again with the humidifier

I've had another foray into life with the goofy Aldi humidifier, and I thought I would revisit the topic since I never returned to show a photo of the thing.

Here's the beast in action!

As an aside, I would very much like to take a moment to wax rhapsodic over Aldi, my discount grocer of choice. Aldi does a lot of things right, and I have a lot of respect for the company and I am also really happy to have one close enough to frequent. In short, I love Aldi.

I go there maybe once a week or two weeks, and it’s probably my favorite trip. The angels don’t sing when I go there (the way they do at the fancy Harris Teeter not far from here) but for some reason, I most look forward to this store. Is it the new organic products popping up here and there? Is it the opportunity to get my favorite junk food and snacks for way less than I can get them anywhere else? (By the way, Aldi knock-off Oreos are better than real Oreos, in my opinion, and the knock-off Cap’n Crunch has a permanent place in my heart.) Maybe it’s my favorite “off-the-shopping-list” treat, their fancy chocolate bars. Is it the section in the middle with the “stuff” instead of the food, where you never, ever, ever know what you’ll find but 98% of the time it’s something awesome? My latest obsession: the personal exercise trampoline for $25 that I should have grabbed immediately but talked myself out of. Why, oh why, did I talk myself out of that? It would be fun for the whole tiny family! I can just imagine Gabriel jumping around on that thing.

As I referenced above, Aldi is beginning to introduce organic products. They are part of the store’s Simply Natural brand, which includes both organic and all-natural/simple ingredients. Last week I picked up a jar of organic salsa and a box of organic honey nut cheerios to give to G as a snack instead of conventional snackies. Did you know that to be certified organic, the product is also non-GMO? When I can get non-GMO grains, I jump on it. Especially for my boy. There’s organic produce including spinach, cherry tomatoes, and apples, and there’s also organic honey. I think they are maybe also venturing into organic dairy, even, which makes me really happy because I try to keep our milk and butter organic. (Cheese is an aspirational goal that will likely not come to fruition any time soon.) And my latest, greatest finds: nitrate/nitrite-free BACON and DELI TURKEY. Can I just tell you how happy this makes me? It make me very happy.

There are some things I don’t get at Aldi. Their organic produce availability is growing, but it doesn’t encompass our whole diet yet and I try to stick to organic with the Dirty Dozen (or however many it is this year) so I get a lot of my produce elsewhere. I also don’t get my meat there, because I get the vast majority of my meat from Zaycon. And while Aldi has a lot, they don’t have everything, so there are other odds and ends that come from other places. But my Aldi list is usually a long list! And I spend way too much time there poking around the shelves, looking for new organic things and generally just scouting.

I should also probably disclose that I am not getting paid or otherwise compensated to write any of this. I just really like Aldi and I look forward to my trips there, as weird as that may be.

What about you? Have you ever been to Aldi?

fortification and the mom struggling to feed a toddler

When I first had my baby, I planned to nurse him exclusively for at least six months and to start "baby-led weaning" at that point. That meant I was going to start offering him regular foods to see what he took to and what he didn't like. None of this baby food nonsense for me, and the baby foods I WOULD give him would be hand-made by me, from whole, organic ingredients! And then my plan was to do a clean, all-organic, mostly whole foods diet. His grains would be whole grains. His sweeteners would be natural sweeteners, not the white refined stuff that we're all addicted to. So what if the vast majority of my budget was going toward housing and grocery bills. It's his health! Health is the foundation of life! This is critical stuff!

Enter: reality

My plan worked for a while. Sort of. My kid was one of those kids who is reluctant to give up the boob and start with the real food, so it wasn't until he was about 11 months old that he would get any significant amount of nutrition from food rather than milk. We did well combining eating and nursing, though I did end up getting organic baby food as a concession.

