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Our culinary adventures have been so non-existent this week that all I have to show you is this dessert I made last Sunday. Nearly a week ago. Sure is pretty though!

Strawberry almond cream tart.

Not feeling very good right now. I might just go lay down. Watch some tv. In my jammies. I have what I think is supposed to be an outdoor wedding to attend this afternoon and it’s raining. So typical. I get to serve cake. I had better be feeling better by then.

Gonna go curl up in the fetal position now. Happy weekend!

P.S. Last night I used my kitchen torch to toast the outside of marshmallows, peel off the toasted layer, eat the toasted layer, then repeated. mmmmmmmmmm

Had the chance to play with my new creme brulee torch yesterday. Actually, Isaac did lots of “playing” with the torch. I used it for its intended purpose.

my first use of vanilla beans

We had such a yummy dinner I’ve been inspired to blog about it. Some of it was planned but much of it was me staring at the contents of my pantry wondering what in the world I could make. There was lots of staring. My pantry is full, yet it can be so hard to figure out how to turn all that “stuff” in to something edible.

My go-to cookbook lately has been the recently acquired “Cooking Light Annual Recipes 2010″. I can now safely throw away all of the torn-out pages of last year’s Cooking Light magazine that I’ve got in my recipe binder.

Yes, I have a binder. Don’t you?

The cornerstone of dinner was the Broiled Salmon with Peppercorn-Lime Rub (page 116 for those that have this book). 20 minute entree that included peppercorns, one of my favorite things in life. Gives Ella anxiety though. “What’s that black stuff? Is it hot? It’s hot! Ow, my mouth hurts”. Queue eye-roll from mom. The sooner she gets on this pepper bandwagon the better off we’ll all be.

I always start my cooking prep by reading through the recipe completely. Ok, so that’s what I try to do. And I did this time. Then I looked at the pretty pictures in the middle of the book and saw the Lemon-Thyme Quickbread (page 162). Mmmmm. Recipe read, ingredients on hand, 1.5 hours ’til dinner, let’s make it happen. Also got to make more use of my stand mixer. I’m still in love with it.

Speaking of which. I bought mine through Costco and got a bonus attachment, which just arrived yesterday. It’s the rotary slider/shredder. Now I have to find a recipe that involves lots of slicing and shredding.

All right, with the bread in the oven and the entree waiting for the oven to become available I began the staring of the pantry to figure out what else we should eat. I had hoped I had some couscous or something, but we’re mostly out. Also out of sticky rice and even minute rice. There was barely enough of the dreaded brown rice. I cooked it in chicken broth rather than water and that helped.

Lemon-Thyme Quickbread

Finally I went with a staple around here for our vegetable. Yet another Cooking Light recipe, I tore this one out last May, but you can find it on page 124 of the 2010 annual recipes book. It’s Green beans with feta (and red onions and some other stuff).

So, to recap, the menu, minus all of the above filler:

Broiled salmon with peppercorn-lime rub
Lemon-Thyme quickbread
Brown rice
Green beans with feta

Broiled Salmon with peppercorn-lime rub and green beans with feta

I’m off to get my 5th slice of the bread. What did you have for dinner?

Ok, so it’s not quite a year yet. I’m 11 days early, but my appointment was today so it’s close enough. It was a quick appointment with just the lower wire changed and my Herbst re-activated on the left side only. What this means, essentially, is that my bottom teeth hurt (top don’t hurt at all right now) and my smile is a bit lopsided — to the left side. Hopefully this corrects itself after a couple of weeks. I can only touch a couple of teeth together… again. Kinda hard to eat when your eating tools are unavailable.

I asked the doctor (again) when I get the Herbst out. He confirmed what he told me last time (I am nothing if not persistant) - 4 or so months. Essentially, appointment after next and they’re about 10 weeks apart.

I also asked if we were on track with the braces and he figures I may get de-braced closer to 2 years than to 2.5. Sweet relief! If I run in to one more adult with braces who’s been in them for 4 years I’ll just… feel really badly for them, I guess? Tell them they chose the wrong orthodontist? I don’t know. Suckers.

Photo update. Honestly, even I can’t tell the different since 10 weeks ago. But do marvel at the change that’s occurred in a year.

And now the face shot comparison after a year.

It seems like it ought to be fairly obvious to some from the pictures, but yes, I have lost weight. 27 pounds in the last year. Thanks in part to the braces, at first. My battle with acid reflux can be thanked for the rest. The loss has plateaued though. I wonder what kind of non-diet I can try next??? I honestly don’t know what foods I could cut out of my diet now that I’m all ready not eating fatty and fried foods. Bread, maybe. I love bread and it loves me back. Why would I want to quit that??? And when you can make and bake it in your very own home it’s a tough thing to give up. I’m going to just say no.

So I had a birthday recently. No, please, stop the clapping. Low-key affair this year. I was quite pleased though to receive from my mom a creme brulee torch and creme brulee set. Looks like I’ll get a chance this coming weekend to put them all to use. Creme brulee is my most favorite dessert in the world.

I’ve also been craving these coconut cupcakes with lime butter-cream frosting though. Maybe I’ll have to bust them both out. Dessert, any one?

