Category Archives: learning to cook

tacos & toast

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Until recently, we hadn’t had groceries in our house for a long while. Trips to the grocery store are just another one of those things I thought I’d have all the time in the world to do once I worked for myself, but I was wrong. So wrong.

You know what it is? It’s not that I don’t have time. I have plenty of time – I make my own damn schedule, so I could always factor in a trip to Trader Joe’s if I really wanted to. But when I do have free time to mold and shape as I please, I feel compelled to fill it with workworkwork stuff. I feel obligated (to my bank account) to be writing articles, working on bakery stuff, taking care of any HST biz. And when that stuff’s been done, I feel obligated to exercise, or clean the apartment, or watch Criminal Minds (or my new favorite, Keeping Up With The Kardashians). Plus, it’s so easy in New York to grab cheap take out food or a sandwich from the deli…too easy…

The point is, Kevin hasn’t had a home cooked meal in weeks. Actually, that’s not true – he makes us a scrambled egg breakfast almost every single morning. His girlfriend hasn’t cooked him any meals in weeks, which would be perfectly fine because he can cook his own food. Except he also does all the laundry around here. Sigh. I’m flunking out of Homemaker Class 101.

Well I FINALLY went to the store last week. And we’ve been joyfully eating food out of our own fridge and pantry every since. It’s revolutionary. On his birthday on Friday, I made Kev a big breakfast (eggs with french toast!…from the freezer – don’t be too impressed) and then a yummy turkey taco lunch. He was happy.

Now I just have to learn how to make something besides toast and tacos. We had tacos again for dinner last night.

food

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Remember when I was “learning to cook?” Yah. I’m not anymore.

I’m sure I’ll cook more someday, but today is not that day. We’ve been eating, you know, easy food in our kitchen (like PBJs, egg and ham scrambles, beans and rice – the basics), or food at cheapeats places around the city like we always have, Kevin and I.

So I left some onions in a bowl next to our toaster oven. And one or two of them STARTING GROWING OTHER ONIONS. OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT.

It was gross.

Seriously, I had to take photos because I was so disgusted by it.

In other food news, Kevin took me out to Rosa Mexicana on Monday night. Never been there, love Mexican food, always wanted to go there, like to drink margaritas: Score.

We had fun and it was yummy. (Thank you for that nice date, honey!)

my birthday is tomorrow!!

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I turn 29 tomorrow. How exciting. I feel like a real adult.

I just tried to write a blog entry about my day yesterday – a trip to the grocery store, a new dinner making experience, and an awesome new gift from my honey! – but my computer effed everything up and I’m about to lose my cool.

So in the interest of maintaining my sanity, and so that I can go for a walk and get some baking done, instead of staring at this computer screen all afternoon, I’m going to post photos of yesterday and be done with it.

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I used this How To Cook Spaghetti Squash guide, and this brown sugar-glazed carrots recipe. Both dishes turned out pretty good – although I’m not sure I baked the squash for long enough. Still, a yummy, filling supper.

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Kev got home from his overnight business trip to Miami carrying this huge box!! I let myself pretend it was a puppy for a few minutes. Then I unwrapped the very next best thing: a new, fancy standing mixeraaaAAAAAAHHHH! YES. This is going to change my life.

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It’s a really nice one too. He did his research.

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I stayed up late making two red velvet cakes, which were much more enjoyable to make with my new mixer. And Kevin crashed into bed, exhausted from his whirlwind trip, and hoping to get some sleep in preparation for the TWENTY-FOUR HOURS OF IMPROV he’s about to do.

That’s right. He and his improv team, Tomahawk, are hosting a 24-hour improv festival that begins tonight and ends tomorrow at 8pm. I’m hoping to catch a show late tonight, and then maybe something tomorrow afternoon after they’ve all been awake for almost 36 hours and are probably going to be sub-humans. How could I miss out on that? As I said in an email to my good friend Keith, who is a member of Tomahawk, coming to see them in the last leg of this insanity will be Schadenfreude at its finest.

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I came to bed late last night, around 3am, which has become my usual bedtime recently. Who knows. Maybe it’s a phase, maybe I’m my grandmother’s granddaughter. But that’s where my body clock is resting right now. And who am I to argue.

