It's been awhile. I know. But I've come equipped with excuses!!! So, here goes!
We got married!! Yay!! Our wedding was July 1st and it was one of the hottest days I've ever experienced. We had a really small wedding with only about 35 people including ourselves. It was amazing. It was the perfect wedding.
Three weeks later we moved from Wisconsin to Kentucky. Let me tell you...it was hectic!!! We packed all of our stuff into a rental truck on a Tuesday, drove all day Wednesday, and unpacked on Thursday. One short week later our house was completely unpacked. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are that good.
A few weeks after THAT, Jake started grad school (the reason we moved to Kentucky in the first place). He's studying to receive his PhD in Physics and is also working as a TA in the Physics Department at the University. I won't admit it to his face, but he really is as smart as you are all imagining he is. It's painful. He loves school and has made some friends that he invites over to dinner relatively regularly...which has inspired me to get back into more of the cooking!!
Since we moved we've been making a menu every few weeks, shopping for those meals, and then actually making them instead of letting them sit in the fridge/freezer and go bad before we get around to making said delicious meal. However, we've still had nights (like last night) where I beg for some kind of delivery pizza because it is soooo delicious. Enough of that. It's time to cook!!
Tonight I decided to venture into a part of the world I had never experienced: Meat. I've never really liked meat all that much. My mom says that when I was much younger I would just chew and chew and then spit it out telling her that I couldn't swallow it. I'm a vegetarian by no one's standards. I love a juicy burger as much as the next person, but steak, roast, pork chops, etc. have never been my cravings. Jake is, unfortunately, the opposite. If given the opportunity, I think he would have chicken or steak (or both!) at every meal. So, I've decided to bite the bullet and learn to make meat for his sake.
I decided to start with a roast. I knew I could do this in my crock pot and I've become quite fond of cooking in a crock pot recently. The idea that I can put a bunch of stuff that sounds good together into this magical kitchen appliance in the morning and have delicious dinner by the evening with little effort from me is fascinating. I knew I would need meat (of course). For this I brought Jake along with me to the grocery store. I don't eat a lot of meat. I've never cooked me that doesn't consist of browning ground turkey so I knew I would be unable to choose some kind of meat myself. With his patient help and discerning eye for meat we ended up with a beef chuck roast which means nothing to me. I knew we would need some kind of cooking liquid and Jake was partial to beef stock so we went with that. Next I decided on carrots, red potatoes, and yellow onions. So far so good.
This morning was prep time. Jake suggested searing the giant piece of meat in the frying pan with salt and pepper to make a crust before we put it into the crock pot. Meanwhile, I chopped up three carrots, four potatoes, one onion, and four cloves of garlic. I layered about a third of the vegetables on the bottom of the crock pot. Jake added the meat once it was reasonably cooked on the outside and I covered with the rest of the vegetables. The last step was to add three cans of beef stock (if I was really adventurous I suppose I could have made my own beef stock, but it seemed to me that simply attempting to cook some kind of meat was enough adventure for one day!). Then I turned the crock pot to low and left it there for seven hours.
All day I just kept checking the pot. The smell in my house was heavenly and kept drawing me back into the kitchen. It made me feel like I should don an apron and make some kind of pie from scratch while wearing my pearl necklace and heals and waiting for my husband to get home. It was very 1950s-Sunday-dinner feeling. Instead of all of that, I lit a pumpkin spice candle. Much easier.
Finally, after Jake got home, I took the roast out of the crock pot. Jake brought out a knife and I stood by waiting for the moment of truth to see if it actually cooked all of the way through. After a semi-labored slice (it wasn't as tender as I wanted it to be), and some breath-holding on my behalf...SUCCESS!!! The roast was cooked! As we started eating...it actually tasted good too!! DOUBLE SUCCESS!!! I was thrilled with myself. I had cooked meat and it tasted good.
Now onto my mishaps. The meat wasn't as tender as I wanted it to be and I'm wondering if that had something to do with the type of meat we used. I'm not entirely sure though. Also, the potatoes and carrots didn't seem like they were entirely cooked. I'm contemplating boiling those in the morning before I put them into the crock pot to ensure they actually get cooked and soft. Lastly, the meat was good, but I'm wishing it had a bit more of some kind of flavor. I'm thinking of using some spices next time, but I haven't pinned down what I would use or how I would use it. We'll see.
I'm thinking of cooking either ravioli lasagna or stuffed manicotti for dinner tomorrow night. I've never cooked either one and don't have an exact recipe for them (as is true of most of the meals I cook) so it'll be an adventure no matter which one I choose. For today though, I cooked meat, and that's enough to leave me satisfied!!
Until the next time!
