Aug 23, 2010

Heyy,

Today we attempted to make eggs benedict (poached eggs). I was on making the hollandaise sauce. And mom was on poaching the eggs!

My part was perfect! As it always is :P It involved alot of whisking, but i still made it perfect! Everyone thought it was delicious, if only the eggs could have been as nice! My mom had no idea what she was doing, and ended up overflowing the frying pan. Too much water, and we weren't sure if all the eggs were sposed to go in at once but she put them all in anyway! Haha there was alot of white foam and boiling water spilling over the stove. ALL her fault, i think i'll add!

When we finally cleaned the mess and looked at the eggs, they didnt even look edible! It looked like someone had vandalized the pan with toilet paper! haha, but once we got the eggs out and cut off the excess egg whites, they looked pretty good! We made toast and put the eggs on it,covered it with the hollandaise sauce! My bro Ty enjoyed it, he wants us to make it again on real English muffins.

Poaching The Eggs

First: Fill a skillet with about 3 inches of water -thats all. Put the skillet on high heat. Cover it to speed up the heating time. Meanwhile, for 4 eggs, crack each one into its own seperate bowl.

Second: Place the bowls so they are convinient to the stove. Add one tablespoon of plain vinegar to the water, and some salt. Vinegar helps the egg hold its shape. The salt will raise the temperature of the water so watch the bubbles.

Third: Lower the lip of each egg bowl 1/2 inch below the surface of the water and let the egg flow out. Immediately cover with lid and turn off the heat. Set the timer for exactly 3 minutes for medium-firm yolks. When the timer goes off, lift the eggs out of the pan using a slotted spoon to get rid of any water. Place the eggs on toast/english muffins and serve.

Making The Hollandaise Sauce

First: I cracked 3 eggs and seperated the yolks from the whites. Putting the yolks in a pot i whisked it on low heat and slowly added 1/2 cup frozen butter peices until it was all mixed. Then I removed it from the heat.

Here are some pics of our egg creations so far, eggs benedict, sunny side up, and egg salad.

Next dish up will be Quiche! Yummy!

Till next time,

Missy

August.19,2010

Hi , we're back!

I know, we've been gone a few weeks. Busy summer schedule, silly family re-unions and time spent in the hot sun vegging out! We have decided to use this week as a lesson of how to cook eggs in many different ways. We don't want to do it all in one day, so this will go on for a while.

Todays lesson- How to cook a Hard Boiled Egg

First- warm up your refrigerated cold eggs to room temp by placing in warm water, this will prevent them from cracking.

Second- put eggs in a pot, single layered, and cover with cold water, just until the eggs are immersed. Put on high heat and bring to a hard boil. As soon as the water is bubbling hard, remove from heat and cover pot with lid. depending on the firmness of the yolk, cook for proper amount of time. This is the time of cooking after the eggs are removed from heat source.

Large eggs- soft boiled- 4-5 minutes
-medium boiled-6 minutes
-hard boiled- 17 minutes

How to test an egg if it is hard boiled.
Remove from hot water and spin carefully on countertop. If it wobbles, there is still uncooked yolk inside, if it spins evenly, it is cooked all the way through.

Third- When eggs are done, remove carefully and place in a bowl with cold water and ice for 10 minutes.

Fourth-Then peel shell and thin membrane off while under cold running water. Easy!

Slice up hard boiled eggs into small bits , add 3 tbsp of margarine and salt/pepper to taste for yummy egg salad sandwiches.

Some interesting add-in ideas...
celery & onion
chicken & curry powder
ham & mustard
pickles,mustard & onion
green pepper,pimento & chili powder
bacon & onion

So, all done, everyone loved their egg salad sandwiches. Maybe next time we'll make devilled eggs out of the hard boiled eggs. Now, since we have some more time, we are going to try frying an egg sunny side up.

Interesting fact!
The ropey strands of the egg white that attach the egg yolk in place are called Chalazae (kuy-lay-zee). The more prominent the Chalazae, the fresher the egg.

