Three Things

Everybody loves Joe

eveneiger — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 01:33:12 +0000

I just saw this excellent “unofficial Trader Joe’s commercial” linked on Serious Eats.

It comes to them via Doobybrain.

Speaking as a filmmaker/student/critic and film festival organizer this little film is really well done. Technology is incredible. And so is filmmaker Carl Willat from Carl’s Fine Films.

I miss Trader Joe’s (which my family warmly calls “Trapper John’s” )

Time for another visit.

CAKE IN A MUG! WOW!

eveneiger — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 23:50:27 +0000

Courtesy of Carolyn I give you this link.

Cake in a MUG

You make cake in a mug in the microwave! Hurray for being able to microwave your cake and eat it to.

No three things today. I think that one is enough.

A day for Cupcakes

eveneiger — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 05:37:28 +0000

So Saturday was a big day for my housemate. Her semester dance show was upon us and that called for a large heaping of love and celebration. We bought her flowers and then I proceeded to prepare for the evening like my group of friends always does for special occasions. I baked.
Not only did I bake but I set out to bake cupcakes from a beautiful new cupcake cookbook that Matt got me for Hanukkah. This book is a cake-baker’s dream. Pure unadulterated foodie porn in artistically designed Technicolor.

photo from the Barnes and Noble website linked above.

I chose a strawberry swirl buttercake cupcake with a light and fluffy egg-white seven-minute frosting. That’s when I remembered. I didn’t have a cupcake pan. Conundrum to be sure! It is very difficult to bake without the proper tools. This is where the Boy Scouts of America can teach and important lesson: Always be prepared.
I eventually recruited Chelsea to be my fellow Cupcake Baker Extraordinaire and Special Extreme Driver to Hannaford’s. After picking up the essential baking tin and paper cupcake cups (pastel colors, of course), we focused in on the decoration section. We needed to create the perfect balance of Lonnie-friendly colors which by definition would be pink-teal-maroon and variations of that theme. We settled on some watermelon colored (and as it turns out watermelon flavored) sprinkles. Then just as we were leaving I saw a box of neon food coloring with color recipes on the back including, you guessed it, pink, maroon and teal. Perfect. Because I still haven’t invested in an electric beater I chose to forgo the seven-minute frosting for a can of Duncan Hines Whipped Fluffy White Frosting.
After we arrived home we put a record on my suitcase turntable, tied aprons around our waists and started baking. The batter was a simple vanilla cake batter that we whipped up like mad women till our arms got too tired.
After pouring the batter into the twelve paper cups we put a dollop of strawberry jam on top of each one and swirled it all together (and very artistically) with a wooden skewer.
After a quick twenty minutes in the oven the cupcakes made a stealthy trip up to my bedroom for secret cooling (the dancer of the day had arrived home, so we had to hastily cover up our surprise project). Once it was safe to begin decoration without fear of discovery we began.

before the frosting began

Naked, the cupcakes were already beautifully and deliciously fragrant. The strawberry jam made pretty swirls across the tops of the cupcakes. Though I wanted to try one bare without frosting, we proceeded as planned:

White frosted tops.

Pink and green sprinkles.
Fancy teal lettering spelling out our secret message (see below). We coaxed a third of the frosting into a near-teal color with the neon blue and neon green dyes. About a 10-3 ratio of blue to green…kinda. The colored frosting was then sloppily spooned into a pastry bag I just happened to have lying around. Yup, I have pastry bags but no electric beater or muffin tins. Go figure.

I think they turned out very pretty. And Lonnie-rific.

all done!

Later after the show they proved to be very popular, though not as popular as the dancer of the hour. Most of them disappeared within seconds of reaching the hands of happy tap-dance loving cake consumers.

1. Everyone loves cupcakes. Especially with their name written on them.
2. I loved the thin pockets of jam throughout the cake and can’t wait to try it with different berry flavors.
3. An afternoon of baking cupcakes with friends and taking pretty pictures of them is the best therapy a girl can ask for. And the sugar doesn’t hurt.

all photos courtesy of gifted photographer and proud new owner of a Canon Rebel, Carolyn Chyu

Three Links: ’cause I am feeling linky

eveneiger — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 01:02:24 +0000

1. RAINBOW CAKE: This link came from Serious Eats and is very very pretty. I dedicate this link to Nirj because the photo and rainbow cake from cake mix combo scream her name on an amp turned to 11.

2. Worms. Matt has pets. They have been growing for some time now to feed his plants. I am worried he might take this worm fostering business to the next level. Check out his post about eating/farming worms.

3. Awesome Chicago pizza place write-up at Slice blog. Great Lake. Too bad next time I am back in the Windy City it will be Passover. Awww Man.

