Quesadillas and Merlot

Although I've lived in Texas for the last 11.5 years, I have never made a Mexican dish. I've eaten it plenty of times, but I've not ventured into the kitchen once with the intent of making my own Mexican concoction. And so, on my trip to visit Sweta, I thought: "why not try it now?"

 

And so, our adventure began. First, we had to choose what exactly we wanted to make. Not wanting to try something too intricate, we decided to stick with quesadillas. Yes, they're usually served as an appetizer in restaurants, and no, they're not very hard to make... or so one would think. Turns out, our quesadilla dinner turned into a supper by the time we got all the ingredients and mastered the art of making them (successfully).

 

Not wanting to make quesadillas that were completely uninspired in terms of ingredients, we decided to include all the healthy goodness we could. So our shopping list included:

• tortillas
• cheese (note to anyone else who didn't know: you can ask to sample cheeses at the deli counter; also, through my many years of making friends with deli workers, my advice is to get your meats sliced on 1 for sandwiches and 2 for cheeses; and although not all deli places advertise the cutting sizes for their meats and cheeses like HEB does, the sizes I gave you are pretty universal)
• oven roasted chicken breast (sliced on 7 -- perfect size for grilling and putting into salads.. and quesadillas, too)
• corn
• red bell pepper
• green bell pepper
• onion
• spinach
• avocado (which we forgot to add in by the end... oops)
• pineapple (as a healthy dessert... or in our case, healthy brunch the next day)

After cleaning up in the kitchen and preparing our work area, we began our adventure. Lessons learned in the kitchen that night:

• If you don't put oil or Pam in a pan before throwing a tortilla on there, it will blacken and smoke will come from the kitchen area.
• You need to turn the tortilla over on both sides while making quesadillas to ensure excellent taste.
• Sometimes the tortillas will rise up. I haven't figured out why this happens, but we stabbed the air bubbles that formed with a knife.
• Cheese is a the main ingredient in quesadillas. Make sure you add plenty, especially if you want to actually close the quesadillas on the edges.
• Drinking Merlot while making quesadillas will make all of the above lessons much more fun.

 

And here are the pictures...

 

Here is the very first quesadilla. Notice the charcoal appearance. Sweta said it was delicious, though.

 

And then, by the time we made the fourth one, there was great improvement, as the picture shows! Huge learning curve, if I may say so myself... Biggest lesson of the night: Don't be afraid to try something new.

Can't stop thinking about it...

I've come to the realization that I am obsessed with baking. It's not even a secret any more. The slightly overwhelming part of this is that my brain is almost always thinking of something new to bake. Someone will be talking to me, and if I get slightly bored or uninterested and my brain starts wandering, it inevitably ends up with a new concoction in the kitchen. I was especially productive in making mental lists of things I wanted to try in my long drives to Houston. There's raspberry chocolate pudding, apple banana vanilla pudding, mocha coffee bean pudding, double chocolate chunk strawberry cookies... The possibilities are endless!

And then... I've also become fascinated with shakes. I did this program where I entered in what I eat every day to see what I need to cut back on. Not surprisingly, the one part of my daily intake that I fulfilled (and quite often surpassed) first every day was my sugar intake. Apparently, I'm only allowed to eat 24 grams of sugar daily. So I've become overly careful to look at the labels before I eat. And here's the fun fact of the day (that relates to milkshakes): unless you buy unsweetened soy milk, you're usually taking in as much as 12 grams of sugar per glass of milk. But, using yogurt instead of milk saves you up to 6 grams per cup.

So my first milkshake experiment was a vegetable one: cucumber, dill, and yogurt. Sounds slightly weird, but it's quite healthy! And tasty, too!

Marbled Pound Cake Success(es)

So after diligently searching for a job for the last five days and applying to an average of three companies a day, each with its own cover letter and resume edits, I decided it was time for a mental break. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to continuously find new companies that are willing to hire someone with almost no experience...

And what better way to clear my mind than by baking? Anyhow, I tackled the first of my three culinary ideas and made some marbled pound cake. In three individual pans. So they're a little small, but it only makes the serving sizes smaller (and by default, healthier!) The actual baking took longer than I thought... almost an hour! But I'm waiting for them to cool right now, so I'll let y'all know how they turn out. Don't worry... I took pictures.

Hopefully my mom will actually like my baking this time, so I won't be stuck with three individual pound cakes and no one to eat them (my diet will probably sacrifice two days of food for me to be able to eat one).

On a grosser note, McDonald's has announced the addition of an item to it's menu: The Mac Wrap.

Personally, I had no issue with the Taco Bell Drive Through Diet and thought it was perhaps a small step toward making more people aware of the health information for their fast food purchases. I will say, though, that I don't think The Big Mac Snack Wrap is a step in the right way in any way, shape, or form. Maybe they're trying to appeal to an ever-increasing Hispanic population, but introducing items like this may not be the best way possible... In my opinion, at least.

Anyhow, hope y'all have a great day and happy baking!

New Ideas Galore!

Okay, so they're not new ideas "galore," per se. But since I have been without my own kitchen for five days now, I did not waste precious time. Instead of baking, I thought of future projects. And, not to brag or anything, but I've come up with some fairly phenomenal ideas, if I may say so myself. Here they are:

1. Marbled Pound Cake -- I had some at Starbucks three days ago and now I want to have some in my house, all the time
2. Cappuccino Crème brûlée -- made in individual cappuccino cups
3. Chocolate Covered Love Stamp Cookies

Now, you may be thinking to yourself: "What are these chocolate covered love stamp cookies you speak of, Iana?" Well, here's the idea:

I would probably take some chocolate chip cookie dough, cut it in squares, and bake it. Then, after taking it out of the oven and letting them cool, I would cover them in chocolate ganache and right as the ganache starts hardening, I would stamp a heart or a love something or other on top. This way, it would look like a Valentine's Day postage stamp (you know the ones they come out with every year around February and that a lot of people use on engagement and wedding invitations)... but it would be bigger and made with chocolate! Of course, I probably won't make this one till it's closer to Valentine's Day so as to not spoil the surprise. That and I haven't quite figured out how I could stamp a stamp design into the chocolate ganache. So if anyone has any ideas, please let me know!

The Beginning of a Great Adventure

As would be expected, I started this blog at the worst possible time: when I’m on a new diet. As such, my culinary adventures will be highly restricted to what I’m allowing myself to eat. But this will only make this blog more perfect. I somehow foresee that this blog will revolve highly around baking sweets as soon as I get off this diet, and now we can at least pretend my blog isn’t all about being unhealthy. In fact, I really think the first few weeks will be mostly salads, with an occasional adventure with pasta or rice.

Naturally, I’m also not going to be cooking anything spectacular for a couple more days, since I’m traveling for a little bit right now. I’ve come down to Houston until Tuesday and, since I’m not at home, it’s harder to take over someone’s kitchen and just let my imagination run wild.

But, since I did not want to disappoint any of my first group of readers by not having anything food related in this first blog, I will post a picture of my last salad (which I made two days ago).

Although it’s usually important to make all your food taste as good as possible, you are always limited by your ingredients (especially when on a diet). This is when appearance jumps to the forefront and you must focus on making it look as good as possible. This is probably the most important lesson when it comes to cooking and baking: if at all in your power, never sacrifice presentation and appearance.

Grilled Chicken Salad Variation 1
Ingredients: Lettuce, grilled chicken breast, corn, black beans, spinach, tomato, avocado, orange bell peppers, olives and feta cheese

Until next time...