"Infinite Riches in a Little Room"

While I was on vacation in New Hampshire last week, I found some old timey cookbooks that my family had told me were up there. First, let me briefly explain the house. It's really just an awesome cabin that a very nice lady left to my Grandpa back in the day. My entire family uses it for vacationing in the summer. It's a nice place, very much in the woods, and I am very much allergic to it. But it's still fun.

Anyway, so there were old cookbooks, and I had a chance to briefly go through them and take some pictures of recipes that I would like to try. Most I will have to change since they include a lot of cooking and frying in a large quantity of fat, but I'm sure I can figure it out.

 I have a plan of trying the recipes, and good or bad I will post them with both the original recipe written word for word as well as my own updated version of it. They're a little tricky because they have a lot of vague measurements and silly instructions (half a glassful of wine; besprinkle with sugar). I imagine this will be fun for me. Especially the recipe that involves baking egg yolks, slicing them, dipping them in pancake batter, and frying them in fat, and serving with fried parsley. Yum and death. That's in a book from the 1890's.

I did decide to share now with the world a page of quotes from one of the books. It's called: Favorite Recipes Cook Book, A Complete Culinary Guide, and it's from 1931. It has lots of good recipes but I think the quote page was my favorite. Sorry it's awkwardly split up. I was having trouble taking pictures with my less than perfect camera in a very dim room. I will try harder next time I'm there.

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Gardening Fun

Gardening is fun, especially if you have someone else do it for you, and then reap the benefits. That's how I roll. Earlier this year, my dad and brother (with my assistance, of course!) felt the need to make a huge garden structure thing, in order to keep the deer and critters out as well as to make us look fancy. I must admit, it does look nice. I mostly helped by halfheartedly digging a hole with a post digger. Turns out that I don't enjoy manual labor. At least I tried!

We planted some seeds, planted some already started plants, and I re-potted my herbs so they could have room to stretch. And holy crap did they stretch! The sage went insane! Especially in the past couple of days. I mean, it was doing alright outside, then when I looked at it yesterday they were giants! I definitely need to use them soon. And the basil has been growing well, but it seems some bugs might like it too since the leaves have little holes in them. Oh well, I still used some today in my grandma's sauce.

The parsley and dill had all but died before I re-potted them. Now they're coming back strong! It's quite exciting. And I also cheated and bought rosemary and mint since I couldn't find mint seeds, and the rosemary smelled too good to not buy. The mint is the only one not in the garden, I put it in it's own pot right under my window. No real reason for that, it's just where the pot already was.

Lots of stuff is growing, and I'm kinda looking forward to all the fresh and free vegetables that will be coming later in the summer. Oh, and the strawberries! I have learned that strawberries fresh off the vine are ridiculously fantastic.

Now you can all look forward to summer recipes with home grown ingredients besides just the herbs (which are finally usable and can fulfill the purpose of this blog!). I'm gonna make zucchini bread, butternut squash risotto, grilled vegetable sauces, green bean casserole, soups, desserts, drinks, anything and everything I can!

Now I'm freaking hungry.

Watch out, it's pic heavy below the cut. Click them to see them bigger
Ignore that is says to click for the recipe. What it really means is to click for the pictures.

Click here for the recipe!

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Spicy Mango Dip

I had a whole thing typed up about this recipe, and then somehow deleted the entire thing. I don't really feel like typing it all again, so I'll sum it up.


~Made it in Boston. Had a BBQ. Good times
~Made it again, some changes, still tasty. Good times.
~Made it for Memorial Day. More changes. Used fresh mint from my garden. Good times.


Perfect summer-time dip recipe. Spicy, sweet, and refreshing at once.

Play with ingredients, change, substitute, have fun. If you have a lame allergy to mango, like Karen does, use peaches or something instead.


 Done. Enjoy!

Click here for the recipe!

