Raspberry-Cinnamon French Toast

This weekend I tried something fancier than what I'm used to. One of my friends from college is getting married, and she asked me to be a bridesmaid. Her engagement party was this weekend, and she and her fiance hosted a potluck dinner, so I brought...breakfast.

My boyfriend's mom gave me the following recipe last weekend, and I wanted to try it.

Ingredients
5 eggs, beaten
1 cup brown sugar, divided
1 3/4 cups milk
1 loaf of Pepperidge Farm swirl cinnamon raisin bread
1/4 cup butter, melted
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1 teaspoon vanilla
Raspberries, as many as you want

Cut the bread into squares and place them inside a 13x9 pan. Oh yeah, and grease the pan. It already smells really good because of the bread.

Combine the eggs, the milk, 3/4 cup of brown sugar, the cinnamon and the nutmeg. Vanilla wasn't originally in the recipe, but hey, like I needed an excuse. This recipe is just asking for it.
Pour the mix on the pan and let it cover the bread. Cover the pan and stick it in the fridge, where it should rest for about eight hours.

The next day, combine melted butter with 1/4 cup of brown sugar. I think I went a little gun-ho on the butter, but I figured more butter never hurt anyone. Well, that's not true. But anyway, drizzle the mix on the bread, which should be out the fridge 30 minutes before it goes into the oven. Set the oven at 400F and leave it for about 25 minutes. Take it out and cover it with raspberries. Return the pan to the oven for another 10 minutes.

Try it with boysenberry syrup, raspberry syrup, blueberry syrup, unspecified-berry syrup, maple syrup or your concoction of choice. My raspberries were a little tart (FAIL), so make sure yours are fit for a wedding party.

This week's groceries
Honestly I'm too tired to look for my receipt. Should be under $20, though.

The joys of being a minor

This was a glorious weekend. Some fellow Skiff staff members and I went to Dallas on Thursday for the Texas Intercollegiate Press Association annual convention, where I was surrounded by other journalism geeks - you know, those weirdos who care about grammar, spelling and who can quote the AP Stylebook like nobody's business. On Saturday I left for Greenville, Texas, and I came back late last night, so I didn't have time to experiment with cooking this weekend.

One thing I did get to experiment with was almost getting kicked out of a hotel bar. Yes, a hotel bar. Fun times. Let me recount the occasion; I promise there is something relating to this blog's theme.

Anyway, so my friends and I wanted to go out Friday night and have some fun. We're in downtown Dallas, how hard can it be, right? Well, we contemplated clubs, gay bars, the House of Blues and crashing a prom. When all of those options failed, we settled for watching "Adventureland" at the Angelika movie theater.

After the movie, we came back to the hotel and decided to go to the hotel bars for drinks. A non-alcoholic drink for me, since I was the only person in our party underage. Yeah. Awesome.

Well, when I asked the bar tender for a non-alcoholic beverage, he didn't look too happy and started lecturing me about the TBC. Expecting doom and trying to avoid a lecture, I said I was leaving. On my way to the door, a bulky hotel staff member in a suit stopped me and asked if I was the only one in my group who was under 21. I said yes and that I was leaving, hoping I could avoid problems. He turned to my group, and I thought, "Great, they are going to kick us all out." But the man said I could stay, unless he saw me drinking, in which case he would kick us all out. My friends nodded in agreement and I sat down at our table. The bartender made me a non-alcoholic drink on the house.

This drink was delicious. I do not know what it was, but I could detect orange juice. I think it was a Shirley Temple. This is how it's made.

Ingredients
4 oz. ginger ale
2/3 oz. grenadine
2 oz. orange juice
ice
Sprite or other lemon-lime soda

I didn't see how he prepared it, seeing as how I was sitting away from the bar, but apparently, you pour the ginger ale and grenadine, which gives the drink its pink color, into a glass with ice. Then, you pour the soda on the rocks. You may add a maraschino cherry if you'd like.

I'll be legal in about a week. Um, yay.

This week's groceries
None. I didn't go grocery shopping this weekend. Oh boy.

