What the devil is pancetta . . . ?

I think I've mentioned before that I can cook. Not like Iron Chef, no, but I know my way around a kitchen and can cook for my family. I'm from a family of 5 kids, and my mom always cooked homemade meals for us every day. I had a great upbringing that way, so when I got married and moved out on my own, while I didn't know how to cook EVERYTHING, I knew enough to wing it and make things work without eating out every meal. One of my proudest moments was making a delicious ham sandwich using leftovers of an amazing ham roast I had cooked the previous night without even having to call my mom for instructions (no really, it was a FANTASTIC sandwich).



It's been seven years now since I first got married, and for the past several years I've been living with my husband's family, and for the past two years, I've been cooking for us all five nights a week. So I'm confident in saying that I'm now a capable cook. I've collected tons of recipes over the years, learned a lot of my mom's cooking secrets and tricks, and I'm comfortable with my abilities.

I am not, however, a fancy cook. I wrote a post awhile back about how I nearly went into paroxysms when I found out I could substitute the long shelf life evaporated milk for perishable half and half or heavy cream! It changed my life! I see things in recipes like fresh herbs and not commonly used produce and immediately start figuring out in my head what the measurement of dried herbs would be and what I can substitute for shallots. (Onions, btw. Substitute onions.)

So, when I came upon this delicious-looking recipe on Pinterest for Winter Minestrone Soup (I've been craving soup this pregnancy), you can imagine the internal monologue I had going on as I read through it. Just for kicks and giggles, let's go through it and I'll tell you what I thought. Because this could just be me being all narcissistic, but I thought it was pretty darn funny. My thoughts are in the parentheses.

Winter Minestrone & Garlic Bruschetta
Serves 6 to 8

Good olive oil (I don't know about "good", but that we have.)
4 ounces pancetta, 1/2 -inch-diced (Pancetta . . . what the devil is pancetta?)
1 1/2 cups chopped yellow onions (Dehydrated onions = 3/4 c)
2 cups (1/2-inch) diced carrots (3 carrots)
2 cups (1/2-inch) diced celery (3 stalks)
2 1/2 cups (1/2-inch) diced peeled butternut squash (Ha. I've attacked a squash before. Also blogged about it. That's not likely to happen again.)
1 1/2 tablespoons minced garlic (4 cloves) (Score for the bottle of minced garlic in the fridge!)
2 teaspoons chopped fresh thyme leaves (Dried thyme = 1/2 tsp-ish)
26 ounces canned or boxed chopped tomatoes, such as Pomi (How big are those normal size cans? 14 ounces? Eh, I can just do two of those.)
6 to 8 cups chicken stock, preferably homemade (page 62) (Chicken base and water, that counts as homemade since I have to dirty a dish.)
1 bay leaf Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper (Bay leaf, table salt, and normal ground pepper, check)
1 (15-ounce) can cannellini beans, drained and rinsed (White beans in sauce work, right? I don't really like beans anyway. Maybe we don't need those.)
2 cups cooked small pasta, such as tubetti (see note) (So . . . elbow macaroni it is!)
8 to 10 ounces fresh baby spinach leaves (I still have that frozen package of spinach in the back of the freezer, woot!)
1/2 cup good dry white wine (Make extra chicken broth, we don't have wine.)
2 tablespoons store-bought pesto (Pesto is just basil in some kind of oil or liquid, right? Yeah. 1 1/2 tsps of dried basil it is. Wonder if I should add an extra trickle of olive oil or something.)
Garlic Bruschetta (recipe follows) (White bread and butter on the table when dinner is served, check.)
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese, for serving (Freshly opened grated Parmesan in the plastic bottle. Because everyone loves a garnish.)

( . . . we never did figure out what pancetta was . . . *Googles* . . . Oh! Fancy bacon! I like bacon! We have breakfast bacon!)

