Squiddy's Kitchen Creations: Cooking With My MAMA!!!

the latest and long-awaited installment in Squiddy's Kitchen Creations is COOKING WITH MY MAMA! i love my mama, she taught me mostly everything i know about cooking, and fostered a natural love of yummy things and making yummy things from the time i was a baby. i don't get to see her nearly as much as i want to these days, so when i had the opportunity to spend a weekend with her, i jumped at the chance. we would be house-sitting for my aunt and uncle, who are also very cool, and would have all the yummy materials we would need to cook up a storm. yay!

so Friday, i arrived ready to make... PIZZA!

i brought my bread machine to mix up the dough while we played guitar hero.
when it was done, we started working on the toppings! This is a slightly-fuzzy shot of my beautiful MAMA and my most excellent roomie, FrostyPants.

mmm...

there are few things so sweet as a pan of sizzling bacon!

Frosty is spreading sauce on his crust. his is better looking than mine.

then, we chopped up the peppers: the mushrooms, and the tomatoes.
here is my mama makin bacon! isn't she lovely?
and here is Frosty spreading again. he likes the sauce. heh.

MMMMMmmm... there are few things as sweet as a pan of sizzling bacon!

for my pizza, i chose baby bella mushrooms, bleu cheese, tomatoes, bacon, olives, and a bit of fresh basil and green pepper, all on a hearty homestyle sauce.

then i added Mozzi and some Olives. Yum!

and then... BACON! and it is ready!

here is Frosty's pie, pre mozzy:

not sure how i missed getting more shots of his, take my word that it was beautiful and delicious.
here is mine, a bit over cooked, but still yummy. i couldnt wait to eat it and thus:

and here is frostys perfect bubbly pizza, not overcooked:
Verdict: Guilty! (of being scrumptious!)

***

the next morning, mama and i decided to make a big breakfast fry-up!

we started with excellent cappuccinos from my aunts AMAZING wonder-filled caffeine dispensary:i have never tasted such magnificence in home coffee. ill bet that machine costs more than a car!

first: taters

next: onions and mushrooms. not pictured: green peppers. home fries are yummy!
those are hard-working hands.




two of my favorite veggies!



now for my favorite part. this is a great brekkie item that Frosty taught me. its fun to make, and yummy too! i call it Birds Nest / Eggs In A Basket.


first you need a nice hot fry pan:some BUTTER: (because if you use margarine or some other such abomination, you clearly have NO SOUL. don't even say PAM in my presence. Bacon Fat, however, is perfectly acceptable.now get the pan nice and sizzly with a good butter coating. don't burn it, baby, sizzle it.
now check on those taters, sizzling away. mmm, yeah! even the cheddarwurst is trying to sneak in there! you wait your turn, you naughty sausages.
time for the onions to go in. if you put them in before the potatoes have fried a bit, they get too crispy. and by crispy, i mean burned to charcoal.
now slap some bread on that sizzly pan that's been waiting.
and make a cookie-cutter type circle in it, like so. i usually use a small-mouthed glass, but you can use a cookie cutter/shot glass/jar or whatever. you want the hole to be about 2.5 inches or so, enough to hold the egg and still keep the structural integrity of the bread intact. press it down, and the pan will toast the bread under the rim making it easier to pull out.
now you have your nest. now put the egg in before the bread gets TOO toasty, or it ll burn.

i like to let it cook for about 10-15 seconds and then scoot it around a bit so it doesn't stick.i like to add some veggies in there so i can eat them while i cook. I'm a piggy like that. now you can see a good solid egg white on the bottom, so its time to flip. carefully!

ah, i was distracted at some point or maybe the heat was a bit high. the edges shouldn't look quite this dark. it ll still taste good though!
meanwhile, the home fries are still sizzling away. normally, you would make the eggs after the fries are done, but i got excited, so sue me.
this is what the finished product looks like:

hopefully yours will be a bit less burnt, and have a nice, thick-gooey yolk center. yum!


now for the sausages! i really have a strange aversion to most ground meat items, but my one exception is cheddarwurst. god i love that stuff.


slap em in the pan,

and roll em around until they re nice and sizzly, and the skins start to split a bit. covering them is a good idea. i also like to add a dash of water to the pan really quick before the lid goes on, to make it nice and steamy in there. it helps the process.
perfect!


fries are done! take them out and plate them!

excellent! everything smells so good! even winnie wants to get in on this.

muaha! too bad you have no opposable thumbs! more for me!

i have no pictures of the final spread because, well, i ate it all before i remembered to photograph it. but it was GOOD!

i cant wait to cook with my mama again!

Squiddy's Kitchen Creations: Things I Need For My Kitchen, Part 1

Welcome to my Kitchen! watch out for flying objects, keep your elbows tucked in, and BYOB, cos its crazy cooking time!

today i will be writing about things i need for my kitchen (as you may have noticed from the title. how smart you are! lets continue)

i live in what is technically a one bedroom apartment, so as you can imagine, our kitchen is rather small and humbly-equipped. we have a sink, a stove, and a bit of counter, and that is about it. the rest we make up for in creativity, ingenuity, and flair! pretty much all of my cooking equipment and utensils have been inherited from loving friends and family, and a few from those nice folks at the thrift store down the street. actually... now that i think of it, i cant really recall any object in our kitchen which was purchased new. so we really do... make do. that is not to say that it prevents us from making delicious food though. oh ho ho no. DEE-RICIOUS is how we roll down at Squiddy's Happy Critter Cottage. (or as the boyfriend calls it, the ZooQuarium)

so this is the beginning of what will be a sort of wish list for my kitchen, which undoubtedly will grow exponentially over time.

i just started the list this morning, and its already a page long, so this might be typed in installments, as i am at my desk in the cube farm currently.

here goes.