When I tried to climb into bed, though, I discovered there was no room!

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The rest of the family had taken over.

Now if we could just add a dog to this bed.

supper club

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Last night was the first ever supper club – an informal dinner party that some of my Brooklyn friends (those of us who live in Park Slope/Prospect Heights/Prospect Lefferts Gardens) have decided to have once a month.

About a month ago, my good friend Clayton (who is also a member of Harvard Sailing Team) moved back to his old street in Prospect Heights, after living in far away Sunset Park for a few years. Since two of our other best friends live on the same block as he does, and since his boyfriend lives just a few blocks away, and since I live just on the other side of the park, we decided this was the perfect reason to start getting together to have a dinner party from time to time.

Each month a different apartment will host the party, and Kevin and I got to host the first one! During the party last night, we drew names out of a hat to see who would host the next month. So in November, our friend Tim will host the next Supper Club.

I’d say this new tradition is off to a fantastic start.

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Everyone made something to contribute to the feast last night, which was so fun and family-style. I, as the host, made the main course. Faryn and David were responsible for the appetizers, Clayton volunteered to make dessert (he’d just been apple picking and had to find something to do with 30 apples), and Sara brought ingredients to make one of her favorite drinks: butterbeer. (Yup, from Harry Potter!)

The appetizers were amazing. Faryn prepared a savory treat, a recipe borrowed from our friend Marina, complete with figs, prosciutto, goat cheese, argula, lemon juice and olive oil. These were incredible.

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David’s appetizer was sauteed asparagus with a little onion, garlic and seasoning. It was also incredibly good. And I didn’t even think I liked asparagus!

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We all devoured the appetizers in a matters of moments, laughing and chatting while we stood in the kitchen. I think we’d all been saving our hunger for this feast, so by the time everyone arrived at my apartment, we were all ravenous.

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Sara’s butter beer was the hit of the party. Everyone who’d never tried it before raved over it, and everyone who’d read Harry Potter said, “This is exactly what I thought it would taste like!”

It’s so easy to make: just a splash of butterscotch schnapps and then you fill up the rest of the glass with apple cider. So yummy.

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After enjoying some conversation and game-time in the living room, we finally sat down to the main course – veggie lasagna, chopped salad, and garlic bread.

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Everyone seemed to really enjoy the lasagna, which was healthy and filling. It’s a very simple recipe that I’ve used for dinner parties past. It uses carrots, zucchini and a lot of spinach. And of course, CHEESE!

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My plate:

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And I went back for another half piece of lasagna. Because I couldn’t resist.

After some more living room time – chatting, debating, drinking…

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…we finally cut into the real treat of the evening, the apple galette.

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Clayton made this delicious pastry treat entirely from scratch, based on Martha Stewart’s recipe for a plum galette.

It was so flaky and flavorful, I enjoyed every single bite – a la mode, of course.

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Supper club was a great time. And I’m looking forward to the next one. Nothing like getting together with a group of close friends and eating a huge, multi-course meal that we’ve all lovingly prepared together.

Happy Halloween, everyone!!

things are revving up

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It’s 3:30am and I’m up. I’m nocturnal. I always naturally have been. My grandmother is too. (Except then she still wakes up at 6:30am. I do not.)

This is a photo from a Harvard Sailing Team photo shoot back in March, I think. The talented photographer and delightfully nice guy, Eric Michael, photographed us for half a day. (He also takes great photos of my best friends, Billy and Adam, for their hip hop comedy duo, Snakes.)

That’s me in the photo, taking the picture, Chris on the left and Clayton on the right. We’re all being weird.

So, today was another long one. It was raining today. I went to a therapy session, met Kevin for lunch, finally bought a Halloween costume, then I came home and baked a cake.

Next on the agenda was to head back out to see Kevin’s improv show and perform in my own. Disappointingly, I tried to do some yoga before I left and I ended up not having enough time to finish the podcast I was listening to. It’s only 25 minutes long but I just didn’t have time. Boo. That was unfortunate.

After the improv shows, which were funny and silly, I came home, baked another double batch of cake and made a big batch of frosting. Kevin frosted the first cake (God bless him) and then I wrote “Happy Birthday Charlie” on it. And then we cleaned the kitchen up. And here I am.