So-easy-to-make-it's-not-even-funny pizza bagels

I've had quite a weekend. I have done my laundry, gone grocery shopping, shot and edited video, gotten my picture taken for the contributing writers section of Image Magazine and I have tried to study for two tests (and failed miserably at that). I still have more studying to do, but I sure don't want to. Seeing as how my weekend has been so packed the only reason I went grocery shopping was because I had to cook something for the blog, I was looking for something that didn't require much brainpower. Even less than my standard entries, which definitely do not require any talent. So I settled for pizza bagels. Quick and easy to make, and just as easy to devour.

Ingredients
1 bagel
Pasta sauce of your choice
Shredded cheddar cheese (yes, cheddar)

Buy bagels at the grocery store or at your favorite bakery. Get something else than plain bagels if you'd like. I prefer those cover and sesame seeds and other random tasty things. Don't go for blueberry. But you don't need me to tell you that.

Preheat the oven at 350F.

So basically, you cut a bagel in halves and you spread sauce on them. Then you top the halves with shredded cheddar cheese. While mozzarella seems to be the obvious choice of cheese, cheddar I think goes better with this recipe. It's thicker and tastier. And my aunt made it that way, so I'm just keeping with tradition.

Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil, place the pizza bagels on top and stick it in the oven. A glorious meal will greet you triumphantly in about 10 minutes.

You could try sprinkling your pizza with condiments to make it even tastier, but I was to hungry to contemplate further delay when I made this recipe.

Easy snack food or meal replacement when you're in a hurry, you're out of Lean Cuisines and you're broke.

This week's groceries

1. Prego regular spaghetti sauce - $1.99
2. Albertsons cheddar cheese - $2.29
3. Albertsons bagels - $1.99
4. Mac n' Cheese (x2) - $2.18
5. Del Monte fruit cups - $2.99
6. Albertsons fruit punch - $1.19
7. Cadbury eggs - $3.99

Total = $17.05

Chicken fingers and 1/2 cup of EPIC FAIL

So this week I intended to make the non-flambe version of Bananas Foster. I didn't know Bananas Foster existed until last Tuesday, and now I really want some. I found a good recipe, but I'm not 21 yet, and neither are my roommates, so I wasn't able to procure any rum. I will have to wait one of my roommates turns 21 in the following two weeks, or until I turn 21 a little further down April. Woohoo.

Anyway, I settled on tasty chicken fingers for this week. This is another recipe I found in the back of the Bisquick box - God bless it - and was easier to make than I thought.

Ingredients
2 boneless chicken breasts cut in quarters
2/3 cup of Bisquick
1/2 teaspoon of paprika
1/2 teaspoon of salt or garlic salt
1 egg, slightly beaten
1/2 cup Parmesan cheese
3 tablespoons butter, melted

Preheat the oven to 450 F. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and grease it.

In a gallon storage bag, mix the Bisquick, the paprika, the Parmesan cheese and the salt. Shake it up (this is a lot of fun.)

To make the chicken fingers tastier, I marinated the chicken in my tasty and aforementioned Chardonnay Herb marinade for a few hours. I cut the chicken in quarters and dipped them in the beaten egg. Then I dropped the fingers from the first chicken breast inside the storage bag and sealed the bag.

Now it's time to play. Shake up the bag again. And more. Let the chicken roll. Move its contents around until the chicken is completely coated in the powdery mix. Do the same with the chicken strips/fingers from the other chicken breast.

Place the fingers on the sheet and drizzle with the melted butter. Of course. You didn't think this was actually healthy, did you?

Bake for about 14 minutes to make sure the chicken is not pink when you take it out of the oven. Make sure you flip the fingers at about half time so both sides cook well.

Here is me taking the sheet out of the oven as my roommate Katharine, um, eggs me on.




I also made a biscuit with Bisquick to accompany my chicken (you can see it in the video). They actually tasted good. Yum.

I should be Bisquick's spokeswoman. I wonder if they're hiring.

Oh, yes, recession. Probably not.

This week's groceries

1. 1 can of apple raspberry juice - ?
   
2. 7,000 Lean Cuisines - ?
   

Total = I can't find my receipt

P.S. I already had all the ingredients, pretty much.

