The bird! Thanksgiving rules.

Dad's chicken marsala. Yum! Let the weekend of good eating begin.

My first legal drink: A strawberry margarita at On The Border

Homemade Calzones!

As I said before, last week was a nonstop calzone craving for me. I was super busy all week, and Sam and I planned on spending Saturday at his house to relax after a long week and a rough night at work. The mental plotting of the calzone I was going to make on Saturday is just about the only thing that got me through the end of the week.

Most of our recent experience with calzones comes from D.P. Dough, a calzone delivery place in Amherst that Sam and I splurge on from time to time. D.P. Dough has its downsides, though, all of which apply to all of the delivery places in the area: the food is dense, it's heavy, and you can never finish it all unless you've got one hell of an appetite. Every time I get one of their calzones, half of it sits in my fridge for a week before I throw it away. And, although they have a lot of options in addition to the custom-calzone option, they don't offer all of the ingredients that I've been craving.

So we went to Stop & Shop. Friday was pay day, so I was ready to splurge on all the best fillings I wanted. It was all planned out in my brain: I wanted spinach, broccoli, tomato, and goat cheese. Sam got black olives, mushrooms, and shredded mozzarella. Vegetables are generally cheap, and a bag of pizza dough was only $2.30. The most expensive thing was my goat cheese, but what can I say? Sometimes I have expensive taste.

The great thing about calzones is you can literally put whatever you want in them. There are no limits. You don't have to approach it like you would approach a traditional pizza. You could stuff a calzone full of chocolate and peanut butter and -- I'm going to try that. The idea of a dessert calzone is not uncommon. D.P. Dough offers one on their menu, stuffed with apples and cinnamon to be dipped in a glaze sauce. If you can have a dessert calzone, why rule out the idea of a dessert pizza? I suppose the world is still warming up to the idea.

The first thing we did to prepare our calzone was take care of washing and chopping the vegetables. I used cherry tomatoes, which I just sliced in half vertically (slicing them through their width caused them to sqeeze a little and they lost their juices to the cutting board). The broccoli was cut normally. I ripped up the bigger pieces of spinach. We set the dough in a bowl with some flower to knead it a little before separating it into two chunks for us to work with on our own. After forcing my dough to remain flat and maintain the right shape, I spread goat cheese over all of it. I chose to use spreadable cheese instead of crumbles because a) it was cheaper and b) I wanted there to be even layers of cheese when the calzone came out of the oven. After spreading the cheese, I started throwing my vegetable fillings onto one half of the dough. Sam and I both thought that I was overstuffing, but when my calzone came out of the oven some of the vegetables seemed to have shrunk. After placing all of the toppings, I folded the rest of the dough over and pinched the thing shut. Then I helped Sam with his and we put them in the oven at 475 degrees for 15 minutes. (Bake them on the middle shelf of the oven -- I put mine on the bottom and the underside of my calzone got a little burnt.)

When our calzones came out of the oven, we were afraid; they were extremely hard. We thought we'd burned them and that our dinner was ruined. Fortunately, as we sliced them in two, watched the steam escape from their cavernous interiors, drooled and took our first bites, we quickly became unafraid: they were perfect. The outside seemed hard to us at first, but the inside was soft and cooked to perfection. Sam dipped his calzone in Ragu marinara sauce that he added crushed red pepper, oregano, and red wine to.

This calzone was probably the greatest culinary success I have ever had. If I had more time, I would have loved to make the dough myself. This was the first time since I started learning how to cook that I experienced a sense of longing after devouring the calzone. An hour after eating it, I turned to Sam and said, "I miss that calzone." I would make another, bigger one right now if I could.

Problems I ran into
None! Another easy one. As long as the dough has risen enough prior to using it, this is extremely simple and extremely difficult to screw up.

Craving: Homemade Pizza

I usually try to cook something every weekend. Sometimes I miss a weekend because of school or work, so my ideas get backed up. I usually plan my weekend cooking around my weekday cravings. Today I found a recipe from the New York Times and felt completely inspired to make a homemade pizza using all of my favorite salad ingredients. I don't want to give anything away just yet, but think goat cheese and spinach. (I f#$*ing love goat cheese.)

Photos now, words later

Since Blogger will be down for two hours starting in fifteen minutes, I decided to post a photo of a Halloween-themed treat I made two weeks ago but never got around to posting. Hopefully I'll have the accompanying recipe up tonight (it's super easy and was found on other blogs, so I'll post the link from where it was found). I'll also be writing about a few other foods I made but for some reason didn't take photos of. The links to those recipes will also be posted. Until then, feast your eyes on my (slightly messed up) White Chocolate Munchkin Eyeballs!

