Greek Corner Gyros

I know I haven't posted on here in a while, and I don't normally do a review-type post, but I ate at the gyro place today and had to share my gooooood eats!

I've always liked the feel of the Greek Corner Gyros place down on Franklin and Jefferson. It's small, there really isn't a lot of seating room, but the staff is always smiling and quick to greet me when I walk in the door. It also helps that the tantalizing smell of roasting lamb and beef wafts through the restaurant and even seems to seep through the walls and pull in passersby. And if you're lucky, every once in a while you'll catch an authentic, "Opa!" from the Greek family that runs the place.

One of the first things you'll notice as you enter the Greek Corner is its massive menu. Posted above the counter, and with typed up new specials taped to the counter itself, it seems to be ever growing and slowly running out of space to expand. Ranging from souvlaki to hot dogs, the selection, needless to say, is not lacking in the slightest.

Despite this, I used to always get the same thing. Even though I visited quite often--as much as four times a month at the height of my patronage--I always got the traditional gyro meal. The gyro consists of a large helping of lamb meat (which, it turns out, is really 80% beef, but who's counting that against them? Not this girl!), tomatoes, onions, and delicious tzatziki (a sweet cucumber and yogurt sauce) all wrapped in a round fold of golden brown pita, and it comes with seasoned fries (not to be underrated!) and a drink. While it may  seem silly to never vary one's order in a place where the menu is so obviously plentiful, what else could one really get a gyro place?? A good gyro is hard to find, and even harder to quit.

That's why it wasn't until a visiting friend tried something different that I branched out. She had ordered the Mediterranean chicken, a sandwich that, like the gyro, was served on pita bread. Naturally, I shook my head at her. Who doesn't order a gyro at a gyro place, at least the first time they visit? Shameful. But that was before I saw, smelled, and tasted what would soon become my new favorite and usual order.

On this aforementioned slice of fried pita sat seasoned chicken, green peppers, provolone, and, you guessed it, the cool tzatziki. It certainly looked and smelled good, though I wondered whether it could stand up to the savory, greasy goodness that was my beloved gyro. I asked if I could try a bite, and my friend obliged. The texture of the tender chicken and the chewy provolone; the combination of sweet, mildly cheesy, and chicken-y flavors; the comforting presence of the familiar crispy pita wrapped around all this greatness--all of it made for one phenomenal bite.

And that was it, that's all it took. Now, whenever I go there, my order is once again always the same, but it's no longer what it was before; now I get the Mediterranean chicken every time. So naturally, that's what I got tonight as well, and it was as good and satisfying as ever.

I'd show you a picture, but, well, it's sort of...

                                                                                             ...gone :)


And once again, when I head back there some weekend night at 1:00 in the morning, I won't hold up the line of drunk college kids (their largest clientele demographic, I would guess) by taking a long time to decide what I want. The choice is obvious: it's that tasty, tasty chicken all the way!

Favorite Breakfast Dishes

I love hearty breakfasts with lots of meat--bacon, sausage, ham, etc--and eggs and something else fluffy, like pancakes or french toast or even potatoes. But making all these things separately, and eating a helping of each, makes for a lot of food, a lot of kitchen mess, and an overly-full stomach. This is why I like to mix things together.

This morning, I found a can of corned beef hash on my shelf. I don't remember buying it, but I'm sure it was me, I love anything with corn beef, and hash is always good. It makes me feel like a Who down in Whoville eating Who Hash :)

(from: http://www.meijer.com/s/mary-kitchen-corned-beef-hash-1-can-25-oz/_/R-126915)

Already, this provided me with a savory meat (the corned beef) and something fluffy (the potato chunks); all I needed was the eggs. Luckily, my roommate keeps the fridge regularly stocked with basic stuff, the kinds of things I always forget to buy, like milk, butter, and eggs. I grabbed three of the eggs and began to whisk them up in a small bowl with a few splashes of milk. Meanwhile, the greased skillet I had placed on the burner was heating up nicely.

Once the skillet was ready, I poured on the eggs and started scrapping them around till all the liquid turned to jiggly fluff. Before the eggs could burn, I emptied the can of corned beef hash into the pan and mixed it all up. Now I just had to let it get a little crispy.

After letting the corned beef hash sit for a minute, then flipping it, then letting it sit again, then flipping it again, everything was starting to turn golden brown, or at least it would have if the corned beef wasn't already naturally a reddish shade of pink. Regardless of color, I could tell it was ready, so I turned off the burner and served myself a bowlful.

Before I dug in, I added a few decent shakes of garlic salt, a very good decision in retrospect. The garlic and egg toned down the loud, sharp flavor of the corned beef, creating a nice balance of tastes on my tongue. Overall, it was easy, hearty, and lovely, just what I want from a good breakfast. And the only things I got dirty were one skillet, a bowl, a fork, and a spatula. Not bad at all.