And I am wiped out.

In other news, here’s another behind the scenes photo from that HST shoot.

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This is Adam and Chris.

My friend Dave emailed me yesterday and asked if I could bake a Fanny & Jane cake for his friend’s birthday in two days. That’s a rush order, especially since I have three other orders this week to work on. Had I still been working at the desk job, I almost certainly would have said no. But because, theoretically, I have the time, I was able to say yes. It was fun to bake the cake and much better work than sitting at a desk.

Suddenly, I feel busy.

Tomorrow I’m helping Adam and Maggie move, then doing more baking – have to finish my three other orders, and then we’re having girls birthday drinks with Faryn.

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Faryn, left. Me, right.

Friday evening is our new Brooklyn Supper Club – at my house – and in addition to cooking, I have to deliver Fanny & Jane sweets during the day.

Saturday, Halloween, I’ll have the day totally free. Yes! And then I’ll go perform in the Oddbody show and the Harvard Sailing Team show.

On Sunday, we rest.

It’s interesting to me now that I sit down to write about this – I’ve realized something. Yes, that’s a good amount of stuff, and yes, I have to run around to a lot of different places. Frankly, that might be the most exhausting part. Everything you do in this city requires a solid 10-25 minutes of walking to get there, even if you take the subway. You still have to walk to the subway, and up the stairs and down.

You know this. Why am I telling you this.

The point is, it can be exhausting running around this city. And I felt exhausted today. And when I sat down to figure out a schedule for myself for the next few days, since I have lots of little things to accomplish, I felt overwhelmed by how much there was to organize. Also, cutting short that yoga session today really bummed me out. I shouldn’t have done that.

But, ah ha, it’s still all better than the damn office! Of course it is. I’d gladly run around this town doing these things – helping my best friend move, delivering sweets for my bakery business, performing in comedy shows, going to therapy – any day. It’s great, really.

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This is Billy.

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This is Adam.

So I’m going to stop fretting about “much I have to do” in the next few days, because really? I don’t. It’s not that much. And everything I do have to do is fun.

Oh and I’m going to make more time to do yoga. Period.

still learning to cook

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I spent much of my vacation week cooking, as you can imagine. In fact, I’ve made so much food that I have to stop cooking for a few days so we can catch up on the leftovers!

I made an easy stir fry – something I’d done before, but always with prepackaged stir fry veggies, not with veggies I selected and prepared all by my lonesome. This time, I just picked out a bunch of veggies I thought I’d want in the stir fry, sauteed them up with a little bit of garlic and olive oil, browned some small pieces of chicken in another pan, mixed it all together with about a tablespoon of stir fry sauce I had in the fridge, and served it all over instant brown rice.

The best things about this dish, besides the fact that it satisfied my Chinese take-out craving, were that we had two days of leftovers (it didn’t look like much food when I first cooked it, but those veggies filled me up fast!), I was able to use up a bunch of peppers and onions that were begging to eaten, and it got me to eat cauliflower and broccoli, two kinds of veggies I tend not to like.

On the menu this week in Jen Learns To Cook Simple Meals Most People Figured Out How To Make Well Before Their Late Twenties:

Smoky Chipotle and Black Bean Chilaquiles, a recipe from Rachael Ray’s Big Orange Book. I think they’re basically glorified vegetarian quesadillas. Yes! Latin American food! My very favorite to the extent that I was probably born in Mexico and my mom neglected to tell me.

soup, sweets and sara

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My very good friend Sara came over yesterday. She’s also self-employed at the moment, having recently left her life as a full-time nanny to spend more time pursuing her acting career. Sara and I are both in the sketch comedy group, Harvard Sailing Team. She lives pretty close to my apartment, so we decided to meet up for some lunch.

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As I continue to learn to cook, I decided to make chicken soup from scratch – for the first time ever! – and it was very good.

I basically just browned some chicken with olive oil in a big pot, adding a bit of garlic salt. Then I added about 12 cups of water and 8 or 9 chicken boullion cubes, and brought it to a boil. I coarsely chopped up a bunch of veggies: a large onion, three small potatoes, a bunch of peeled carrots, about two cups of butternut squash (pre-cut by Trader Joe’s), four or five stalks of celery and half a leek. I added the veggies to the boiling stock and kept it boiling for about 20 minutes, until the veggies were fork-tender.