The easiest, tastiest, and cheapest cake you'll ever make

I mean no exaggerations whatsoever when I say that this cake was the most delicious one I have ever had in my entire life. The fact that it only uses two ingredients, both of which were on sale at Stop & Shop on the day I decided to try it, only makes it that much better.

I found the recipe for this cake here on Noble Pig. It looks too easy, right? That's what I thought. It's just as easy as it looks, and I swear on my dog's life, it is incredible, tasty, sweet-but-not-gonna-give-you-a-sugar-headache, perfect cake. At least, that's what my taste buds thought, and they have never lied to me before.

All you need is yellow cake mix and a can of pumpkin. Seriously, that's it.

The recipe is incredibly straightforward. You pour the yellow cake mix (on sale for $1) and the can of pumpkin (on sale for $1.50) into a bowl and stir. I didn't have an electric mixer on-hand to mix those two sole ingredients together, so I used a spatula, and it too was just as easy. When you mix the two together, you will think that you don't have enough pumpkin. You will think that you are going to have to drive to Stop & Shop and buy another can. But just as you start to turn yourself towards the back door, still stirring, you'll notice everything blending together perfectly, and decide there won't be a need for an additional can.

The Noble Pig version of the recipe uses a homemade apple cider glaze. I decided to make a different sweet glaze, using confectioner's sugar and water. I found a recipe for it online, but ultimately decided to wing it. I put a little water into a measuring cup -- the amount of glaze I wanted, that was the amount of water I used -- and mixed in powdered sugar until it got to the consistency I wanted. Yes, it came out way too sweet, and yes, it kind of ruined everything. If you only use a little of it, though, it tastes fine. Just don't douse your cake in glaze.

There's a reason the recipe comes with a separate recipe for a glaze -- specifically a glaze, and not a frosting. When I tried to frost the cake (with Nutella), it basically crumbled under my fork. It falls apart pretty easily. However, when you're just dribbling glaze over it, there won't be any crumbling. Next time I make this cake, I have every intention of melting a little Nutella and pouring it over the cake. Total loophole.

I was afraid this would taste way too pumpkiny to be very good, but the pumpkin flavor was very subtle. The pumpkin-to-cake flavor ratio was spot-on.

Problems I ran into
No problems. Literally the easiest thing I've ever made. After eating it, I told my mom about it and insisted that I make it for dessert at Thanksgiving. Not only is it delicious and easy to make, it's also so much healthier than a normal cake, lower in fat and cholesterol because you don't have to add butter, milk, or eggs. It's been days since making this cake, and I'm still blown away by it.

I've never been this enthusiastic about a cake before. But I could get used to it.

Carbonara Saturday

This week at school is a particularly hectic one. Sam and I both have tests, papers, work, and miscellaneous other things keeping us busy. We saw it coming, so we took Saturday to head to his house. Part of the reason for our going was so that I could do some laundry and so we could both relax in a stress-free environment. The other reason was that when I get stressed out, I feel the need to cook. It's my favorite way to decompress; I like it more than watching wedding shows and napping. What made Saturday's kitchenfest so much better was that Sam wanted to cook with me.

I really wanted to take advantage of the fact that we had a full kitchen to use, and I hadn't stopped thinking about carbonara ever since the Olive Garden nightmare I'd consumed a few weeks ago. The decision was made to concoct our own version of Frank's carbonara as best we could.

Frank never wrote down his carbonara recipe, but we knew the basics. What we ended up with was not too far off the mark, but it wasn't exactly the same because we did a few things differently.

You'll need six eggs, a yellow and orange pepper, a package of bacon, some olive oil, and angel hair pasta for this recipe.

To make carbonara, you first and foremost need pasta. You can ultimately make it with any type of pasta, but we stuck with one of our favorites -- angel hair. You'll also need peppers (sweet ones, not hot ones; we used one orange and one yellow), a package (or two) of bacon, six eggs, and some olive oil. We really eyeballed everything as far as quantity of ingredients goes because neither of us had ever cooked Frank's carbonara with him. In the end, we would have benefited from more bacon because we used so much pasta. This recipe also leaves you with a TON of leftovers, so be prepared to eat nothing but carbonara for a few days straight (which, let's be honest, would be hands down the best couple days of your entire food life).

First things first: get a giant pot of water going on the stove. Since more water means a longer time waiting for it to boil, you can use the in-between time to do the rest of your prep work. Sam and I divided the duties between us to make for easier, quicker work.