Another good breakfast combo like this one is called Farmer's Breakfast. This one may be more appealing to the masses since not everyone enjoys the strong taste of corned beef, but I still recommend either one because I think they're both good. Anyway, Farmer's Breakfast goes a little something like this:

1. Scramble some eggs
2. Brown some sausage
3. Fry some bacon
4. Dice some potatoes
5. Stir them all together in a skillet till well mixed
6. Serve with pepper to taste

It's a little more work and a lot more dishes (which kind of defeats the purpose of finding an easy breakfast combo that doesn't make a mess of your kitchen), but it's totally worth the trouble. And if you can find a partner to make and eat it with you--my boyfriend loooooves this stuff--you've also found somebody to help you with the clean up (hopefully).


Moral of the story: corned beef hash with eggs and garlic salt is super quick and easy, while Farmer's Breakfast is possibly even more yummy, but definitely more work. Either way, they're both way above mediocre.

Broccoli Cheddar Soup?

Yes, the title of this post does end in a question mark, that is not a type-o. I did that because this turned out to be one of my failed attempts at cooking something new. Well, sort of failed. I guess this would be a case where the adjective "mediocre" is entirely appropriate.

Knowing that we were going to be snowed in by the impending second coming of snowpocalypse, my roommate and I (I guess she's like my unofficial partner in this blog now?) went to Walmart and bought all the necessary ingredients for the only dish that really makes sense in those kinds of conditions: soup, specifically broccoli cheddar soup. 

As the snowflakes began to accumulate, I started by chopping some onions. Even though we lit a Christmas candle (appropriate for the weather, we thought) to stave off the eye-watering sting of the onions, I found myself frequently running over to the door of our apartment to shove my face out into the frigid, snowy air just to give my burning eyeballs a break. Eventually, half of a large yellow onion was sufficiently diced and thrown into the deep pot on the stove to saute in some butter. 

It was then my job to add 3 cups of water and 3 chicken bullion cubes to the pot and wait for it to boil while my roommate shredded the carrots. On her most recent trip home, she had borrowed this electric shredding thing from her mom. The words "Salad Shooter" were printed across the side of the little contraption, and when you put a couple carrots in the top, it whirred and buzzed and then shot out thin shreds of carrot, the perfect size for salads, or, as in our case, broccoli cheddar soup. After putting three medium sized carrots through the salad shooter, she moved on to cutting up the broccoli. As anyone who knows me knows, I do NOT like broccoli, so the fact that I am even entertaining the idea of eating something with broccoli in the name is kind of astounding. But my roommate assured me, as she cut the broccoli into slightly smaller (but still ridiculously gross-looking) chunks, that the nasty green menace would shrink down in the soup a little and that with all the cheese and noodles we were about to add, I wouldn't even notice them. 

When the water broke out into a boil, I tossed in the veggies and then waited for a second boil before adding in the 2 cups of egg noodles. The pot looked like a jumble of orange and green; had potatoes been an ingredient, this soup would have felt very Irish. During the 5-6 minutes that all this then boiled for a third time, I cubed the giant, 1 lb log of Velveeta cheese that we bought. The processed cheese stuck to my hands, the knife, and the cutting board as I tried to slice and pry it into smaller pieces. It grossed us out a little to think about the fact that we didn't need to refrigerate this stuff, it was fine all on its own. And yet, the cheesiness was probably my favorite part of the finished product. 

Once the egg noodles were nice and tender, we threw in 3 cups of milk, all the freshly cubed cheese, and some garlic powder to taste. As soon as the cheese was melted and mixed thoroughly throughout the soup, we were ready to dig in. Warm and filling as any soup should be, it was also chewy, crunchy, and cheesy at the same time. The combination of broccoli, carrots, and noodles provided the texture, while the cheese was the creamy glue that tried to hold it all together and it turned out to be the most dominate flavor by far. My roommate was kind of right about the broccoli, I didn't notice it hardly at all, but this could have been because I spent a lot of my dinner time meticulously picking through the chunks and separating out the ugly green trees. Needless to say, my roommate declined when I offered all my broccoli bites. 

The odd thing, though, was that there was this weird, mysterious white substance that built up and clung to everything in our bowls. It almost looked like tiny little cheese curds, but we were pretty sure it wasn't coming from the cheese because when we had had this soup made for us by my roommate's mom in the past, she always used Velveeta and this stuff had never come up for her. Perhaps it was the brand of egg noodles we used? We really had no idea. But that, combined with the somewhat watery consistency of the liquid parts of the soup, made us nostalgic for how Mrs. Angeli used to make, and that's just ultimately gave this dish a mediocre rating in my book. 

Of course, I forgot to take pictures while we were cooking and eating this time around, but I do have a picture of our leftovers:

It tastes better than it looks, but not as good as it sounds. Thus, mediocre. But if anybody wants to try and do it better, here's the short version of the recipe we followed:

Broccoli Cheddar Soup:

1 onion (diced)                                    2-3 Tbl. butter

3 c. water                                            3 tsp. chicken bullion cubes/granules

1 pkg. frozen broccoli                         2-3 shredded carrots

1 ½ -2 c. very fine egg noodles           3 c. milk

1 lb. Velveeta cheese (cubed)             Garlic powder

Sauté onion in butter.  Add water and instant chicken cubes/granules.  Bring to a boil. When boiling add the shredded carrots and the broccoli.  Again, when boiling add egg noodles.  Boil 5-6 minutes.  Add milk, cheese and garlic powder to taste.  Heat until cheese is melted and well stirred into soup.

