Posts Tagged “cooking”

No aprons were harmed in the making of this post

Posted on September 28, 2012 by Cathryn

I was trying to come up with our “couple name” and I realized we don’t have one. Curthryn? Cartis? These are terrible options. Vote in the comments for your favorite.

Our schedules are awful this semester, and we never ever see each other. I leave in the mornings and stay in class all day, and Curtis has night classes until 9-9:30 every night. We try to eat a late dinner together for some semblance of normalcy, but neither of us want to be cooking at 9:30, so that means we want something ready to eat when he gets home.

So in an attempt for readiness, we pre-made a pasta bake on Sunday. The only thing is, we didn’t have anything off of either of these recipes so we had to … make due.

FIRST WE SUITED UP WITH APRONS.

Our pantry may look stocked, but I guarantee the canned goods are mostly black beans and diced tomatoes. Only one of which went into this dish.

I want to be in a Better Homes and Gardens spread real bad.

TADA! For every ingredient we didn’t have, we replaced it with cheese. I swear we used a fourth of a can of grated parmesan in it. A whole container of ricotta, and a whole container of feta, too. It was … ill-advised. But! I made my own tomato sauce using plain sauce and my own spices, and that turned out great! I’m a real descendant of a real Italian now!

Tagged: cooking, recipes | 2 Comments

MSG is my kryptonite

Posted on April 13, 2012 by Cathryn

What’s MSG? It’s a food additive. Good or bad, I have pretty conclusive evidence that it gives me profound headaches.

“So just avoid it!” you would say.

BUT I CAN’T. It is in things I love, such as ramen noodles. Okay–maybe I’m better off just not eating ramen noodles. They’re not the pinnacle of nutrition or anything. But nevertheless, I discovered a recipe for them while Pinteresting and I got some ideas for how to make ramen without having to get headaches!

Just throw the flavor packet away and use broth and vegetables, duh.

I’M SORRY MY PICUTRES LOOK DUMB. I can’t get Instagram. My phone is too old.

Anyway, I really like making my own ramen noodles now. It’s all the fun of ramen plus slightly more nutrition content AND I watched Dr. Oz make his own ramen noodle soup one time. So that makes it legit.

I guess.

(Not really, Dr. Oz.)

Tagged: cooking, food | 1 Comment

Just call me Giada de Laurentiis.

Posted on January 22, 2012 by Cathryn

I was watching the Food Network last weekend, and I forced myself to sit through an episode of Giada at Home or whatever her dumb show is called.

If I haven’t already mentioned this a million times, I kind of hate Giada de Laurentiis. But I know good food when I see it. I just have to put the show on mute and cover the top half of the TV with a blanket so I don’t have to look at her dumb facial expressions. Or hear her dumb voice. (I’m mean, I’ll stop.)

Giada did an episode with spicy dishes and I was intrigued by a particular ravioli recipe because it 1) required practically no work, and 2) was spicy. When a recipe only has about 3 steps and less than 10 ingredients in it, I worry that it may turn out bland.

Not the case.

I don't have a picture of the ones I made because it was all eaten IMMEDIATELY.

The pasta was really good, and the longest part of the process was waiting for 3 quarts of water to boil to cook a pound of ravioli. And during that time I just played on the Internet so it wasn’t work at all!

I highly recommend the recipe. Touche, Giada. Touche.

Tagged: cooking, food, italian dishes, the food network | 1 Comment

Happy Thanksgiving!

Posted on November 26, 2010 by Cathryn

I know, I’m way too late for this post. It’s already Friday. BLACK Friday. But Happy Thanksgiving anyway!! I hope you all had a wonderful time!

We had a normal menu this year, although I convinced my mom to increase the sweet potato casserole by 50%. I must say that I hate the term “casserole” because it sounds like something nasty. These sweet potatoes are DELICIOUS. You all have probably had something similar–it’s sweet potato goop topped with brown sugar and pecans. Some varieties include marshmallows. It’s almost too sinfully dessert-like to include on a dinner plate.

This year, I piled my first plate with so much food that I couldn’t fit corn or cranberry sauce (we use the gelatin kind because it is delicious). It was tragic.

I also jumped on board making a second dessert because mom’s pumpkin cheesecake pie turned out dodgy. I wanted to do another pumpkin thing because we had extra pumpkin anyway, and I actually had an intense pumpkin bar recipe from Ashley that got mysteriously left on the desk in my Indianapolis apartment. Drat. Some Internet searching discovered several recipes that reported a cake-like result. I finally settled on Paula Deen’s pumpkin bar recipe.

I kid you not, there is NO BUTTER IN IT. Well, there is some in the icing mix, but I didn’t make the icing. Why make icing when it’s on sale for $1.49 at Kroger? Yeah, right.

They turned out exactly like in the picture, and they tasted great! They were still very cake-like, though a little more dense, and perhaps manageable to eat with your hands. But forks are much more clean.