Category: Cooking

Green chiles are delicious

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Attempting to make chile rellanos last week. This was our first one and it is a little messy but it was still delicious… Don’t judge that cheesey fried chile goodness until you try it!

So it’s green chile season here in the southwest (I know Colorado isn’t very southwestern but you can still buy fresh Hatch green chiles here so it gets to be part of the southwest for the sake of this post) and all the stores are selling fresh Hatch green chiles (some of them will even roast the chiles for you!). Cobalt and I are ridiculously green chile starved most of the year so this month or so when green chiles come to Colorado is pretty special to us. We pretty much eat green chiles for the whole month. Anyway, the point of this paragraph is that we tried making chile rellanos on the other night and they turned out pretty tasty. Yay!

Speaking of the southwest, Cobalt and I ventured down to New Mexico this weekend for a baby shower for a good friend and to see his family (and friends who didn’t get to come to our wedding). It was a very short trip but it was nice none the less. My new mother in law and I spent a good few hours watching a bunch of Friends episodes. Awesome. :)

Finally, today marks the official first day of my fifth year of grad school. Whew… We’re gettin’ up there! Still all that remains is for me to get some results to write my thesis about (and maybe publish some papers along the way… you know how these things go…). Everyone please think some awesome thoughts that my research works out so I can be starting to wrap things up by the end of this year! Yay science… :-/

Anyone have an epic weekend? Does anyone love green chiles as much as we do? Is there a food that’s special to the place you grew up in/a place you’ve lived?

Pasta Party!

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Yesterday, Cobalt and I went over to our friend L’s house to hang out with L and our friends T and C for a day of adventure. We made homemade pasta. L charged us with two tasks: making mushroom ravioli and spaghetti carbonara. So we divided into two teams – Cobalt and T on the spaghetti and C and me on the ravioli while L started on the ravioli filling. That picture up there is my sad looking mummy ravioli. He surprisingly didn’t explode when we cooked him so I guess I patched him up pretty well! C said he was delicious… :)
Anyway, it was really fun/tasty! Here are some more pictures:

First we have C mixing the ravioli dough:

Next we have Cobalt and T working on making the spaghetti… The pasta machines were of course the best part…

Once the spaghetti was ready to be cooked, everyone switched over to team ravioli and we had quite the assembly line going on (someone painting the dough, someone filling the dough, someone making the little raviolis, etc). Look at C’s cutting skill!

And two hours later, we have the final dishes:

Spaghetti Carbonara

Mushroom Ravioli

Oh man… it was so delicious… Have you ever made your own pasta? What is your favorite kind of pasta to make/eat? Did you do anything amazing this weekend?

Biscuit Success!

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Last weekend, I decided to attempt to make buttermilk biscuits. These are pretty much my favorite biscuit of all times but every time I have tried to make them in the past they don’t turn out as fluffy and delicious as the buttermilk biscuits you find in restaurants. Luckily, I have this crazy sense of hope that keeps me from giving up in these situations. You should see me in lab – I am always excited and hopeful when I repeat experiments that have failed multiple times in the past. I just think maybe this time everything will be different and I will get cool results. Note: usually it’s not different and I don’t get cool results but oh well… that’s grad school for you. Anyway, the point here is that I am excited and hopeful every time I redo a previously failed activity and I don’t know if that is a good skill to have or not but it worked here. Look at these puffy biscuits. And since you can only see a picture of the biscuits (and not taste them), I will tell you about them. They are perfect – so light and fluffy. I would have eaten the whole batch in one sitting but I had to share some with Cobalt too… Yumminess.
Thanks to our friends Chocolate Pudding and Millionaire Space Accountant for giving us the cookbook with the winning buttermilk biscuits recipe! :)

“Breakfast” for dinner

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Last night, Cobalt and I made these tasty pancake things with sautéed apple chunks on top (and inside the pancakes too). They also have powdered sugar on top. Basically we used an Aebleskiver (Danish Pancake Balls) recipe but then since we don’t have an aebleskiver pan, we just made regular shaped pancakes. They turned out delicious but I bet they would have been even more amazing in ball form (it was kind of hard to get the apple chunks to stay inside the pancakes this way)… Anyway, we got the recipe from this website. Try it! :D
Before you scold me for eating sugary goodness for dinner, I just have to remind you that one of the best things about being an adult is being able to eat whatever you want… In the case of last night’s dinner, we ate it with a salad which, in my book, means that it’s dinner (or lunch). For example, donuts are generally a breakfast food, but donuts with salad on the side… now that’s dinner. ;) What about you? Are there any foods that you eat for dinner even though they are technically not dinner foods?

Happy Groundhog Day everyone! Try your best to make it amazing just in case you get stuck in it for a long time…

(Note: Potassium does not eat donuts for dinner… just to clear that up in case you were worried…)

Egg rolls for the new year

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Last night, Cobalt and I made homemade egg rolls for dinner! Here are some pictures:


Baby egg rolls waiting to be cooked


Cooking egg rolls (yeah yeah… we don’t have a wok… wedding registry?)


Cobalt eating the first egg roll! (He looks dubious but I assure you he liked it). This pic is also neat because if you look closely, you can see the steam coming off the egg roll… Yay! Steam captured.

Happy days. I love cooking… I especially love trying new recipes! What do you guys like to cook?