[76] Mashed Baked Potatoes

How to Cook Everything, Revised Edition by Mark Bittman

This is the second to last recipe that counted for this challenge from Thanksgiving. It’s also the second of two that I failed to remember to take photos. My apologies.

Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk about why I did a slightly different recipe than Mr. Bittman’s traditional mashed potato recipe. I had two reasons, both very simple. First, because I was convinced (erroneously, it turns out) I had already made mashed potatoes (version 1) for this site. Obviously part of this challenge is to get me to spread my wings in the kitchen, so minimizing repeats is important. It’s also important if I ever want to buy another cookbook again in my whole forever life. Secondly, and even more basely, I picked this recipe because Bittman says that baking the potatoes, rather than boiling them, dries them out and allows them to soak up even more milk and butter.… Continue reading →

[72] Baked Potatoes

How to Cook Everything, Revised Edition by Mark Bittman

You guys, I have to be honest with you here. The first photo for this recipe was, apparently, taken at 10:42 pm CST on the day before Thanksgiving. That means I was tired and stressed out, but also desperately seeking yet another recipe to be executed.

You see, Thanksgiving was not the glut of recipes I expected it to be. Largely, this is because I had to keep the feasting down to a reasonable amount for four people. As you can imagine, this was hard to do. When I thought we might have between eight and ten, I was thinking maybe four or five pies and several sides and a monster turkey and so on. When it finally came to just four people, I had to 1) reign in my instincts quite a bit and 2) give myself permission to make things I’d been drooling over for days, even though they didn’t apply to the challenge.… Continue reading →

[48] Mashed Potatoes

How to Cook Everything, Revised Edition by Mark Bittman

What is roast chicken without some sort of delicious Solanaceae accompaniment? It is nothing. NOTHING, I say!

Furthermore, woe betide you if you pick the wrong member of the Solanaceae family. I mean, aside from some members being highly toxic, some having psychoactive effects (some doing both…), many would just be weird. I mean, I suppose I could imagine some folks feeling an urge to smoke after a good roast chicken, but that’s really Solanaceae after the roast chicken, not with.

So, we’ve narrowed down our Solanaceae choices to, “consumables”. I’m going to go a bit further and narrow it to “edibles”. Hell, let’s go a step further and narrow it to “major food crops”. So, we’re lookin’ at eggplants, tomatoes, and potatoes. Any one of those things is delicious, I have to admit.… Continue reading →

[30] Vegetable Frittata

I’m pretty sure this book is available at “Amazon.com”:http://www.amazon.com/gp/redirect.html?ie=UTF8&location=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2F&tag=metaco-20&linkCode=ur2&camp=1789&creative=390957, but it’s not immediately obvious. I guess that, despite it clearly being nationally published and such, it’s still one of the more obscure books in our collection. And we have two from this “collection”. I would link directly to the suspected book, but there’s NO information about it there, so I don’t see the point. Please let me know in the comments if you disagree.

Anyway, this is the book that first introduced me to the frittata. As mentioned in our “About”, I went on to make a lot of them. This recipe makes it clear that they’re very easy, and can be quite healthy. Also, amazingly, tasty!

Unless you’re my good friend, Maria-Sea. She’s just going to skip straight over this recipe, since she thinks the taste of eggs is gross.… Continue reading →