You can cook your chopped up peppers in leftover bacon grease or olive oil. We chose to cook it in bacon grease after Sam's mom suggested we do so in order to save ourselves another dish to wash.

After putting the pot on, take out a cutting board and wash and dice the peppers. This was my job. At the same time, Sam cooked the bacon (with some help from his mom). It doesn't really matter which order you do this in, just keep in mind that you'll have to cook the peppers later. Per Sam's mom's suggestion, we wound up cooking our peppers in the bacon grease. Although that's not how Frank cooks his peppers (he does it in olive oil), it yielded delicious results. It was also one of the main reasons why our carbonara didn't taste exactly like Frank's; after he cooks his peppers in olive oil, he pours the entire pan -- oil and all -- into the pot of pasta. While the peppers cooked, Sam and I broke the crisped bacon into bits.

Before adding the peppers and bacon to the pasta, though, you have to add the eggs. Depending on the amount of pasta you're making, you'll want to use a different number of eggs. We used a pound-and-then-a-little-leftover-pasta-from-a-box-in-the-cabinet, and since it was going to be enough for two people, we used six eggs. Frank usually makes enough carbonara for the entire country, and uses a dozen eggs. Before adding the eggs to the pasta, though, crack them into a measuring cup and scramble them. When you pour them into the freshly-strained pasta, the heat in the pot cooks them. The angel hair becomes coated in subtle eggy flavor. It is to die for.

After adding the eggs and mixing the pasta, you can add your peppers and ripped-up bacon. At this point, you're essentially finished. This is where we realized the one thing we forgot, a small yet potentially crucial ingredient: garlic. We had originally planned to add garlic to the pot of carbonara, or to cook our peppers in olive oil with garlic, or something, and it completely slipped our minds.

The finished carbonara.

The finished product was almost exactly what I wanted from the dish, almost everything I'd been craving in the past couple of weeks. Since Sam is 21 now, he went to the package store and picked out a sparkling red wine (a red champagne) to go with it. We ate an early dinner -- it was about 2:30 or 3 -- by candlelight in his dining room. We added parmesan cheese to our carbonara too -- to die for.

We also bought a fresh loaf of ciabatta bread from Stop & Shop, heated it up in the oven just before meal time, and dipped it in a small bowl of olive oil in between heaping forkfuls of carbonara.

Problems I ran into
No serious problems were faced during the making of this meal. The only thing I would have done differently would have been to cook the peppers in olive oil. I'm pretty sure that was the one thing that would have made it identical to Frank's carbonara because the oil would have given it a different texture. Next time.

Big E 2010: Must-Eats

The Big E offers a plethora of great foods aside from the stands within the Avenue of the States. When Sam and I went last Tuesday, the primary reason for our going was for the food. I made a list of the things I wanted us to get, and managed to eat most of them without noticing the things we missed because we were too full and satisfied from everything else we'd consumed.

The fair has a few staple foods, things it's famous for. The stands for these foods typically have the longest lines, and for good reason -- the food's amazing, and we sampled a lot of them. It also has a lot of non-staple, but still must-try, foods. This is a summary of the foods you absolutely must try if you're going to the Big E for the food. You would be seriously remiss if you didn't try at least a few of these. In no particular order...

Pickles

Sup, pickle.

The first food we purchased after entering the park -- after I got an iced latte and Sam, recently turning 21, got a beer -- was from this pickle stand. We wandered through the craft area and when we came out on the other side, Sam saw the stand, gasped, and exclaimed, "PICKLES!" The craving for a giant, fresh pickle came on suddenly, and the need for one was implanted. There was no turning back. And, since we came on a weekday, there was no line.

The pickle itself was giant, crunchy, and by all accounts perfect. It was crisp, firm (there's nothing worse than a soggy pickle), and the presence of the garlic taste was subtle and not overpowering. At about $1.75 per pickle, this pickle is well worth the price.

Kettle Corn

Moments after leaving the pickle stand, after walking through a small tavern area filled with older Big E-goers drinking beer and watching sports on large television sets, we came across Henry's Kettle Corn. I've always been a fan of kettle corn -- Sam has not. We each had a free sample of the popcorn, forever converting Sam into a kettle corn eater. We decided to get a small bag of it for the road. (It's been almost a week, and the popcorn is still as fresh as it was the day we bought it.)

The best part about the Henry's Kettle Corn stand, like most of the stands at the Big E, is that you can watch them making it. The popcorn is still hot when they hand you your sample or your bag, and you can taste the freshness. This popcorn in particular has a perfect balance of sweet and salty, each flavor slamming your taste buds perfectly and unexpectedly. One moment you're just eating a piece of kettle corn as you wander the fair, the next moment you're being slapped in the jaw with flavor.

