Pasta and Why It's Super Delicious

I am not a real food person.  I'd like to think I know how to make real food and that in this sense I am more capable than most regular college kids, but truth is I incorrectly boiled potatoes the other day for mashed potatoes with dinner.  However, I have mastered the easy craft of making pasta, which is so very dissimilar from boiling potatoes.  As a baker, I also happen to love carbs like bread, cereal, pastries, oatmeal like things, and PASTA.  I'm italian, I can't help it.

As a kid, I could often be found knocking on my neighbor friend's door munching on a bag of cooked, cold pasta.  Don't ask why, I don't know.  It was delicious.  I don't need to explain.

Pasta is also a prefect medium for other flavors.  Pasta Primavera can have super-delicious fresh flavors like red pepper, asparagus, and olives while still being simple with a drizzle of olive oil and nothing else.  Whole wheat pasta works really well in a primavera.  Marinara sauce, though cliche and over-rated, is a classic flavor with meatballs and spaghetti.  Alfredo sauce is so super rich and fatty and carby that it can'r help but be super delicious.  Penne Alla Vodka is the perfect blend of creamy red sauce and little meat chunks and very subtle vodka undertones.  Pesto, especially with cheese tortellini, is so cheesy fresh and basilly.  And then that gets us into the whole stuffed pastas like Butternut squash raviolis in a brown butter and sage sauce or stuffed shells oozing ricotta and mozzarella.  It's all perfectly delicious.

You'd think with my only on-campus food option being a pasta place, I'd be happy.  Alas, I am not.  They tend to serve only random pasta options rather than the classics everyone know and love.  Also, they do things wrong.  I'm not claiming to be a super italian genius, but it's not real italian food, although the cannolis are good.  While I'm on the subject, Olive Garden and The Chateau are not real italian food either.

Anyway, I was lucky enough to steal some Annie's mac'n cheese when I was last home and have since learned how to make it in the microwave.  It's not as good, but it's still better than anything on my meal plan.

Raw String Beans

Eating with a meal plan, it is increasingly difficult to incorporate vegetables and fruits into your foods.  Though I have never been known for my healthy food choices or particular love of vegetables, there has been one fresh, crunchy, pre-dinner snack that I've always enjoyed: Raw String Beans.

Ever since I can remember, my sister and I have been helping prepare dinner with my parents, and whenever we were having a side of string beans, the job of cutting off the ends and washing them was delegated to one of us.  I have so many memories, memories that merge into one feeling, one moment of getting dinner ready.  I'm standing over the sink, my hands numb with cold water, feeling the firmness and freshness of the beans as I bend the ends until they finally snap.  There is a residual taste of green in my mouth, because that's how they taste, green.  There is no other way of describing it.  Well, I guess there is, but this works well enough for me.  I have been known to eat half the available string beans before they have even been cooked for dinner, to set aside an especially large helping to not be cooked for me to eat at dinner, and to even request them on summer morning supermarket runs to snack on throughout the day.

Being in college, I am deprived of this luxury.  The first time my parents visited me, they brought me enough string beans to reasonably last me a week.  They lasted two days.  I was in heaven.  I was raving about how awesome they were to a CSF friend I have weekly dinner dates with to discuss a book we are reading.  The next week when we met, she plopped a plastic bag in front of me.  MORE STRING BEANS!  It was wonderful, but it also didn't last.  Hopefully, you can learn from my stupidity.  String beans and ginger ale should not be ingested at the same time.  You'd think two things that taste good by themselves would taste good together.  You'd be wrong.  It is gross.  Trust me.

Editing

Hey guys,
sorry about the reposting
I'm re-reading some of my older blog posts and editing and it is resulting in unexpected reposts because I apparently do not know how to work the internet.
Hopefully, it won't happen again, but I don't know for sure.
New post tomorrow.

Snickerdoodles

This was a writing prompt given to my AP class by our super, mega-awesome English teacher.  We were supposed to write an essay starting with the phrase "I believe in...," and this is what I came up with.

