Fried Trout

After my failure to produce proper Cinnamon Roll Pancakes this morning, I return to the kitchen hours later on my solely mother's orders, to cook the fish she had me season for her earlier that day. So I know, in light of recent decisions , that I should jump at every opportunity to test my hand at some dish or the other in the kitchen  but after this morning I honestly was not up to it. Cooking is really harder than it looks!! Damn you Giada de Laurentis for making it seem so fun and easy!! (i'm joking I heart you oh so so so much...:-))

However I am pleased to report that my obedience to my mother and determination not to repeat whatever mistake I made this morning spurred me on to SUCCESS!!!!!!!!! Allow me to present to you deeeeeeelicious-flaky-oh-so-good-melt-in-your-mouth fried trout!!

I honestly feel really good about this, aaannnnnddddd my confidence shot through the roof when my mother and my father proceeded to tell me that it tasted good. Felicitations are in order! Despite my absolute awesomeness at making proper fish right of the bat, I have to be honest and report that my cream sauce which I tried to make to go with the fish was tres tres terrible!! It was lumpy and disgusting I asked my mother for help and she laughed and said that she didn't know what I was doing so how could she help?! Which makes sense, she has a point not a very strong one but valid point none the less, but maaaaannnnnnn......but fish was still awesome!!! Whooooot Whooooot!!

Now on to the god stuff....

Title: Dinner

Aim: Fried Trout with Cream sauce

Apparatus: Trout
                 Whole Lime
                 Salt
                 Pepper
                 Flour
                 Seasoned Salt
                 Vegetable Oil

Method:

1. Wash the fish, season with salt and pepper. Add about a tsp. of lime zest and then squeeze the juice  from the lime onto the fish. Mix this well working the seasoning into the fish. Let sit for at least 30 mins. Can be left for longer if desired.
2. Mix flour with seasoned salt in a ziploc bag or any little baggie you have on hand.
3. Pour oil into frying pan (Medium heat). Fill it approx. 2/3 of the way full. Just ensure that it is enough to fry all the fish you have sufficiently.
4. While the oil heats ( I left it for about 3-4 mins) take your first piece of fish pat it as dry as possible and cover it in the flour mixture. You can either place the fish in the bag and shake it up or pour the flour mixture on a tray and just rub both sides on it.
5. Place the flour covered fish in the oil carefully (remember oil is very hot!) fry on each side for approximately 5 mins or until golden brown.

Discussion:

1. So I didn't include the recipe for the cream sauce because mine went kaput. However if you would like to try it you can find the recipe here. I discovered that I didn't put enough milk. Now I realise that you may be thinking, "How on earth can you mess up a recipe when the instructions are right there?" Well I tried to memorise it then I went into the kitchen and after frying the fish I forgot how much milk so I didn't put enough and it remained lumpy and doughy and now creamy at all. If I had just carried my laptop downstairs all would have been well...laziness never pays off now if I would only learn that lesson?!
2. Trout was what I used here but really any fish will work with this recipe.
3. Feel free to put whatever seasoning you want in the flour or even no seasoning at all. Some recipes call for putting the fish in an egg batter after covering it in flour. That's acceptable as well, I didn't do it so I never put it.
4. If you haven't noticed I am absolutely terrible at at measuring stuff I estimate alot, which probably isn't the best idea since I am learning my way around the kitchen. However I find that if I just estimate amounts based on what I have then I can generally avoid waste. I can get away with it too b/c i'm not a chef and this isn't a food blog hehe... ;-)

Conclusion: Fish success served with rice, sauce was shite tossed in the bin. All in all wasn't a bad nite. Now I leave you with perfection....

Looks good doesn't it...

Yours,

yum yum for my tum tum..... :-)

Cucumber whaaaaaaaa?!?!

So I have this rule where I don't eat after ten o'clock; long and short of it is that I try not to eat too late and I love to eat so I think ten is a really good compromise especially since I stay up late quite often ;-) In any case I was feeling a little peckish so to speak and I looked ta the clock and saw that it was 9.30 so I rush to the kitchen to try to find something I can throw together fast that's light and is somewhat healthy.

