Banana-Almond-Chocolate Chip Pancakes

From KatieElby by Katie Elberson

August 27, 2009

Bring out those tiny violins, because Boyfriend’s marathon birthday weekend is over. I know; you’re devastated. Trust me when I tell you that he is, too. The cake has been eaten, the keg has been returned to the liquor store, and both of our pockets are quite a bit emptier, but it was a hell of a celebration. And wait, hold the phone, it’s actually not over, because my birthday present to him – a concert featuring one of his favorite bands – doesn’t even happen until this Sunday. Is this kid lucky or what?

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Peanut Butter Bars

From KatieElby by Katie Elberson

August 17, 2009

After we made the pan of blondies to take to Boyfriend’s party, I decided we needed to bring another dessert, too. Probably we didn’t need to, as I knew there would be at least one cake there already (there wound up being two, and one was left virtually intact long after the eating had stopped), but I definitely wanted to.

The problem was, I didn’t have a whole lot of time to work with. We had plans on Wednesday and Thursday, and Friday there was an impromptu overnight beach trip to celebrate the first summer weekend in recent memory where there was not a cloud in the sky. So when was this magical, extra dessert going to get made? I had no time for baking, for preheating ovens or fussing with dough, no time for the whole toothpick-inserting procedure to check for doneness. The answer: peanut butter bars.

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Pizza, sort of.

From KatieElby by Katie Elberson

August 10, 2009

Well, you can’t say I didn’t warn you. Still basking in the glow of last week’s delicious gnocchi success, yesterday’s foray into the art of making pizza dough fell a little short of expectations. And when you live in the tri-state area and are practically raised on New York-style pizza, a sub-par crust is cause for dinnertime mutiny. Fortunately, Boyfriend spared my life because the topping was kick-ass. It was a stuff underneath it all that was a little…questionable. Allow me to elaborate.

It’s my own damn fault, really. I was a little more cocky than I should’ve been, and chose to simply ignore the phrase “substitute up to one half of the all-purpose flour with whole wheat.” Hear that, yesterday’s self? “Up to one half.” Did I substitute up to one half, you ask? Nope. Play it safe on the first attempt at a new recipe? No way. I substituted the entire amount of flour. This wasn’t my first go-around with bread-making, but did I check to see if the yeast was dead before I used it? Nope. Did I put the dough somewhere especially warm to rise, and not just on my countertop while the A/C whirred quietly in the background? NOPE. So you see, friends, there was a really, really limited chance for success here. Really limited.

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Kitchen Sink Guacamole

From KatieElby by Katie Elberson

August 7, 2009

The apartment I lived in during my senior year of college was pretty much just a glorified dorm room. I know fraternity brothers who made their apartments more grown-up than ours. There was a pong table in the front room and a dilapadated old futon (possibly the least comfortable piece of furniture I have ever sat – or, shudder, slept – on) that we inherited after it lived in three, count them three, different fraternity apartments (it still had one of the boy’s names written in sharpie on it’s bent, groaning metal frame), and the walls of our back room were covered (wallpaper-style) in hot pink Disney Princess Ballroom tablecloths (guess who got to climb on top of the shitty futon and the mini fridge to hang thaton the wall). It was like living in a 6-year-old’s birthday party for 9 months. And while we had 4 refrigerators (What? We needed somewhere to put all the Beast), we didn’t have a lot of other appliance-like equipment. What we did have, however, was the Magic Bullet. And the Magic Bullet brought much joy to our lives because, as anyone who has ever seen the infomercial can tell you, this tiny machine does everything.

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Gnocchi, You Will be Mine.

From KatieElby by Katie Elberson

August 4, 2009

The idea of making homemade gnocchi has been in my head for years – ever since I had it for the first time four years ago. See, once you’ve had homemade (and that’s the first way I ever had it) the frozen stuff is just not as good. Don’t get me wrong – given the choice between frozen gnocchi and any other kind of pasta, I’m going to pick the gnocchi every single time.

But I was nervous terrified. What if I screwed up something that I love? What if I told people I was making it (which I did, because why not add some more pressure to the equation?), then I tried and it just bombed…the dough didn’t come together, or the potatoes were too gluey, or…something. What if I wasted three hours of my precious, precious weekend and had nothing to show for it other than a kitchen covered in flour and congealed potato (I bet you’re hungry after that description)?

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Eggplant Parm, Polenta-style.

From KatieElby by Katie Elberson

July 27, 2009

I will be the first to tell you that my ex-boyfriend and I were…less than a perfect match (there will be hoards lining up to tell you this fact second, third, and fourth). We didn’t so much end on a great note either, and I don’t miss the drama. What I do miss is his mother’s cooking. And his grandmother’s cooking.

See, I was not always the kind of girl who would swallow an oyster. In fact, my college roommates will regale you for hours with tales of my freshman year eating habits: namely, that I ate very little except chicken Caesar salads. Then came the ex-boyfriend, and, more importantly, the ex-boyfriend’s mother. The ex-boyfriend’s mother did not much care for blondes or picky eaters…unfortunately, I was both. After meeting me, and realizing that my blonde hair did not, in fact, mean that I was a total idiot (must’ve been a good day), she made it her personal goal over the next year and a half to make me eat as many of the foods I “didn’t like” as she possibly could. This meant, in large part, that she lied to me. Like the time she told me she was feeding me the dark meat of a chicken and it wound up being goat. You’d think I would’ve stopped eating at her house, but the fact is I ate dinner there more often than not.

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Flatbread and a Confession

From KatieElby by Katie Elberson

July 20, 2009

I have a lot of not-so-great habits. Arguably, some of them have a toe over the line into bad habits, but hey – we can’t all be perfect. One such habit is that I will consistently pick up whatever magazine/newspaper/pamphlet/letter is sitting in front of me. Not so bad, you’re thinking to yourself, what’s so wrong about that? What’s so bad about that, people, is that these are frequently not my things to be touching. That’s right, I pick these things up off of other people’s desks (yes, this includes my boss, and no, she hasn’t fired me yet), kitchen counters, end tables…you get the idea. And sometimes people don’t like their mail read by anyone other than them. Weird.

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Nawlins

The food triumph

From KatieElby by Katie Elberson

July 19, 2009

Man, oh man, do I love the South. I went to college in the Quasi-South (Richmond and I agree that since it was once the capital of the Confederacy and the grocery store is closed on Sundays, it should count as the South. I’ve met enough people from, say, Alabama – the Real South – that disagree with that assessment, though, to know that I can’t just go around calling Virginia “The South”). I also tried (unsuccessfully) to move to Nashville when I graduated (thank you, shitty job market). And let me tell you, after a long weekend in New Orleans, my love affair with the South is still going strong (sorry, Boyfriend, I know how you feel about mountains and snow).

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