Flavors 518

Last night, we had over our new friend and her husband, of JessJamesJake fame, who I met at the All Over Albany party . I thought it would be a good time to use our pasta machine and I totally pimped out my husband's cooking skills ("Do you guys want to come over and eat his pasta sauce?" "Scott, you are going to make some pasta sauce for some people who live around the corner from us!").  The good thing about having people over is you can make desserts that you wanted to make, but thought were too decadent for a house with two people in it. I bought the new Pioneer Woman cookbook when I went and saw her speak in NYC in March. We wanted to make the coffee cake, and this one she posted in 2009 is pretty similar to the one in the book except you'd swap out the instant coffee crystals in the filling for cream cheese, and put a different icing on top (more of a ganache), but the cake is the same. I made some doughnuts from that book back in March. Anyways...

I'm quickly developing a huge girl-crush on Joy the Baker , and I think if you make her recipes you will too. From her new cookbook , I made her cinnamon rolls with buttermilk icing for my husband's birthday weekend. All I can say is wow. I could tell these were going to be amazing from very early on in the recipe. The dough was very similar in technique and ingredients to the Dorie Greenspan white loaves recipe . Check them out: And then layer after layer of flaky goodness: Then there were presents, including a cookbook he was browsing at our friend's house last weekend . Let it be known these cinnamon rolls are very, very special.

It's getting a little warmer round here and it makes me feel like looking forward to the next few months. I've got some fun ideas and then our 1 year wedding anniversary. Yay! Next week I'm going to the book signing for The Pioneer Woman in NYC. Sure, she is goofy sometimes and wants to put in way too much butter, but there is something I like about her - relatability, unparelled success out of just typing about food from her living room computer, those mushrooms ?  March 31st Joy the Baker is going to be in NYC also for a cookbook signing .  Do you read her blog? Emma Stone does! I bought her cookbook last night and fell in love with her all over again. You really feel like she is right there with you. I think there is some balance in blogging - you want to disclose enough about yourself that there is something there to relate to, but not too much that it would be awkward if readers were to meet you in person. It is not a journal, right? Somehow, she really strike...

Today I went to a food swap in Troy. I am sure from my own experience organizing a cookie exchange that getting that all organized is not as easy as it looks. I got a New York state cookie cutter at The Hungry Fish Cafe this weekend and decided to make a speculoo cookie recipe from Around My French Table by Dorie Greenspa n . Check out what I made, and I'll mention what I got for it! Check out the packaging I made and the signs for my table display: There were over 40 people there at the Oakwood Community Center in Troy. It was super fun. You can't believe the creativity and skill people show in what they come up with to make. I did notice that the people who made alcoholic things were most popular. It seems like if you made infused vodka you get to choose between all the canned tomatoes. Also, I could not have expected that there would be so many vegans! It was weird that it kind of felt like speed dating or a high school popularity contest. The girl w...

So I have mentioned that I am dogsitting in a house that has a kitchen that is equipped for cooking with mixes and not from scratch. The dogs' owners come home from Florida tomorrow, so I decided to make myself one of these mixes to test out how they are (and because I feel celebratory because it is almost time for me to go home). It is usually my feeling that mixes are more expensive than cooking from scratch, and also may have other unwanted ingredients included like preservatives. It is also usually my feeling that all a mix really does is give you the dry ingredients already mixed together (which takes about two minutes to stir together yourself). I guess it also saves you having to look up a recipe. I always doubted if they tasted very good. Well, here I am to tell you that actually the Duncan Hines Devil's Food cake mix is not bad. It is just about as good as a homemade cake as bread made from a bread machine mix is as good as bread made from scratch. You get a lot of ...

Just for fun I'd like to talk about some foods that sound gross to me. So I am out here dogsitting in Massachusetts, and my coworker cooks almost exclusively with mixes. As a person who cooks from scratch frequently with actual ingredients,  I didn't even know half of these mixes existed. Call me crazy - but I didn't know you could have a box of dry ingredients that makes a dish of scalloped potatoes if you just add water! How, exactly does that work? She has tons and tons of slow cooker mixes, but I am not going to judge those because they just seem like packets of seasonings. I shouldn't make fun. Her doctor is always telling her to eat healthier, and we are always trying to come up with healthy foods that she may like. But she really seems to be the type of person who judges whether foods are good or not based on what is not in them (spices, vinegar, anything mushy), than what they contain (healthy ingredients with actual nutrients). When I was over here on my...

This is amazing. I had heard about it for a few years and never tried it myself. But I read it in the Essential New York Times Cookbook , and decided to give it a try. There it is served with Veal Saltimbocca from the same cookbook. This recipe is revolutionary. Dead easy. The least amount of work I have ever put forth in regards to a baked good, and also better than any bread I have ever made before. The elasticity and texture is amazing. The crust is fabulous. It is like bread from an expensive restaurant, fresh as can be. And it was so easy – all I did was mix the ingredients together, leave the dough in the bowl for 18 hours, shape it into a ball and leave for two hours, put it in a dutch oven in then oven for half an hour, take the lid off and cook for about 20 minutes more – and viola – fabulous, rustic style bread with barely any effort. No mess either – you don’t even have to use the food processor. Amazing. I think I'll be making this all the time now.

One good thing about living in Albany is the proximity to so many other great places to visit like NYC, the Berkshires, Cooperstown, Montreal, and Boston. About a year and a half ago some of my Study Abroad companions and I reunited for a weekend filled with cultural activities. I brought British themed snacks. We had a Mad Men inspired fashion show. We visited the Boston Public Library and a great vintage travel poster show. We went to a great Italian restaurant in the North End. And we visited the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and Café . Unfortunately, it looks like the café is closed right at this moment for renovations, but when we were there it was open. I love that museum. It is so eclectic, so intimate, so personal. It is not formal or stuffy. Also there is the mystery of the stolen paintings , that I (as a person who works in museums) find completely fascinating. I find the subject so fascinating that I read books meant for teenagers about the su...

I have heard of cookbook addicts who have a problem - that is people who constantly buy cookbooks and never use them. These individuals seem to get fed up with themselves and say things like "I am going to cook my way through that entire cookbook all in subsequent days". Who have you ever known (besides Julie Powell) who has actually done that? My approach is more balanced. I don't buy a crazy amount of them, and what I do have I actually use. We keep them on a shelf in the dining room so we can never forget which ones we have. Also, sometimes if I have nothing to do for an evening I might browse through one I had never looked at very closely before. You can always revisit them, and some times we go through phases where we revisit cookbooks we've had for a long time. This browsing through them turns out to be useful when one random night you really wish you knew what to do with some leftover chicken, and you remember some interesting quesadilla recipe you read fr...