Now I have been reading for awhile; I just love, love, love, books! Can't get enough of 'em!! Now whenever I would read books that were set in England, post Victorian era I believe (can't really remember exactly) cucumber sandwiches were a VERY popular snack. They were the best thing since sliced bread! Now I don't know about you but that just sounds absolutely terrible. Not tasty at all! Now don't get me wrong I like cucumbers. By themselves? I could eat them all day-minus the skin of of course- but I mean it's vegetable and bread?! Not just any vegetable I might add, it's a vegetable that's wet. It has like 80% water or something (I don't really know I just made that up). But it just doesn't sound appetizing.

But I digress, that was just to give you a glimpse of what went through my head when I discovered this weird combination so to speak. So fast forward...there are cucumbers in the fridge...otay...and there's bread...alright, dare I try?! Ummmmmm...CHEESE!!!! So this is what happened:

bread+mayo+cheese+cucumbers+bread= meh.....

If you followed my equation then you may correctly assume that the sandwich wasn't really all polite English society led me to believe, but then again I didn't have high expectations. It wasn't bad, it served its purpose as a snack. It just wasn't good. Acquired taste maybe? Perhaps. However I am now determined to find the BEST CUCUMBER SANDWICH EVER!!! I'm gonna dress that sandwich up so good the cucumber won't even know what hit it! I'm talking sensory overload for your taste buds because It's gonna be sssoooo goooooddddd!! Those are some pretty high goals for someone who doesn't know her way around the kitchen.....i'd better get to work..... :-/

Yours,

Concombre....?? 

EPIC FAIL!!!

So I just tried to make chocolate pancakes with Strawberry cream cheese frosting. Ugh.... My pancakes never come out like the cool looking pancakes that you get in restaurants. But they're always yummy so it never really matters that much you know. The pancakes were not the problem in this recipe however. Those were tasty and fine, the frosting was the problem. Laziness will be the death of me I swear. I get all the ingredients together and I decide that using the electric mixer would be too much work so I decide to use a spoon and a whisk. BAD IDEA. Everything is going fine until I decide that it's time to start whisking and then the frosting started to clump and the butter separated out and started to gather together and the icing sugar did not mix in properly.

So I tried to salvage the mix by using the mixer-which I tried to avoid in the first place-and it helped a little but not that much. On tasting the disaster (mostly because I hate wasting food) it wasn't terrible which leads me to believe that if I had done the recipe correctly with the electric mixer then all would have been well or okay at least. I will try this again and it WILL work.

Yours,

Frosting troubles... :-(

I made Chili!!!

Do you see that lovely bowl of yummy goodness to your left?! That was all me!! I MADE CHILI!!!!!!! :-) Using a basic recipe I received from a friend I added subtracted and divided to make this masterpiece which tastes sssoooo good even if it was just a tad spicy; which BTW is just the way I like it!

Now a word to the wise this is a heavy recipe, and while it can be eaten by itself I usually eat chili with crackers or toasted bread. But honestly eat it with whatever you want.


Title:          Dinner

Aim:           A Pot of Chili

Apparatus:Red Peas (a.k.a kidney beans)
                  1 lb of Ground Beef
                  4 Chicken Sausage Pieces (but really whatever sausage you prefer)
                  3 Scotch Bonnet Peppers
                  1 Sweet Pepper ( different colours make the dish look lively :-) )
                  1 Small Onion
                  1 Small Tomato
                  1 Can and a Half of Tomato Sauce
                  A Sprig of thyme
                  Vegetable Oil
                  Salt
                  Pepper
                  Escallion (a.k.a green onions)
                  Cheese (I used white cheddar)
                  1 1/2 tsp. Chili Powder

Method:

1. Defrost meat and season with salt and pepper cut the scotch bonnet peppers in quarts and place it in the container with the meat until ready for cooking.
2. About 30 mins before you begin the actual chili making process start the process of cooking the peas by simply bringing it to a boil in a separate pot.
3. While the peas are cooking place a small amount of oil in a separate pot and warm on medium heat. Then cook the ground beef until browned. Add the sausage chopped into as small, or as many pieces as you would like.
4. Cook together, mixing sporadically for approx. 2-3 mins then add all the seasoning (finely chopped green peppers, onions, tomatoes and sprig of thyme and scotch bonnet peppers). Mix together thoroughly and cover pot cooking for 5 minutes.
5. Add tomato sauce and peas (which have been cooked for 30 mins) Mix thoroughly and let sit for 2-3 mins.
6. Add water, enough to just cover mixture, put on low heat and simmer for 50 mins to an hour until semi-thickness is achieved.             