The two men at the stand were also really funny, nice guys. While one of them filled a bag of kettle corn for us, they messed around with each other and did some funny poses and faces while I took photos of them.

Fried Dough

Everybody loves fried dough. It's sold at events similar to the Big E all the time. What makes the fried dough at the Big E superior to other places is that, like with the kettle corn and cider doughnuts, you can actually watch the people in the food stands making it all from scratch. You go up to the window to place your order, and there's one person manning the cash register while another person is making dough at a counter and putting out fresh fried dough. You bite into it and it's still hot. I was excited to find that after ordering my fried dough (I got it with chocolate), there was a table in front of the stand where you could add powdered sugar. At a lot of other places, such as my summertime place of work, Six Flags, you have the option of getting confectioner's sugar as the topping on your fried dough, but nothing else. There is no sugar shaker nearby giving you the option to add it to your dough, which is a tremendous bummer.

There are a couple different options for toppings on fried dough, but I always opt for the standard chocolate sauce. The fact that I had the option of adding sugar at my own discretion made it all the better. The dough was so fresh it practically melted in my mouth. Perfection.

Turkey Legs

Sam gnaws on a giant hickory-smoked turkey leg.

Sam was most excited about getting a turkey leg, a popular Big E staple, when we were there. The only problem was that it took a long time to find it. Unlike fried dough and candy apple stands, there are only a few turkey leg stands -- there may even be only one, because when we asked for directions at an information booth they had to give us very specific directions to find it. We found it, its line full of big, buff men -- lumberjacks, perhaps -- and stared at the legs on display in the stand's window, enjoying the palpable smell emanating from the stand.
I had one bite of the turkey leg -- I wanted Sam to enjoy as much of it as he could -- and, though it was tough to break through the skin, it was quite good. The turkey wasn't dry, and the hickory flavor was incredible. The only problem? After eating an entire leg of it, Sam's breath was pretty rank; too much hickory, I suppose.

Cream Puffs

 

Perhaps the most advertised food at the Big E is the cream puff, available in one bakery on the entire premises in the New England Center. They are being produced all day long by bakers, put together assembly line-style with giant scoops of whipped cream and two big, puffy pieces of pastry. Within the bakery are signs with tips on how to eat the cream puff without making a mess: the "twist and slide" method, as they call it. Similar to eating an Oreo cookie, you hold the cream puff, each palm grasping one of the two outer pastries, twist, and separate, effectively giving you two cream puffs. The downfall of the cream puff is that there is entirely too much cream in it; the whole thing is extremely rich, and the use of that much cream makes it almost overwhelming. When I ate my cream puff, my plate was overflowing with extra cream when I finished. I couldn't bring myself to eat all the whipped cream for fear of contracting a sugar-induced headache. Overall, though, the cream puff is perfect for anyone who goes to the Big E with a sweet tooth.

Things We Didn't Sample

 There were two other foods that we saw, but did not try. One was the Big E's famous "Craz-E Burger," a cheeseburger with bacon using a halved glazed doughnut instead of a bun. The main reason we skipped it was because we were already stuffed from a few hours worth of nonstop eating. However, we did feel like we needed to at least see it, so we found the stand that was selling them and asked a gentleman who bought one if we could take a picture. Although I was extremely full, and although I don't really eat meat, the burger seemed oddly tantalizing. I was tempted by its mound of melted cheese, bacon strips, and warm, fresh scent.

I also decided to skip the candy apples, even though they were near the top of my list of things to eat at the Big E. This was partly because my stomach was screaming for me to stop eating and partly because it's difficult to come across a stand-out candy apple. Just seeing and smelling them was enough for me. I'd had one at my first trip to the Big E in the fall of 2008 and, though it was delectable, it wasn't unlike any other candy apple I'd ever eaten.

These are by no means the only food options at the Big E Agricultural Fair. They are merely the most delicious and most popular ones. If you're headed to the Big E in the next week, check them out and at least ask for a sample. You'll regret not trying them in two weeks, when you realize it'll be another year before you get the chance.

Big E 2010: Avenue of the States

One of the biggest events in this half of Massachusetts is the Big E, an annual agricultural fair in West Springfield held during September and into October. The Big E has many highlights hidden amongst the generic food stands. You can get all of the standard "fair food" at any number of carts and stands throughout the fairground -- fried dough, candy apples, etc. However, for more unique food stands, there's one particular area of the Big E that begs to be seen and tasted: the Avenue of the States.

