Cooking and baking for people all around is a generous and sweet gesture, particularly for people who have experienced life-changing events.  Someone you know just had a baby?  Make them a big pan of lasagna (or any other large dish that freezes beautifully and makes great leftovers) and hand deliver it with a teddy bear.  A friend just lost family member?  Cake and a HUGE pot of spaghetti.  In times like that, the last thing a person wants to do is think about what to make for dinner.

Having friends feed you and take care of you in an inadvertently nurturing way is a great thing.  It might not be appreciated much during the moment, (and that’s OK) but these people will look back on this and remember that you are there for them.  And that’s what everybody wants a good friend to know, right?  We’re here for them to the best of our abilities…even in times where the circumstances are a little hard for us to relate to and a little awkward to talk about.  Make them some food.

One of my recent favorite food gifts was to a friend who is experiencing a bit of a dry spell in the love department.  To show my sympathy for such an atrocious state of being, I mailed her a box of rich chocolate cupcakes.  I sent her a card with the cupcakes expressing my regret at her becoming “persona non nookie” of her town.  We started joking and the cupcakes slowly started being called the non nookie cupcakes.  I love this.  When we think of sending sympathy gifts, our minds immediately turn to death in the family and such.  Why not send a non nookie food gift?  It’s my invention people and it’s a terrific idea!  I should look into nailing down a day on the calendar and calling it Sympathy for All Persons Suffering Non Nookie Day or SAPSNN Day.  Ok, it needs work, but there aren’t many people out there who can’t say that at some time or another the lack of physical love would be nice to forget in a box of gooey chocolate baked goods.

A picture of the very first non nookie cupcake.  Picture courtesy of the persona non nookie to whom they were gifted.

Don’t be afraid to mail baked goods to far-away friends.  Here is a great how-to article on packaging and mailing a cake, but it would work equally well with cupcakes, pies, or cookies.  And also, I personally never get anything interesting in the mail.  A box of cookies would be a great break-up in the horrific routine of fliers and ads for car dealerships.  If you want to mail something other than baked goods, I’d either forget about that idea or get some dry ice and send that stuff in a deep freeze.

We all eat.  Most of us enjoy eating.  It’s better than sending a basket of soaps.

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‘Twas not always so, amigos.  In the past, when you ate a salad, it was an iceberg salad with bottled dressing.  Hamburger was the most used meat in most houses.  If you mentioned the word “organic” to the average person, they would ask what the hell you were talking about.  And taking pretty pictures of the food you just prepared?  Never done.  Then, the food revolution started in the late 90s and early millennium and people started taking a bit more notice of the beautiful subtleties of food and the way it can be prepared and served.  Now when you eat salad, it could mean any sort of mixture of leafy greens with any number of homemade dressings and vinaigrettes  and chicken breasts have replaced hamburger in meal-wide prominence.

Yet, for many of us, back when this revolution started, we were only able to watch from the sidelines.  While people were going on and on about homemade gourmet, there were those of us whose budgets prevented us from even dreaming of having steak more than once a year.  We watched Food Network on our televisions, drooling over the food being prepared all the while glaring at our warmed up bowl of canned soup.  It was the best of times, but for some of us, it plain sucked.

Then Starvin’ With Louis came along.  In about 2005, a web show featuring an average guy making interesting meals out of cheap ingredients (RAMEN NOODLES, PEOPLE) blew up on the internet.  I was there from the beginning.  I watched every episode.  It was funny.  It was gritty.  It was some big dude making food and feeding it to his roommates who acted like they’d lost a dare by having to eat the food.  In the end, though, the food was enjoyed by the guinea pigs and Louis, the cook, was hailed as a culinary genius to the budget-strapped masses.