Discussion: 

1. The escallion and the cheese are just garnishes that I used in an attempt to make my chili look   photogenic :-) I however love lots of cheese in my chili so feel free cheese it up if you would like.
2. I despise sour cream, however I notice that lots of people use sour cream in their chili so if you like sour cream and you haven't tried it in your chili before go ahead and try it! I've heard it's good but I really wouldn't know. 
3. Now like I have mentioned before, I like eating my chili with toasted bread, however I have eaten it with crackers and it was tasty, I have seen people eat it with noodles (which seems a little weird to me) and I have heard of a rice combination. Honestly rice and chili sounds weird but I'm pretty sure it would taste fine, so if you try it and it's a good combo let me know!! 
4. As for the tomato sauce, in the original recipe tomato paste and pasta sauce was used, so my friends recipe was alot thicker than my own. However when I conducted the taste test on my tiny variation I had absolutely no cause for complaints. So just FYI 1/2 can of tomato paste and 1 can of pasta sauce can be substituted for my 1 1/2 cans of tomato sauce.

Conclusion: I successfully made chili for dinner, everyone in my family was pleased except for my brother but he doesn't count because he doesn't like anything with pasta/tomato sauce except for lasagna, weird right?! 

Wild Card indeed...

So I'm on a budget because I'm trying to save for Jazz and Blues Festival at the end of January, but I could hardly pass up dinner with a friend who I haven't seen in years! So I went to Cuddyz Sports Bar and Grill , and I decided to get two appetizers. Now I love almost everything shrimp, so I jump at every opportunity I get to stuff my face with said delicacy.

The item you see here ----------------------------->
was termed the Wild card. The description stated "Jerk Chicken or Shrimp Wontons blended with water chesnuts and green onion, served with sweet-plum chili sauce". This sounded uber yummy and in my head I assumed that it was just whole pieces of chicken or shrimp seasoned and wrapped in a wonton and then deep fried I suppose. Not what showed up on my table when I ordered the shrimp "wild card". The shrimp was mashed ; this was at the time and still is really weird to me because I have never had anything but a whole shrimp before. It was just odd. However it didn't taste bad, and the sweet-plum chili sauce while quite sweet was equally as spicy and tasty. It was indeed inventive and I enjoyed it with my mound of fries (which was more like a mountain) however I don't think I would get it again. It was just too weird mashed shrimp in a wonton? idk man idk....


Yours,

Shrimp on ma minddddddddddd... :-)

Christmas Crinkles

For everyone who knows me they can more than sufficiently appreciate and attest to the fact that food is ABSOLUTELY important in my life. I just can't get enough (sing along with me please)! If there was a way that I could eat ALWAYS and not suffer the negative consequences, I would be all over it! I imagine lot's of people would agree. For as far back as I can remember I have always wanted to learn how to cook and bake. I, honestly was the only factor stopping myself from learning due to this recurring illness which has sadly plagued me since my youth, and has on many occasions given my family reasons to doubt if I would ever completely recover, LAZINESS... *sheepishly smiles* Forgive me sometimes I have a flair for the dramatic...:)


How I got my groove (back...haha) was through trying to find a way to make a little extra money on the side. I thought I would teach myself how to bake (since I've always wanted to learn) and once I had a certain number of recipes in my arsenal then I would sell them. So in essence I would have a little bakery business going! I thought it was ingenious, and I was so excited I made plans, googled recipes, asked people who already knew how to bake for advice and searched for cute ways to package goods and I even came up with a name I thought was the cutest thing since sliced bread assuming my french was correct "Ma Petite Patisserie". All this enthusiasm was immediately curtailed by my mother asking me "Who's gas I was planning to use?" after a short discussion (to be absolutely diplomatic)and much huffing and puffing and rolling of the eyes on my part, MISSION ABORTED.


After a couple weeks I still really wanted to learn how to bake, and when I went to Pastry Passions in Sovereign Centre, and I saw a slice of cheesecake for I believe it was almost $450 I almost died. The $1000 hat was going to spend to buy my brother and I some cheesecake I could buy ingredients and make a mini cheesecake or cheesecake cupcakes. So I thought I should just do this. The beauty of compromise is that you work together, which I would have realised earlier if I wasn't being a little brat. So I would still learn how to bake I'd just use the oven at the same time my mother uses it so as to cut down on costs and preserve resources. YAY!!! (dances around a little...ok maybe a lot..)


