US meets UK

The only perk I can see, is that I don’t have to do the dishes. Thankfully, if I cook - Nick will do the dishes. So, we’ve nipped that problem in the bud.

In reality, there are many reasons, perhaps the largest being that our skill has outpaced our budget. We’ve gotten pretty gosh darn great at cooking meals, but at this moment in time I wouldn’t want to drop $50 per person for a meal. Now that I’ve started to cook meat, we’ve really out paced ourselves. It used to be that we’d go out to dinner and Nick could get all the things that I didn’t know/wouldn’t make at home. Now? I cook the steak, and we’re both eating the same meal.

The other issue, is that for the most part I don’t know where the restaurants are getting their meat from. There are a few restaurants, that will tell you where it comes from, and for that I’m grateful because it prevents me from having to rely on the vegetarian option. Places like the Abbey in Baltimore, or the Founding Farmers in DC supply you with that information. So when I’m home I eat steak, but when I’m out I’m constantly getting the salad or whatever the non-pasta vegetarian option is.

Which brings me back to the beginning - if I can make steak at home for less than I pay to go out and eat vegetables… why should I?

We rented Julie & Julia from Redbox the other night, and I was sorely disappointed. As much as I love Amy Adams and Meryl Streep, I couldn’t love the characters. That’s unfair, I liked Julia Child and I identified with her as a trailing spouse and an expat - but i couldn’t stomach Julie Powell.

I was however, inspired to attempt boeuf bourguignon. The reason cooking beef and other meat dishes is difficult for me is that I have no frame of reference. I’ve never had boeuf bourguignon, so I have no idea how it’s supposed to taste, or what the final product should be.  I wanted to use the Julia Child recipe, but I also wanted to cook it in a clay pot. Clay pots (romertopfs) are amazing, if you cook meat (or even veg) you should certainly invest in one. It cooks the food faster, infuses it with more juice and in general enriches the flavor of your food.

(source)

Which is how I came to make the boeuf bourguignon as if Julia Child were actually from Africa, and used a clay pot. I also put more veggies in than she called for, one carrot?! Pish posh, put in three.

(not my boeuf bourguignon… my carrots were smaller…)

So, in case you want to make my franken boeuf bourguignon this is how it goes. There are no pictures, because I was too concerned about messing up to take them. I also used cornstarch instead of flour because my mother can’t consume gluten. So, feel free to change that. I made the beef stock the night before, using 3 lbs of soup bones, some carrots, carrot tops, leeks and onions that I roasted before sticking in a slow cooker, I may have added wine to it as well, I can’t remember anymore!

In case you’re getting into making your own stocks you should know this. Chicken stock is waaaaaay easier to make than beef stock. It isn’t that beef stock is complicated per say, it’s just that Chicken is easier. Or rather, that beef is more involved-you need to be involved with your beef stock.

So,  let’s pretend your stock is made and skimmed and in the fridge awaiting your return. And yesterday you put in your 3lbs of beef cubes in a bag with red wine. Or do it that morning because your forgot… it’s your choice. You’ve also soaked your clay pot for at least 20 min.  Grab a burgundy wine or, a pinot noir, pour yourself a glass.

Clean and chop your carrots into little circles, and strip your pearl onions of their skins. Rub your mushrooms, remove the stalks and chop in half. Put the carrots and onions to the side, put the mushrooms to the side, but separate.

Cut your bacon into tiny strips, Julia says to take the rind off, but this caused me to massacre the bacon, in the future I won’t be derinding. Cut them into lardons, aka sticks. Pat your beef with paper towels and then in small batches powder them with cornstarch (or flour). Plop in 2Tbs of olive oil to your pan and bang the bacon, with some of the powdered beef cubes in as well. Let them brown on all sides and remove to your clay pot. The flour/cornstarch allows the beef to create a little crust.

Once you’ve finished with the beef braising, toss your onions and carrots into the pan you’ve just been using.  Add more bacon fat or butter as needed. Season your beef with salt and pepper. Add tomato paste to the clay pot/beef, about a 1/2 tablespoon. Crush 3 cloves of garlic, and add a teaspoon of fresh thyme to the pot. Crumple a bay leaf while you’re at it and pop a clove in.

Once you’ve browned all the onions and carrots add them to the clay pot. Repeat with the mushrooms, but use more butter instead of bacon fat. Pour in 2 cups of the red wine, and 1 cup of the stock.  If you have room, add a bit more stock - I did not have room. So now I have lots of extra beef stock, gluten free french onion soup perhaps?

Stick it in the oven at 450 for an hour and half. Julia Child’s recipe calls for several hours, but I’m into instant gratification and an hour and half is about all I could wait for. Nick roasted potatoes, my mother made a fantastic field greens/berry salad and a brilliant pavlova to accompany the meal.  Our Sunday Dinners have stepped up to a new level.