I loved it.  Loved every single episode.  I still do.  Every few months I dig up some of the episodes and watch them and get a good giggle.  Yes, I still watch.  Do you know what sucks about that?  Nobody else seems to be shooting any love at this gang of Boston film makers.  No sponsors.  No fans (I’m one of only 18 followers on their Twitter page, which never tweets).  Their videos are all up on YouTube, but are hard to find in any sort of organized way and the loading of each video can be sketchy.  They have a now defunct blog, and sometimes one of the crew members has a webpage with all of the videos and more information…but those get shut down all the freaking time.  There’s never a reliable and constant source anymore…and I can’t understand that.  This show was featured as one of the 10 Best Podcasts in 2005 by Wired Magazine.  How is this allowed to happen?  Do you have any idea how big it is to be recognized by Wired Magazine??

It is my understanding that things just sort of lost steam with the show.  Ideas were running thin, data was lost, sponsorship was not consistent, and these guys had to pay the bills.  I understand.  But why the lack of archives?  Why the lack of fans?  Why not make one episode a year just to make sure people remember?  We need someone like Louis again!  We need someone to remind us that these terrible ingredients can be used in more imaginative ways and that drinking beer while cooking is a good thing!

This post is sort of my half-assed attempt to plead with Louis Scheele and Mike Pecci to please show that little web show a little bit of love.  If hosting is a problem, CONTACT ME and maybe I can help you (seriously, my husband works in this field and he knows his stuff!).  Time and money can’t be so constraining that you can’t at least throw up the old videos in a place better than effing YouTube.  Ramen and hotdogs are still cheap!  Generic SPAM is still cheap!  Asian chili sauce will still make your roommates twist in agony!

Here is the very first episode of the show.  It’s a classic.

Part 1

Part 2

Since I am putting this post on the internet, I thought it appropriate to really show my fandom but actually MAKING a Lou dish.  Up until this weekend, I’ve only watched the shows and had never made a recipe.

I made Ramen Hotdog Chop Suey.  My husband and I stared into the wok while I was making it, always keeping in mind that we could always have PB&J if this didn’t work out.  But as the dish came to a finish (it didn’t take long at all to make) it started smelling really good.  I served it up and took my first bite.

“Holy crap,” I said.  “It’s kinda good!”

And it was.  It’s not gourmet and I don’t think I’d pay to eat it in a restaurant, but it was still pretty good!  Of course I didn’t use Pabst Blue Ribbon beer (see previous post about crappy beer.  I used Yuengling), and I used a better quality hotdog simply because those are what I always have in the house, but it was a very neat and tasty dish.

I strongly urge you to check these episodes out for yourself.  I might do a few more posts to show that I am a Starvin’ With Louis fangirl.  And to keep your attention on the subject.

Enjoy!

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Look at your plate.

How colorful is the meal you are about to eat?  Is it mostly a beige and brown meal?  Believe it or not, by eating a meal that is full of natural (i.e. they occur in the food naturally and not by process) color, you are pretty safe in assuming that you are eating a meal full of essential vitamins and minerals.  You want to eat food that is dark and green, dark blue/purple, bright orange, and red.  When you are eating processed food and fried food, the colors will tend to be a beige and/or brown color.  While this is fine in smaller portions for certain meals, you certainly don’t want it to make up the bulk of your meal.

Avocado is a must.

Take a quick read why.

In general, the avocado is tasteless or very mild in taste.  It’s very easy to punch up the flavor with herbs, citrus, and spices.  Use simple mashed up avocado in place of mayonnaise on your turkey sandwich.  Make a big bowl of creamy guacamole and serve it with pork chops or chicken breasts instead of just tortilla chips.  Use it as a way to make a smoothie extra creamy and thick.  Add it to a citrus based pasta salad for an extra punch.  It’s recommended that you try to consume avocado at least 3 times a week.  Since they can be expensive, though, try for a once a week consumption.

FISH FISH FISH FISH.

Fish is good….for the most part.  Read this article.  I’ll wait.

Fish is super good for you to eat, again for the most part.  If you are pregnant or have a frail condition, you certainly want to avoid larger fish such as tuna, shark, swordfish, and other huge fish to avoid mercury poisoning.  We like to hear about those lovely Omega 3 Fatty Acids and oily fish are one of the best places to get it.  Salmon is good.  Sardines are great.  Mackerel is divine.  The internet is flooded with thousands of recipes for fish.

