Tag: food

Ah, that lovely time when I got laid off from my job and happily put away all my accoutrements that had to do with going into the office.

I’m going to start going into my company’s Portland office one day a week, so I pulled out my tiffin so I could drag my lunch along with me.

I do enjoy the compactness of this design.

Tiffins hold a lot of food, though. And near the end of my last in-office job, I discovered that I could cut a circle out of plastic and divide up the different parts of my lunch so that I only had to bring the top part.

My new city of bridges mug is a good vessel for the Parisian Hot Chocolate I’ve been making during the cold and dreary winter. I got the recipe from the Oregonian and it’s a good thing I printed it out because I can’t find it now.

Essentially, you carmalize a bit of sugar, let it rest for a minute, add the milk, stir until the sugar is dissolved into the milk, add in chopped unsweetened chocolate and let mingle for five minutes without letting it boil. I’ve found it’s best to wait about five minutes before drinking so things can settle.

I’ve filled the jar with high-proof rum and the flavors are blending.

I feel pretty overwhelmed and unmotivated this Christmas season. My family is doing stockings only, and I’m glad my to-do list is minimal. I remembered this chocolate covered popcorn that a family at the Emerson School used to give the office staff each year. It was delicious and one year I asked the child who gave it to me how they made it. Here’s the recipe: Buy a bag or two of popcorn. (This is two bags. You can, of course, pop the popcorn, but see above re: unmotivated. Things I learned: though easy, bagged popcorn is very expensive in comparison to popping your own.) Melt chocolate chips. (This is one bag of milk chocolate chips and one bag of white chocolate chips.) Drizzle. Let set. Divide. Eat bits while you are divvying it up.

I also made these cherry pistachio cookies with dark chocolate. Mostly because I was trying to decide between a few cookies and Matt caught on to what I was doing and enthusiastically championed this cookie. So everyone who liked these can thank Matt.

I made these red velvet cookies with cream cheese frosting from my favorite Cooks Illustrated Christmas Cookie book.

I also made some coffee stars, but I seem to have forgotten to take a picture of them.

We did a cookie exchange at work, and half of this batch went to my person. The other half got eaten at Christmas Eve Eve. She also got half of the batch of coffee stars.

While I was getting my Covid-19 booster shot, I also picked up this little bit of Christmas schlock that I hadn’t ever seen before. I was super excited by the idea of a ball of chocolate melting away and releasing marshmallows.

Sadly, the bomb was already open when I unwrapped it, so I didn’t get that exciting effect. It was also much too sweet.

Overall, a disappointment.

From the future I can report that later in December I noticed that New Seasons had silicon molds so I could make my own hot chocolate bombs. It was very hard to leave the store without buying one, but I did it. Though if I ever see one at Goodwill, I will bring it home for some fun experimenting.

I’ve not been in much of a mood to cook lately, but I really wanted to make this turkey cheddar pie (with bacon topper, not bacon lattice as the recipe called for. I know my limits.)

I did a great job on the crust, a thing that is touch and go with me, and the pie was delicious as were the brussels sprouts. Even the mashed cauliflower wasn’t terrible.

Fred Meyer has started selling butter in these two packs. I didn’t realize until I got home that it’s the dreaded East Coast butter (long and thin) rather than the short and stubby West Coast butter. Thankfully, my butter dish swings both ways.