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!