Monthly Archives: March 2011

Shooter’s Sandwich

So, miracle of miracles, this recipe was actually sent to me by Dan. Yeah. The man who thinks eating is a hassle and only sometimes gets excited for dinner if it involves dumplings and/or blueberry pie sent me a link to a sandwich. Must be one hell of a sandwich! Naturally, I had to check it out. OK, so what the hell is a “shooter’s sandwich?” According to the article Dan sent me, it’s apparently an English invention. It was originally created as a snack that a gentleman’s cook would make the night before a hunt, to be eaten when the gentleman in question got hungry after a day of bloodthirsty entertainment. So, it’s literally a sandwich for someone who shoots. Cool. More specifically, the shooter’s...

OK, so the other day I was reading a super dorky food-themed manga about a kid that’s really good at making bread. Like, really good. Better than every other baker in the world, in fact, despite zero professional training. And this is all because he has these “solar hands” that are naturally super warm so that when he kneads his dough the heat really gets the yeast going, the whole thing comes together and rises a lot faster than normal. As a result, his breads are always perfectly moist and fluffy, with the just the right amount of crustiness for each type of bread he makes. Seriously, his bread is so good that one bite will literally kill you with its awesomeness. Totally nerdy...

I noticed the other day that I’ve been making a lot of desserts lately. My last five or six posts have been sweet things — girl scout cookies, molten lava cake, mini pies, etc. Come to think of it, I haven’t made a proper meal since the day we had Chicken Fried Steak for lunch. This is not good. A girl can’t live on desserts, you know. So when I came home from work tonight, I was pretty determined to cook something tasty that didn’t involve any amount of sugar. Luckily, there was chicken in the fridge, and leftover pie dough + frozen mixed vegetables in the freezer. Chicken pot pie, hollaaaa! The thing about chicken pot pie is that it’s awesome. Like, really...

I have a real soft spot in my heart for s’mores. Yes, they’re delicious and evoke happy childhood memories, but they’re also what I used to win my way into Dan’s heart. Early into our awkward and nerdy courtship (we pretty much fell in love after discovering a mutual obsession with Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series), I figured out that Dan had a wicked sweet tooth — the man couldn’t finish a small burger but could inhale a jumbo box of Junior Mints in about ten seconds. So, every night for weeks, I would just happen to make too many late night s’mores and have to find someone to take the extras off my hands. This had the happy effect of 1) giving me an...

Happy St. Patty’s Day, everyone! Are you wearing green? I’m not. I don’t really own anything green; it’s not a great color for me. Thank god no one at work is fanatical about the whole wear-green-on-St. Patty’s Day-or-get-pinched thing. That would have sucked! Elementary school bus rides really traumatized me on that front. Anyway, I’ve been thinking long and hard about what to do for my St. Patty’s Day post. Something green? Something with Guiness or whiskey? Something super Irish? I did the first two last year, so I decided to go Irish this year. What do Irish people eat? Shepherd’s pie…corned beef…soda bread…potatoes! Gotta have potatoes. The Simply Recipes blog had a post on Colcannon earlier this week that looked pretty tasty, and...

Happy Pi(e) Day, everyone! What is Pi Day, you ask? It’s a holiday commemorating the mathematical constant pi. Invented in 1989 by Larry Shaw, a physicist at the San Francisco Exploratorium, it was officially recognized by the US House of Reps as “National Pi Day” in 2009. Basically, it’s a kind of nerdy day that makes engineers, and scientists, and anyone else who likes math giddy with glee. I love it! I’m terrible with dates, so I didn’t realize it was 3/14 until Facebook told me that my friend Tiffany had hosted a Pi(e) Party this past weekend in honor of the mathematically special date. There were sweet pies, savory pies, and…a mac n’ cheese pie with a woven bacon crust! This, of course,...

So Dan and I bought an elliptical machine today. My mom told me a few weeks ago that I was looking fatter than ever, so exercise has been on my mind a lot lately. I went running a few times…embarked on an 18 mile bike ride one day…hiked in the Great Falls….and then hit a slump. I blame the weather. Cold, wet, and windy…there’s no way I’m going out into that. Last week I became convinced that buying exercise equipment would solve all my problems: I could get a great cardio work out at home whenever I wanted, and if the weather was good I could still go for a run outside. Boom, just like that my newly accumulated flab would disappear and my...

New Orleans-Style Bread Pudding With Whiskey Sauce

Happy belated Mardi Gras, everyone! I was planning to make New Orleans-themed foods for Fat Tuesday this year — gumbo, jambalaya, king cake, beignets, etc. — but work this week has been all kinds of hectic, and I was too tired to cook anything but leftovers in the microwave. Now that Mardi Gras is over, and St. Patty’s Day is around the corner, I was sort of thinking that this recipe could kind of represent both occasions, since bread pudding and whiskey are traditional Irish foods, and Emeril Lagasse tells me this pudding is “New Orleans-style,” whatever that means. Bread pudding is one of those wonderful, mysterious foods that I didn’t discover until fairly recently. I’d seen it on menus and in display cases...

What is it about Girl Scout cookies that gets people so crazy? As soon as cookie season starts, pint-sized dealers pop up on every corner, and suddenly everyone is fighting with each other to get their hands on as many Thin Mints, Tagalongs, and Do-Si-Dos as they can before sprinting home to devour their sugary contraband. And god forbid you try to eat someone else’s cookies without their permission… Yikes! Maybe it’s because I never joined the Girl Scouts, but I’ve never been that wild about their cookies. I mean, I’ll eat them, and they’re delicious, but I certainly would never assault anyone for them. Plus, now that prices have risen to $4.00 a pop, it just doesn’t seem worth it to squander what little cash I...

I haven’t eaten (or thought about) chicken fried steak since I moved out of Texas, where everything is bigger, beefier, and more fried. I’m not a health nut or anything, but I generally try not to eat too many fried foods if I can help it. And chicken fried steak is…a slab of steak that is breaded, fried, and then smothered in gravy. Red meat AND fried? That’s a heart attack on a plate if I’ve ever seen one. Still, the Pioneer Woman had a post on chicken fried steak last week and it just looked so yummy that I had to try it. Chicken fried steak is so different from the way I usually eat steak. I like my steak to be thick and...

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Monthly Archives: March 2011

Shooter’s Sandwich

Brioche

Chicken Pot Pie

S’mores Cupcakes

Colcannon

Mini Blueberry Pies

Molten Lava Cake

New Orleans-Style Bread Pudding With Whiskey Sauce

Samoa Cookie Bars

Chicken Fried Steak

Blogs I Love

Cool Sites