Allie Goes to Japan, Part 1!

Osaka was really the main destination for my trip to Japan. It was just added bonus (/convenience) that I got to go to Kyoto and Tokyo as well.

After a verrrryyyy long day (two days?) of travel, I touched down in Osaka in the early evening and met up with my boss, who had already been in Japan (Tokyo) for a few days. We checked into the hotel, and because it was already kind of late in the evening and neither of us were familiar with Osaka, we decided to get sushi at the hotel's restaurant. My first taste of real, non-American sushi! (Not my last, either.)

I already ate at least one before I remembered to take a picture.

Did you know that in Japan, they put the wasabi on the sushi before you get it? When Matt and I go out for sushi, I generally avoid the wasabi and ginger (it just ain't my thang), but there was no avoiding that sinus-clearing spice here! Thankfully they used a reasonable hand with the stuff, and the sushi was really good. I realize that I've never lived in a place super near an ocean, but the sushi was just so much ... gentler, I guess is the word, on the palate than it is in the U.S. It's fresher, and doesn't taste fishy, and is just really nice and light to eat. The plate I got had I think nine different types of fish, and my favorites were the salmon and the scallop!

San Diego

Note: I originally wrote this post in April. This trip happened in January, and I just found the post mostly completed in my drafts folder. So I'm hitting "publish" as is, and maybe sometime before next January I'll get around to writing its sister post about my trip to Los Angeles that same week?)

I wanted to talk about California before too much time has passed and I decide it's not worth going back to share. (A lot of things have ended up like that lately, but I was listening to an episode of the Robcast with the woman who founded Momastery, and she was talking about how she made a point to have certain times for writing, where she typed the things she needed to say and hit "publish" when time was up, and I realized that kind of focus is kind of what I need right now, so I'm making a better effort to write regularly and actually send it out into the world.) (October Edit: HAAAAAAA.)

So, I was lucky enough to get to go to California for a work tradeshow! On the day before the first enormous snowstorm hit Virginia in January, I flew to San Diego with two of my co-workers. We had switched flights to avoid being trapped in the bad weather, so we had an extra couple days to hang around and see the area.

There was amazing Mexican food! There were Bees! We were on a boat! There were margaritas the size of my face, and my Japanese coworker bought a sombrero after drinking one!

I don't like tequila, so I got a face-sized sangria instead.

But for real, I got to see and do a few things I'd never tried before. Like, after breakfast one of the days, we stumbled upon this farmer's market in the streets of San Diego, where my co-worker convinced me to try uni (sea urchin), which — believe me — is disgusting and you don't want to eat it. It was all slimy and salty and horrible. (And I LIKE sushi and don't have an issue with textures and all, but it was just. so. bad. Coworker disagreed.)

We also got to visit the San Diego Zoo. My sister-in-law used to live in the San Diego area, and she said it was one of the best zoos in the world, and it did not disappoint! We got to see pandas and elephants and lots of giant turtles, and it was fun.

One of the days, both my coworkers decided they wanted to go to Tijuana, to which I was like, no thanks, I've been to Mexico. So they took off, and instead I headed up the parkway to have brunch with a bee friend, Allison/Mrs. Parasol! We went to a place called Snooze, and I had uhMAZING breakfast tacos. (BREAKFAST TACOS HOW I MISS YOU. Virginia sux.)

That's all she wrote, folks.

Have you been to San Diego? How do you make time to write?

I'm Here For The Food: A Love Story for Milan

I really, really loved Milan. I got to spend four magnificent days in the city (one and a half of them on my own), and while we did some things for work, I'm not going to talk about them here.

I loved the food. Oh my gosh, the FOOD! I had fresh pasta three times while I was there, and it was just so amazing and creamy and wonderful. I had gelato twice. Gnocchi once. Panna cotta for breakfast, which blew any panna cotta I've had completely out of the water. Lemon sorbet that was more like a creamy drink than an ice cream, but was oh-so-good.

"After" photo of a melt-in-your mouth salmon taglioni in cream sauce. Sorry, I didn't get a "before," but it was basically the same but with a significantly larger amount of pasta.

I ate as much of the deliciousness as humanly possible, but almost every restaurant we went to in Europe asked me if the food was okay, because I could never actually finish everything I ordered. If only I could have taken a cross-continental to-go box!

Gelato #1 from a street vendor near the Duomo cathedral. Italian Cream flavor, and it was amazing.

Italy made me realize how much I love eggplant, when it arrived on a vegetariana pizza. (In the U.S., it's one of the few veggies I find generally kind of icky. It's that thick skin, it makes it hard to eat.)

Fresh pappardelle with porcini mushrooms. We asked the hotel concierge for a restaurant recommendation, and she recommended a restaurant where they would come pick you up (at the NH Hotel off Sesto Marelli). The sign on the place literally just said "Ristorante," and the food and wine and dessert were all fabulous.

