Cooking Baking Eating

I love the grill. I love grilled food. Steaks, chicken, fish (when I wasn’t allergic to it), all sorts of meats and even sometimes the occasional grilled portabello. But there is one very strange and sad thing about it.

I’m afraid of the grill.

I think it stems from my parents gas BBQ. It had a lever to push and light it, but it was so loud that I was convinced that it would cause it to explode. I only had lit it a few times and each time I would shut my eyes and try to get as far away as I could from the grill and still push the lever. I always was afraid to blow myself up. It was pretty darn strange.

Now I leave the grilling up to the Husband and I stick with creating new marinades and different things for the grill. He can deal with the heat and exploding grill, I’ll hide in the house. (No it never has blown up, but that doesn’t stop me from being afraid still.)

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Sometimes when you’ve had a rough time of it, you just need a little inspiration to get yourself motivated to do something. Try something new. Just DO anything.

That’s happened to me this past week. I’ve been stressing out severely about getting my blood drawn for the first time in 8 years. Now to normal people this isn’t a big deal, but to a needle-phobic… It’s a huge and terrifying thing. Too many bad, bad experiences…

So while I was trying to get through the neurotic stress of waiting for the time to come where my schedule will allow for it, I found other ways to occupy myself.

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I love my friends. They do things like throw birthday parties for their dogs.

And then ask me if I would make the food.

This makes me incredibly excited. I’ve never actually done food for a party. The most I’ve done for a party is make salad. And not even a fun salad. Bagged salad opened into a bowl. Sad.

I’m not much of a party girl, but this could be really great. Part of me hopes that this goes well and could even make me want to start doing catering or something.

I think I just need a change from my current job, something that will let me do something I love. I love food.

I’ll post more about the party and the accompanying food as it comes closer and things get a little bit more concrete.

Ah summer.

I loathe the heat of summer. Why can’t it just be WARM and not BOILING outside? My poor fair skin needs to hide from the sun and avoid it unless wearing a strong SPF.

But the heat is also the BEST time to make the ice cream. Home made ice cream. Minty fresh ice cream with bits of lovely dark chocolate nestled through it.

Now THAT is summer.
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Thats right. Dark chocolate salted caramel cupcakes. Have you ever heard of anything that just makes your insides just start dancing, anticipating the sugar high that is about to ensue? This causes it.
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Its hotter than hell outside. Summer has definitely made her appearance this year and I just wasn’t ready for it. I’m not ready to take my pale skin outside into the scorching heat and risking a sunburn or heat stroke.

I’m being over dramatic about the heat stroke, but not about the sunburns. My skin will blind you if I go into the light.

But this incredibly hot weather is definitely good for one thing.

Ice cream! Its time for me to break out the machine again and start making my husband his favorite ice creams. I’m also wanting to start getting into the world of frozen yogurt. Now I just have to find the perfect recipe!

I love making bread at home, but I do have one issue with that.

My skills with a bread knife and cutting in a straight line leave much to be desired. Its also probably why I can’t cut fabric in a straight line either. I think I have a genetic disposition to having a crooked hand.

I really hate the fact that my bread all turns lopsided when I try to cut into it. If you notice the cinnamon swirl bread on the right, the slice was rather lop sided. Either one end ends up twice as thick as the other or just all around retarded looking when I would come after it with a knife to enjoy its yeasty goodness.

I also hated the fact that I could never slice a good slice for a sandwich. Not only was it horribly lop sided but also super thick. More conducive to french toast than a turkey sandwich.

I had been thinking of buying a bread slicing guide online, but they always had such bad reviews for being cheap, thin plastic that would break or crack easily if used often.

But then I found this “beauty” while at a local thrift store. I love thrift stores, I think a good portion of my cooking and baking supplies have come from there. It only cost about $3 and was a nice sturdy plastic. I almost didn’t get it since I thought I would never use it.

I use it multiple times a day.

Its great because each slice is the same width and perfect for a sandwich. PLUS you don’t have that weird bread tilting thing going on after I’ve cut the bread.

Who knew that such joy could be found for only $3…

Sometimes I don’t think I’ve come a long way in my cooking, but then I starting thinking and go through old pictures.

Last year for Thanksgiving I wanted to cook a turkey for the first time on my own, make everything for a great meal and all that jazz. But unfortunately it was just Husband and I so there was a huge amount of food for only 2 people.

I found this picture and realized how far I’ve come. From a spoon stuck in a can opened from the bottom (why opened from the bottom I have no idea…)

To making my own cranberry sauce.

Good Gods I’ve turned into a food snob…

Now I have my pasta attachments for the KitchenAid mixer, I can make the pasta a heck of a lot easier than before with that stupid manual machine. I would relegate it to the craft area of my life but without the crank handle its just a door stop.

But now on to the pasta.

This was actually the inspiration for making the pasta. I bought this a few years ago with a friend when we were going to thrift stores. The thing I really love about it is the recipe and instructions that line the outside of the bowl.

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I love kitchen gizmos and gadgets. Especially ones that REALLY will make my projects easier.

A while back I decided I wanted to make fresh pasta. Why? Well, because I could. Plus I had never had fresh pasta and really wanted to try it. So I went out and bought a manual one.

It served its purpose, it helped me make pasta. But there really is one bad thing about it. Its MANUAL. As in you crank it to pull the pasta through.

I can’t tell you how tired my arm was after doing this. It was really quite annoying. Unfortunately now I’ve lost that damn handle crank so I can’t even use the stinking machine.

But then the times change… Read more »