When is Pi day?

Today is March 14, affectionately called “Pi day” since it is 3/14. I’m going to have a busy day, so instead of making one from scratch, I picked up a Nilla pie crust and made one of the recipes from the back: Easy Banana Cream Pie, which is a variation of their Easy Banana Pudding Parfaits and Easy Banana Cream Pie from their website.

Easy Banana Cream Pie – Makes 8 servings

• 1 medium ripe banana, sliced
• 1 NILLA Pie Crust (6oz.)
• 2 1/2 cups cold milk
• 2 packages of Jell-O Vanilla Flavor Instant Pudding and Pie Filling (3.4oz. each)
• 2 cups Cool Whip Whipped Topping, thawed, divided

1. Place banana slices on bottom of crust.
2. Pour milk into a large bowl. Add pudding mixes. Beat with wire whisk 2 minutes or until well blended. Gently stir in 1 cup of the whipped topping with the wire whisk. Spoon pudding mixture into crust.
3. Refrigerate 4 hours or until set. Top with remaining whipped topping. Garnish with additional banana slices. Store leftover pie in refrigerator.

So yeah, it’s made with instant pudding and Nilla wafers, don’t judge me. I don’t really eat these often or at all, in fact, my husband and kids are the instant pudding fans. I’d settle for a nice warm apple pie. Maybe on the weekend…

Cheap dinner! Score!

Well, I didn’t feel like cooking tonight, but we had take-out last night and I’m trying to keep the budget and calories low. I decided to just stop by at Publix to get stuff to make ziti with asparagus, smoked mozzarella and prosciutto. Disclaimer: I don’t get star-struck by celebrity chefs, but her book “Everyday Italian” does have some good recipes.

Well, when I got to the store it turned out that all but one of the ingredients were on sale! Woot! Complete fancy and yummy dinner for 4 was $9.95. Ronzoni pasta was buy-one-get-one free, asparagus were $1 off per pound, and the fresh mozzarella was $1.00 off. The only drawback is that I have to do dishes…

Happy Epiphany!

Today is January 6, and in Mexico everyone is having Rosca de Reyes (Kings’ Cake). But since I am not there, I had to make my own. Not too shabby either, I might add. We’ll have it tonight with some hot cocoa, mmmm.

So good

For some reason I felt like roasting a chicken yesterday. I kept thinking about a French market I saw on a Paula Deen episode where the fat drips from the chickens on a rotisserie onto potatoes on the bottom. Mmmmmm… Alas, I’ve never been to France and don’t have a rotisserie, but I have a lot of cookbooks.

I settled on a recipe from Alton Brown’s “I’m Just Here For the Food“: Chicken in Garlic and Shallots. Mr. Brown says that it is his favorite dish of all time to cook; I figured it’s not roasting, but all that olive oil can only help the chicken. His notes said that the resulting oil would be good for making garlic bread, so I bought a loaf while picking up the rest of the ingredients.

It WAS delicious. You could taste the herbs and the oil in the meat. Buying a whole chicken and cutting it yourself makes it very economical, and it was very easy to make. Don’t forget to get bread. The kids loved dipping it in the oil. I saved the few garlic cloves that were not completely cooked down to add them to tonight’s mashed potatoes. Can’t wait.

Cake time!

One of my hobbies is cake decorating. I took my first Wilton class 6 years ago, and many have followed since. Check out the one I made last week:

It’s a working foosball table. The goal posts are not perfect and the players are a tad close, but the kids played with it, and it was delicious (chocolate fudge with strawberry filling). Overall, I was happy with it: my first kinetic sculpture!

The perils of democracy

I use Google a lot. I research topics, look for images, you name it. I also have to read each recipe I am cooking. For some reason, I can’t memorize any. But googling recipes just. does. not. work.

There are hundreds of variations for each one. For example, I needed a recipe for rolls made without yeast (don’t judge me, I was in a hurry and didn’t want to go to the store). I got 2 million results. I read various ones from the first pages and settled on one. I followed it to the T. Aaaand it failed miserably. I mean, it tasted OK, because well, a mix of flour, 2 sticks of butter and sugar cannot taste bad. But those were not rolls.

One of the great benefits of widespread internet use is that anyone can publish information. Millions of people can share their knowledge. But they can also share very inaccurate information, which is the main problem with internet recipes. And just because a recipe has 320 likes, or appears on the first page of results, it doesn’t mean it works.

When you buy a cooking book, you know the recipes have been previously tested in a kitchen (fine, maybe not all of them, but I assume publishers still have standards). So, if you follow the text, you get reasonably good results; that being said, when I used the recipe for quick bread from the Joy of Cooking, that was a mess TOO. Gah!

Earlier this year, Google introduced “Recipe View” which is aimed at helping the cook, and index the information out there. I have not used it much, and I haven’t heard about it much either, which to me it means that it is not that great yet.

Sigh. Books are still better than the internet for some things.

Oh, good grief!

Fine, Universe. You win.

The end of my broccoli.

The person who cleans my house drove over the 4 broccoli seedlings I had left. I give up. Garden center broccoli it is.

GARDEN TRAGEDY

Remember I mentioned that I was growing broccoli and cabbage for a fall harvest? Well, my house is surrounded by woods, and sunlight is at a premium. I have to chase the sun to make sure my seedlings get enough energy to grow. In the afternoons, that best sun spot is on the driveway.

As I do every afternoon, I moved my babies from the porch to the driveway. My husband came back from work, and felt something weird under his car tires. It happened. Half my babies were crushed by a Jeep. Now, I don’t know if I mentioned this but I planted 10 small pots of each vegetable. From them, 8 of each made it to the next size pots. I thought that was enough since both plants grow huge.

But now… I only have 4 of each. And a couple look like runts. Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

You can even see the tire tracks.

A photo of the perpetrator. Beware of him around your seedlings. Hmm, why does he look so happy?

Summer lunch…

A super-fresh Caprese salad with balsamic vinegar, courtesy of Tablecloths and Sporks Organic Farm (sounds big, huh? It’s just my two 4×8 plots in the community garden).

How fresh was it? The tomatoes were still warm from the sun.

Heirloom seeds and plants

This is cool. I’m glad Seed Savers is being featured. I haven’t ordered from them (yet!) since 2011 is my very first gardening year and I didn’t know much about starting seeds and using heirlooms. But, next year I will be a little more adventurous–I need more sun on my yard to support this hobby!

Heirlooms are cultivars that have been passed down from generations or are older than 50 years, and are open-pollinated (the actual definition varies by organization). Because they are not genetically modified or intensely hybridized, they are somewhat fragile and prone to diseases, which is why commercial growers stay away from them. Their shapes and colors are not “perfect” so grocery stores don’t carry them either. But that is part of their charm. They have so many different colors, shapes, and flavors, so it’s fun to grow them.

Amish paste tomatoes on the left, speckled Roman on the right.

I grew Black Zebra, Amish Paste, and Speckled Roman tomatoes (from here), and this fall I have cabbage and broccoli going (wish me luck). My Florida market eggplant gave me one tiny fruit, so that was a bust. I also got attacked by early blight and lost at least half my harvest, but that is another story. I can’t say that I will have a complete heirloom garden from now on (I grew this super-ultra-delicious grape tomato hybrid and will again), but definitely I will give non-mainstream plants a bigger chance.

Ripe speckled Roman tomatoes