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Chicken and Corn Risotto

I love making risotto. It's become one of my go-to meals. I  first learned about it in college, when Sarah taught me how to make it a couple times. Then, on a vacation in New Hampshire I had this really awesome mushroom risotto, but when I told my mom about it she had no idea what I was talking about. What kind of Italian doesn't know about risotto (ignore the fact that I had only recently learned about it as well)? So I planned on making some. We had butternut squash growing in our garden, so I made a butternut squash risotto. It was fantastic! (Recipe will be up when it grows again this summer!) Realizing it was my mom's new favorite, I made it again on different occasions, such as her birthday or a random Tuesday. Sometimes it's mushroom and beef, sometimes it's chicken and corn. Today was the random Tuesday chicken and corn version. It was pretty spectacular.

Usually I make it with those boxes of tasty broth, but we didn't have any and it's gross out so we didn't feel like going to the store. So it turns out that risotto works well with bouillon cubes! Lucky us! Plus we had leftover corn on the cob since I bought some yesterday to make a black bean, corn and mango salsa (which will also be posted eventually) as well as some parsley for that same recipe.

And don't forget, making risotto is always a good excuse to open a new bottle of wine! Both for the recipe, and for you to enjoy while endlessly stirring the rice. Comfort food and wine on a rainy day, it doesn't get much better than that!

FYI: Arborio is the best kind of rice to use for risotto, in fact the bags or containers usually say "risotto' on them. But if you don't  feel like buying fantastic risotto rice, you can always use medium grain instead, it just won't be as glamorous.

Click here for the recipe!

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Simple Mozzarella-Steak Pinwheel

Using pizza dough the way it's used in this recipe is a very simple, yet very impressive, technique. It's the most basic stuffed bread, but when your guests have a piece they'll think you spent forever making it because it is just that awesome.

Once again my parents had their friends over and I agreed to make a few snacks for them. These are good opportunities for me to practice cooking since I can pick whatever I want to make and then have them pay for the ingredients! I have made pinwheels before; I used a recipe out of one of Giada's cookbooks and have since altered it a little. Her recipe had the bread stuffed with mozzarella, spinach, and prosciutto. I made it that way, and it was fantastic. When I made it again this time, I took out the prosciutto since my mom's friend is a vegetarian. And it was still fantastic.

But then I was thinking, what about everyone else? Surely they would like a stuffed bread with meat in it too (mostly I was thinking of me). So I decided to make an entirely different recipe, using steak. And what goes with steak and bread better than pepper, onions, mushrooms, and cheese? That's right, nothing. And so this recipe was born. And then devoured.

Seriously, it was delicious. And so easy to make. Especially if you just buy the pizza dough like I do. You can make it from scratch, but the would negate the point of this recipe being quick and easy. It's also very versatile, so it's easy to substitute whatever you want. But you'll want to try this one, trust me.

Remember, the thinner the cut of steak you can buy, the better it will roll in the bread! So try your best, ok?
Also, props to Mark for seasoning the steak and helping me make this.

Click here for the recipe!

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Tips! Keeping parsley and researching recipes

I decided to be charitable today and share my genius with you all. Or, to be more honest, I was kind of bored and thought this is as good a time as any to share some of my little tips with the world.

#1
One such tip is the importance of researching recipes. I always always always go through cookbooks and websites to see what's out there and tasty looking. And I try many of the recipes I see. The first time I make a recipe I follow it exactly. From that I can usually play around with it the next time and turn it into something of my own. But it's important to see what other people are making in order to come up with your own ideas and use them to greatly impress everyone who knows you. When you want to do things and learn how food works, I suggest you research, cook the recipe exactly, and then experiment the next time you make it. When you get used to recipes through this method then you should do what I do whenever I want to try something different: research, pick parts of recipes you like, and make your own dish.

