No, not the palace.: Delectable Delights

As anyone who has talked to me for 5 minutes knows, I. Love. Food. And as anyone reading this blog knows, I especially love making it myself! A request for care packages from home starts out with “Oh man, I’d really love some Ghirardelli chocolate chips…” and increases up to “having my mixer would be AWESOME” and ends up with me in a bakeshop purchasing a silicone muffin tin to supplement everything Mom and Dad graciously mailed me (thanks, by the way!).

I simply love cooking and baking.

I’ll admit to being frustrated here when it comes to this—I can’t justify purchasing everything required for a recipe when a little is called for I know I have little cause to use it again (see: apple cider vinegar), and on top of that I also would probably need to purchase additional kitchen equipment. It’s been hard to pick and choose what is worth shelling out for and what isn’t. I’ve done okay, but my actual cooking has suffered a bit.

What hasn’t suffered as much is my ability to make do and enjoy some variety! I’ve become a big fan of soups and salads and sandwiches

Did I ever stop being a fan?

wonderful pasta combos, and HUMMUS.

Look, Uri, I finally bought pita bread for making chips!

I’ve opted for some quite interesting soup combos that I’d never really run into before—my new fave is carrot and coriander. I’ve set my sights on making that one on my own if it’s possible…I think I’ll try that at home where I have a properly equipped kitchen, haha. From there it’ll be easier to figure out if I can make it with what I have here. But I digress!

The lovely Waitrose is pretty much my favourite place ever to buy ready-made soups. Personal favourite (aside from carrot and coriander) is the Moroccan tagine. As I hope my father can recall, I’ve attempted to make it in some rudimentary form back home, but it sadly did not taste as good as this one! It’s perfect over a bed of long grain rice or couscous with a dollop of crème fraiche. I’m drooling a little just thinking about it. This is seriously making me want to buy a proper tagine when I come home!

Tagine in a tagine!

Let’s be honest here: what you’re really interested in is WHAT HAVE I COOKED AND BAKED?! I know, I know, you all miss me and my cooking…prepare to miss me MOAR. ;)

First up, we have an excellent pasta bake that was so simple it hurts. In this situation, I’m getting over the “GOTTA MAKE EVERYTHING MYSELF FROM SCRATCH!” thing I had going on at home (because, well, I could!). Instead of a standard pasta sauce, I found one better: pasta BAKE sauce. Judgment? With a little garlic, onion, and fresh basil added, it’s easy and divine!

Happy after-rowing-practice dinner!

Second, my cookies. Oh yes, I wasn’t joking when I said I asked Mom and Dad to ship me chocolate chips—and they did! As everyone in The Programme now knows, I can bake and it. Is. Delicious. Full stop, y’all.

I love stacking them on a plate!

This bears talking about because of the difficulties I ran into rather unexpectedly. And y’know what, let’s get into the difficulties of measurements and how I had to use math (can you feel my bitterness?!) to manipulate recipes to work at all.

The cookies, as I used an American recipe and have my trusty American collapsible measuring devices, were less a problem of “how much” and more a matter of “WHAT BOWL IS BIG ENOUGH FOR MIXING?!”. These are trufax and truprobs. Solution? Divide it all in half.

I should probably move my laptop further away from the flour explosions and workspace...

Oh yeah, and don’t toss in the brown sugar with the flour mixture. :P

However, that still left me with the problem of the butter (cue doom music). Unlike the US, the UK apparently operates on grams and as such, their butter basically comes in 250 gram chunks. Blessedly, the type of baking I tend to do is less precise than, say , pastry-making, so I ended up all right guesstimating and converting cups to grams (and then halving that).

Here’s the ensuing mess that I know Mother is all too familiar with…

I didn't even show you the stove...

And here are my cookies again!

Still looking AWESOME.

Yesterday, I met Sim’s lovely girlfriend Charlotte. Half-jokingly, he mentioned that I should make welcoming cookies and that got me thinking about muffins (I think it’s because I was itching to use my new silicone muffin tray OHOHOHO). Blueberry muffins, to be more precise!

New problem: I got the recipe off the BBC website…and they like grams. And ounces. And I have no internet to save me (don’t ask about that drama) and my phone does not convert ounces to cups (hm, wonder why? Weight to volume issues much? Haha!). After angsting about it for a few minutes, I remembered Mom sent me my (FAMOUS AND DELICIOUS) cranberry walnut biscotti recipe from Williams-Sonoma, and they happen to be pretentious when it comes to cooking…meaning they actually have conversions for this stuff! With my notepad handy [don’t diss, Sim and Mikko], I managed to convert into approximate cup measurements and got some really nice results in the batter!

Ugh...math.

I neglected to learn my lesson from the last go-round of baking. See: laptop in the same place...

No lie—Williams Sonoma makes my life and saves my baking.

Aside from the issues of the recipe being pretty basic and needing a couple tweaks, it made only eight muffins, and I should’ve sprinkled some sugar on top of the muffins, they came out pretty freaking well. Those fresh blueberries were totally worth the extra amount I paid (and go wonderfully in morning porridge!).

Look at those oozing blueberries! Or should I say Ouse-ing...? Laugh at my pun, Buckinghammers! Lordy, I crack myself up...

But now, to my absolute favourite cooking adventure yet: butternut squash carbonara.

I’ve shared this with pitifully few people, but I discovered the most wonderful blog (woot woot!) about cooking in a closet-sized kitchen: link here. I have found SO many recipes that are at worst edible and pretty good and at best knock-your-socks-off uh-MAY-zingly delish. I found one of the latter. ;)

Very clearly, HERE IS DAS LINK: Butternut Squash Carbonara!

I had my fair share of issues making this, but lordy, was it a blast! After I finished butchering a butternut squash with a citrus knife...

For this, just enjoy the pictures, but a warning: make sure to clean up your drool.

I'll admit to never having cooked/baked/used butternut squash before. Clearly it didn't occur to me that I could really use a chef's knife to cut this cookie...