Doing away with disposables...

It's Spring! The last few months have whizzed by in a blur, mostly because I was wedding planning. And now I am MARRIED! If that's not the craziest thing ever, I don't know what is. So now we are officially Mr. and Mrs. Penguin in Paris!! Woohoo! It is almost officially one month after the wedding and we are all pretty much back to normal life. The Mr. and I have begun to talk about buying a house which means of course that I am now obsessed with saving money. Which leads me to the topic of this post- being frugal in the kitchen. Until recently I never realized how much money I spent on things like paper plates, paper napkins, paper towels and the like! Considering we have real plates, real glassware actual dishtowels and cloth napkins-we throw away a lot of money on disposable products. Which is also probably not so great for the environment. We could go through a whole pack of plastic cups in a week! Soooo in the name of saving money and not adding anything else to a landfill we are trying to go mostly disposable free! Using our real plates and glassware has been pretty easy-someone  just has to wash them, mostly me, but it's mostly fair since Mr. Penguin takes out the garbage. Using cloth napkins has been fine for me but Mr. P doesn't love them. Still working on that! The hardest part has been to try to cut back on paper towels. It's so easy to grab paper towels for kitchen messes and while cooking. I've definitely cut back on paper towel usage but I am having a hard time cutting them out completely. I am terrified to use anything but disposable when making chicken for example. I guess it's a work in progress. On the bright side, I am enjoying using my pretty polka dot cloth napkins. I'm on the look out for a few more on sale ;)

I lurve me some polka dots!! They make me happy just looking at them! Up next, how to buy groceries for 2 on $50 a week...

SHARK!

My brother's birthday was this past weekend so we all had a family BBQ at his new house. My brother and his wife love the water and that's why I ended up making them a shark cake. Sometime last week I texted my bro to see what Mr. Penguin and myself could bring to the BBQ. My brother's response was to send me a text of a shark. Awesome. So here's what I came up with....

First, I carved a shark out of a watermelon. I was quite proud of myself for this one. It's not all that hard. The most difficult part is slicing the bottom of the watermelon so that it sits flat. It's hard because the watermelon gets slippery and you're using a big knife to hack through a large, dense watermelon. In retrospect I would have had someone else hold the watermelon to help stabilize it and avoid almost chopping off several fingers. The second 'shark' idea I came up with was this....

A SHARK CAKE! My brother wanted 'Eat Me" on it so that's what he got. It's a chocolate cake....

 that I made in two 9-inch round pans. Then I sliced each cake in half and layered them with peanut butter filling. The same peanut butter filling I've blogged about before from my friend over here. It's so good! Then once it was filled I whipped up some chocolate buttercream frosting, with a little almond extract in it and covered the whole tasty thing...

Then all I had to do was mix up a little gum paste and fondant to make the letters and the shark. 

My trick for this is to print out something simple from the internet like a basic blackline picture of a shark. Then I trace it onto wax paper with a sharpie marker. Then I just use an exacto knife to cut out my design. Just make sure your have an exacto knife dedicated to baking and not one that you also use for woodworking or other hobby things. I was a little upset that I broke off the tail as I was putting it on. I let the shark harden overnight before putting it on, forgetting that it wouldn't really have any give when I attached it. You don't want to put fondant on buttercream too far in advance though because the buttercream with start to really soften the fondant and make a mush of your design. 

So in the end my brother liked his double shark dessert and everyone else got a kick out of it too. Shark themed birthday success!

No Cheese Pizza

Mr. Penguin doesn't like cheese. I know, the horror! Who doesn't like cheese?? To be honest, at first it was seemed like an insurmountable challenge to cook things that we would both like. I mean, have you ever noticed how many recipes have some kind of cheese in it? A lot. And Mr. Penguin doesn't eat any cheese, not sticky, not mild, not even cream cheese. But after thinking about this a lot I realized that this could potentially be a good thing. Cheese is really not super healthy to be eating all the time. It can be pretty fatty and it might be a good thing to learn to cook without using so much cheese. In light of my revelation I began to look into finding recipes that don't use cheese or to modify other recipes to make them without cheese or with a substitute. It hasn't been as bad as I thought. We have actually found a lot of things that are enjoyable and healthier without the cheese. Except pizza! I always end up having to eat pizza with other people or eat a slice by myself when I'm really in the mood for it. However, I realized I was being an idiot about the whole thing! What you see here is a homemade pizza...

And because it is homemade....it only has cheese on one half!!! I don't know why I never thought of this before. (We have tried to order pizza from the pizzeria with half no cheese but in the end they ALWAYS put cheese on the whole thing, it's like they don't think you are really serious when you say no cheese...) On my half I put some skim mozzarella and some pepperoni and olives and on Mr. Penguin's side there are mushrooms, peppers, olives and NO CHEESE! WE CAN NOW EAT PIZZA IN HARMONY! Lol. But in all seriousness, now I need to buy a pizza stone....

