Biscuits and Sausage Gravy

During Winter Break, my main squeeze and I went up to Seattle for a quick, random day trip. We started our day at Voula's Offshore Cafe for breakfast. Guy Fieri from the Food Network has been there. On their menu, they have an area of his recommendations. I chose "Billy's Biscuits", which was biscuits and sausage gravy, with hash browns, and eggs. (I was not a member of the Clean Plate club that day.)  I was hesitant about trying them, since I was sure that I didn't really like biscuits and gravy. I have a vague memory of trying it once as a kid, at Perkin's with my parents, and not liking it. But then again, all I ever ate at Perkin's was chocolate chip pancakes. (During college, I told my parents that I never liked the chocolate chip pancakes, but always ordered them because I was too scared to try anything else. Their responses were just blank stares. I don't know if they were shocked that a child wouldn't like chocolate chip pancakes, or if they were trying to figure out how many times I ordered it, even though I didn't like them.)


Anywho, Voula's changed my mind, and I've had biscuits and gravy on the brain ever since. There was no school today, so I figured it would be a good time to try it out. I used Alton Brown's Southern Biscuit recipe, except I used half whole wheat and half regular flour. My biscuits were more like hockey pucks than I had hoped, but they tasted good. I forgot to take pictures of the process until they came out of the oven.

Pay no attention to that blobby one on the lower left. He was the leftover dough. Couldn't bring myself to throw away dough.

I made my gravy using this recipe from Paula Deen. I liked it, but it got really thick after it sat. Next time, I'll use less flour to thicken it. But again, it tasted good.


I used this sausage that I found:

No MSG! Yeah!

 Next time, I might use turkey sausage. Probably a healthier option, in the long run. Until then, leftovers for dinner this week!

Tatebanko

When my main squeeze and I were in Portland last week, I found a Tatebanko kit in the art section of Powell's City of Books. According to the cover, tatebanko is a "forgotten Japanese art of creating amazing dioramas and scenic perspective from paper." For ten bucks, I figured a little art project that would become decor was a worthwhile purchase. 


I opened it up the other night, and was instantly confused. It came with all of these pieces...

... not to mention that the directions were originally in Japanese, and then translated to English. And they were sparse. The first direction basically read "Cut out the pieces, and glue them down, dummy." 


So I started cutting and gluing.

It was going well until I hit this roadblock:

Pieces 6, 7, 8 and 9, all had As, Bs, and Cs, on them. What am I supposed to do with that business? I just stuck with my  strategy to keep cutting and gluing, now in alphabetical order. 

Ooohh... it's coming together! 

Now it has sides! This was harder to accomplish than I had imagined.

And a front!

This finished project! I love it. I think it's the best 10 bucks (plus 2 hours of cutting and gluing) I've spent in awhile. 


Uh-oh. Leftover pieces. That's no good, right?

Um, Dear 20A, 20B, 21A and 21B- where the feez do you guys go?








Oh, I get it.

One of you holds up this explanation written in English. The other holds up the version in Japanese. (I'm assuming that it says the same thing in Japanese. It may say something along the lines of "Some dumb American bought this. Laugh at them." I'll never know the real truth.)


Anywho, it was a fun project. A little artsy, a little craftsy. Good stuff.


Oh, and I forgot my favorite part.


This dude:

It's a little surfer dude. If you go to the website, it suggests where to glue him. I'm trying to figure out a way to make him mobile, so I can move him all around the diorama. 


The whole time I was working on it (when I wasn't puzzling over the lack of directions) I was thinking of other applications for this technique. I wanted to buy more kits, but the company doesn't ship them outside of Japan. And, I can't buy them online from Powell's. And they are over $100 bucks on Amazon. So I'm thinking of making my own. I think Van Gogh's "Starry Night" would look amazing, if I can figure it out. And, wouldn't it be fun to make one out of personal pictures? Like a little diorama of a vacation or something? I have ideas. I'll keep you posted. 


(Also, "diorama" is nearly impossible for me to spell correctly. My fingers literally freeze on the keyboard, no idea where to go after the "di-". So I just fill in letters phonetically and then wait for the squiggly red line to appear underneath. Ah well. Can't be good at everything, right?)

