i love to cook. ?

{the beauty that is gillian's roasted veggie sandwich}

i love to cook. lie.

i love to eat. cooking is a means to an end.

i have long said i love to cook. this statement is simply untrue. it's basic correlation-causation confusion.

i love delicious food. if money (and calories) were no object i would go out, order in, or even have a private chef whip me up whatever strikes me. mostly.

i do love to cook any meal that can be thrown together. delicious food that requires little to no thought. breakfast is a go-to. as is spaghetti (perhaps one of my ultimate comforts). i even consider homemade spaghetti sauce as a throw-together. they're mindless for me. all about taste. no recipe required.

recipes, i am learning, are the bane of my kitchen happiness. though, contrarily, i incessantly harvest them. cooking by recipe is eclipsed only by hunting for recipes. so i create a stockpile, referring to my catalogue when i'm feeling uninspired or need a starting point, a la baked goods. i take what i need and make my own variation.

last night's dinner is a perfect example: a grilled variation of the above pictured sammie. inspired by a photo of an eggplant parm pizza, i baked up some breaded eggplant and roasted off zucchini and red onions. add to that a slathering of pizza sauce on one slice of bread, a crumbling of goat cheese, some slow-roasted tomatoes and healthy heaping of spinach. grill it up and you have sandwich bliss...

okay, so most wouldn't consider that many steps (and the time) a throw-together meal - but, even with all the steps, there was little thought involved.

don't those mindless meals just taste that much better?

destination: scone

every weekend brings the opportunity for david and i to enjoy breakfast together. we do spend workday mornings together but on the weekends we can take the mornings at a gentle pace. no cereal or quick eats necessary.

we have developed a tradition of the saturday morning scone.

while the tradition is the same the scone is ever-changing.

until recently i would hunt for recipes to correspond with my cravings but have since changed my method. i have found that i prefer to perfect a single base recipe and simply modify my mix-ins.

so far, my base is not yet perfect, but i'm figuring it out as i go. forget what i've used before, here's what i'm working with now:

Basic Buttermilk Scones

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
3 Tablespoons sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 Tablespoons butter, cubed and chilled
3/4 cup buttermilk

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar and salt. Pulse to well combine. Add butter. Pulse to form a coarse meal with pieces of butter no larger than pea-sized. Depending on what ingredients are being mixed in, some may be pulsed in.

Otherwise, turn out into a separate mixing bowl. Add mix-ins. Stir to evenly distribute. Slowly mix in the buttermilk, stopping when the dough almost holds together in a ball.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface - I like to use a sheet of plastic wrap. Gently knead the dough just to pull it together and incorporate any resistant crumbs - I use the corners of the plastic wrap to pull the dough together without over-kneading. If the dough won't hold together, add more buttermilk - slowly, you don't want too much liquid.

I would credit this recipe, but I've really just pulled commonalities from a bunch of different places.

Also, I have been using unbleached AP flour and occasionally experiment with whole wheat flour - to mixed results.

for my birthday weekend i chose the blueberry white chocolate chip concoction i made a couple of weeks ago. they were so divine (and truth be told i didn't do as well the second time around because i didn't write down my recipe and tend to only approximate qualities of the add-ins anyway). admission #2: the scones pictured are the originals - not the birthday version.

saturday, august 27th: Heavenly Blueberry White Chocolate Scones

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

3 Tablespoons sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons fresh ginger, grated (i keep a peeled ginger root in my freezer so this quantity is an approximation from that)

6 Tablespoons butter, cubed and chilled

1/2 cup white chocolate chips

1 cup fresh blueberries, washed and dried

3/4 cup buttermilk

3/4 teaspoon vanilla

In the bowl of a food processor, combine the flour, baking powder, baking soda, sugar, salt and ginger. Pulse to well combine. The mixture should be fragrant. Add butter and 1/4 cup of white chocolate chips. Pulse to form a coarse meal with pieces of butter no larger than pea-sized. Turn out into a separate mixing bowl. Add the blueberries and remaining white chocolate chips. Stir to evenly distribute. Add the vanilla to the buttermilk in a liquid measuring cup. Whisk to combine. Slowly stir the buttermilk mixture into the flour mixture, stopping when the dough almost holds together in a ball.

Turn the dough out onto a work surface - I like to use a sheet of plastic wrap. Gently knead the dough just to pull it together and incorporate any resistant crumbs - I use the corners of the plastic wrap to pull the dough together without over-kneading. If the dough won't hold together, add more buttermilk - slowly, you don't want too much liquid. At this point, I like to wrap the dough up and refrigerate it until I'm ready to bake.

When ready, preheat the oven to 400° F. On a floured work surface, pat the dough into a large disc, 3/4-inch thick. Fold in half. Pat down to 3/4-inch thickness. Fold in half or thirds. Pat into a 1-inch thick disc. Cut into sixths or eighths, depending on preference.

Arrange wedges on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Brush tops with egg wash and sprinkle with sugar. Bake 20-24 minutes, rotating halfway through, until golden brown.

Enjoy!

admission #3: i missed the vanilla on this round, but i'm only pretty sure i used it the first time around

admission #4: the ginger is an approximation and this last time i don't think i used enough.

if i get it right next time i will fix the recipe.

a haphazard housewife (to-be)

in my time away from blogging i've given a bit of thought to content. what do i have to say? what do i want this blog to say about me? who am i?

i am a haphazard housewife (to-be). i enjoy the kitchen. i love the nurturer role. but neither in the traditional sense. i love to turn out tasty treats but nothing in my home ever quite turns out as planned. my kitchen adventures are marked by cuts and burns. my favorite things to prepare are things that require improvisation - though, whether or not improvisation was intended i find that it is almost always required.

so perhaps you can benefit from my trials. they should, at least, entertain you.

enjoy the food i throw together. but don't worry, you'll still get wedding updates.

farewell, 25. welcome, 26.

{25th birthday drinks at Centrico in NYC with David and cousins}

25. the year i became engaged to be wed. the year i found a love of baking. saturday scones. sunday croissants. mostly uneventful - with one dramatic exception. a year that emphasized home. a slow start to wedding plans. another year toward health. beginning with a trip to my favorite city and ending with an earthquake (so it was a couple days before my year ended...).

to 26. a year of change. faster wedding planning progress? necessary. change of location? certainly. finding work that will make me happy? hopefully.

26 began with a natural disaster: an unceremonious hurricane. perhaps an appropriate metaphor for what should be a whirlwind year. and, hopefully, will end in my living in my favorite city.

day-of birthday plans consisted of making some sort of chocolate + peanut butter treat for myself. pulling together some kind of delicious dinner...day-of birthday activities consisted of eating whatever struck my fancy - which happened to be far more junk food than i normally consume. no birthday treat. no delicious dinner. lots of napping. a bit of feeling ill.

lesson learned so far in year 26:

*a day of junk food is far better in theory than in practice. moderation can actually provide more enjoyment.

{heading to my "Farewell to 25" dinner}