It took me more than a year to come to terms with the fact that my plan just wouldn't work. Not with this kid, and not in this situation. I was hitting up against severe constrictions that made it impossible to feed Gabriel the way I wanted. I simply didn't have the spare time to make his food. I didn't have the funds to buy everything organic. I constantly had to make choices between making his food and earning his money. Eventually I just resolved to make extra food whenever I did have the time, and otherwise to feed him my version of "convenience" foods, like pre-made applesauce pouches, cut up fruit and vegetables, and frozen peas. I'd also give him the organic crackers and puffs when I could get them. (So much for no refined grains!)

There was the complicating factor of him being allergic to dairy, which is a major source of fats, calcium, and protein for most kids. One thing led to another, and it became clear that he needed to be getting more calories. I went through an arduous phase of "trying harder," wherein I overdosed on reading materials and lost a lot of income -- and therefore food-buying power. Eventually I had to accept the fact that this was not going to happen the way I wanted it to happen. It became more important that he get enough to eat, no matter what, than that he never have fried foods, never have white sugars, never drink juice unless I juice it myself from fresh organic produce. It just was. not. happening.

So I let go of my expectations of the perfect diet. I stopped comparing myself to the mommy bloggers who have been foodies their entire lives, have nutrition degrees, have their own organic gardens and access to organic farmers and blogs that give them food budgets that were bigger than my rent, not to mention supportive husbands who bring in most of the family's income and put the kids to bed so that mama can have five freaking minutes to herself. Because I didn't have any of that.

Things are different, now. I am feeding him all kinds of things I swore would never be welcome in my home. He eats hot dogs. He eats tater tots. Everything gets drenched in ketchup. I buy nutrient-fortified things as often as I can -- calcium-fortified orange juice, protein-fortified almond milk, DHA-fortified eggs. Enriched, fortified, value-added stuff is everywhere. A far cry from the whole foods I theoretically hold as ideal.

I still feed him mostly organic produce when it's on the dirty dozen, and most of our meats and dairy (for me) are hormone-free and antibiotic-free -- these are two things I follow the 80/20 rule on. But a popular snack around here is (natural) peanut butter on (Aldi brand) graham crackers. He gets a tablespoon or two of Nutella once a day (he calls it "ice cream," which is completely adorable). He gets juice at breakfast and lunch. I spend way too much money on those pouches. Some days the only vegetables he gets are in a pouch and in the three bites of spaghetti sauce he'll tolerate before realizing I've loaded it with carrots and peas.

It's unbelievably hard to let go of expectations, especially when it comes to our parenting. In a lot of ways, I am the mom I always wanted to be. But when it comes to food, changes had to be made by necessity. What's more, I had to stop telling myself I should be able to do this really great thing of elevating and protecting my baby's diet at all costs. I simply lacked the capacity to pull it off. And I had to accept that, or die trying.


What is something you always thought you'd do as a parent (or as a grown-up), that you later realized simply wasn't possible?

making super soft, iron-fortified bread at home

So it turns out that, despite a meat-loving pedigree, my boy does not yet like meat. He'll eat some salmon or some real fried chicken maybe, but meatballs, burgers, steaks, chicken breast, or any breaded nuggets, fingers, or sticks are not of interest to this boy. I am not too concerned about him picking and choosing what he eats right now, but I do get concerned about his protein and iron intake. I've taken to hiding meat purees in other things and finding other ways to get some of the good stuff into the boy while he comes around to this whole meat thing. 

One of the things I'm poking around with is finding ways to add some iron-fortified "infant cereal" to things. It's easy to sneak a good amount into oatmeal and sauces, for example. I've mixed some in with peanut butter that I spread onto graham crackers. But the latest thing I tried was adding it to bread. 

I bake bread in the bread machine -- that is definitely the easiest and requires the least amount of time, and the little loaves work well for my little family, too. I have goofed around with a few different recipes, but nothing works quite as well for me as the regular white bread recipe on the side of the machine, so for now that's the one I use. 

