Domestic Adventure in Wichita

Yesterday I was throwing a yarn art party to be enjoyed with wine and a cheese plate. I love cheese. I can handle a cheese plate (except maybe the choosing crackers part), but I don't know a thing about wine. So, again, my friend Kelsie acted as guide to Wichita, and she took me around to some pretty fabulous places. (I don't think I ever posted about the amazing goodies at Juarez Bakery, but everyone should go there.)

First she took me to a great little wine shop in old town. I don't really like wine, so the fact that the vibe in this place wasn't remotely pretentious was perfect. It was a cozy, earthy sort of wine shop with really helpful people (well, person, but Kelsie says the others are great too). Just the sort of place an ignorant wine purchaser like me should go. Unfortunately, the beer selection was kind of lame, so even though it's the closest alcohol selling store to where I live, I will still have to drive a little bit to buy beer I like.

Next stop on our adventure was The Spice Merchant where Kelsie has been telling me to buy coffee, and I have been too lazy to go. (Laziness is my excuse for everything). It has some great little knick-knacks and cooking gadgets, preserves, spices (of course), and the most important part--coffee. I smelled a ton of coffee beans roasted right there, and I fell in love with a rich, earthy, and sort of sweet smelling Organic Columbian. I generally lean towards Columbian coffee beans, so this isn't much of a surprise. It was a medium roast coffee. I think I have discovered I don't like dark roasts because I find I can taste a sort of acrid flavor in dark roasts. It took me a long time to figure this out. Instead, I like a good medium roast brewed dark.

Oh, and don't let me forget the most exciting part! The Spice Merchant has vanilla beans for $1.25 a bean. It's over $5 a bean when you get them from the grocery store. I am ecstatic, and there will be homemade ice cream this summer. I also got some almond syrup because I have decided to quit coffee creamer. I want to live a life of caffe au lait drinking. This morning, I frothed milk in a saucepan using a whisk (it turned out acceptably frothy, but I still need a frother), and I put it in my coffee with the syrup. It was nice, but I need to work on my ratios.

Then our adventure took us to Heritage Hut, where we picked up some crochet hooks and some yarn for Kelsie. It was a small store, so it didn't have a huge yarn selection, but they had really, really nice yarns. Although, I think sometime soon I will hop over to Twist to see what they have. I need to buy some knitting needles because Lindsey (the only guest who showed up to the party besides Kelsie and I) showed me how to knit, but I am currently using chop sticks, and the ends are not pointy enough.

Our adventure took a turn for the mundane after that. We bought cheese, fruit, and crackers at a regular old Dillon's grocery store.  Grocery store camembert might as well be brie. It doesn't smell attrocious at all, and that's just wrong. I need to find a decent place to buy a good foot-smelling camembert. Finally, we wrapped up our adventure by stopping by a Big Lots to get 12 wine glasses for $10 because I didn't have any. Not too shabby. They are very rounded, which was kind of amusing.

Because of tornado warnings, we spent part of the yarn art party in the stairwell in the basement of my apartment complex with lots of my neighbors, yet I think the yarn art party was a success. Most of the guests didn't come, but Lindsey was a delightful find, so she made all Kelsie and my efforts worth it. Social win.

Cold Steak Tacos

I made cold steak tacos, roughly inspired by Cooking Light magazine. From their June issue, I combined the flank steak taco recipe (vageuly followed) with the coleslaw for a catfish sandish, and tada! Cold steak tacos that were amazing and good for summer and the heat.

Steak

1 hour ahead of time mix

• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 tablespoon dried ground peppers (I have a jar of an assortment all ground up together)
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 2 cloves minced garlic

Rub that into a flanksteak and put the steak back in the fridge for an hour. When that hour is up, throw on the grill on high for 6-10 minutes on each side. Keep it juicy. Slice it thin to make it go farther and to make it more easily distributable in wraps.

Mushrooms and Onions

• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1/4 cup red onion chopped
• 1/4 cup chopped mushrooms

Warm the oil in a skillet, throw the onions on. When the onions soften a bit, throw the mushrooms on. Don't really cook it down, just warm and soften a bit and pull it off the heat so it can cool.

Coleslaw

• 4 tablespoons lime juice
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1/3 cup sour cream
• 2 cups bagged coleslaw mix (cabbage and carrots and whotnot)
• 1 cup fresh cilantro

Mix the first three ingredients, then toss in the second two.

Cheese

• grate some cheese of your choice (I used pepperjack)

Tortilla

• Whatever kind you like (I used spinach wraps)

 Wrap everything up together in one neat little bunch and eat. Yum!

