Low effort frozen fruit thing: I put frozen fruit in a bowl and pour unflavored, unsweetened yogurt smoothie over it (though regular unflavored yogurt would probably also work) and a bit of light cream because yum. Then I stick spoon in it and put the whole thing back in the freezer for a short while so it’s not frozen solid but it’s a nice thick texture. Then I eat it. It can be sweetened if desired.
is any of the fruit strawberries? if so i recommend a frozen fruit slushie: fill a blender with fruit (I recommend strawberries with peaches or mango if you’ve got them) and add just enough soda to make it blendable. I usually use sprite but any fruity soda works. then just blend it up! it makes this really thick, almost sorbet-ish smoothie with a nice tang and fizz from the carbonation. you can also add alcohol or drop a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top if you want!
I've been cooking a lot this summer, and I thought I would document some of it before I go back to school and lose kitchen access in the fall. Here's the first update! A lot of the recipes I make come from Deb "smittenkitchen" Perelman, whose blog I love because of her focus on reproducibility (great for me, a lazy perfectionist) and the fact that she has a lot of recipes that are good for my attempts to eat heart healthier (veg focused, grain salads, etc etc) among the wide variety of things she posts. Lately I have fallen in love with these black bean tacos. Which is weird, because her commentary on them is basically "eh, they're ok, they're pretty good, they're not amazing." But, add some garlic to those mashed beans? Some pickled red onions maybe? They are very good. I just have to get a couple cans of beans, some tortillas, and some Trader Joe's coleslaw mix, plus the ever-present green onions that are always slowly dying in our veggie drawer, and bam!! Filling and crunchy and good. I have many ideas for riffs on these. Pictures: Spoiler: taco pix
I love her recipes as well! I have both her cookbooks and she's my go to blog for when I want to bake something. Some of her cakes are way too fiddly for me, though they look delicious, but I am especially in love with her traybakes with fruits.
@Emma yesss! I took out her cookbooks from the library and photocopied the recipes that looked good. She has many good desserts .. I’m currently in love with the cake I made most recently. Which is admittedly very finicky.
@blue on the other hand probably my favourite recipe from her isn't finicky at all: https://people.com/food/smitten-kitchens-whole-lemon-bars/ It's ridiculously delicious and I think one of these days I might try to make it with the likes I still have in the fridge rather than lemons :)
Cooking update 2: (chanting) Bulgog-i! Bulgog-i! Spoiler: Pictures So good, and I only marinated it for about half an hour. (Up-to-eight-hours is presumably better?) I’m curious whether the pear in the marinade did anything, specifically because the out-of-season pear I used was not very flavorful or, like, good at all. Nonetheless: tasty. Also: obvious from the pictures, I cooked it way less than theirs, so mine was a uniform light brown instead of dark brown with crispy edges. I like crispy edges, but I didn’t want to overcook it. ALSO, higher heat might have helped, but as it is I got spattered with hot oil a little bit. So. My family put it away extremely quickly. Now I have to resist the urge to take a Meat Nap long enough to go for a walk, appARently. (Bonus: we were able to put away Jasmine the foster kitten, who is Not Into Being Put In Her Crate, because she leapt up on the table and started trying to eat this while we were getting silverware. I’m ...... glad??)
Today: cheddar, wild rice and broccoli fritters! From the Smitten Kitchen book, but shared as a promotion on another site. My parents both loved them, I’m not sure I did, but that might be because every time I make rice I get re-surprised and re-dismayed at how long it takes to make rice. (I’m used to the little frozen trader joe’s rices that you just reheat, so I’m spoiled.) Spoiler: Pictures... They taste better than they look Oh, also, I wouldn’t have known how to parcook the broccoli if I hadn’t recently done a similar recipe that gave me an idea. Three minutes in boiling water worked great, then rinsed to cool and chopped up. Anyway, definitely a success but next time I might make something else instead. (Like last night when i DID just make black bean tacos again.)
hey anyone who knows pancakes help with with a small puzzle? My mom gave me a gingerbread blueberry pancake recipe a while ago that I want to make since I have fresh picked blueberries and an extra friend who's staying over P: Trick is, I don't know how many servings the recipe is at baseline, it doesn't say! No idea if I need to double it or make half again as much or not multiply at all to feed four hungry late-twenties folks. My only hint is that it uses 2 1/2 cups of flour and 2 eggs at baseline? If the measurements of any of the other ingredients like the berries or molasses or butter would be helpful, lmk.
for that amount of flour and eggs, I'd probably use about one cup of blueberries! or perhaps a little more/less, depending on whether you're the type who likes their blueberry pancakes crowded with berries or not
That sounds like a recipe that would comfortably feed four hungry people. My comparison is this, which isn’t enough for four people of widely varying appetites:
@Misty Pond Oh I already know how much bloo berry to use, that's in the recipe x3 just didn't know how much batter that the recipe's gonna make so I can adjust to make more if it'd be insufficient for a group of four, since it doesn't tell me how many people it serves. @Verily that's definitely helpful! Yeah mine uses the 2 1/2 cups of flour and 2 eggs and 2 cups of milk, so it should make for more than the 12 4-inch pancakes than than recipe describes, so I'm probably pretty set- might make half again as much if I'm feeling cheeky.
Worst case scenario, delicious leftover blueberry pancakes. The recipe there, from Good Housekeeping iirc, wasn’t an inadequate meal, just not enough by itself to be quiiite a full meal, let alone a large meal. It is, however, delicious.
some baking adventures! 1. I made cookies again, using the recipe I posted here a little back, but this time I used a whole cup of brown sugar only, no white sugar. the result has had some interesting subtle changes in the taste, texture, and I think the spread of the cookies as well. I guess the next thing to do is see how the cookies do with 75% and 100% white sugar... 2. I made coffee-flavored buttercream icing for my mom's birthday cake! I didn't follow the given recipe for it, though, which asked to use a food processor. instead I did a similar method to my cookie recipe, wherein I melted the butter, added in the dissolved instant coffee, and then folded the mixture through a bowl of sifted icing sugar, stirring hard until the mixture combined and stopped 'leaking' butter. apparently the result still turned out good and close enough to what the original method produced, so I'm glad that experiment worked out :D spreading the icing on top of the cake layers was a bit harder...don't think I spread it out over the edges enough. oh well. at least the cake will still taste delicious <3
Oh wow that icing sounds so good! My cooking has been severely impacted (pun intended) by getting my wisdom teeth out. RIP. My kitchen now only produces jello, eggs and pastina.
i was craving mushroom soup today, so i made some from scratch! baby bella mushrooms & fresh thyme, delicious. i followed this recipe, except i sauteed the mushrooms instead of roasting, i used milk instead of cream, and i blended it roughly with my immersion blender at the end. hearty and delightful.