One super bonus of working from home is that you can make yourself some pretty awesome lunches. Take, for example, this lovely panini. Made with my very own home made light wheat bread, deli turkey, fat-free American cheese, cilantro, bacon, and avocado spread. Awesomeness personified. My stomach didn’t appreciate the bacon though (pretty sure it was the bacon) and gave me some good acid reflux pain.

I do love my grill pan and grill press.

There has been little excitement here since fish taco night. Ella would argue differently.

Happy 6th Birthday Ella!

I made the cupcakes. The cake I made from scratch. The frosting I tried to make from scratch. I got the recipe off the Pioneer Woman blog. It is supposedly “the best frosting ever” but I couldn’t get it right. It involved creaming butter and sugar and I guess I don’t know how to do that quite right. Thankfully there is an entire aisle at the grocery store dedicated to making and decorating cakes.

Now that April is over, we are in MY month. May. Month of Mother’s Day and my birthday. For maybe the first time ever I have a joint Mother’s Day/Birthday present and I got it early. It’s my new Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer.

In the world of baking bread, I have 2 things to share. Firstly, last weekend I made a light whole wheat dough for making loafs for sandwiches. It worked really well in a turkey panini I made for lunch one day and Ella didn’t have any complaints. I’ve got enough dough left for another loaf.

I made my first batch of dough using my stand mixer yesterday. It’s a brioche and the finished product was quite a hit today at my family’s Mother’s Day celebration.

dough in the brioche pan for resting

finished product

I wish I had had the time to take a picture of the bread after I took it out of its pan. It was pretty. Luckily, I have enough dough for another loaf (or 2, probably). We sliced it up and served it with butter and assorted preserves: apricot (my personal favorite), orange marmalade, raspberry jelly, and apple butter (made by my sister).

Traveling back in time, yesterday I hit up Pike Place market to get some fresh fish and vegetables to grill. And in honor of the fabulous weather we sat outside for our first outdoor meal of 2010.

The salmon sat on a bed of lemons, oranges, basil, and oregano.

Finishing touches. Good meal!

The other day we went to Dukes for lunch. Isaac and I each got fish tacos, though we got different kinds. They were unbelievably yummy. Inspired me to make my own. I didn’t work from a single recipe, but gathered bits and pieces from a couple. Essentially what we have here is mahi mahi coated in a 8-spice rub (comprised largely of paprika), blackened in my cast iron skillet. Two corn tortillas were topped with slaw, the fish, cilantro/lime laced sour cream, cucumber/avocado pico de gallo and feta cheese. So far I’d say this was an acid reflux friendly (or is that unfriendly?) meal.

Topped off dinner with blackberry pie and fat-free whipped cream. I’m full, but not in pain. Success!

What a weekend. I’m exhausted and I have a headache but I’m not complaining. Beautiful weather as well. I wish I had had my camera with me today for the zoo and the boat parade we weren’t expecting while we had lunch at Duke’s on the Tacoma waterfront. What a great find!

In my last post I mentioned I had cinnamon raisin bread in the oven. Here is the resulting yumminess.

Since I’m doing so much  more cooking lately I’ve needed to better organize my kitchen. I have 42 spices. Forty-two. I got those suckers in line, thanks to some stuff I got at IKEA. My fancy pants knives are now on a magnetic strip where I can get at them easily.

No Kitchen Aid stand mixer, but Isaac goes to Portland on the 29th for the day so he’ll get one for me then.

Here are some photos of my small and crowded, but organized kitchen.

I posted this originally with no title. I’m not very witty, but there should be some kind of title at least, no matter how lame.

I’m itching for change people. I waffle all the time on whether or not to continue my freelance business, and there’s a bazillion house projects I want to do (but don’t have the $$ to do). I could just paint my downstairs and that *might* cure the itch but I’m not so sure. Plus, though I’ve been thinking about it for awhile and I’m fairly certain I will eventually repaint, I shudder at the thought of how much work it is. Still, it’s usually a 2-day process.

Behr has me though. They’ve got primer/paint combos so I can eliminate the pesky task of first priming the walls. Yea! I’m going to go from buttercream and brown/green (looks better than it sounds - Behr calls it “Elk” I think) to pear and grape green. All you have to do is look at my photos to see the current wall colors. Them’s the new colors over there to the right. The red is my accent color, my favorite color. The brown is the closest approximation to the current color of my cabinets, though they are darker. Some day we’ll redo the cabinets. I just know it!

I may be getting my first Kitchen Aid Stand Mixer this weekend. Costco has them on sale right now. We may actually drive down to Portland to save on taxes, plus our membership is due, so that’ll even out. As much bread making as I do the stand mixer will be very helpful. Ella’s b-day is around the corner and I’m making some awesome looking (tasting) cupcakes so I’ll get lots of initial use out of this somewhat expensive kitchen appliance.

Speaking of bread, the below was a delicious Italian Semolina loaf(s).

In the oven *right now*: formed buttermilk cinnamon raisin bread. mmm!

Happy Easter every one! I can hardly believe that we are so far in to this year.

Just a few pictures today. I don’t have much to speak of.

My food contributions today were deviled eggs, a tossed salad with fruit, and a white cake with lemon curd and Italian meringue frosting. Pictures of the cake below!

pressing curd through sieve

cooking the lemon curd

ingredients for cake ready to go

cooling cake

cakes layered with lemon curd

finished cake, frosted with Italian meringue

mmmmm