In a late-night experiment the other day, I tampered with my bread recipe by replacing some of the flour with toasted wheat germ (zinc!) and replacing the powdered milk with fortified oatmeal cereal (iron!). The result was a super soft loaf of sandwich bread that Gabriel now requests. The taste is pretty much the same, maybe with a little more depth from the wheat germ. Overall, I'm really happy with the results and I am going to keep tinkering with it to see just how much of the cereal I can add in. A slice of bread is not going to replace the iron content of an ounce of beef, but still...the more iron, the better! 

singing the praises of zaycon

In my kitchen, there are conflicting needs. One side of the conflict is the budget. There isn't a whole lot in the coffers here at Chez Freelancing Single Mama With A Toddler At Home. The other side of the conflict is my deep, deep desire to feed my son the best I can. And for me, "the best" is defined as clean, organic, whole foods to the extent of my ability. I prioritize organic meats and "the dirty dozen" in produce -- and if he were able to have dairy, I'd make organic milk a staple, too.

Organic stuff, as you know, is not so cheap. I buy in bulk whenever I can, but the meat gets me every time. Enter: Zaycon. They offer basically organic ground beef (93/7) and boneless chicken breasts approximately every quarter.

I am a HUGE fan.

There are a couple of catches to using Zaycon. First, their deliveries are what I would call "sporadic" -- I am a pretty new member so I don't have a really good sense yet, but I think chicken comes twice a year and beef comes quarterly to where I am. It may be that chicken also comes quarterly. The second catch is that these meats are not technically organic, because the farmers keep antibiotics on site to treat sick animals (which are kept apart from the health animals until they're off the drugs); to be certified organic, there can't be any antibiotics on site. So they are basically organic, and it's close enough for me. The third catch is that you are ordering in bulk. In 40lb boxes, to be exact. Too much meat? Split a box with a friend. If you're in the Triangle and you want to share a box, let me know! The fourth catch is that you're getting 40lbs (or more) of fresh meat, packaged in 10-lb things, which means you need to take your box home and process it yourself pretty much immediately because you probably do not want to stick ten pounds of ground beef straight into your freezer. You don't get to pick your pick-up date, but you'll know it a couple of months in advance so it can be easy to plan around. For me, "processing" four 10lb logs of ground beef involved a food scale and a bunch of ziploc bags, basically. Also: lots of time. It's fun with a friend, though.

That sounds like a ton of effort, right? Well...maybe it is. But I'm generally willing to do a little work if it means I can save a lot of money. So when I found out that the ground beef was $3.49/lb and the next chicken is priced at $1.84/lb, I was completely sold. I might have even uttered a four-letter word that starts with H and ends in hockey sticks as part of a verbal affirmation.

You want in on the deal? Check them out and see if there's a drop in your area.

Zaycon also offers other great stuff like strawberries and honey and milk, but only in specific parts of the country (NOT including my part, sadface). If I remember correctly, it's because part of their business model is to keep things as close to local as possible, though "local" is probably loosely defined as "within a state or two" if I'm guessing. Either way, no PNW wildflower honey for me.

I recently picked up my first box of their ground beef. I found out about the drop right before it happened and everything had sold out; fortunately, I was walking past my computer at the exact moment that I got an email saying that they had a few extra boxes for people on the wait list. By the time I got to the site (which was within 20 seconds of getting this email!) it was down to one box, which I handily nabbed. It was really exciting. (I guess you just had to be there.)

Zaycon's fall chicken sale is now open -- I would highly recommend you take a look and see if they're coming to your area. It's in October, so there's lots of time to find a freezer solution if you need one.


Note: the Zaycon links above are my affiliate links. I get a $1 credit for every purchase made by someone who registers using that link. 

days like these

I baked a spoon into the banana bread. Draw your own conclusions. 

a cookie recipe and a subtle birthday hint

Behold, the long-awaited (but requested!) losing cookie recipe that is actually full of the winning:

Ingredients:

3/4c honey
3/4c sucanat*
1c butter, softened
1tsp vanilla
1 large egg
2 1/4c flour
1tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt (use less if you like your cookies shockingly sweet)
1 giant hershey bar, chopped
1 ghiradelli semi-sweet or dark chocolate bar, chopped

1. heat the oven to 375
2. beat honey, sugar, butter, vanilla and egg. stir in flour, baking soda and salt. add more flour if you need to.** stir in the chocolate chunks
3. drop dough by rounded spoonfuls about an inch or two apart on a cookie sheet.
4. bake until they're done. for me, i check at 10 minutes and decide then.