The houses stand one after another along a street on the Big E fairground and each one showcases what some consider to be the cultural highlights of each state. Each of the houses is a smaller-scale replica of the given state's original state house.

The best thing about the Avenue of the States is the different foods available within each house. Everything was relatively cheap; when you hear people talking about the Big E being expensive, they don't mean that the individual foods are costly. The Big E becomes an expensive because there is no possibly way to resist a lot of the foods they have. Sam and I made a point of at least tasting something from each of the state houses. Only in the Connecticut house did we not pay for something.

And now, on to the states!

New Hampshire

We started with the New Hampshire house. Inside, the first food we saw was a homemade fudge stand. The stand had a lot of different varieties, from standard chocolate to pumpkin. Because we couldn't settle on just one but didn't want to spend so much money on fudge (it was roughly $9 per pound), we decided to ask the girl behind the counter for her thoughts on the best fudge they had and buy half a pound of it. Her suggestion? Pumpkin fudge. She handed us two samples, and it was delicious -- much better than I anticipated, because honestly, how can you not be initially skeptical about pumpkin flavored fudge when the standard is chocolate? At first, I just wanted to buy out their entire stock of chocolate-with-nuts fudge. I looked at the "pumpkin" label on the glass and thought to myself, "I bet that's gross." I was seriously wrong. If you visit the New Hampshire house and decide to buy some of this fudge, do yourself a favor and at least sample the pumpkin fudge. You will not regret it.

(New Hampshire also sold a lot of other nifty little things, such as fanny packs with cats embroidered on them.)

Connecticut

Connecticut was the one state house in which we didn't buy anything. Aside from the positively divine maple syrup and maple cream samples we had, the house didn't have much to offer. The samples, however, made the visit to the Connecticut house totally worth our time. The man running the table told us that his wife had made the syrup and the cream, both of which were almost miraculously good. The only thing that held us back from buying any of it was the fact that both Sam and I live in a dorm and would have little to no use for homemade maple products, regardless of how tasty they are.

Vermont

 What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of Vermont and food? Personally, I think of cheese, so the Vermont house was awesome to walk through. We didn't buy any cheese, but I did sample a piece of Green Mountain Boys cheese, a type only sold at the Big E during its few weeks in operation every year. It tasted like cheddar, but with something extra and not quite identifiable.

One of my absolute favorite things about the fall season is hot cider, so it was an exciting moment when, after sampling a bite of Green Mountain Boys cheese, we rounded the corner in the Vermont house and saw a stand selling hot cider and fresh cider doughnuts. Getting into the line for the stand, you pass by a window featuring fresh doughnuts on display. Through this window you can watch two men making the doughnuts -- mixing the dough, molding it into circles. We stepped up to the stand and ordered. I had a cup of hot spiced cider while Sam had a cup of cold cider and a hot doughnut. (Now would be an opportune time to state that Sam always insisted that I take the "inaugural bite" of each thing we ordered, which was adorable, and made the Big E experience that much better.)



 

Maine

The state of Maine is renowned for its lobster, but especially for its lobster rolls. Lobstering is a major part of the fishing industry in the state, and as a result the people there tend to know what they're doing when it comes to cooking with the crustacean. Walking into the Maine house, Sam excitedly said, "Lobster rolls!"



I would not call myself a lobster aficionado by any means, although I am very much a seafood snob because I come from northeastern Massachusetts. (Fish chowder and most clam foods are my forte, to be perfectly honest.) The taste of lobster has just never blown my skirt up. I've only ever eaten it a handful of times in my nearly 21 years of existence. My mother lives for it, though, so I had to have a bite of Sam's lobster roll if only to brag to her about it later.



The thing was delicious. The lobster was noticeably fresh, and the amount of mayonnaise wasn't overwhelming like I normally expect it to be (honestly, every time you see a lobster roll or any other roll involving seafood with mayonnaise, it looks like the fish is frowning in mayo, right?). I took the inaugural bite and Sam enjoyed the rest.





The line for the Maine Baked Potatoes starts outside and weaves through a queue line, amusement park style. During the Big E's busy weekends, people fill that line and extend around the Maine building's exterior. We came on a Tuesday, though, and didn't have any wait at all. My excitement and anticipation grew after looking at the choices of toppings: butter, sour cream, cheese, chives, and bacon bits.

