Potato Skins

Also while home, with my mom, I made these Potato Skins. Quite honestly - she did most of the work, but it was my idea. We were making a few things at the same time and somehow she got stuck with the not so awesome job of scooping out all of the potatoes. We also didn't plan well and were too impatient to wait for the potatoes to cool before scooping them, so it was quite a production. All in all, I personally thought they required more effort than they're worth and wouldn't bother making them again. I can wait to eat my potato skins at bar, but for those of you that want to make them at home, this recipe works just fine.

Lemon Ginger Bundt Cake

A few weeks ago, while at at my parents house, I took advantage of the fact that my mom has a big old Kitchen Aid, perfect for baking, and make this Lemon-Ginger Bundt cake. It was really quite easy and the little tiny pieces of ginger were great. I'd definitely make it again! The picture is, quite obviously, not mine, but honestly mine looked just as good. Oh - and I didn't bother with the powdered sugar...

Peanut Pork & Strawberry Salad

Another terrible picture but at least I'm posting! This is peanut-rubbed pork loin or something. I had to bake it way longer than they said, as usual. And some of the peanuts burned. But it was not bad. The strawberry salad was really good though! I got it from a book of just salad recipes. I would have probably thought it was too weird but I remembered Sarah doing the strawberry-balsamic thing one time so I figured it was a good idea. And it was! First you make this dressing with strawberries, balsamic vinegar, oil, lemon juice, etc. and blend it all. Then add more strawberry slices. Then put it on the greens and add goat cheese (I had feta). Voila! Awesome strawberiness I will definitely be making again.

Chocolate-Orange Cupcakes

So, these cupcakes are vegan. Usually I feed people something before I tell them it's vegan, because people think vegan desserts are going to taste like, I don't know, hay and carob? But these taste like cupcakes. My roommate has this incredibly great book, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over The World, by Isa Chandra Moskowitz and Terry Hope Romero, which is where I got the recipe. I made them orange by adding 1 1/2 teaspoons orange extract to the batter, which the book suggests. It also has a recipe for orange buttercream (or "buttercream") frosting, but I was afraid it wasn't going to make enough - I live in fear there won't be enough frosting - so I just substituted orange extract for the vanilla extract and orange juice for the soy milk in the fluffy buttercream frosting recipe. I only used about 1/8 cup orange juice, not 1/4 cup. In conclusion, vegan cupcakes = delicious. Don't be scared by the apple cider vinegar. The cupcakes do not taste like vinegar. They taste like chocolatey-orange delightfulness.

Oh, they could be frosted more delightfully, but I had several mishaps with this mechanical pastry bag my roommate has - including the fact that I broke it - so I just spread the frosting, and added orange sprinkles. All the pictures in the book have these amazingly beautiful frosted tops, but that appears beyond my reach.

June Cooking

I've made a few things lately but not taken pictures or gotten around to posting about them. So here's a quick recap of a few of them:

Rachel Ray's Meatloaf Muffins
Sarah made a meatloaf so I decided to too. I had all the ingredients and I was getting hungry when I found out you have to cook a meatloaf for longer than I was willing to wait. Rachel Ray to the rescue as usual, she had this great idea of just putting scoops of the meat mixture in a muffin pan instead of all together in a loaf. Quick cooking and tasty! I forgot how good meatloaf can be.

Butternut Squash Pasta
I've been on a calorie counting kick lately so I'm looking for recipes at Cooking Light these days. I'm not sure they're particularly light but they tell you how many calories are in it so that's handy. The butternut squash in this came out really good, though of course if you're counting calories you can't have very much pasta with it.

Quinoa Salad
Part of my trying to eat slightly more healthful foods is trying to bring healthful lunches to work. A good way to do it is to make a lot of something on Sunday that I can eat all week. Otherwise I end up eating bread and pasta as usual. So, this quinoa salad was the perfect thing. It made a ton and there's so much stuff in it to keep it interesting. I didn't even end up putting in the black beans because I thought it was already jam packed.

Creamy Lemon Squares

A week ago the CTO invited the whole Technology Team to his house in Brooklyn for a BBQ. I made these creamy lemon squares. I was a bit skeptical, but I figured if they didn't come out well, I'd just leave them at home. Thankfully they were great! My only 2 notes:

1. The recipe is dead on with the estimate of how many lemons makes 3/4 c. lemon juice.

2. Buy extra lemons anyway -- you never know when you'll have an "accident" - a lemon and a half in to my squeezing, I managed to tip the entire measuring cup of juice over and made a big mess to clean up. :)

Kimbab!

This is my Korean kimbab! My new friend Sunny came over this weekend and showed me how to make it. I'd been wanting to learn for years ever since I first had it in Korea. You have to cut everything into thin strips which took a lot of time but then the rolling up is kind of fun, I imagine that part is probably similar to sushi. She also showed us how to make two kinds of Korean soup but I'm not crazy about soup. Kimbab is going to be great for bringing to work for lunch, and just in time for summer!