Pesto Quinoa Salad

Spring happened today. Actually, that was just a calendar thing. It didn't feel like spring today. But last week it did. That's when the sun came out to play, and when I started craving fresh summery foods. Like salad of random veggies and grains (not lettuce!). And basil. And garlic+nuts+oil+basil, which gives you pesto.
 
That's also when I took my container of aforementioned foods outside to lunch. Context: Out of the 15 buildings in my office complex, no one is outside eating, ever. There's just smokers by the smokers' doors. Then there's me: the strange girl who grabs a towel out of her car, finds the opportune spot for soaking up sun and plops down in the middle of the grass.

Oh, and my date for sunshiney lunch was Patti Callahan Henry's new book, And Then I Found You, which arrived that morning/a few days after I had written a story about it for Village Living. To keep this spring theme going, the plot is centered around the first day of spring, the day that the protagonist placed her daughter for adoption. The kind of book I liken to emotional candy, I ended up finishing in two late night sessions and getting excited whenever I came upon a Birmingham reference like Highlands Bar and Grill or Vulcan or the field by Mountain Brook Elementary.

Mini Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins

In some ways this story starts with brown bananas and mini chocolate chips in my pantry, with a limited time frame for baking and a personal delight in all things miniature.

But the more important story is bigger than that.

 

It's a story of the Knowles' hearts for their son and brother, the one they have yet to meet. That will change soon. They will bring him home from the Bahamas. But they know not when that will be.

It's a story of a house full of junk, literally, contributed by friends, and how the money it raised, several times the amount that was hoped for, helped pave a way for the last steps of this process of choosing someone and whatever he carries.

And it's a story of a small body of people journeying with the family and, on a Saturday morning, with the junk. Some lifted, some priced, some bartered, some cashiered, some bought, some baked.

And it's a story of a bigger body, the ones who came because they saw a sign or piles and piles of stuff in multiple yards, the ones who came to buy a couch or whatever treasures they could find, the ones who came to support friends or to take a Saturday morning stroll through the neighborhood (or both!), the ones who went home with clothes or books, or just a mini loaf of mini chocolate chip banana bread....or muffins or cookies or pecan squares or brownies or oatmeal-chocolate chip cookies.

Yard sale, adoption awareness, community gathering, bake sale — all from an overflowing fountain.

Ham Party Sandwiches with Roasted Red Pepper

Party ‘wiches is in the house tonight
Everybody just have a hammm time
And they gonna make you lose your mind
Everybody just have a cheeese time

In the midst of writing this post, I realized just how trashy pop lyrics are. And I couldn’t go on writing my awfully horribly terribly cheesy version of “Party ‘Wiches,” fifth grade change-the-lyrics-for-a-project style. LMFAO like doesn’t even use real words half the time: gonna, drank (as a noun), reppin’ (whatever that is?), zeppelin (like Led Zeppelin?), shufflin’—what?

If I still have your attention after all that blabbering about nothing, these sandwiches will wow a party. They are served hot 'n toasty. They are cheesy. They have a touch of sweetness. There's butter involved. I don't even really like ham, and I find the taste a treasure-filled delight.

It's one of those recipes that has circled potluck circuits millions of times, so I added some roasted red pepper (they are so funky to roast!) to do something unique for the blogosphere and add a touch of pretty to my picture. But the pepper really didn't add that much to the taste, so don't bother with it unless you just feel like it.

One last round of horrible lyric editing just came out below. You don't have to read it, unless you just want all the more fodder for poking fun at me.

One more ‘wich for us, another round
Please fill up my plate, don't mess around
We just wanna see you eat it now
Now you wanna be, you're hungry now

Light Scalloped Red Potatoes

The writing of this post didn't make it past potential headline choices.


The Art of Slicing
It's Kinda Therapeutic, You Know

How to Make Fancy, Rich Potatoes Semi-Light
A Little Swiss Cheese, Boiled Skim Milk, Oh and Garlic!

The Ugly Duckling
How Do You Photograph Cooked Potatoes and Make Them Pretty? Fail for Me

That Time I Became My Parents
Saturday Night Steak and Potatoes: Apparently I Inherited This Routine

You Don't Have to Have a Man to Make a Steak Dinner
How Two Single Gals Finished Every Bite of their Beef

The Night I Grilled a New York Strip Medium Rare
Alllll By Myself, I Might Add

Banana Muffin Tops with Oatmeal Streusel

At some point I vowed not to buy more random baking pans that might or might not get used, ever. My collection already includes the popsicle-shaped cake pan I asked for for my birthday in high school (what a cool teenager I was!) and snowflake molds my thoughtful friends gave me for Christmas a couple years ago.

But then one day on the baking aisle a.k.a. my fantasy land at Hobby Lobby, a Whoopie Pie pan screamed: "Buy me! Make pretty treats with me, and fill them with Buttercream Icing!"

Fast forward several months: I still have not made Whoopie Pies with aforementioned impulse buy. But I did have a revelation mid-what-to-do-with-speckled-bananas-this-time brainstorming: muffin tops!

So semi-healthy breakfast treats with lots of surface area for slightly sugary but mostly oat-y treat topping were born. And that would not have been possible without that whoopie pie-turned versatile tool in my ever-growing kit(chen).

Random thought: Why do I so tend start like every sentence with a conjunction? Must be the elementary grammar rebellion I have repressed for nearly 20 years kicking in.

Learning not to fear the art of Cake Ball

Out on the interwebs are millions gorgeously perfect balls of cake and icing, coated ever-so smoothly in chocolate and topped with some smashingly beautiful decor. Like much in the online world, they are eye candy but not real life, at least for my skill set.

But who cares what they look like if you know they'll taste heavenly? Not me.

If you decide to take on the project, I do highly recommend inviting a friend over and timing it so you are mid-cake ball process when said friend arrives, especially if you decide to go the 100 percent purist from-scratch cake and icing route like yours truly the baking snob. That way you have extra hands to roll balls and then dip and decorate them. Plus, that means two heads to try to figure out how in the world you make chocolate dipping look semi-decent.

Also, apparently it takes a lot of red dye to make red velvet cake really red. If you look really hard, you'll see a tinge of red in the cake, but it was essentially chocolate cake (which is better anyway). Red sprinkles are a lot harder to not mess up, so they kept a little Valentine-y theme.

My sources this go-round: 
Awesome from-scratch Red Velvet Cake, Smitten Kitchen
Step-by-step Red Velvet Cake Ball instruction, Iowa Girl Eats

Pot Sticker Night on the Court

Roommate H. grew up in China, eating Chinese food. Her parents did not know how to cook Chinese food. She did not know how to cook Chinese food. But when she moved to the States for college, she somehow figured out how to create familiar dishes, experimenting until she reached the tastes her mouth knew so well. 

Now I find her funny bottles with Chinese writing in my fridge and watch her simple yet fresh Asian concoctions come to life. Our house Chinese food night we had talked about for months came to life at last when H. picked up dumpling pastry from an international market and mixed up two kinds of  filling: egg+spinach and pork+fennel.

Then we all sat around as she taught us to fill the insides of the dough circles and then rub water on the rim before we folded it together like a hand pie and crimped the edges, over and over again.

And then guess what we cooked the pot stickers (a.k.a. Jiaozi) in?

 To finish it off, she mixed soy sauce+rice wine vinegar for dipping, plus we had a side of Smashed Cucumber.

It's such a treat to live with different people who introduce you to new food things in the kitchen.