So . . . yeah. That's pretty much exactly the thought process I had with this. I didn't even read the directions, but I know I'd have some sacrilegious thoughts about those as well. At the end of this recipe, I'd have a Minestrone-similar soup, definitely, but there are no promises that it would in any way be the SAME as this recipe. Would it be edible? Yes. Would it taste good? You bet your britches. Would it look like a passable imitation of the picture? Yep. But Julia Child I am not, folks. I never met a recipe I couldn't simplify, and never met a corner I didn't try to cut. Because that's how I roll. How about you? Do you put fancy chefs and cooks to shame, or is condensed cream of chicken soup your best friend? Do you have desserts or dishes that are constantly requested at parties and functions, or was mastering the can opener the greatest advance to your culinary career to date?

A Pantry Worth Crying Over

Have you ever watched a cooking movie like No Reservations or Julie and Julia, sat there for two hours of them making food that looks so good you can almost smell it through the TV? And you end up, at the end of the movie, so hungry that you would eat just about anything, even if it didn't look like that? So you go to your pantry or fridge, determined to find something even marginally awesome to eat. You open up the door. And want to cry.



Let us have a moment of silence for that horrible, horrible feeling.

*Sighs*

Ok, everyone done? Do you need another moment? No? Ok, moving on.

For anyone who didn't follow, the reason we are all crying and having a moment of silence is because the contents of our pantries and fridges . . . in no way resembles the kind of pantry or fridge you need to reproduce anything even slightly similar to what you just watched Amy Adams eat. Don't even get me started on having the patience to even give it a decent attempt, given ideal ingredients and kitchen accouterments.

This is just so not fair. And it has gotten to the point that I don't even watch Julie and Julia anymore unless I am prepared with something good to eat afterwards! Because I know what will happen, and I can't endure that heartbreak!

Or something like browning butter. Excuse me? I am already dragging out a mixer, half a dozen measuring cups and spoons, whisks and spatulas and spoons and EVERY OTHER DISH IN THE KITCHEN, but now you also want me to get out a pan, and painstakingly melt and saute butter in there until it is brown but not burned? Are you out of your freaking mind?! Come on, I am the kind of girl that reads a recipe, gets to the end and says, "Well, THAT'S not going to happen," and then either disregards it altogether or cuts corners like I'm late to work. Honestly. There is not way I'm going to sift those dry ingredients. The best you're going to get is I'm going to dump them all in a bowl together and give them a good stir with a whisk.

You know what needs to exist? A grocery store that will deliver 24/7. So that when people like me decide to watch a food movie at eleven at night, we actually have an option available when our mouths are watering and we're starving. "Yes, I need to order one of your meals from the freezer section. I don't care, something that looks even remotely similar to what Catherine Zeta-Jones just made that can be ready to eat in ten minutes." Such a place could make a killing, I'm telling you.

Come to think of it, y'know what would be even better? A magic fridge. "Fridge, I want chicken parmesan." *Ding!* "Ooh, yummy!"

"Fridge, I want Girl Scout cookies." *Ding!* *Munch*

"Fridge, I want a half-naked male model." *Error!* "Aww..."

Anyway . . .

This is a serious problem, people. These beautiful food movies and sadly lacking fridges are contributing to food depression all over the world! Something must be done! Raise awareness! Because there are few things in this world sadder than a fridge, a cupboard, or a pantry worth crying over.

The Squash I Squashed

I have learned sooo many new things today! One of them being that I really find pulling hair out of my tub drain distasteful. And my daughter always looks cute in a short bob (yes, she cut her hair again). The most . . . entertaining, perhaps, thing I have learned is that a jack-o-lantern is probably the closest I think I'll get to a whole, raw squash again.

Here's why:

Last week at Sammy's preschool, they had a whole passel of butternut squashes that they were giving away. Feeling slightly adventurous, as I get sometimes, I grabbed one. I figured, hey, if I can't figure out how to cook the thing, we can always paint it for Halloween decor, right?

It'd been sitting on the counter since then, and I've been contemplating it. I looked up a few recipes on Google, and found everything from soup to roasted squash to pureed squash. Lots of options. Now, I know that most squashes are naturally quite sweet. Hello, pumpkin pie anyone? They didn't arrive at that delectable treat without some kind of suggestion in the right direction. So I'm figuring that most of this squash will probably be going towards some kind of sweet dish. Worst case scenario, we have butternut pie, a la imitation pumpkin! Which, really, how is that a bad thing? And the rest of it can go towards a savory dish, say, a halved recipe of soup since I'm the only one that will eat this stuff anyway!

