House-bound for the Weekeind

There are two things I tend to do when I’m bored – eat and shop. On their own, each of these vices can be trouble. Combined, they’re deadly.

It was a quiet weekend at home for me. My cat had surgery during the week, so I didn’t make any plans in order to keep an eye on her. (Post-surgical orders included “no jumping.” How do you stop a cat from jumping up on things? It’s not like she’ll listen to me…) After a week of no carbs, or more truthfully 4 out of 5 days of no carbs, I was looking forward to a feeling of boredom and seeing what was beckoning me from the kitchen. After all, since I had to stay close to the kitty, a trip to the mall for some boredom induced shopping was out of the question. One vice tucked away, another one waiting for some action! Let the weekend begin…

Friday
My long lost friend Hailey, who has been MIA for months, came over for a dinner of salad, pizza and beer. She brought the beer, I made the pizza and salad. The salad was your standard garden variety – lettuce, tomatoes, and red onion from the farmer’s market, accompanied by a colorful array of bell peppers left over from my carb free week. The pizza was where my wannabe foodie status shined through. I made two pies – a mushroom, onion and green pepper pizza, and a bacon and scallop pizza (I stole this idea from the British Beer Company – sounds gross, but it’s actually quite delicious).

The pizza dough was homemade, made with bread flour instead of all-purpose flour, as recommended by the fine chefs at America’s Test Kitchen, and resulting in a much chewier and bread-like crust. For the sauce, I bought a can of Pastene spaghetti sauce, which is really nothing more than canned tomatoes with a little seasoning thrown in (I honestly can’t taste the difference, but I’ll take their word for it). Instead of accepting it as is, I chose to dress it up a little. I sautéed some fresh garlic in olive oil, stirred in the tomatoes, added some kosher salt and let it simmer for about 15 minutes. I then pureed it with a hand blender to smooth out any remaining chunkiness (I prefer my pizza sauce smooth, unless I’m eating at Bertucci’s). After taking it off the heat, I stirred in some chopped fresh parsley, basil and oregano. I even grated some fresh mozzarella, but it was way too watery, and that tends to result in a very soggy pizza. Even though bad pizza is still pretty good, I wasn’t willing to settle for pretty good. Fortunately, I had an emergency bag of never fail shredded mozzarella on hand.

There is truly no better way to introduce carbs back into your life than with pizza and beer. These pizzas definitely hit the spot (as did the beer). And since there is plenty left over, I’ll be eating it all week long! I’m guessing I shouldn’t get used to my jeans fitting again.

Saturday
I love the fall because I love most things pumpkin – seeds, soup, coffee, beer and bread (oddly, I could take or leave pumpkin pie). Feeling the season while I was at the grocery store, I bought a little sugar pumpkin so that I could roast my first batch of seeds of the season. As I was scooping out the seeds, I decided to make some pumpkin bread as well. I have a whole pumpkin that’s otherwise going in the trash, and a whole night of nothing to do. Then I had an even better idea – I’ll make two batches of pumpkin bread, one with fresh pumpkin and one with canned, and see which tastes better.

I started with the fresh pumpkin. I peeled the pumpkin by cutting the skin off and miraculously sparing all of my fingers, and then cut it into chunks. I put half the chunks in the blender and pureed them. After that, I thought I should go online and make sure I was actually preparing fresh pumpkin correctly. Turns out, I’m supposed to cook the pumpkin before pureeing it. Who knew? Most of the techniques I found online suggested roasting the pumpkin, but that would take about an hour and I really wanted a short cut. So, after much searching, I found one website that said I could microwave the pumpkin. So, the second half of chunks got microwaved on medium in a dish covered with plastic wrap for five minutes. You know how they tell you to be careful when you remove plastic wrap from something you just cooked in the microwave? Yeah, they’re not kidding about that. I threw caution to the wind, and hastily removed the plastic wrap. After a few choice curse words, a cold water bath, and some triple antibiotic ointment (the steam literally melted a layer of skin off my thumb – just a small bit, right below the finger nail, but it hurt like another very choice curse word), the pumpkin was ready to be transferred to the blender. It was definitely a little easier to puree, but the two batches didn’t taste any different so my thumb was burned in vain. I combined both the pureed cooked and raw pumpkin in a saucepan to cook on the stove top, allowing some of the water to burn off. Now, I was finally ready to make pumpkin bread!!

