Where's my cake?

I want to smash my face in it, cry, then have a nice long nap.

Why?

We're 1 today!!And that's what 1 year olds do on their birthday.

Well, technically tomorrow, but the party's today. One year olds have no clue that it's their birthday so it doesn't really matter when it happens. All they see is cake, lots of weird people, and shiney wrapping paper.

There are lots of weird people around here (we love our commenters, tell your friends) and are much too distracted by shiney things. My last attempt at cake was an epic fucking fail (don't worry, I'll post it soon so you can laugh and cringe too) so we're going to have to wait a couple weeks for Taneasha to make one.

When Taneasha told me we'd made it a whole year (see, totally oblivious, may as well be a toddler) and warned me it was closer to my post day than hers, my first thought was to do a "clip show" post, but she'd already done that to cover my ass over the holidays. Crap. Okay, fine. The first year is always full of firsts, new things learned, and first attempts at things that really need practice.

Here's what I've learned:

1) Preheat the fucking oven. This is where the shiney paper effect comes in. We get all excited about the prospect of making cookies; we sift, we cream, we add moar choklits! and then when we go to bake them, we have to sit for 15 minutes staring at a wall while the oven warms up. It's like a time out for naughty bakers.

2) Kitchen timers are your friend. When the recipe says bake the cookies for 13 minutes, they're not kidding. Granted there's a bit of leeway, but really, they don't need 17. Four minutes is a long time for cookies to be at 350 degrees. Plus, when you're trying to prove that it really is possible to make dinner in 20 minutes, it's nice to watch those last few seconds count down as you take your first bite.

3) Beginners luck is a fickle bitch. The first time I made hollandaise sauce (years ago) it came out awesome. I've never been able to make it quite the same since. But this is not always how things go. Sometimes it takes a couple tries to get a recipe right. Sometimes no matter how many times you try the recipe just won't come out right. Yes, there have been times when we've posted first attempts, but we've done it for a reason. We're here every week writing up recipes, acting like we know what we're doing, but really, we're just trying to feed ourselves and our families something other than cereal for dinner. Shit happens, some recipes suck (I fully expect that sometimes the stuff that works in our kitchens won't work in yours and that's okay). Sometimes you get it right on the first try, sometims you don't. Sometimes you never will. And if you don't, there's always cereal for dinner.

4) Tinfoil is the only thing that will stop guacamole from turning brown.

Taneasha here.  This looked like so much fun, I decided to jump in too.  Here are some things I've learned in our first year. 

1) Putting together a post will always take 3 times longer than you think it will.  I don't know how many times I've gone into the kitchen thinking, "Oh, this will only take me 30 minutes or so."  2 hours later, flour in my shirt and hair and butter all over the camera, I finally have the food cooked and the pictures taken... but haven't even started on picture editing and actual post writing. 

2) Don't make something for the first time for a post.  Ok, obviously I haven't really learned this because I still do it, but it's really not a good idea.  It has a habit of turning into chaos. 

3) Cooking is going to be messy.  There's just no way around it.  Almost without fail I'll need something from across the room while whisking batter.  Also without fail, I'll let the whisk rest against the side of the bowl, checking to make sure it's stable, but as soon as I turn my back, the thing falls out of the bowl, flinging batter much further than physics should allow.  Things are going to spill, drip, and boil over.  It just happens, and it's ok.   

Ok, back to Seeley.

There are also a couple things I'd like to post about again.

Chicken Picatta. This was a first attempt. I was totally winging it to the point that I didn't even know how much of each ingredient I used. I've made this a few times since and really want to post an actual recipe for it. Plus, it's way (like way) way better with basil than parsley.

Smoothies. While this wasn't a first attempt, it was a bit of a half-assed one. I want to do a bit more with them and show some of the actual fruit combinations that are tasty, rather than just telling you to dump a bunch of fruit in the blender for a while. But hey, at least it wasn't just cereal for dinner.

Pizza. I've shown you the quick and easy pita version, now I want to try the real thing. On real dough. With yeast. One of these days I'm going to make dough that actually rises. I swear I can feel the poor little yeasties dying. I kill them with my bare hands.

Well, I guess this did turn out to be kind of a clip show. But at least I can prove that I learned something in the last year. I sure didn't learn much calculus. No, seriously, someone show me how to take the partial deriviative of a multivariable function. Anyone? Bueller?

So tell us... what would you like to see us make in our second year?

liquid lunch

It's exam time. Finals. Two down and two to go. Really not looking forward to three hours of calculus on Saturday night.

I need energy here. Lots of it, in a fast, easy to make, and quick to consume form.

And for that, we break out the blender.

No, it's not margarita time yet. Though, wow, I could totally do with a tall frosty glass of slushy booze.

Gah! Exams! Must. Study. Must. Eat.

Berry Berry Smoothie

What you need:

• 1/4 cantaloupe
• 1 mango
• 1 c frozen blueberries
• 1 1/2 c frozen raspberries
• 1 c vanilla yogurt
• 1/2 c pear juice

What you gotta do:

If you've got one of those little single serving blenders, I totally suggest it. You won't have to wash an extra cup.

My berries were picked over the summer by a coworker and frozen on a cookie sheet before bagging. I really think frozen fruit is the way to go with smoothies. It removes all temptation to use ice cubes in them. The smoothie will be perfectly chilled, and not watered down at all. It also won't separate if it sits for a few minutes.

Chopping a mango is something most people need to learn how to do. It's not an intuitive process, and it does take a bit of practice to maximize the mango recovery, but it's fairly simple once you know what to do. 

The pit is wide and flat and runs lengthwise down the middle of the fruit. Stand the mango up and align it so that it's long side is pointing away from you.

Don't slice down the middle of a mango. Ever. Offset the knife by about 3/4 of an inch.

Slice straight down. Do the same to the other side.

You can trim the last little bits off the middle, but what you have here is the bulk of the flesh.

Score it just to the skin, lengthwise and then crosswise.

Then, with your thumbs on the edges and your fingers on the bottom, flip it inside out.

Perfect bite-sized chunks just waiting to be bitten.

Or sliced off and put in a smoothie.

You can do something similar with the canteloupe. My dad always did this when I was a kid; they're called canteloupe caterpillars.

Both the mangos and the canteloupe go into the blender on top of the berries.

You can use any flavour of yogurt that you want in your smoothie, but I had a good quality, high fat (8.5%, which is insanely high for yogurt, but really not bad compared to most dairy products) vanilla. 

Pour in your pear juice. Again, the kind of juice is flexible. More what you need here is some lubricant to keep the mixture moving in the blender. Yes, vodka would work just fine.

This starts looking smooth so fast I barely had time for a picture. I did have to poke at it once to get everyone moving around (I'm not going to warn you to turn the blender off before you stick a spoon in it. If you can't figure out not to stick metal objects into fast moving and sharp blades, I expect to see you on the Darwin Awards).

It will look totally done after only a few seconds on high, but this is deceiving. There are still chunks.

Once you've got it whizzing around on high speed, give the smoothie a full minute in there. You'll need it, but you'll still likely end up with the odd blueberry that manages to escape unscathed.

Pour your delicious dinner into a tall glass and add a bendy straw!

That's your average 10-12 ounce glass. I was able to fill it up twice. 

And while I was slurping down the first one, the stuff in the blender didn't separate at all.

Smoothies store in the fridge just fine for a couple days and are totally portable. They make great grab-and-go breakfasts if you make them the night before and keep them in the fridge, or awesome afternoon snacks if you need a boost at work.

And if you get yourself some bags of prechopped frozen fruit, they take less than 3 minutes to make.

What's your favourite blender drink?