I've been meaning to cut the sucker up and get cooking since Saturday, however, I've also been battling a cold that has been flirting with me for over a week and settled in for a nice, long-term relationship around Friday. Suckage. Big time. So, poor squash just sat on the counter, waiting to hear its fate. And that cold, yeah, still hanging around. I've packed its luggage and put it outside, even left an eviction notice, but it's not taking the hint.

Anyway, I picked up the squash this afternoon while dinner was baking, and I didn't even have a chance to decide what to do with it before I felt a squishy, wet soft spot on it. Well, obviously, if this squash is going to start going bad, I need to do something about it pronto. And painting it to look like a cutesy-pootsie ghoulie is out of the question now.

So . . . the real question is . . . what the devil do I do with the thing?! I start looking around online. And it seems like every recipe I find calls for already cooked squash. And the most common way to do that? Cut it in half and bake it in the oven for a couple hours.

Er, problem there. Because, um, I kind of already went Sweeney Todd on the thing, and it it now in three pieces, and sans the whole part that was soft. Not exactly perfect roasting material now, huh? So I'm just gonna have to find a different way to cook it! Which brings us to recipes, because there is no easily accessible alternative out there for what to do with three big pieces of butternut squash.

I did, however, find a unanimous agreement that the squash needs to be peeled and cubed. Ok, peeled. Peeling a squash. Zucchini is easy peasy lemon squeezy, that stuff has a thin peel like a cucumber. However, I have never tried to peel a pumpkin, and that was pretty much what I was lookin' at right then. So, for kicks, I pull out a vegetable peeler like it says.

I would have been there until December, I kid you not. Because not only is it practically impossible to peel a concave-shaped vegetable, but I would need to go over this thing with my dinky little potato peeler about three times to get through to the lovely orange stuff underneath the tan skin and pale stuff under it. Think orange, here. No that texture, but that idea. You take a peeler to an orange, what do you get? That white stuff underneath that you don't wanna eat. Same concept, pale yellow flesh under the tan skin that I don't wanna eat. So, peeler is a no-go.

Next option, I'm gonna have to just cut the skin off with a knife. So, which knife. Let's play a game! You bring me a knife that you think would peel a pumpkin, and I'll tell you if it'll work. And do not even think about touching that butter knife, because I will snigger at you. Put the paring knife back. Fillet knife? Don't be funny. Long skinny knife. Ha. Butcher knife, no. You will cut off your finger before you skin a butternut, because a knife that big will be a joke.

Ok, I'll tell you. You want a knife about 6 inches long, half the blade width of a butcher knife. We have two at my house, and they're my favorite, especially because I sharpen them before each use. I tried the fillet knife, and started laughing because I got 3 inches into a cut and realized that this was a fail of epic proportions because have you every tried to cut a jack-o-lantern with a fillet knife? Yeah, it's like trying to carve an apple with a spaghetti noodle. You need a big, sturdy bad boy to cut into a super-firm thing like a squash. You need a slightly flexible, equally sturdy smaller bad boy to PEEL a squash.

Now, I finally got started peeling this thing. It was not pretty, to say the least, my squash looked more like an abstract sculpture than a vegetable (fruit? What category would this be in?) by the time I was done with it. By this point, I was sighing a sigh of relief, and then hurdling onto my next project in between checking on my dinner and two pots on the stove (dinner is baking and cooking, remember?). Now I need to cut this puppy up!

This worked pretty well, and for this job I used the biggest baddest knife I had, a super-long butcher knife. Butternuts are tough suckers, and it took a little muscle to get through the big pieces, but after that cubing the small stuff was nothing. Wanna know what I did next?

Um, sorta nothing. I put them in a ziploc bag, and now, some five hours later, they're still there. Sitting on the counter. Waiting. I don't know what to do with it! I checked for how to store the stuff, but I got nothing for raw, cubed squash! Don't refrigerate was a common one, but that was for WHOLE squash. Apparently the cold does bad things for the flavor. But letting a skinned, cubed squash out all night might be bad, right? Yes? No? I don't know!

