A lot of people I know say that being able to make poached eggs is the mark of a spectacular cook. At least without those egg poaching things you can buy. My poached eggs don’t look quite as smooth as the poaching thing’s eggs, but they are more impressive because they are made without a poaching thing. And you can make then too!
First you take a cup, and place microwave safe saran wrap in it, a fair amount, I usually use enough so that it is shaped like a square. Then you crack an egg into the cup.
Then fold one side of the saran wrap over the other and roll it down till it’s just above the egg. You should be able to pick the egg up by these saran wrap handles.
Tie the handles in a knot!
Drop it in a pot of boiling water for four minutes.
Carefully take them out of the water, untwist the saran wrap, dump out the egg and eat it! Well, you probably want to add salt and pepper first and let it cool off a bit, but it sounds more dramatic without those steps.
I dunno, maybe someday I will buy a poaching apparatus and wonder why I went through this trouble. But for now, om nom nom!
~Abbie
So I have three jobs. This warrants explanation I feel.
First I am a supervisor for Dining Services (I work in the cafeteria kitchen). I actually have a certain fondness for this job. I mean, yea, I work it in part because I won’t get paid more anywhere else, but I like it much more than desk jobs I have had. I prepare lots of vegetables and like interacting with the student and professional workers, who are all very laid back.
I also work Saturday Program at the Groden Center (the school for autistic children where I also had my summer job). I really like working with my kids, and Saturday program is a lot lower pressure than the school day program because we aren’t, well, doing school. It’s just a field trip every day. I also like the fact that it is 6 hours of work in a row, rather than being broken up a lot like Dining Services.
Finally I still strictly speaking work at the VENlab. This is largely because I am the only RA with the paperwork for one of the projects. I don’t want to be down on the VENlab, it was a great opportunity for me and I really like the people there. I’m just getting a little busy to deal with the way they do scheduling (basically you don’t know if you are working until 24 hours in advance). La.
So fudge! Fudge is delicious. So here’s the thing, generally people make fudge using a candy thermometer, but I just eyeball it, so that is the recipe I will give. You can probably look up temperatures though?
First you take 1 1/2 cups sugar, 6 tablespoons margarine and 1/3 cup evaporated milk and you bring it to a full rolling boil. You must keep stirring it, or it will burn and that is sad. (That’s probably why people mostly make fudge when it is cold!) Then I take it down to a medium heat and keep boiling it for 4 minutes. You can tell it is becoming perfect fudge when the stirring kind of separates the fudge from the pan and it looks like a gooey ball of fudginess. After that, you must remove it from the heat and stir in a 6 oz package of chocolate pieces, a 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla and half of a 7 oz jar of marshmallow creme. Stir it until it blends together completely and pour it into a greased 13 x 9 inch (again, “normal sized”) pan. Whenever I do this I repeat and substitute 1/2 cup peanut butter for the chocolate pieces and then pour that on top. I think this is significantly tastier, but it will alienate people who are allergic to peanuts.
~Abbie
I haven’t posted in over a month! My goodness. In any case, in that time I have started a new semester at Brown.
I am taking Neural Systems, fMRI in Theory and Practice (a lab course), Culture and Health and my independent study. Neural Systems is a pretty good class, it is my preferred sort of Neuro, but the lecture hall it’s in is one of my least favorite. Ah well, what are you going to do? fMRI is excellent, it’s a very cool opportunity to actually do fMRI as an undergrad and I really like the professor. It’s a difficult class though, seeing as it requires knowledge of a lot of different subjects including physics and vector calculus as well as neural anatomy. Culture and Health I currently have mixed feelings about. The material is pretty much everything I care about in the world, but I have some frustration with the rigor of anthropology papers. Like, one of the papers we had to read had only 6 references, two of which the author had written and two of which were published in non-peer reviewed journals. This is very substandard when I’m accustomed to multiple pages of references for a given paper. Hmm…
Oh, I also am doing an independent study to prepare for my honors thesis which will be in early identification of autism. My final project/paper (for the IS, not for the thesis) will be writing a grant proposal, which will hopefully result in me having moneys to do my thesis.
Anyhow, a simple recipe. I always called these 7 layer cookies, but my friends said I’m not allowed because they are not cookies. So I am now calling them 7 layer bars. To make them you preheat the oven to 350 degrees. You melt a stick of butter and pour it into a 9 x 13 inch (what I would call “normal size”) pan. Then you sprinkle 1.5 cups graham cracker crumbs over the butter, spread a package of chocolate chips on that, then a package of butterscotch chips on that. Next you sprinkle a small can of shredded coconut on top of that, and a small can of condensed milk over that. Finally you sprinkle the top with enough chopped pecans to cover it, you can add more or less if you like. You bake it for 30 minutes, but you should let it cool before eating it. I didn’t get to take a picture of the whole thing because everyone ate it too quickly.
~Abbie
I updated my scallop post with a new photo. I’m also going to post the photo here though, because we made garlic bread along with the scallops.
I am not the garlic bread queen in the house, but we did make this simple garlic bread to go with our scallops. We bought a long crusty white bread then cut it into fourths and lengthwise (only in half lengthwise). Then we melted butter and mixed minced garlic and parsley with it. We spread that on the bread and put it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes.
~Abbie
There was a sale on lobsters at our grocery store, so we bought them and I cooked them. Many people were deeply troubled by the demise of the lobsters, but I thought they were delicious. Not really sure what to do about that.
I also made very simply potato wedges with this meal. I chopped the potatoes into little wedge slice things, then put them in a plastic bag with blue cheese dressing and olive oil and smushed it until they were coated. Then I put them on foil on a pan and baked them for 20 minutes at 450 degrees.
~Abbie