The most unusual pasta dish I've ever had. It was a ricotta-walnut-chili pasta from the Sheraton Milan Malpensa restaurant before a 6 a.m. flight to Frankfurt. I had to ask the waiter if all the flowers and leaves were edible! Also, I love that every meal in Italy starts with prosecco. Mmmm prosecco.

I could basically just wax poetic about the food forever, but I won't bore you. If you have not been to Italy, get to Italy if just for the food! I could just eat the whole city and be perfectly happy.

That Time I Got Tricked Into Eating Meat

So. I accidentally ate meat last week. I've been a vegetarian/pescatarian for a little over two years now. And I got irrationally pissed off over something that is completely voluntary, which is ridiculous.

Last week, Matt and I had a date night. We went to the driving range to hit golf balls for a while, and then Matt suggested we go to this local burger dive. We had gone there on Valentine's Day last year (are we romantic or what), and I had a really good veggie burger with refried beans and chips and salsa on the actual burger, and I wanted to experience that again.

We got our food, and I took a bite. Something didn't taste right. I looked at the patty. I looked at Matt. I looked at the burger again. I said, "I think this is meat." I made Matt take a bite. He said that it was for sure a black bean patty. I shrugged. I took another bite, and a third.

This thing did not taste like a black bean burger! I ripped the burger apart and tore into the patty. Yep. That there's ground beef, through and through.

I took it back. They told me I had ordered a regular burger. I said the burger was CALLED "veggie tostada burger," and thought it was a fair assumption that the patty would have been vegetarian-friendly. Because there ain't no actual vegetables in it! They made me another one, but it kind of put a damper on my evening.

I realize that my vegetarianism is self-imposed. It's not like it would have harmed my health if I'd decided to just suck it up and eat the meat. But it made me think about my dietary preferences. I like how I feel when I'm not eating meat. I'm not interested in going back to a carnivorous diet right now. I don't crave it, don't want it, don't need it.

And I probably won't be going back for another burger at that place.

Do you ever return restaurant food if it's incorrect?

Life List Fail: There Were Cows, But I Wasn't Allowed to Milk Them

"I didn't know learning to be a farm hand was on your list," my friend Chelsea said.

It's not. And it's really silly, but I think it would be pretty cool to get to milk a cow, and so it's on my Life List. I've heard it's not as easy as it looks.

We were at the Virginia Cheese Festival. (How's that for irony.) It was a lot of fun! There were cheese-making demonstrations, and cheese-sampling flights, and three floors worth of vendors with bites of cheese to try. There were some really good cheeses, and some unusual ones (mulberry chevre? habañero mango cheddar?). We tried goat cheese, and sheep's milk cheese, and cow's milk cheese (and when I got home and told this to Matt, he said, "Cow's milk cheese is just CHEESE.")

The cheese flight, which was guided and really informative, with cheeses from Caromont Farm.

And I learned a lot. I learned that goat cheese is called "chevre," which is pronounced "shev," and that cheese washed in cider is really delicious. (That's the cheese on the right, above.) I also learned that the rind of brie is actually white mold, and that kind of grossed me out and confused me because I like brie but other moldy cheese varieties are gross. I don't know my life.

Anyway, so we're sipping chardonnay and tasting cheeses and plotting which ones we're going to come back and buy later, when I heard that there were cows outside among the outdoor (non-cheese) vendors. And I said that we had to go see the cows and see if we could milk one! And Chelsea thought that was weird, but agreed that she'd take a picture if I managed to do it.

Cheese tasting selfie. 

So we went out to see the cows, and there were two little brown cows and one bigger black-and-white cow that was lazy and laying down under the tent in this little metal corral.

I love cows! I did get to pet the two brown ones. Chelsea happened to know the woman who owned the farm, and told her I wanted to learn how to milk a cow.

And the woman told me they had this thing that you could "learn" on, but it was basically just a piece of wood painted to look like a cow, with a rubber udder attached under a tank of fluid. Not exactly the same thing. (I did not attempt to milk the fake cow. I'm pretty sure that was meant for children.)

So I didn't get to milk a cow, but it was still an awesome day.

Do you like festivals? Are you a cheese connoisseur? Would you want to milk a cow?

Cookbook Challenge: Things That Remind Me Of Childhood

Well, some of these recipes remind me of childhood. Not the alcohol ones, obviously. Thought my parents like to tell me that when I was two, they once found me in the recycling bin trying to get the last drops out of my dad's beer bottles.

No children were harmed during the making of these Bride and Groom First and Forever Cookbook recipes.

Citrusy Sangria
I've been really pissed off at Kroger lately. Every week I buy produce — and I buy lots of it, because vegetarian — and before the next week's grocery trip has come around, a good amount of the stuff I haven't eaten yet has gone bad. Four days after I bought the navel oranges to make sangria, and one of them was already growing green mold! So that was frustrating. I only used the one good orange in my wine. Which really isn't a big deal in the big scheme of sangria, but dammit Kroger I am tired of throwing money at you only to have to throw my food away after a couple of days. Rawr. Also, the sangria was good, but duh, it's red wine. I never say no to red wine.