Strawberry Shortcake - the dessert, not the cartoon

In my quest for easy recipes to try out I always overlook the most obvious ones. So last weekend, as I scraped the last of my roommate's Bisquick to make crepes (AKA fruit tacos), I noticed the back of the box had a couple of recipes, most of them which were not pancakes (gasp!) One of them was strawberry shortcake. See, this is what I like about Bisquick. It's so versatile. I can make biscuits, pancakes, chicken fingers, dumplings, strawberry shortcake. Maybe even my own house, if my heart felt so inclined. Bisquick is your kitchen's McGyver.

So this is my week's culinary delivery to my roommates. I haven't sent anyone to the hospital just yet.

Ingredients
2 cups of Bisquick
3 tablespoons of butter
1/2 cups of sugar
1/2 cup of milk
4 cups of strawberries
1 tube of Cool Whip or real whipped cream, as your heart desires

Preheat the oven to 425 F. In a pan, melt the butter mercilessly, which is not difficult I guess. Combine the Bisquick, milk, 3 tablespoons of sugar and the butter in a bowl and mix until you have dough of some sorts. I'm not quite sure what the consistency was supposed to be, but whatever I did turned out fine. If you follow the instructions, you can only pray yours will turn out fine too. But my success bodes well for the rest of humankind.

Anyway, I digress. Spoon the dough onto a buttered baking pan to make six biscuits. Make sure there is enough room in between them for the biscuits to expand. It's like your teenage kids, you have to give them some space.

While the biscuits bake, slice a boatload of strawberries, put them in a bowl and mix them with an unhealthy amount of sugar.

After12 minutes in the oven, your bread should be golden brown. Take it out of the oven (thank you, Captain Obvious). Slice the biscuits in half and fill them with strawberries. Place the biscuit halves back together and top with whipped cream. You can also get some strawberry syrup and squeeze some of that on the strawberry shortcake. I just thought of that. I wish I had.

You know how I take pictures every week? These were gone before I had a chance. That's how good it was.

This week's groceries

1. Bisquick - $2.64
2. 1 lb. strawberries - $2.49
3. Market Pantry milk - $1. 69
4. Market Pantry berry juice - $0.77
5. Market Pantry soups (x3) - $4.11
6. Del Monte fruit cocktail (x2) - $2.64
7. Cadbury eggs - $2.79

Total = $17.13

Strawberry Banana Tacos

My roommate Katharine and I went to Blue Mesa today for Sunday brunch. It is a luxury I am able to afford once a semester, but after having scrambled eggs with potatoes, cheese enchiladas, corn cakes, Spanish rice, beans, agua fresca, rice pudding and flan, the price of the buffet seemed very well worth it.

Keeping with today's Mexican theme, I decided to make fruit tacos! Which is the cheap college version of sweet crepes, the ones you fantasize about having in some cute coffee shop in some cute French village while cramming for your test in the library.

Ingredients
1 cup of Bisquick
1 egg
Milk
Nutella
Bananas
Strawberries
Cool Whip

The reason I didn't write measurements for most ingredients is that I used what was leftover of my roommate's Bisquick, which was less than a cup, and enough milk to make the mix look like pancake batter.

So I mixed the Bisquick, the egg and the milk until I made pancake batter. I poured a spoonful of batter on a small nonstick pan (which I greased) and tilted the pan with a circular motion so the batter would cover the entire surface. I tried to flip the crepe to early though, and that resulted in epic fail, as evidenced by the pancake wreck in the picture.

Katharine came to the rescue and told me to way for bubbles in the batter before flipping the crepe. That actually worked. Make sure you don't pour too much batter on the pan so the crepe is thin and not, well, a pancake.

Because the crepes were small, they wouldn't wrap around their contents, but they make perfect tacos! I spread some Nutella on each and slice some strawberries and bananas to fill the crepes with. Add some Cool Whip if it strikes your fancy.

These are great for breakfast or dinner. Or any time, really. Who needs an excuse to eat this?

This week's groceries

None. I'm broke and relied completely on my roommates' charity.

Foolproof chicken pasta and cheesecake-brownie cupcake thingies

In an unprecedented event, I came back from work at 5 p.m. a couple of weeks ago. I was starving, and being home early, I actually had time to cook something better and more nutritious than Mac n' Cheese.

