The treachery of peanut butter

Earlier this week, friend Nick ribbed me for never updating my blog. He expressed his concern for my eating habits and worried that maybe I wasn't. Well, have you seen me lately?! Even so, he felt compelled to start a blog that begs the question, has Hilary eaten today? While I doubt DidHilaryEat.blogspot.com will gain much traction, stranger things have happened.

As it were, I am forging ahead in my lifetime battle against gluttony. My eating disorder has intensified with recent stresses at work, which always leads me down that dangerous path to the peanut butter jar.

As I am now a coupon-clipping queen in an effort to cut back on reckless spending, I recently came into the fortune of Jif Extra Crunchy Peanut Butter. I have long been an ally of Skippy and still believe it is a better product than Jif, but that particular week, no coupon was to be found for the Skippy. I restrained myself and only purchased two. Upon getting home, I opened it and gave it a taste. Wow, it was very extra crunchy! So very crunchy in fact. And so very delicious when paired with some left over dark chocolate Hershey kisses. I had a moment there in the solitude of my kitchen where I knew I should stop, but didn't know if I could.

My new-found dessert. The process of letting the dark chocolate kiss melt in my mouth for a quick bit before introducing it to a spoonful of extra crunchy peanut butter was euphoric. I eventually stopped and then brought the jar to work as a snack item. It has since been decimated, even eaten with a fork in more desperate times when spoons were not to be found. One very busy day, I considered using my fingers rather than walk the 10 steps to the office kitchen to retrieve the proper utensil. Semi-neanderthal of me, but my pride disappeared years ago.

Thus, I am on board with Jif. I understand why choosy Moms choose Jif. Forget wasting money on toys and babysitters, all you gotta do is give your kid a jar of the stuff and they'll be occupied for a lifetime. Or in my case, two business days.

Gingerbread

I haven't blogged in a few months now, which is mainly due to the fact that I don't have internet at home. I thought about getting it in 2013, but as we all know, the world ends on Friday, so, no point. But I figured I should post one last time.

Last night I wandered my way back into baking from scratch. I love everything about cooking, especially the eating part. But baking? It's been more of a miss than a hit for me over the years. Box mixes tend to be my best friend. I don't have a fancy stand mixer and always find myself over mixing something resulting in dense, cardboard-esque baked goods. I do tend to be OK with pies and cobblers, though. And, ovens usually treat me well otherwise when it comes to savory items.

So, despite my failures in that arena, I took a gamble this year. I decided that I wanted to bake a variety of cookies for my coworkers for the holiday season. As the last week of the work year (and world) fast approached, my interest started to wane. I scanned hundreds of cookie recipes on the interwebs, but nothing stood out enough. Then the thought of making dough, chilling it and then dealing with the mess of rolling out, shaping, baking, cooling, icing and packaging tipped the scale to "forget this." Lazy, yes. But these cookies might not even turn out well, so why go to all that trouble. Instead, I decided to bake something that would take far less time and effort: Gingerbread blondies.

I love gingerbread. It's my favorite holiday season cookie, aroma and flavor. I stumbled across many a recipe on pinterest and elsewhere for gingerbread bars. I judged all of the recipes based on the pictures. Some had cream cheese frosting, some had orange frosting, some just powered sugar. But, many of them were flat or very cake-like. I wanted gooey. Ooey gooey. And thus I chose a recipe from a British blogger, who was kind enough to note the gram/cup conversions in her ingredients list.

The recipe was pretty straight forward, but I stumbled a few times along the way. I doubled it, so had to remeasure the flower at one point since I had lost track of how much had been added. Then, I decided 45-55 minutes was far too long of a cooking time. Brownies usually bake in 30ish minutes, so I figured these would as well. And my overriding fear of producing a dry, cake-like blondie prompted me to put 30 minutes on the kitchen timer.

Fifteen minutes in, they looked almost done. They had risen substantially and were a great gingerbready-brown color. At 20 minutes, I took them out of the oven and did the toothpick test. Clean! All done. Except for that 10 minutes later, they had deflated and were noticeably raw inside. Bugger. How did the toothpick fool me? Don't they look done in the photo? I turned the oven back on and threw them in. Another 10 minutes went by and I checked, thought they were done and was fooled AGAIN. Bloody hell. Three times is the charm, right?

