A First Attempt

At work, as well as at home, some things require a definite mustering of courage to try something new. In chemistry, this is commonly known as an activation barrier. Basically, in terms of the progress of a reaction, there are some points which require more energy (or in layman's terms, a little more oomph), which when reached, everything else is downhill from that highest energy point. The easiest way to picture this concept is to imagine yourself walking along a path, and up ahead, you see a hill (a really, really big hill). You know that climbing the hill is going to be really awful, but once you get to the top you can 1. Roll down like a little kid to the bottom and 2. at the bottom there is a pool of cookie dough (or marshmallows or whatever else makes you giggle).

Graduate school has been a series of hills for me. Every technique I have learned in the past few months has required me to climb a really big hill, and not only break my back doing so, but also humble myself by constantly asking for help from my peers and labmates. Cooking and baking for me have been no different. I've had to really work up the courage to cook certain things.

This whole "working one's self up" to try a new technique (in the lab or in the kitchen) is ridiculous. My energy has constantly been placed in building courage and trying to harness my fear of failure.

Yesterday, I attempted a *sacred* Ryno family recipe for yeast rolls. Whenever my mother-in-law makes these, I try to eat my weight in them (as does everyone else in the family). They are indescribable. My first attempt was not a total failure, though it was certainly not a stones throw close to Tony's mom's rolls. Mistake 1 was using a glass pan versus a metal pan: the rolls cooked differently on the bottom than on the top. Mistake 2 was kneading the rolls for too long (or with a mixer dough hook versus by hand).

At any rate, these rolls were edible, and my dad ate about 4 within a day. I dare not divulge the recipe without permission, but you can see the fruit of my labor :).

Happy Holidays!

The first of many holiday posts: Homemade Cranberry Sauce

It's Thanksgiving. It's my birthday (basically). I have my mom and dad here in California to celebrate both with me and my hubby. I have a totally amazing new camera to explore a new, and hopefully therapeutic hobby. Life is good.

This means many things: 1. I am now the slowest person in any group whenever I have my 15 pound camera around my neck, mostly because I now take pictures of EVERYTHING. 2. I have a lot of recipes stock piled with cool pictures ready to write up and post, mostly (obviously) of holiday-centric dishes. 3. I am one happy Pookie. I hope that you all enjoy what's to come, as most of the dishes have been in either Tony or my families for generations. Luckily for me, our families both like to follow simple directions (WOO HOO!)

The recipe below is most likely the easiest of them all. My family has always just had the canned cranberry sauce...left in the shape of a can. I opted to make my own tradition by starting making REAL (not can-shaped...) cranberry sauce.

Reagents:

1 12 oz package of fresh cranberries
1 cup sugar
1 cup water

Procedure:

1. Wash cranberries thoroughly, and remove any bad berries and stems.

2. Bring water and sugar to a boil in a saucepan, allowing the sugar to dissolve (supersaturated solution, anyone?).

3. Add cranberries and reduce heat in order for the mixture to simmer for about 10 minutes. The cranberries will burst.

4. Allow the mixture to cool completely first at room temperature and then refigerate.

See...painfully simple...and definitely not can shaped :).

More holiday recipes to come!

Brown Sugar Acorn Squash

This recipe was adapted from one of my favorite websites, and food blog author, The Pioneer Woman, She always has really great recipes, and most of them are fairly simple.

Anyway, it is the fall season, and that means there is an abundance of a lovely variety of squash (squashes, squaesch...I can't pluralize worth a darn). This recipe is painfully simple, and is equally delicious.

Brown Sugar Acorn Squash

Reagents:
1 Acorn Squash
4-5 Tbs Brown Sugar
2 Tbs Butter
Coarse Grain salt
Maple Syrup (optional)

Procedure:

0. Preheat the Oven to 400 F.

1. Cut squash (carefully) in half. Notice the manly hands, these are my husband's. I was afraid that slippery squash + big knife = Lisa fainting and a trip to the ER, so I "allowed" him to do it instead. (Actually, I begged.)

2. Scoop out the seedy, stringy innards of the squash, and discard them. Place the halved (or kinda-halved, like mine) squash in a baking dish. Sprinkle them with a pinch or two of salt, and score them a few times.

3. Place 1 Tbs of butter (or more, if you like your arteries to get a good hardening) in each of the hollowed out insides. Then, place about 2-3 Tbs brown sugar in each of the hollows.

4. In the original recipe, PW drizzles her squash with pure maple syrup. We didn't have that, and I didn't want to destroy the entire recipe, so I delegated a single half to be drizzled with...um...Hungry Jack syrup. Tony liked it, but he's pretty easy to please :).

5. Fill the baking dish with about 1 cup of water, so the acorns have moist heat, and cover the dish with tin foil

.

6. Place them in the oven for about 30 minutes covered. Then, take off the foil and allow them to bake for another 30-40 minutes.

Then, allow them to cool for at least 5-10 mintues, and enjoy!

Tony actually liked the redneck Hungry Jack drizzled squash much better, but I thought the flavor of the brown sugar-only version was much more developed (i.e. not drowned in syrup and without its original, squash-ie flavor).

Either way, I would definitely make this dish again!