Sayonara, Summer…

Yep, I know it’s been fall for a week.  In south Texas, though, it will feel like summer for probably another month or so, but with shorter days.  After that, the weather gets really awkward.  Way back in the day, I remember checking the forecast every morning before going to school.  The temperatures could span 30 degrees in one day, so I needed to know whether or not to bring a hoodie.  (These are Important Matters.)  Then it’s like the heat becomes slightly dormant until March or April, when summer resumes its sweaty dictatorship.

Regardless of the endless summer here, tomorrow is October.  We’ll have peaches and tomatoes galore at least until November, but it feels awkward to blog about summery things while friends are starting to post pictures of snow (!) on facebook.

With a few hours of September left, I’ll share a couple yummy recipes I made this week that err a little more on the summer side.  

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Croissants!

The Daring Bakers go retro this month!  Thanks to one of our very talented non-blogging members, Sarah, the Daring Bakers were challenged to make Croissants using a recipe from the Queen of French Cooking, none other than Julia Child!

YUSSS!  I’ve been wanting to make croissants for a long time but needed something to get me motivated to do so.  This is a perfect example of procrastination paying off: “make puff pastry” has been on my list of things to do before turning 30, but that hadn’t even been enough to make me do it yet. Croissant dough is technically puff pastry with yeast and sugar, by the way, so this totally counts.

Breakfast Chalupas!

It seems like all sorts of foods are on a constant rollercoaster between good and evil.  Coconut oil is good for you now, but agave syrup is bad news bears?  It’s hard to know who or what to believe, but I feel like if it Mama Nature made it, it’s most likely okay.  And let’s just get this out of the way: please don’t ever tell me that the fat content in avocados is bad.  Hello, GOOD FAT.  (For the record, I am by no means a nutritionist…feel free to dismiss my opinions if they’re not to your liking.)

After many years of being viewed as cholesterol-laden baddies, eggs are now packed with Vitamin D and lower in cholesterol, at least compared to an earlier study.  If you read that article, it’s unknown why, but thought to be related to the hens’ diets.  Speaking of hen diets, I was lucky to score a coupon for Eggland’s Best eggs (as a member of the Foodbuzz Tastemaker Program), which are the eggs I’ve been buying for the last few months anyway!  They boast having vegetarian-fed hens (wait, do other eggs come from carnivorous hens?!) which produce healthier eggs.  Being a vegetarian myself, I’m down with that.  They taste good, too. 

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake!

The March 2011 Daring Baker’s Challenge was hosted by Ria of Ria’s Collection and Jamie of Life’s a Feast.  Ria and Jamie challenged The Daring Bakers to bake a yeasted Meringue Coffee Cake.

I have to admit that I’ve been feeling a little meh about blogging lately.  Mainly it’s that I don’t particularly like to write/am not a great writer which hasn’t stopped me in the past.  As mentioned quite a few times, I’m terribly slow in the kitchen, but sometimes it feels like it takes even longer to write a post.  If I try to make and post something on the same day, it can become an all day affair, so I usually try to post on the next day.  Maybe I need to get ahead of blogging…as in, be a few completed recipes ahead of blog posts.  If that makes sense, do any of you do that?

Anyway, there’s nothing like a Daring Kitchen challenge to pull me out of a blogging rut.    This month with the Daring Bakers involved yeast and resulted in something that looked suspiciously like Stollen.  The taste and texture was quite different though, especially with the fillings.  Speaking of the fillings, meringue inside bread was totally foreign to me.  Let’s just say I was pleasantly surprised! 

Almond Ginger Granola

I’ve been having a problem lately with the freezer being crowded up with too many concoctions resulting from this blog.  For example, these cookies which I made last month were finally finished off.  (The frozen dough balls never did make it to the oven.  Oops.)  And I’m pretty sure there are still slices of Stollen in the deep freeze, too.  Grody.

While I’ve always got ideas in my head, not to mention a list with things needing to be crossed off, I just haven’t wanted to make even more things.  After all, I’m usually just cooking for myself.  But then I realized I could make something that I hadn’t made before, but have been eating pretty regularly lately: Granola!  ’bout time, right?

Nutella-filled Banana Pancake Muffins

So apparently it’s Pancake Week.

I love pancakes, but never make them.

Honestly, I think they stink up the house.  Why is that?

Ever since Jill made banana cupcakes with nutella frosting for my birthday though, I’ve had pancakes on the brain.  But then I wanted to put them in a muffin pan.  And you know what?  They were the very opposite of stinky.

I know, my weirdo nose is weird.

Cooking 101: Poaching Eggs

I had never poached an egg until today.

Evidently it’s a tricky thing to do, and was even last month’s Daring Cooks‘ challenge.

One of my friends (okay, you guessed it: Jill) poached an egg for the first time the other day and was successful!  She read a few fussy tutorials, then ended up following the simple instructions from the guy in the video at the end of this wikihow post.

I thought I’d give it a go today, and it worked!  Well, mostly. 

Tex-Mex Migas

Growing up in San Antonio, there are just certain things that you don’t think twice about.  A lot of times, this pertains to food: chips and salsa should always be complimentary, the chips are often red and green during the holidays, and migas are really tasty.

Then you go north for school and notice the absence of all these things.  In fact, you see things like canned tamales.  Pardon??  I don’t even want to know.

When you come back, you find yourself working and hanging out with people from all over who have been transplanted into this seemingly other world.  That’s just how music is.  They can’t believe that it’s 75 degrees in December.  You catch them gawking in awe at the Christmas-colored chips, expecting them to be flavored.  (They’re not.)   And if you tell them of a great place to get migas, they’ll give you a blank stare, probably thinking you misspoke about where to find female friends. 

Lemon Ginger Cranberry Cream Scones

After Thanksgiving, I was left with cranberries, cream, and crystallized ginger, and then my friend Jill gave me a lemon from the tree in her backyard.  Seriously…a real, live lemon tree!

When life gives me cranberries, cream, crystallized ginger, and a lemon, I make scones….a few weeks later!  Nothing had gone bad because I froze the cranberries, the cream was unopened, and I put the lemon in the fridge.  Still, I meant to make these at an earlier point.

Originally, I was going to use this recipe from Joy of Baking, but add in the lemon/ginger/cranberriness.  Then while I was looking up how to freeze scones, I found that there was already a lemon cranberry cream scone recipe on Smitten Kitchen.  Figured I couldn’t go wrong with Deb!  

Pumpkin French Toast

Yesterday I went to a David Sedaris reading/signing and he was hilarious.  If you ever get the chance to see him, GO.  He read some stories from his new book (Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk), shared snippets from his diary, and answered several questions.  Though I’ve read a few of his books, I haven’t read the new one yet, but really liked what we heard from it.  It basically seems to be a collection of short stories from the perspectives of personified animals and insects, but coming from the mind of David Sedaris, they’re super clever and funny.

My friend and I waited in line for the signing, but there were SO many people there that we hardly moved.  He had asked people to tell him jokes (he’s been collecting them this book tour!), so I’m guessing that’s part of why it took so long.  Oh, and we didn’t manage to stick around the whole time.  I have no idea how long he stayed there to sign books, but it had to have been at least until the store closed!