I had bought a box of Archer Farms Tuscan pasta salad at Target. The instructions are easy to follow: dump the pasta in boiling, slightly salted water (which I also flavored with some garlic powder). Mix olive oil with the pesto packet to make the dressing. If you want a creamier dressing, replace some of the olive oil with mayonnaise.

Now, this works as a side, not as the main dish - maybe for a starving college student like myself, but even I want more sometimes. To turn this into a generous entree and then leftovers (the gift that keeps on giving), grill or fry two or three chicken breasts. I marinated mine in the Chardonnay and Herb concoction I have referred to so lovingly in the past. I cut my chicken in cubes (or you can do strips) and mixed it with the pasta to make for a fuller meal, most of which ended up in Tupperware to feed me for another week. Cooking a large meal and storing it for sporadic consumption during the week is a good way to save money, and you can make another kind of pasta or meal and store it in Tupperware so you can mix it up during the week and not get bored on the same thing. Pasta is just practical and preserves well.

For handy snacks, how about making your own brownies? Or you know, how about Pillsbury puts the whole thing together and you take credit for it for sticking it in the oven? I tried the cheesecake swirl brownie mix - nothing crazy. You mix the brownie batter and separately you mix the cheesecake topping. I decided to make these as cupcakes and not brownies. The ending product looked like Pangaeas in their chocolate oceans. To my roommate, a cupcake's cheesecake topping looked like a duck. These things are like the inkblot test.

My roommate crazy.

This week's groceries

1. Archer Farms pasta salad - $3.99
2. Old Orchard apple juice - $1.00
3. Gold n' Plump chicken breasts (x6) - $11.49
4. Pillsbury cheesecake brownie mix - $1.37
5. Sparboe Farm eggs - $0.87
6. Market Pantry milk - $1.69

Total = $20.41

Shot-through-the-heart berry tarts

Happy Valentine's Day! Or not! It doesn't matter because the following recipe can have multiple connotations.

Have you ever been shot? Me neither. This blackberry tart is the closest thing I've seen to a gunshot wound. Like I said, this tart is appropriate for any circumstance. To your date on Valentine's Day it says, "I keep bleeding, I keep, keep bleeding love." To your heart-broken self on Valentine's Day it says, "My heart got mugged and stabbed, run over by a truck and mangled by a bear." To your single self on Single Awareness Day it says, "You might as well. He's just not that into you."

I had seen the small graham cracker mini pie shells in Albertsons before, and I wondered when I would try to do something with those. They are no L'Madeleine fruit tart, which I crave all the time by the way, but they will do for a pastry. They also look fancy, even though they don't take much skill to make (just look at me.)

Ingredients
1 5.1 oz. JELL-O box of Cook n' Serve vanilla pudding
12 Keebler graham cracker tart shells
1 can of Oregon blackberry pie filling
1 10 oz. bottle Smuckers raspberry spread

Cook the pudding according to instructions. Fill the tart shells with pudding, and top with some raspberry spread. Place as many blackberries as you want on your tart. Make sure you don't take too much blackberry juice from the can or your tart may get too watery. Let pudding cool and then refrigerate. The tarts are better cold. Cover them with plastic wrap to preserve them better.

Sweet, eh?

This week's groceries

1. Oregon pie filling - $3.19
2. JELL-O pudding - $1.49
3. Smuckers spread - $3.79
4. 6 Keebler tart shells (x2) - $5.38

Total = $13.85

Banana cream pie, sans the bananas

This week I thought I'd experiment with a recipe I've used before for coconut cream pie, but make it banana instead. I tried another recipe in the past for banana cream pie, but the custard was too mushy, and the layer of banana slices at the bottom looked like Pikachu exploded on my pie.

The following is an Emeril Lagasse recipe. Yeah, I know. It's actually very Julieta-friendly, considering Emeril is into the fancy cooking and the coq-au-vin and a bunch of dishes with names I can't pronounce.