Enjoy!

Lent is Upon Us

'Tis the season to give stuff up, and this year I'm abstaining from what I try and fail to give up every Lent: Coke. As a Coke-enthusiast, this is a seriously big challenge for me. Whereas some people can't say no to at least one piece of chocolate every day, I've gotta have my Coke fix. Yeah, I know I'd save so much money if I didn't buy a bottle every other day or so, and yes, it'd be good for my body if I cut out all that sugar and caffeine (because this girl does not do Diet Coke; ew), and of course I've heard the urban legend about how Coke is so strongly acidic that they use it to clean blood off the highway--but it doesn't matter; Coke is my Kryptonite.

(from: http://willthef1journo.wordpress.com/2012/07/16/coca-cola-and-mclaren/)

This is why I started preparing for Lent two weeks in advance of its actual start. A few weeks before Ash Wednesday I decided that, as deliciously fulfilling and thirst-quenching as I find Coke to be, and despite the fact that it would easily be my last request in any impending doom situation, Coke wasn't doing me any favors. It was sucking up all my money in exchange for copious amounts of empty calories. But instead of just quitting cold turkey on the first day of Lent and naively relying on my notoriously feeble will power, I decided to ease into it this time.  So I started slowly, cutting down my almost every day habit to a few times a week at first, then once a week, and then out entirely just in time for Lent to begin.

(from: http://queirugalibre.blogspot.com/2012/05/coca-cola-se-hace-con-el-control-de-la.html)

The caffeine headaches sucked at first, but this week they were practically non-existent. And I've rediscovered how satisfying just plain old water is when you're parched. I mean sure, every time I see the coke machine all painted with fizzy brown bubbles and placed conveniently just across the room from me at work, right in the middle of my line of sight, I let out a deep sigh (more of a whimper) of longing. But it's getting easier, and for the first time in the several years that I have made this my Lenten goal, it actually feels doable.

Top Five Foods to Pair with Mashed Potatoes

To take a little break from the usual, I decided that for this post, instead of working my way through a new recipe, I'd give my two cents on some good oldies. Of course, this post centers around what dishes go best with one of my all-time favorite foods: mashed potatoes. And for easy reading, I've compiled it all into a top five list.


So, my top five things to eat with mashed potatoes are....

5. Fried chicken, corn, cheese, and country gravy

Now this may sound like multiple dishes, but all four of these things go into one bowl with a big, steamy helping of that fluffy white goodness. That's right--chicken bowls are my fifth favorite way to have mashed potatoes. The mix of creamy and crunchy, cheesy and sweet, is just heaven in a bowl. Well, the fifth best heaven anyway.

4. Country-fried steak and country gravy

I'm realizing that I could probably make a spot just for country gravy alone as an accompaniment to mashed potatoes, but that's not a real meal (I wish), so I won't. I first tried country-fried steak somewhat recently, within the last four years or so, but it was an instant classic. Once again, there's that element of juxtaposition: it's that creamy and crunchy combination that really brings out the best of both foods.

3. Turkey breast

As a Thanksgiving classic, who hasn't tried dipping their turkey into their mashed potatoes? You know exactly what I'm talking about here. On its own, turkey breast to me has always kind of blah (I'm a dark meat person), but paired with mashed potatoes, turkey magically becomes absolutely delicious!

2. Steak

I mean, was there any question as to whether this would be on the list? They just go together, like they were made for each other. Whenever I'm in the mood for either steak or mashed potatoes, a craving for the other is sure to follow. It's like a thick, medium-rare flank dripping in its own juices was just meant to cuddle up next to a creamy, buttery pile of mashed up spuds, flakes of red skin visible throughout the mound. This came very close to the coveted top spot, but ultimately I had to go with...

1. Chicken fettuccine alfredo

Starch upon starch! Sounds terribly bad for you, I know, but I swear the best meal I've ever had that involved mashed potatoes also included a heaping helping of this hearty pasta. And what's even stranger, is that it was from Hyvee catering. Who knew? But I highly recommend it if your taste buds have been anywhere close to mine thus far. The chicken helps to break up the starchiness, while you still get to enjoy two popular and tasty carb-loaded dishes in one sitting. Just remember to do some intense cardio the next day, because this meal will stick with you in the least flattering way possible.


Overall, I think this is a solid list. Eccentric, maybe, but solid. And now of course I'm dying to eat all of these, ranking system be damned.

The Long-Awaited Conclusion of "Yummy Oat Pancakes"

Though it's been a few days since I've had them and I'm just now getting around to blogging about it, the memory of the oat pancakes we made last Thursday is still fresh and vivid. Despite having eaten several (good) meals since then, the oat pancakes are by far my favorite dish of the week (and I treated myself to both China Palace AND The Greek Corner Gyros this past week, so that's saying a lot).

After soaking the oats in buttermilk overnight, my roommate and I just needed to mix together the rest of the ingredients. In a small mixing bowl, we combined the dry stuff:

1/2 cup flour
2 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (trust me, that's plenty!)
1/4 teaspoon salt

In a medium mixing bowl, we combined the wet stuff:

2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 stick of melted butter

First, we added the wet stuff to the soaked oats and combined it all with a big rubber spatula. The result was a very yellowy version of the chunky wet stuff we had before. I wish I could say it was appetizing, but it really wasn't. Then we added the dry stuff. This had the effect of at least changing the color from sickly yellow to an off-white, tan-ish color, and it made the consistency more thick than chunky. Now it was really starting to look like batter.