July.22/2010

Hi all,

We did it!!! We successfully made our first two dishes. yummmm! The first dish was the Broccoli Cheddar soup, and it turned out great and tasted magnifico! The recipe was easy to follow , but a bit of prep work was required, like chopping onions, shallot,garlic, potato, and of course, broccoli. I really allowed Missy to use a knife and chop up the garlic and shallot. Ha! Ha! Her eyes were stinging. Oh yes, and we even made our own croutons. I think the funiest part was when I had to blend the boiling soup mixture in the blender afterwards to a smooth texture. Well, the first time I had too much in there and the lid and the ingredients just about flew off. I had a bit of a mess to wipe up afterwards. We served it up to the family for lunch . My youngest son kept guessing what it was that made it green. He thought possibly Spinach, Peas, Celery- all wrong. My other son said 'It looks like puke soup". How nice, but honestly, it was great and everyone liked it. The recipe came from Heidi Swanson's 101 Cookbook website- vegetarian section.

The Brocolli Cheddar Soup

Alright now for supper, we made quite a simple recipe called Pesto Ravioli. The pesto was made with olive oil, sundried tomatoes, thyme, hot peppers, walnuts, and garlic- all blended together and tossed with the cooked pre-made ravioli. Placed on a bed of spinach, and sprinkled with goat cheese. Well, my kids usually don't like stuff that is too spicy or has unusual ingredients in it. I was pleasantly surprised that they ate it up and two even went for seconds. The most complaining came from the youngest about how the ravioli was stuck together. "Winer"- we call him. It was good though, a bit too much hot peppers. This recipe found in the same place as the above one.

Pesto Ravioli

Thanks for reading! Now, time to start thinking about our Challenge for next week.

Bye! From Missy and Mom

July 21 2010

Heyy

I am so excited to start cooking tomorro! I want to kno how to make more than KD, haha! Plus it will help my self confidence go higher! Or so my mom and bf think! they never said it, but i kno it went thru their minds!

Today my teacher showed us the movie "Food Inc" IT WAS DISGUSTING! before i was only half-vegetarian, now im a complete vegetarian! the image of all those animals, skinned and hanging on those racks have now scarred my mind forever. I told my friend about it after and the next thing he does is offer me a pepperoni stick! yea good friends!

Does anyone kno wat Surf and Turf is?? my bf is apparently really good at making it but i have never heard of it!

Do we have any non-meat foods in this house? im hungry, no starving is the better term! a Crave cupcake would be really good right now! Bye people!

Missy<3

First Week- July.20/2010

Hi All,

We are here sitting in my daughter's room and finally did it! We created our blog together. Not sure if anyone but us will see this or even care, but it's for us and we're proud!

After seeing the movie, "Julie and Julia" we got talking about , "how wouldn't it be fun if we did something similar. " We love to bake together and actually volunteer together at an organization for sick kids and bake 2-3 times a month. We definitely have desserts down to a fine art, she calls, "The Philadelphia Cheesecake cookbook" her bible.

Now that she is a teenager, she keeps asking if I can teach her how to cook. Things like roasts and fancy dishes, veggies, soups, etc. I think she seems to think that she's moving out soon and will have to know this stuff. As her mother, I'm thinking she's rushing things and has all the time in the world. I am not looking forward to the day she leaves, contrary to many mother/teenage daughter relationships of horror, ours is pretty amiable. I love her and she knows it! That's why, before time runs out on us, we are gonna do this instead of saying we should have done that.

We thought it would be hilarious to find a cookbook written by someone sharing our last name. But after much research, found none, except some series called" The Hannah Swenson' mysteries. The author wasn't even a Swenson! Then we found, Heidi Swanson's 101 cookbooks website and well she has hundreds of recipes that she has created or found. Plus, gluten free and vegetarian recipes. My daughter was ecstatic, she likes the idea of going vegetarian and I don't mind broadening my horizons. We are also hoping to try out recipes from other works, maybe even a few Julia Child ones.

So, without further ado, this upcoming Thursday we will attempt our hands at creating the Broccoli Cheddar soup and the Red Pesto Ravioli. Both are from her vegetarian section. We'll let u know how they turn out.

Bye from Missy and Mom