Wordless Wednesday: Bout!

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Austin, bout, Hellcats, Holy Rollers, roller derby

TXRD Lonestar Roller Girls Playoff: Holy Rollers vs. Hellcats
August 25, 2012 – Palmer Center, Austin, TX

Daring Bakers’ Challenge: Filled Pâte à Choux Swans!

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baking, cream puffs, dessert, French, pastry, pastry cream, pâte à choux, profiteroles, swans

Kat of The Bobwhites was our August 2012 Daring Baker hostess who inspired us to have fun in creating pâte à choux shapes, filled with crème patisserie or Chantilly cream. We were encouraged to create swans or any shape we wanted and to go crazy with filling flavors allowing our creativity to go wild!

If you’ve never made cream puffs/profiteroles, eclairs, beignets, gougères, churros, etc., then we’re in the same boat, at least until this challenge. I’m not sure why I had never ventured into the choux pastry world, but it seemed to be really easy to make. You just melt butter with water and salt, mix in flour, then eggs. It smells oddly (deliciously) like mashed potatoes, by the way. Related: Did you know that Parisian gnocchi is this stuff cooked in boiling water?

Wordless Wednesday: Silver Structures

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architecture, Bard College, exhibition, Frank Gehry, New York, Olafur Eliasson

The parliament of reality by Olafur Eliasson and the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts by, you guessed it, Frank Gehry. They’re neighbors at Bard College in New York.

Daring Cooks’ Challenge: Cornmeal!

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breakfast, brunch, cheese, eggs, hatch chiles, recipe, savory, vegetarian, waffles

Rachael of pizzarossa was our August 2012 Daring Cook hostess and she challenged us to broaden our knowledge of cornmeal! Rachael provided us with some amazing recipes and encouraged us to hunt down other cornmeal recipes that we’d never tried before – opening our eyes to literally 100s of cuisines and 1000s of new-to-us recipes!

My friends Julie and Andrew just traveled to New Zealand a few days ago and I am incredibly envious. In fact, they’re spending the next nine months Down Underer while renting out their Texas home, so I offered to borrow various items from their kitchen in the meantime. Always thinking of my friends.

Having never shared a roof with a waffle iron, I obviously had to put some cornmeal in it in order to kill two birds: my desire to make some waffles (of course) and this challenge. Do you know how many cornbread waffles on the internet are covered in chili? This is so freaking brilliant that it’s disappointing to have never heard of it, but even more so that it wasn’t my idea. While tempting, August is just not the time for chili in Texas.

I knew I wanted something savory featuring cheese and chiles since that’s my favorite kind of cornbread. Then I remembered a post by Joy the Baker in which she made savory cornmeal waffles and served them with a fried egg. Excellent! (pun avoided)

Wordless Wednesday: Lucky Truck

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burritos, food trucks, landscape, NY, Red Hook, summer

This is the view from behind The Burrito Stand in Red Hook, NY.

Holy Cow Ice Cream – Red Hook, NY

Tags

Holy Cow Ice Cream, ice cream shop, New York, Red Hook

One of the best things about spending a month in upstate New York comes in the form of a simple ice cream shop. In this case, that shop is called Holy Cow Ice Cream and it’s located at the end of a strip center in Red Hook, about 100 miles north of New York City.

The inside of the shop is very basic with a few freezer cases, a menu, and various ice cream machines, but no seating; that’s outside in the form of picnic tables. Offerings include hard ice cream, soft-serve, flavor burst (soft-serve with the gel flavor edges..), Razzles (think McFlurry or Blizzard), egg creams, floats, malts, milkshakes, and probably other things I’m forgetting.

black raspberry | mint chocolate chip | blueberry pie | coffee + fudge