NOTES:
- *use turbinado or, if you must, brown sugar in place of the sucanet
- **the honey makes the dough pretty wet, and you want a stiffer dough, so you may need to add a few tablespoons of flour when you get to the end.
- mixing some whole wheat flour in makes these nice and hearty - great for dunking in milk, in my opinion
- because there's so much honey in this recipe, you aren't going to get very crispy cookies. if you like crispy, you'll have to look elsewhere.




Because my birthday is Sunday(!), I plan to make up a batch of these. The jury's still out on whether I plan to share any with Brian.

the swing of things

You won't believe this, but I'd actually planned a post for Monday. Planned it in my head, anyway. You remember that cookie contest that I didn't win? Well, I was going to share with you my not-winning* (no duh) cookie recipe. But I was planning to write the recipe post as a response to one of you fine folks actually requesting said recipe.

Alas, I received no requests.


It was a lonely weekend.


So lonely.


But about these cookies. Brian loves them. I'm not really sure why, because Brian is not one to show enthusiasm for much of anything in the culinary realm of dessert (except for his mom's chocolate pudding pie - which is SO GOOD - and this weird pasty bland thing called New York Cheese Cake, which I have never come to appreciate). Brian's sweet tooth must have fallen out or something.

But these cookies? He raves.

I had about a billion leftover cookies after the contest. They sat here on our table in their little lidded bin carrying tray thing for a while, quickly making us fatter. Every now and then, Brian would go over to the table, carefully select one cookie, take a bite, tip his face toward the heavens, close his eyes, sigh, and say 'just like [insert name of some place he used to go to in New York with his grandparents but no longer exists] ' Then he'd pop the rest of it in his mouth and continue whatever he had been doing moments before the cookie hiatus.

It was like watching a sitcom. Or my adorably dramatic little cousin with the British name spelling. Or a really bad commercial. Only 60 calories!

Eventually Brian took a bunch of the leftovers to work, and he says 'everyone' said I should have won. So there's that.

Then again, he is known for occasional exaggeration. So there's that, too.
*flips tables*


So anyway. If you want the cookie recipe that makes husbands sigh but fails to beat out white chocolate macadamia nut cookies in the church chocolate chip cookie contest, just let me know.

the results are in

I won't keep you in suspense about the baking contest.

My team did not win.

HOWEVER, we got loads of nice compliments. So there's that.

Next year, it's on like donkey kong. The 'mid winter challenge,' as this event is called, will be a barbecue contest! And since I don't really have a barbecue sauce recipe (heh..unless Kraft counts) I've got to get to work.

Any pointers?

BIP

Baking in progress!!

Image Source

If the cookie-loving folks at my church agree with me on Sunday, I will return to this space on Monday, VICTORIOUS. There's a chocolate chip cookie contest going on at my church this weekend, and yours truly has entered!

Back to the kitchen...

How to make Greek yogurt

What is this madness?

We've been making some changes in our food habits lately. Eating more vegetables. Eating  less in general. Making less-bad snack choices (usually). Brian's been having yogurt-based smoothies. I have kefir when it's in the house. 

Brian asked the other day what the difference between regular yogurt and Greek yogurt is. My understanding is that Greek yogurt is regular yogurt with whey drained out of it. Incidentally, it's pretty easy to make. I made my first go of it yesterday, with a little encouragement from my Nourishing Traditions cookbook.*

Have you ever gone a day or two and then looked at your yogurt tub and found this yellowy liquid in the middle? That stuff is whey. And have you noticed that the yogurt itself is a little thicker when it separates like that? Ta-da, Greek yogurt by neglect!