 So after such a LENGTHY introduction on to the reason for my blog, Christmas Crinkles!! As much as I would love to take credit for this recipe, I got it from this page 

 http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/chocolate_crinkles/

 Since this whole journey is very much an experimental, try and see how it works type of thing here's my format:

 Title:      Cookies

 Aim:       To successfully bake deeeeeeee-licious cookies

 Apparatus: 1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
                 1 1/2 cups white sugar
                 1/2 cup vegetable oil
                 4 eggs
                 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
                 2 cups all-purpose flour
                 2 teaspoons baking powder
                1/2 teaspoon salt
                1 cup confectioners’ sugar
                Wooden spoon
                Measuring cups
                Measuring spoons
                Two mixing bowls
                Approx. 3 cookie sheets
                Approx. 1 tsp. of butter
                Saran wrap
                A working oven (for sure!!)

 Method:

1. In one bowl beat together the cocoa powder, white sugar, and vegetable oil until it comes together in a sort of dough. 
2.  Add the eggs one at a time (mixing for 30 seconds each). Then add the vanilla and mix thoroughly. 
3.  In the other bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt. Then mix into the chocolate doughy- like mixture until just combined. Do not overbeat. Cover the dough with plastic wrap and chill overnight or for four hours. 
4. Preheat the oven to 350°F, and grease the cookie sheets with butter (unless they are non-stick). 
5. Put the confectioners sugar in a bowl. Using a teaspoon get clumps of chilled dough and roll into a ball using your hands. Cover the ball in confectioner's sugar and then place on cookie sheet. 
6. Bake for ten to twelve minutes 

Results: [See picture above]

Discussion: Now if you went to the webpage above then you would see what that "experts" cookies looked like. Mine looked nothing like that! Why?! Well I used a tablespoon instead of a teaspoon to get little clumps of doughy goodness, so naturally because my clumps were bigger my cookies were bigger. The next problem I encountered was the dough, it was a lot less dough-like that I thought it would be, it was very wet like and I think perhaps I was to put more flour in it I am not sure yet google hasn't been helping very much. But I left a comment of the site to see if the owner can help me out so we shall see. When you are rolling in confectioner's sugar make sure the cookies are completely covered. So that when they bake you get that nice cracked look kinda. I didn't put enough sugar and so when they were done baking I went a little crazy with sprinkling it on lol. Also, the cookies were much more cake-like that I expected them to be. I have never had these cookies before so I had no idea what they would taste like. So perhaps they should be cake-like, I don't know, but they were extremely yummy and chewy and delightful. My father and brother could not keep their hands out of the cookie jar. Literally! I did have quite a bit as well and everyone said they loved it. So despite the weird non-dough-likeness, and the cakeyness. It was a success!!

Conclusion: MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. deeeeeee-licious cookies were baked and everyone loved them!!


 Yours,

 Hapyness... :-)

Causes.....ahhhhhhh!!!

So I know that for most people the first thing that comes to mind is...O.K. here we go again another person crying about the woes of the world, trying to make us feel guilty for wasting our (nasty) green beans because this child in a country (whose name I can't even begin to pronounce) half way across the world is starving. Is that what this is about? Yes and no.

No, because I can't make anyone feel guilty for anything. That is completely up to them. If you choose to help then great I applaud you and thank you so much. If not, it won't break my day.

On the other hand yes and a big RESOUNDING yes, because living in a third world country where I see suffering on many different levels often brings issues like these close to home where my heart is...:-)With this in mind, I wanted to highlight a cause and three organisations that I support, which makes an effort to aid these "cause-worthy" individuals in whatever way possible. If you have a moment (which I assume you do since you are taking the time out to read my blog) please do not hesitate to go on the webpage and browse, so that should an opportunity arise whereby you can help you have the means to do so. Otherwise keep these organisations in your prayers.

http://one.org/international/

http://www.worldhelp.net/

http://livinghopeja.com/index.php (for information about this one you can hit me up!)

http://invisiblechildren.com/


Yours,

Do what you can and leave the rest to God...:-)