What is a recipe you’ve challenged yourself with lately?

I couldn’t stop making them. First I tried them the “That Wife” way, and they were good. Then I tried them the Brownie Points way, and they were (surprisingly) even better! It’s the covering of the pot that makes the difference for the sugar. I made a few for my bee friends:

(bee cutter available at Sur La Table)

Then for Baking Gals with Amy I made a vanilla batch and a peppermint batch. I *may* have used too much peppermint extract, it turns out I needed peppermint oil instead and didn’t run out to buy any. Whoopsies….

But they were pretty and delicious! I made 4 batches in 2 weeks. I think I’m over marshmallows for awhile. Have you ever made them? What’s your method?

Do you know what a pavlova is? It’s Nick’s favorite dessert, and I attempted to make it for him a few months ago. This is what a pavlova should look like:

This is what mine looked like before it went into the oven:

This is what it looked like when it came out of the oven:

Pavlova FAIL. Instead of attempting it myself again, I’ve farmed out the work to my sister and mother. Both of their (non chocolate) pavlovas have turned out great. I’m still gun shy though - I don’t want to fail so hard again!

What’s been your biggest dessert (or cooking) FAIL?

It was a bad, bad idea. It was great meat from Polyface farm, grass-fed and pastured from a responsible farm. A few friends, Nick and I all journeyed down to Polyface 2 months ago (perhaps I should blog about that…) and toured the farm before grabbing some meat to take back with us.

I really wanted to go to the farm and I was pleased everyone agreed to go, but this post isn’t about the farm - it’s about the burger. We also picked up steak in addition to the ground beef from the other night and I thought I should try a burger before attempting a steak.

I managed to eat half before I felt sick, then attempted to eat a quarter more and eventually I had to quit. Then I went upstairs and wished I had just stayed mostly vegetarian*. Since the burger day, I have tried to eat a steak (also from Polyface) and it was the bomb. So, I’ve decided that steak > burger.

*by mostly vegetarian I mean that I eat mostly vegetables and sometimes fish. Recently, I tried bacon on my veggie burger.

I’ve been converted. When we returned home after the snowpocalypse  we (of course) made s’mores. Since Nick went shopping for the s’more materials he returned with these

and these

and oddly enough, strawberry marshmallows.  I didn’t feel like waiting for marshmallows to harden if I made them, so he tried to buy them at Harris Teeter - but they were all out! Except for Strawberry or Tutti-Fruti flavors and he wisely chose strawberry.Which lent an interesting, but not horrible flavor.

mmmm, decontructed posh s’more.

What do you consider your necessities for a s’more?

If you’re looking for a quick, last minute favor idea I have the recipe for you!  I tried my friend’s mother’s Peanut Butter and Chocolate fudge last week and it was so great I begged for the recipe right then and there! Lucky for me, it’s so easy you can remember it. It’s quick to make and really the only requirement is that you have a bit of patience and some upper body strength.  I have a 4th of July cookout today and forgot to make something - luckily we had all the ingredients in the house because I was feeling a bit too lazy to go to the store right before a holiday.

Start by melting your butter and peanut butter in your pot. Yes, it looks gross. No, there is no way to justify this as a diet treat.

Then add your sifted cocoa powder and vanilla extract.

Next, sift your confectioners sugar into the pot a bit at a time, mixing it completely each time. This is where your upper body strength and patience comes in handy.

Mix it ALLLLL together and stick into a 9×13 pan.  Place paper towels on top and weight with light objects (I used two boxes of crackers).  Replace your paper towels every so often once they’re full of oil, I did it about 3 times.  Let the fudge sit for 2 hours before cutting up.

OM NOM NOM.

Here is the tiny version:

Since we’re considering Mrs. Kitten’s lavender bud throw project it looks like we’re going to have an serious excess of glassine bags.  Which would be perfect for these fudgy favors or OOT treats!

Have you pondered making your own favors?

There’s a twist to this edition of “Miss It, Make It”, it’s sort of in reverse.  I know much of what I’ve posted has to do with things I miss in the US that are difficult to acquire in the US.  This time though, I wanted to figure out how to recreate one of my new favorite treats from the UK to eat in the US.

The naked bars are delicious! I’m not 100% sure I can or can’t get them in the US, but I attempted an at home version anyway.

I found the recipe here, after finding it on Food Gawker - after finding Food Gawker from That Wife.  Did you follow? Would you like a tip guys? It’s called READ THE RECIPE. Simple I know…However, I did not read the recipe the whole way through.  Instead of saving the cinnamon to roll these balls of deliciousness in I put all 4 tablespoons into the mix. Can you see the large layer of cinnamon?

