Life in the Cheese Drawer

woo! that was intense.
first off, i made the meringue. since macaron call for meringue, i am a meringue pro. whipped those egg whites right up!

then, i pulled the bowl of ice cream and brownie layers out, and shook. and shook. and shook shook shook. dipped in hot water. cut around the brownie edge. shook shook. nothin’. called nate. he dipped in hot water for quite some time. then i cut around the brownie again, and it came out. soupily. a big soupy brownie mess. ugh.
but, further inspection revealed it was merely superficial, so we cleaned up the soupy ice cream and started plopping the meringue on. i was going to get fancy and pipe it on, but yeah. time was of the essence.
after everything was covered, i made it at least a little pretty and dolloped my spoon all over so it had peaks. now it’s chillin’ in the freezer waiting for the big broil tomorrow.

 

i’ve been eyeing a baked alaska for some time now, wondering if i could pull it off. well, after i mentioned it to my dad for his bday, and him saying he was just thinking about that, i started in on one tonight.
first, a history lesson. the baked alaska was invented by charles ranhofer of delmonico’s restaurant in 1876  to honor the new american territory (alaska – derr). it’s also known as a norwegian omelette, both names coming from the low temps in the two spots.*
first off i made brownies. if you haven’t made homemade brownies, you should. they’re easy, and you’ll never go back. i had to use parchment paper since i wanted the whole shebang to come out of the pan. hate corners and parchment. i used this recipe from joy of cooking (JoC never disappoints). easy peasy.

i threw the brownies in the freezer for a quick cool down since my ice cream had been sitting out for about a half hour and i didn’t want it to become soup cream.

first things first: cut the brownie out for the bowl. some people use cake. some people use pound cake. from my meanderings on the web, i’ve heard that a dense cake is the best for the bottom.

i had measured the bowl and it was 8″ across. unfortunately (or fortunately as we’ll see), the parchment brought in the brownies so much that instead of 9×13, it was more like 7×12. see, i hate parchment.
time to goop the ice cream into the bowl. i’d read to use some plastic wrap for easy bowl removal as well as baking spray. i decided to give the spray a try. if anything. i’ll just run some hot water over the bowl if it doesn’t pop out.

strawberry then vanilla. as a non-strawberry ice cream liker, i want the vanilla next to the brownie! ok, for the fortunately part, turns out the bowl was a little bigger than the amount of ice cream i had, so i was able to tuck the brownie into the top of the bowl perfectly. my first plan was to just let it sit on top of the rim, but fortune was on my side.

wrapped that baby up with plastic wrap then tinfoil, and now it’s sitting in the freezer getting nice and frozen for the meringue  that i’ll put on it on saturday. this was about 20X easier so far than i thought it would be.

*wiki! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baked_alaska

usually my meals consist of me looking in the fridge, seeing what’s easiest to make, and doing that every night. i don’t mind cooking, and in fact enjoy it, but most nights i’m too hungry to care and just want to shove something in my mouth.
tonight i wasn’t that hungry, so i fried up some chicken thighs with homemade bread crumbs on them, threw some asparagus with feta cheese on it in the oven, made some rice pasta, and nate made some of those red lobster biscuit mixes (have you tried those? if not, RUN to the grocery store). i then made a sauce for the pasta from white wine, cream, milk, butter, garlic, red pepper flakes, and parsley. mmm mmm, it was yummy, even though i could have leaned a little less on the white wine in the sauce.

TOMORROW begins the baked alaska adventure – eeeee!
 

i’m trying to eat healthier, which includes me trying to eat more fish. Tonight i tried to fry fish and failed. fish fry fail.
anyway, i bought frozen cod from walmart, which may have been my first mistake. the second mistake may have been using cast iron instead of my non-stick pan (which does wonders with chicken tenders!). thirdly, fail may have been  exacerbated by the flakiness of panko bread crumbs versus real bread crumbs.
the fish may have been saved if i’d seasoned it enough, but even a liberal shaking of old bay seasoning in the panko didn’t do anything for the fish.
so basically i plopped on my plate tonight some gross, slimy cod surrounded by greasy fried panko crumbs. i dipped it in cocktail sauce (aka: ketchup mixed with dijon mustard), which sort of covered up the blahness of the whole ordeal.
thankfully i had a huge sweet potato on the side, which helped things immensely (i eat them sans brown sugar [but yes to the butter], so healthy, right?).
ultimately what really helped was me going to the store aftewards and buying a pint of half baked. that stuff will right any food wrongs. (i just checked again, and whew, no corn syrup.) so much for healthy.

i’ve been on a smoothie kick lately. and not the green kale and spinach kind, either.
these are smoothies i make after i run forever on the treadmill and need something to pick me up afterward. in the past i’ve added cocoa, peanut butter, or yogurt (GREEK GODS not that crap chobani), but recently i’ve been focusing on fruit.
1. get out your blender. if you can’t find your blender, it’s probably because it’s stuffed away somewhere in the back of a cupboard because you use it so infrequently. good luck.
2. get out your fruit. for me, this means inspecting the bananas i bought 5 days ago to figure out which one is the worst looking because that one needs to be used first. i also buy frozen fruit for other fruit (strawberries, peaches, raspberries, blueberries, etc.) since fresh fruit will grow mold in my fridge before i use it all.
3. get out your frozen orange juice concentrate. this stuff is key – it’s what adds some sweetness to the smoothie. don’t use too much – that stuff is potent. i scoop out a healthy teaspoon. i just keep the tube in the freezer with the metal cap on and hope it doesn’t get freezer burnt.
4. throw some ice cubes in there if you want to dilute it. otherwise you can always add more frozen fruit. if you’re worried about calorie count, ice cubes are a good filler.
5. add some milk. i normally start off with about 1/2 cup, but after the blender doesn’t want to blend, i add some more to loosen it up.
6. if you really want to get fancy, throw some flaxseed in there. i don’t know if it’s necessarily still beneficial if it’s a year past expiration, but it sounds fancy, right?
7. blend that crap together. if you want to get ultra fancy, add some cocoa or peanut butter. or both. pour it into a glass. enjoy your somewhat healthy shake-like drink.