Oatmeal Bread: Staff of Life

Baking bread is something primal everyone should really try once. I mean, not to be preachy, but there’s something really basic about this that I find really relaxing. Oh, and you make the best bread imaginable, baking your own, as well. Plus, it can be stored in the fridge for weeks, or frozen for months. And you can make oatmeal bread, which is what I consider to be one of the best twists on straight up bread out there.

Chili Con Carne: My particular version

I love chili. This recipe is one of my favorites to do, as it’s great for a crowd, or even solo – you just need to freeze the leftovers. The only unfortunate thing is that making it solo means it’s not really workable to do cornbread with it, unless you really want stale leftover cornbread for cornbread stuffing. Which isn’t a bad option, considering. Really, it just comes down to the fact I’ll use just about any excuse to break out this recipe – I love chili, and this version is my favorite.

Rise from your grave

This is a quick update. It’s been almost a year since this project started, then went idle. I’ve since regretted this going idle, as it was a good exercise in note-taking, record keeping, and photography, besides the fact that it might have shared some good recipes with people. However, I think, my formal style and extreme focus kept this from being a relaxing and easygoing project, and also the fact that I had not found an image optimization program yet, which would allow me to add pictures to this site without them being miserably slow uploads. At any rate, things got bogged down, then I went on a month long trip, and never really got back to this. This changes now.

So, I’m restarting this,  as a less formal blog which will contain both recipes, as well as bits from my life. In particular, I’m probably going to add some writeups of some of the trips I’ve experienced as a geologist, as well as any future ones I get involved in. I’ll try to make those interesting, too.

Given that I never particularly aimed at having any sort of readership, if anyone’s still out there, hi. And if anyone begins reading now, hello as well. Future posts will probably contain more content than this announcement.

Stir Fry Chicken: Flashy, worthwhile food

Stir fried chicken is a lot of fun to make. By which, I mean, it’s exciting and the results are tasty. It’s even easy, if you do all the preparation ahead of time. And, it involves working with a wok and very high heat, which is fun and exciting. You could do it in any large pot, too. It’s well worth trying, as it’s a delicious and unique flavor.

Strawberry Rhubarb Pie: The taste of spring

To me, at least, spring tastes like fresh strawberries. Well, those, a lot of rain, and allergies, but the fun part would be strawberries. Strawberry rhubarb pie utilizes them in the best possible way, to create warm, gooey deliciousness. I made this pie last week while I was home with local rhubarb, and it was so delicious.

Midnight pollack: necessity, the mother of…

In my haste to get all my pictures for my other posts uploaded, and the post on the pork chops done today, being home and done finals and therefore having time to write all this up, I nearly forgot about a little midnight experiment I had while writing papers. I was hungry, there was one last chunk of fish in the fridge from the aforementioned fish fry, and I needed to use it up. Therefore, I threw it in a baking pan with what I had on hand, and the result was pretty tasty.

Berry-Mustard Pork Chops: My best this year

Thus, why I made it yesterday for mother’s day. I didn’t get pictures, so none are coming, but this one should stand on its own merits: it’s the best thing I’ve made all year, flat out.

Fish Fry: A good time with friends

I wasn’t the one to pull this one off, I just helped. My good friend Alex P led it, with me just assisting as needed and prepping the aforementioned beans as a side dish. That said, we agreed afterwards the results were phenomenal, and he was OK with me posting it. And, thus, a post on beer-battered pollock, because this affordable, everyday dish can be a real marvel with some effort.

BBQ Baked Beans – the kitchen sink

At least, this recipe seems to have everything in it – though oddly enough, you don’t really need to use the sink aside from rinsing the beans and picking out any bad ones. This recipe is basically a baked beans recipe modified to have some fun and flavor – smoky barbecue flavor, that is. It’s got a whole range of fun ingredients, and my version, while modified with several substitutions from the original (largely my mother’s suggestions, which removed some of the overpowering elements and upped the barbecue flavor), still has a whole mess of fun ingredients which turn baked beans into something, which, if not gourmet, is at least fun at parties.

Peanut Butter Cookies: a simpler cookie

Peanut butter cookies, for whatever reason, just feel easier to make than chocolate chip cookies. Maybe it’s that their cooking time isn’t as long, or that the batch is smaller, or that I can fit more onto a cookie sheet, or that the batter is easy enough to mix by hand, but this is a nice quick batch of cookies.