I opted for sour cream, cheese, and bacon bits. I only had one qualm with the potato: the cheese was liquid cheese, the type you'd get on a hot dog at a baseball game. As a result, the taste wasn't as good as it could be. The bacon bits weren't fresh-off-the-griddle bacon bits, so they didn't look like bacon, but they tasted exactly the same. It's understandable that the stand would resort to such ingredients because they have to feed thousands and thousands of people some days. Had I been making the potato myself in my own kitchen, I would have had the time and the resources to grate my own cheese and grill my own bacon. Just saying.

Massachusetts 

Since we're from Massachusetts, I wasn't expecting our state house to have anything that I'd be interested in eating. The Massachusetts house had lobster rolls, but since we'd already eaten one just minutes before, we opted to skip it (though they were cheaper there). That wasn't the only thing in our state house, though. There were also various fresh berries and milk. The berries were juicy and clearly must have been picked in the last 24 hours, and the milk was unlike any milk I've ever tasted (in a good way). It was creamy and, like the berries, lobster, doughnuts and everything else we'd tasted already, extremely fresh.





The Massachusetts house also offered Finnish pancakes and had a display of wines from a local brewer. Unfortunately for me, I'm not of the legal drinking age just yet (only six and a half more weeks!), so I couldn't try any.

Rhode Island

In doing my research of the Big E the day before going, I made a list of all the foods I knew I should try. At the top of that list was the chowder in the Rhode Island house. It was difficult to maintain patience as we wandered through all of the other houses on the Avenue of the States, especially after noticing that we'd be visiting Rhode Island last.

There are two seafood stands inside the Rhode Island house. I chose to visit the Kenyon's stand and to order a bowl of shrimp and corn chowder. I also made the tough decision to skip the bread bowl because I was so stuffed from all the other state houses. This chowder was so close to perfection that I thought I could die. The only problem I had with it was the amount of pepper in it, but that's strictly personal because I have an oddly low tolerance for anything remotely spicy. Aside from that, it was an amazing dish. The broth was creamy, the vegetable-to-shrimp ratio was spot on, and I couldn't see my face in it -- the grease factor was at a minimum.




The Big E will be a daily happening in West Springfield until October 3. If you're going strictly for the food, be sure to check out these standout foods from the Avenue of the States and enjoy a bite of each part of New England.

An interesting way to think about food

I found this interesting blog post recently about how much money 200 calories of various foods costs. The foods range from healthy greens and vegetables to junk food like potato chips and soda. I found this particularly interesting because I've been making an effort to eat healthier for a while, but particularly in the last several months. Now that I'm back at school and in a bind as far as money goes, it was fascinating to see exactly how much I'd have to spend in order to eat the way I need to in order to stay healthy.

While perusing the different foods listed, it's important to consider a few things about the foods. Obviously, certain foods can fill you up with 200 calories more than other foods can. For example, 200 calories of beans -- already a fibrous food -- will be more satisfying than, say, jelly beans, and it will cost less.

Interestingly (but not surprisingly), the foods in the most expensive category were almost entirely healthy foods -- lots of vegetables, fruits, fiber and protein -- while the cheapest category was comprised mostly of carbs. However, the higher the price per 200 calories is, the greater the serving size is. While a bowl of carrots, a couple apples, or some turkey may not be a savory to you as a small handful of Doritos, they'll fill you up more and seriously improve your health.

The point is this: eating right may seem more expensive than eating the cheap-o garbage that's on sale every week, but because fruits, vegetables, and fibrous foods provide a greater serving for their price and thus can fill your stomach with less food, it pretty much balances out. All that's left is exercising moderation in your food consumption so you don't find yourself making the trek back to the supermarket every other day.

Another similar article I found talks about buying healthy foods for under $1 a pound. I really like the writer's mantra of only ever buying food that costs $1 per pound or less. If done right, it sounds like a foolproof way to stay healthy and save money.

I'm making a list...

... of all the recipes I intend to try the next time I have access to a decent kitchen. Being back in a dorm atmosphere has been keeping me from the stove and increased my desire to cook for myself instead of eating university food for every single meal. Even going out to eat is getting a little trite (athough the weekend of my two-year anniversary with my boyfriend took us out for several completely delicious meals which I would not take back). I find myself craving new things on a daily basis and then growing more and more bummed as the day goes on because the dorm kitchen is disgusting. I long for the kitchen I knew all summer -- the faulty gas stovetop, the fully stocked refrigerator, the pantry that somehow always contained the one ingredient I needed. I dream of taco night and homemade carbonara.

That being said, I am now making a list of all the things I want to try. It may not be possible to make all of them in one day off, but they will all be attempted at one point or another. I found all of the recipes on other blogs and websites. Expect more posts about cooking instead of dry posts about health and reblogging from other sites in the near future.

