I think many people get into food blogging because they read a lot of food blogs, think it looks like fun, and decide to start a blog themselves. I, however, had never read a food blog before I started food blogging, other than my friend Amanda's. All I knew was that Amanda was in this online baking club that had her baking something every week and blogging about it, and I thought it sounded like a riot. So I joined TWD and started a blog. At the time, because I had not read food blogs, I did not realize that attractive food photographs are kind of the point. Since most of my blogging was done as a part of organized groups with participation requirements, I assumed that my pictures merely served as proof that I actually made the assigned recipe. Sort of like turning in homework. Eventually, as I started reading more and more blogs, and viewing stunning photograph after stunning photograph, it dawned on me that I had woefully misunderstood the significance of the pictures. Once I got a clue, I began trying, within the confines of my limited photographic and artistic talents, to take better pictures. I took the food outside in the late afternoon light. I thought about things like whether a particular bowl complemented the food. I garnished with mint leaves. I tried.
I say all that just to make it clear that I really, really wish that I did not have to post the following photograph. I wish it so much that I almost skipped posting today altogether -- but when I make something, it always seems foolish not to post, thereby wasting a permitted skip that could otherwise be used on a week that I don't bake. So here is my Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie, which I (1) turned into a parfait when my mini graham cracker crust fell apart, (2) accidentally burned with my blowtorch, and (3) photographed in my kitchen at approximately 10 p.m. And boy, does it show:
I fiddled with the photo editing software and tried to crop, adjust the light, etc. to help the situation, but nothing could help a lime pie that's been so abused. All I could do is post later in the day on Tuesday in the hopes of subjecting as few people as possible to this fugliness. I'm sorry if you're not one of the lucky ones.
I made one mini pie parfait for my husband. He really enjoyed it. I've made other (easier) key lime pies before (ones that don't require the whisking eggs over the stove routine) and he liked those a lot as well, so I'll probably stick with the easier kind (e.g., Mark Bittman's key lime pie from How to Cook Everything). Also, hubs prefers whipped cream to meringue, and I prefer whipping cream to whipping egg whites, so I'll stick with whipped cream going forward. But just because this probably won't be my go-to key lime pie does not mean that it wasn't wonderful. It was, says hubs! Linda of Tender Crumb picked the Creamiest Lime Cream Meringue Pie - thanks for the great summer pick, Linda!
My friend Jen from Jen B's Cooking Carveout chose this week's CEiMB recipe, Grilled Thai Beef Salad. Jen has the office two doors down from me, and we joined CEiMB around the same time. Therefore, our turns to pick recipes come around the same time. I pick the week after Jen, and this Thai Beef salad had been on my short list. I was thrilled when I saw that Jen picked it, because I was able to knock one recipe off my list, which turned an excruciating decision into merely painful one.
I think the Thai Beef Salad appealed to me because I love Thai food, but rarely cook it at home. I guess I tend to skip over Thai recipes because the ingredients (things like red curry paste, green chile sauce, fish sauce) always seem exotic to me, although they can't be all that exotic, because they carry them in Publix.
In any case, I was so glad that Jen picked this, because it forced me to stare down the "international" aisle shelf at Publix and gather the ingredients I needed to make an authentic(ish) Thai dish at home.
The base of the salad is simple: red leaf lettuce, basil, cilantro, and shallots. But it is the dressing/marinade that makes this salad shine. A combination of lime juice, soy sauce, oil, brown sugar, garlic, ginger and red curry paste makes up both the marinade for the flank steak and the dressing for the salad. It came together really quickly and was so delicious. Hubs and I had it for dinner on Sunday night. I served hubs a scoop of rice with his to make it more of a manly-man meal. We both thought it was fabulous. We used the leftover beef in a stir fry tonight. This one is officially in the rotation. Thanks for the great pick, Jen!
I've got to be honest - I'm so mourning the end of One Sentence Blog Post Week ("OSBPW") that I almost couldn't even bring myself to post today. Something about the one sentence format was so energizing - I couldn't even wait to get to the computer to knock out that sentence. So the prospect of returning to multiple sentences kind of immobilized me for a while there. But then I realized that nobody is making me write long-winded non-OSBPW posts, and with a little bit of discipline, I could embrace brevity every week!
Karen of Something Sweet by Karen chose this week's TWD recipe, Applesauce Spice Bars. I first made these last fall to bring on a family trip to the lake, and I made the recipe as written, including the glaze. My memory from that trip is a little fuzzy -- I remember thinking the applesauce bars were very good, but didn't travel particularly well glazed. Fast forward ten months -- Karen picked the applesauce bars for TWD, and I decided to make them for another family trip. I decided not to glaze them this time because of that nagging recollection of a Tupperware container full of sticky, apple-y, spicy mess.
So I made the bars, sans glaze, before we left for vacation -- they're easy to make and did not unleash any kitchen drama. They even baked all the way through, which is by no means a sure thing for me when I bake bars of any kind. I brought them to the beach, where I prettied them up for a photo shoot.
There are lots of people taking pictures of all kinds of things at the beach, but I was the only one taking pictures of baked goods. I wanted to yell "What?! Haven't you ever seen anyone photographing applesauce bars on the dunes before?" But I was pretty sure I knew the answer. Kayte asked via Twitter if it was like a Sports Illustrated swimsuit shoot. Having never participated in such an event, I can't be sure -- but I can tell you that I did not tell my applesauce bars to "work it, baby," or assure them that they are way hotter than my other desserts, and at no point did the applesauce bars throw a diva tantrum.
