Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label cooking. Show all posts

Friday, August 2, 2013

Fancy Fruit!

I brushed up on my creative food skills this summer by making a fruit bouquet for a friend of mine from high school. She got married this summer and asked if I would make a fruit bouquet for the rehearsal dinner. Of course I would! I love playing with food!

She even provided the fruit so I only had to worry about finding the time and cookie cutters to make the  arrangement!

I looked up what fruit arrangements can cost, and it is insane! This is way cheeper than hundreds of dollars! Ya it may take some time, but thats what makes it special!
So here are some things you will need if you ever want to make a fruit arrangement! It was super easy and fun to do!

 For fruit I used watermelon, pineapple, canalope, some other mystery mellon, grapes, strawberries, and I used kale for a filler.
You will need wooden skewers to hold up the fruit, and obviously cookie cutters, knifes and a cutting board!

Start slicing up fruit about an inch or a half an inch. I made the pineapple probably to thick so you can probably get away with only a half an inch.

Once you have fruit cut and ready to assemble, slice off the top of the watermelon. First I figured out what side it was the most stable on though so it wouldn't go rolling around!

To make flowers, cut a flower shape out of pineapple and a circle from a melon, stick a toothpick into the pineapple and melon to attach, and finally a skewer into the pineapple. I found it to difficult to just put a skewer into both. You can cut out letters, and stick a row of grapes on skewers for simple creativeness! I also sliced a small piece of strawberry and cut it into a heart shape to go inside of a heart shaped pineapple to make it pop.

When You start to stick things into the watermelon, work back to front.  I started with the letters and then added kelp. I slowly added flowers and mellon pieces, always adding kelp. You may need to stick toothpicks into the kelp to help it stay down. Once you have a simple design stuff it with strawberries and grapes to create the full fruity effect!


Sunday, April 21, 2013

The Apple of a Pie

   It has been forever since I blogged, but the end of my first year of college is only two weeks away! Instead of writing a speech I decided I would waste my time away on my blog. hmmmm lets see what procrastination has in store for me!

   And speaking of procrastination that brings me back to the blog, and the fact that the project I'm showing is actually all the way back from Easter time.... whoopsy! And so my Easter *cough *cough from not to long ago..... was a lot of fun! We got a couple of close friends together to celebrate with a dinner. My friend from Chile hosted our little dinner party, and she made an amazing dish from her home country, Chile, which was AMAZING! It was made of salmon and looked like a strawberry smoothie BUT tasted nothing like it! It was super yummy!  she cooked raw salmon with the acid from lemon and limes and marinated it with peppers and onions. We also had a Korean stew, and rice. I also made mashed potatoes. Our food as well as the guests were from all over the world! Chile, Brazil, Mexico, Korea, Turkey, 1/2  Japan (hehe), and USA were all present. I also made a staple American dessert!  Apple pie!

So I figured I would show how to make some good ol' fashioned American apple pie for anybody that doesn't know!  So here is how to make and an apple pie from scratch with real apples!

Basic tools needed for the job


Ingredients you will need, you can use any apples you want though!


Tuesday, March 26, 2013

College Home Cookin'

 Boy am  I smart or What! I feel as if I have leaped over culinary perceptions of college cooking! I have discovered a super yummy way to make something like spaghetti, that tastes like spaghetti O's, within the realm of my very own dorm room. [cue dramatic music]

It is a big deal.

For all you people to fancy or who have the ability to actually buy real groceries let me introduce you to ramen a very cheep meal, and beside it is western family tomato soup another cheep contender in today's experiment. 


Wednesday, January 30, 2013

Epic Ramen Time!

Yesterday at work a couple of us student employees were talking about our beloved top ramen! The office was quiet since it was towards the end of the day, and you could almost hear all of our stomachs growling in despair. We were hungry. At the office we give out top ramen so there is a cute little basket at the front with pretty little top ramen's arranged all yummy looking. Top ramen is the staple food of college students because its cheep, yummy, and totally filled with essential nutrients and vitamins..... right?

As we were discussing the different ways we all like to cook, and eat our ramen, our boss even weighed in on the conversation then. Some of us microwave it, some take the time to boil the water on a stove, or just use a tea kettle. Half of us drain the water out and then add the flavor packet, and some use the water as broth. Some people like the American ramen and some prefer the Japanese versions.

I personally am kinda addicted to some Japanese ramen noodles that have dried seaweed in it! yummy!!!!

So I decided that everybody needs to know how to cook yummy ramen, and no one could teach it better than Wong Fu! They are some amateur filmmakers from California who make the FUNNIEST shorts ever!

Enjoy a Wong Fu weekend clip of how to make ramen!


Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Merry Christmas, Lets Eat!

Merry Christmas!
And so once again I find time to blog! And it is a very good thing too since I come bearing a wonderful  gift! I have the most amazing recipe yummmmmmmmmmmmmm!

MayI present La Bete Noire! So by the name you could probably tell its french! So now its automatically gonna be super good, but when I was trying to figure out what the translation was it wasn't sounding so good.... so Noire means black but I didn't have a clue what Bete meant! And so I called upon my awesome  cousin who lives in France! Through the wonderful world of Facebook I learned that Bete meant stupid or idiot..... well now we were both confused! Why would a chocolate torte be stupid????  So she called upon a french friend to help explain. The explanation is,  "La Bete Noire is also like the person that is always guilty so in the case of a dessert, it's a guilty thing" Which is a perfect description of this torte!

Be prepared for a wonderful chocolaty sensation from this flour-less torte!


La Bete Noire


Cake
1 cup of water
3/4 cup of sugar
9 tablespoons of butter, unsalted
18 ounces of bittersweet or semisweet chocolate
6 eggs




Ganache
1 cup heavy whipping cream
8 ounces of bittersweet or semisweet chocolate

Set the oven to 375


Prepare a spring form pan, I like to use parchment paper


start with the sugar and water


bring it to a boil and then remove from heat


now melt the butter


and then add all that yummy chocolate!


after the chocolate is melted add the sugar water mixture


after that add the eggs!


and pour into the prepared pan


next put the pan in a water bath and bake for about 50 minuets until the middle doesn't shake


cooling time! 


making ganche is super easy bring the cream to a gentle boil and then add the chocolate! 


Ta-da! I even added a bit of mint flavoring for Christmas! 

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Somethings Squidy.....

It has been a fun filled weekend in Billings! And of course the best was saved for last! today I had some tacos with a twist. As My cousin, her husband, and I were roaming the grocery store finding ingredients for tacos for lunch, it was when we came upon the meat section that Tierney asked, " Beef? Chicken? Shrimp?  How about squid!" Squid? Yes, squid the stuff that swims in the ocean, has all those creepy tentacle arm thing-ees, and is super slimy. Had my cousin gone insane or had she just made a breakthrough in taco cuisine? We would find out!

Thats not Squidward! 
Yes thats right a pound of slimy squid was purchased for tacos.
This was going to be very interesting I thought, as the man in the meat section grabbed the gooey things. He probably thought we were crazy, I know I would have!

And here I thought chicken in tacos was being adventurous, boy was I wrong!


A lovely look on Aaron? 


But master chef Aaron knew what he was doing! He cooked those things up like a pro, it was very impressive! We had an awesome lunch, with homemade salsa and squid tacos!  They were very yummy! So who would have known that squid would go great in a taco? So now you know!
Yummy!