And bam! We were ready to fry up some pancakes. As you might have guessed, the process is essentially exactly the same as with regular pancakes. You scoop about a half a cup's worth of batter into a measuring cup, depending on how big you want your pancakes, and then pour them onto a hot griddle that has been sprayed with Pam.

One thing that is a little different about pancakes made with oats, though, is that it is harder to see the bubbles. I was always taught that you know a pancake is ready to be flipped when it starts to bubble, but with this kind of pancakes, it's hard to see the tiny bubbles amid the speckled cinnamon and oats. Lucky for us, unlike with regular pancakes, oat pancakes taste good when they're just a little crispy.

Once the pancakes have turned a decent golden brown on both sides (or even slightly darker), they're ready to be plated and served, preferably with butter and powdered sugar. If you're like most people and enjoy maple syrup, have at it. I, on the other hand, cannot stand the stuff. I stuck with my sugar fix.

And there you have it: a very UN-mediocre stack of tasty oat-filled pancakes, if I do say so myself.

(Side note: As you may have noticed, my pictures just got way more frequent and way cooler. That's because I recently installed Instagram on my phone just so I could take nice pictures for this blog. (Don't judge me.) And don't worry, while everything certainly looks cooler with the filters on than it would if I had just left it as my crappy phone camera captures everything, I do try to be loyal to the food's real life level of deliciousness, meaning I'm not gonna fluff up a botched recipe with a perfect-looking picture; I'd like to portray my results as honestly as possible. Just be prepared for even more classy food pictures to come!)

Yummy Oat Pancakes

My mom was never much of a baker; she'd rather eyeball measurements and proportions till she got something to taste just right than be precise. This is the reason why I never learned to bake anything fancier than those pre-cut Pillsbury sugar cookies. But I've been able to get by with mostly just cooking, and I've never really been into stuff like cake or cupcakes anyways (I'm more of a straight up chocolate kinda girl).

Where pancakes fall in the baking-cooking divide, I'm not entirely sure. You obviously don't bake them in the oven, you fry them on the stove top, but making the batter is very much like making cake batter in that your measurements have to be exact. Too much flour, the batter's too thick; too much milk, the batter's too thin. Either way, those are some bad pancakes. Needless to say, I can't just guess at how much of each ingredient I will need. I'm going to need some practiced hands if I want to make one of my favorite breakfast foods: oat pancakes.

My first experience with oat pancakes was at my best friend's house around fifth grade or so. Her mom, a woman who rather enjoys baking and has a knack for it, made these delightful little speckled rounds that resembled pancakes, but were oh-so-much more than that. They were fluffy, as a pancake should be, but textured; you could taste and feel every oat and grain in them. To me, this was a new and pleasant experience for my mouth, but texture like that is not for everybody. Lightly sweetened with cinnamon, they were especially good with butter and powered sugar.

But I haven't had them in years. There's more work to them than with regular pancakes, so they don't get made very often, and I haven't been over to my friend's house often enough in the last few years to catch her mom on a day when she's going to the trouble of making them. Lucky for me, though, my best friend is also my current roommate.

So after finishing up our foray into pesto sauce last week, she suggested we call her mom and try to make an old favorite for ourselves. I enthusiastically agreed.

And tonight's the night! Sort of. First thing's first, though, you have to soak the oats in buttermilk overnight. I measured out two cups of old-fashioned oats and two and half cups of buttermilk, and then my roommate started to combine them.

The buttermilk was as thick as a melted milkshake, but the two ingredients gradually mixed together. I made a face. The mixture began to look more and more like, well, blown chunks. I wasn't too surprised, the batter was supposed to be chunky, but it did weird me out just a little.

          "Looks gross," I said.
          "Smells gross," she said.

Sure enough, the bowl smelled unexpectedly like sour cream. As strange as it is, that's what buttermilk smells like apparently. Nevertheless, as we covered the bowl and slid it into the fridge to sit until morning, we were giddy with excitement.

This was only a few hours ago; tomorrow I will wake up and fill the kitchen with the smell of not sour cream, but lovely oat pancakes (which, although they have a taste all their own, smell pretty much just like regular pancakes). So get excited, because my next post will be delicious!

Part Two of the Great Pesto Adventure!

I know all of you five or so people (and that's being generous) who read this blog are in high anticipation, on the edge of your seats even, just waiting to here the conclusion of my last post. Well, wait no longer, for the secret to pesto has been (somewhat) discovered!

Because Walmart disappointed us with its basil product selection, my roommate decided to expand her search to Hyvee. Here she found some lovely fresh basil, though it was a little pricey.

Now, to adjust the proportions of her recipe. She knew she needed a lot of basil, a little more olive oil, and a lot less Parmesan cheese than last time. Here were he conclusions:

2 cups fresh basil
2 cloves worth of minced garlic
1/4 cup pine nuts
2/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
salt and pepper to taste

So last night, after using my handy chopper to chop first the fresh basil and then the pine nuts, she threw everything together in her magic bullet.

