Buttered Popcorn Popsicles

What was I thinking? Why did I ever think that butter and popcorn flavored Popsicles could be good? I really have no clue. But it happened. I actually made these monstrosities. Biting into them, they had  the flavor of salt and fat women trying for weight loss. I could literally not pallet more than one bite... Never make buttered popcorn flavored popsicles. Just don't do it.

I also tried to make a carmel sauce, but it ended up just being burnt candy bits. It tasted good but was in no way smooth enough to get onto these Popsicle without melting them.

I won't give y'all the recipe, because trying this is cruelty to ones mouth.

Success with Quiche

Hi, I'm Jen. Some of you already know me or have talked to me. I have my own food/traveling blog and JoDee invited me to join this one too, so here I am. I love cooking and baking, and trying food from other places I visit.

Ever since I visited Tartine Bakery in San Francisco last weekend and got a slice of their quiche, I have wanted to make a quiche of my own, better than any quiche I have made before. I wanted to make a really good quiche, so I turned to Deb at Smitten Kitchen because her recipes are excellent. For the custard filling and an idea of measurements to make the size of quiche I wanted, I took the example of a mushroom quiche she recently made, but added in less mushrooms and some of my own vegetables, and using pre-made crust.

Spring Quiche

Ingredients:

2 refrigerated pie crusts
10 ozs mushrooms (you can use a variety of kinds)
4 spears of asparagus
Half a zucchini
2 cloves garlic
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 tsp dried thyme
3/4 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese (shred by hand, it'll melt in better that way)
6 eggs
2 cups milk (I used soy milk)
2 cups heavy whipping cream
Freshly grated nutmeg
Salt

Instructions:
 0. Preheat oven to 325.
1. In a 9 inch Springform pan, place the pre-made pie dough. You might want to coat the pan with a little olive oil before you put the crust in but I didn't and it didn't stick. Refrigerate for later.
2. Chop up vegetables and cook for 5 minutes in a frying pan with the olive oil. Add the butter, garlic and thyme and cook on medium for 10 more minutes.
3. Whip three eggs in a bowl. Then add 1 cup milk and 1 cup heavy whipping cream, plus some salt and a few grates of the nutmeg, and beat vigorously with a whisk until frothy, 5-10 minutes. This would be a lot easier with a kitchen aid but you don't need one.
4. Take out the pan from the fridge,  add 1/4 cup of the cheese, half the vegetable mixture, and the custard mixture. Repeat the custard mixture with remaining eggs/milk/salt/nutmeg, sprinkle another 1/4 cup cheese ontop of the first custard mixture, add in the rest of vegetables, and pour in the second batch of your custard mixture to fill the pan. Then sprinkle the last 1/4 cup of the cheese ontop of that and bake in the oven for an hour and a half or until a toothpick comes out clean.
5. Let cool on a wire rack or away from the stove for 15 minutes. Place on a baking sheet, unhinge the pan and remove the outer part of the pan to cut the first piece. It's easier to cut after you cut the first piece and you can put the pan back together after that.

It will be so nice to have this quiche for any meal of the day. Glad I decided to make it. :)

Candylude 1:Andes Mints

As a little girl, my Grandad on my Fathers side, Roy, use to give me Andes mints when I would come talk to him. He was an artistic, yet stubborn man, who died before I was a teenager from lung cancer. He is actually the reason I am so adamantly against smoking, but my political opinions really do not belong lingering in this blog. These mints remind me of sticky days, in smokey rooms listening to the sound of an oxygen machine, the Price is Right playing on the television screen.  Later in my life, they would remind me of long boring evenings sitting at a Mexican food restaurant listening to my parents talk to friends.

These little chocolates have a smoothe mint flavor, unlike many mint candies, you can still taste the chocolate in them behind the mint flavor. I have always been a fan of eating the chocolate layers first, then the mint layer. But I am a strange flower.

These little candies have an elegant feel, and make a normal night just a bit more classy.

Strawberry Banana Popsicle

Well, last night I tried my 2nt Popsicle in my fancy Popsicle maker. At the request of my boyfriend, I made 'strawberry banana' Popsicle. The recipe used really made it taste like a smoothie on a stick, mixing a bit of milk and yogurt with fresh strawberries really makes a delicious flavor. The banana batter was a bit too thick to pour correctly into the mold, and banana flavored things are really just NOT my cup of tea. Overall, it is still a better Popsicle than a store bought one, but just not as good as the strawberry shortcake one I made earlier.



Recipe:
Strawberry 'Batter'
1 Tb Sugar
2 Tb Milk
1 T vanilla yogurt
1.25 cups strawberries

Banana Batter:
2 Tb sugar
2 Tb Milk
3/4 cup banana

Curried Mac Bake

So as anyone who cooks often knows, the way you learn is by making mistakes and experimenting. Today for lunch I experienced failure in more than one way.

