Cupfakes

The first recipe that I made from Willow Bird Baking were her Cheddar Chive and Bacon Cupfakes. I didn't have many of the ingredients but I wanted them so badly so I simply made a few substitutions. It went very well. I love when recipes are easily customizable.

I didn't have avocados so I didn't make the frosting. I didn't have bacon so I sauteed some franks. I added some Philadelphia Cooking Cream and some jalapenos too. AMAZING. !!

My Obsession with Willow Bird Baking

In early October my friend T sent me a recipe for a Birthday Cake Cheesecake and asked me what I thought of it. I am not really a cheesecake person but for some reason this one intrigued me. I started reading through all the other recipes on the blog (Willow Bird Baking) and I was instantly hooked. I needed to make a cheesecake immediately. I saw the Red Velvet Cheesecake and decided it would be the one. I don’t even like red velvet cake that much either but I simply could not resist. Before I completed the cake, I also saw her cupfakes and made the Cheddar Chive Cupfakes substituting a few ingredients. It was delicious. In upcoming posts I will post pics and a few notes on the recipes from Willow Bird that I've made.

I'm learning how to make roti

Slowly but surely I am going to get this right. I love roti too much to not be good at it. 

I want to marry the inventor of the slow cooker

A few years ago, my roommate bought a slow cooker and I asked if I could try it. I tried a chicken stew but it pretty blah. Too much liquid. Over-cooked. Blah. Next I tried some ribs for a New Years dinner. The ribs were also pretty blah. Too much fat. Too much liquid. I never tried the slow cooker again.

My mother, on the other hand, had been singing praises about her slow cooker. She had three in different sizes. I thought she was nuts. Last summer when my sister came to visit, she bought me one despite my protests. I don't need it, I cried. I won't use it. She ignored me. It sat in the box for several weeks and I had pretty much forgotten about it. One day I pulled it out and thought I should at least use it once. On the cover was the picture of a whole chicken in the pot. I had a whole chicken. I wondered if it would fit.

I seasoned up my chicken well and then placed it in the ceramic pot. It definitely fit. I couldn't decide on how much liquid to add. I saw that some recipes suggested no liquid. I also remembered that too much liquid was a problem when I first used it. I decided to go with no liquid and hope that it and all worked out. And you know what? It did. That chicken was A M A Z I N G. After just one dish I was hooked.

Since then I have found sites dedicated to slow cooking. While I haven't tried any of the recipes, I do browse from time to time. The slow cooker is so versatile. I can toss the food in and go to sleep. I can leave the house. I don't have to keep running to the kitchen. Can I marry the inventor of the slow cooker? Please?

Here are some of my favourite dishes to cook in my slow cooker.

Whole chicken - no need to heat up the whole house during the summer. Be careful not to cook it too long or it will be falling apart and difficult to remove from the slow cooker in one piece. Each slow cooker is different. I find that mine cooks a lot faster than others.

Chicken parts - toss them in with your favourite seasonings. Guess what? You don't even have to marinate your meat. I know! Crazy. Toss it in and walk away. I often cook a bunch of parts and then shred the meat for sandwiches and salads for later.

Beans - I love doing beans. Sometimes I'll do a combination of several types of beans. I can then turn that into a bean stew, bean soup or even just a bean filling for a wrap. One thing I have noted is that when using my slow cooker, I don't use as much salt. In fact, I tend to leave salt out when cooking the beans and I don't notice a difference. I have since done the same with meat. Just make sure you use a lot of onions, garlic and herbs.

Pork leg - oh yeah. This is probably my favourite. Season up that pork shoulder really well. Let it marinate for a little while. It's a large cut of meat after all. Put it in the slow cooker and walk away. When you return, you will have DELICIOUS pork that's perfect for pulled pork sandwiches or whatever else your heart desires. I'm drooling just thinking about the last pork shoulder that I did.

Baked beans - oh yeah! You can definitely do baked beans in the slow cooker. Use some small white beans - like northern beans. Combine tomato paste (or ketchup), barbecue sauce (or just the ingredients for bbq sauce), a little vinegar, lots of brown sugar, maybe some dried mustard, oregano. Taste it. Does it taste really good? Like extra yummy bbq sauce? Great. Now add it to the slow cooker. Add your soaked beans. You want to cover the beans with the sauce plus maybe another 2cm or so of liquid. Not as much liquid evaporates during slow cooking and you don't want your baked beans to be swimming in liquid at the end. However, if they are, put it on the stove to dry it out or stir in some cornstarch to thicken things up. It should be fine though. That brown sugar is going to caramelize and make something lovely. These baked beans were so good that I wanted to just take the ceramic pot and grab a spoon and not move until they were finished.

Chicken + beans + potatoes + carrots - I got the inspiration for this from What's for Dinner's Cowboy Stew. She uses beef. I was out of beef. I soaked my beans and made the same sauce as I would for baked beans, rubbed the chicken pieces in some of it too and put the pieces on top of the beans. I also put some onions and garlic at the bottom. Next I was going to add the potato and carrots but I was craving raw carrots and decided to just do a slaw instead. I then decided to just do a baked potato too. End result? Finger licking good! Another dish that I want to eat straight from the slow cooker. One other thing I should mention, for this dish, I actually added frozen chicken to the crock pot. Yup. Yup. You can toss frozen chicken into your slow cooker.

