[leo the lamb]

Thanks for the comment, Miss Runner-Up. I'll take all the encouragement I can get.

Today I tried to make a frosting to go on a tasty-ish gluten-free coffee cake (store-bought), using cottage cheese and powdered sugar. I was thinking along the lines of cannoli cream, and didn't realize that I wasn't using ricotta until there was no going back. My stick blender couldn't do much with the small amount, and the hand mixer couldn't make the stuff smooth. I added more sugar and some softened butter, which improved the flavor at least.

[Miss TTU Runner-Up]

My husband made a Dutch Baby for dinner tonight. It was yummy!

[rsc2a]

(04-15-2018, 08:37 PM)Miss TTU Runner-Up Wrote: My husband made a Dutch Baby for dinner tonight.  It was yummy!

Poor kid.

[leo the lamb]

I'm avoiding processed foods for a few days to get my health back in balance, so I'll be cooking more, mostly simple stuff but maybe I'll experiment a little. Right now I'm enjoying a simple bowl of fried onions, mushrooms and ground beef. I used unsalted butter and virgin coconut oil, so there's a bit of a coconut flavor, which I don't mind. It was good without any salt, but I added some to the latter half of the bowl. As I was frying the ground beef, I thought why not cook it medium-rare like one would a steak? By the time I felt it was safe enough, though, it finished cooking very quickly.

[Miss TTU Runner-Up]

Found a new seasoning called Tajin. It is used, I believe, on Mexican street corn and to rim Margarita glasses. It is tangy with a bit of lime flavor. I grilled a few ears of corn tonight and topped them with butter, Parmesan, sea salt, and Tajin. It was really good.

[leo the lamb]

Oh, man. I need to visit a local farm store to see when their delicious corn is in season.

[leo the lamb]

I finished mincing finely, and finally, five onions for my sister's Christmas gravy. Boy, howdy. I've recently started to use higher-end cutlery, but my chopping skills are not up to par. My go-to onion chopper for anything more than one or two is a beautifully thin santoku-ish carbon steel blade made by a young smith in Vietnam and sold through ChefKnivesToGo. I don't recommend browsing the site unless you're serious about being a home chef and/or have good financial self-control. My most expensive knife from there so far was $70, but now that I've peered into the world of oriental kitchen knives there is no going back and I fear substantial chunks of my income will spontaneously go missing. My most recent order included some honing tools, as I'm a novice when it comes to making and keeping a blade truly sharp and want to develop those skills as well. A good blade don't make a chef, but in the meantime it surely is a fine thing to look at and use. I've still go a fair bit of chopping to do for a salad, but at least no more mincing tonight. Funnily, the knife I usually reach for when making this salad, which involves dicing boiled potatoes, eggs, and carrots plus pickles and bologna, is a cheap old filet knife that's no sharper than a good butter knife. The pickles will require something sharp, but the filet knife glides through the 'fleshier' ingredients nicely.

[leo the lamb]

I was looking through the "natural" egg selection at my usual discount grocery store and was unimpressed by all the pretentious and misleading claims.. "free range... in a large barn." I settled on the brand with the least b.s. on the label and the prettiest eggs, a mix of blue-green and speckled brown. I scrambled some up in unsalted butter, and my initial skepticism at the deep orange yolks as a sign of quality gave way to amazement at the taste. I just made some more in coconut oil to make sure it wasn't the butter giving all that flavor. I don't even want to salt them, they're so delicious on their own. There's a local farm that sells eggs from seasonally pastured hens, but for now I'm happy to have found these beauties.