Mexican Chicken Salad with Taco-Ranch Dressing
Unlike every other child in America, I grew up hating both cheese and ranch dressing. Since becoming a vegetarian, I have begrudgingly accepted that FINE, cheese is wonderful, but it wasn't until I tried this salad that I thought, "Huh, maybe ranch dressing is okay too." Though admittedly the recipe tells you to make your own ranch dressing, and it didn't have that weird zip to it at the end like store-bought ranch does. (Instead you mix equal parts mayo and buttermilk, and throw in a little lime juice, taco seasoning and onion powder.) I skipped the chicken on my salad and stuck to the dresing and avocado and tortilla strips, but Matt enjoyed the chicken tossed into his.

Strawberry Daiquiris
These were very tasty, and Matt and I agreed that the best part was the lime juice-soaked sugar around the rims. My goodness lime sugar is delicious. (Matt doesn't like it when I put his drinks in martini glasses, so he got the more manly rocks glass. I think I win though, because the martini rim has more room for lime sugar.)

"Hidden Treasure" Bread Pudding
I don't know that I had ever had bread pudding before, but I have been missing out all my life because IT WAS SO GOOD. The "hidden treasure" was that there were chocolate chips on the bottom of the ramekins. DELICIOUS CHOCOLATE MIXED IN WITH SWEET EGG CUSTARD. My goodness.

Artichokes with Lemon-Garlic Butter
Neither of my parents were big on cooking much when I was a kid, but on very rare occasions, my dad would come home from the store with an artichoke. He would cook it up, and melt some butter in the microwave, and then the two of us (and occasionally my sister) would rip those leaves off and dip them in the butter and scrape the meaty bits off with our teeth. My mom thought it was disgusting. I loved those days. That said, this butter tasted better than the microwave-melted kind, but the artichoke itself didn't taste quite as good as I remember my dad's being.

Summer Tomato Stack
If a recipe could be a basic bitch, that's what this one would be. Seriously. I already made this caprese salad-esque "recipe" once this week without even looking at the instructions, and then I followed the instructions and it turned out the exact same, except that the tomatoes were cut in a way that was more difficult to eat and the reduced balsamic was thicker than when I just poured it over my tomatoes from the bottle. (The recipe said to "decoratively drizzle" the balsamic glaze on the plate, and clearly I don't know how to do that. It ended up all over the counter.)

Completed: 88 of 147 recipes

Do you have any fond childhood food memories? What foods did you hate as a kid that you kind of begrudgingly like now? What stories do your parents like to tell about your chldhood?

Things That Broke My Heart in May

Remember when I showed you some large buckets of dirt and bragged about how green my thumb was going to be this year?

Well, I was doing everything right. I had those suckers in direct sunlight all afternoon, and I watered them before bed every night, and I tracked my little pots' progress in the Sprout It app on my phone so I knew they were doing what they were supposed to. I all but sang lullabies to them.

And the leaves of my sweet carrots and beets got HUGE. (At least in my opinion.)

Some of them were over six inches tall. So when Sprout It told me it was time to harvest them, I didn't question it.

I picked the largest-leaved beet and started to pull it up, and the roots were thin enough that they all snapped. I thought, "That's weird, beets are supposed to have sturdy stalks. Where's the beet head?" And so then I dug all the way down to the bottom of the container looking for the beet. There was no beet. So then I panicked and ripped all of them up and dug through the entire container looking for beets, to no avail.

If I had been in a right frame of mind, I would have left the others to continue growing, but I was like IT'S TIME TO PICK THEM WHERE ARE THE BEETS WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME THAT I CAN'T GROW BEETS.

Sprout It also said it was harvest time for the carrots. They only fared slightly better. Don't be fooled by their close-up; they were only about the length of my pinkie finger, if that.

Can I tell you a sad story? (Because this sad story needs a sad-story predecessor.) When our seedlings (that we were growing separately from the carrots and beets) were all sprouted, we waited a tiny bit too long to get them into pots. Matt was convinced they were all going to die (they did) and so I got home one night really late, and it was pouring rain, and I found him out on the balcony trying to pot all these little seedlings by himself.

It was also raining when my beets didn't grow and my carrots weren't ready, and I was digging through the dirt looking for the non-existent bounty. And once I found I had none, I decided to stand out on the balcony in the drizzle for a little while, hoping Matt would get home soon because I was depressed and I wanted to be dramatic for a minute. But it was cold and he didn't get home fast enough, so I just took my sparse carrots and beet leaves inside and washed them. And Matt cooked the greens up as a side dish to go with dinner.

I am really disappointed they didn't grow, but I learned to let things grow longer if they don't seem ready, and to not rip my whole garden up in a panic.