Carbonara Showdown

One of my absolute favorite meals of all time is carbonara. My number one favorite version of the dish is the way that my boyfriend's brother, Frank, makes it. Every couple of months I get this intense craving for it that doesn't go away until I finally coerce him into making it. (Each time I trick him into making it by saying that when I get my next paycheck I'll reimburse him for the supplies. This never happens. He keeps making it when I beg him, though.) Frank makes a heaping pot full of it. I'm unsure of the exact measurements for his recipe, but I do know a few details:

1. He uses angel hair pasta -- lots of it.
2. He uses four bell peppers, two yellow and two red, sliced and cooked in a pan with olive oil.
3. I believe he cracks four eggs into the pasta after it's been cooked. That may be the wrong number. All I know is that if he used any more or fewer eggs, it wouldn't taste the same.
4. He sometimes uses a mixture of real and fake bacon, depending on what he can find in the kitchen, and both taste great.
5. There is some garlic in there too.

Unfortunately for me, Frank recently went away to college, and so I have been without carbonara for a growing period of time. This lead me to make a rash decision at lunch today.

The time was approximately 4 p.m. My boyfriend, his brother Dominic, and their mom Lisa were going out to lunch. Olive Garden. Our wait for a table was short. Our wait for our food was great. Due to my carbonara craving, I opted for the Olive Garden version, which featured shrimp and chicken in addition to the usual ingredients. The photo on the menu looked promising, and when the plate was finally delivered to my corner of the table, the sight of the real thing had my mouth watering.

I was disappointed.

It seems that everything we had at Olive Garden for lunch today was extremely heavy -- my soup, though delicious, had the consistency of chowder and the breadsticks felt like they were sticking to the insides of my stomach. While the thickness of the soup was pleasurable, the heavy, greasy mess of carbonara was not. I found myself delivering a full-fledged comparison between Frank's carbonara and the dish in front of me to the rest of the table. Olive Garden's carbonara seemed to be loaded with some kind of sauce, which I admittedly wasn't expecting although it was clearly printed in the description on the menu. (I made the mistake of forgoing said description and choosing my meal completely on the picture and the name.) I will say one positive thing about Olive Garden's carbonara: the shrimp tasted fresh, which isn't common in chain restaurants that are not situated directly on the coast. However, the peppers looked shriveled and dead, cut into long slices; Frank always diced his peppers. There was very little bacon, and it didn't seem thoroughly cooked. The chicken was slightly fried, having been cooked with bread crumbs in oil, which only added to the weight of the meal.

Olive Garden's carbonara dish includes fresh shrimp and chicken in addition to the standard fixings for the meal. It was ultimately ruined, though, by the general heaviness in the pasta sauce. (Sorry for the camera phone picture, I neglected to bring my own camera to lunch.)

The main difference was that Frank's carbonara was so much lighter than Olive Garden's carbonara. In all my time eating Frank's version, I've never been able to see my face in it, and I've never felt as weighed down as I did after Olive Garden's dish. The latter sent me into a food coma. Even when I add a ton of cheese to Frank's recipe, I still don't feel so heavy and gross. The post-Olive Garden feeling was as if my pores were leaking that mysterious sauce that was hiding underneath my pasta.

I suppose there is a lesson to be learned from this dining experience: Always, always, always wait for Frank to come home and make his carbonara from scratch; do not settle for less than the best.

I love Amyblogschow.

Okay, I'm not 21 for another couple of weeks. But once I am, I am definitely going to try these, and write about them. Get ready

In other news, Amyblogschow is an awesome food blog/website. I love her "Stupidly Simple Snacks" videos. Check them (and her other posts) out here.

Garlic Potatoes and Chicken

Today. One o'clock in the afternoon. Time for lunch. Minimal options in the cabinet. Chicken in the refrigerator that must be eaten before it goes bad. No fresh vegetables. Things were looking bleak. It was obvious that I had to use up the chicken, and Megan had a bunch of fresh garlic in the fridge from a farmer's market she worked at the other day. When I went to the upstairs fridge to get the chicken, I noticed on the countertop a box of canned whole potatoes. I had my vegetable.

Too impatient to wait for everything to bake, the decision was made to utilize the stove top, cooking both the chicken and the potatoes together in a skillet in olive oil. I used two pieces of raw chicken, one can of potatoes, one clove of garlic, and olive oil.