I have to say, though, when I was a kid I went through a Food Network-watching phase with my parents, and we always laughed at Emeril's signature "BAM!" whenever he dumped spices or garnish on his dishes. It was around that time my dad, who usually has a good taste in gifts, gave my mom a wooden salt and pepper grinder for Christmas. I know he meant well, but my mom did not look too happy.

Anyway, courtesy of the Food Network, this is the recipe, with a few tweaks to suit my purposes.

Ingredients
1 graham cracker crust
3/4 cup of sugar
1/4 cup of corn starch
3 cups of milk
4 egg yolks
1 tbsp. butter
1 tspn. vanilla extract
1 tspn. imitation banana extract
1 tube of Cool Whip

Mix 2 3/4 cups of milk and the sugar in a saucer pan and heat it up. In a bowl, combine the yolks, the corn starch and the leftover milk and mix well. When the milk is boiling, pour the egg mix into the saucepan and stir for three minutes until mixture thickens (it's cool how it goes from
liquid to pudding in seconds!) Turn off the heat.

Stir the butter, the vanilla and banana extracts into the custard. It looks and tastes a thousand times better than instant Jell-O pudding. Pour the custard on the graham cracker crust and move it to the fridge. I tried a regular flour pie shell when I first made this, and cookie is better.

Let it cool for two or three hours so it's solid enough for consumption. Spread Cool Whip on top.

There's nothing better than bananas than fake banana flavor. No dead Pokemon on my pie this time.

This week's groceries

1. Pepperidge Farm cookies - $3.39
2. Albertsons strawberry lemonade $1.19
3. Schepps milk - $2.09
4. McCormick's banana extract - $4.19
5. Graham pie shell - $3.19

Total= $14.15

P.S.: I had a lot of the ingredients lying around in my kitchen, so I didn't spend that much in groceries this week.

Drunken chicken and instant mashed potatoes

With my nonexistent cooking skills, the only thing I'd venture to make at the moment is fried chicken. Last time I made some, I rubbed the chicken breast with mustard and garlic powder and let it fry in olive oil sprinkled with minced onions. The chicken has a good taste, but it is a bit dry after it's done frying. I thought I would branch out this time and try a marinade.

Do I look like I'm smart enough to make a marinade? Of course not. So I went to the Happiest Place on Earth for college students - Target.

As I pushed my cart down one of the grocery aisles, I stopped to look at the Archer Farms marinades and dipping sauces. Unlike other store brands that offer cheap products that taste like rubber slippers, Target's home brands actually taste good. Archer Farms products also come in different flavors and are reasonably priced. No, they're not paying me to say all that, though I could use the extra cash.

Anyway, I picked the Chardonnay & Herb marinade, partly because it would make my chicken, and by extension me, seem sophisticated, and partly because Mustard & Beer was out. The 12 oz. bottle was $3.99, which I thought was a good price considering I have at least seven chicken breasts sitting in my freezer. However, whatever class I thought I had acquired by picking the Chardonnay & Herb marinade went out the window when I told my roommate about the awesome "char-don-ey" marinade I had found.

I also thought about what side to have with my chicken. I arrived at the starch aisle, and I picked up a box of Market Pantry four-cheese instant mashed potatoes for less than a dollar. Another Target brand, Market Pantry is not as fancy or diverse as Archer Farms, but it still tastes good, and with a tight budget, I'm not picky. The box alleges that it uses real potatoes! It must be true.

I thawed two chicken breasts yesterday and let them marinade overnight in Ziploc bags. I made the mashed potatoes today, following instructions, except I added some garlic powder to give it some flavor. I fried the chicken in olive oil. Perhaps too much, because the chicken was a little dry again, and though it tasted good, the flavor was faint. I really need to work on that.

My drink was a glass of Old Orchard apple raspberry juice. The can made two quarts of juice. I was hesitant to get it because the label said "no sugar added," and I think sugar makes the work go 'round, but it was sweet enough.

I'll pass on the Char-don-ey, thank you very much.


This week's groceries

1. Archer Farms marinade - $3.99
2. Market Pantry potatoes - $0.94
3. Betty Crocker chicken alfredo meal - $2.99
4. Del Monte Fruit Chillers - $2.00
5. Old Orchard apple juice - $1.19
6. Market Pantry milk - $2.49

Total = $13.60