If you’re still one of those people who hate fish?  Look, you really ought to try to get your palate used to it.  Start with a very mild fish like flounder and start working your way up.  Try different recipes.  Use fresh ingredients.  Citrus and fresh herbs make almost any fish taste better.

Dark Leafy Greens

I know that I made mention of these above, but this category is seriously one of the most important. It’s a super food.  No joke.  Here, read this.

I’ll tell you one thing, my freezer ALWAYS has frozen broccoli and spinach.  They can sometimes be flat and the taste can get old, so you turn to the internet to spice things up.  One of my favorite ways to spice up a bag of frozen spinach is to add a can of stewed tomatoes and about a teaspoon of curry powder along with a pinch of salt and pepper.  It makes a great side dish to any week night meal.  And honestly, I prefer my broccoli steamed with no flavorings added.

In the summer, when all of those beautiful salad mixes are out, I like to buy some and have side salads with ever meal dressed with a simple lemon vinaigrette ( I almost never buy salad dressing).

Whole Grains

Hugely important in every diet.  Here’s a short article.

One of the easiest grains to have access to is brown rice.  I’ll be honest with you, I do not care for brown rice and planned to never buy it again.  However, I’ve decided to give it another chance.  I recently read that, instead of preparing brown rice the way you might prepare white rice, bake it.  So, I’m going to give it a whirl.

My favorite whole grain is bulgur wheat.  I love Tabbouleh.  You can find so many recipes for it online and you can find bulgur wheat quite easily in most supermarkets.

Don’t forget about oatmeal.  I try to eat oatmeal for breakfast every day.  I get SICK TO DEATH of it, but I still try to eat it.  I buy dried fruit and add a little bit every morning to make it more interesting.

Elementary School should have taught you the “elementaries”.

The rest of the important stuff, you should remember from elementary school.  Do you remember the food pyramid?  We need to remember that.  Remember being taught the difference between processed sugars and natural sugars?  Here’s a must read on that subject.

It’s still pretty simple.  Eat your fruits and vegetables.  Drink lots of water.  You need calcium (either through dairy or other means).  Beans are good for you.  You don’t need more than 4 oz. of lean meat at your evening meal.  Dessert is nice, but not needed.  Snacks are recommended but should consist of nuts and fruit instead of candy bars and potato chips.

As I said before, I am not a nutritionist.  I’m just a mom and a housewife who has learned these very simple facts concerning nutrition.  The most unfortunate thing about eating healthy is that it is so much more expensive than eating junk.

A few things that I always keep on hand to help me with this are frozen fruits and vegetables (not as perishable and more affordable in the long run), canned tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes, and diced tomatoes.  Don’t buy premade tomato sauce as it can contain a lot of unhealthy ingredients that you don’t want…and it’s way more expensive.  I try to buy whole grain pasta (but read the labels on those.  They aren’t always really whole grain).  And I’ve always got both green and black tea on hand.  Oh, did I forget to mention tea?  Ok, here:

Drink Tea.

Green tea is thought to be great, but is lacking real world evidence.  So what?  It’s loaded with antioxidants!  Read this.

Although it isn’t praised as much as green tea, black tea is super too!  Read this.

As you know, I like to make homemade (i.e. not made from a pre-sweetened powder) iced tea.  I also like to make iced green tea.  We love it and drink it by the gallon!

There.  That about covers all of my personal knowledge concerning nutrition.  I’m by no means a professional and I’m sure I still have a thing or two to learn.  I hope someone out there finds this helpful.

Enjoy!

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1. Which expensive electronic device do you or your children most admire? Right now, it’s definitely the Wii.

2. Do you ever use your computer in the kitchen? Yes.

3. What ratio of new recipes cooked in your home come from the Internet vs from a cookbook you own? Only a very small amount come from the internet.  Out of ten new recipes that I try, usually only 2 come from the internet.

