Cravings...

So, I'm making a new rule: I cannot fulfill a craving for a food item from a restaurant or similar establishment until I know that I could create the item myself. (This will strictly apply to cravings in and of themselves, not simply ordering or anything.)

I had the craving for dumplings today: delicious, stuffed, steamed dumplings. I googled 'steamed dumplings'... somehow I managed to find someone who is just a big a fan of Alton as I am... and their foodblog reminded me of Alton's episode 'Wonton Ways'. He outlined that using storebought wanton wrappers are perfectly acceptable, and went over a few stuffings.

I review Alton's recipe, and some others on the web, and decided on a simple starting point for a recipe (The meatloaf a few posts back made it clear that Alton likes spicy food.)

Ground pork, scallions, bellpepper, and my new food processor from last weekend (yay), and I had enough stuffing for sixty dumplings (that's all the wrappers I had, I could have stuffed 70 probably.) Add my new bamboo steamer to the mix, and viola... steamed dumplings!

A photo diary of the afternoon:

The Stuffing Station (above)

A few specimens waiting to be cooked (I just staged them on the baking sheet) (above)

They actually got steamed... (above)

Finished Product (above)

I also tried my hand at pot stickers, but Alton wasn't kidding about two minutes, four just gets you pot charcoal. Maybe next time.

Blockhead

So, I'm beginning to think I'm writing a food/kitchen blog...

Because most people who read this blog by now know that I pride myself on my kitchen and its contents... In particular I LOVE my knife set. Even though it's only three pieces, they are amazing Henkels 4 star knives, and they will cut you if you just look at them wrong... tomatoes don't have a chance!

Well, when I bought them, I did not purchase a full block set... just a three piece pack from Amazon.com. So for the last three months, they've been sitting in a drawer in the cardboard display packaging they originally came in.

I was at BB&B today and saw this knifeblock for the second time:
Look different? It's composed of basically hundreds of strands of plastic, all extruding from a large piece of plastic at the bottom, all encased in a wooden tube. It has no set number of slots, and is dishwasher safe (the plastic part). Basically allowing you to just toss a knife into the block, not dull it by banging it all up against a knife slot, and clean your knife block once in a while.

And it gets some of my prized possessions out of hiding. (the little silver nubs are the bottom of my Henkels steak knives, who just slip down into the plastic medium.

The following shots show you how cool this thing is (and how bored I was):

OW!

Yeah, but a good ow. A hundred push-ups NON consecutively in the past 48 hours has left me with the proof that I need to do more of them.

One Hundred Push-ups

So, I ran into this website... HundredPushups.com. It's a very basic approach to getting you to do 100 consecutive push-ups. Basically ten minutes three days a week for six weeks. No membership fee, no equipment to purchase. Best part is, you do a test in the beginning to establish where your starting point and slope to 100 are.

I'm taking the challenge... will you?

Cooking for one...

I learned most of what I know about cooking at the apron-strings of my Mother (Hi Mom!). I always felt it was a treat to help or even head up cooking for the family (of ten). Large meals were always the order of the evening; even when I, the youngest, was in high school, there were plenty of mouths around the dinner table.

Living for the last year and a half at my sister's, with three mouths to feed, the habit was to cook for at least five and have some leftovers.

I just struck out on my own and maintained my habit of cooking a large meal on Sunday and having lunch leftovers through the week.

Tonight I had a craving, oddly enough for meatloaf. Knowing that meatloaf is pretty much an open recipe for any concoction of meat, veggies and spices I knew it would be easy, but I decided to call up Alton's recipe on the web - it looked deliciously flavorful.

BEWARE ALTON'S RECIPE - it's HUGE, or at least it was when I made it...



If you'll excuse me, I have to go buy some more tupperware...