Monday Peppers- a lesson in blanching

In the last post I mentioned some stuffed pepper I made. And here they are! I used this recipe from EatingWell. I have been trying to cook healthy food and I figured since this was made with lean ground turkey it fit the bill. You have to blanch the peppers first. I had no idea what blanch meant. So like any good novice chef reading a recipe, I googled and read the wikipedia entry! Apparently it's just plunging something in boiling water for a short time and then dumping it in some ice water. From what I read, it seems that the purpose of blanching is either to remove an unpleasant taste of a food or to soften a food. I think in this case the point was to soften the pepper a little bit before they go in the oven to cook the rest of the way. Once I figured out what blanching meant the rest of the recipe was pretty easy. Although, I always have a problem when cooking meat. I have such a fear of undercooking something that I always cook it for longer than I'm supposed to. The recipe calls for cooking the turkey until it's no longer pink, about 2 minutes. Well, I don't know if my pan wasn't hot enough but I cooked the turkey for about 6-7 minutes before it wasn't pink. I was getting nervous that I was overcooking it but it turned out fine. Actually it turned out more than fine. It was delicious! Mr. Penguin gave the peppers a 10 out of 10 and he actually had seconds! I would definitely make this recipe again, and now that I know what the heck blanching is I can put another notch on my becoming Julia Child belt. Yes!

Pyrex: A New Addiction

I have been recently trying to deck out our kitchen with all the things I need to cook and bake properly. Teaching myself how to cook has made me truly realize the value of having the right tools for the job. I've always had a love of all things vintage and as I was wandering through the interents the other day I came across some vintage pyrex, which eventually led me to Ebay where I bid on these absolutely gorgeous vintage cinderella pyrex mixing bowls in the pink gooseberry pattern. I fell in love with them the moment I saw them. The seller's description said they belonged to her 98 year old mother who recently moved in with her. They were getting rid of items of which they didn't need to have doubles. It's always nice to know the story behind an item. I like that one lady in Missouri owned these bowls since the 50s and now they have been passed along to me. Maybe I'll have them until I'm 98 and then pass them along to the next generation. (Seriously these pyrex pieces hold up so well that if you don't put them in the dishwasher they could last that long or longer!) I was so excited that I won my auction but even more excited when the box arrived a few days later. After a good hand wash I used them the very same day. I tried out a recipe for stuffed peppers that night and mixed up my stuffing in the largest bowl. I might have imagined I was a 1940s housewife version of Julia Child but I won't admit it here. You might think I'm crazy but I swear the bowls added a little bit of love to my recipe. The peppers came out great and my love affair with vintage pyrex has apparently begun... 

Ingredients...

What exactly is soy lecithin and why is it in so much food?? This is the ingredient label from some donuts  that were in my cupboard. I don't recognize half of the things in this ingredient list and that is super scary. I have had this drive lately to really pay attention to what I am eating so even though I have been eating what I thought was fairly healthy for a while, I have started looking at labels and found some shocking things. I know, I know... donuts are not healthy but they are not mine-they reside on Mr. Penguin's side of the cabinet. But even my 'healthy' foods like my granola bars and yogurt have a ton of weird and difficult to identify ingredients. And I swear xanthan gum is in everything! So my new 2012 resolution is to try to weed out as much processed food from my diet and eat as much real food as possible. Titanium dioxide? That can't be good for you. 

Brussel Sprouts...

Brussel sprouts. I don't recall eating them as a kid but when I hear the name I immediately think "Bleeeck".  Brussel sprouts are one of those foods that no one is supposed to like right? Like on a TV show where the kid walks in to see dinner on the table and says, "C'mon Mom. Brussel sprouts???" Well, I decided that I would put my preconceived brussel sprout notions aside and try them. It's not really fair for me to say I don't like them if I have never tried them. I am much more diplomatic in my 30s than I would have been as a kid. I don't think you would have been able to get a sprout past my lips between the ages of 3 and 23.

I started out to try some steamed brussel spouts the other night with dinner. I was not impressed. Actually more than not impressed- I ate two (made a hideous gagging face) and threw the rest out. What a mushy mess. The consistency was weird and they tasted a little like feet. Yes, feet. Now perhaps this was more mental than not since I was pretty sure going in that I wouldn't like them. But feet? Ew.

Since I had some more in the fridge, I decided to make them again last night and give them one more chance. This time I roasted them at 400 degrees just tossed in a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Roasting is my new favorite way to cook everything. This was like night and day! Why would anyone ever make a brussel sprout any other way?? They were delicious. I had to eat the entire plate before I would admit it though. I kept cautiously eating one after another, waiting for one to taste bad (read:feet like)  but it didn't happen. Once roasted they had a different texture, not mushy, more like potato maybe? So I can now say that I like brussel sprouts and can in good conscience recommend them to others. If you've never had a brussel sprout get on it! You might be pleasantly surprised. Just make sure to roast them, I warned you.