So here I sit, polishing off the leftovers of some truly fabulous chicken and some cold french toast from the day before, dipped in powdered sugar. A worthy dinner, I assure you. But I'm still bothered by the incredible conundrum that is THAT STUPID SQUASH! Because it's after 11 at night. And most of these recipes I'm looking over take a minimum of an hour to make! I really don't want to be up until nearly one in the morning, but what do I do with my baggie of squash in the meantime? I'm so stymied.

I guess . . . I'll stick it in the fridge. And then, in the morning when I take Sammy to school, I'll take it out. That can't do it TOO much damage, can it? I have no idea. *Frustration*

Anyway . . . I'm going now. I'm going to go stare at that cubed squash in a most cheerful shade of orange, and I'm going to get some information out of it if kills me. And, worst case scenario . . . I'll have a go at that butternut pie!

The Evaporated Milk Miracle

I am going to share with you possibly the most life-changing cooking secret I have ever stumbled upon. And I wish I could say that it has been my new trick that has been keeping me away from my blog for so long, but sadly that would be a lie. I just haven't had anything to write, honestly. But I do now, yay me! And so . . . the secret.

Anyone who cooks regularly and is on a budget, like me, has a certain set of skills that are necessary for their kind of cooking. One of them is looking at a recipe, and depending on the list of ingredients or the number of steps it takes to get to a finished product, lots of recipes go on the "Psh, that's not happening" list. Another skill is being able to see the shortcuts or cheats in a recipe, or even the ability to look at the picture, the ingredients, and be able to kind of wing it on their own without needing a recipe. And then there's this skill: the inconvenient ingredient spotting.

You know what I'm talking about. Shallots, pecans, buttermilk, puff pastry, weird herbs, wonky mushrooms, phyllo, milk of camel, eye of newt, you get it. Those ingredients that, yeah, you could find at most grocery stores, but honestly, you don't keep them in your house. And you wanna know the number one reason? You don't use them a lot, and they don't keep.

If you're buying yourself a pint of buttermilk and only using one cup and two tablespoons of it, what the crap are you supposed to do with the other cup? It would be immensely convenient for me to have a complete recipe database where I could look up things like "Recipes that use buttermilk" and then I'd be ok because I'd end up being able to use all my buttermilk. But I don't have that, and frankly, the thought of making one gives me a headache despite how much I would love it.

So, you find a recipe you want to make that calls for one of these pain in the butt ingredients. Sometimes you're already planning a trip to the store with enough money, so getting this ingredient is no problem. But then there's those times that you either just went to the store and you're not wasting the gas to drive there again for one stupid ingredient.

Half and half or heavy cream is one of those ingredients for me. And for good reason. There is no practical use for cream on a daily basis, there just isn't. I don't drink coffee, and that's honestly the only thing I can think of that would justify me keeping cream on hand. Which means that unless I buy it specifically for a recipe, I do not have it in the house, because it will spoil before I get around to using it, even though I have several recipes that call for it. So I've been suffering without these particular recipes simply because I was missing that one dang ingredient.

Well, folks, just recently I discovered the magic secret that has changed my cooking life. And I didn't even find this intentionally, I literally stumbled across it in an article or blog or something that I was reading. And it is this: a substitute for half and half or heavy cream in a recipe is . . . evaporated milk.



*Heavenly glow of light* That's BRILLIANT!

I seriously had a complete *DING* of awe when I read that! It's so simple, yet so genius! I have evaporated milk in my pantry, I use it enough that it's on hand all the time! Because, this is the BEST PART, it's CANNED! Which means, it lasts for a long time! I can buy four cans at Walmart in April, and they're still good at Christmas!