You want to marry the inventor too, don't you?

Friendly Friday

When Allison at O My Family started Friendly Friday a few weeks ago, I thought it was a great idea. Let’s actively seek out persons to help and, of course, blog about it. But who would I help, I thought? I don’t interact with that many persons on a daily basis. I see my students and the persons in my lab. That’s it. And just like that, I had lost my desire to help.

I read her posts each week and thought, hmm, I guess I could do that. But then, I don’t talk to my neighbours so baking them something would be a bit strange. I don’t know what the postman looks like either. My car is dead so there’s no giving old ladies rides to the bus stop. I had, once again, given up on helping. Besides, I didn’t want to help just so that I could link up in a Friendly Friday post. I wanted to help just to help.

For class this week we were scheduled to talk about prosocial behavior. I cringed. I would be prepping a lecture on helping. I’d be reading all the psychological reasons why we don’t help and pretty much nodding in agreement.

Another Friday passed and I had no Friendly Friday post. I hadn’t helped a soul. Sure, I had made copies for my students. Sure, I had critiqued a paper for a friend but that just wasn’t the same. I headed to the supermarket to get my Friday night movie. As I walked out the supermarket, it started to rain heavily. A lady, her baby, her older daughter and husband stood next to me watching the rain.

The husband decided that he’d brave the downpour and go get the car. After all, it did not seem like the rain would end anytime soon. We could be standing there forever. This is your chance, Kelster. Offer your umbrella for the trip to the car. I froze. I decided to wait. If the husband didn’t come back with an umbrella, I’d offer my umbrella so that she could cover the baby. Finally! I could link up in Friendly Friday.

Uh. What? Was I only doing this so that I could link up in Friendly Friday? No, no, of course not. FF had certainly giving me the extra motivation but even without FF, I would have offered to help this family. I knew this was true but there was the nagging doubt in my head.

The husband drove the car as close as he could and I quickly offered to shelter them on their walk to the car. The wife thanked me profusely. The husband, however, was not as friendly. He walked up to us, picked up his daughter and said, “It’s not raining that badly anymore.” I shrugged. I didn’t care how lightly it was raining at that point; I was not going to have a drop of rain fall on that precious sleeping baby if I could help it.
After they left, I started thinking. Does it matter why we help? Should it only matter that we helped? Three theories of helping exist. One, the empathic-altruism hypothesis, states that we help simply for helping’s sake. The negative state relief hypothesis states that we do it because we feel bad when someone is in distress and helping relieves this. The empathic-joy hypothesis says that we help so that we can feel good. The latter two seem to be more about the helper than the helpee. But again, should it matter why we help? I will address that another time. For now, I am just glad that I did.

Épinards et fromage Vol-au-vents (Spinach & cheese vol-au-vents)

Later this week I am going to do a detailed post on my current love affair with Willow Bird Baking. However, for today I leave you with the beauty that came out of my oven last night.




Spinach and Cheese Vol-au-vent on HOMEMADE Puff Pastry. Yes, I needed to use caps for that. At the beginning of this year, I was still avoiding most recipes that required working with dough. I have just never been a fan of kneading. What was that about me baking bread? Ha. I try to choose recipes that don't call for a lot of kneading. I do everything by hand because I don't own a mixer or a food processor. Therefore, I do not attempt recipes that would be best done with equipment. However, after some success with sourdough croissants, I decided to try puff pastry and these vol-au-vents. I have Willow Bird to thank for this. I would have never ventured out of my comfort zone if it were not for her.

Go check out Willow Bird and her gorgeous vol-au-vents!

Not Extreme Couponing

I have always been a frugal shopper. I realised pretty early that most items went on sale at some point. I live near to a Publix, Sedano's and Winn Dixie and typically do most of my grocery shopping at Publix and Sedano's. Publix always has great Buy One Get One sales and Sedano's usually has great deals on meat and produce. I rarely buy anything at full price.

I always got Red Plum and Procter & Gamble inserts in the mail but I never really used them much. Slowly I started going through them but I found that there were never coupons for items I really used so I would use them only rarely. I started reading more and more about couponing and following couponing websites such Two Frugal Friends (no longer active) and I Heart Publix. I started seeing that I could get great deals. But I also realised that it took a lot of work. I would also need to have multiple sets of inserts to really take a great advantage of coupons. Too much work, I decided.

I started really understanding how these persons used coupons and decided that it was time. I got myself a coupon boxes and started clipping. Of course, a few months into clipping (and still not fully catching on), the inserts stopped arriving in my mailbox. ARGH! I guess I need to now subscribe to the local newspaper to get them. I still haven't done that because I am not yet couponing full time.

I feel a little awkward sometimes because there is NEVER anybody else using a coupon at my store. I don't want to hold up the line. And I also worry about the language barrier. I live in a predominantly Spanish area and it's not uncommon to have a cashier that does not speak a lot of English. There is usually no English whatsoever in Sedano's. I would not dare to try to use coupons there or ask about the coupon policy.

I am ready to take the plunge, subscribe to the newspapers and print internet coupons. Join me as I try to save a few pennies here and there. It won't be extreme but there will savings.