Grammy’s Cornflake Stuffing and other memories triggered around Thanksgiving

eveneiger — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 00:39:10 +0000

I am in the process of backtracking to some older and long overdue posts. This one was written in anticipation of Thanksgiving this past November.

11/22/08
As thanksgiving approaches I have been thinking about all the things about it that I am looking forward to and also a lot of things I will be missing. I’ve been think recently how big a holiday thanksgiving has always been in my family, and of course like a good Jewish family, the food is central. Thanksgiving has always been spent with my mom’s side of the family. She had 5 sisters which for me means lots of aunts and uncles… and cousins.. all girls. We currently stand at a headcount of eight ranging from age 21 (me) to 4. My mom is from Berea, Ohio, which is on the west side of Cleveland, so every year for thanksgiving we pile into the car for the 7-8 hour drive to the family house. This house is very important to me (especially right now since it has been emptied and will be up for sale come spring). On Cantor Circle in a cute, 1950s development called Bluegrass, this house has always been the center of family gatherings. My aunts, uncles and cousins come in from all over, usually in a car, arriving late at night, and exhausted, from (at various points in the past 20 years) Anne Arbor, MI, Madison, WI, Clemson, SC, Seattle, WA, Cape Cod, MA, Boulder, CO and of course Chicago.
We always leave Chicago hours later than planned since my dad usually forgets about 5 things and has to go back into the house to check/get each one… a separate trip for each… as my mom gets more and more exasperated. We head out, hit lots and lots of traffic leaving the city, and start the trek across Indiana and Ohio. We usually leave the house in daylight but by the time we get to the Indiana Tollway the sun is setting and stomachs are rumbling. I start to crave McDonalds the moment we hit Gary, IN. I know that once we are past that smelly city of smoke stacks and factories (burning diapers, my dad once told me) we have made enough progress to think about a pit stop. McDonalds is road tripping food and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It’s the only time I eat it and it is amazing. That distinct Mickey D’s burger taste in the backseat of a van heading 70mph across the Hoosier state is the taste of car-trips. Well that and carrot sticks.
I know when we have reached Toledo we are about an hour and half away. I start to get excited. We cross a bridge over the river where if you look to your left you can see Toledo. It sparkles.
When we get to the outskirts of Cleveland you can see the Bluegrass development on your right… peeking though the trees is the swimming pool and playground that are nestled into a corner of the neighborhood. I love seeing it from the highway. It means we are home.
Home for Thanksgiving will mean a crowded house, full of eight noisy girls playing endless games of imagination, putting on dance shows (my sister is the star performer) and doing turkey themed art projects instigated by my grandmother. The highlight will always be Making Grammy’s Cornflake Stuffing, or as my mom and aunts call it, Nanny Annie’s Stuffing. Gathered around the long wooden table that seats the entire visiting clan, we all kneel on the long benches ready to help. With my grandmother instructing I, as the oldest, get to grate carrots and onions while the little ones crunch boxes of cornflakes into the perfect flake to crumb ratio. Mixing it all together with chicken stock, oil and salt and pepper is a messy job. Luckily Grammy always lets everyone have a turn with her hands in the bowl. This was always my favorite part of Thanksgiving: Grammy leading our gaggle of girls in her not-so-precise-stuffing-cooking event.
When we finally arrive in Berea it is always late at night, somewhere between 11 and 1am. Usually my grandparents were still awake, my Grammy sitting in her chair that faces the entrance hall. If it was really late, 1 or 2 am she would be in bed… not there to greet us with a big sloppy hug that warmed my sleepy body and made the transition to bed-sleep from car-sleep a bit smoother. When she got sick, about six years ago, she would spend all her time in the chair, so no matter what time it was she would be there, though asleep. She passed away five years ago, a few days before my sixteenth birthday. The first time I walked into the house, late at night, and she wasn’t there waiting for us in her chair… I cried. The emptiness of that chair, in that spot, hangs in my memory, even though the room is empty, waiting for a new owner, and her chair sits in my room at home. I claimed it, to me that chair is Grammy, and I want it to stay that way. As much as I would like to, I can’t hold everything still in life as I hold it in my memory. We grow up, become adults, we loose people to illness and age; people move on, move out. At some point the memory has to be everything and enough and you have to let the change happen instead of fighting it. This is the first year that there is no Thanksgiving in the brown house on cantor circle, Bluegrass, Berea. That Thanksgiving is gone, but we can take what we loved from it and bring it with to our own homes, and talk about what we did, and do new things that become old. As long as Thanksgiving is with the Lezbergs and has Grammy’s cornflake stuffing. It still tastes and smells the same. Tastes and smells that bring back twenty years of Thanksgiving in Berea, no matter where we are.