The chicken was already extremely thin, so it didn't require much cutting. I just cut both larger pieces into bite-size pieces. Because it was being cooked in a skillet, the smaller pieces would cook much quicker. I cut each potato into quarters -- there were about five potatoes in the can, so the potato:chicken ration was 1:1. The garlic was chopped into teeny tiny pieces, the smallest I could manage.

In the skillet, I put a few capfuls of olive oil and all of my garlic. When it started to simmer, I poured in the potatoes and chicken. It took roughly seven minutes for everything to get cooked. You need to be sure to move everything around in order to cook all of the chicken. The center of the skillet is the hottest, so you want everything -- especially the chicken -- to sit there for a bit to get cooked.

Problems I ran into

No real problems, just a few things I'd do differently the next time around and a few things I was hoping would turn out otherwise. For one, I thought that the potatoes would be a little crispier. Next time, I will probably bake the potatoes with olive oil and salt, getting them crispier and more flavorful. I also added another capful of olive oil to everything while it was cooking, not noticing that the oil in the pan had not boiled away at all. It wound up being a little too much. It didn't change the flavor of the final product, but it did make it a little greasier.

Sure, it looks a little monochromatic. But it tasted pretty damn good.

Mini Tortilla Pizzas

There were a ton of mini tortillas left over after making soft tacos, which begs for more tortilla recipes. Waking up this morning, the Travel Channel was playing a show about pizzas. The craving was implanted. The need for pizza was born.

Making pizzas is so simple, there's really no need to have a list or a photo of ingredients. For my breakfast I just made a standard cheese pizza, but you can literally do whatever you want with it.

But what is it that qualifies the dish as "pizza?" What if you choose to forgo the use of sauce and cheese altogether? I found a ton of different definitions of the word, from various online dictionaries and Wikipedia, and each one had just one thing in common: it's a baked dish in which all of your toppings are stuck on a round piece of bread. Some definitions included that the differences between types of pizzas are culturally based. So if you don't feel like going with the grain and making a "typical" pizza, don't. Pizza is freedom.

For my cheese pizza, I used a few of the cheap mini tortillas I used to make soft tacos the other night, some Ragu pasta sauce, and some cheddar cheese (in the cheese selection, I just stuck with the first thing I could pull out of the refrigerator).

Since my pizzas were smaller, I didn't need to bake them for long; ten minutes at 350 got the job done.

Problems I ran into
I didn't really have any problems, but there were a few things that I wish I had done differently. Because I just made these pizzas on a whim and without any real desire to make them completely phenomenal, I just tried to make them as quickly as possible. I thought the use of pasta sauce instead of a designated pizza sauce would present an issue when it came time to eat the pizza, but it didn't. It did, however, make the tortilla a little soggy as it sat on my plate. To remedy this, I would not change the sauce; I would bake the tortillas alone in the oven for a few minutes to harden them a bit. This will probably also make the pizza easier to cut when it comes out of the oven.



The only other thing I would have done differently: experimentation. Looking through the refrigerator, there were plenty of potentially awesome pizza toppings I could have tried, but like a fool, I didn't.

You're entitled to your freedom. You're entitled to pizza. Experiment and create your own.

Taco Night: The Best of All The Nights

Yes, it's true: the best night of the week in this house is taco night. While it doesn't occur on the same night every week, it does happen at least once in every seven days. After spending all day at work thinking about the soft tacos at On The Border in West Springfield, it only seemed appropriate to make tonight taco night.

Tacos are easy to make, and there are a lot of variations of them. Tonight, we made our "usual" tacos, consisting only of refried beans and cheese baked in a taco shell. I also tried my hand at making soft tacos, which ended on a slightly less successful note than the hard tacos.


(Not pictured: a bag of Mexican cheese blend. I would also like to point out that those tortillas cost $5 for three packages. Score.)

All you have to do is open up a can of refried beans, spoon some into the taco shell (or onto a soft taco or tortilla), sprinkle some cheese on top, and bake at 350 degrees for ten minutes or until everything is heated to your liking.








The final product:


Problems I ran into
With the hard tacos, none. They're pretty hard to screw up. However, with the soft tacos, I was pretty much just winging it the entire time. I kept them in the oven just as long as the hard tacos, which made the tortillas crunchy, thus ruining the "soft" effect I was going for. They were still delicious, and they had a much lower fat content than the hard tacos, but they lacked the texture I was going for.

And another thing...
Since I had an entire package of tortillas, I decided to experiment with some dessert as well. I spread Nutella on one tortilla and sprinkled a few chocolate chips on them. Then, per the suggestion of my boyfriend, I rolled it up into a sort of chocolate enchilada. I thought it was pretty good.




(Photo by Sam <3)