Philotic Web

Today it is cranberry tarts. With chai made with fresh spices. And clementine with cloves stuck all in.

But mostly cranberry tarts.

*drools twice as much as peters_girl*

Ever made it from scratch, Alea?

2 tbs. darjeeling tea (loose)
10 whole cloves
2 inches cinnamon stick
1 whole nutmeg, crushed coarsely
6 cardamom pods
4 peppercorns
1 small chunk of candied ginger
3 whole allspice

Put in more or less spice, as you wish. Add lots of boiling water. Makes 1 pot.

Add milk and sugar to taste, or cream for a more "latte" experience.

Biscuits. I love biscuits.

Another way you can make chai is to take all those ingredients, throw them into a pot of milk, steam the milk, and then strain it through a cheesecloth. Oh, and the ingredient amounts are fairly (borderline entirely) flexible. The only real requirements are tea (although darjeeling, or at least black, is best, in my opinion) and some spices. So if you want to adjust any of that, you will not be doing any violence to the tea.

The current smell is that of a furnace being turned on for the first time since April.

That's right, it's December, and our landlord finally turned the heat on. And only because we called to complain.

My kitchen smelled like grossocity because my roommates don't clean up after themselves, but now it smells like Clorox.

I made a two great curries tonight - beef red curry and potato yellow curry.
They were both spicy and delicious.

Top Ramen. The staple of my diet.

I made chocolate chip cookies for my mom and dad.

It smells nice.

A grilled blue cheese sandwich.

Pot roast soup, fresh from the can. And the smell is particularly strong because the soup decided to make a mess all over the microwave that I have yet to clean.

My kitchen is filled with all sorts of smells. As of 9pm, none of them are unpleasant. WOOHOO! First thing you'd smell, even going down the hallway to the kitchen, is my mom's scrumptious turkey chili. The second thing you'd smell is my purgatory cake (warmed up on the stove, of course) as I just had a piece with a scoop of ice cream. Aaaaaaaaaaand the the last smell associated with the kitchen would be the smell of baking soda with a hint of cinnamon, windex and bleachy scrubbingness stuffs. I cleaned the fridge with the specially scented baking soda, wiped down the surfaces with windex, and scrubbed the floor, as well as a glass container that had been sitting outside to hold seashells, with the scrubingness stuff.

The lovely smell from the fire in the fireplace is all through the house, so technically you'd smell it in the kitchen too, but it's not a kitchen smell. I'm rather proud, though. I've been fairly good about keeping the fire going since about 2pm during my cleaning and nesses of stuffs. The only time it probably really died is when I went to get Dan from work. I left at 9.30 forgetting the store closed at 10, so I had to wait about half an hour. The parental units were still at the Basque dinner with their lovely Canadian guests. I think we've even been able to go without the heater today. Woohoo! Lets just hope it lasts. I have a feeling the storm is going to come in and make it necessary to have it on in a couple hours.

No smells right now - just an incredible amount of smoke. What on earth could produce such a haze throughout the house when cooked?! We had to open all the windows and let the midwinter air work on the clouds near our ceiling.

I'm currently in Kelly's kitchen, and let me tell you, the smells are lovely. If there was ever one shining moment that any of you would want to be jealous of my life, it's this one, in which I'm basking in the rich, warm, lovely smells of Kelly's cooking.

*gloat gloat gloat*

Oh the smells of my kitchen.

Well for the first six months in my apartment I had a male room-mate and so you can assume that we wreaked havoc on the kitchen. The smells varied from horrible, to eye-watering. Not too long ago his "female visitor" walked into the kitchen (following a trail that was weaved through knee high trash) and.... lost her lunch...
But now that he has moved out and my girlfriend has moved in, we cleaned the place up and now smells of catfish filet and garlic mostly.

Yum!

I'm currently in Ali's kitchen, and let me tell you, the smells are lovely. If there was ever one shining moment that any of you would want to be jealous of my life, it's this one, in which I'm basking in the rich, warm, lovely smells of Ali's cooking.

*gloat gloat gloat*

Pfft. That's right... I'm glad you've finally realized that copying me is just about the closest to cool as you're ever going to get. Haunting truth, isn't it?