I still have a basil plant, a cherry tomato plant and a hot pepper plant going, so hopefully those will fare better. So far I have one tiny hot pepper and another medium-sized one, and six little tomatoes. And the basil's looking mighty fine. I must try to be patient.

Have you successfully harvested anything so far this year? Do you have any garden fail stories that will make me feel better?

Cookbook Challenge: Ogres Are Like Onions

I would say that a good amount of my conversations with my husband involve us quoting our favorite TV shows. The bulk of the quoting is from Friends or How I Met Your Mother, but I am also decent at quoting The Office and various movies that I've seen several times.

I am much better at remembering obscure quotes from things than Matt is. I wonder, if my brain wasn't so full of quotes, what kind of knowledge I could have. I ask Matt this all the time, most recently when I knew every word to an NSYNC song we heard at a baseball game, despite having not listened to the song in years. You can't really help what sticks and what doesn't, I suppose.

That said, my spectacular ability to quote things has nothing to do with the fact that I've finished some more recipes from the Bride and Groom First and Forever Cookbook. Other than that I've thrown in a Shrek reference or two for good measure.

Warm Artichoke and Green Onion Dip

I love artichokes. I love green onions. But I did not love this dip. It had WAYYYY too much Parmesan cheese in it. The Parmesan cheese overpowered both the artichoke and the green onion. They should have just called this one "Put Some Parmesan On Your Triscuits And Have A Nice Day." But I made it on a dreary, cold and rainy day, and my book club loved that it was a warm dip?

Tuna With White Beans, Artichokes and Black Olive Tapenade
It rained all week, so instead of (asking Matt to help with) grilling my tuna steaks, I seared them on the stove. Based on all the stuff that was topping the tuna, I was expecting that Matt was not going to like this one at all, but he surprised me and thought it was really good! It had a dark, earthy flavor. I don't think Elliott realized that it was tuna, since it didn't come out of a can, so she did not harrass us for any.

Confetti Coleslaw
I've never been a huge coleslaw fan. Whenever we've eaten at barbecue restaurants (this was in my pre-vegetarian days) I've stayed away from coleslaw because it kind of has this reputation for being mayonnaise slop with a little bit of cabbage thrown in. So I was thrilled when this recipe used minimal mayo, and left all the flavor to a sugar-vinegar mixture. The coleslaw was delightful — crunchy, tangy and light. Next time you throw a barbecue, invite me and I'll bring some.

Classic Lasagna
No photo for this one. I should have taken one when I prepped it the night before, but I wanted to take one of the finished product in all its cheesy, melty glory. But then we had company and I wasn't going to be weird and make them wait while I photographed their food. I made this meat-sauce lasagna (ground beef and Italian sausage) when Matt's parents were in town a few weeks ago, and the three of them all said it was very good, and then polished off all the leftovers over the course of the weekend. (I made plain ricotta lasagna rolls for myself.)

Yogurt Granola Parfaits
"What about parfaits? Parfaits have layers, everyone loves parfaits!" These were a good and quick option when I needed a treat to take to a friend's house because we were having a Queen Elizabeth movie marathon (the Cate Blanchett versions). We wanted to be fancy. Also, why does this cookbook have so many recipes that are literally just "throw X, Y and Z in a glass/bowl/plate and call it good"? It's kind of weird. I'm not complaining though. It's making my life really easy.

Grilled London Broil Fajitas / Guacamole
Knocked out two recipes with one meal! I made homemade guacamole (I should have added more salt, but otherwise it was delicious), and I prepped and cut the fajita meat and Matt grilled it. The meat smelled amazing, the pepper/onion mix was delicious, and the salsa recipe that was included with the fajita recipe was good (though not as good as my college salsa). We had a friend over on May 4 and had a pre-Cinco de Mayo fiesta with ¡fajitas y bebidas!

Completed: 82 of 147 recipes.

What is your favorite summer barbecue food?

Is Life Without Chocolate Even Worth Living?

I think chocolate is making me break out.

I know that this is a fairly controversial statement. Some doctors say that what you eat has no effect on the oiliness or dryness of your skin, and other doctors say that what you eat absolutely affects your face.

My mom and my sister have always complained that they can't eat chocolate because it makes them break out, and my mom has gone so far as to tell people she's allergic to it. And Past Allie always thought this was silly, because I've never heard of a few pimples counting as an "allergic reaction."

But you know how much I love Nutella? I started noticing that every time I eat it, within a day or two I get huge cystic acne flares. I thought it was because Nutella is quite oily, and decided maybe I shouldn't buy it anymore. But my skin was still flaring up every time I ate regular chocolate too.

This was kind of mind-boggling to me. I've been a Proactiv user for years and years because I had bad acne as a teenager, and when I tried to stop using it as an adult, my skin freaked out again, and so I've been back on it ever since. I figured adult acne was just my cross to bear. So the idea that maybe I could control my skin a little better by cutting out chocolate was intriguing.

