Oh Hello

Really fast I wanted to update y'all. Soooooo.... a lot has happened recently. I got another job... more details on that later but I am still at Lush one day a week. I actually had applied to a school here... for the nursing program. I am in the process of transferring credits and I have to take my generals.. the ones that wont transfer from uaa... but I am very excited. I also am going to take the TEAS nursing entrance exam before June 30th to hopefully get considered into the Spring 2016 program... which I am ok with because I can take those generals this fall, hopefully. Also June 16th I am getting knee surgery.... yep they are doing surgery to remove the cyst as well as to take care of my tendinitis..


A lot happened in a short amount of time, but I am super determined to heal from this surgery ( I wont be able to run for 6-8 months) and I am determined to become a nurse, I really want that self-fulling feeling inside.





Also I had started making vlogs on my youtube channel. Check it out if you want. User name is ohhitsrachael


have a great day.
2 more months until Chris comes home.

Sorry, no posts for awhile.

Hey y'all, I just wanted to let totally know Gibson be posting for a while. I've got a lot going on right now, and honestly I haven't cooked anything new in a while.... so I will be taking a break from my blog.


I'm not sure when I'll be back at it.

Cauliflower Pizza Crust

I have seen these Cauliflower Pizza Crusts all over and have always wanted to try one. I would say mine was slightly successful, but I have ideas on how to improve it for next time, it was delicious, mostly I just need to improve the structure of it.


I started off with half a head of cauliflower, and cut the stems off. I made a personal pizza with this amount. After cutting the cauliflower, I placed it in a blender, and blended to rice size pieces. Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Once the cauliflower is blended, place in a microwave safe bowl, and microwave for 4 minutes. After this, allow the cauliflower to cool for 10 minutes. DO NOT RUSH this step! I cannot stress that enough. You want all of the moisture to be released from the cauliflower.

Once cooled place on a clean kitchen towel.

Now, fold the towel over the top and squeeze the moisture out. You will be surprised as to how much water is held within cauliflower.

Keep squeezing until you have soaked up as much water as humanly possible! 

Once ready, place into a clean dry bowl, mix in an egg and mozzarella cheese, this is going to be the binder. I should have used half an egg for mine since it wasn't the whole cauliflower head, I added back in too much moisture with the egg.

I had to end up squeezing some the egg out, so it would hold. This is pretty messy, but mixing actually works better with your hands. I also mixed in some salt, pepper, and garlic powder to season it.

I placed mine on a cookie sheet with cornmeal... and it stuck to the tray, I didn't have parchment paper so I tried working with what I could. I just shaped it as you would a dough for a pizza crust.

Place it in the oven and bake for 14 minutes.

Once par baked take it out and add topping of your choice. I just stuck with sauce and cheese.

Now bake until your cheese is melted to your liking or toppings are cooked, I baked mine for about another 10 minutes, keeping an eye on it.

It had an amazing crisp and crunch on the ends.

Hey it looks like a pizza right?!

Next time I would use less egg, and when I bake it I would use parchment paper, as it took me a while to pry it off in one piece with a spatula. The middle wasn't as crispy as I wanted, so next time I will make it thinner as well as place another cookie sheet on top of it while the crust bakes with some sort of weight on top. I think that would help yield a crispier crust all over.

Mushroom Risotto

I am pretty certain I have shared my mushroom risotto before, maybe about a year ago, so I wont really go into making it, risotto is not a particular dish, but a cooking method of cooking rice, so I wont bore you with the details if you already know hoe to make it. However I wanted to share what I added into this batch, of course I added the mushrooms, onions, and garlic as per usual, but I also added some cherry tomatoes to this, asparagus, and carrots, they are difficult to see under all of that Parmesan cheese, but this was my favorite veggie combo that I have done with risotto. I really think this is going to be my go to combination for risotto. Risotto is one of my very favorite things to make.