4. Does your family regard a recipe as something printed from the computer, on a handwritten card or something on the kitchen netbook? That doesn’t really apply to me.  Recipes in my kitchen come from cookbooks, a Word doc. on my computer, or a web page.  A recipe is a recipe.

5. Do you have a television or other electronic entertainment in the kitchen? I have a radio/CD player.

6. What is the eating in front of the computer rule in your house? I do it.  A lot.  And get crumbs in my keyboard all of the time.

7. How many places can you order dinner online from in your area? I still use the phone to order out.

8. What is the BEST recipe you have ever made from the Internet? Probably Italian Bread.  I don’t remember where I found it, but I was born and raised in a small Italian town (in WV, no less) and I missed perfect warm Italian bread and this recipe was very close.

9. What’s the least used kitchen gadget in your home? My Fondue pot.  I love it, I just rarely make fondue.

10. What is the oddest recipe your family has tried after seeing it on the Internet? I don’t know.  I’m boring and usually steer clear of the weird stuff.

I get in trouble a lot for all of the crumbs in the keyboard

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Things around here have been crazy, to say the least.  We are busy trying to get settled into our new house, working on fixing up a few rooms, and my laptop is broken.  Why should this have any effect on this site?  Well, allow me to vent/complain/explain.

There’s not much time to create any fabulous meals here.  We’re eating your basic pork chops and chicken breasts quite a lot.  And with my laptop being broken, I no longer have access to a lot of the recipes that I had set aside to try out specifically for this site.  So I’m a little grumpy about all of this.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.  1)  It would appear that my laptop is not broken beyond repair and I am hoping to have it back up and running soon.  2)  Sometime in late spring we will begin the renovations on the itty bitty teeny tiny kitchen.  Since it is kitchen-related, I will be sharing the experience right here on this site.  It will be lots of fun for you all to read even though it won’t be much fun for me to be doing…but we all love to watch a renovation take place, especially when we aren’t having to do the work.  That will be fun, won’t it?

Until then, my friends, I will try to remember to get on here and leave the occasional food post with my sub-par photographs.  Until then, Ciao.

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My pizza stone is my very dear friend.  First of all, I like to use it to make pizza.  On homemade pizza, I prefer a thin and crispy crust and a pizza stone is really the only way to achieve that in a standard oven.

But as time wore on and my cooking diversified (compared to what it used to be) I found another really awesome use for my pizza stone.  I can use it to make Naan!

In case you are unaware, Naan is a leavened Indian flat bread.  It’s usually made in a tandoor oven, but since most American kitchens do not have a tandoor, I discovered that my pizza stone can help me achieve the crazy hot surface that I needed to make a perfect Naan.

I put the pizza stone into a cold oven, and then crank the heat to the max.  I let the pizza stone sit in the maximum heat of my oven for 30 minutes before putting the Naan dough on the stone.  (WARNING:  This thing is insanely HOT!  Use every precaution when doing this.  It only takes a microsecond of contact for you to get a very nasty burn…trust me…I know.)

Once the Naan is on the pizza stone, I turn the broiler on high so that the top of the bread will cook.  It only takes about 3 minutes for the bread to cook fully in this fashion.

Once the Naan is through cooking, I like to finish it by basting a small amount of vegetable oil over the top, sprinkling with some finely minced garlic, and sprinkling with some chopped fresh cilantro.

I love Naan and make it every time I make an Indian dish for dinner.  I use the recipe from the Indian cookbook that I’ve linked to probably a thousand times.

There are many wonderful recipes for Naan out there and I suggest you try it out.  Pizza stones are readily available here, here, here, and here.  Take your pick.  Just don’t underestimate the power or a porous stone that you can heat to a bajillion degrees.  I’m sure I’ll find many more uses for this thing in the years to come.

Also, remember that these tools don’t mix well with soap.  Just wipe them down if you can.

Go and get one!  Start making your own pizza crusts with whole grain flour!  Make some Naan!  French fries work well on this baby too!