It's easy to make on purpose, too. Most instructions will tell you to set a strainer in a bowl, line it with cheese cloth or a dish towel, and spoon the yogurt into it. Check back in a couple of hours and test it for thickness. When it's as thick as you like it, put it in a container. 

Me, I'm not so much into washing dishes when I don't have to. So I saved the previous yogurt container and washed it. If you look at that picture, you can figure out what else I did....but I'll spell it out for you here, anyway. 

I pulled the yogurt container from the fridge, folded up some cheesecloth, rubber-banded it over the container, and turned that thing upside down over the empty one. Easy, peasy, and no extra dishes to wash. (I did wash the cheesecloth, though. That stuff is gonna see some good use.)

Too thick? Stir some whey back in. 

Lots of time to wait? Let it drain until it's done draining and you've got cream cheese!

My guess is that most people toss the whey, which is unfortunate because there's some cool stuff you can do with whey. I haven't tried any of it yet, but I have some ideas. It'll keep in the fridge for 6 months, they say, so I've got time. 

I'm thinking about soaking rice grains before cooking them and/or playing with something called lacto-fermentation. 

I really love this stuff. 

*Not an affiliate link.

What's the most ambitious thing you ever made, in the kitchen or otherwise?

swf iso kefir

Kefir, in case you don't know, is a culture milk product, kind of like yogurt but not as thick. I make my morning smoothies with it all the time. It's a probiotic and I've found it to be really filling and satisfying. Most morning anyway. Some days I need a bowl of grits.

My store stopped carrying the brand I like, and all the other brands are loaded with crap and sweeteners and yuck. I just want kefir, straight up kefir. So it's time to start making my own! As best I can tell, you put the kefir grains in milk and let them work their magic a while, and then you have kefir.

Except I don't know where to source kefir grains. Sadly.

But you all are smart, and maybe you know where I can find some!


So tell me - have you ever bought kefir grains, and if so, where did you get them?

Fudge FAIL

I like to try new things in my kitchen. A lot of times, I come away with moderate, if not great, success.

But not always.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: 

My latest FAIL. The S'mores Fudge Fail.

Healthy?

Brian and I have never exactly had 'much money.' We don't have much disposable income and never have, and rather than living an inflated lifestyle using credit cards, we just don't do a whole lot of things that cost money. One of the things we don't do is eat out much. When I was working and Brian was in school, we still ate at home most nights but that doesn't necessarily mean what we ate didn't come from a can or a jar or a box. I wanted to make a change to that, but I just didn't have the time and energy to make a meal from scratch every single day. So when I quit my job and we moved halfway across the country and I decided to be a housewife and eventually do some work from home (all in like 2 months), one of the things I wanted to focus on immediately was making good dinners every night.

I've done pretty well for the most part, I'd say, and I am really proud of my efforts to cut WAY back on our reliance on pre-packaged foods and reducing like whoa the amount of chemicals and preservatives and how-do-you-pronounce-this foods. I never bought into the idea that low-fat and fake processed foods are better for you - I just use less of the good stuff. (I'd rather have a tablespoon of real butter than a tub of Smart Balance.) 

In that vein, I have begun to think about how to augment the actual healthful factor of what we're eating. (Because homemade pizza is awesome, but it's still just pizza.) Introducing new vegetables, seasonings, cooking methods, etc. It's been fun. And it's been really cool too - I am so much less intimidated by 'real cooking' and a lot of things that would have put me off a year ago are now on my list of things to try. I've started with some really basic things - like making bread from scratch, experimenting with home-made chicken broth, and making cream sauces from a roux and even making Chinese and Japanese sauces (like teriyaki and plain stir fry brown sauce) from scratch. 