-Kayla
Monday, September 12, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Two Stories; One Kitchen
As newlyweds it seems strange to say that we don't have a long list of things in common. Alas, that's more true than I'd often like to admit. We've known each other since we were 12 and 13 and have been together for almost as long. We've grown up together, but have still managed to not grow alike. Jake just graduated with a BS in Physics and I have a BSE in Secondary Education English and never the twain shall meet. He likes math, I like grammar; he likes science fiction, I like romance novels; he likes classic rock and I like pop music. It seems like an unlikely match, but we seem to balance each other out...especially when we're cooking.
We love food. As college students we lived apart. During the week both of us ate whatever crappy college food was around (ramen noodles, pop tarts, frozen pizza...you get the idea). On the weekends we cooked together. We used recipes we found on tv, the internet, in cookbooks, or, when our friends realized that we were pretty gifted in the kitchen, recipes given to us by Jake's roommate. We could follow a recipe all day long and it always turned out well.
Living together has brought different challenges. I'm working a retail job till the end of the summer so I spend sometime almost everyday at work. We try to cook one good meal each day that we eat together. When I'm working the closing shift that usually means lunch (or really late dinner after I get home). If I pick up a day shift or on the rare occasions when I don't have to work, we make dinner. Any way you slice it, we eat together a meal we've created as a couple each day.
We try to plan our meals. When we go grocery shopping we get the ingredients for the meals that we cook and like the most. However, we have the tendency to come up with some crazy food ideas from time to time. Some of these have to be improvised because we don't have all of the ingredients we need. Other times the food doesn't work the way we want it to so we end up changing it on the fly. We've had some close calls with the smoke detector, but everyone still has ten fingers....I think.
Tonight was one such occasion. I got home from work a bit after 10 and was hungry because, like usual, I had forgotten to take something along with me for dinner. It's closing in on grocery day so we don't have much in the house for food. I always keep a stockpile of noodles and sauce though. I told Jake that I was going to make myself noodles and sauce and asked if he wanted any. Instead of answering me, he walked over into the kitchen and started rummaging around in the fridge to see what kind of sauce we had. "What if we make a sauce," he says to me, "We can use the sauce we have as a base and make a roux...wait, do you have flour?" I love to bake. I bake cookies, breads, cakes, pies, brownies, anything. Most of these items require flour...so of course I have flour in my apartment.
"Yes Jake, of course I have flour. I bake, remember?" I reply, more sarcastically than not (which is my style).
"Perfect. We need butter and flour to make a roux and then we can throw in some wine and cream cheese and maybe some of the sauce we already have and...what do we have for spices?"
All of this is happening while he's whipping through the cabinets and fridge and taking things out, putting them back in, and scouring the kitchen for possible sauce ingredients.
"We don't have any milk," he announces to me, "It'll be okay. We'll just wing it. Wanna make a sauce?"
"Let's do it," I reply, "These sorts of things tend to turn out well for us. We'll just go for it and see what happens." As he starts with his melted butter and flour I realize it's really thick. Despite my best efforts (that included wine, melted cream cheese, and alfredo sauce) it was still just too thick.
"We really do need milk, don't we?" I ask, knowing that this will involve one of us taking the trip down to the corner gas station to get the required ingredients (this happens often).
"Yeah. Milk would be a good idea." Off I go on the quest for milk. I return with milk...and two sodas (of course! I have a small...okay not so small...addiction to soda). The milk definitely does the trick, but I had put so much wine into the sauce to try to thin it out that it was all you could taste. Jake proceeded to add pepper, red pepper flakes, and coriander. Mix well and taste. Still too much wine. More coriander? Yes please. Mix again. Taste again. Much better. Wait, it's actually really good.
"Jake! This is delicious!" I exclaim.
"Yeah?" he asks before he tasting the delicious sauce. I nod my head, unable to find words to tell him how good it really is. He sticks his finger in the sauce, licks, and starts to nod his head as his eyebrows raise in shocked delight. "It is pretty good, isn't it," he says with a smile on his face.
We realized quickly that with all the adding of the liquid to the roux we made a lot more sauce than we anticipated. "Ummm...this really is a lot of sauce," I admit, knowing that it was my random adding of liquids that created such an abundance of sauce.
"That's fine," Jake replied, completely unmoved by the clear excess, "We'll just combine the two jars of sauces in the fridge, rinse out the empty one and put our sauce in there. We'll have our own jar of leftover homemade sauce!"
Jake is always wanting to brag to our friends and family about how awesome our makeshift meals turn out, and this one was no different. Almost immediately after we finished eating he was cozying up to me on the couch asking me who I was going to tell about this fabulous creating. "I don't know," I replied, "Probably my mom, Granny (my grandmother), and Taylor (my sister). But I'm not going to tell them now. It's almost midnight!"
"We should start a blog with all of our kitchen adventures and all of the good food we end up making. We can tell the stories, share pictures, and brag about our good food!" Jake declares.
So, here we are, blogging about our food adventures, kitchen mishaps, and mutual love for food and each other.
