Post Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone. I hope you all had a great time! Mine was awesome. I spent a lot of time just simply relaxing. It was very much needed and wanted.

Only bad part: the MiniSpaceship (my car) had a window malfunction again... this time the driver's side window fell in to the door. :( The honda place was able to fix it in the next two day, so it was not horrible, it just was lame.

In other news: Had a lovely Turkey Day dinner at Krissy's house (same place as last year, but very different people!). Learned a new game. Started Listening to Christmas music (some of you know how much I love Christmas music... ). Made it through the entire first season of Dexter. Worked on Christmas gifts (almost all done!) Took care of a pissy cat. Got to joy ride in Gwyn's mother's Batmobile. Visited a number of my favorite PGH restaurants.

It was a good break! I just need to stay focused for the next two weeks and get this thing done! I am really exctited to come home, but I am also a little sad as this means I am leaving Pittsburgh :( but... 10 days till I am home!! Yay!

Dessert Pierogies (Part Two, Sweet Potato, Cranberry, Apple)

I have done it again! I have mixed the cute and bite-sized nature of a pierogie with the sweetness of pie! This time, I have truly embraced the PIE-rogie nature of this.

The Yadgrad group does an annual Thanksgiving dinner. I was asked to bring some dessert, I thought this would be a perfect occasion.

If this is your first time reading about my dessert pierogies, you should check out this page first. They were my first attempt, and this time I more-or-less followed the same procedure, just with different fillings.

So to start:

Sweet Potato!

I don't know if sweet potatoes are just getting more popular, or if they are a staple here in Eastern PA, but I have become a little fascinated by them. They are that weird unknown thing to me. Ever since Chelsea and I made Sweet Potato Pancakes, I have just been interested.

There is a problem. I went to the store, looking for 'Sweet Potatoes.' Giant Eagle was not selling any sweet potato, but they had pallets of yams. Yams are just as foreign to me. I had no idea what to do, so I decided to get a few yams, and I eventually found some (expensive) organic sweet potatoes.

The Left: Sweet Potatoes The Right: one Yam

Peeled Yam

So after some internet research, turns out in America they are basically the same thing. There are hard flesh sweet potatoes, called sweet potatoes, and soft flesh sweet potatoes called yams. Then in other parts of the world there is something completely different that is a yam, that only bears passing resemblance to what we call yams. I am still confused... but oh well. This does not really have anything to do with dessert pierogies... just a weird anecdote.

So for this filling you will need:
2-3 Sweet Potatoes (whatever that means)
Brown Sugar
Butter
Milk
Marshmellows
Corn Syrup

Wash and Peel the potatoes. Cut the potatoes in to large cubes of equal size (6 to 10) per potato, just to help with cooking. Put in a pot of boiling water. Cook in boiling water, stirring occasionally, for 20 or so minutes. They are done when you can, with little effort, stick them with a knife.

Remove from water in to a large pot or bowl. Add butter (2-4 tablespoons), milk (2-4 tablespoons) and Brown Sugar (1/4 - 1/2 cup). Start mashing. Add more butter and brown sugar as you think is needed. Let this cool a little.

Potatoes and Cranberries!

Roll out the dough, cut some circles:

It is like an empty canvas

Place a small spoonful of smashed potato on a circle:

Then fold, press, and set aside.

Seeing as I only had one sheet to cook them on, I cooked everything on wax paper, to aid in moving around of product.

When ready to bake, heat oven to 350. Once heated, put pierogies in. Let them bake for 20 or so minutes, once they start to just get a little brown, remove them from the oven. Using the syrup as glue place a few marshmallows on the outside. Once everything is covered, put back in the oven.

I forgot about how marshmallows puff!

When pierogies are golden brown on the edges, and the marshmallows are golden, remove and let cool.

Just out of the oven

Mmmm....

Cranberry Tarts!
Gwyn suggested this one, kind of a Nantucket pierogie. Surprisingly, not as tart as I was expecting.

For these you will need:
a bunch of cranberries
Almonds or Walnuts (depending on what you want/have)
Brown Sugar

In a pot, put cranberries(2 cups) , smashed almonds (3/4 cup) (ziplock bag, then take a hammer to them) and brown sugar (1/4-1/2 cup). Heat this on medium, stirring often. Cook until the cranberries have all opened up. You should end up with a relish looking thing. Taste it, it should be great! Let cook.

See above, for picture of cranberries on stove

Same as before, cut circles, fill with spoon full of cranberries. Fold, pinch, set aside.