AND TERRIBLE. I decided I should try an experiment to see if my skin clears up when I avoid chocolate, and on the first day, I came home and wailed to Matt that I didn't think life without chocolate was worth living. (He was obviously super thrilled with this assessment of my life.)

I just discovered Japanese green tea chocolate! How can you take this deliciousness away from me?!

Since then, I have managed to go two or three days at a time, but I keep forgetting that I'm not eating chocolate and then accidentally eat it. (On Sunday I scarfed two Andes mints at Olive Garden before I remembered that Andes mints are chocolate. Gah. Life without Andes mints isn't worth living.)

I am still interested in the results of this experiment though, if I can ever display enough self-control to actually avoid cocoa for more than a few days at a time. I'm half-scared that my skin will be perfect sans chocolate and that I'll have to give it up forever, and half-scared that it won't have any effect and that my skin just sucks.

Do you think the things you eat affect your skin? What couldn't you live without?

Cookbook Challenge: Don't Drink and Blog

I … made a lot of sauces for various things for this post? Thanks, Bride and Groom First and Forever Cookbook!

(I've been wracking my brains for like a week for an intro to this post, and haven't come up with anything good. So I guess let's just jump in.)

Peanut Sauce
Well this is rather embarrassing. I have made Pad Thai several times in the past few months, and each time, I find myself Googling peanut sauce recipes. I never even realized there was one right in this here cookbook! Stupid stupid! It was also stupid easy. It … tasted like peanut sauce? I don't know. I'd make it again.

Salmon With Honey Mustard Glaze / Maple-Glazed Spiced Carrots
As you can see, these are not salmon fillets. The grocery store ran out (!) of salmon because of the Super Bowl (!!!), and the fish market was closing anyway, so I bought some frozen Pacific whiting and called it good enough. (Who eats fish on Super Bowl Sunday?!) Matt really liked the fish anyway, but I think the glaze would have worked better on salmon. This is why we follow instructions! Also, Ritz crackers crumbled onto fish is pretty awesome.

The carrots were tasty, but not anything really special. The glaze didn't reduce as much as I expected it to, so the carrots were kind of still swimming in liquid syrup, even after they were fully cooked (and possibly even over-cooked since I kept waiting for the sauce to reduce).

Pork Tenderloin with Mango Salsa and Blackberry Syrup
I bought the world's smallest, cutest pork tenderloin for Matt, and then I made myself another fillet of that Pacific whiting, and then applied the salsas and syrups accordingly. Other than the fact that the pork took like three times longer to cook than the recipe said (even with my baby tenderloin! but Matt prefers his pork with no pink), Matt and I both really liked this. You should totally make mango salsa (hint: mango, lime, red onion, jalapeño, mint leaves), but only if mangoes are in season where you are. It turns out I really like mangoes. I always thought they were gross in Texas, but they were probably out of season/transported from somewhere else every time I tried them.

Crudites with Green Onion-Mint Dip
Another book club, another tray of goodies. The dip was quite light and refreshing. It's a good summer-y dip. I had to explain to Matt what blanching the veggies accomplished, but the blanched asparagus was so, so good. I freaking love asparagus. Except for that one side effect of eating it. You know.

Mojitos
I'll be honest, I did not have high expectations for this drink. I do not particularly like mint leaves. So it was a pleasant surprise when it was actually pretty tasty. Even though all the blended mint leaves floated to the top of the glass and that was really weird. Like drinking grass. If I had a better blender, it might have minced it all up better. But thank goodness it didn't turn out as green as it was in the cookbook photo, because I'm pretty sure I would not have enjoyed Photo Mojito at ALL.

Also, Matt belatedly informed me that shot glasses hold 1.5 oz of alcohol, not just 1 oz, as I previously thought. I used a shot glass to measure the rum. I tried to type this description immediately after drinking my mojito, and that's why you get gems like this: "Tyed four minutes later… one of these willg et you kind of tospy…" You're welcome.

Smoked Salmon Platter
This wasn't so much "cooking" as it was "take pre-cooked salmon and put it on a plate and arrange accoutrements around it in a pretty manner." Elliott was very excited, but she got none. Matt and I both thought it was tasty — I don't even particularly like capers, but it turns out that salmon + honey mustard/sour cream sauce + red onion have enough flavor that the caper flavor seemed toned down a little — but really, you can't go wrong when you're doing literally none of the work for your dinner.

Completed: 69 of 147 recipes

What is your favorite veggie? Did you know that shot glasses were 1.5 ounces??

Cookbook Challenge: You're Not Hardcore Unless You Live Hardcore

Matt has commented on multiple occasions so far this month that I'm like, REALLY into completing this challenge. In December I calculated that, if I want to finish cooking through the Bride and Groom First and Forever Cookbook in 2015, I have to make two recipes every week. And I guess I'm being pretty hardcore about it, if Matt's noticed and said something.

Just let this be an inspiration to you, I guess. If you have something you want to accomplish, turn it into bite-sized (ha, pun intended) chunks and then go bananas trying to complete those chunks.

