Avocado Pizza: Hodge Podge Goodness

I think I used a frozen vegetable mix called "Hodge Podge" for this, so the title is completely justified. Also, its moving season so my life and apartment are both 100% a hodge podge mess. Though maybe not as delicious as mixed frozen vegetables can be. And looking at this picture below, its pretty clear that the majority of this pizza is not frozen vegetables? Like hello avocados and mushrooms?

I thought about what I would talk about for this post, because I spend the majority of time on this blog talking about either my hate for finding natural lighting or some other random topic. Definitely not food, never! Have I ever actually described the taste or texture of an ice cream or pizza (wow my diet is so American) in a way that makes you go yum I want to eat? Probably not.

But I'll do what I do best, and make random comments and generalizations to the world of home cooking and dessert making. If its not obvious already, I started my kitchen adventures from the oven. From boxed cake mixes in high school to be specific. Baking has always been my favorite in part due to its lovely methodological ways. Which is funny since as a scientist, I follow a lot of protocols in lab, and then when I come home to relax, I follow more protocols essentially.

Cooking on the other hand initially terrified me (and kinda still does) for 2 simple facts 1) the ingredients lists seem way longer and detailed (like I have to buy A WHOLE JAR of oyster sauce for a "dash?") and 2) "to taste." Being a kitchen newbie and having to improvise ratios brought back awful memories of creative art projects in elementary school that looked akin to really sad clay volcanos. I've heard the other argument from people who started their adult lives cooking real food (unlike me) that cooking is easier in the sense that you can be messy and improvise ingredients without much backlash (like not including a dash of oyster sauce). It kinda speaks poorly to my ability to be creative that going off the grid makes me so nervous, so I'll have to work on that whole taking risks in life thing, starting first with pizza toppings.



Avocados are delicious in all forms, though I have to admit that warm is usually not my preferred route, but would still make it again.
Whole wheat honey pizza dough from Budget Bytes.

Tardis Tea Ice Cream: Better Astronaut Ice Cream

Remember those super trendy freeze-dried packets of "astronaut ice cream" that every science museum, art museum, or store that considered itself cool sold? While freeze dried foods are a fascinating novelty, do they actually taste that good? Not really. I mean, the freeze dried ice cream was actually pretty good given that ice cream is a delightful mixture of cream and sugar at its core. So even sucking the moisture out of it can't really do that much damage.



But here, I present an ice cream all astronauts, real and fictional alien ones, would probably enjoy. A bit of caffeine, some fruit, and some leaves- all part of a balanced space traveling diet. Though I get the impression that Doctor 12 is maybe not an ice cream type of person, or am I just grumpy old person stereotyping? He could very well be the exact opposite and be that crazy old man that subsists on ice cream. Related to that, ice cream for breakfast, while helpful with the whole natural lighting photography thing (which I still need to seriously work on), does not keep you full until lunch.

So what exactly is Tardis tea? It's this awesome early grey tea blend with blueberry and vanilla notes created in honor of Doctor Who! The blueberry is clearly meant to be associated with Tardis blue, and earl grey I suppose embodies the BBC. The tea leaves from this smell straight up amazing and as close to fantasy and exploration as a scent could possibly come close to. While the tea brews slightly on the bitter side when drinking it, the cream and sugar in the ice cream base more than help balance out the bitterness. For extra measure, I also added in a swirl of blueberry sauce, which gave it a nice pretty streak of purple/blue too.



Of course, Tardis tea ice cream isn't exactly a common Tazo or Twinnings or Celestial Seasonings tea, but normal earl grey works perfectly in this recipe. Heck, the recipe I adapted this from is an earl grey ice cream recipe. I've been pretty successful with my attempts at tea-based ice creams in the past making green tea and chai tea and now this Tardis tea ice cream. That just about covers the bases of my favorite teas. I usually hate drinking fruity teas, but now I'm thinking they might have a redeeming place in tea-infused ice creams now. Even if you're an anti-tea person, tea ice cream might just be the type of tea you've been waiting to be offered your whole life!

Sidenote-isn't it kinda awesome that freeze drying food was invented thanks to NASA and the amazing energy and funding that we poured into scientific exploration back in the day? Take that Ted Cruz! Not to mention like the gazillion other maybe slightly more useful things in our lives aside from freeze dried foods.

