When Bad Things Happen to Good Cooks

I'm like a poor man's MacGyver when it comes to First Aid.

It pains me to write this. No literally, it pains me to write this because I've injured my right hand. 

OnThursday evening I started making a Chicken version of Cookin Canuck's Shrimp, Sun-Dried Tomatoes, Asparagus and Bucatini Recipe in a White Wine Garlic Sauce (her recipe titles are always super long!). I decided to sautee some chicken cutlets in light olive oil in a skillet. So I heat up my skillet and start cooking and guess who comes knocking on my door? It's my beau Carlos and he's over an hour early. I try to greet him while simultaneously taking care of the chicken but oops! the chicken breasts are burnt. I flip them over to cook them a little more. But it's too late. We set off the fire alarm with all the smoke. Carlos turns the fan on, I open up a window and soon the smoke clears. In my infinite wisdom, I throw in another chicken breast into the super hot oil before I let it cool down. Emphasis on the word "throw". The hot oil splashed all over my hand and on the wall behind me. Luckily, I threw the chicken breast with a pair of tongs and I wasn't standing directly in front of the skillet. However, I was burned pretty badly. I had second degree burns on my wrist (almost all the way around) and on some of my fingers. It's blistered pretty badly and it hurts to do anything with my right hand (type, shake hands, pick up things, etc.).

My kitchen confidence has been wavering lately. I feel like I've gotten lazier and not better. The time I have to devote to cooking has been reduced and my budget is super tight. So I've been cutting corners a lot lately to save time and money. But it's not making me a better cook.

So what do I get out of this experience besides a burnt hand? Time in the kitchen cooking should be joyful. I should take my time and be methodical. I should regain the pleasure I felt in the process and not necessarily rush to the result. And never let Carlos (and his soft kisses) distract me from cooking ever again.

Thoughtful Eating's First Blogiversary

I can't believe it's been a year since I started this little nook in the foodie blogisphere. I have to say, it's been a swell ride that I hope will continue for years to come. This blog has done a lot for me. It's encouraged me to add variety to my cooking and to be adventurous. It showed me that I still have a lot to learn about cooking and that it's okay to make mistakes in the kitchen as long as I learn from them. I saw just how huge the foodie blogosphere is and have been humbled a bit that my nook is only going to be a quiet corner of that. (I'm no We Are Not Martha). Photographing the food I've been making has been a lot of fun. I realized how big a factor visuals are when cooking and eating. I've tried to consistently add at least one photograph to every recipe. And I've had fun photographing. I try to be clever setting up the food shots but I'm also limited with my camera and with lighting/timing. It'll become more difficult in the future so I'm hoping to create my own light-box to help out.

Here are some highlights over the past year:

Lisa and I celebrate Falafel Fridays

I eat through my Fridge & Pantry

I teach people how to process: Honey Dew Melons, Onions, and Pineapples.


Chocolate Chip Banana Bread my top dessert


I fall in love with my Crockpot

 I sell some goodies at the office

 I enter Foodbuzz's Eggland Best competition with two entries (First and Second) (I doubt they even bothered to look at them)

Celebrating St. Patrick's Day with food was a blast: Guinness Cupcakes, Irish Lamb Stew and Irish Soda Bread.

Best Photograph I took all year 


Massachusetts suffers an Aquapocalypse and I celebrate by making a Chicken & Pasta Salad


You can get Thoughtful Eating on your Kindle, if you so desire

For the next year I hope to start using a food processor, advance my knowledge of basic techniques, review more local restaurants, become more active with Foodbuzz and Foodista, and keep enticing my readers with my recipes. Hope you'll stick around to see what the next year will bring!

Vegan Coconut & Lime Cupcakes

There are no substitutes for this recipe. Every ingredient has to be exact to keep it vegan. For example, I used Duncan Hines Cream Home-Style frosting in Classic Vanilla because it's on the PETA list of Accidentally Vegan products. Also, I didn't use eggs, milk or butter in this recipe. Just Cream of Coconut and Oil. You'll notice that I don't include sugar. Cream of Coconut is super sweet and you won't need any additional sugar because of it. All these ingredients are easy to find at your local grocery store and this is a simple recipe to make!

Ingredients:

Cupcake:
3 cups of flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp coconut extract (optional)
1 can of cream of coconut
(this is basically coconut water & sugar)
Juice & zest of 2 limes
1/2 cup of light olive oil or canola oil

Frosting:
Duncan Hines Creamy Home-Style Frosting in Classic Vanilla
Juice and zest of 1 lime
1/2 cup of shredded coconut (less or more per taste)

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This makes 12 cupcakes.

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.

In a small bowl, add your cream of coconut and lime juice. Mix and let rest.

Mix your dry ingredients together and add the lime zest. Then add your cream of coconut/lime juice mixture, oil and coconut extract. Mix thoroughly until incorporated.

Add batter to 12 cupcake liners in a muffin tin. Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean. Because of the high sugar content, these cupcakes get brown fast so keep an eye on them. Let cool.

In a bowl, add your shredded coconut, frosting, lime juice and zest and mix thoroughly.

Spread frosting onto cooled cupcakes. You can top with a little bit of lime zest and shredded coconut if so desired. Enjoy!

Bean & Corn Salsa

Carlos and I were at Del-i-cious, a local deli place, waiting for our orders. I flipped through a Martha Stewart Living magazine they had there when I saw a recipe for brown rice and black beans. I was so impressed with it that I took a picture.

It not that the recipe was terribly complicated, it was more the image of the bowl full of rice, beans, avocado, tomato and cilantro that impressed me. In fact I was salivating a bit. Even the del-i-cious meatball sub I devoured once my order was up, didn't satisfy me. I had to make this! But I had to give it a Latina twist.

So I played with it a bit. I did standard white rice and added some grilled corn to the salad. I served a sliced avocado as a side. It's a new favorite and healthy too. Who needs meat with this? There is so much good protein in those black beans.

Ingredients:

Rice cooked Raquelle-Style 

A large can of black beans
4 ears of corn
2 plum tomatoes seeded and chopped
1/4 of a large red onion chopped
cilantro to taste
a squeeze of lime juice
a dash of salt
a sprinkle of pepper

1 avocado

This serves two very hungry people.

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Heat up a grill pan. Smear some light olive oil on those ears of corn. Grill them up. Set aside.

In a large bowl, combine your black beans, tomatoes, red onion and cilantro. Season with a little lime juice, salt and pepper. Just a little bit! Cut the corn kernels off the grilled corn cobs. Fold them into the mixture. Be careful not to over mix.

Serve with a half of an avocado, sliced and salted. Squeeze a little lime juice on that too to keep it from going brown. Add some rice to your plate. Voila! Enjoy.