So when I saw a recipe for a healthy healthful corn and potato chowder, I made immediate plans to bookmark the site. And then I read the ingredients list, and stopped short. Ingredients included canned corn, canned brand-name chicken broth, Velveeta, bacon bits, and fat-free half and half. (And potatoes of course.) I reeled.

First off, I'm not sure how a cream and cheese-based potato soup could be called healthful (although it could easily be called AWESOME). But really...I don't see how something with Velveeta in it could ever be called healthful. Bacon bits aren't real food either (unless you crumbled up half a pound of bacon in a jar too). And I've already mentioned how I feel about fat-free stuff.

Certainly this recipe is less-bad-for-you than if it were to come from a calorie-laden restaurant vat or a tin can that you dilute and heat up in the microwave. But to me, there's a big difference between less-bad and actually good. Maybe Velveeta, mass-produced chicken broth from a can, and pseudo-meat are a step in the right direction, but they in and of themselves do not a healthy life make.

Maybe I shouldn't publish this opinion. I don't necessarily have room to talk, and my eating habits are far from great (I might have had 2 miniature York peppermint patties while writing this). But can I be the only one to raise my eyebrow to this notion of healthful eating? Is this recipe really what we think of as a good food decision? I don't know. Maybe. But maybe not.

menu planning

Hey guess what! I've started meal planning!

Meal planning is pretty basic - you sit down one day and map out your meals for the upcoming week, or two weeks, or month if you are super-mom (which, hello, I am NOT, on account of not being a mom and also not being super enough to plan meals for a MONTH).

Some folks plan out breakfast, lunch, snack, and dinner. I am good with just doing dinners, since Brian doesn't eat breakfast much and lunch is usually leftovers (for him) or sandwiches for me (or maybe leftovers too).

Back when I was working and Brian was in school, he did a lot of the cooking and I just tried to make sure we had a little bit of everything on hand. I tried menu planning a few times, but Brian - who has an extreme aversion to rules, lists, schedules, boundaries, etc. a major spontaneity/creativity streak (love you hon!) - was resistant. And since I didn't have the time or energy to do it all myself, we just kinda would wing it most nights.

Well...NO MORE! Now that he's the one working (HA!) and I sit around eating bon bons and watching soap operas all day (DOUBLE HA!) I figured it might be a good idea to bring back the meal plan idea. So I did. I did one for most of last week's dinners, and last night I scribbled one out for this week.

A lot of of the frugal/homemaking blogs I read will make their new meal plan on Sunday, which makes sense especially given the Sunday circulars - wherein they scope for great deals and plan meals around what's cheap this week. I've noticed here in Denver that a lot of stores run their sales Wednesday through Tuesday, AND, with Brian's weekday off being Monday, I have sorta gotten in the habit of my 'weekends' being Sunday/Monday and am naturally inclined for my 'week' to begin on Tuesday - which would include the meal plan. So I'm in this weird little time warp and I haven't bothered to reconcile it. Buying lots of meat when it's cheap has worked well enough in the cheap-stuff department.

Another thing I like about meal plans - it gives me a way to experiment with new recipes. I've got a couple in the pipeline for this week. I think it's a lot of fun to poke through some of the cookbooks we received as wedding gifts to find something new to try. And if I don't feel like looking through books, I'll just make a list of things I already know we like. No harm, no foul.

So who wants to sneak a peek at this week's dinner plans? I KNEW you did!

Tuesday - potato and leek soup (leek is a new vegetable to us, and soup is usually a safe way to introduce something...yes?) with some of the leftover bread from last week - an assortment of cornbread, biscuits, and featherlights
Wednesday - barbecups, canned corn, and salad (barbecups are something I came across in the Virginia Farmers cookbook we received as a wedding present. It consists of a muffin tin lined with crescent rolls, and then you put ground beef and onions cooked and mixed up in barbecue sauce into the crescent rolls, and you put some shredded cheese on top and bake until the crescent rolls are done. They make little cups full of barbecued beef and it's one of those recipes you can mix up a lot and do whatever you want with.)
Thursday - chicken tetrazzini, with more salad (because if we don't eat our lettuce up front, we don't eat it, and that is sad)
Friday - dinner out. Brian is leaving that evening for the youth group ski retreat, so we're going to get a little something cheap and yummy before the high schoolers descend and I am left alone with the dogs for 52 hours I get a couple of solid days of work on the house  
Saturday - chicken lo mein (something I have wanted to learn to cook for ages and I finally got some noodles! Brian isn't a huge fan so this is a good thing for an alone weekend.
Sunday - leftovers