My uncle mixing stuffing the right way. By hand. The only way to do it.

1. I have many family recipes but Cornflake Stuffing is one of my favorites. Its better inside the turkey then in the casserole. Though my Aunt Suzy prefers it raw.

2. Berea was also home to my Grandfather (Pappy)’s giant garden. Always featured prominently on Thanksgiving.

3. The recipes of loved ones, especially grandparents, helps keep them alive long after they pass away. Ask them to give you their recipes. Its worth it.

Russo’s Will You Marry Me?

eveneiger — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:40:11 +0000

So for a number of years I have heard whisperings of a wondrous food market close to Waltham called Russo’s. Tales are told (mostly by my roommate Nirja) of glorious baked goods, glorious cheeses, European groceries and an unimaginable array of fresh produce. There was rarely any details accompanying a Russo’s mention so my knowledge of the store was mostly limited to the special breads or lunch items that would show up in my refrigerator. Once again my lack of car has limited my adventurous grocery shopping desires.

SO when Nirja mentioned she was heading to Russo’s to pick up some dinner fixins’ I asked to tag along. I was not disappointed. Despite what was shaping up to be a 4 grocery store visit week, I was willed to by myself two maybe three things. That was difficult. Upon entering, every vegetable and fruit known to man (or so it seemed) was arrayed before me in a glorious rainbow of freshness. The shelves below the banks of produce are filled will all sorts of hard to come by canned, boxed, jarred, bagged, and wrapped food products from countries around the world. If only I had hundreds of dollars to burn on obscure groceries.

Nirja and Mayank led me toward the middle of the store where set to the side of the largest display of cheeses i have ever seen was the holy grail of freshness: Fresh Handmade Pasta. And not just your typical spaghetti, fettuccine and angel-hair. They had lasagna noodles, tortellini and three types of ravioli. I opted for the sweet potato filled small squares while Nirja and Mayank got green and white striped pesto ravioli. As you may have learned already, I love “pocket food” as Matt calls it. So these squares of pasta with soft pillows of orange at their center were irresistible.

As we passed the cheese case I averted my eyes because I already had a triangle of brie at home and I allow myself only one cheese treat per shopping cycle. (I glimpses some cheese shaped like little fruit with color on them… talk about fancy). The bread was a little harder to keep away from but I satisfied my great-granddaughter-of-a-baker soul with a few deep breath of fresh baked goodness. Next time, I may treat myself to a nice hearty loaf.

I took my time weaving in and out of the aisles taking everything in but in the end settled on some white button mushrooms and sun-dried tomatoes (huge container for super cheap) to round off my Italian experiments for the week. My total purchases cost only about $9 which satisfied my wallet just fine. As we walked out I scolded Nirja for not bringing me sooner and told myself I would be back very soon.

1. Fresh pasta is worth it, especially when filled with tasty things

2. Next time I’ll have to buy some bread and cheese, or else I will be sad.

3. I love Russo’s more than Trader Joe’s.

Starting Off the Semester Right

eveneiger — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:23:22 +0000

The beginning of a new semester brings many things. New classes. New weather (Freakin’ freezin’ here in Boston, good ole’ 15 degree days). And… most importantly… since I cleaned out my pantry shelf and fridge food before I left for winter break, New Groceries.
Being a college student on a budget, with no car, and a long-ish walk to the local grocery chain, grocery days are few and far between and always a big event. I tend to get to the store every two weeks which means I eat veggies and other fresh goodies for the first week and meat-and-potatoes and pasta for the second week (I don’t mind really, I’m German with a taste for anything Italian, soooo… I am a real authentic Deutscher!) Some day my dreams will come true and I will live blocks from a grocery store so I can shop, cook, and eat Euro-style: bi-weekly to daily groceries in small batches.
Alas… that day has yet to arrive so I tend to be more of a slave to the schedules of the lucky few with cars who always have a warm seat for me on their grocery runs. But as I mentioned earlier, this is the Start of a New Semester (!), which means of course that no one has groceries and my shopping options expand ten-fold. This past weekend I hitched rides to Hannaford’s (the local supermarket), Costco (the local gallon-o-mustard depot) and my favorite and least-often visited Trader Joe’s (cue the Hallelujah chorus).
If I had my way I would buy large quantities of certain oatmeal, snack, and granola bar products at Costco twice a semester and split my time lovingly between the two other stores twice a month, buying fruit, veggies and meat at Hanni’s and everything else, all pre-made food, cheeses, sweets and salts (chips/crackers) at TJ’s. However, Trader Joe’s is a bit far from us so it is a rare and highly valued visit.
Because of my tri-fecta of grocery store visits this weekend, I am happy as a clam, with lots of tasty meal choices that I will expand upon in the coming days. I am very excited about two items I bought at TJ’s: Butternut Squash and Apple Soup (perfect winter flavors) and Chicken Links with Sweet Apple and Vermont Maple Syrup. I have spent most of the day daydreaming about what I could cook for dinner and looking for a fun way to combine these two items into a tasty and creative meal. Seeing as the links had a slight breakfasty flavor to them, I thought that savory crepes stuffed with a nice sausage/onion/mushroom sauté would be the way to go.
Crepes are always a scary endeavor because they are very fancy sounding, but they are shockingly simple as long as you pay attention to what you are doing. I found an easy savory crepe recipe (versus the more common dessert variety that has sugar in it) on Epicurious.com, one of my favorite recipe web-sites. I got about 11 crepes out of the recipe but that depends on how thick you make them (aim thin) and the size of your pan (mine was about 7 inches).