Enjoy!

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Alas, it is a necessity in my life.  I have to do it at least once a month.  I can handle those enormous once a month trips, I can handle it.  What irritates me are all of those smaller trips in between where only one or two things need to be procured.  A gallon of milk.  Diapers.  A special ingredient for the dinner I want to make.  I hate those trips.

Luckily, as time goes on, my shopping has become more efficient and I am able to minimize the number of those small runs.  I’ve learned to stock my home in such a way that it lasts the full month, but I’ve also learned to make a lot of things homemade so that I don’t have to worry about buying them.  One of these things is yogurt.  My son eats yogurt for breakfast every morning and I like to always have yogurt on hand because I LOVE Indian food and yogurt is a big part of that cuisine.

It was actually from an Indian cookbook that I was able to first learn how to make yogurt.  I messed it up quite a few times, but I figured out a few tricks that might help.

Start off with a quart of milk.  You can use any milk you like, I use whole milk, but you can use 2% or 1%.

Bring the milk to a boil in a large heavy pot and stir constantly.  When the milk starts to rise, remove it from the heat.  Allow the milk to cool slightly.  Don’t let it get to room temperature, you want it to be warm to the touch, but not hot.

You need some “starter” for this.  Starter is about 2 Tablespoons of yogurt that you have.  You can use purchased yogurt from the dairy aisle.  That’s what I use.

Put the yogurt in a heat-safe large bowl and whisk it until it is smooth.  Slowly add the warm milk, whisking all the while.

Make sure that the yogurt and milk are thoroughly incorporated.

Now you need to let the yogurt set up.  You need a warm place for this.  I like to use my oven.  If your oven has a “WARM” setting, start this while the milk is still boiling.  If your oven doesn’t, the simply set the oven to it’s lowest temperature (mine goes only as low as 170 degrees F.) and let it preheat while you are preparing the yogurt.  Turn the heat off before you put the bowl inside and make a warm and snuggly place for the bowl to sit.

I put a thick dish towel on the oven rack, the bowl on the towel, and then another thick towel over the bowl.  This needs to be a gently warmed environment so the yogurt sets up correctly.  It’s not as hard as it sounds.  It takes 8 hours for the yogurt to set up.  Take a peek about 4-5 hours in and if the oven isn’t warm, set the warmer on again for 5 minutes and turn it off before it gets too hot.

Do this right and you’ll have your own homemade yogurt.  And you won’t have to go to the store to buy one lousy little tub.  Your welcome.

Enjoy!

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It was my mother-in-law who got me turned on to Wilton cake pans.  She made character-themed cakes from Wilton cake pans for her sons when they were children and they both reminisce about them to this day.  I decided that I wanted to do cakes like this for my son.

For his first birthday, Cookie Monster was the cake.  Cookie Monster was a theme to his party.  I got the Wilton food coloring gels to get the colors nice and deep.

I’ll be the first to admit that I have neither the patience or the talent to make a fancy cake.  If you look closely you can see mistakes that I made, but all in all it was an adorable cake.  The blue icing had that muppet fur look, and the basic picture is recognizable.  My son isn’t going to look at a cake like this and say, “Geez Mom, you made a ton of mistakes!  It looks so sloppy!”  It’s supposed to be fun, and it was.

It was very fun.

This year, the birthday party theme was dinosaurs.  Again, I turned to Wilton for the cake pan, and again it appeared that my novice abilities and minimal patience didn’t ruin the party at all.

Again, I used the Wilton gel food coloring because of the depth of color they achieve.  The cake and cupcakes were a rousing success and I’d like to encourage anybody out there to try these for a little one.  If it’s a niece or nephew or a son or daughter or grandchild, etc. and you want to do something special, make them a cake.  If you’re abilities worry you, just go out and buy a set of tips (Wilton makes these as well) and go to their website and pick out a cake pan that will thrill your little one the most.  They have hundreds of cake pans and many of them are in the shapes of today’s favorite children’s characters.  Each pan comes with specific instructions on how to decorate the cake and what tips to use, etc.