My research today for appetizers and snacks:

I'll give you an example. One day I decided that I absolutely had to make corn chowder. The only problem was, I had no idea how to do that. So I went online and found several of my trustworthy go-to cooking websites and looked over many different chowder recipes. Some were overly complicated, some had ingredients that I despise, and some were too simple. But the important thing was that they all had certain similar aspects to them. Many had a roux to start off with. A few had creamed corn, and some had just frozen kernels. And so on and so forth. So I took the common aspects and applied them to my own recipe, and then took the bits and pieces that sounded good and used those too, like using creamed corn and corn kernels and adding bacon fat (it isn't the healthiest of recipes!). I've learned by experimenting like this that you can just find a bunch of recipes for the same food and just take from them what you want to. Chances are that it'll come out spectacular and you will feel like a Culinary God.

Don't worry, I'll eventually post that recipe! It's just a little hard to do because I make it slightly different each time :)

#2
The next bit of advice is more directly linked to herbs. My herbs still aren't useful yet so I rely on grocery stores. The problem is that buying those little plastic containers of herbs tends to be a huge rip-off. So I buy the bundles that are dripping wet and always 5x more than what you actually need. But won't all that go to waste?!? Um...no. Chill out. I told you there was some advice here, didn't I?

The best example I can give you is with parsley, since that's what I always like to have on hand. That stuff lasts forever! It's awesome like that. I can buy a huge bundle, use what I want, and then I take the rest and put it in a cup full of cold water and put it in the fridge. Every once in a while I check the water and add more, or dispose of stalks that become unappealing. The parsley can last quite a few weeks like this and having it around will help you figure out how to use it. Here's a pic of my parsley after I've had it for about 3 weeks:

 Yea, it's a little sad looking, but it's still good and remember, it has been sitting in my fridge for 3 weeks! I find this system to be much cheaper and way more convenient than buying just a little bunch for an outrageous price whenever I need a tablespoon of parsley in a recipe. And I know there are tube containers you can also buy to keep it more compact in the fridge to save space, but i haven't gotten around to that yet, so this works just fine.

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The herbs are ok

I know it's been a while since I posted new info about my herbs. And no, it's not because I forgot or anything lame like that, it's because they honestly hadn't changed much since my last update. There was a few days when I thought they were going to die, and that wasn't cool, but since it got warmer they've been doing much better and have actually grown a little! I'm going to start watering them with a fertilizer water thing that my dad made for our garden and I hope it will make the herbs grow to the point where I can actually use them. I did NOT expect it to take quite this long!

The basil has finely grown some new basil like leaves. After remaining unchanged for 2 months I was concerned that I had duds, but now I see actual progress. See how cute? It actually resembles basil now! I just want to gobble it up!

Now, the parsley I was really really worried about. It was not doing well at all. It was losing the green color and being all long and floppy and terrible and kind of shriveled  up. Thankfully it looks like an actual plant again! I rescued it! I probably wasn't watering it enough because of my fear of over-watering my herbs. But now the parsley is quickly on its' way to a full and healthy recovery, all for the purpose of being eaten! Mmmmmmm tasty....

The sage has always been pretty and healthy looking. The only real change is the leaves are bigger and cooler looking, and there is more of them. Enough said, check out the pic.

My dill is being kind of strange. It's growing well, but with a purple tint to it. Is this normal? I guess I just have to wait and see. It is steadily growing, so it's still doing well, right? Oh well, at least it's looks neat!

We've also started growing plants for the garden in the back yard. My dad and brother (with my help of course!) built this huge wooden structure for our garden, so we're pretty excited about it. They had to build such a big garden so the deer won't be able to just eat everything. I'll put up pics of it when we've planted some of the plants outside. Right now the peppers and tomatoes and eggplant are growing inside, and are doing quite well if I do say so myself! Here are some of the tomato plants! They're huge (compared to the herbs at least)!

So many growing things! Only problem now is how to get rid of all the stupid little flies. I'm going to blame my brother's orange tree for them. No way can my cute little herbs be at fault!

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