I served it with some whole wheat hamburger buns that we needed to use up, which I toasted, buttered and garlic’d. Sara, Kevin and I all really enjoyed the soup. It was warm and hearty.

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While I made the simple soup, Sara put together some pumpkin chocolate chip brownies I was planning to bake. She did a great job and they turned out very tasty.

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Although, we both agreed that they could use more pumpkin. This particular recipe only called for a half cup. I found the recipe here, but if you like pumpkin in your sweets, I would look for a recipe that uses at least a cup of the stuff.

While the brownies were baking, I popped into the oven alongside them a single tray of carrot coconut cupcakes. I had frozen batter leftover from the Susan Woo event that Fanny & Jane sponsored last month and I knew I had to use it up pretty soon. I wasn’t sure how they’d taste, but they were delicious and yummy, as though I’d just  made the batter! Score.

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After we finished up lunch, and spent some time chatting on my front stoop over coffee, two of our other best friends, Billy and Adam (who are also self-employed, make up a comedy rap duo called Snakes, AND are members of Harvard Sailing Team), showed up to join the quickly growing party. Then Sara’s boyfriend George stopped by after his work day was over (he does have a “normal” job) and we all spent a nice evening laughing, talking, playing games, eating pizza and drinking beer. And finally, around 9pm, we headed into Manhattan to see Kevin perform in an improv show, and THEN (phew!) we went to see a “secret” Comedy Central showcase. It was a fun, long, late night and I don’t think I went to sleep until close to 4am. Yikes.

All in all, yesterday was another wonderful post-desk-job / pre-self-job vacation day. At one point, Billy and Adam were making fun of me for drinking beer on a Thursday afternoon, when on this day last month I was up to my eyeballs in data entry, and I said to them, “Wait, it’s Thursday?” and we had a big ol’ laugh about it all. This change of pace is really nice right now. I’m sure you’ve gathered that I’m enjoying it. I think I’ve said so about three dozen times.

Many of my friends are self-employed at the moment and it’s awesome. It’s inspiring and exciting to see people choosing to make money in ways that make them happy, rather than in ways that are more approved-of by society. It might be a situation that is unique to this particular time in our lives, or to living in this particular city, or to not having many financial obligations besides paying our rent and feeding ourselves, but whatever the circumstances, it’s pretty great so far.

I’m excited to see what next week will bring!

daily dessert

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Today’s episode of daily dessert features a real treat, my grandmother’s pumpkin cookie recipe.  I mentioned last week, in the post where I first tried out the pumpkin cookies, that I’d received from my grandmother an envelope full of old recipes, meticulously handwritten on yellowed slips of paper. My grandma found them at the thrift store where she volunteers in her hometown, Quincy, Illinois, and she sent them to me.

Only one of the recipes in the batch, however, was written out by my grandmother. All the rest of them must have belonged to someone else, but there is one, the pumpkin cookie recipe, that is unmistakably hers.

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I can tell because some of the handwriting is next to impossible to read. She’s legally blind, or at least that’s what she tells us, so she makes us match up the socks when they come out of the dryer, we have to keep the lights low in the house during the daytime because she sees better in the dark, and reading her handwriting is an acquired skill. But we love her very much. And as her granddaughter, I can decipher the chicken scratch.

GRANDMA ROSE’S PUMPKIN COOKIES

1 cup sugar
1 cup butter or shortening
1 egg
1 cup pumpkin puree
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups flour
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup raisins, or nuts, or chocolate chips or coconut (all optional)

Preheat oven to 350. In a medium to large bowl, cream together the sugar and butter. Add 1 egg. Mix well. Add pumpkin and vanilla. Mix well. In a separate bowl, smaller bowl, sift together flour, cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet. Add your choice of mix-in, or none at all. Bake for 20-30 minutes, depending on how soft or hard you like your cookies.

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On Saturday night, after a Baldwins show and a Harvard Sailing Team show (my improv and sketch comedy groups, respectively), Kevin and I came home to the apartment and, around 12 midnight, spent a solid hour in our kitchen cooking and baking away. It was a lot of fun. Especially because we were doing it together. And because it was the middle of the night!