Also, Wilton is a big name and can be found just about anywhere.  It’s not hard to find.  I know that times are tough for some people and sometimes splurging on the bakery cake might be a bit much for some so I’d like to encourage you to look into these cakes for parties.  They are fun, make a great centerpiece, and it’s a personal think to bake a cake for someone like this.  I know that I always feel touched when I put one of these cakes before my son.  Sure, I’ve only done it twice, but it’s such a sweet tradition and I hope others might try it.

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After about 8 years of all of this activity, I ended up with a mountain of cookbooks, boxes upon boxes of recipe cards, and binders full of loose leaf paper upon which random recipes were printed or hand written.  It was a big mess and a terrible eye sore.

When we decided to make the cross-country move from Washington to Pennsylvania, we started purging a lot of our unnecessary items.  One night while resting at my kitchen table after one such purge, my eye was drawn to the messy disaster that I called my “recipe collection” and I came to the resolve that something had to be done about that disorganized dump.  As I started thumbing through my various cookbooks, it occured to me that I would realistically only use a fraction of the recipes in each culinary tome.

“Why do I keep these big bulky books when I would only use a few of these recipes?”

I realized that I asked myself the same question many years ago when it came down to cd’s vs. mp3′s.  I chose to go digital.  Why not go digital with my recipes?  My main personal computer is a laptop and it’s usually sitting in my kitchen anyhow..why not take the time to take the recipes from my cookbooks, put them all in a .doc and keep it on my computer?

I’m doing that right now.  It’s been a long and tedious process.  I really didn’t realize that I had that many recipes lying around.  At the beginning of this process, I caught myself only writing out the recipes for desserts.  When I cook meals, I am more likely to throw things together rather than use a recipe.

“But what about SmellMyPlate?”  I asked myself.  “I need dinner recipes to prepare and share on my website!”  Well that more than tripled the original number of recipes I had picked out.  I’m at about 400 recipes right now and I’m still not seeing an end in sight.  This process is making me more organized and getting rid of some terrible clutter, but it’s been a lot of time and work.

I was uncertain about my comfort levels of having all of my recipes digitized, so I went to my local department store, and bought about 6 cute and matching 3-ring binders and some page protectors so that I can print out all of the recipes and sort them out by Appetizers, Side Dishes, Main Dishes, Beverages, Desserts, and Party Dishes.  This way I can still have recipes in paper form and they will be organized and tidy.

I see so many kitchens with piles of cookbooks and loose leaf paper recipes stuffed into corners.  I used to be the owner of one of those kitchens and it drove me absolutely batty.  I’m sure that this isn’t an original idea, but I’m so happy to be getting some recipe organization going on in my life!

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I wanted to give it a first try in a dish where I could tell if it had a vanilla taste to it or if I was just using tinted rum:  French Toast.  I always add a swill of vanilla extract to my egg wash for French Toast for a little extra flavor.  I was very happy when I served this breakfast and it tasted exactly as it always does.  Needless to say, I was feeling very pleased with myself that I had whipped up a HUGE batch of homemade vanilla extract for a fraction of the price of the store-bought stuff.  You really ought to try this out.  I give it my stamp of approval (like that means anything).

On a little admin note, please forgive me if my posts are few and far between.  My family and I are relocating from the Seattle area to the Philadelphia area at the end of August.  Right now we are eating out a lot and grubbing in order to clean out the pantry and freezer.  There are no exciting meals coming out of my kitchen right now because we are focused on getting all of our belongings packed up so that they can be loaded on a truck and driven across the country, safely I hope.  However, we will be staying with my mother temporarily (when we moved to the Seattle area from West Virginia, we got our apartment over the internet without first seeing it.  We had to because we didn’t know a soul out here and it was a mistake because our first place was in a scary scary area).  My mom is a big fan of cooking and looks forward to the possibility of my helping her in the kitchen.  My posts will kick back up once we arrive and even more so when we are able to secure a place of our own.

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