I'm serious, I almost had an aneurysm over this. Ecstatic fit. And that very night, I made one of my new recipes that I'd found and discarded at first because it called for heavy cream. It was a peaches and cream overnight french toast, incredibly easy to make (once I found out I could use evaporated milk!), and it was DELICIOUS. I'm going to make it again, it was so yummy, and I had every single ingredient on hand in my pantry. *Boogie dance*

So, ladies and gentlemen, that was my wonderful discovery that I just had to share with the universe. The magical substitution that changed my life. So many avenues are now open to me, I can do whatever I want! Who knows, maybe someday soon I'll learn how to FLY! (Ok, maybe this has gone to my head a little).

Now . . . if only I could find a good substitution for cream cheese . . .

Is This Fudge Still Good?

Today and yesterday have been purging days. What are we purging? We are purging Christmas from the house. It has been a bittersweet process, since it is always sad to see the sparkly and shine go down, but since this year just did not feel like Christmas to me, it wasn't too bad. And it was nice to be able to see the living room again, now that the seven trees are down (yeah, you read that right, we had 7 Christmas trees).

And in the midst of taking down my tree and packing up my decorations, I also started throwing out the Christmas goodies that have been picked over and left to go stale. We got a good haul, everything from fudge to some kind of relish to sugar cookies to a box of fancy nuts. A good portion of the stuff eaten (and thrown away) was stuff I made, since December seems to signal to my inner baker that it's time to have fun. So I did. Ho boy, did I have a billion calories worth of fun.

First up were chocolate cake batter cookies, my first attempt and it was a glorious success. Fabulous. I added in Andes mint chocolate chips to make them festive, and those cookies were polished off in no time. I didn't even have to take any to work, I was so impressed.

Next up were molasses cookies. Easy peasy, no odd instructions or anything. About halfway through sifting together the dry ingredients, I realized something . . . We didn't have molasses. *Facepalm* I KNOW I bought molasses, at least within the past couple years, and honestly, how many recipes call for molasses? But not a drop was to be found anywhere, so I substituted what Google told me to substitute. And bought molasses on my next trip to the grocery store.

On that same trip to the store, I remembered that I had several recipes that called for chocolate chips, and recently had noticed that we were out of chocolate chips (that was a bad day). Normally I always have a stash of two bags of chocolate chips in one fridge or the other, so being out was incredibly disturbing to me. So I bought four bags to compensate.

Upon arriving home, I put groceries away, and when I opened the drawer in the fridge to toss in the chocolate chips, I burst out laughing. Apparently on my trips to the store that I had taken in the week or two before that, I had remembered to buy chocolate chips then as well. With my new addition of chocolate chips, I had a total of nine bags of chocolate chips in my fridge, 6 Hershey's, 2 Nestle, and one Andes mint. Suffice it to say, we are set on chocolate chips.

Upon acquiring my precious chocolate chips, I also added to my cart that day rice Chex and powdered sugar. Oh yes, my friends. Muddy Buddies. The reason Chex cereal is still in business, in my opinion. Sure, Chex Mix is good, but Muddy Buddies . . . heaven. I made three batches this year, and probably consumed at least one full batch all on my own. I love those things. And my shirt loved them too, because by the time I was done, my nice black shirt had powdered sugar streaked and puffed all over it, with a really nice chocolate peanut butter smudge all over my stomach. I need to stop leaning over the bowl.

With the list of clothing I dirtied up while baking, we can also add another shirt generously sprinkled with oatmeal bits from making No-Bake cookies. And a pair of pants dripped with batter from maple bars (too dry, couldn't figure out why). And I got the toe of one of my white tennies when I dropped a little chunk of warm, gooey, and green colored Rice Krispie treat mix on them.

Like I said, I went a little bonkers. I think the most popular were the Muddy Buddies (duh, I mean really) and the chocolate mint cake batter cookies. For some reason, the maple bars didn't get touched except by me, and the green Rice Krispies ended up in the garbage because they dried out too fast. It was a shame, really. But all in all, I made a whole lot of delumptious holiday treats, and I've got the chocolate still under my fingernails to prove it. And the powdered sugar all over the counter. And the Pam spray on the floor. And the flour in my hair. And the chocolate chips under the edge of the cupboards on the floor.