Crikey Moses, they were done. I cooled them, dusted them and my knickers with powdered sugar and then packaged them up for work. Some were cakey, some were gooey, so not bad overall. 

Lessons learned from this baking experience? Don't bake again.

Key Lime Sigh

I love Key Lime Pie. It has all the elements of a fantastic dessert:  Sweet, tangy and tart; creamy and velvety; crunchy and buttery. And now, and even more fantastic iteration of this dessert is back on the market. Ben & Jerry's has re-released it's Limited Edition Key Lime Pie ice cream. Friend Christine introduced me to my latest temptress in the world of food and I licked the carton clean last night after a rigorous boxing workout. Way to negate my calorie-burn. But, I went to bed with a Key-Lime-Pie-eating grin on my face last night :-D

Fare Thee Well

My all-time favorite meatball creator will soon be gone. Yes, Potenza is closing on August 18. I work nearby, so am used to frequenting their bakery for lunch and indulging in either their spectacular eggplant parmesan or their meatballs. Oh, the meatballs. I've never tasted something so good: crispy on the outside, tender on the inside, full of herbs, cheese, garlic and love. The handcut spaghetti and succulent homemade sauce are the perfect duo to make this dish my heartthrob.

Since learning of the Potenza owner's intent to shutter for good when it was announced in July, I have eaten there four times. Twice in the bakery (meatball sub, eggplant parm special) and twice in the restaurant. During my most recent visit (last night), I asked our waiter whether he'd be amenable to giving me the meatball recipe, since they will never be made ever again. He said he would look into it. And at the end of the meal said he had taken a picture of it on his phone and would email it to me. The dream. Said email still hasn't arrived, but I will wait patiently. If it doesn't arrive in the next week, I'll just have to go back one more time, or go to therapy to deal with my separation anxiety.

Supplanting my garden with a carden

It's nearly June, which means my garden of herbs that I planted in early April should be flourishing by now. Or not. After a rollercoaster of fickle weather, my poor plants aren't sure what season it is. My basil is a pale green color and keep seeding as if its easing into Fall. The thyme is growing, but yellowing here and there. And the cilantro, well, that's another story. Since it was planted, the cilantro had been growing at an explosive rate. So much so that I could snip some for use in some Cinco de Mayo recipes. Well, upon checking on the plants a few days afterwards, I noticed someone or something had mowed my cilantro down to stems. Mere stems!

I have seen a rabbit slinking around behind the bushes in my courtyard. Was it him? Or was it the drifter who lives in the stairwell near the courtyard? Or maybe it was one of my fellow residents in a tacky display of neighborly charm?

Or maybe I will have better luck sustaining my patio garden on my car. Yes...my car garden, er "carden" is looking good, folks. My 13-year old car, that is slowly starting its transformation into a full-blown beater. It's missing a signal headlight, has tape on another main headlight that has now burned out, has a back fender sticking out slightly, has a busted grill from an accident, hasn't been washed in a couple years and now, has plants growing out of the trunk.

What do you think these will grow to be? I think one of them resembles a maple tree. That's not gonna work out well!

Cobbling

I was cobbling last night. I had intended to cobble a strawberry rhubarb delight on Sunday for Easter dessert, but the timing got the best of me. I haven't made a cobbler in over a year, and before then had a bit of an OCD issue with making them every weekend in the summer months. But it all came back to me with ease. This is only the second time I've made a strawberry rhubarb cobbler and I think this time, it came out better than the first time.

Not unlike my first time making it, I had to go to several grocery stores before finding rhubarb. But, unlike last time where the rhubarb I found was thin and scraggly, this crop was luscious and abundant.

I was sure to slice up the rhubarb very thinly this go around and was glad that I had enough to have even parts rhubarb to strawberries. The first go around, there wasn't enough rhubarb, so the finished product was a bit too watery.

Voila!

Spring has sprung

I can't get enough of the lovely view outside of my patio. I wish spring would last forever. Up next is the bloom of the azalea bushes at the base of this blossomtastic cherry tree!