I made the fresh batch first, then followed with the canned batch. The fresh pumpkin required about 10 minutes longer to bake, and it did not rise as high as the canned. The canned had a more orange hue than the fresh. But the true test is the taste, and in my opinion, they tasted exactly the same. I was about to conclude that fresh pumpkin adds nothing, and is so not worth the extra work, when I realized that a sample size of one is not very valid. So I brought both versions to my parents house, where they and my sister blind tasted both and tried to guess which was fresh and which was canned. All three thought that the canned version was made with the fresh pumpkin, and both Mom and Dad thought the canned one tasted better (maybe because they thought it was fresh). My sister thought the fresh, which she thought was the canned, tasted better.

Given the broader sample size, it is now safe to conclude that fresh pumpkin adds nothing and is so not worth the extra effort.

Sunday
By Sunday, I was all cooked out. And I still didn’t want to leave the cat alone for too long, so the mall was still out of the question. Instead, the internet beckoned. I went online intending to learn more about the chefs competing on the Next Iron Chef that is premiering tonight, and then got distracted by the Food Network’s online store. I’ve had three things on my foodie wish list for a while – measuring cups, measuring spoons, and knives. I have sets of all of these, but I want better sets. Need? No, of course not. Want? You bet!

My wish list is empty, for now. I found a set of measuring cups by Oxo that included the standard measures (1/4, 1/3, 1/2, and 1 cups) plus a 2/3 cup, 3/4 cup and an egg separator. I know I can do the math, and measure these amounts using a combination of the standard cups (but surprisingly, a lot of the reviewers felt they couldn’t make recipes that called for 3/4 cup of flour until they bought this set), but it’s just easier to have these cups and it’s cool, too. (Yes, it is.) And, at $7.95 a set, how could I pass them up? Now, for the set of measuring spoons. The ones I have are fine. But they are awkward. They don’t fit into most spice jars and that alone makes them really annoying. I waste more dried herbs and spices because I have to try to pour them into a measuring spoon. While not the end of the world, it’s a pain I can live without. Cuisipro had a set of spoons that are long and skinny (claiming to fit into all spice jars), and had a pointed tip to help scrape up the last bits of an almost empty jar. These two have an array of sizes that are not in the standard mix of spoons – pinch, 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, 2/3, 1, 1 1/2, and 2 teaspoon sizes, plus the 1 tablespoon size. They were a little pricey for measuring spoons, $17.95, but not unreasonable (and to be honest, I have no idea what good measuring spoons cost).

The last item on my wish list, a new set of knives, was a harder decision. The Food Network Store was having a sale on Wusthof’s Gourmet line of knives, so a deal was to be had. In order for me to buy a new set, it needs to offer me more than what I currently have. I had my eye on the 18 piece set for $350 (marked down from $400, and compared to the suggested retail price of $548. The 18 piece set includes 9 legitimate knives, a sharpening steel, a pair of kitchen shears, 6 steak knives and a knife block. Before clicking on “buy,” I needed to do more homework. I learned that the Gourmet line is Wusthof’s economy line, but the reviews were all really strong (and not just from people who bought them, but from actual product testers) and they hold up to the higher end knives from Wusthof. I’m glad I did my research, because I was able to find another site (www.cutleryandmore.com) that was selling the exact same set for $280 – plus a bonus knife sharpener and a three piece cook’s set that includes a cutting board, a second pair of cooking shears and a fish spatula. I’ve always wanted a fish spatula! The extra $70 in savings and the added value from the bonus gifts sold me. My new knives should be here by the end of the week (free shipping!) and I PROMISE that I’ll take much better care of these ones than I do my Calphalon knives. (I can’t wait to use my new tomato knife!)


So, at the end of the weekend, I succumbed to both of my boredom induced vices – eating and shopping. After spending 4 straight days babysitting my cat, I deserved this!