Tardis Tea from Adagio Teas
Earl Grey cream recipe via Gimme Some Oven
Blueberry sauce via My Baking Addiction

Biscoff Stuffed Snickerdoodles: Jane Bennet Cookies

So maybe in the original Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice cookies were not central plot points or character defining objects, but in the modern Youtube adaptation, The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, the word snickerdoodles would probably make every character simultaneous awww and weep because of their pivotal role in highlighting the emotional downs, then ups, that was the temporary separation and then reunion of Jane Bennet and Bingley (or Bing Lee in the modern case). ~spoilers~ though, you can't really expect to avoid spoilers about a 100+ year of story? Plus, there's a psychology study that found having plot points spoiled doesn't detract from a reader's enjoyment of the novel (also, hi to my new future home!). But more importantly, a thousand apologies to spoiling a certain Game of Throne's death to my friend's friend (which can never be forgiven no matter how many psych studies are done).

Anyways, like the impression I have of Jane Bennet, snickerdoodles are one of those classic, beautiful cookies that are perfect for all occasions- birthdays, celebrations, sadness all are complemented by sugar and spice (specifically, cinnamon). Add in Biscoff cookie butter for added sugar and spice? Definitely go-to cookies for everyone. Like seriously, if your day doesn't improve with some of these cookies, you must have really really interesting taste preferences (and let me know so I can adjust accordingly).

These snickerdoodles are probably a little on the flat and crispier side for my liking. There's an interesting debate floating around the interwebs about what makes a true snickerdoodle- flat and mildly crispy, or super puffy and soft? I think my ideal snickerdoodle would achieve both flatness and softness. While these didn't quite hit the mark on the softness, I think I can forgive them for that thanks to the cookie butter center. Make these as any other cookies (or as the recipe indicates), but add chilled Biscoff spread to the center of two rounded halves instead of forming one ball immediately.
Snickerdoodles recipe via All Recipes

Roasted Garlic Rosemary Bread: Artisan Phases

Remember how in my last post about whole wheat bread I referenced that other loaf of bread that I technically baked first? Well, here it is. And as usual, I tend to attempt giant leaps forward before backtracking into baby steps.

My family has this vague history (if you can count 2 parents and 3 children who are barely in their teens and twenties as "history") of becoming obsessively fixated on hobbies or interests. This is pretty convenient for someone going into academia, but can kinda make you look crazy when it comes to hobbies. Like one summer, I went to hot yoga every single day at 6 AM. I'm still trying to figure out how I did that. Oh, and of course the one time my mom decided to go on a food network inspired cooking phase of multi-course dinners, it ended a few short weeks before I was home for Thanksgiving. And don't get me started on my cross-stitching phase of 2 months thats slowly dwindling, or my mother's recent gardening revival.

In this case, I would say bread baking is in its infancy as an obsession. For me, I think my obsessions tend to either 1) wax and wane fairly very quickly (i.e. cross-stitching), or 2) wax very slowly until I become the type of person who spends their weekend nursing an oven. Bread might be in category 1 at the moment, but it way has the potential to become 2. Especially if I actually do go through with buying a bread mixing stick, a giant bucket, and this fancy artisan bread book (which is where this Roasted Garlic Rosemary Bread recipe originally comes from).

I'm a huge sucker for garlic in general, but especially roasted garlic. It's the sign that I've truly fallen in deep with the "food snobs," "foodie culture," or you know, whatever label. As usual, the rise of this loaf was less than optimal- at only ~2-3 inches max. This is this thing I hate about food photos on blogs. At certain angles, you would totally not notice the lack of rise in a bread photo, and just think "omg, delicious, must try myself." But if you stare at it long enough, its totally obvious that the bread is not particularly tall. And then doesn't that just make you feel cheated?

Regardless of my high yeast/rise standards, the bread itself tasted great, albeit a little dense due to the rise problem. It was great as a tiny sandwich, or just by itself lightly toasted. Aside from the rise thing, the recipe is very easy to make (no endless kneading!). I think my rise problem was due to letting the dough initially rise for too long in a slightly heated oven. Since the bread is also left to sit overnight in the fridge, I think allowing the dough reach its rise peak resulted it in having massive deflation while in the fridge. Well, this is all untested conjecturing, so you know, don't listen to me.