            I believe in half a week old snickerdoodles (recipe to follow, unabridged of course).  First you must lug your crusty, unclean mixer from the moth bitten pantry to the kitchen in such a way that it digs into your belly, and you have to use a slight backward swing to get it over the peacock, granite countertops that have always been a little too high for your liking.  Next, you must sit on the oak stool for twenty-three minutes while you wait for an entire stick of butter to soften because you forgot to take it out earlier (even though you knew well in advance of your edible experimentation).  However, you could stick it in the soup-stained microwave, get radioactive waves drenching you while you stare, and inevitably pull out a puddle on a sidewalk of wax paper.  You plop it into the mixer and put on the rickety speed of four for “three minutes until it becomes light and fluffy” though you don’t actually know what that means because it has never happened.  Then, you pull out the measuring cups, making sure to not have a firm grip on them so that they slip out of your butter fingers and fall the foot from their shelf to the counter making an oh so satisfying clack as they bounce from the impact.  You skip back to the pantry and manage to wrestle both the giant sugar Tupperware and the colossal flour one into your somewhat short arms.  You hazardously waddle back to the kitchen and measure out two half cups of sugar (both whole cup measures are dirty) and two half cups of flour.  WAIT! you only pour half of the second cup of flour in so as to complete the imperative practice of saving half the flour until the rest of the ingredients have been thoroughly mixed in.  After that you must take on the Herculean task of pulling the sticky, brown stained vanilla extract bottle from where it is stuck in your pantry; again, with the height issue it is impossible to get proper leverage.  Once that is extracted (no pun intended though you laugh as you pull out the magnetic teaspoons), you must pry open the lid, often with a butter knife.  You measure out quarter teaspoon each of some mysterious white powders that could be crack for all you know, though the labels read baking soda and cream of tartar.  You begin quoting Spongebob in your head while measuring out half a teaspoon of vanilla, using the quarter teaspoon twice to conserve dishes, a habit you quickly picked up once your parents refused to clean your baking dishes anymore.  You put on the mixer, crack a cold egg in, drop some shell in, panic, and spend five minutes attempting to fish out the little shards so your friends don’t get accidentally stabbed in the mouth.  Then you put in the half half cup of flour and another full half cup mix that and take the bowl out of its metal lock and away from the violent, erratic paddle.  You dump some pungent cinnamon into a bowl and add sugar until the cinnamon no longer sinks to the bottom, which will take much more spoonfuls than at first anticipated thanks to the cinnamon dumping.  At least you know what’s for breakfast tomorrow: toast with butter and cinnamon sugar, classic.  You proceed to make ten thousand one inch balls of dough, roll them each in the sugar (usually five at a time to save some extra minutes), and lay them on a baking sheet.  You gingerly place them in the (hopefully preheated unless you forgot) 375º oven that has looked like the mouth of hell to you ever since you were seven.  Wait eleven minutes even though the heavenly smell will begin circulating though the entire floor of your house as soon as the timer hits six minutes left.  Here’s where you have to be strong, though it is like telling a woman in labor to wait to have her baby so she can be born on Valentine’s Day, you MUST WAIT AT LEAST TWO DAYS BEFORE EATING THEM.  If you are lucky enough to accidentally smoosh one with the oven mit as you pull them from the oven, you may eat that deformed one.  However be warned, they are extremely addictive (probably from the crack you put in them) and eating one will ALWAYS lead to eating another.  Your will power is not as strong as you think.  In the end it is worth it though; the flavors of a half week older snickerdoodles greatly out shine those of the warm oven fresh cookies that have been known to be devoured in a matter of minutes at your house.  Next time, you will hide some in your hollow book to be ravenously devoured half a week later.

Officially Signed Up for Food Labs

Hello one and all,
I know I've been a horrible blog owner of recently.  To justify but not excuse my behavior, our first trimester is coming to a close resulting in much mayhem and increasingly approaching deadlines.  On a positive note of the trimester coming to a close, I have signed up for my next trimester of classes aka food labs!

I am signed up for five food labs, all of which are from 7am to 1pm, Monday through Thursday: How Baking Works, Intro to Cakes, Principles of Artisan Bread Baking, Viennoiserie, and Chocolates & Confections.  Viennoiserie is a course on making baked goods using puff pastry, such as croissants and turnovers.  As for how to pronounce it, I have absolutely no clue.  Silly french people.  Though I am extremely excited about all of the classes, and probably would be about any food class they put me, I'm most excited for chocolates and confections.  It's very easy to experiment at home with cakes and other such baked goods, but trying to learn chocolates without the proper instruction or equipment, though I have tried, is extremely difficult.  I also have high expectations for artisan breads, though it will be less fun to eat.  Seriously though, kneading bread is one of the most relaxedly focused activities, at least for me.  It is something that puts me at peace.

I'm so ready for all of the classes where I can actually start learning how to express my passion for baking and (hopefully, if I'm good) share it with you.  I only have two more weeks of academics, one of which is finals week, then Thanksgiving break (good noms to talk about), and then I will be back and will hopefully start blogging about labs!  Just so you know, in case you didn't, each of my five labs is nine days long, so I will have about two weeks in each lab.  So, stick with me, because good things are coming.