Sunday Day of Cooking

This Sunday was Papa Matwijkow's birthday! To celebrate, I made him brunch, my favorite meal, and Rebecca and Mama M and I made him dinner.

Brunch spread

 Brunch was uber delicious: scrambled eggs, fruit salad, and pancakes. I have this nifty gluten-free baking mix that I used to make my pancakes. The only weird thing about them was that they didn't bubble around the edges like normal pancakes do when they're ready to be flipped. Regardless they were nom-able.

I did the Blackmer tradition with my pancakes: pancake, fruit salad, yogurt, syrup. Deeelish.

kuchen, pre baking

 For dinner, Mama M made gazpacho, tilapia, and veggies. Rebecca and I made kuchen with peach and blueberries. I have no idea where kuchen is from, but we have it in my family ALL the time. You can make it with any fruit you have around.

First, you get flour (or gluten-free baking mix in this case), baking powder, a little bit of salt, and sugar, and mix that all together. Then you cut in butter (or margarine), make a crumbly delicious mix, and then press the mixture into a pie pan. You put the fruit on top, sprinkle some sugar and cinnamon on top, and bake in a 400 degree oven for 15 min.

While thats going on, beat one egg and then add 1 cup of yogurt to it. After the kuchen has baked for 15 minutes, take it out of the oven and pour the egg and yogurt mixture over top. Put the kuchen back in the oven and bake for half an hour.

Finished kuchen!!

It'll have to cool a bit once its done, so plan ahead for that. We had it with vanilla gelato and it was SO good. Its also mad good as leftovers, once the fruit has gelled.

Yay cooking!!

Carol

AZ update!!

Sorry I haven't been updating!! Life in Arizona has been great. I've moved in with Rebecca Marwijkow's family and so haven't been doing that much cooking... Papa Marwijkow is an AWESOME cook. To thank him for said awesomeness, we made him a bangin' father's day dinner.

 We decided to make a quinoa salad and tilapia; Rebecca and I were in charge of the salad. I've had the salad before but didn't realize how sorta complicated the recipe was. The complications made it SO delicious though- to give the cucumbers some extra flavor, you salt them and then soak them in water for 15 min, and then dry them. A little extra taste I wasn't expecting!!

The salad basically has cucumber, tomato, onion, cilantro, pepper, and avocado, along with a oil and vinegar dressing, all thrown together with quinoa.

This is the link to the recipe for more legit instructions: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/13/health/nutrition/13recipehealth.html?ref=quinoa

The finished product!! Super delicious, and awesome for leftovers because its supposed to be served cold.

We're making a dinner tomorrow as well for Papa M's birthday so I'll have more yummy things to post : )

-Carol

Nighttown, Cleveland

So besides quinoa, the food I have been primarily eating Chobani greek yogurt and avocado sandwiches, so there hasn't really been anything too interesting.

On Monday (6/20), Cara and I went to Nighttown, a local and really, really nice restaurant not far from our house. Nighttown is a jazz club in Cleveland and hosts people from our high school's Jazz Ensemble (which Cara and my brother were both in!) to Wynton Marsalis -- so its pretty well known in the culinary and jazz world.

Anyway! I got the roasted duck breast salad: spring greens and local arugula, balsamic roasted shallots, walnuts, goat cheese (my cheese of choice), fresh strawberries, and blush vinaigrette. It was the best salad I have ever had. I have always been a huge fan of strawberries and of goat cheese in salads. The duck was a nice touch; the last time I had duck was in China but this was almost equally as great.





Cara (being Cara) got Mac and Cheese: aged English cheddar and Fruyere tossed with penne pasta, Morel Mushroom dust (Cara had it sans mushroom) and heirloom tomatoes. There were some fried/crunchy onion bits on top, which added a nice crunch to the dish.  The only other Mac and Cheese I have had to rival Nighttown was in Paris so hella props, Cleveland.




Hattie

Pizza and Pasta

My mom and I made this pasta salad. It is basically a capreze pasta thing: red onions, fresh mozzarella, fresh basil and tomatoes.  With some pasta and then dressing.  Its quite nice with a sausage in it too.  

Then the other day (I'm really slow at posting) I made pizzas for dinner.  I home made everything but had a dough fiasco that ended with us using Boboli crusts, which work fine.  The green is a pesto pizza with garlic oil, onions and freshly shredded cheese.
 This red pizza uses homemade tomato sauce, onions and peppers on top of mozzarella.  The sauce is super easy to make.  I sauteed onions, added carrots, celery and pizza spices (thyme, rosemary, basil, garlic and about 3 other green spices that smelled good) put in crushed tomatoes and simmered it until all of the flavors had combined and it was thick enough.