Now it's New Years, and despite still being in an insane sugar coma from all the treat-bingeing I've been doing over Christmas, I can't wait to tackle the traditional New Years food. Little smokies in their special sauce. A cheese ball with crackers. Shrimp cocktails in that sharp red sauce. The classic vegetable tray. Who knows what else! All I know is my holidays are planned around food, and in a whole lot of ways, dishes and mess notwithstanding, that often makes it feel the most festive of anything.

What Happens in the Kitchen . . . Should Really Stay There

So, tonight was a pretty sketchy food night, all in all. Dinner was a slapdash performance, and the recipe I used was called something like Chicken and Broccoli with Garlic and Parmesan. Not bad, right? That's what I thought, plus it was really simple and didn't require any freaky ingredients. There was just one problem . . . I have a chicken phobia. Well, sort of. I have a problem with handling raw chicken. I think it is nasty. I don't like seeing it, touching it, or knowing I have to deal with it. It just makes me want to throw up a little. Or a lot. Depending on the day.

Anyway, I decided that the chicken was not happening today. So I did ground beef instead (for anyone interested . . . no, I have no problem with raw beef. I know. I'm weird). Not that big of a deal, beef substituted for chicken, this is not a big deal for the most part. Yeah, some dishes don't cooperate well if you swap out the meat, but this is not one of them. Potatoes, broccoli, and the other ingredients work just as nicely with chicken or beef. So yeah, I followed the recipe (if anyone has cooked with me, you know what kind of a loose term that is for me. I don't use measuring utensils oftentimes), and it turned out fine. Just not . . . great. Out of the 5 people that ate it, Krissy was the only one that really liked it, I think. I was kinda on the fence, it was ok but not really good. Sammy liked the broccoli.

Well, when I was at the store earlier today I saw some graham cracker pie crusts and recalled that I've been in the mood for a chocolate cream pie for some time. So I got a pie crust, and performed some impressive chef skills by getting the pie ingredients ready to go at the same time as making dinner (no, I did not screw anything up. I was very meticulous). The only thing I changed was instead of unsweetened chocolate pieces (which I didn't have) I did the substitution thingy it said on the side of the cocoa powder container. And did know that if you heat up flour, sugar, milk, cocoa powder, and shortening that it thickens up? Who knew? And do you wanna know what a freaking !@#$% it is to separate egg yolks?! Holy crap! It would have been easier to just throw in the whole egg and take the consequences!

Egg yolks were separated (finally), shortening was melted (fun to watch), chocolate mix was thickening (O_o), managed to accost my sister in law on her way out of the laundry to assist in the grand "mix some of the bubbling chocolate mixture into the egg yolks and beat to prevent the eggs from cooking" attempt. It did work, I was pleased. So, I got everything all mixed together, got the vanilla and butter in, tasted the completely project, AND . . . meh. Didn't do it for me. I was very disappointed. It was too dark chocolatey, and I'm a milk chocolate girl. So I added in the rest of a bag of Hershey's chocolate chips and a handful of marshmallows, but they didn't really do much, sadly.

That lovely pie crust, all wasted now. Of course, I will eat the pie, and I will make everyone else help me, but it just wasn't fantastic. What a let down. I should have done the chocolate pudding recipe I had instead. You just can't fail with chocolate pudding. You also have a lesser chance of getting very small lumps with chocolate pudding . . . (the lumps were my fault . . . yes, you do have to start stirring the chocolate mixture when it starts to heat up. You don't wait for a minute, assuming it won't heat up that fast. *Rolling eyes at self*).

So yeah. There's my unstellar night of cheffing. I did much better a couple weeks ago, I made manicotti! Well, it was manicotti, but in giant shells instead of giant tube pasta. It was fabulous, and it was my first ever time using ricotta cheese! My mother is a die-hard ricotta hater, but I'm going to make her something tasty with it and change her mind.

Ok, this little cook is going to go check on her failtacular chocolate cream pie now . . . I should have gotten the heavy whipping cream at the store, I could have made whipped cream to pretty up the pie. Ah, well. Silly me. Happy cooking to all y'all out there, and good luck with any chocolate cream pie endeavors you take on!