Marinated Olives and Feta Cheese
I made this to take to a book club potluck. The marinade (made of olive oil and lemon zest and fresh parsley and garlic and various other things) made the olives super pungent. Like, strong-tasting to the point where you could only eat a few before you have to stop, you know? The bread on the tray disappeared, as did a good amount of the feta, but I had an awful lot of olives left when I got home. I probably should have halved the recipe, since Matt doesn't like olives.

This is the unfancy version of that salad I made last time.

Croutons
If I had known making croutons was this easy, I would have started doing it a long time ago! (Maybe. Well, sometimes. Convenience is still a factor.) These croutons were buttery and garlicky, and the "salad course" upstaged the rest of dinner. I don't know why I have such a weird attitude toward salads; I quite enjoy them when I'm eating them, but if I'm not in the process of consuming one that second, I'm like, "Sigh, salad is so boring, and doesn't count as a meal because it doesn't fill you up, and excuse excuse." Croutons are basically the reason for eating salad, in my book.

Spiced Carrot Cake with Fluffy Cream Cheese Icing
We'll just call this one "deconstructed." Both cake rounds broke on their way out of the pans, but Matt determined that they were still delicious, so we slopped icing unattractively on the top and ate it anyway. We snacked on it like that for a few days, but it kept messing up Matt's blood sugar, and I felt guilty every time I ate any because THREE AND A HALF CUPS OF POWDERED SUGAR IN THE FROSTING AND TWO AND THREE-FOURTHS CUPS OF GRANULATED SUGAR IN THE CAKE. I'm sorry, body! I ended up throwing about half the cake away, just because we couldn't keep doing this to ourselves.

Hazelnut Hot Chocolate
It's like drinking Nutella! If you're into that kind of thing. Which, I am. I mean, you literally heat up some milk and whip some Nutella into it, and you've got hot chocolate. (The recipe is a little fancier than that, but that's the gist.) It was good, but I think the last time I bought hot chocolate packets I accidentally bought the sugar-free kind, and I must have gotten used to those, because I almost thought the hazelnut version was a tiny bit too sweet. But, you know exactly what you're getting if you make this. Bonus, it doesn't use up a whole container of Nutella, and then you can eat the leftovers out of the tub with a spoon.

Vodka-Spiked Lemonade with Red Rocks
The fruit-punch ice cubes are what make this drink amazing. Otherwise, it's just lemonade. But add fruit punch and let it melt super slow, and it's really delicious. Matt's not even the vodka-drinking type, but we both had two glasses of this lemonade. I'll have to remember to make it again in the summer; this is such a pool-side drink. (Also, I totally cut lemon-slice garnishes, and then forgot about them until we were already almost done with serving #1.)

(I made the cheddar-dill variation recipe. Because that's more fun than plain biscuits.)

Quick and Easy Drop Biscuits
Once upon a time, Matt and I went to Red Lobster. He ate about 70 cheesy biscuits, requested more, and then we took them home in a to-go box. Matt put them in the fridge and then forgot about them. Being the good wife that I am, I helped him out by scarfing down all of them. When he found out, he was kind of mad. He said I STOLE his cheesy biscuits. All that to say, these biscuits tasted a lot like Red Lobster's biscuits. When I mentioned that, Matt said he was still upset about the cheesy biscuits. And that I wasn't allowed to have any of the leftovers, because this time, they were all his.

Completed: 62 of 147 recipes

Do you like olives? What's your favorite kind of cake? And have you ever STOLEN any of your significant other's leftovers? ;)

No More Produce Bags!

A few years ago, I started taking reusable bags to the grocery store. I figured reducing the amount of plastic bags I used could only be a good thing.

But I was still bothered, because even though I was no longer using plastic to haul my load home, I was still bringing home several plastic bags a week in the form of produce bags. Those things are sneaky, and made me feel guilty.

I slowly started phasing them out. I stopped putting things like onions and avocadoes in plastic, figuring that the outer layer always gets removed before prepping and eating them. Then I stopped putting fruit in produce bags, letting the apples and lemons roll around my cart footloose and fancy free.

A few weeks ago, I stopped putting lettuce and cilantro in plastic bags. And things got messy. If I'm paying for a head of lettuce, I don't want the leaves to start falling off on the checkout conveyor belt. Plus, I have a thing about other people touching my food. (I once told a cashier at HEB to do something about her hands after she sneezed on them and then grabbed my loaf of bread to scan. Eeeugh.)

But I've finally found a solution to keep other people's hands off my food (for the most part) and avoid using plastic bags. I made my own mesh produce bags.

I made a few larger ones for things like lettuce and lunch fruit, and some smaller bags for things like cilantro or shallots. It was pretty easy. I just got some mesh from JoAnn's in my favorite colors (NOT tulle mesh, but a heavier kind), and I sewed some quick straight lines around the top edging and sides.

