My new blog, Cooking With Wolfes, is up and ready to go! I will no longer be updating this blog and have moved all of my Food Buzz and related operations to the new one. You can find the blog at cookingwithwolfes.blogspot.com and you can email me at cookingwithwolfes@gmail.com.
You can also access me via Foodbuzz
The new blog focuses on seasonal and on-sale items to create budget-friendly and tasty meals. Enjoy!
Recently I have been thinking about how to move this forward. To me, food blogging is my hobby, but it's also a passion and something that I truly have a lot of interest in. So I'm changing. My blog, perhaps my approach, websites, probably a lot! I want to expand and hopefully brand my unique perspective of cooking in a way that people can find it approachable and fun. So give me a few weeks and look forward to some big new things!
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It's spring time here at Boilermaker Kitchen, which can only mean one thing. A garden! Yep, it's my first spring in an actual house since I left the desert air of Arizona behind. I had some summer gardens in Connecticut while I was there, but this will be my first all season plot. I'm a little excited, and a lot freaked out. I joined the Lafayette gardening online community to get some tips and hints with this part of the country. My main goal is to not over water my plants (this is because in Arizona you water your garden twice a day thanks to the blistering heat).
Stroganoff is one of those dishes that I grew up making one way, only to find out you can make it an entirely different way only a short time ago. Beef tenderloin as the meat source? That still boggles my mind, as I would never use such an expensive cut of meat in a dish that I consider old fashioned home cooking. But maybe that's just me being cheap. I also tried the revamped recipe from Cook's Illustrated, which used sirloin tip (a somewhat cheaper cut), but surprisingly I did not like their recipe at all. Odd, I thought to myself, rarely do I not enjoy a recipe from ATK. Well, as it turns out, it just was not for me.
During my recent trip to Vegas, I discovered a restaurant serving what I consider to be one of the better breakfasts I have eaten, a chile relleño omelet. Never one to simply have something once, I decided to give them a go at home.
There are some obvious differences when cooking at home compared to what you are served at a restaurant. For example, I never cook omelets with four eggs, but that (or three) is pretty much the standard at a restaurant. Big deal? Not usually, but I was planning on stuffing a pretty good amount of stuff into this omelet. I'll be honest, my first one completely fell apart (I ate that one and gave the nice one to my wife). I believe this is more about patience than anything, having the omelet set up really helps you manipulate it as needed.
More on the Vegas trip-
Freed's Bakery
Vegas seems to be all about deception. Go on the strip, see the glitz, and be overwhelmed. Go off the strip and see another simple desert city. But while the strip is hiding price gouging and mediocre food, the area off the strip is hiding some just plain amazing restaurants (like The Egg and I or Donna Maria's). Well, we went for the wedding cake off the strip for this occasion. Rachel Ray had visited Freed's a long time ago for wedding cake by the slice, and I figured it was worth a shot. What a deceptive décor though! Located in a strip mall, the sign is simply a banner hung from screws flapping in the wind. No fanfare, nothing. But this place has been Zagat rated and mentioned in all kinds of publications all over the world. Their pastry counter looked amazing, and the éclair my mom tried was outstanding. The wedding cake, as you can see in the picture, was just stunning. A "Mad Hatter" cake with angled layers, beautiful decorating, and so much detail I cannot even begin to explain it all. It was quite tasty too, if a bit heavy on the filling. If you ever have a sweet tooth, I strongly recommend stopping by.
I finally did it. Em and I got hitched last weekend (on Pi Day!) in Las Vegas. I highly recommend it. We even took our parents with us and they had a great time. And of course, as with all of my travels, there was a lot of emphasis placed on food. This is my second trip to Vegas in about 4 years, and I am very happy to say I fared much better this time around. Word of advice, next time you travel, take some time and do a little bit of research. I plowed through a lot of sites, including Frommers and TripAdvisor, and I found a lot of useful information, not to mention ways to save money.
But before I get to talking about food, a wedding picture :)
Yes, we had a lot of fun. It's so easy to get married in Vegas. Now on to the food!
Again with the leftovers! Well, when you buy tostadas, you usually have some leftover. If you don’t want to make chips with them, I would suggest breakfast. Yep, pick up and eat breakfast tostadas. It reminds me of the days I used to eat huge breakfast burritos at Viva Burrito in Tucson, a warm, spicy breakfast that kept me full well into the day.
With the pork tostadas I made the other night, I certainly had leftovers. And I was feeling something a bit different. Emily suggested enchiladas. Now, I have to give a small amount of background here. I always have ingredients for enchiladas at hand (the same goes for a chocolate cake, you can never be too careful). Why? Because enchiladas offer a lot of versatility and can easily be made into dinner. Take some tortillas, wrap it around a nice warm filling, place it in a pan, pour sauce and/or cheese over it, and bake until bubbly. Boom, dinner. And you can put so much into an enchilada, that's why I like them so much. I put leftover shredded meats, rice, beans, whatever I can find that sounds good together. You could even make them for breakfast.
I had some interesting comments on my aforementioned post. So while I was making this dish last night for dinner, I did alter a few things as well as clarify. Plus, this gives me a great oppurtunity to put another picture of Molly (almost a year!) on my blog. A few points.
I'm certainly on a Mexican kick at the moment. Between discovering Rick Bayless' fantastic show on PBS and a Mexican market down the road, I have been all over this. Tacos, enchiladas, meats, beans, you name it, I'm into it. And I plan to continue that path. It's the food I truly miss from Arizona, the pure, unadulterated foods of Mexico. I'm not saying that the Midwest does not have some good food, because they do, but there is so much culture and passion behind Mexican food that I just love.Writing is difficult. There, I said it. Finding time to write in addition to the job, planning a pseudo-wedding (more on that later), working, taking care of a puppy, and the holidays is just not easy. And I know, some people work 3 jobs, have kids, and read this and go "you sir, are weak". Well, its not just about time with this, its about motivation. Have I been cooking? Of course, but writing about it just kind of took a back seat. I needed to ask myself what my goals where for writing a food blog and if I really wanted to keep jotting everything down I did and having people stare at me when I took pictures of my food in restaurants. But I digress, I have found my voice, and while sometimes I may be more inspired than others, I hope you enjoy the collection of rambling and recipes to come. Back tomorrow with some fun stuff.
Read more...I realize I have taken quite the hiatus from blogging lately. With holidays, sickness, and getting married happening right now, I just have not felt the urge to write about food. My motivation will return, and I will be back with lots of new recipes, posts and thoughts. Thanks for your support. Stay tuned
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