So we went from this....

(from: http://www.hy-vee.com/health/healthnotes/default.aspx?%2Fassets%2Ffood-guide%2Fbasil%2F~default)

to this....

Though still a little on the goopy side, it turned out much better than last time. It smelled strongly of basil, giving it that earthy, slightly minty scent. And it tasted a lot like basil, too, though in a good, pesto-y kind of way. My roommate still holds that it's not quite as good as her mom's homemade version, but I'm perfectly content with it. It's good on pasta, or even some gnocchi. In fact, I'm seriously considering digging into the leftovers for lunch today :)

Did you know that basil comes in a paste?

For this two-part post, I am cooking vicariously through my roommate who is trying to make her own pesto sauce. Armed with dried basil, olive oil, minced garlic, grated Parmesan cheese, pine nuts, and a magic bullet blender, she has made one very brave attempt so far.

The result was a pale, goopy, oily mush that didn't coat the pasta very well and that tasted solely like Parmesan. That's the thing with pesto though, I guess: you have to play around with the proportions until you get it just right.

We also concluded from trial #1 that part of the problem was the basil--you really need fresh basil leaves to make this work (we think). So off to Walmart we went.

After scouring the baking and spices aisle, the produce section, and even the random little kiosks scattered throughout the store, the only basil product we found aside from dried basil was basil paste.

Yep, that's a thing:

(from: http://goodenessgracious.com/2011/03/oh-my-sweet-basil.html)

Granted, I've never tried basil paste before, so it could be perfectly good and work perfectly well for cooking and such. Maybe we were still a little weirded out by the liquid egg product (made from real eggs!) that I had spotted earlier in our shopping trip, but we were put off by the paste. 

But somewhere, out there, preferably in Kirksville, there has to be some fresh basil. That, and maybe less Parmesan cheese, will guarantee the perfect pesto, we're just sure of it! So stay tuned, because the search continues...

At least Kinky was on sale...

(from: http://www.drinkhacker.com/2012/12/21/review-kinky-liqueur/)

Super Bowl Fail

Warning: This post may or may not have turned into a rant about my day going from bad to worse yesterday, but I PROMISE it's entertaining, if nothing else because it's rather pathetic.

Despite not having cable and not caring about football in the slightest anyway, I had quite a spread planned out for our not-so-Super-Bowl Party. My roommate and I invited a few other girls over to just hang out and eat our food. It was going to be great. Here's what I planned to make/have:

1. Summer sausage and a small assortment of cheeses (two kinds to be exact, mild cheddar and Colby Jack)

2. Pigs in blankets (aka, little smokies wrapped in crescent rolls in case you live under a rock)

3. Breaded cheese balls made from string cheese in an imitation of a Pinterest recipe

4. And finally, margarita tequila chicken wings in place of hot wings (I don't do spicy)

Naturally, the margarita tequila chicken wings were to be the crown jewel, as well as the one thing on this list of party food that I had never made before. But still, it was going to be great. I was going to learn to make wings and everybody was going to love them. 

Or so I thought. The day before the big game was when it started to go down hill. 

Before I could do anything with the wings, I had to marinade them in, well, essentially a margarita. It seemed like a strange idea, but I like chicken and I love margaritas, so what could go wrong, right? With the marinade all mixed and the chicken thawed, I set out to prep the wings to be soaked overnight. But I didn't know you had to separate the wings yourself; I just thought they came ready as little drummies and little wing things and that was that. Apparently, you have to separate the full wing at the joint to get the usual two pieces. Okay, I thought, no problem. The brief instructions I found online simply said, "Cut apart at the joint." So I got my knife and set to work hacking and sawing at the skin, fat, tendons and bone that met at the joint of the wing with little to no success. I spent at least fifteen minutes struggling with just this one wing to no avail, and so I gave up, deciding that my wings were just gonna be twice as big as normal wings! I tossed them whole into the marinade and shoved the bowl in the fridge to sit. As frustrating as that experience was, this was still not a disaster, I still had things under control. 

The next day, I waited around anxiously, not sure when I should start cooking and in what order I should cook everything. I analyzed my day and all the recipes and the different oven temperatures and the probability that my guests would come early, and several more obscure factors. I eventually decided that either something wasn't going to be ready when everybody arrived, or something would be cold by the time they all got here. Ultimately, I just arbitrarily started getting out ingredients and preheating the oven around four, hoping for the best. 

Sure enough, it was not long before I realized that not only could I not find the aluminum foil I knew we had, but both of our baking sheets had disappeared as well. After indulging in a brief fit of exasperation, I managed to get a hold of a friend at the last minute who could supply me with both. Whew, close one. I was still on top of things at this point, still moving forward with the cooking. Despite that little hiccup, everything was going to be okay. 

Then my cheese balls melted in the oven. I think it was because I didn't use the right type of cheese because it worked fine the first time I made it, but the first time I made it I used the white string cheese and not the variety pack. The recipe never said to use a particular type, though! So Pinterest failed me, but I still had other dishes.

Then no one showed up to our party. 

