Deep-Dish Fail

I didn't make many creative things this week because I was trying to use up all the food I had that was about to expire. I had:

• half a loaf of bread
• 2 eggs
• a little turkey
• leftover sausage
• queso
• chips
• cheese

I used this to make another turkey panini one day. The next day I made an egg-in-a-hole and mixed the sausage with the queso. (I know, super healthy meal right?) And the third day I made another egg-in-a-hole! At this point it was time to go to the grocery store!

Wednesday night I decided to try a recipe I found for deep dish pizza. I bought refrigerated pizza dough and filled a round 9" pan with it. Then put a layer of sliced tomato on that and covered it with mozerella cheese and the rest of the left over sausage! It's supposed to cook for 30-35 minutes, but when I checked on mine after 20 minutes it was already burnt. So I recommend cooking for about 15 minutes at 350 or following the directions on the dough can.

The next night I made spaghetti with butter sauce and grilled chicken to use up some of those things. I also planned on having a baked potato with it, but I forgot about the potato! So I just had the spaghetti and some garlic cheese bread we had bought a while ago.

The pizza made a ton. I've had it for 2 meals and still have more for one more meal. Which  means it's a fairly cheap recipe! I also have leftovers from olive garden last night, so I won't be cooking for a while again! Bad news is that's less to blog about. Good news is my grocery bill is way cheaper!

Leftover Schmeftovers

I finally had to freeze the last half of the Johnny Mazumi, so I can use the loaf of bread I bought before it goes stale. In keeping with my health streak, I had strawberries and spinach. For the spinach, I put some vegetable oil in small sauce pan then added a handful of spinach and heated/stirred it until it shriveled up. I also added some salt, and after it shriveled I two more handfuls. (Three handfuls of raw spinach shrivels into that tiny pile of cooked spinach!) I mainly did this because I couldn't take a meal that looked like rabbit food one more time.

For the sandwich, I made a panini! I had some turkey and mozerella cheese to use up so I dipped one of the pieces of bread in the vegetable oil (before I added the spinach and salt) then pressed the oil side of the bread to the other slice of bread. On the non-oil sides I put miracle whip, mozerella cheese, and turkey. Then, I grilled it on my George Foreman for about 3 minutes (miraculously the exact same time it took to cook the spinach!).

It was quite a delicious meal for just throwing together some about-to-expire stuff from the fridge.

Insert Funny Title Here

At our Sunday dinner this week, we decided to start a chore chart to split up who does what. Mainly because I can never remember if it's mine turn to take out the trash or wash the dishes and so on.  So, we are using a white board (for now at least) and moving magnets around for whose turn it is to do what chore!

It's my turn to run the dishwasher nextttt. And I have less right now just because I did a bunch of my chores tonight!

In other news: we seem to have a cricket infestation. We have been attacked by about 5 already. One flew into my face when I was sitting on my bed. Nbd. Except that this is totally unacceptable. It took us about 20 minutes to get rid of the first one, and we have progressively become faster at getting rid of them. That really means that I've gotten better at screaming loud enough that my roommate acts faster on killing them because crunching big bugs is so not my thing. Spiders and small bugs I can do, but anything with an audible crunch or visible guts does not work for me.

Johnnyy Mazumi

I made dinner! It was johnny mazumi! Apparently I still haven't learned my lesson about getting out all the ingredients before beginning to cook because I forgot to get sour cream this time. Thank goodness for Hillary being at the grocery store when I realized and buying me some. It turned out super good! It's a mix of sour cream, cottage cheese, green onions, tomato sauce, and ground beef. It just ends up being a half-creamy/half-tomato saucey spaghetti. Yum!

Since that was short I'll give you a list of all the kitchen misshaps I've experienced so far:

1. I spilt half a pot of boiling water on me - I was moving a pot of spaghetti to drain and didn't have a good hold on one half of the pot and ended up dropping it. Don't worry, it didn't hurt!
2. Had to make an emergency ghetto HEB trip to get baking soda
3. Set off the smoke detector - twice - but this is because the smoke detector is right above the oven and I think it overheats easily
4. Today I almost cut off my finger while chopping the green onions, but just cut my fingernail instead. No worries!
5. I thought I had a lot more than this, but I'll keep you updated on new ones!

That's all for now! 

There's Baking Soda In Caramel

Lot's of cooking happened yesterday! First, it was my turn to cook Sunday dinner for the apartment which meant finding a vegetarian recipe because my other roommate is a vegetarian. After a long time on google, I finally decided on breakfast burritos! So, I scrambled eggs, cooked sausage, heated up queso and toritillas, and got some shredded cheese then served it buffet style. This way me and Hillary could get sausage, but Abby didn't have to touch it!

Next, I finally made the caramel popcorn that I've been wanting to make. I learned to always get out the ingredients needed for a recipe before starting it (I'll tell you why in a few minutes). To start out you pop corn in a pan by pouring enough vegetable oil to line the bottom of it then enough kernels to line the bottom and heat on medium-high heat covered until they pop! Let me say the popping corn was one of the funnest things I've ever watched. I'm making my popcorn like this from now on!

 Then fill 2 shallow pans with the popcorn. I started out with them on cookie sheets but remembered later that you have to stir the popcorn. So, I moved them to some pyrex pans.

Now comes the fun part: making the caramel. First you melt 2 sticks of butter in a pan. I recommend using a bigger one than I did because I almost had a few overflows. Add brown sugar and salt. Stir continuoulsy while boiling for 5 minutes. Then add baking soda and vanilla gradually. Here's the problem. We reached this point, and I went to get the baking soda to find that I only had baking powder... Not the same thing. Keep in mind that I have 5 minutes of needing to continuously stir the caramel while I solve this dilemma. First we went and knocked on our neighbors doors to ask to borrow some... no answer. Then we thought we found a recipe that didn't use baking soda. Nope it still used it; just didn't list it in the ingredient list. So I had to run to the ghetto HEB while Hills stirred for me. Thank goodness there was no line and baking soda only costs 40 cents.

 After adding the baking soda (not powder) and vanilla, you pour the caramel mix over the popcorn then bake at 250 for an hour and stir every 15 minutes.

While the 1 hour wait was horribly long, we decided it was worth it! The popcorn is AMAZINGGG. I highly recommend it if you're bored, and need a long project to do.