Bye, 2010!! Hi, 2011!!

(Warning: This post is long, and only has one picture. Read at your own risk.)


If you are one of the five people that read this blog, you'll know that I made a lot of my Christmas presents for people this year. Most of them I'm not super proud of, but there is one that I could live with.

I made this for my friend Erin, who also started a blog in 2010, called Punched at Recess. I always admire and appreciate Erin's outlook on life, and her blog is the perfect mix of intelligence and humor. She and her students had a run-in earlier this year with a one-eyed pigeon, which Erin deemed Cap'n Pidgey. I decided it would be fun to make her a little mascot of her pigeon friend.

So, my 2010 ended with a bunch of art projects, a couple fun little road trips, and an excellent Christmas and New Year's. 

Now, on to 2011, with a note about resolutions.

I make resolutions every year. Every year. For as long as I can remember. I'd also make resolutions at the beginning of the school year. And sometimes my birthday. I'm a goal-setter. The problem is, I'm not always a goal-reacher. As I was thinking of resolutions for this year, the same ones popped into my head... exercise more, lose weight, eat better, read more books, spend more time being creative, blah, blah, blah. When I made a joke to a friend about how most of the people at the Y this week won't be there in February, I silently thought "Man, I better still be there in February."

That got me to thinking... and I changed my resolutions this year. My resolution is to be realistic. That's it. Realism. I'm applying my realism to my goals (I'm not calling them resolutions anymore. They are goals now.). 

Goal 1: Get back into running again. I want to run Bloomsday in May. I haven't run seriously since Bloomsday 2009. To be realistic about my goal, I'm starting slow. I'm on week one of a "Couch to 5K" program. It's going well, but I'm bummed I'm slower and more out of shape than I had hoped. 

Goal 2: Eat better. I know, same words as the former resolution. But, I'm being realistic about this one, too. In the past, I would have made myself eat only salads. That's not realistic. A side salad every day wouldn't kill me though. And I'm not going to count every calorie, either. I love food. Eating better to me means that I eat food that is good for me, and tastes good. I want to cook more often, not just look for meals that are prepared quickly and with a minimum of dishes to wash. 

(Note about goals 1 and 2: In the past, I would have used those two goals as a means to a different goal- losing weight. I would have set an unrealistic numerical goal, and then obsessively counted every calorie consumed and burned. That would last for a few weeks, and I would see some results, but all the joy of running because I like it, or eating food that tastes good, would be gone. I'm not gonna do that this year. I haven't even set a weight goal. I would like to weigh less, and would love one of those flat stomachs. I don't remember a time in all my 28 years where I had a flat stomach. That ship may have sailed.  Realistically, I realize that to reach a magical number on the scale, or have flat abs, would take a lot of the joy out of exercise and food for me, and it's not worth the sacrifice in my mind. Healthy and happy is a realistic goal.)

Goal 3: Spend more time on creative pursuits. I started this blog as a way to hold myself accountable to use my creative talents. I have only told one person about my blog, because I'm afraid of failing, at blogging and being artistic. Am I going to create a masterpiece in 2011? Realistically, probably not. But I'm definitely never going to create anything if I'm too afraid to try. 

Goal 4: Don't set any more goals for the year. Three goals is enough. Are there other things I'd like to change about myself or my habits? Of course. Can I change that many things about me in the next 361 days? Realistically, no. So three goals is good for now. 

The past four days have been a good start. Here's to 361 more of the same!

Christmas Creations

I've been working for awhile on Christmas presents. I prefer to hand make presents, whenever possible. It's usually not possible, because I wait until the last minute to start. This year, I didn't wait until the last minute. In fact, I'm almost done. So as not to ruin the surprise for anyone, in case some of the people on my Christmas list stumble upon this blog, I'm not going to post pictures yet. The spoiler alert is that I'm proud of some of my Christmas creations, and some other creations are causing me to brainstorm backup presents I can buy for people. Anywho, pictures will be up in a couple of weeks.