Historic Mac & Cheese-y Childhood Night

Simply Recipes posted an intriguing recipe/article about Mac & Cheese. Mac & Cheese appears in cookbooks back to the1400s. My guess is the dish itself is probably older. That's a long history of yumminess.

They offer a recipe from 1861 that is really more like a guideline--oh before the days of 24 hour grocery stores. For those uncomfortable with guideline-style recipes, Simply Recipes was kind enough to morph this beauty into a modern clear-cut recipe.

Tonight, my friends and I are gathering to test the mac & cheese recipe, which means I'll be doing mostly whatever I want because they're just guidelines. I'll be making the mac & cheese, others will brings sides, appetizers, mix-ins, etc.

We've also got some lemon ice cream made at Kansas State University to finish off the evening. It tastes like this fruit dip Lindsey makes, which our friend Amy dubbed Childhood and Sunshine. I think it's an appropriate dessert for a dinner so reminiscent of childhood. Let's face it, adults don't eat much mac & cheese.

The recipe doesn't call for any sort of cream sauce, but I think I might throw one in to make it creamier like they have a nice restaurants.

The Baking Gods Have Spoken: Cheesy-Potato Scones

I love savory scones. Two of the local coffee shops make the greatest scones with cheese and sausage or bacon, and they are maybe my favorite food ever! I have wanted to learn to make my own, but every scone recipe I have is very British (crusty scones that require coffee or tea just to swallow), and these bakeries do a very Americanized fluffy, biscuit-like scone.

With a little help from Epicurious.com and my own ingenuity, I developed a scone that I love with the random stuff that I had around the house! I'm going to share a mentally adjusted recipe because when I'm playing around with recipes, I often don't read as well as I should, and I made some mistakes that probably could have ruined my scones, and I don't want to include those in the recipe (I don't expect to get this lucky with attempt two if I repeat those mistakes). The recipe will have lots of options because I believe in fudging if you don't have what's necessary. Bake with what you have.

Prep: Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

I use 400 because my oven seems to draw it's heat straight from hell. It gets excessively hot in there. Grease a cookie sheet.

Step 1: Sift/whisk together 2-and-3/4 cups self-rising flour, 1 tablespoon sugar, and 2 teaspoons baking powder.

Step 2: Throw in 1 heaping cup of frozen hashbrown potatoes (the shredded kind), 2 cups of coursely shredded cheese of your choice.

I recommend a more potent cheese like cheddar. All I had was colby jack and pepperjack. I did the colby because my roommate doesn't like spicy, but I think a more flavorful cheese would be better. Havarti dill might be good too. Mmmmm!

Step 3: Throw in a few tablespoons of this or that. Whatever you like. I added garlic salt (if you don't add garlic salt, make sure you do add a tsp of salt).

I also added some sage and some onion flakes because I didn't have any real onion. Epicurious calls for chives. Dill would add a nice touch if you have it. Crisply cooked bacon or any breakfast sausage is good. If you like sweeter scones, add some honey. I also highly recommend a tablespoon of dry mustard or just throw a couple spoonfuls of whatever mustard you have in the fridge. I used some dijon mustard we have and never use.

Step 3.1: Stir.

Step 4: In a separate bowl, beat together one egg with 3/4 cup whatever milk you have and  1 tablespoons vegetable oil or butter.

Epicurious calls for whole milk, but a reviewer said they used skim, and it was fine. I used some of the skim sour milk I have for making waffles, which also seemed fine. I used butter instead of veg oil because most baked goods end up flakier with butter. I needed to get the fat back that I lost using skim milk, too. I don't believe in being too low calorie. That's what yoga and kickboxing are for--eating whatever I want.

Step 5: Gradually add your liquids from Step 4 to your flour mixture. If it seems dry, throw in some more milk a tablespoon at a time. I did.

Step 6: Knead your dough a tiny bit so that it sticks together--not too much, you don't want to overwork it and make it tough.

Step 7: Roll out your dough/press it into whatever shape with your hands so that it's about 1-and-a-1/2 inches high. Then cut it into whatever shape you want.

I make two balls, flatten them a bit with my hands, and then cut wedges out of the round. If you have giant cookie cutters, you could make scone blobs that vaguely resemble cookie shapes.

Step 8: Put scones on cookie sheet with at least a half inch between them. Bake your scones for about 15 minutes.

Step 9: Pull your scones out of the oven, let them cool a bit, then pig out.

Here's the Epicurious recipe that aided me, along with the very useful user reviews, which guided some of my own baking choices.