We all enjoyed these bars. When I first tried them (last fall) I was a little surprised by the texture -- very cake-like, when I was expecting something more like an apple-spiced blondie. It's a little like when you take a sip of what you think is water, but it's actually milk (or maybe it would be more precise to say it's like when you take a sip of what you think is water, but it's actually ice chips). Not bad, just not what I was expecting. But once I got over that, I thoroughly enjoyed the light texture and lightly spiced flavor of these bars. Yet another winner from the great Dorie Greenspan! Thanks for the delicious pick, Karen!
My good friend Peggy of Pantry Revisited chose this week's recipe for CEiMB, Stuffed Turkey Burgers, and the posting day for this recipe happens to fall during One Sentence Blog Post Week (which I've been enthusiastically participating in), and I feel like I'm getting really lucky with this whole one sentence thing, because the recipes I've posted so far this week fall into one of two categories (1) simple and delicious; or (2) made so long ago that I can't remember anything much to say about it anyway -- and without question this one falls into the former category: two small ground turkey patties filled with a little mozzarella and some roasted red peppers, and then sealed together and broiled to perfection (simple, delicious, and a nice change from ground beef - great pick, Peggy!).
Since this is One Sentence Blog Post Week in some parts, including these parts, I am going to seize the opportunity to post the ciabatta that I made back in May for the Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge (since the one sentence limitation helps me out big time given that I remember so few details about the ciabatta, seeing as I made it back in May and all) but I do remember that (1) we loved it - this is probably the best bread that I have ever made;(2) it had tiny holes, which irritated me to no end given that the hallmark of a good ciabatta is big holes (i.e. when it comes to ciabatta holes, size matters);
and (3) the fact that I made this insanely delicious bread yet was annoyed about the hole size definitely made me pause and question what has become of me.
As the lazy days of summer roll on, it's become apparent that blog fatigue has set in, for me and others, as manifested by a generally low motivation to wax poetic about baked goods (or just about anything else), and which has threatened to turn a super fun hobby into (gasp!) a chore (i.e., another thing on the to-do list) which would be tragic, as that is exactly the kind of thing that causes fickle people like me to ditch blogging and take up, say, fly fishing, so imagine my relief when I saw that someone had the brilliant idea of One-Sentence Blog Post Week (starting with today's Terse Tuesdays with Dorie), in which blog posts would be confined to -- yes, you guessed it -- one sentence, which is awesome because this week's TWD recipe, Brownie Bites (chosen by Jayma of Two Scientists Experimenting in the Kitchen - thank you, Jayma!), is an adorable little two-bite treat, and a lil' blog post just seems right for such a little dessert, and a mighty fine one at that (even without the glaze, which I skipped - good thing, because that might have necessitated a second sentence), even though the full recipe only made 12 measly little brownie bites, which was not nearly enough for a week at the beach (in fact, they were gone before we even left for the beach), and because I don't have any pictures of the brownie bites at the beach, I'll close with a gratuitous shot of my kids at the beach.
This week's TWD recipe was chosen by the wonderful Mary, The Food Librarian. Mary is a bundt cake enthusiast, and she picked a fabulous one this week!
I have a couple of mini bundt cake pans that I should have been really excited to use, but for some reason I was feeling a strong pull to do a full-size bundt cake. Just when I could feel myself falling deep into that "obsessing over something that really and truly does not matter" abyss, I realized that I had two, count 'em two, overripe bananas. Since the full recipe calls for four bananas, my decision suddenly became easy: I would make half of the recipe and use my mini bundt pans.
The cakes came together easily, and rose very well, well past the rim of the pan:
Of course, when I took those cakes out of the pan and turned them over, they had a distinctly Weeble-ish quality to them:
Fortunately, Weebles wobble but they don't fall down.
And neither did my mini banana cakes.
This was not some ordinary banana bread. The banana flavor was just right -- not too overpowering, not too subtle -- and the texture was moist but not overly dense. It was simple and delicious. I glazed two of my four mini cakes with the lemon glaze that Dorie mentions in "playing around." David thought the glaze really complemented the cake nicely. And my almost-two year old so loved this cake that she was inspired to string a few words together: "ah wah mo kay" (translation: "I want more cake.")
Thanks for this fantastic pick, Mary! I will definitely make this one again, for reals.
I am particularly happy to have made such a stellar recipe to celebrate this, my 100th post! I will save my profound observations and my "Blogging and What it Means to Me" essay for my highly-anticipated-by-nobody-but-me blogiversary, which is coming up in a couple of weeks, but I couldn't let a good round number like 100 pass without doing something. And as luck would have it, I've recently been the lucky winner of not one, but two "pay it forward" giveaways, and this seems like as good a time as any to start paying forward. For this 100th post, I'd like to pass on the awesome prize I won from my bloggy friend Di of Di's Kitchen Notebook -- a $25 gift certificate for a new cookbook! I used mine to pick up this excellent one by Mark Bittman:
Thanks Di, I've been loving my book!
But if you win, you could pick out any cookbook (or heck, any kind of book, or even a board game -- I won't tell) you'd like! I'm offering one lucky winner a $25 gift certificate to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or another online bookseller of your choice that facilitates easy* (*in my sole and complete discretion) online giftcard transactions.
If you would like to enter, leave me a comment by midnight PST on 8/10 answering the following question: "If you were a classic bundt cake, what kind of classic bundt cake would you be?" (or some other question). I will use the random integer generator to choose a winner.
Thanks for playing along! And thanks again, Mary, for choosing one seriously delicious banana bundt cake!
I am a Yankee living in the Deep South with my super cool, non-chocolate eating husband David, and my three great kids, Jacob, Elizabeth and Caroline, who don't like anything I cook. They all keep me laughing every day.
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