They still taste delicious even though they’re a bit (okay, a lot) on the cinnamon-y side. From mound of chocolaty goop:

To neatly rolled balls of deliciousness.

OM NOM NOM.  Nutritional info available here, although it says they’re high in sugar Calorie Count forgets that it isn’t high in refined sugar. Woo hoo!

What should I call these? “Raw cinnamon truffles” and “balls of deliciousness” just isn’t cutting it for me…

I can’t think of a single place I’ve lived where I couldn’t find sushi…until now.  Lancaster (UK) has tons of great Indian restaurants, a few cute Italian places and several (unsurprisingly) English Pubs - but no sushi can be found.

So we bought our own sushi mat, I wrapped it in plastic wrap like The Pioneer Woman told me to and purchased the necessary ingredients.  In case you’re in the UK, you don’t necessarily need to hunt down the specialty shop (like I did) for your nori - Sainsburys carries nori! Go Figure.

For my first experience I tried to keep it simple and purchased “krab”, avocado, cucumber and sesame seeds. However, I used brown rice and it was wonderful! While on a work trip to Houston I went to dinner with my friend’s family and had fantastic sushi with brown rice, so I decided to use it for my at home version.

Then I placed the rice first, then the nori, then the fillings and rolled - following Pioneer Woman’s Instructions.  What did I learn from my sushi experience? “Rice inside” rolls are way easier (and prettier) for first time sushi makers.  The only down side being I couldn’t cover them with the toasted sesame seeds Nick likes.

My other tip, use a sharp, sharp knife.  We had a dull one (even though Nick re-sharpened it, it was still pretty dull) and we pretty much had to saw through the roll.  This loosens the integrity of your roll and shakes the rice off if it’s a “rice outside” roll.

You can see the difference between the “rice inside” vs “rice outside” ones…and why I angled the plate to try and show only the “pretty” ones.  They were all delicious though, and we enjoyed with a lovely view of the English countryside.  Next time though, I’ll be making miso soup and edamame (sans salt) to enjoy with them!

Have you ever tried making sushi? Can you find it near-by?

There are lots of reasons that motivate people to lose weight.  For some (like Ash is Fit) it’s a wedding, for others it’s playing with their soon to be born children without getting winded, for Seth Rogan - it’s playing the Green Hornet. For me? It’s a combination, I’m tired of being overweight and blaming my knee surgery (it was 2 years ago, I need to get over it), I don’t want my wedding pictures to feature an overweight stranger, and most importantly? An audition in June for a local dance company.  I want to be back to my fit, healthy and dancing self.

Here are a few blogs that continue to inspire me:

I first saw Tyler on the Consumerist, I started following his blog, and then I was inspired by him - he’s gone from 344 pounds to 279 pounds in 13 weeks. He writes about his weight loss journey and blogs about his calories, weight, exercise and everything in between.  He even posts pictures about himself and clearly has more cojones than I do.  He’s run a 1 minute pledge on his blog - for every comment he promised to work out for 1 minute on the elliptical at level 14 (he ended up with over 90 comments!). Sure, he’s not losing weight for his wedding, but that doesn’t stop him from inspiring me!

My other favorite weight loss blog (which Miss Ballet Flat also loves) is Ash is Fit. I recently checked out her cooking site and tweaked her Chili Bean Burgers.  Mr.D (a meat lover) actually begged me to make them again in the same week! Ashley has lost almost 80 pounds in 2 years and was motivated to lose weight for her wedding.  I always figure if Ashley can  shred levels 2 and 3 back to back then I can at least do level 1 or 2 back to back.

Of course, no Weddingbee inspiration would be complete without a bit of bee lovin.  Mrs. Avocado continually inspires me as That Wife. A few months ago I would delete ALOT of pictures of myself - I just really wasn’t satisfied with the way I looked, so I’d delete the photos.  A post of her’s reminded me I should keep them so I have something for before and afters and that just because I didn’t like something doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. What other bees inspire me? Obvi there’s Miss Meatball and her flab to fab series, but I also Gchat with Miss Ballet Flat daily, she sends me clips of the Biggest Loser and we gab about our days, diet and fitness.

I’ve started a weight loss race among my friends, inspired from Budget Beautiful. Instead of starting with 20lb we’re shooting for 10lbs and doing the race in legs, so that the goals are tiny and manageable. Obviously, this race isn’t for people that are at a healthy weight, it’s for people with more than 10lbs to lose. It’s been pretty fun so far, everyone sends a check in weight on Friday and I’m creating little charts for my friends.

What inspires you to be healthy?