A Mortar and Pestlei cant tell you how many times a week i say to myself "damn, i wish i had a mortar and pestle to grind/mash/mix this crap" and yet i somehow always forget to buy one. i am a big fan of herbs and spices, and a bigger fan of fresh herbs and spices, preferably grown and picked from my garden seconds before use. (yes that's right, i have a garden in a tiny apartment. i rock.)
i want to get one soon, but i will be sticking to either porcelain or granite as they are more durable and tend not to absorb stains/odors/flavors as much as those horrid wooden ones. soapstone is out of the question. i am quite rough on my tools. rough but loving. like your moms prom date.
here are some online.



A Woki love cooking in woks! its wonderful! these round-bottomed pans are so versatile, they heat so nicely, and the surface area is way larger than a normal frying pan since you can use the sides too. great for any fried or sauteed thing you can come up with, and you can even use them to steam veggies or meat in combination with a steaming basket! i really need a wok.


A Cast Iron Skilletcast iron cookware is great for frying and high-heat/slow cooking for long periods of time. it is a pan that will grow with you as it ages, developing a better coating over time for great non-stick and seasoning properties. a good cast iron skillet is the pride of a kitchen. i have a very small one, at home, but it is one of those crappy cracker-barrel ones, and not much bigger than a chicken breast really, so it isn't very versatile. i need a big deep frying pan like the mama had.


A Rice Steameri know, you can cook rice in a regular pot. but it sucks. it burns. its always too mushy, or really dry. but with these, its almost always perfect. plus, you can use them to steam veggies, meat, or even as a slow cooker! rice steamers are awesome.



A Chef/Butcher/Chopping Blocki love to cook with fresh ingredients, so i usually do a good bit of chopping, slicing, dicing, and julienning by the time I'm ready to cook. at the moment i have a small (6x8) beveled glass cutting board, which does the job, but is quite loud. also, i am always waiting for that one fateful blow that will shatter it. it washes quite easily, and it has an embedded photograph taken by my beloved room-turtle, but that's about the best i can say about it. i have been eyeing up the chopping blocks online for some time now, and i hope to eventually acquire one of those fancy pants Chopping Block Kitchen Islands one day, once i have a stationary home and larger kitchen. (i can dream) but for now I've got my sights set on something like this.


More Counter Spaceas i said before, there isn't much to be had in my current setup. whats there is already partially taken up by a dish rack, coffee pot, and microwave. if our kitchen was bigger, i would get an island, but its barely big enough for 2 people as it is. i need more surface area!!!


A Double Sinkit would be easier not having a dishwasher if i had one of these.





and now it is time for me to get lunch. more kitchen wishes later.

Squiddys Kitchen Creations: An Introduction

i LOVE to cook. cooking for me is akin to a really fun experiment in chemistry and physics, only you get to EAT your results! yum! i think my love of cooking was born early in my childhood. some of my very earliest memories involve food, and as i come from a very large family of folks who lived in many various places throughout europe for a good portion of their lives, there was always an abundance of crazy delicious dishes every time the family got together. i remember watching my opa toss pizza dough from my highchair and playpen. i remember the family fall honey and berry harvest at my aunt and uncles farmhouse which was always the start of a wonderful weekend-long cooking extravaganza involving a kitchen full of cooks, a house full of children, and so many good foods you couldnt count or try them all. i remember standing on a dining room chair to reach the kitchen counter so that i could perform various "food experiments", an activity which my mama inexplicably encouraged no matter how much of a mess i made, and how bizarre the resulting "recipes" were. she taught me that it was perfectly fine to try different things together and experiment with various cooking methods and so on, but also that i must eat what i make, because otherwise its just "playing around", and my mama was not fond of waste. she educated me on the basics of cooking and food safety so that i would know enough not to make something poisonous or undercooked, and made sure that i knew to come to her if i ever had a question about anything. in fact, this is one of the things i most love and respect my mother for, her persistence in always giving me a full and honest answer to any curiosity i might have, to the best of her knowledge and abilities, and avoiding at all possible costs the dreaded "because i said so" or "that's just the way it is" response. (although i suspect this may have been partly due to my steadfast refusal to simply accept these sort of answers and instead question the matter further, on of my most enduring and endearing qualities. this one is also most likely rubbed off from her. thanks mom!) i have always thought this was the main reason i became so interested in science at such a young age, a cultivated insatiable curiosity of the natural world.
but that's a tale for another day... moving on back to the COOKING!!!

i still do a great many "food experiments" only now they are pretty much all delicious. (and i make a bigger mess!) so in order to exercise my blogging discipline, and further my recent efforts at regularity (not the fiber kind) i will be writing about my various kitchen capers (not the pickled kind). first up is Squiddys Kitchen Creations: Things I need For My Kitchen, Part 1.

Bon Appetit!