Also, I'm creating cookies right now. I want to get them made and packaged for people at school this week, because I'm still hoping for snow days. I used two recipes from one of my favorite blogs, How Sweet It Is. The Fat Fluffy Snickerdoodles are out of the oven and cooled, and they are everything they promised. (I heart a snickerdoodle, in general, but these are way above par.) Right now I'm about three-quarters of a my way through a batch of Hot Cocoa Cookies, and they smell awesome. I'm nervous about them still, mostly because I didn't have enough regular flour, so I made them with half self-rising flour. I convinced myself it wouldn't be a problem, but I have to wait for the marshmallows to cool before I can test my theory. 

Row upon row of snickerdoodles: a beautiful thing

Oh, hey there, hot messy blobs!

My cookies are much flatter and uglier than the ones on the blog. I'm going to blame it on the self-rising flour, and not my sub-par baking skills. But, I'm still going to give away the ones that are somewhat aesthetically pleasing, if only because it leaves more snickerdoodles for yours truly. Not really in line with the giving spirit of the season. I'll ponder my shortcomings while I eat snickerdoodles until I puke. 


P.S. Do yourself a favor and bookmark How Sweet It Is. Or add it to your blogroll, or RSS feed, or whatever it is the cool kids do to keep up with their favorite blogs. How Sweet It Is gets updated frequently, and has a good mix of sweet and savory recipes. And, Jessica, the blogger, is hilarious. She's the blogger I wish I could be.

Not an Apple Cup post

This weekend was the Apple Cup, the rivalry game between the University of Washington and Washington State University. Normally, I'm a WSU Cougars fan, because I grew up on the east side of the state, and I'm always a fan of the underdog. (The Cougs are perpetual underdogs.) This year, the Apple Cup was late in the season, the last game actually. The Huskies needed to win to get into a bowl game, and the Cougs would love a chance to ruin that for them. I didn't get into the rivalry this year, just because I would rather have a team from Washington go to a bowl game than some other team. (Spoiler Alert: The Huskies won by a touchdown in the last minute of the game.)


The other thing that may have softened my heart towards the Huskies is that my main squeeze's oldest niece is freshman at UW this year. She's also the reason for this post (which should have been one of the first posts, but I am a slacker). Her birthday was about two weeks after she moved up to school this year, and I know how much I loved to get care packages at school, so I made her Huskies cookies for her birthday.


I made my own cookie cutter (which is a whole other story). It was also my first trip into the land of royal icing. I made the first batch with a regular sugar cookie recipe, and I didn't like them. They were too thin and wafery. I like puffy cookies, so I remade them with a chocolate recipe dough. Much better tasting, but they didn't travel as well as I had hoped. 

Cut outs before they go into the oven.
 

Nutella cookies

One of my favorite things in the world is peanut butter cookies. A good peanut butter cookie is a wonderful thing. Paula Deen makes one of the best, easiest peanut butter cookies. I change her recipe a bit: I put 3/4 cup of sugar, and 1/4 cup of brown sugar, and I add about a 1/2 tsp of vanilla. (Really, I just pour a bit of vanilla in. But if you measured it, I think it'd be about 1/2 tsp.)


Some people love Nutella the way that I love peanut butter cookies. I don't feel that way about Nutella. Really, I could take it or leave it. But I had some left over from another baking adventure, and I thought I could improve on Nutella by combining it with my peanut butter cookie recipe.


They turned out pretty good. They tasted a little bit like hazelnut brownie cookies. Which I don't hate. 

Nutella cookies in the oven.

Nutella Brownie Cookies
(adapted from Paula Deen's Peanut Butter Cookies)


1 large egg
1 cup Nutella
1/2 cup flour (the Nutella is more liquid-y than peanut butter, so I had to add flour)
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla


Heat oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper. 


Mix all ingredients until dough forms. Drop by spoonful onto parchment paper. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Remove from sheet and allow to cool. 

Homemade Oreos

Yep. You heard that right. Homemade Oreos. I first saw them posted here, at the Bake at 350 site, which I love. In the not too distant future, I see myself making Homemade Nutter Butters, Homemade Animal Cookies, and Homemade Hostess Cupcakes.


When I made my first batch, I never realized how many more batches I would need to make. They are so good that I want to share them with everyone. But they are so good that they also disappear faster than I can make them. I made them so often that I nearly had the recipe memorized. Seriously. They are good.