It's Chili in Here

It's almost winter. It's cold out. It's chili season!

Chili is so easy, I don't know why I haven't made it before. I used one of those McCormick's packets, a pound of beef, and then added in canned and fresh vegetables:

Chili isn't really a picture-friendly food, but although it may look gross, trust me--it was good. I made enough to have leftovers, and I'm looking forward to eating the rest tomorrow. Hopefully chili's like soup, and it'll be even better the second time around. 

Update (1/4) - Chili is not like soup.

xo, Kristin

surPIES!

Pie is just a gift from heaven. I made 3 apple pies today. Two are a surprise for my ex-cross country team, since they have their first meet of the season tomorrow. One was for me to eat with friends. I'm considering eating less carbs. Goodbye pies...

Rating: 10/10 (Who can go wrong with apple pie??)
Total Time: 1hr 15 mins total
Difficulty: 3/10

Also, check out my friend's food blog! Her blog, Eat The Impossible, addresses allergy friendly recipes!

Kristin

PotLuck

Martin and Debbie have arrived safely in Japan, and wont have internet for a little while, and I am on a month break from school and get to avoid preparing anything more difficult than a bowl of cereal! :D :D

I guess the blog's going to take a couple weeks hiatus. In the meantime, I leave you with some pictures from the potluck party I threw in my dormitory.

The good thing about potlucks is a lot of people bring food, and so you don't have to eat the food you yourself prepared for the potluck. The other people get stuck doing that. Ha ha! Plus, the added advantage of actually throwing the potluck means that you get to keep all the delicious leftovers.

Other people prepping food. That's what I like to see! Here we have pasta, egg plant, melting chocolate, and something green.

Mac prepares a spinach, strawberry, and fetta salad. OMG YUM.

Gorging on food. Sipping wine. Enjoying the Olympics. 

Kristin

Free meal!

Tonight I made myself sauteed kale and tomatoes with rice. Preparation was exactly how it sounds. Not hard. Not impressive. Very delicious. 

The brown rice I bought using my parents' credit card last month at Price Chopper.

The tomatoes I got for free at Stop and Shop because they were mislabeled and I complained about it.

The kale I pilfered late last night from the college community gardens.

Rating: 7/10
Prep time: Set the rice to cook in rice cooker 30 mins before sauteing veggies. Total prep time, 35 mins.
Difficulty: 3/10

Next time I'll cut up the kale into smaller pieces and not overcook the rice (I hope).

Kristin

Dessert Weekend

This weekend I was able to get away from school (and my non-airconditioned 150 million degree room) and go to the lake with a friend. We made chocolate peanut butter bars, clafouti, and chocolate covered strawberries. Delicious weekend.

Rating: 10/10

Prep Time: 15 minutes (+ 20 mins in the freezer)

Difficulty: 2/10

Rating: 8/10
Prep Time: 15 minutes (+ 1 hour in the oven)
Difficulty: 2/10

Rating: 10/10

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Difficulty: 1/10

Kristin

Okonomiyaki Dinner Party

For those of you who don't know, okonomiyaki is a sort of cabbage pancake eaten in Japan. Okonomiyaki is relatively healthy, cheap, and ooo so delicious. Hands down it was my favorite food when I lived in Japan.

Not only does it taste AWESOME, but there's a certain social aspect that goes along with eating okonomiyaki. It's a food you eat with friends while sitting gathered around the electric grill to chat and make food together.

Since it's so cheap and easy to make, I decided to do okonomiyaki for tonight's impromptu dinner party.

Now, okonomiyaki can get complicated. You'll see some recipes online that call for special flour, daikon, things that you can only find at Asian specialty stores, etc. These are unnecessary. If you want to eat good okonomiyaki, all you really need is eggs, flour, water, cabbage, and the contents of your fridge.

Tonight's dorm fridge haul included:

tomatoes
onions
garlic

Not so involved, but enough extra ingredients to make a good, vegetarian okonomiyaki. We topped it with mayonaise and tonkatsu sauce and it was awesome!!

Batter and chopped vegetables

Okonomiyaki pancake

Over-ripe cherries

Finished !

Rating: 9.5/10
Prep Time: 1 hour (included frying up a TON of pancakes)
Difficulty: 3/10

Kristin

Martin & Kristin Reunion Special

Martin came to visit me today at school and brought along the things he found in his kitchen pantry at home. We had assumed that all grocery stores were closed on the 4th of July, but found out later that every significant store in the area is open for business...

Anyway, we started out with simple spaghetti and sauce:

Rating: 9/10 (Kristin), 6/10 (Martin)
Prep Time: 10  minutes
Difficulty: 2/10

Preparation took hardly any time at all because although we suck at cooking, we can boil water, to an extent. It was pretty hard, not letting the water boil over, but somehow we made something edible.

Next, since we're really bad at timing and synchronizing our cooking/ multitasking. We had canned vegetables for desert:

Rating: 1/10 (Kristin), 2/10 (Martin)
Prep Time: 1 minute
Difficulty: 4/10

WTF canned vegetables. More difficult to prepare than you'd expect:

Martin & Kristin

Howdy! Hi!

So, before any actual cooking with (sex)pots begins, I wanted to highlight that we've had an auspicious start: I googled the blog and it turns out it's the first thing that comes up! That's good, since my long-term hope for the blog is a (natural) segue into a book deal. If the dialog in Julie & Julia can get good reviews, then surely mine can too.

Anyway, my first post isn't much of a "cooking" post—more of a self-introduction as presented through food.  Here's the last thing I ate:

It's sugar decoration letters!! Or was, anyway. They are my favorite snack in the world (sans cake, obvi), and are indicative of the food standards I hold myself to. My mom and I were left alone to make dinner tonight, which meant the sugar letters became the meal's appetizer, eventually rounded out by pre-cooked chicken purchased from Stop & Shop. The usual cook—my dad—was out of town, and we saw no need to prove that we can get by on our own.

There is a saving grace, however. As an avid food network fan, I know that Sandra Lee is up for hours every night brainstorming how she's going to utilize her leftovers in "round two recipes." I'll have you know my mom and I figured out our round two in just minutes: this leftover chicken will reinvent itself as chicken salad for lunch tomorrow. Suck it Sandra!

Anyway, I expect the real cooking for me to begin next month when I move to Japan and get my first apartment. I technically have cooked things in the past, so there is a glimmer of hope for the future. Thanks Oberlin College co-ops for "teaching me how to cook"!

On a final note, a self-introduction suggests that someone besides me, Debbie, and Kristin may read this entry, and potentially want to know something about me, the author, Martin Rouse. I can assure you, the non-existent reader, that this is not the case. I just like writing about myself. But more importantly, I really really like Kristin and Debbie, and can't wait to get to know them better through their food choices and adventures.

Martin

PS- Hey guys I brushed my teeth! Note the generous helping of Red 3 and Red 40.