My friend Nate was suppose to come over this afternoon, and being too poor to go out I decided to make lunch for when he was here. My Aunt had given me a Mac&Cheese cookbook for Christmas, and last night while looking through it I had found a recipe for 'Curried Mac Bake' being a fan of curry I decided to make it.
My first mistake was using honey-wheat bread instead of the called for sourdough to make a topping. My second was burning the topping.

In the end my curry tasted like burned bread and had a aftertaste of burned bread and curry which just did not taste good (I could barely finish a bowl for myself and I did not want to not eat any of it and waste a box of mac and cheese)

The other failure was that Nate had my address wrong and ended up a few miles away knocking on some other apartments door to be greeted by a large black man who did not know who 'JoDee' was. Poor Nate, at least he did not have to eat this terrible food >.<

Mung Bean Noodle Thai Stirfry

 So one of my favorite healthy meals to make is Mung Bean Noodle Stir Fry. Mung beans are a low fat and low glycemic index noodle made from of course, mung beans. They are used in most Asian cultures and can be found at Asian grocery stores and sometimes on the Asian isle of normal grocery stores. Low in price, they do not require boiling in hot water to soften, and thus take less energy to prepare. They are pretty much tasteless, so it is required that the person preparing them understand basic flavoring to give these noodles substance.

So my 'Recipe' (it is hard to have recipes when you cook on the fly with what is at hand.)

3 chicken 'tenders(half a large breast), 1 package of mung bean noodles, half a bag of mung beans, 2 onions, 1 red pepper, 2 carrots, a handful of cilantro, 1 T vegetable oil, 4 T soy sauce, 1.5 T Fish Sauce, 1.5 T Rice wine vinegar, 1/2 a medium cabbage, 1/2 cup flour, 2 T cornstarch, T pepper and Salt, 3 cloves garlic, 1/2 cup chicken stock

Writing this down I am starting to realize that recipes I consider 'a breeze' are more complicated that I realize >.>

To start, open your mung bean noodles, and put them in a bowl and cover them with water and set aside, after 15-20 minutes, pour them into a colander and let the water stain off.

After this, you dry your chicken (thawed!) off, then mix the flour, cornstarch, pepper and salt together, and coat bite size piece of chicken in the mixture. Set a wok/large and deep frying pan up with the vegetable oil, and brown the chicken until it is about 90% cooked. Remove the chicken and place in a covered container/plate on the side.

Next you cut up your onions and red pepper and cook them down, then add the garlic and cabbage and chicken stock(which helps steam the cabbage) and cook until the chicken stock has mostly cooked down and the cabbage is starting to wilt down. Now it is time to add your noodles and mung beans, then once you have them stirred with the vegetable, add your sauces (fish, soy and rice vinegar), and re add the chicken (it will have finished cooking because of its own steam if you had it covered, and if you cooked it all the way before hand it is going to be dry and chewy) and then cook for another 3-5 minutes on medium heat to get all that flavor soak in.

Now all that is left is putting the food on a plate, and adding finely chopped raw carrots and fresh cilantro to the top.

This meal has a very heavy 'health' flavor to it. The carrots add crunch and there is a plethora of textures and flavors from all the veggies. You can easily make this vegetarian as well by deleting the fish sauce (:(), and chicken and substituting mushroom/vegetable broth.

Oh yes and on a final note, the drink in the top picture is one of toms and my favorites. It is a sour blue raspberry soda. You take about 1.5 ounces of Rosas cocktail mix blue raspberry, a few small squirts of raspberry agave nectar(to sweeten!), a few drops of lemon, and top with soda water and you get a first class sour blue raspberry soda.

Beer Blogging: Bell's Hopslam

Style: Imperial India Pale Ale
ABV: 10%
IBU: Unlisted, but high (~70)
Availability: Regional, seasonal (Winter/spring)

Hopslam is one of the most highly regarded ales from Bell's Brewery of Kalamazoo, Michigan, one of the larger and more highly regarded craft breweries in the United States.

Pour of this beer is a reasonably deep amber color, something that may surprise people who simply hear that it is a pale ale (although the more seasoned IPA drinker will recognize this as fairly normal among the more extreme variants in the style, which Hopslam clearly is).

Fragrance is quite floral, with some lesser citrus notes and a hint of sweetness (from the honey that goes into brewing the beer). This is a very hop-forward bouquet, but basically what is expected from the style.

Initial flavor is very heavy on floral and herbal flavor notes, with traces of grapefruit, honey, and caramel as well (the latter just letting you know how much malts went into the production of a beer like this). Alcohol is fairly hidden until later in the mouthfeel, but it will sneak up on you. This is not a six-pack sort of beer - drinking six of these will probably put the uninitiated on the floor.

Finish is very clean, with a dry, almost white wine-like feel on the palate, something that is provided by the fermented honey (mead is also very similar in this regard).

Overall, this is a very high-quality IPA that pairs well with chicken, fish, or spicy food, but is balanced well enough to stand up on its own. Well worth having if you can find it in your area (when in season, should be available in most of the eastern US).