Cook these bad boys for 25 - 30 minutes at 350. Garnish with brown sugar.


Apple Pie
These are my favorite, but I also really like apple pie. Very similar to the mini apple pies.

For this you will need:
4-5 medium apples (the greener and tart-er the better)
Apple Pie Spice
Sugar

Start by washing and peeling the apples. This was super exciting for me! Gwyn gave me an early Christmas present:

One of the most useful kitchen gadgets ever invented.

As you all should know, this made peeling and slicing the apples a piece of cake (or pie...). I love this thing. I have always thought it was an amazing invention.

When you are processing the apples, you eventually want the apples in very small slices. Smaller than normal apple pie slices seeing as you need to fit it in a pierogie.

Once you have your apples ready, in a large bowl add sugar (enough to over all of the pieces) and as much spice as you want (I prefer a lot). Mix well and let sit for a little.

Already look tasty!

Roll, circle cut dough, prepare to fold. Add a small pile of apple to the middle. These ones are hard, all other pierogies I have made, the filling is plyable. Raw apples are not. This means it is really easy to poke through the dough. Just be gentle, and work the pieces to fit. Fold, pinch, set aside.

These were baked along with the cranberry pierogies, 25-30 minutes at 350. Garnished with Raw Sugar.

So all in all I made 65 dessert pierogies. My personal favorites were the apple variety, but again, I love apple pie. They were a big hit... and by that I mean that there were none left! Another successful pierogie making experience.

Oh and a very rare picture of me cooking... I normally have my hands full:

In my PJs!

Chicken Paprikash

I was first motivated to make this after visiting Catacombs in Spokane. If you are a Spokane resident, and have not been to this fine establishment, you need to go. There is no reason why you should not. The food is glorious, and the atmosphere is so unique! Anyway, they have a great Chicken Paprikash over spatzle.

Chicken Paprikash

Prep time: 20 minutes
Cook time: 40 minutes

Serves: 3-4

2 or 3 chicken breasts (you could also do whole chicken pieces)
some salt
3 tablespoons of Butter
2 medium to large Onions
black pepper
2 tablespoons Paprika (you can get super fancy and get Hungarian Paprika, or Sweet Paprika)
1 teaspoon Hot Paprika or Cayenne Pepper
1 Cup Chicken Broth
1/2 cup sour cream

Cut up Chicken. Add a little salt (garlic too if you want) rub this around a bit. In a large pan, add butter on medium heat, let melt, add chicken. Cook chicken until all sides are white, but don't cook all the way (we are going to stew the chicken later to fully cook it). Get it to about 75% done. If you are really paranoid, you can cook it all the way in this step, but you might dry it out. Remove and set aside.

Before

After

While the chicken is cooking, slice onions. From top to bottom, in fairly big wedges (16-20 per onion). Once chicken is removed, add onions in to pan. If the butter is mostly gone, add some more. Cook onions until just getting light brown. Remove from heat, add the paprika, black pepper, and hot paprika or cayenne. Stir well. Add chicken broth, stir some more.

Yes for Asparagus!

Add chicken. Cover pan, let simmer for 20 minutes. This can be extended longer, this should only make the chicken tastier.

At this point, your kitchen will smell amazing.

When ready, remove from heat, let cool a little bit (4-5 minutes) mix in sour cream.

Serve on top of spatzle or pasta. For those of you who don't like it really hot, you can add sour cream at this point to dull down the spice.

Enjoy with a friend!

Thanksgiving Week!

So this week I am taking care of the Rohrer household as Gwyn and her mother are in Alaska for the holiday. This means I get to interact with Aerona. one on one. Mano a Gato. Aerona and I don't have a very good history. It might be that she picked up right away that I don't like cats... or it might just be she is a mean cat. Her favorite activity around me: hissing. Awesome. When Gwyn and her mom are around she just keeps her distance, and oddly likes to sit in my shoes (nothing else, she just sits). So yesterday morning I woke up around 6:50, and quickly heard her meowing outside my door. This would for be the ritual-istic morning feeding. When I opened the door, she meowed and ran downstairs, I followed her to the kitchen. While I was getting out her food, she was all cute and cuddly, rubbing up against my legs, quietly meowing. As soon as I set the food down, her head cocked back and out came the fangs with a nasty hiss. So I walked out of the kitchen, and went in to the living room. A few minutes later, I went in to the kitchen to get some water, at this point Aerona ran out of the room and hid under the coffee table. This is where the fun started. When I walked back in to the living room, she started hissing. As soon as she did I yelled at her: "WHY ARE YOU A MEAN CAT!" This apparently startled her, she flinched and stopped hissing. But shortly started hissing again. We had a little yelling/hissing match, when I was getting tired of yelling, I just threw a pillow in her direction and she ran away...