I haven't tried washing them yet, but they should hold up under the gentle cycle. I'm not sure if the dryer will shrink them, so they'll probably just air dry.

And of course, if you like the idea of avoiding plastic produce bags but don't want to deal with sewing, you can purchase pre-made produce bags here.

What craft projects have you been working on lately? Have you taken any steps recently to reduce your share of trash?

Cookbook Challenge: Cheesecake and Cabbage (SO MUCH CABBAGE)

Note to self: When a dessert recipe suggests a specific type of pan, don't assume you can get away with what you already have. You need all the pans. If, say, a cheesecake recipe suggests a springform pan, and you use a regular baking round, you won't be able to get it out of the pan without destroying your labor of love. Icing will drip down the sides of the pan, and will harden, and it will look SUPER ATTRACTIVE for your book club potluck.

Here are some more recipes I made from the Bride and Groom First and Forever Cookbook, which I'm cooking through slowly but surely. I even managed to make some of them without screwing up.

Very Vanilla Cheesecake
I chipped away at the icing so it'd look prettier, but I left it in the pan. Also, I accidentally forgot to reduce the heat on the oven after I made the crust, and didn't realize it until the cheesecake filling had already been cooking for 10 minutes, so I was terrified that it wasn't going to turn out well after I spent like two hours making this freaking cheesecake. But it was delicious. My book club assured me that I am allowed to bring cheesecake for all future meetings.

Great Robert's Whiskey Sour Slush
I made these slushes for an after-dinner treat when we were at my parents' house over Christmas. And I chose to make them there so that I didn't have to buy bourbon, since they already had some.) I thought it was tasty, and it only had four ingredients — lemon juice, sugar, ice, bourbon — so there were limited chances for me to mess these up. (I did my best though … I accidentally blended stuff in the wrong order, but I don't think that should make a difference. Note to self #2: start reading recipes before you start.)

Mrs. Birdsong's Cabbage Soup
This soup re-affirmed my commitment to vegetarianism. Wait, that sounds really mean. I didn't mean it like that; in fact, I split the recipe in half and made two separate pots, one as the recipe dictated (full of beef stew meat and beef broth, as Matt was pleased to discover) and the other using no meat and veggie broth. Allie does not cook food that she does not get to eat! While the two pots were simmering, the beef one actually did smell better, but I am still having a hard time getting back on board with cooking meat. This is going to be a long challenge, yo. But the veggie version of the soup was really delicious and healthy-tasting, and Matt ate four bowls of the meaty kind for dinner, so I'd say it's a win.

Herbed Buttermilk Popcorn
Guys, I made popcorn. ON THE STOVE. This is a big deal, because I have a major addiction to PopSecret Homestyle microwave bags. (Yeah yeah, chemicals popcorn lung bad for the environment WHO CARES it's deliciousssss.) And I kind of expected that any popcorn made from scratch would not be as flavorful as my lightly-buttered salty goodness. So here I am, standing up and admitting it: I WAS WRONG. This stuff was really tasty; the seasoning was creamy-tasting but also pepper-y. I wasn't super confident about my stove technique, and was kind of afraid of burning the kernels, but I'm sure it gets easier with practice.

Arugula with Cranberries, Cambozola, Walnuts and Raspberry Vinaigrette
I couldn't find cambozola cheese at the grocery store, so I subbed in gorgonzola. It's not my favorite, but it's better than blue cheese. I was about halfway through assembling this salad when I realized it was just a fancy version of a salad I make all the time: lettuce, nuts, dried cranberries, shredded Mexi-cheese with raspberry dressing from a bottle. And frankly, while the arugula and gorgonzola did end up tasting better than expected, I think I'll stick with my simpler salad. It's cheaper, and there's no walnut-toasting or moldy-cheese-eating required.

Chinese Chicken Salad
I did mix in the chicken, and just ate around it since it was in big chunks. Which means I basically just ate cabbage with peanut sauce for dinner. Meh. It was okay. I think Matt enjoyed his dinner way more than I did. After we put the leftovers away, I went to town on some leftover Chinese takeout. Thematic?

Completed: 56 of 147 recipes.

What is your favorite popcorn topping? What was your worst cooking mishap? And how do you feel about blue cheese?

Scrap Veggies

I feel like everyone has something they're super passionate about, right? Well, (one of) mine is the environment. I'm really thankful that our new city has really awesome recycling facilities, because back in College Station we could basically only recycle white paper, plastic, and certain colors of glass, and it made my soul die a little every time I had to throw away something that could have totally been recycled in any other city.

But even with the better recycling options, I'm always looking for ways to reduce the amount of trash we produce, because it bothers me a lot how wasteful we are as a society. How wasteful we are as a household, and there's only the two of us! We are far from perfect, and send an awful lot of trash to the landfill every week, and my goal is to be more aware of it and reduce our refuse when possible.