I feel like that's all I've got for now. I'm storied out...not to mention that it's 12:30 am and I'm starting to spell things wrong more often than not. Until the next adventure!
-Kayla
We love food. As college students we lived apart. During the week both of us ate whatever crappy college food was around (ramen noodles, pop tarts, frozen pizza...you get the idea). On the weekends we cooked together. We used recipes we found on tv, the internet, in cookbooks, or, when our friends realized that we were pretty gifted in the kitchen, recipes given to us by Jake's roommate. We could follow a recipe all day long and it always turned out well.
Living together has brought different challenges. I'm working a retail job till the end of the summer so I spend sometime almost everyday at work. We try to cook one good meal each day that we eat together. When I'm working the closing shift that usually means lunch (or really late dinner after I get home). If I pick up a day shift or on the rare occasions when I don't have to work, we make dinner. Any way you slice it, we eat together a meal we've created as a couple each day.
We try to plan our meals. When we go grocery shopping we get the ingredients for the meals that we cook and like the most. However, we have the tendency to come up with some crazy food ideas from time to time. Some of these have to be improvised because we don't have all of the ingredients we need. Other times the food doesn't work the way we want it to so we end up changing it on the fly. We've had some close calls with the smoke detector, but everyone still has ten fingers....I think.
Tonight was one such occasion. I got home from work a bit after 10 and was hungry because, like usual, I had forgotten to take something along with me for dinner. It's closing in on grocery day so we don't have much in the house for food. I always keep a stockpile of noodles and sauce though. I told Jake that I was going to make myself noodles and sauce and asked if he wanted any. Instead of answering me, he walked over into the kitchen and started rummaging around in the fridge to see what kind of sauce we had. "What if we make a sauce," he says to me, "We can use the sauce we have as a base and make a roux...wait, do you have flour?" I love to bake. I bake cookies, breads, cakes, pies, brownies, anything. Most of these items require flour...so of course I have flour in my apartment.
"Yes Jake, of course I have flour. I bake, remember?" I reply, more sarcastically than not (which is my style).
"Perfect. We need butter and flour to make a roux and then we can throw in some wine and cream cheese and maybe some of the sauce we already have and...what do we have for spices?"
All of this is happening while he's whipping through the cabinets and fridge and taking things out, putting them back in, and scouring the kitchen for possible sauce ingredients.
"We don't have any milk," he announces to me, "It'll be okay. We'll just wing it. Wanna make a sauce?"
"Let's do it," I reply, "These sorts of things tend to turn out well for us. We'll just go for it and see what happens." As he starts with his melted butter and flour I realize it's really thick. Despite my best efforts (that included wine, melted cream cheese, and alfredo sauce) it was still just too thick.
"We really do need milk, don't we?" I ask, knowing that this will involve one of us taking the trip down to the corner gas station to get the required ingredients (this happens often).
"Yeah. Milk would be a good idea." Off I go on the quest for milk. I return with milk...and two sodas (of course! I have a small...okay not so small...addiction to soda). The milk definitely does the trick, but I had put so much wine into the sauce to try to thin it out that it was all you could taste. Jake proceeded to add pepper, red pepper flakes, and coriander. Mix well and taste. Still too much wine. More coriander? Yes please. Mix again. Taste again. Much better. Wait, it's actually really good.
"Jake! This is delicious!" I exclaim.
"Yeah?" he asks before he tasting the delicious sauce. I nod my head, unable to find words to tell him how good it really is. He sticks his finger in the sauce, licks, and starts to nod his head as his eyebrows raise in shocked delight. "It is pretty good, isn't it," he says with a smile on his face.
We realized quickly that with all the adding of the liquid to the roux we made a lot more sauce than we anticipated. "Ummm...this really is a lot of sauce," I admit, knowing that it was my random adding of liquids that created such an abundance of sauce.
"That's fine," Jake replied, completely unmoved by the clear excess, "We'll just combine the two jars of sauces in the fridge, rinse out the empty one and put our sauce in there. We'll have our own jar of leftover homemade sauce!"
Jake is always wanting to brag to our friends and family about how awesome our makeshift meals turn out, and this one was no different. Almost immediately after we finished eating he was cozying up to me on the couch asking me who I was going to tell about this fabulous creating. "I don't know," I replied, "Probably my mom, Granny (my grandmother), and Taylor (my sister). But I'm not going to tell them now. It's almost midnight!"
"We should start a blog with all of our kitchen adventures and all of the good food we end up making. We can tell the stories, share pictures, and brag about our good food!" Jake declares.
So, here we are, blogging about our food adventures, kitchen mishaps, and mutual love for food and each other.
I feel like that's all I've got for now. I'm storied out...not to mention that it's 12:30 am and I'm starting to spell things wrong more often than not. Until the next adventure!
-Kayla
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