Sad, I know! Apparently, when my roommate invited people over (and by people, I mean like four or five, not a huge thing) she said we would just be hanging out and having some snacks if they wanted to come by and not watch the Super Bowl. This was an accurate description of how we intended to spend our Super Bowl Sunday, except for one thing: I wasn't just picking up a few snacks, I was cooking tons of food! Ten full-sized wings, thirty-ish pigs in blankets, a whole plateful of melted cheese balls, and a large summer sausage (yeah, I said it) with sliced up cheese all sat precisely arranged on cute little platters and cutting boards across our breakfast bar (of course I forgot to take pictures) to be seen and enjoyed by no one but me, my roommate, and my boyfriend (and he only came by because he pitied us). 

One girl said she had too many meetings to go to that night; another two decided they actually wanted to see the game, so they stayed in their dorm rooms. But two of the girls we invited just bailed altogether. Lame, and rude. Even if they didn't realize how much blood, sweat and tears (but really, just mostly a LOT of tears) went into this little get-together, they at least knew we were buying some sort of snack food with our own very limited funds. Again, RUDE.

And STILL, I was trying to see the positive. Event if no one else was here to try my fancy margarita tequila wings, my roommate, my boyfriend, and I could still taste how they turned out. Excited after having smelled the marinade several times that day, I bit into the fleshy drummie part of the wing, the crispy skin crackling under my teeth and the chicken juices spilling down my chin. 

And it was gross. Just, gross. It tasted like alcohol, and I don't mean that it tasted like alcohol as in like a strong margarita, I mean it tasted like alcohol as in like straight alcohol and no other flavors whatsoever. You couldn't taste the lime or the salt or that tangy margarita-ness you get when you have the actual beverage. But I know I did it right! I followed the directions to the letter! How did this happen?? Now, I was ready to admit to defeat. Now, I really threw a fit. Then, at seven in the evening, I just went to bed wanting nothing more to do with this terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. 

The only good things to come out of that day? Yummy leftovers. The pigs and blankets were especially scrumptious, and the sausage and cheese proved to be a very good late afternoon snack. I even bravely attempted to salvage the wings (I made ten of them after all!) with a pleasurable result. By drowning them in barbecue sauce and popping them in the oven for just five extra minutes, I managed to cover up the alcohol taste and just enjoyed hickory barbecue flavored chicken for dinner.

Just some of the leftovers I am currently enjoying:

So I guess everything wasn't a complete fail in the end, but two things are for sure: margarita tequila wings are nasty, and Super Bowl Sunday 2013 was not a good day for me. 

No-Slip Breakfast Burrito

In an effort to mix it up somewhat, I though I'd share a recipe that I (sort of) made up myself! It's called, as you may have guessed, the no-slip breakfast burrito :)

I'm a big breakfast fan, and when I say that, I don't mean that I'm a big fan, I mean that I am a fan specifically of big breakfasts. I would much rather start off my morning with something hearty and savory like eggs and bacon or biscuits and gravy, then something small and sweet like a cinnamon roll or a simple bowl of sugary cereal. That all being said,  I don't usually have much time in the mornings before school or work to take the time to cook myself all the things I would really like to eat. With this in mind, and after some inspiration from my roommate, I have recently resorted to the breakfast burrito.

Source: National Cancer Institute Author: Renee Comet (photographer) AV Number: AV-9400-4222 Date Created: 1994

What's great about the breakfast burrito is that you can pack a lot of different ingredients into one easy-to-take-with-you tortilla. Here are just a few of the combinations I've tried:

• turkey, egg, and cheddar cheese--for a classic meat and cheese breakfast feel
• tomatoes, green peppers, onion, egg, and provolone cheese--for the veggie-lover 
• turkey, tomatoes, egg, and Monterey Jack cheese-- for a sort of combo of the first two
• tomatoes, spinach, egg, and mozzerella cheese--because it's just another good veggie and cheese one

By Nillerdk (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-3.0

(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

And I usually add a little salt and pepper to taste. Of course, there are many more combinations I've dreamed of trying--like mushrooms, leftover ground beef, egg, and Swiss cheese because I love mushroom and Swiss burgers!-- but these are just the simple ones I've been able to put together with whatever I happened to have in the fridge at a given time. 

But before I could master all these different flavor options, I had to master the art of keeping the burrito together. If you're anything like me, you've noticed the complicated origami that must take place to make sure the burrito filling stays packed inside the tortilla. This turned out to be simple enough to figure out after a few tries, but it was not until my roommate revealed her no-slip secret that I was able to keep the insides of my burrito from tipping out of the open end. 

So without further ado, here's how it's done:

No-Slip Breakfast Burrito

Ingredients:

You can use pretty much whatever you want, but to start with something easy, let's just say..

• a slice or two of a roma tomato, diced
• a slice or two of deli turkey, torn into several smallish chunks (chunk size is really up to you)
• 1/4 cup (more or less as desired) of shredded Monterey Jack cheese
• 2 eggs
• a splash of milk
• salt and pepper to taste
• one medium-sized flour tortilla
• one extra pinch or two of Monterey Jack cheese, if desired

1. Start by whisking the eggs and milk together in a medium-sized mixing bowl. Don't be shy, break up those yolks. 

2. Once the egg mixture is fully whisked, throw everything else into the bowl. Trust me. Stir it all around until everything is well-coated in egg. 

