Ten-Minute Couscous Soup

I know it's been a long time. There have been so many good dishes that I wanted to post about, but I've been too busy finding instances of plagiarism in the papers of my students and running in circles trying to do dissertation-related activities. So, there you have my excuses. But this recipe, courtesy of 101 Cookbooks, made me push aside the mounds of paper and piles of books and dust off ye old bloggie.

This soup is so easy and quick and rewarding. And healthy! I poured a 32oz. box of chicken stock into a pot, brought it to a boil, added a cup of dry couscous, let it simmer for about 5 minutes, then threw in some cubed dried sausage, a package of mixed cut up broccoli/cauliflower, some julienned sun-dried tomatoes, let that sit for a few minutes, then served in a bowl with some grated jalapeno havarti on top. And I had all of these ingredients on hand except the sausage and cheese! You could easily make a veggie version with vegetable stock and no sausage.

This is perfect for the busy week-nights where you get home late and you're too tired to cook. And then you have leftovers the next day! My only word of caution: I would have some extra stock on hand to add to the soup because the couscous will soak up most of the liquid.

Don't count me out of the cooking-blogging game--I'll be back!

Froth of love

So little time to blog these days, but let me point you in a fun direction. If you too love a hot caffeinated beverage with steamed milk in the morning, but hate paying $4 a cup, then a one-time $19.99 investment (or less if you search online) in this product means you can make your own cappuccino, latte, or chai!

Fancy backsplash tiles

My mother made these tiles out of clay, inspired by an Indian sari pillow. They now reside behind my sink.

Bacon ice cream

I'm way behind on yummy stuff, so this will be brief.

Inspired by
JordanBaker, I tried this recipe. She goes through the creation of bacon ice cream step-by-step with pictures, so I recommend visiting her site. Plus she's funny as hell.

Note: pay attention to the recommendation "cook bacon in oven because frying on stove = stinky tiny apartment."

It's surprisingly sweet and tastes like praline pecan, because the ice cream base is sugary and the chewy chunky bits are salty like caramel. But then your brain kicks in and says "wait a second, that's bacon in there." It's an unusual and tasty dessert. Test it out on your friends without telling them what it is and see their reaction (but not the vegetarian or kosher ones. That's just cruel.)

Revenge is the dish best served cold

I have discovered, after annihilating more than two plastic containers, that it is best to let your frozen concoction stand for a few minutes after removing from freezer before serving.

Banana Cream Pudding Pie and Fluffer Nutter Ice Cream

Oh, superbowl. If only you were actually a super big bowl of anything except football. My first superbowl party was in Boston in 1997, when my male roommates hosted our friends for the big event. They made tons of food, including jambalaya and gumbo in honor of the New Orleans location of the game. Or maybe New Orleans was in the superbowl. Anyway, my main memory of the day comes from the kitchen, where I was hanging out with the other women at the party (do mostly women hang out in kitchens during big football games?), and one of my roommates shouted "five minutes until kickoff!". To which I responded, "there's a cookoff? Where?"

This should illustrate how little I care about football.

But the food! And the company, and the commercials! These I enjoy. So I have a couple of treats I made for a superbowl party tomorrow.

One is a banana cream pudding pie, because I had soul food the other week and they were out of their fantastic banana pudding. So I went without, plotting my banana cream revenge.

I bought a 9" graham cracker pie crust, 1 4 oz. package vanilla instant pudding mix, milk, 3 bananas, and whipped topping. I prepared the pudding according to the package instructions, sliced half the bananas into the pie shell, poured the prepared pudding over it, sliced the remainder of the bananas on top, chilled the thing in the fridge for a few hours, then spread 3/4 tub of whipped topping over the whole shebang. Looks pretty, and I'm trying to avoid digging into it until tomorrow. By the way, everything was non-fat, so really, it's a health food.

Next, I attempted Fluffer Nutter Ice Cream on the suggestion of Bike Guy, who had never had a fluffer nutter sandwich until I made him one the other day. (If you too have not had a fluffer nutter, I encourage you to go to your nearest supermarket, buy white bread, creamy sugar-filled peanut butter, and marshmallow fluff and do the first thing that comes to mind. You won't regret it.) I made a basic vanilla ice cream recipe (5.5 cups heavy whipping cream, 1 1/4 cups sugar, 2 tsp. vanilla--mix together and chill to 40 degrees, then prepare in ice cream maker). I warmed about 1/2 cup of peanut butter in the microwave for 45 seconds to make it liquefy, but I had trouble with the fluff. It wouldn't get runny, no matter what I did to it. So after the ice cream was ready for the transfer to a freezer container, I added the runny peanut butter and fluff and stirred it a little. Now it's chilling in the freezer. I wanted to get nice ribbons of p'butt and fluff in the ice cream, but I have a feeling it's chunky. And there's nothing to represent the white bread. I'm sure it will taste good, but the presentation is lacking. We shall see if the football-loving hordes like it.

(Note to suedoenymph: I just read your comment about freezing the bowl first--great idea! And I changed my settings so that now I will receive blog comments via email so I get those friendly tips in time!)

I'll post some Feedback on the desserts: Both big hits, just like the sacks on Tom Brady. after the big day.

Also, Rachael Ray had a couple of tasty-sounding dishes (viewed from a treadmill at the gym) that I plan to make one night this week just because they sounded so good. No football necessary.

p.s. Bike Guy is making this dish tonight for dinner, and experimenting with a shrimp, jalapeno, cream cheese, and bacon-wrapped appetizer. Eeee!

p.p.s. if you're a fan of bacon or Jim Gaffigan, you'll love this.

Kitchen makeover!

Long time no post, I know. But my plan was to do over my kitchen and post before and after photos here. So! I have a very small galley kitchen, and when I moved in 3.5 years ago, I put the most relevant furniture in it. This included a drop-leaf table that was given to me by a professor who wanted to get rid of it. The table came with 4 folding chairs, but there wasn't any room to unfold the table and have the chairs around it at the same time. So I kept 2 chairs at the table. I never ate at that table, although at one point I did take LSAT practice tests there because that was the only place in my tiny apartment where I could sit upright and write on a table.



As you can imagine, I was frustrated with the lack of surface space for food prep in my kitchen and the dearth of storage space. I wanted to redo the kitchen with the following criteria: 1) spend as little as possible, 2) create as much space as possible, 3) find items that would create horizontal space for more storage.

I found a piece of furniture at IKEA that was perfect! FORHOJA promised to provide a butcher-block kitchen cart that was the right height for food prep with adequate drawer and shelf space. Unfortunately, it was out of stock for months, so I patiently waited. Once it arrived back in stores, I bought and assembled it, an ASPUDDEN cart to hold other things I stored in my kitchen, like purses, hats, gloves, and bike accessories, and a basket for my recycling. I assembled these in my tiny living room/study/tv room/dining room and got ready to move the old stuff out of the kitchen.

I sold the kitchen table and chairs (and a few other things taking up space) on my friendly neighborhood Craigslist, so the money I got for the table offset the cost of the new furniture.

And the piece de resistance: my neighbor is a handyman, and he had painted one wall in his kitchen a lovely warm gold which really dressed it up. He provided the paint and the labor for a small fee, and now I have a pretty accent wall in the kitchen as well. I splurged on a poster for the wall, and now my new kitchen is ready for whatever meals I want to prepare in it.