but I am finally taking classes I have interests in! With all the school madness, I have still managed to get in my cooking for the week. I actually cooked a lot this week because I am really not interested in the campus food options anymore. This week I really challenged myself ranging from breakfast food, to dinner. First I attempted my very first recipe attempt- the pancakes! It came out great! I did use eggs this time (see first blog) and I actually had vanilla extract. I think this helped me realize that sometimes you jus have to attempt something again to get it right.

Next up we have what I call stir rice (like stir fry except with rice). I cut together some veggies, a.k.a red and green bell peppers, and some bacon for taste. It was sautéed and a cooked extra long grain rice was added. With some seasoning, and this joint was hmmm hmm good. I LOVE RICE, so it was good to find another way to spice it up!

After seeing how adding the peppers to the rice worked, I decided to try it out with pasta! The choice of pasta was spaghetti. My problem with pasta is, it is really hard to get the seasoning INTO the pasta.  Using the same method I used for the rice, I made my bell pepper spaghetti. It was good. I am not a fan of pasta but it was tasty! As in I would serve it!

Speaking of serving it, I have been thinking a a lot about inviting others over for dinner type thing. It is a very scary concept because I don’t want to invite people and then make something that does not turn out well. So my good friend, Nemie, suggested that I make something that I have made enough times to be comfortable with making it. So look out for your invitation to dinner lunch and maybe brunch ( I can’t fade breakfast. Too early!). This will definitely be a leap of faith, so to say but I look forward to the challenge.

P.S Both the rice and spaghetti meal were accompanied with baked round eye beef seasoned with bacon and a hint of balsamic vinegar.

Can I pasta my chicken in peace? (Week 3- 1/16- 1/22)

So I am recovering from a terrible cold and I am just regaining my appetite so I wanted to make something simple. I had some penne rigatoni pasta and some alfredo sauce, so I purchased some chicken. I lightly browned the chicken to get the juices out. Then I cut them into thick strips while the pasta was boiling with a bit of oil in the water. I then cooked the chicken in the alfredo sauce and added some spices to enhance the taste. Then I poured the pasta (after it was drained) into a bowl and poured the chicken alfredo sauce into it. and then just mixed. It was sooo good! I felt very accomplished especially since the recipe was straightforward and I did not have to stress too much in my weakened state. This week, cooking was definitely harder to do because I did not want to really spend any energy I had. I just wanted to rest since I was still recovering from being sick. I did have to tell myself that I made a commitment to this and I need to see it thru no matter how I feel. I mean if I stop this week because I am not completely healthy, I will have no problem not cooking next week because I am sad or just not up to it. I am glad I went ahead and cooked because I feel great knowing I accomplished something this week.

A World Without Rice is No World for Me (Week 2- 1/9- 1/15)

So I was pretty sick last week so I am super late on updating the blog. But yay God for healing me! So last week I had a bit of fridge drama. I wanted to buy a fridge so I can stock up on grocery so I won’t have to shop every week for ingredients and I can save left overs. It seems the universe disagree with my thought process though. I could not find a fridge at Walmart, the place that has all things. So I was stuck with the question, what can I cook with the least amount of grocery? I visited my fave recipe site and got the inspiration to make chicken stir fry with rice. I ALWAYS have rice on hand. I LOVE rice. No I am IN LOVE with rice. So I went to work, got some groceries, and while shopping I remember reading about balsamic vinegar and how it brings out the taste in meat so I decided to buy it for the chicken stir fry and other future endeavors. I also got interested in making ky lime pie and saw that it was pretty easy! So I said why not?! Let’s do this! I did not really follow a recipe for the stir fry. I just seasoned the chicken, slightly browned them in a fry pan with the balsamic vinergar, and added veggies as well as ginger roots and spices. It WAS goooooooood! The chicken was really tender and juicy! the ginger added spicy/zesty taste to it. Then I made the key lime pie. The recipe can be found on allrecipes.com. It was sooooooooo good! Before I even baked the pie mix, I wanted to sit there and drink it. The pie would have been perfect if I had not allowed them to caramelized!