3. On the stove, bring a burner to medium or medium-low heat depending on how sensitive your stove top is. Put a decent-sized skillet on the burner and don't be stingy with the cooking spray. 

4. Once the skillet is hot, pour the contents of the mixing bowl into your skillet and wait for the bottom to set (it doesn't take long!). When the bottom has set, you can try to flip it over. Or, you can play it a little safer, and carefully push the outside edges towards the center with your spatula, allowing the liquid egg to flow out to the edge of your skillet and cook. It might be a little difficult with the chucks of tomato and turkey, but you'll get to flip it a few times once there is no uncooked egg left. 

5. When it's nice and firm, slide the egg off the skillet and onto a plate and set aside. Take your tortilla and warm it up a little in the skillet (not for too long though). If you like, add your extra few pinches of cheese to the top of the tortilla and let it melt a little for some added gooey goodness. 

6. Plate the cheesy tortilla and lay your omelette on top. Take one edge of the tortilla and egg together and fold it towards the center, about an inch inwards. Then roll up your burrito from the right or left side of the fold, and there you go! To help it stay folded and shut, you can try placing the burrito back into the still hot skillet with the fold side down, and squishing the burrito onto itself with your spatula. Once you are satisfied, plate it again and eat it up!

So that's my roommate's secret, then: if you stir all of the ingredient together and make it into a tortilla-sized omelette, they won't fall out of the tortilla! And thus began the no-slip breakfast burrito. Mediocrity at its finest. 

Escape to Hogwarts

My grandma always made me hot tea with honey if I had a sore throat, and for most of my life, I thought this was the perfect remedy for such a thing--until recently.

Harry Potter and I have always been close. I started reading about his life of magic, misfortune, and adventure when I was about nine or ten and I felt like I grew up right alongside him. It was sad to see the series come to a close, but that didn't stop me from rereading the books on a fairly regular basis and indulging in ABC's Harry Potter Weekend almost every time it comes on TV. Because of my slight obsession, the idea of a real life glass of Butterbeer had crossed my mind once or twice.

The idea of combining the dream of Butterbeer with the dreariness of a winter cold came to me this past week as I was complaining about my poor, poor throat and reminiscing about Grandma's special tea. I don't know how Harry Potter was brought to mind or where the idea of substituting Butterbeer for the tea came from, but suddenly it was there! And I was ecstatic.

So of course my first course of action was to Google Butterbeer recipes. I waded through a bunch of potentials until I came to a particularly helpful-looking Yahoo link: "Harry Potter Top Ten Butterbeer Recipes" (http://voices.yahoo.com/harry-potter-top-10-butterbeer-recipes-473697.html?cat=22). It seemed like a good place to start.

Naturally there are many different versions, some sweeter and some thicker, some with alcohol and some without. On top of that, the Yahoo article is especially nice in that it recognizes that there are varying levels of complexity to consider as well, and so the recipes are categorized into three groups: "Easy Recipes," "Slightly More Complex Recipes," and "Complex Recipes." Right away I decided I was going to go big, or go home; I went with the very first one under the "Complex Recipes" category.

It went a little something like this:

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups milk
2 teaspoons honey
1 tablespoon butter
1 teaspoon cinnamon
2 teaspoons sugar
2 teaspoons hot chocolate powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 ounce butterscotch schnapps for adults or butterscotch syrup for kids

Directions:

1. Melt butter and honey together

2. Add milk, sugar, vanilla, and butterscotch schnapps or butterscotch

3. Microwave or heat on stovetop until warm

4. Mix in hot chocolate powder and cinnamon

5. Serve

The first attempt, much like my first foray into steak frying, was a little disastrous. After following the recipe step by step and watching the saucepan carefully, I poured my Butterbeer into a tall glass beer mug, trying to imitate Harry Potter to a tee. The result was a very warm and sweet milk mixture that was sandwiched between a thick layer of hot chocolate powder on the bottom of the glass and an even thicker layer of powdery cinnamon across the top. When I tried to taste it, I just got a mouthful of pure ground cinnamon and nearly choked; I felt like I was doing the cinnamon challenge, and that was NOT okay with my throat.

But the second time around was much, much better. After Googling how to dissolve cinnamon in milk, I found out that you simply can't. Ground cinnamon is essentially ground tree bark, and so it just won't dissolve. The answer, therefore, was to use a cinnamon stick, and my, did this do wonders! I woke up this morning prepared with a new set of ingredients, plus a cinnamon stick, my still sore throat, and a hefty hangover (a little hair of the dog, ya know?). This time, my concoction was blissful. I got all the flavor of the recipe, including frequent spicy sweet flares of cinnamon, without the thick powdery texture of the ground version. The trick is to toss a stick into the pot as the milk mixture warms. Of course, a lot of the hot chocolate powder still sunk to the bottom, as hot chocolate powder is want to do even when being used for its intended hot chocolate-making purposes. But who doesn't like to lick up the chocolaty goodness at the bottom of their empty mug anyway?