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Kevin manages the lights and sound for Harvard Sailing Team, and occasionally for The Baldwins, so we were both pretty exhausted from performing/teching shows. But Kevin’s sister Lisa’s birthday was this weekend and we were planning to get out of the house on the early side the next morning to ride the train up to Rockland County and visit Kevin’s family. We’d decided to bring a sweet treat.

Once I started looking through the refrigerator, though, I realized that there were a handful of grocery items that were about to expire. And being that I’m on a mission to cook more at home, I couldn’t let that happen! So while Kevin baked the cookies all by himself (!), I got to work putting together some mashed potatoes and turkey burgers for us to save and have for lunch later in the week.

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As a novice chef, I felt pretty pleased with myself for saving doomed ingredients from the garbage can.

And you can imagine I was even more pleased when I turned around to find Kevin practically done with the pumpkin cookies. He only needed my assistance on one or two occasions and I’m pretty sure those times were really just because he was trying to steal smooches.

He’s been my baking companion for Fanny & Jane, the bakery project my girlfriend Faryn and I began this past spring, more times than I can count. He’s saved my butt on a number of occasions, when I literally would not have been able to finish all my baking work before dawn if he hadn’t stepped in. What a guy. He really does know what he’s doing in the kitchen (even if I insist on backseat driving whenever he makes omelets).

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The cookies turned out to be quite delicious. The batch I made last week was also very good, but we baked these for longer, so they were crunchier, which I prefer, I think. Also, I didn’t add chocolate chips last week, only coconut. But I like both.

Success! They were a huge hit at the family party. Even little Craig, Kevin’s 3 year old nephew, liked them a lot.

Stay tuned for ANOTHER wonderful dessert we experienced yesterday when we all sat down to the table together for Kevin sister’s birthday dinner. It’s a cake that happens to be one of Oprah’s favorite things! I’ll write about that later today.

daily dessert

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Oh boy, have Kevin and I been feasting for the last two days! We, who do not historically cook. We, who rarely have more than eggs, soy milk and old onions in our fridge. We, who would be happy with Taco Night every night forever and always. (Actually, I think that’s just ME, not we.) We’ve been feasting.

Since I know that the days when each dollar will matter more to me are not far away, I’ve decided to get a jump start on making more meals at home. It’s something I’ve often tried to do in fits and starts, but now I’m determined to solidify the habit.

We did a big, pre-planned grocery shop on Sunday. And since then, our little oven has been working overtime. We’ve made the following in the last two days: breakfast quiche (an easy, lower-calorie recipe provided by my friend Jess), vegetarian chili, smashed cheddar onion potatoes, pumpkin coconut cookies, and my personal favorite – hot wing inspired turkey sloppy joes. This is big for us.

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Kevin made the sloppy joes and potatoes himself and, let me tell you, I was impressed. He chose the recipes out of Rachel Ray’s Big Orange Cookbook and spent an adorable two hours in the kitchen last night putting it all together. You guys, it was amazing. So delicious…mm-mm-MM. I’m having leftovers for lunch today and my mouth is watering just thinking of it.

But let’s get down to business here. After he was done heating up the kitchen with his skillz, I decided to make pumpkin cookies for dessert.

Several months ago, my grandmother sent me an envelope filled with old recipes that she’d collected or found tucked inside books at the thrift store where she volunteers in Quincy, Illinois. This envelope of weathered paper, each piece covered with the sort of careful handwriting that so many of the older women in my life seem to share, is something I have cherished since the moment I received it.

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What a great gift to have all these old recipes! Thanks, Gram!

I decided to make use of my first-ever purchase of a can of organic pumpkin and chose a pumpkin cookie recipe from the batch. It seemed simple and it was. To be fair to myself, I do know how to bake. I guess I just haven’t baked much pumpkin stuff before.

Anyway, within half an hour, our house smelled like autumn, like Thanksgiving, like heaven.

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They might not look like much, but these pumpkin cookies, to which I added a little coconut for texture, were delicious. I ate, uh, more than one.

I should probably bring them into the office to share the wealth, but whatever. My dog ate them or some other reason that I won’t bring them into the office.