Oh well. In other news the Mini Spaceship took a hit. The driver's side window mechanism is damaged, and thus my window is stuck in the down position. Shadyside Honda was able to fit it in to their schedule on short notice yesterday. Only problem being that they don't have the part, so it is going to take until this morning for me to get it.

So last night Skanda and I had diner plans. I needed a car. Gwyn and her mom don't mind me using their cars, so I went on a trek to get a car from their house. The only issue is that their house is 6 miles away. This means that I could take advantage of our great bus system. I knew it was raining, I put on my rain jacket, bundled up, and walked outside. The very first step I took on the sidewalk, a giant truck drove by, creating a tidal wave in the 5 or 6 inch standing water on the road. From that point on, my boxers were soaked.

Short explanation: I live on 5th ave. This road is a major thoroughfare in to Oakland. This is great for getting arround if you are driving, but walking... eh. The sidewalks are barely wide enough for two people to walk on, then you add to that, that a lot of people walk up and down this street, so it is busy, and careless bicycle riders ride on the sidewalk (I used to jump out of their way... now I just keep walking. I have made contact with a number of bicyclists in this way.) I should say now, that I have not, and will never ride on a sidewalk in Pittsburgh when on a bike. That is just irresponsible. I am getting off topic... so the sidewalks are narrow, and the street is busy. When it rains there is no drainage, so the water builds up. I think you can all see where this is going. It is impossible to walk along the street without getting soaked.

So after a long trek I made it to Aspinwall, completely wet. I retrieved the mail, pulled the garbage in, glared at Aerona, and jumped in to a very dry and cozy car.

Skanda and I, our destination: Max's Allegheny Tavern. I had been there once before. It is amazing. I think it is the best German food I have had in the states. I had to go back one last time before I left, and Skanda had never eaten German fare. It was a great evening, food was great, Skanda loved it.

If you were all worried, I have two new recipes that I need to post. A new set of Dessert Pierogies and Chicken Paprikash!

Picture for Thought

I know some of you will have already seen this, but check this out.

Money

I spent a good 50 minutes going over it and did not finish. It is astounding to see the differences when they are graphically represented.

Randall Munroe,Thank you for enlightening the internets.

Family: You heard it here first!

I would just like to bring to the attention of my family (in particular Chelsea) that Mom is now easy to shop for:

"I am VERY easy to shop for!!! I love Zag things, WSU things, things to decorate with, fun serving dishes and things for entertaining. I like unique children's picture books and fun stationary and note pads. I love pictures of my children and collections of music playlists that meet my tastes (which you know). How hard can it be???!!!" -Mom

Now that we know that! It almost seams easy...

(Mom: Chelsea and I like to joke about this, I am not trying to be hard on you. I am absolutely sure that Chelsea is going to fall off of her chair when she reads this. I love you mom! And I already know what I am getting you for Christmas!)

Job Choice done.

First, get this playing in the background.

Now, if you know me and my music, you will understand in about 4 notes what I am about to say ;)

I am going to Boston! I finally made a choice, and most of you know I hate making choices. So this is a big relief. Ill be working for MIT's Lincoln Laboratories, I am super excited!

So if anyone was wondering (or wanted to plan on hanging out with me) Ill be finishing up school on the 7th of December, sometime between then and now packing up my stuff, Flying home the 8th, celebrating Chris' wedding the 10th, then enjoying a long and relaxing Christmas break. Sometime after my paper clear I can take a trip to Boston to look for a place to live, then (hopefully in the begging of February I can start work!

So, as to my Christmas break I have a few idea of 'projects' I want to work on, but I will take suggestions from all of you. Here is my potential list:
- Making a kilt (patterned off of my Utilikilt.)
- ReTeaching myself the Star Wars CC game. (I have a boxes (and I mean boxes and boxes) of cards in my closet)
- Making another Ginger Bread House
- More Experimentation with Food (ill finally be back in a decent kitchen.)
- I still need to pick a Christmas break TV show. I think it might be Dexter, any thoughts?
- After becoming a Java protege with the robot, I am going to hammer out the Bohnanza game.

Thoughts?