Cara

Breakfast is my favorite meal

Mary (my cousin), Edie (my friend), Cara and I had a splendid breakfast Tuesday morning. 

Mary made delicious scrambled eggs with graded cheese and some rice milk (she's vegan but will eat eggs/food if they're from a good place) to make them nice and fluffy.

I was in charge of the bread -- for condiments, I put out peanut butter, jelly (strawberry and acai berry mix), spekuloos (a dutch cookie spread that is like eating rainbows and unicorns), dutch cheese and cheddar cheese. 

Add coffee, and the breakfast was delicious. 

Hattie 

Summer Salad & Smoothie

I eat a lot of salad, especially throughout the school year. Salads are the healthier option for me, but I like having fun, adding other foods to compliment. The other night, I made this light meal: salad with a homemade smoothie for desert. 

The salad:

• Half a head of romaine lettuce
• chickpeas
• fresh carrots
• mom's homemade salsa 
• 1/2 hamburger
• sprinkled balsamic vinegar

The smoothie (note: all ingredients were eye-balled):

• strawberries
• blueberries
• plain yogurt
• honey
• some milk
• ice

Normally in my smoothies, I like adding banana and instead of milk, I use orange juice but we didn't have any so I made it up! I also like my smoothies really thick to eat with a spoon, rather than having the ability to use a straw. To make it thick, add more fruit/ice/yogurt and if you would like it to be more liquidy, add more milk/juice/etc.

Hattie

Waffles with a twist

It started one year ago when Cara and I got into the habit of making waffles and pancakes at midnight. Its technically still breakfast, being 12:20am, but midnight waffles are definitely the best.

So last week, Cara and I had a friend over and we made waffles but this time we (were super bored and) added food coloring, making multi-colored waffles!

We mixed the regular bisquick waffle mix into a large bowl, but rather than pouring it directly onto the waffle iron, we divided the mix into four separate parts for different colors. Since my family seems to lose food coloring, we only had turquoise, blue, green, and yellow.

They were definitely weird, especially that my waffle iron wasn't working properly, but they were just fun to make!

Hattie

(I have been seriously failing to make posts, for I have all this good food I update you on, so expect two posts tomorrow!)

Why Not Bake?

So I walk into Hattie's house and her cousin Mary is making a bumbleberry pie.  For all you berry connoisseurs who are now extremely confused and questioning your mastery of all things berry, have no fear.  Into this pie, Marry threw strawberries blueberries apples cranberries chocolate chips and probably at least fifty other fruits that went unobserved.  Hattie and I, not wanting to be out-done, decided to make a cake.

We started out with a plain yellow cake mix, decided it was too boring and added cocoa powder.  After licking batter off our fingers we still wanted something else.  a gobfull of peanut butter did the trick and the batter was incredible.  We put it into the cake pan and decided that Reece's cups were in order.  After a short jaunt to CVS we were ready.  The house began to smell amazing while we made our buttercream frosting and when we took it out the tantalizing began.

Because we didn't want our buttercream to go to waste, we had to cool the cake, which took soooooo long, all the while we were salivating and picking fruit out of the pie.  Finally we broke down and tried the cake. It was superb, if I do say so myself.  The picture does not in any way give this cake credit.


Cara, with Hattie's baking and photography included

Quinoa and Bean Chili

Tonight I got creative and made chili! I basically used the bones of an online recipe and added a ton of other stuff we had laying around. Thankfully it turned out pretty delicious.

Le Delicious.

Making quinoa is essentially the same as making rice- 1:2 ratio of quinoa to water, bring to a boil, then let simmer until all the water is gone.
The chili had onion, carrot, cumin, chili powder, garlic, tomato, red pepper, black beans, white beans, and a dash of tabasco sauce.  Once that had gotten all yummy I stirred in the quinoa and served!

Tomorrow night is definitely a night for leftovers : )
-Carol

Red Curry Chicken with Onion, Spinach and Basmati Rice

Tonight I made a legitimate dinner for my parents and myself! It felt great to cook something, even if it was an homage to my favorite Blanchard special.

Ingredients:

Chicken
Frozen spinach
1/2 onion
Red Curry paste
1 can (14 oz) coconut milk
Basmati Rice

Directions:
Cook the chicken until brown, add the onion and then the spinach. Add red curry paste to taste (I added a whole ton) and cook through. It will smell super yummy!! While this is going on, cook the rice- 1 cup rice, 2 cups water. Add the coconut milk to the chicken mixture, bring to a boil, and let simmer. Once everyone is back from work, serve!!
If you're my parents, you can also add peanut butter (???) to this plate of delicious. But I don't get that anyway.



It didn't exactly turn out the way I thought it would but was still super yummy, and easy to make! I'm definitely going to try adding different vegetables and seeing what happens next time.

Yay domesticity!!
Carol