The Great Crêpe Disaster of 2023

For Christmas I got a crêpe maker set that included the portable griddle cooker, crêpe spinner and beveled beechwood spatula. I decided the inaugural test would be yesterday, February 2, which is La Chandeleur in France, an annual holiday in which you just make and eat a ton of crêpes. I asked Sophie's French teacher if you would say "Joyeux Chandeleur!" as a joke, but as a true française, she didn't get it, and instead explained to me that it's something of a holiday to welcome in the springtime, and it was a way to use up all your stored flour and kitchen supplies from the winter.

For some reason I thought it would be better to invest in the imported crêpe mix from France rather than risk a messed up homemade batter for the first time, but that was pretty dumb cause I sure wasted a lot of it (and it wasn't cheap!) in order to practice my crêpe spinning skills.

So it was a bit of a mess (and I think I threw away the first four or five...) but I DID feel vindicated in the end after I did some research...

HORRIBLE HORRIBLE FAIL!

The spinner that came in the kit is a horrible fail! It is beveled like a rake and all it does is spread the batter to the ends (as you can probably see). When I did more research, actual crêpe spinners are cylinder dowels, like a chopstick, so it does spread it around, but doesn't empty it from the middle (if that makes sense). So I've already invested in one of those and crêpe making is now on hold until that comes in.

I actually was able to finagle a few decent crêpes, even though I didn't take pictures of those ones, but the good news is that they still tasted delicious, and Nutella can cover a multitude of cooking sins!

Lessons in Cooking: Pumpkin Seeds

I forgot this was cooking until it was much later in the process (as always now). I'm baking cornbread for Thanksgiving and I found a pumpkin cornbread recipe. I actually wasn't inspired to try it until I remembered that we still had 2 pumpkins that we should use and I figured I'd give it a shot and make the pumpkin purée myself rather than storebought.

Then once I had amassed the seeds from preparing the pumpkin, I figured why not try to do something with the seeds?

I prefer sweet seeds rather than savory, so I found a roasted cinnamon recipe. I knew I had to dry out the seeds first and I guess I did it wrong because after washing and rinsing them, I left them inbetween two paper towels overnight and the next day I had to pick them off and they all mostly had some paper towel residue left on them, oops. I decided to just go ahead with it anyway since there weren't that many and I still wanted to try roasting them.

The recipe was small and simple, using sugar, salt, cinnamon, vanilla and coconut oil. I think there might have been too much oil for the amount of seeds that I had, there was still a lot in the pan when I pulled them out, and they still seemed a little damp, but they had already been in the oven 10 minutes past the maximum cook time and I didn't want to burn them, so they just were what they were at that point.

Roasting in the oven

Drying on the counter

In the end they weren't bad at all, and they smelled like Disneyland churros. I think I needed to dry the seeds out more so they had a little more pop. Next time!

Lessons in Baking: Cornbread (AND!) Cooking: Brunswick Stew

This wasn't a huge endeavor and and wasn't too special so I didn't think to document anything until it was about over. And it's just as well because I wasn't too impressed with either of them, but they were okay.

I LOVE soups and stews and I could eat them at any time of year, but I know they're better crowd pleasers in the fall and winter, and since the weather has finally turned I decided to get on it. I originally thought to wait to make it until next Monday or Tuesday since there's rain in the forecast, but it's Debbie and Sophie's birthdays so they probably want something more exciting than my experiments.

So I found a recipe for "Brunswick Stew" which, I had no idea what that was exactly, but seemed like a good enough stew to try. Apparently it's "a tomato-based stew generally involving local beans, vegetables, and originally small game meat such as squirrel or rabbit, though today often chicken." (Spoiler alert: I used chicken.) It was fine, but it didn't seem to have too much unique taste or seem much different than anything other than a generic stew. It did have a slight kick to it because I put in a little too much cayenne, but that was about it. I will said I learned that celery seeds as a spice exists and I loved what they added to the flavor and aroma at the very beginning when it was just onions and potatoes and spices. Likely going to incorporate that more often.

This was after the squirrel (I mean, chicken)
was added

I made cornbread to go with it, which was my first time doing that too. (And where I realized that I should have looked at the serving amounts before I made either of these because it was wayyyy too much for 3 1/2 people, even for a day or two with leftovers!)

The cornbread was fine, but like the stew, nothing very impressive or memorable, just fine. The recipe called for 3/4 cup of sugar and I'm absolutely appalled at how much sugar goes into everything, so I'm often cutting it back, although not too much because I'm nervous the recipe may need sugar for chemical reactions and not just taste, so I took this one down to just 1/2 cup instead, but I don't think that's what made this just whatever.

Cornbread prep

Finished product

Well, you win some you lose some. At least it was pretty easy and good to know I could probably recreate it in a pinch, and I learned about celery seeds.

Lessons in Cooking: Turmeric and Black Pepper Chicken with Asparagus

Oh yes, you read that right. Not baking, cooking.

Cooking terrifies me. I am not a chef. Even when I went to college and those of us who never really cooked before needed to start trying our hand at it, I decided to invest in baking and sustain myself through bagels and cup of noodles instead.

Only very, very, recently have I started to really try my hand at cooking. As a matter of fact, a few months ago we decided I would try to cook dinner one night a week (yes, AJ cooks 99.9999% of the time otherwise) and I probably should have been documenting this awhile ago when I started because I really jumped in and went for it. I think my first dish was a lemon parmesan chicken with artichoke hearts and I even went full-scale homemade Russian pirogies too. Then there was Mexican pozole and a chicken and an Asian broccoli and chicken stir fry and a lentil stew.

So far I've learned it's a lot easier than I thought in many ways, but also just as hard as I expected in other ways, although the only way to get better is to practice. Like, what's easier is often the taste. It's not too hard to make something taste even slightly better than plain (hello random spices and marinades) but it does take attention to detail to cook things the right amount, but it still is harder than you'd think to truly ruin something and made it inedible (not that that's not possible).

I get a free subscription to the New York Times through work so I also get to take advantage of their Cooking section (which is actually pretty darn awesome) and I get some great ideas from there and anyone can cook following a recipe. We realized I had fallen off of the cooking train so I started up again and this week I made turmeric and black pepper chicken with asparagus. It was simple and quick and pretty tasty (it's amazing how little effort it took and how sometimes you need the inspiration to think about combining certain ingredients sometime). I did try to cook too much chicken and asparagus at once though so it took a little longer to cook thoroughly, and I probably could've increased the turmeric and black pepper but it was all cooked a nice amount and it's also honeyed so it's sweet and a nice change of pace. It also would've went perfect over some rice if only I had thought about that sooner.

I'm still very intimidated by cooking, but I'm getting used to it.