Recipe via The Noble Pig

Whole Wheat Bread: Rewrite v2

The problem with being "busy" (read getting stuck in airports) is that I get halfway through writing blog posts, but don't get far enough to publish or queue it, and then when I do get back to it, I'm left with a half written post that isn't even relevant anymore. For example, the last time I worked on this post was last Sunday, when I was partway through revisit trips for future MD/PhD programs. So a lot of this post was about feeling fit, how you're supposed to pick out the things that make you happy for 8 years etc. And this was all supposed to tie to bread. Probably some reference to comfort or simplicity because sandwich bread is the thing that ties lunches through some ridiculous metaphor.

But honestly, similar to my mood when I probably made this back in March (geez how time flies), bread is boring, and I just wanted to test my yeast-skills again. This is actually the 2nd of two breads I've made so far in 2015, but again "busy" (read: lazy) made me totally forget about that other loaf till now, so you'll get a peak of that later. The idea of making sandwich bread is mildly amusing to me (and to my roommate). It's such a simple, ubiquitous product that machines and extra fancy bread slicers do a far better job at doing than myself. And don't even dare suggest that homemade bread has fewer chemicals and is thus more natural and wholesome or I will ban you. Anyways, while I generally prefer my sandwich bread a bit larger, and studded with more grains and chewy textured bits, the combination of honey and molasses I used for this bread added some nice flavors that the bread I buy doesn't always have. At its worst, bread is just a vehicle for other things. At its best, bread is something I would happily eat alone for all my meals if I could. This was probably 75% best bread- I definitely ate slices of this on its own for breakfast, but it also made great sandwiches.

I was pretty happy with the rise I got from this bread (success!). Aside from my pizza crusts, I've never been happy with my past n=~3 experiences making bread. For reasons that I think may be related to letting bread dough rise too much, my other breads have been short. Delicious because carbs, but short. This time, the bread happily puffed up to a reasonably height. The loaf pan I used was a bit on the smaller side, which I think helped with the rise, but made for some pretty tiny lunchtime sandwiches for that week. Sigh, I just can't win with yeast, but I think I'm getting closer.

Recipe from King Arthur's Flour

BBQ Chicken Pizza: California Pi

Ok, pi day was obviously a while ago now, but math is mathematically awesome any time of the year, so we're sticking to pi references for now. And while yes, tau is definitely the superior circle constant, apple tau or a tomato tau with cheese just sounds ridiculous. Though, in my opinion, calling pizza "pie" to begin with is a pretty large stretch. Pizza as "pie" must be an east coaster, Italian American thing because over on the western, better coast, no one in their right mind would call a pizza a pie. Then again, I will concede, the west coast isn't exactly known for pizza.

Before my little education stint over here, my idea of great pizza was California Pizza Kitchen and Costco. I still maintain that combo pizza at Costco is one of the best pizzas out there, but California Pizza Kitchen? As a teen, I thought California Pizza Kitchen (or CPK if you're really hip) was the premier pizza eatery. It was like the coolest, bestest, most mathematical place to go out for a birthday dinner, or to hang out with friends. It was like fancy, but affordable for a teenager borrowing money from the parents. And, as evidenced by this post, my favorite pizza from there was by far the BBQ Chicken Pizza on a honey-wheat crust.

Since college and east-coast pizza revelations, CPK just doesn't hold the same appeal anymore (Costco pizza still does). Maybe it was a post-I thought-I-failed-the-MCAT thing, or a this-service-sucks thing, but the last time I was there, everything was such a letdown. From the crust, to the off-tasting plastic cups of water, to the meh toppings, it was like tasting the sawdust remains of teenage righteousness.

While CPK may have departed from my heart, I do have to give California credit for inventing BBQ Chicken Pizza, which is still delicious and super easy to make at home. Especially if you use ~fancy~ Sriracha BBQ sauce from Trader Joe's (oh look, more California things). The thing I love about "California" cuisine, is that for the most part, its basically normal food, except with like, 20 more varieties of vegetables and lots of locally sourced items year round because of that whole lack of winter thing. Though this current drought might become a problem. :( Anyways, luckily for us who do get to experience winter and spring snowstorms, the basic ingredients of a BBQ Chicken Pizza stand up to winter pretty well. You can probably add more vegetables if you wish, as I normally do, but sometimes the simplicity of just chicken, red onions, and BBQ sauce is perfection that doesn't need more nutrition.