PB2

I have been obsessed with PB2! I love peanut butter so much, but it can be not as good for you. I mean if you eat a lot of it. Of course peanut butter contains good fats for your body and is a great source of protein.... but if you are like me, and could literally eat half a jar of that stuff! It isn't too great for you. PB2 has 85% less fat, is less than half the calories, and still has that protein and good fat. You can mix it with water to create that peanut butter texture, I actually haven't done that yet, but what I have been doing is making smoothies. This is a delicious morning breakfast smoothie or snack smoothie. All I do is blend a whole banana with two tablespoons of this and 3/4 cup of almond milk and about 5 ice cubes to give it texture. This has been my go to morning smoothie, unless it's after a workout then I usually make a fruit smoothie. Fruit smoothies are more refreshing after workouts, but this one is a really great after dinner snack if you are craving something sweet but you don't want cookies, cake, or icecream. :p

Penne Mushroom Alfredo

Yes you read that right, Penne Mushroom Alfredo. Why penne? Why not penne? Penne is my very favorite kind of pasta. Truth be told, I use to love alfredo, and olive garden sort of ruined that for me, not that it is bad, olive garden has excellent alfredo, I just got tired of being around it so much, and smelling it. Now that I have been gone from there for a good while, I find myself wanting alfredo more so than when I was there. I don't eat it very often though, it is a treat, and isn't something you would eat every day, every now and again is alright though.

I truly love this recipe, and it is one I sort of just threw together with what I had in the refrigerator like usual. Chris and I had an awesome mushroom alfredo ravioli at maggianos before he left, so that was my inspiration. 

I diced onions, mushroom, and garlic, and sauteed those in some butter, until tender and caramelized. Once caramelized, I just turned them down to low heat and left them alone. I seasoned them with pepper, and no salt, because I wanted to make sure this wasn't going to be over salted, as I will be adding Parmesan to the sauce which is pretty salty.

For the sauce, I melted a bit of butter, and added flour to make a roux, don't cook too long, just until you get a slightly thick consistency, I made a white roux which is the easiest and takes the least amount of cook time, this one is good for keeping white sauces white and beautiful, though I could have made a blonde which is a bit of a deeper flavor than whites. I could have made this in retrospect because the mushrooms changed the tone of my sauce.

After making the roux I whisked in 1/2/ cup heavy cream until it thickened, I then added some almond milt to it, to thin it out because it was a bit too thick for me. After this I added in 1/4 cup of sherry wine (this gives the flavor such depth!) and then brought it to a boil, and reduced to a simmer, I allowed it to simmer for about 15 minutes, and then tossed in the sauteed mushrooms, onions, and garlic. At this point I added some Parmesan cheese.  I probably added about 1/8th a cup, gave it a taste, and then seasoned it a bit more with salt and pepper.

I boiled some vegetable penne, and just served the sauce on top of the pasta, and served with some additional Parmesan over the top.

Steak!

I tend to not eat meat that often, but this day... I was just seriously craving meat, and what better way to satisfy that craving than a steak?! This one is huge! I didn't make anything to go along with it, because it was so large. This was actually really simple and delicious.

I started with a rib-eye, I don't have a grill, otherwise if I did it would have beautiful grill marks. I seasoned both sides with pepper, lawrys seasoning salt, and garlic salt. I went easy on both the lawrys and the garlic, since I was using both. I melted a bit of butter in a cast iron skillet, got it to high heat and then put in about a cap full of liquid smoke. I love the grilled smokey taste, and since I don't have one this helps give it that smokey, grilled flavor.

I cooked the steak until golden on both sides, and then tossed the skillet in the oven at 400 to finish cooking to my liking, it only took maybe 3 minutes in the oven. I love medium rare steaks, but you can cook it more or less depending upon how you personally enjoy your steaks.

And well that is it! Another easy yet tasty dinner. You could saute onions or mushrooms to amp it up, or make a lovely sauce to go along the top. I love Bearnaise with steaks, but this day I just wanted a classic grilled/smokey taste.