Misadventures In The Kitchen, Week FIVE

This week's recipe: Bûche de Noël!!!!! Tres francais, oui? :)

My friend and I got together today after school and cooked it up (I use the term "cooked" loosely, as you will soon see). Our teacher offered FORTY credit culturel points if we baked one, so how could we not? That's practically an entire semester's worth!

Pros:
It is SOOOOO rich and delicious tasting. (That tends to happen when you use several cups of butter and powdered sugar.)
Fun time with a friend! Need I say more?

Cons:
You don't cook the filling or the frosting. Which freaks me out a little bit, since the mixtures contain raw eggs. Call me paranoid, but I like burning up the little bad bacteria through a process called baking!
If you eat more than 2 bites, you pretty much feel like puking.

Pro/Con (your call on this one...)
Marshmallows. My friend stuck marshmallows on our cake.

I wish it looked more like a log, but.....yeah. This is my baby, right here. ;)

Oh, and before I forget? I added a little bar thingy at the bottom of each post. It's like a comment button if people are tired and feel lazy! Feel free to like...use it...or something. Or comment. Or both? (Now I feel like I'm pushing my luck.)

Happy holidays! From Cheese and her Bûche de Noël!

Misadventures in the Kitchen, Week FOUR

The recipe: CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIE BARS

And get this: I made them to take to a PARTY. An actual, honest-to-goodness party! A social event! Me!!!! Your little Cheesy's all grown up. *sniff*

Pros:
Chocolate.
Chip.
Cookie.
Bars.
Plus, my arm muscles are all buff thanks to the manual stirring I had to do!

Cons:
It took forever to mix because my mom didn't feel like letting me use the KitchenAid power mixer. Grr.
....it had chocolate. That outweighs just about every con you could possibly imagine (except for the lack of an electronic mixer)!!!

They were a semi-moderate hit among the four people who ended up attending the party! (Just to clarify, 6 people in my French class all planned to get together to watch La Vie En Rose for our "culture credit." 2 of them didn't show. Sucks for them.) Considering my cookie bars' rivals were a bag of Lays Baked Potato Chips, 32 bags of movie-theater-style popcorn, and some Halloween cookies, I take this to be a significant triumph.

Happy Halloween to my not so cheesy blog-followers!

Misadventures in the Kitchen, Week THREE

The recipe I made for lunch today is none other than the one, the ONLY.....

Quesadilla!

Sadly, I forgot to bring my camera with me while I made the food, so I compensated by taking several pictures with my phone. Due to....well, I don't actually know because I'm generally technologically inept, but...due to some weird thing I don't get, I can't import the photos from my phone to my computer. And you are all left disappointed, I'm sure. Sorry about that. Hopefully I'll figure it out sometime soon, and I can update the post with visual PROOF that I did indeed cook the quesadilla.

In lieu of a picture, I shall simply describe its appearance to you, so that you may imagine it however you please. It was brown. (I felt like being healthy, so in order to counteract the large amount of butter I stuck in the frying pan, I used a whole wheat tortilla.) Since it was brown, I couldn't really tell when it was all the way done cooking, so I pretty much kept uncovering the cheese to see if it was melted. Looking back on it, that was probably not the best move, and I imagine it interrupted the cooking process in several different ways.

Pros:
Fast and pretty easy, so the hungry teenager didn't have to sit around and starve
I learned something new! Today, I learned that some tortillas are made with lard, but not the kind I used today!

Cons:
My hands were all greasy after I ate it, because I used an awful lot of butter, and I guess it didn't even get all the way saturated.
I have to wash the stupid pan now.

Again, I'm really sorry I don't have a picture for you guys, but I'll consult my Asian BFFs and have them explain how the cell phone ---> computer importing relationship works. And with any luck, y'all will get a picture pretty soon.

Misadventures in the Kitchen, Week TWO

Misadventures in the Kitchen, Week TWO (Ultra Belated Edition!) is the recipe I have been longing to make ever since the first time I ate it! I made.....

PASTA WITH TOMATOES, MOZZARELLA, AND WHITE BEANS

And it was deeeeelicious. I know you're all dying to see it, so here ya go. :)

YUMMEH. Now wipe that drool off your face, this post isn't done yet.

As for the close-up...

I ate three whole bowls of it, and just seeing it is making me STILL feel hungry!

Pros:
Mouth-wateringly scrumptious end product
Relatively simple to make

Cons:
Massively unfortunate clean-up job
Takes a fair chunk of time to prepare

My repertoire is expanding rapidly! Soon enough I'll have a show on Food Network! (For those of you out of the US, it's basically the cooking channel. Name is pretty self-explanatory. I don't mean to insult your intelligence, I'm just not sure if they broadcast it overseas.)

Hopefully next week's post will be on time! As per usual, all suggestions for my next meal are welcomed in the comments!

Misadventures in the Kitchen, Week ONE

Misadventures in the Kitchen, Week ONE was an all-American (I think), cheese-filled delight...*drum roll* A GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICH!

I won't lie, I've made a few before. But there is nothing more important than mastering the skill of the sandwich flip, and I figured it would be a great place to start my series (aka the very beginning). Oh my gosh, I'll be making Lobster Thermidor before you know it!

But as to my sandwich-making process...

Pros:
~Quick to make, which is critical, seeing as how I was STARVING after soccer practice
~Working closely with cheese
~Getting butter on my fingers

Cons:
~Have to keep checking the side on the bottom, because you KNOW it'll be waaaaay browner every .5 seconds
~Constant fretting about burning the sandwich
~Getting butter on my fingers

And the moment you've ALL been waiting for...

my sandwich!

Isn't it beee-yoootiful? I'm gonna call it Adrianna. I bet if I send the pic to NASA, they'll name a rocket space-thingy after her.

As always (just kidding, this is the first time!), I welcome any and all suggestions for next week. :)

P.S. Don't forget, tomorrow is Not So Cheesy's WEEKIVERSARY! AAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!!! ARE YOU EXCITED?! I'M EXCITED! LET'S DO THIS!