Monday - pasta, likely spaghetti or macaroni and cheese, and whatever vegetables are about to go bad. Otherwise, Monday is when we'll eat whatever meal I had planned that week but for some reason didn't cook (such as, emergency pizza night, dinner invitation, etc.)

Do you do a weekly meal plan?

Raw what?

One of my favorite blogs is Casual Kitchen.  This blog appeals to a big range of people, I'm sure, but my personal interest comes from a place of not really caring about food and nutrition but feeling like maybe I should care.  Daniel's tag line is Cook More. Think More. Spend Less.  And he delivers.  He makes it easy for me to get a little bit interested in cooking and nutrition.

I was really struck a couple of weeks ago when he posted a 7-day series on a raw food diet trial.  Raw food might be briefly summed up as food that isn't cooked - isn't dead, some say.  It doesn't appeal to me as a lifestyle at all (I heart me some bread and cheese and chocolate, thankyouverymuch) but I think I could take a few pages from the Raw Foods book.

So what Daniel did is eat a raw food diet for 7 days, and then each day he posted what/when he ate and included notes from the day.  You can see the full archive here.  Seriously, check it out.

Sounds boring, right?  WRONG.  I thought I would end up skipping this series of his, but it was actually fascinating to see what exactly constitutes a raw food breakfast, lunch, and dinner.  Who knew soaked and sprouted wheat berries could be awesome?

I might actually give them a try.

Once I find my magic bullet, that is....

general tso FAIL

In a fey fit of culinary inspiration, Brian and I decided to try our hands at making some General Tso's chicken...the yummy spicy red-sauced Chinese dish that can't be beat.

I thought this would be an appropriate venture because we had basically everything we'd need - not to mention some chicken that needed to be consumed.  We've tried our hand at some basic Chinese dishes, so it seemed a good time to step up the game.

It all started out well enough.  We got the chickens fried and battered no sweat.  When it came time to make the sauce, things were looking up.  It smelled good, I had the heat on the right setting, and we were getting really hungry.

The last step of making the sauce is combining the flavorful stuff you've been cooking with an oil.  When I did this, something happened.  They never combined.  And the flavorful sauce started getting darker and darker.  It was also getting thicker, which I thought was good.

It was, however, very very bad.  Almost immediately things got very sticky and stringy.  In a hurry, we tossed some of the chicken in to coat, and things just got weirder.

Stringy, super-sticky-stuck-together, and pretty quickly, hardened.

Brian was brave and bit down first.  Reaction: not happy.  It was CRUNCHY.  And reportedly tasted like charcoal.

I tried it myself.  Yep, definitely felt like eating fried chicken dipped in BURN.  Not appetizing.  Eli wouldn't even touch it.

I don't know what we did wrong (besides too much heat), but I think we might try again sometime.  Maybe.

The next time I was at the grocery store, I hit up the 'asian foods' section and got a premade bottle of General Tso sauce.

homemade pudding

YOU GUYS.  

Have you ever made pudding from scratch?

I haven't.  I have always been perfectly satisfied with the powdered stuff.  

But I keep seeing all these recipes in my favorite blogs, for puddings made from SCRATCH (I didn't even know you could do that!!) and they look AMAZING.  There are photos.  Of CHOCOLATE.  Pudding.  Go here and here and here and HERE if you don't believe me.

I want.

I also want those cute little pudding dishes.  I think we have one.

Tell me.  Have you ever made-made pudding?  Is it worth it?