Interim Eats

This whole blogging thing is still relatively new to me, and this year so far I have obviously not done a good job of documenting my cooking. This is due to a new job, dead camera with mysterious missing charger, lack of money to buy ingredients, and a whole list of other excuses I'm sure I could think up.

Regardless, I am determined to get back on track. I want to prove to myself that cooking good food on a tight budget is possible. And believe me... no one has a tighter budget than a college student, especially when it comes to food. (Easy Mac, anyone?) While I gear up for this blogging revival, here is a photo gallery of just a few dishes I happened to document while on hiatus. Enjoy!

Twice Baked Potatoes - Yum! One of the holiday staples in my family. Simply bake the potatoes, remove filling and blend with milk, butter, cheddar cheese and horseradish. Sprinkle with cheese and chives, throw them in the oven and voila! Let's be honest, how can you go wrong with cheese and potato?

Homemade Pesto Linguine - This was my first attempt at real homemade pasta. For some insane reason, I decided that on New Years Eve I would make two pounds of fresh pasta for my best girl friends at our annual New Years party. I gotta say, five hours in the kitchen and racing to slip into my New Years dress was TOTALLY worth it. It took some trial and error but I will absolutely be making this again. Some photos of the process...

 

Making the dough was one of the easier parts of this adventure. It was all about finding the right balance between egg, flour, water and olive oil.

Flattening the dough into paper-thin sheet turned out to be way harder than I expected. About one hour in I found my groove, which made the rest of the process a lot faster.

Pressing the sheet into linguine noodles.

 

Drying the noodles on a pasta drying rack.

Pesto, pre-blend.

The finished product in action! And the perfect way to ring in the new year.

Valentine's Day Dinner - My boyfriend Dylan and I both love to cook, so we decided to stay in this Valentine's Day and make a gourmet meal of our own: filet mignon, slow roasted plum tomatoes and creamy spinach. This took maybe 40 minutes tops, with no hassle and plenty of time to enjoy our Bordeaux and delicious spread of cheeses. It was the perfect evening - we almost forgot we were in a dorm!

The set-up.

The meal.

To this day I still think this is the best, juiciest filet mignon I have ever tasted. (I left Dylan with this treacherous task, and he did better than I ever could. Thanks, love!)

Recipes Online

In the age of a generation raised online, information can be accessed instantly by the click of a button. Today hundreds of thousands of recipes are available on the internet, providing never-ending opportunities to expand your food tastes and discover new recipes. Some of these websites and blogs cater to experienced chefs, while others are targeted at people with limited cooking ability. Though I have a plethora of recipes I've inherited from family members, I often find meals on these food sites when I'm looking for a quick fix. Here are a few useful websites I wanted to share as well as recipes I've found on each.

allrecipes.com

This site is great for finding tons of variations on a simple recipe.

These are stuffed peppers I made last week. The baked green peppers are stuffed with ground beef, rice, onion, cheddar cheese and topped with condensed tomato soup before baking for 30 minutes. I was skeptical about the soup at first, but it did a great job of keeping the beef and rice from drying out in the oven. These reheat well too, so don't hesitate to make extra.
Click Here to try it!

supercook.com
By entering ingredients that are in your pantry into the Supercook search engine, this website pulls up hundreds of recipes you can make using the food you already have. (Note: This is a database that will lead you to other food sites to view the actual recipes, so go to the supercook.com for the original website.)

Here's an easy cheeseburger pie I whipped up for dinner last night. I needed a way to get rid of the pound of ground beef in my freezer using what I had. All this recipe requires is ground beef, Bisquick, an onion, 2 eggs, milk, salt and cheddar cheese. Bakes for 25 minutes and leaves plenty of leftovers for lunch on the go.
Click Here to try it!


tastespotting.com
If you're an adventurous eater, then you'll love TasteSpotting. This is a site I discovered today and am really excited to try. Recipes ranging from Korean Pumpkin Porridge to Banana Avocado Pancakes are sprinkled across the site's homepage, with pictures that'll instantly make your mouth water. It premieres a culturally diverse representation of regional cuisines, and you know it's authentic because some of the recipes are still written in their native language! (I found a French onion soup recipe that's written in Polish. Pretty cool, right?)

These pork chop sandwiches are called cemitas, originating from Puebla, Mexico. Cemitas are slider-sized sandwiches, this particular one layered with pork, avocado, sweet cherry peppers and mozzarella all on a homemade roll that takes 8 hours to rise. Whoa. This might be my next culinary feat to tackle.
Click Here to try it!