Here in the States, we have been miss-educated.
Before your mind wanders too far into what number of thing I could be talking about, remember, this is a food blog.
What I am talking about here is the quite tragic, gross miss-representation of a macaroon. Recently, this delectable Parisian cookie has become trendy, but many Americans still think of macaroons as a dense, coconut cookie, or worse, a hard coconut sandwich cookie. Quel dommage.
Do you ever make something and wonder why you don’t make it more often or use that technique more often?
For some reason, I always forget about marinading meat overnight. It’s such an easy way to have an incredibly flavorful meal. Come dinner time, the meat cooks up in a few minutes in the marinade. So easy.
This soy-ginger chicken is incredibly moist and flavorful. It is similar to a teriyaki chicken, but not quite as sweet or citrusy. By marinading in an ovenproof dish, all you have to do is add your veggies, let your dish come to room temperature, and broil.
Nothing coaxes sleepy bodies out of bed on a crisp fall Saturday morning like the smell of freshly baked cinnamon rolls. Add the aroma of spiced apples to the mix, and you’ve got a beckoning that even the appeal of warm covers can’t fight.
This month’s Fresh From the Oven Challenge was from Claire of Things We Make. Claire challenged the bakers to make cinnamon rolls from a Kringle recipe she adapted. I made her dough with only a slight adjustment to the yeast, because I wanted the rolls to rise overnight. The dough took less flour than called for, but still turned out silky smooth.
I do love classic cinnamon rolls, but I currently have haul of Cortland apples that are begging to be baked with, and I thought: Apples + cinnamon? We might have a winner here. So, instead of the traditional butter and cinnamon, I filled my rolls full of spiced apples and pecans.
I made the rolls just up to the point of putting them in the oven the night before and stashed them in the fridge for the final rise. They were nice and puffy the next morning, and that’s about where my good luck ended. I put them in the oven at 350°F and checked them after 20 minutes. To my surprise, they felt quite firm and were getting brown on the tops: they looked done.
Don’t they? I took them out of the oven, iced them, (thankfully took some pictures) and pulled them apart, just to find a goopy mess of dough inside. What to do? I popped them back into the oven for another 20 minutes at 350°F and then another 40 minutes at 400°F before they were finally done enough to eat.
Maybe they were too big, maybe they hadn’t had the chance to come to room temp before baking; I’ll need to make these again to figure out what went wrong. In the mean time, do any of you have tips on how to tell when cinnamon rolls are done?
Despite the extended baking time, the rolls tasted great. The apples turned to a nearly apple pie consistency, enveloped in a soft, eggy sweet-dough. Once I get the cooking time mastered, this may be my go to cinnamon roll recipe.
This month the Food Network has challenged bloggers to a brown bag challenge. Not a challenge like the mystery baskets on Chopped, but a challenge to make September a month dedicated to bringing your own lunch to work.
For some this conjures up nightmarish images of pb&j’s or grade school lunches. For others, like myself, who regularly bring their lunch to work anyway, it’s a chance to try out some new ideas to spice up the regular lunch routine.
I like bringing my own lunch to work primarily because it saves money. Think about it, if you spend $5 a day on lunches eating out, that’s $25 a week, $100 a month, $1,200 a year. It adds up. Plus, bringing my lunch is a great way to use up things that are in my fridge. And often, it’s a healthier option than what I would be getting if I went out.
To start out, I’ve just got a few tricks to beat what I’ve heard as some common excuses why people don’t bring their lunch to work.
“I don’t have time to make lunches in the morning.” -
Simple, pack your lunch the night before.
Make dinner with the intention of having leftovers that you can pack in a separate container as soon as dinner is done.
Stock up on a couple cans of your favorite soups for those days that you really don’t have time to pack a lunch.
“I’ll go hungry. I never bring enough food.” –
Remember back to those gradeschool lunches: a sandwich, an apple, carrot sticks, bag of chips, pudding cup, all stuffed into a lunch bag. Don’t just pack a sandwich and expect it to tide you over the whole day. In the beginning, it may be better to pack a little more than you think you’ll need until you get the hang of gauging the amount of food to bring.
Pack filling foods that are nutritious and high in fiber such as veggies, a handful of nuts or trail mix, pretzels, etc rather than high salt, sugar or greasy foods like potato chips or sweets. These foods will help you stay full for longer and help you avoid a sugar crash a few hours after eating.
Make a salad hearty and more filling by adding either canned beans, or better yet, dried beans you have boiled and frozen. Beans ad texture and flavor, in addition to packing nutrients.
Make your own ‘serving size bag’ by buying larger bags of pretzels, etc. Either, keep the big bag at your desk for snacking, or keep the bag at home and fill yourself a sandwich bag to bring each day.
What do you do for lunch?
We’re teaming up with fellow food bloggers to host a Brown-Bag Challenge, a month-long initiative to eat consciously and save money by packing a lunch each weekday instead of eating out. Join us here and share what you’re eating on Facebook and Twitter with the hashtag #brownbag.