So this adventure turned out, in the end, to be a both magical and soothing recipe review. Though rough at first, I managed to work out the kinks quite nicely. I'd love to revisit this article (http://voices.yahoo.com/harry-potter-top-10-butterbeer-recipes-473697.html?cat=22) again sometime to do a proper taste test to compare all the different versions and complexities, but for now, high complexity and cinnamon sticks all the way. Let me know if you ever try one of these, or some other recipe somewhere, and tell me how it turns out!

Because we can never have too much of him....

First-Time Steak Fryer

And now, for my real first post as a first-time food blogger...

Since before I can remember, my parents have referred to me as "The Carnivore." They particularly love to tell friends and family--and even the occasional friendly stranger--about the time when I was eleven and I ate three strips of bacon, a sausage patty, and a leftover bratwurst from the night before for breakfast. So of course, I'm a steak lover.

As a kid, I never needed to know how to cook my favorite dishes because Mom did that for me. But as a college student, I don't get to enjoy Mom's cooking as often as I'd like. For that reason, I felt it was about time that I buck up and learn to make steak for myself.

After stopping off at Walmart to pick up an inexpensive but hearty-looking pair of small sirloin steaks, my boyfriend and I went back to his apartment and set the packaged meat down on his breakfast bar. We looked at each other. Now what?

First, my boyfriend called a good friend of ours from back home who happens to be a very experienced griller, especially for someone our age. He recommends that for inexpensive meat like the sirloins we bought, soaking it in italian dressing for anywhere between 20 minutes and 24 hours would work just fine. Seeing as it was already 6:00 in the evening at this point, we settled for marinating the meat for about 30 minutes. What our friend could not tell us, though, was how to cook the steak in a skillet. He's been spoiled by always having access to fancy grills.

Naturally, the next person I called was my mom. We told her we didn't have a grill and planned to do it on the stove, but we just didn't know how. She was quick to get off the phone, in the middle of making her own dinner and that of my dad and two younger brothers as well, but also informative: use butter in the skillet, not Pam (for whatever reason), and cook each side for up to four minutes on medium-high heat. Sounds simple; it wasn't.

Once the steaks were all marinated, we did it just like she said, butter in the skillet, medium-high heat, four minutes on each side. Perhaps the key phrase in her instructions was up to four minutes on each side, because when we went to flip our test piece of steak (luckily, this was just a small experimental piece we had cut off, not our actual dinner yet) it was charred black on the cooked side, and when we cut it open the inside was still ruby red and bleeding.

Now, we like our steaks medium rare, and neither raw nor charred really fits into what we had been picturing for our yummy dinner. I was a little embarrassed; it felt weird that my mom could be wrong, and I felt dumb for not noticing that the meat was not only charring, but really starting to burn. I attributed it to being lost in the smell of melted butter and my eager chatting with my boyfriend about what we could have as a side dish--vegetables or potatoes. It was obvious that our procedure needed to be amended.

Monitoring their progress closely, this time around we set the burner to medium heat, and after about 3 minutes and 30 seconds on each side, give or take, our dinner steaks had turned a soft shade of tan. For the final test, we plated each one and started to cut into them: they were both a lovely bright pink on the inside.

We decided on steamed vegetables as our side, and the whole thing was pretty decent.  We each had a beer with dinner as a little reward to ourselves for figuring it out (plus, we were out of wine).

All in all, we reached a few conclusions about what it takes to make good steak out of cheap sirloin:

• Italian dressing makes for an incredibly easy and delightfully tangy marinade, even if you only marinate the meat for 30 minutes right before tossing it into the skillet. 
• Monitoring the meat is apparently important! Now I've recently read that you're not really supposed to move the steak as it fries, but for us, peeking under it occasionally as it cooked to see how it was doing was what worked. Maybe this was just a fluke, but I guess I won't know that until I try again sometime. 
• I think it was the thickness of our steaks that messed us up in regards to how long and on how much heat we should fry them. Had they been thinner, my mom's instructions would have probably worked beautifully. 
• And, I will definitely be making steak again in the future. 

How was the final product? Better than mediocre, good even, and now I can say I've done it more or less by myself (at least without my mom being physically present). I can only hope that my next mistake in the kitchen ends this fortunately. 

Whoops...

So for some reason, I just can't seem to get the "About" page to work. I don't know if anybody out there can see it, but when I visit my blog, it doesn't show anything posted on that page. To start, then, here's my "About" section. Hopefully I'll have the actual page up and running soon, but until then...

I can cook enough to keep myself from starving, but

there are a lot of common dishes out there that I've never even attempted to make. Like steak, for example, or fettucini alfredo, or hard boiled eggs. These are things that I've eaten many times before and absolutely love, but that I just never learned to make by myself. That's where this blog comes in. Generally, I want to figure out how to cook the things I like to eat, and here is where I'm going share my sure to be haphazard learning experience so that anyone else who's curious and interested can learn from my mistakes. So here's to an adventurous semester of lots of trial and error, and maybe even a few more-than-mediocre meals!

I'd like to post something new about twice a week, and hopefully at least one of those posts will involve me learning my way through a new recipe. Though I'm starting this blog as a class project for my Food Writing course, I've always wanted to blog, and I hope I can keep it up just for fun even after the course is over!