A long time ago, I decided I wanted to try my hand at composting our food scraps, and it didn't go over that well. I ended up with a tiny bucket full of sludge because I didn't know the first thing about helping stuff decompose. But, live and learn: I did some more research this time, and about a month ago, I built my own large bin composter for the backyard. (I used this tutorial.)

And by "built" I mean "drilled some holes in this trash can I got from Lowe's."

Thankfully, Matt has been really on board with all my efforts to throw away less stuff. We hardly use paper towels anymore, thanks to having clean rags within easy reach all the time. And now we throw away significantly fewer food scraps. He's gotten even more into composting than I have!

We keep a little flower pot in the kitchen to collect egg shells and veggie peelings, and then every day (or every other day), we'll toss it out into the compost bin. Every week, when I get the newspaper and circulars in the mail, I'll shred them and toss them in as well, along with a handfull of potting soil. And then one of us (most likely Matt) shakes the bin up to keep it all mixed and working.

And despite the fact we've been throwing food in here for more than a month, it doesn't really even smell.

It hasn't been that long, and we use the 32-gallon bin an awful lot, but I'm excited to get to a place where we can turn all our compostable food waste into soil. My goal is to eventually have a small garden in our backyard, so we can grow a few types of veggies. (Our basil plant didn't survive the drive to Virginia, and our pepper plant gave us two marble-sized Mexibells before the weather got cold and it freaked out.) At some point, I may have to make a second bin, so we can keep throwing scraps in while the first bin decomposes, but we're not to that point yet.

What is it that you're really passionate about? Do you compost?

Cookbook Challenge: I Bake Some Stuff

I've been recipe-ing up a storm! And baking more than is normal for me, but I have determined that 2015 is the year I'm going to finish this challenge! Since I don't eat meat (it's been more than a year now!), I haven't really touched very many of the meat recipes, and I need to get started on those soon or I'll never finish. Thankfully, I go to a good amount of potlucks for various book clubs and meetup groups I'm in, and Matt will never turn down a good, meaty dinner.

As a reminder, I'm cooking through the Bride and Groom First and Forever Cookbook. We are far from a bride and a groom anymore. But my sister is getting married! Maybe I should gift her a copy of this cookbook for her wedding. It's been pretty consistently awesome.

Cosmopolitans
I know that mixing drinks isn't really the same as cooking, but … there are cocktail recipes in this cookbook! And I love cosmos! And I don't think I've ever tried one that wasn't made from that gross, sweet, pre-made mix. It had triple-sec in it! Which is probably not ground-breaking, but cut me some slack, I don't mix yummy cocktails all that often. (The recipe made far too many for one person, and I got a little tipsy off just one, and so I refrigerated the rest because WHO WASTES GOOD VODKA. It didn't end up tasting all that good after refrigeration. I cut it with leftover cranberry juice and drank it anyway.)

Shortbread Sweethearts
Ya'll, I bought a cookie cutter and everything for this adventure. I used my new rolling pin. I was patient while the dough sat in the refrigerator, and then again when it sat out on the counter to soften again. (Which made the dough kind of crumbly; if it was supposed to be soft, what was the point of the refrigeration?) Anyway, they were a little too buttery for my taste (butter is the main ingredient), but Matt said they tasted like the butter cookies you could get from those holiday tins, and he liked them. (I wonder if it would have been better with margarine? I started buying real butter to get away from consuming so many chemicals, but I definitely feel like real butter should be used more sparingly than this recipe would have allowed. Thoughts?)

Frittata with Sundried Tomatoes, Cream Cheese and Basil
As you can see, my first-ever attempt at making a frittata was not at all beautiful, but at least it was really freaking easy to make. And it did taste fancier than scrambled eggs, which I seriously considered turning it into when the eggs on top didn't want to flow onto the bottom of the pan like the recipe said. Also I accidentally broiled it on the wrong side and had to flip it and broil it again. But it was quite tasty, once all was said and done. Also, I bought sriracha for the first time to use on the frittata, and now Matt and I put it on everything.

Our Favorite Chocolate Chip Cookies
Were these the most delicious chocolate-chip-and-walnut cookies I'd ever tasted? No. But they were still pretty darn yummy. I just wish they hadn't pancaked out so much — I put the requisite space between them and cooked them for the recommended time, and they just flattened and turned dark around the edges, instead of staying ooey gooey like the book said they would.

Party Pecans
The combination of spices and sauces (liquid smoke! worchestershire sauce! butter! garlic powder! sugar! more stuff!) smelled amazing before I'd even popped these suckers in the oven. And when they were done? Hoo boy, I could see myself sitting with a bowl of these and hoovering them all up in one go. A little spicy, a little smoky, a little sweet … mmm. Matt thought they were only okay, though. All the more for me!

Completed: 50 of 147* recipes

How do you feel about butter vs. margarine? Do you like to bake?

*I've updated the total number of recipes. It turns out, when I initially tallied it up, I miscounted. There are only 147 recipes in the book.