One in the pan, 9 on the plate... this is just before the flip.

For the filling, I browned a small clove of minced garlic in a pan while I put a small dice on 1.5 small onions, 2 large cremini mushrooms, and one Chicken/Apple/Maple Link. Each went into the pan in turn. I then sautéed the whole bit adding a splash of what I call Ginger Water (the liquid that comes in the large jars of Japanese pickled ginger, always handy for a bit of a punch). I added some of the Butternut Squash Apple soup (about two tablespoons) at the end to bind it together, and turned the heat to low.

Sorry it looked too delicious, I couldn't wait to dig in before snapping a shot of the filling in the pan.

To put it all together I spread a bit of cream cheese on each crepe and rolled a few spoonfuls of the filling up in cigar-like rolls, tucking the loose end under the roll so it stayed in place.

Four filled crepes made a very satisfying meal paired with a small bowl of the Butternut Squash Apple soup on the side. The whole thing was delicious if not slightly two sweet. I think substituting goat cheese for the cream cheese would have given it the right amount of salt without me having to physically add pure sodium, which I avoid as much as possible.
Kudos goes to Trader Joe’s for their never-fail-delicious food. I may have to set up camp in their parking lot so I can buy food there more often. It would definitely be worth it.

To sum up…
1.    Temperatures in the teens call for warming foods like Butternut Squash soup and sausage. (You know you’re cold…. Time for soup!)
2.    Crepes are not as scary as they seem. Go for it!
3.    It’s going to be a great semester. I can just taste it.

So…long time no post?

eveneiger — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 02:58:05 +0000

Sorry to be absent for so long. My new semester seems to be shockingly void of writing assignments so I promise to be fully present at least till finals in May.

1. I have a few posts I am working on, so look for some backlogged foodie entries in the coming weeks including a few from Thanksgiving.

2. My new goal is to post at least once a week. I know. You don’t believe me.

3. Sorry.

Martha and Cookie.

eveneiger — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 06:04:14 +0000

This is amazing. And completely food related. Cookie Monster is Martha Stewart’s guest on her cooking show. I am not a big fan of her per se. I really like her publications however, and she has great recipes… but as a TV personality? Not really.

Please watch. Cookie Moster totally wins this episode.

Part 1!

Part 2!

1. This is Cookie Monster Rated R, that level of desperation, not to mention the bribery, is just not appropriate for children.

2. Those cookies look tasty.

3. How do I get a date with Mr. Excitement??

PIZZA! PIZZA! PIZZA!

eveneiger — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 02:14:16 +0000

So today I made pizza.

And when I say I made pizza I mean I made the dough too. Delicious herb pizza dough from a recipe recently acquired from my good friend Maya. It is pretty much a basic pizza dough recipe but with chopped onions, rosemary, thyme, and basil mixed in. It tastes and smells delicious and makes the house smell pretty good too.

Since I just bought groceries (yay foods!) and therefor have fresh veggies (yay staying healthy!) this pizza had everything: tomato sauce, eggplant, baby button mushrooms (like the creminis, my go-to mushroom, but teeny tiny), fresh sage (that I secretly stuck into my bi-monthly bag of fresh dill from Hannaford’s) sun-dried tomatoes, cooked salad shrimp, shredded mozzarella cheese and of course my all-time-favorite, goat cheese.

Baked it in the oven for twenty-five minutes… and viola!

It was smelled so good I ate a third of it before I remembered to take a picture.

So that’s what I ate for dinner tonight…. stay tuned to see what I do with the rest of the eggplant!

(You are totally hooked now right? Just can’t wait to find out? I knew using a cliffhanger in a blog would be a good idea)

So… to sum up:

1. PIZZA!

2. PIZZA! (with herbs!)

3. PIZZA! (with fresh veggies!)