Recipe via Budget Bytes.

Totoro Cookies: Best Neighbors Ever

Having totoros as your neighbors really would be amazing. A napping spot, friends to help your wilting plants grow (I would really need help here), and a cat bus to borrow when you're in a jam. Like, do any of you have neighbors who would be so generous?

Just so we're clear on my Japanese animation creds here, I've never watched any of the Miyazaki films in Japanese, or even in Japanese with English subtitles. Nope, I'm super American and have only watched these with their English dubs. I don't exactly have anything to compare to, but every English dubbed one I've seen has been great. Except maybe Ponyo. But that was mainly the general obnoxiousness of the voices of small children with minimal adorable/fanciful creatures in between. Though, the movie did result in this amazing gifset:

Anyways, I'm a sucker for movies with strong family/sibling relationships. Especially when the movies are geared towards children because I'm secretly also still 5, though probably a little busier. But only a little, because its kind of lame to try to one-up a 5 year old with the "Oh I'm so0o0o0o0 busy thing." But if Frozen was the smash-hit disney movie of the decade because of its strong female sibling relationship, My Neighbor Totoro is like the oscar, life-time achievement for sisterly relationships. Maybe it's because I'm an older sister and relate the forced responsibilities and frustrations and love, but its probably more the simplicity of the story that makes the sisters in Totoro shine. There's all these little snippet scenes of just absolutely ordinary interactions- making weird bellowing noises, greedily running out in front of one another, laughing at stupid things that really aren't that funny or make sense, small fussy arguments, things that do nothing to pull a plot forward persay, but do everything to pull you into this little world of adorable troll neighbors.

People who hate animated films, or rather, find them boring, always tell me that they just can't get into the stories because everything is so unreal- like animated singing, dancing, animals or ~magic~ just throws them off. But to me, its the opposite. Movies with real people and real settings feel unrealistic because the way the characters and stories move in all that reality is so fake and cheesy compared to what happens in real world. Like, if The Notebook were set in an animated world, with maybe some magic, or spirity Home Depots helping Ryan Gosling build that house, I probably would have enjoyed the movie at least 100% more. Animated films, aside from just being beautifully drawn/designed, establish from the very beginning that yo, this is not the real world, so don't think about all the geo-socio-economic-political problems that make everything so unrealistic. Just suspend reality, and take in this new world where wizards have star-fire powered moving houses, and things like true love can happen between a girl and a river spirit. Ok, these things definitely sound a little insane without context, but if anyone reading this ever wants to movie marathon introduction to Miyazaki films, I will be there, artisan popcorn in hand, and maybe these cookies if you give me a 2 day heads up.

These cookies were made for a friend's birthday. I was originally planning on just getting the Totoro cutters because they were cute on Etsy, but being vain and greedy, I decided I wanted to use them first to make cookies to send along with the cookie cutters. These were some seriously complicated cutters. The level of details that were in these cutters was probably the only reason why these cookies look even reasonably consistent from one to the next. I used a black food pen for the small totoros (white ones), as evidences by some really interesting eyeball design choices....

My kitchen continues to have an abundance of lavender and rosewater (surprise there), so I added some lavender to my normal sugar cookie recipe, and rosewater to the royal icing. I think I may have added too much rose water or corn syrup to the royal icing because the icing was incredibly sticky. I added some more powdered sugar, and gave the cookies an extra day to dry, which ultimately fixed the problem, but I'll have to pay better attention to my ratios in the future and not get lazy about measurements.

Totoro cookie cutters from CookieCutters4U on Etsy (they started my dream side career of 3D printing cookie cutters of the strangest, non-commerciable type). The dough needs to be legit 1/4'' thick, or thicker for the center details to become pressed onto the cookies.

Same basic sugar cookie recipe from The Kitchn, but modified with 2 tsp of lavender blended with the sugar, and about 1/2 tsp of rose water.

Royal Icing from Bake at 350, with the addition of 1/2 tsp of rose water. I only needed 1/2 the batch of frosting for the number of cookies seen the the first image, with lots leftover.