When I woke up this past weekend, these cookies are what I wanted to see. What I actually saw was this:
Why did I see a sky full of snow on March 29th, 9 days after spring was supposed to start? Because Chicago hates me, that’s why. Read the rest of this entry »
Hello! I wish you a most happiest of Gastro Fridays! For this week?s Gastro Friday, I?d like to talk about my food studies class on doughnuts. When I first realized I could get away with eating doughnuts in class, I totally had a Homer Simpson-esque moment. I gurgled for a spell, drooled a bit, and started unconsciously chewing on the closest thing to me, a plastic bag. Ain?t no shame in this game, people. Ain?t NO shame. Read the rest of this entry »
While looking for doughnuts to buy for my food studies class last week, I stumbled upon Dinkel’s, a German bakery that been in Chicago since 1922. Their doughnuts are definitely divine, but it was their version of a breakfast sandwich that caught my eye: the Burglaur. I liked immediately for two obvious reasons: 1) It looked delicious and 2)It’s name made me think of that lovable McDonalds character, The Hamburglar. In fact, every time I think of this breakfast bit of goodness, I called it the Hamburglar. Read the rest of this entry »
I love salty and sweet things. Cheese and caramel popcorn. Chocolate and pretzels. Me after a few drinks. And of course, caramel and salt, the latest food combination that is sweeping the nation. I tried making salted caramels before using this recipe from Ina Garten on Food Network, and I ended up with a caramel sauce, not a proper chewy candy. This is partly the recipe’s fault because the ratios were a bit off. Okay, so TECHNICALLY I don’t have a candy thermometer, and TECHNICALLY you need one to make candy like chewy caramels. But TECHNICALLY, you can kiss my ass because I know that (at least when it comes to caramels), you can use the cold water test and be just as successful with your candy making. And isn’t it to so very old school to do that? To cook by sight instead of by technology? I won’t always have a thermometer on me, but I will always have my brain…unless the cyborg aliens with cowboy hats take it. Then, I’m just plain old fashioned screwed. Read the rest of this entry »
For this week’s Gastro Fridays, I’d like to chat about my latest food studies class on the pizza. I was excited about this week’s topic because everyone likes pizza and I knew I wouldn’t have to try too hard to get the students’ attention. But as a food nerd, I get excited because the history of pizza in the U.S. demonstrates an important trait of U.S. cuisine, and that is our ability to take food from other countries, recreate them, and popularize them around the world. U.S. cuisine is so varied and undefined that I’m stoked when I can share a concrete trait of it with my students. Yeah. TOTAL food nerd. Careful, or I’ll hurt you with my arcane knowledge of British medicinal foods, fool. Read the rest of this entry »
Once upon a time, Leena’s awesome and fabulous husband got to eat at a fancy restaurant without her. He ordered an aged steak the size of approximately a half of cow (supposedly the best in Chicago), and gorged on his beefy goodness. Read the rest of this entry »
Look! I cooked! And it didn’t suck! I also love exclamation marks!!! No more cooking rut for me, and I have one cooking method and one vegetable to thank: roasting and bacon. For some reason, kale and brussels sprouts, two veggies I already love, taste even better when you roast them. They get all crispy and brown in a most delicious way. Not quite sure why, but my current theory is that there are tiny elves of yumminess that live in the oven, and whenever something green enters, they moonwalk to Michael Jackson’s The Way You Make Me Feel, creating a chain reaction that ends in crispy brown veggies. Or maybe it’s just a bit of the old Maillard reaction at work. (I think it is the elves) (And in my head, they look like that Indian Oompa Loompa in the latest Willy Wonka movie) Read the rest of this entry »
Last week in my food studies class, we learned about a true American food icon–the PB&J sandwich. It is rare to find a person who grew up in the U.S. that has not tasted a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, let alone someone who doesn’t have a specific and exact way to make their own ultimate PB&J. Even people who don’t cook a lot have a certain way they like their PB&J, down to the type of bread, the ratio of PB to J, what they use to spread it, etc. Read the rest of this entry »
I had another delicious brunch at Lula, only my second ever, but totally worth it. Typically they have a breakfast pastry of the week, and this time, I opened with their cinnamon tea cake with caramel butter ($4 USD). The cake was similar to a cinnamon coffee cake, with a nice, thick swirl of cinnamon on the inside of the cake. The butter was so damn good, my brunch mate had to keep me from licking it off the plate. Then she tasted it, and I had to do the same for her! Read the rest of this entry »
I’m not ashamed to say that I love me some muffin top. In fact, one could go so far as to say that my muffin tops have saved me from my bad cooking/baking stint–muffin tops to the rescue! Well, in all fairness, the muffin bottoms equally contributed to this victory, but muffin tops are so much more fun to say. Read the rest of this entry »
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