Tonight, I made chocolate covered pretzel rods as another contribution to my co-worker Maria’s fund-raising efforts. Can I just say that choco-pretzels are so easy! All you have to do is melt a bag of chocolate chips in a double-boiler, add a teaspoon or two of oil to prevent the chocolate from separating, and then dip the pretzels in the chocolate once it’s melted. Then let them set over night in the refrigerator and you’re done. Give it a try!
One of my co-workers, Maria, is going to Nicaragua in two weeks to serve as a translator for Hope Clinic International. According to Maria, “The purpose of the trip is to provide medical and surgical help to children that would otherwise not receive medical attention. The medical team cares for between 80 and 100 children per day, conducting walk-in pediatric clinics in partnership with the Saint Vincent DePaul Society in Nicaragua.” Very cool.
In order to raise money for her trip, Maria is conducting a bake sale all week at my office. To help out, tonight I made the jalapeño cheddar scones from Smitten Kitchen. I already tasted one, and it was pretty good. Hope everyone at the office likes them!
p.s. If any readers out there are interested in making a donation towards Maria’s trip (even a few dollars would help!), leave me a comment and I’ll get in contact with you about how. Thanks!
On day 22 of my 366 project, I made bagels for the first time ever using the recipe from Bread Baker’s Apprentice. Despite the fact that I used all-purpose flour instead of high gluten flour, forget to add the sugar, and didn’t let them sit overnight, they still turned out pretty darn good.Turns out bagels are pretty easy to make and are just about as forgiving of mistakes as regular white bread. Yay!
Note: The bagel recipe I used is available on the website The Fresh Loaf.
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Tonight, I made a giant pot of black bean soup. It was so giant, in fact, that it required 26 cups of water, 28 cloves of garlic, and 2 pounds of beans (and lots more of other stuff, too).
The result is enough tasty soup for the soup exchange I’m doing with co-workers (I needed to make 4 servings to distribute out to people), as well as plenty of soup for freezing. Yay!
For day 8 of the Making Made project, I made a pork shoulder roast from a recipe by Working Class Foodies that I was dying to try. I invited my friends Mike and Christina over and had a lovely dinner with them, my roommate, and my boyfriend Jim. The roast required 12 hours of marinating and cooking, but it was very easy to prepare and turned out amazing, with a salty sweet crust on the outside and tender pieces of fall-apart meat on the inside.
Despite being a Korean recipe, we ate it with pitas, hummus, rice, roasted red and green peppers, and a salad. Jim also made the scallion ginger sauce and the jalapeño garlic that Working Class Foodies recommend and they complemented the middle-eastern flavors nicely. A successful Korean-Middle Eastern fusion dinner!
The photos above show (1) the finished pork roast and the roasted peppers, (2) the roast with the sugar-salt rub on it, (3) the roast in the oven after about 3 hours of cooking, (4) and the roast messily carved up on the table just before we ate.
Making Made 