Brad requested chocolate chip cookies again. Having been reminded myself of how delicious they are, I couldn’t refuse. But I could do a little experiment with an ingredient I’ve been wanting to try.
Posts tagged easy
Experiments in Wasp Repellant, Day 12: Success?
Though the weather is still vacillating between winter-y and actual spring, there have been a few days of excellent sunshine. Brad and I have been able to take a few walks and even meander around the ponds of our apartment complex spinning tales to each other about exactly what the ducks and geese are up to. We even saw the first ducklings of the year today, a brood of 11 hatched by one of our favorite ducks, Tuffy.
Banana Pancakes
Brad and I both woke up late this morning. He’s the kind of person who wakes up at 7:30 on a regular basis without an alarm clock, while I’m the kind who could happily sleep 10 hours a night and still want a nap later, so when my alarm went off at 8:30 and he was still lying motionless next to me, I kept hitting snooze until he got up – at 9:30. If he’d gotten up earlier, I would have had to get up too so that he wouldn’t starve while waiting for the promised pancakes. It was lovely that both of us got to sleep in.
Experiments in Wasp Repellant, Day 3
Brad and I went for a walk this afternoon. It was a lovely warm day, with a few random bugs around.
But not a single dive-bombing wasp in sight.
Perhaps they are still in hiding or were killed off by the recent sudden dips in temperature but I am hopeful…
Experiments in Wasp Repellant
There hasn’t been a whole lot of baking going on here at Experiments in Baking. I’ve just been too busy and/or too exhausted to even curl up with a cookbook and find something to wrestle (though I have managed to wrestle some stingrays in my dreams). Excessive work always comes in waves for me, and I’ve been riding the crest since the last post.
But yesterday, I was presented with a possibility for another experiment similar to Auntie Rayna’s Magic Acne Cure in that it is an experiment that is NOT meant to be eaten.
Herbed Baked Potatoes
Before sitting down to our crappy reality shows and usual tape cover-folding, we had to have dinner. 
Speaking of staples, potatoes are one of ours (sour cream too!).
Normally, baked potatoes aren’t experi-mental in our home, but I noticed some leftover fresh sage while getting our other usual additions out of the refrigerator and decided to add it to my potato.
Mid-Week Tex-Mex Veggie Quesadillas
When you work three jobs and/or are a student and want to eat food that won’t drive you to a triple bypass by the time you’re 40, 
like Brad and I have been for the past 3 years, you have to learn to come up with fast, nutritious meals. Savory baking is awesome for people like us because all you really have to do is a few preparations to get it together, stick it in the oven, and come back to check on it. In the meantime, you can write emails and essays and blogposts, take a break long enough to play a few songs on Guitar Hero, shower, or any of the other millions of little things that prevent you from standing at the stove keeping your fried-whatever from burning.
Old-Fashioned Coffee Cake
Recently, while reading Vintage Cookbooks, I decided to pull out one of my old cookbooks. Since I’ve been going through a phase of wanting to throw every excess thing away (especially books) in preparation for my potential return to university, I figured I should try baking something from it to see if it was worth keeping.
I have two old cookbooks: one is from the very early 1900s but it’s in storage;
The book with the original recipe
Plain White Yeast Bread: The Best First Bread
This is definitely the first bread that a person new to bread should try. It’s very simple, very forgiving, and very tasty. It’s not as intimidating as other breads, either. The long recipe, amount of time, and all the steps might seem a little scary, but they are actually pretty easy.
I don’t know what made me decide to try making bread from scratch the first time a few years ago. Honestly, I’m pretty sure it was boredom and a desire for something new. I don’t remember what kind I made, either – I never thought that one loaf would lead me into the fascinating wilds of all kinds of baked goods. It certainly should have been a plain white but knowing myself as I do, it was probably one of the most complicated ones in the book.
But I loved making bread that first time, even though my attempts weren’t all that pretty, so I kept doing it when I had the chance. The silky flour in my hands, the rewarding ache of my muscles, and especially the warm smell and unmatchable taste of fresh-baked bread drove me to it.
Homemade Baked French Fries
The sleet is falling, the roads are icy, our thermostat is at a chilly 70 degrees to keep the electric bill from ballooning, and Brad and I needed some comfort food to keep us warm. So we had chicken nuggets (real ones from Whole Foods) and french fries.
A few years ago, when we realized how horribly fattening most restaurant food is – especially our favorite, chicken nuggets and deep-fried french fries – we thought we could never have french fries again. We found some baked ones in bags at Whole Foods but with the $6 chicken nuggets and a $4 bag of french fries, it was one expensive meal.
I’m cheating a little here again, but this recipe started as an experiment to see if we could make the meal cheaper without making ourselves fatter. It became a fixture, something that I make at least once a week.