Today I made ice cream for the first time in my brand new ice cream freezer.

Ginger snap ice cream. Vanilla, spices, and ginger snaps. It was absolutely heavenly.

Earlier it was ginger snaps. I didn't bake them, but I did make the dough, meaning it was very heavily spiced.

Onions, garlic, cabbage, bacon, orange, grapefruit

Chocolate chip muffins and cheesey potatoes.

I made dinner.

Bump!

In a flurry of baking today, many cookies were made.

Date pinwheels
Shortbreads
Lemon tea cookies
Spiced apricot bars (actually, the other night)
Butterscotch chip cookies (other night as well)
Ginger snaps

Add in mom's meringues and mints, and you have quite a lovely Christmas assortment! Mmmm.

Now if you'll pardon me, I have a sugar coma to go slide into...

Elderflower. I found an elder, and it was in gorgeous bloom, and it hasn't rained (much) in the past couple days. I picked off huge hunks of elderflower, and made cordial (delicious!). I'm also freezing a few, and sometime soon I'll go out for more, for drying. I have a rosewater and elderflower cheesecake recipe I'm dying to try.

Oh, and oatmeal raisin cookies. It smells like that, too.

Salmon and rice, to go with the side of asparagus wrapped in prosciutto.

I may be a single bachelor; but I definitely, do not eat like it.

Fresh baked soft pretzels. Mmmmm.... I love having a husband who loves to cook.

Handmade* fried vegetable dumplings.


* I did not make the dough.

Chocolate Chip Cookies!

I made them!

I don't care if I felt justified in doing it, I get embarrassed when those posts come out of hiding.

Today, roasted green chile. Mmmm.

I need to stop having dinners of reheated pizza and make something.

Though a week ago I made a REALLY nice apple and bacon and chicken pasta dish. It was yummy. I need to repeat it sometime.

Pumpkin Scones. Mmm... I love making pumpkin stuff in fall.

my kitchen smells right now because a roommate decide to feed her pets in there. left out a tin of cat food rather than putting in the garbage and the garbage hasn't been taken out since I last did it (last week I just took out the garbage every day) in addition their dishes are piling up in the sink because I haven't done them for them, and they haven't done their own dishes because they didn't unload the load of dishes they ran through the dishwasher.

my roommates boyfriend is making ramen and it smells ridiculously awesome.

My mom finally started making our annual Christmas cookies (yeah, after Christmas but we've been slow this year seeing as we just barely got a tree today ), so our house smells like cinnamon; it's wonderful for my nose and bad for my diet.

I cooked two semi-real meals today for the first time in a while (that didn't involve sandwiches).

For breakfast/lunch I took a two quart box of trader joes butternut squash and apple soup, and I put half a bag of frozen peas in it, a quarter cup of walnuts, chopped up a fresh apple to cook into it and put in a cinnamon stick. let that simmer together about an hour and ate it throughout the day while watching football. Oh and I put torn up slices of asiago and parmesan cheese in it while it was piping hot enough to make it go all melty and delicious. mmm, it was quite tasty.


For supper I took a pound of red argentinian shrimp (also TJs, basically 90% of my shopping is done there) let it thaw whilst rooting through my pantry and fridge for other things to put with it (threw out a bunch of stuff that went bad . glanced at some recipes got some ideas but nothing I had everything for, wound up adapting something for scallops. So I heated up some olive oil, set the shrimp in, fresh pepper, salt and then pulled them out when done and cooked the next batch. Then I took a small jar of mushrooms I had and threw them in the pan the shrimp had been in with some garlic. Let those sautee for a while. Meantime I had some frozen TJs creamed spinach in the freezer so I nuked that to cook it. while doing all this I boiled 3/4 cup of pasta shells and drained them. Once the pasta was done, I tossed in the shrimp, the mushrooms and tossed it all together then tossed it in the spinach. I ate about half, it was delicious with a little olive oil drizzled on top and some kosher salt. The mushrooms were particularly good, exploding with flavor since they'd been marinated in oil.

Not bad for two improv meals with just what I had laying around.

Soooo looking forward to more cooking what with the new job and schedule now.