RULES
1. Post these rules.
2. You must post 11 random things about yourself.
3. Answer the questions the person who tagged you set for you in their post.
4. Create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.
5. Go to their blog and tell them you’ve tagged them.
6. No stuff in the tagging section about you are tagged if you are reading this. You legitimately have to tag 11 people.

Eleven Random Things About Me:

1.  Dishwashing is my least favorite chore in the whole world.
2.  I don’t like drinking cold water unless it’s really hot out.
3.  My first job was as a barista in a tiny coffee shop in Maine.
4. One of my life goals is to be a published author.  I have no idea what the publication is going to be about, however.
5.  I don’t like peas.
6.  I have never broken a bone.
7.   In the course of my life I have, at different times, collected rocks, post cards, stickers, elephants, and elongated souvenir pennies.
8.  Once upon a time, I was going to earn my PhD in history and work as a museum curator.
9.  I was a Girl Scout until shortly before leaving for college.  I earned my Gold Award (the highest award available, like the Boy Scout Eagle Award) for redesigning our town library’s website.
10.  Last Friday, one of my students gave me a beautiful clay bowl he made in art class.  It made me cry and then I had to explain to a bunch of students that I was happy, not sad.
11.  Roller coasters scare me and I refuse to ride them.

Halley’s Questions for Me:

1.  Do you speak any foreign languages?
I took Spanish for 4 years in high school, but I tested out of my college requirement and as a result haven’t really used it since.  I like to pretend I can speak Spanish, but I really can’t.

2.  Savory or sweet?
Um…savory, I think, but it really depends on my mood.  Generally speaking though, I’d just as soon have cheese as chocolate.

3.  Have you ever sent a plate back to kitchen at a restaurant?
No, but I’m not a picky person.  If I didn’t have to cook it AND I don’t have to do the dishes, it’s good enough for me.

4.  Do you drive a car everyday?
Not exactly.  Brian and I are a one car couple and we work at the same place.  He almost always drives.  So unless I’m going somewhere on my own, I don’t drive.

5.  What’s the best thing you’ve ever won?
I won a speech contest in my 11th grade English class.  I didn’t place in the whole grade competition, but I was really happy with beating everyone else in my class.

6.  Cats or dogs?
Cats.

7.  What is your favorite month of the year?
September.  I love the weather and the start of a new school year.

8.  Do you recycle?
Not as much as I’d like to, but living in an apartment limits that somewhat.  Someday I’ll hopefully have a place to store my recyclables and do some composting.

9.  What’s the fanciest dish you can make at home?
Hm…I’m not sure it’s the fanciest, but I make an awesome broccoli lasagna.

10.  What is your favorite kitchen gadget?
My KitchenAid stand mixer.

11.  When did you start your blog?
December 29, 2008.

Krista’s Questions for Me:

1.  What is one song you can listen to on repeat over and over and over again?
I don’t think I have such a song.  I get tired of music pretty easily—listen to one song a ton for weeks and then can’t listen to it for a long time following.  Plus I like variety.

2.  If you won a week long all expenses paid trip to somewhere in the U.S., where would you go?
Hawaii, mostly because it’s expensive and would require air travel.  I’m trying to visit all 50 states and Hawaii is definitely one I’m concerned about making happen.

3.  What was your favorite childhood cartoon?
I feel like I wasn’t really a big cartoon person.  I also feel like my sister is going to comment and remind me of some show I’d completely forgotten about.  I do remember disliking a lot of the cartoons she liked to watch.

4.  Have you ever been part of a team sport?
Yes, but not any time in recent history.  Way back when I used to play rec soccer in New Jersey, but I was pretty bad and not as into it as many of my peers.  Looking back I definitely wish I’d done more with sports, even on a casual level.

5.  What is the last book you read?
I recently finished John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars and now I’m in the midst of The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.  I’m a little concerned that I’m not going to finish it though; the writing is sort of strange.

6.  Cupcake, cookie or donut?
Presuming all of the above are of equal quality, I’ll take a cookie.

7.  What is one thing you do to keep yourself centered?
I try to start every day reading my bible and finish every day reading something else.  Also, cooking. 

8.  Beer, wine, or soda?
Wine, I guess.  Sometimes beer.  Almost never soda.

9.  What is the strangest food you’ve tried?
Seitan?  I don’t really think that bison or calamari are that weird, although I’m sure they are to some people.  I tried garlic ice cream once.

10. What was your first concert?
Good question.  I’ve been to a lot of small scale independent and/or Christian concerts throughout my life, but I’d be hard pressed to remember the first one.

11.  Are you superstitious?
No, although every time the clock says 11:11, I think of one of my friends and sometimes knock on wood in her honor.

Questions For You:

1.  What was your favorite food growing up?
2.  Would you ever skydive?
3.  What do you consider your greatest accomplishment thus far?
4.  What was the first record/cassette/CD/MP3 (I have a wide audience!) you purchased?
5.  How do you feel about thrift stores?
6.  Which is better: being the oldest child or the youngest?
7.  Did you ever attempt running away from home?
8.  Describe the best gift you ever received.
9.  What is your favorite quote?
10.  If you had to get a tattoo, what would you get?
11.  What would your dream job be?

Rule Breaking

It seems to me that this post has largely run it’s course.  I know a lot of people have done it already and I don’t want to make someone who’s not interested feel obligated.  So, because sometimes rules are made to be broken (see: vegan sausage with eggs), I’m not going to follow rules 5 and 6.  I don’t think I’ll be excommunicated from the blogger community for doing so.

If you’re interested in doing this, please post your replies to my 11 eleven questions and/or your 11 random things on your own blog or in the comments below.  I look forward to reading them!

Mashable has a whole section dedicated to all it’s Pinterest posts.  My favorites have included their Pinterest Beginner’s Guide, the Top Brands on Pinterest (several of which I’m now following) and this study which showed that Pinterest drives more traffic than Google+, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Evan was one of the first people to pick up on the Pinterest trend and Healthy Living Blogs picked up his post.

A lot of bloggers pin their own content.  While that’s perfectly legal, Katy Widrick wrote a really interesting post about why she doesn’t pin her own stuff.    I think I agree with her and, at least for the time being, any pins of Relishments’ content are going to have to be put up by readers.

There’s a ton of food pins on Pinterest, so the Kitchn figured out what we like to eat, based on pins.  Did you know edible rainbows are a Pinterest food group?

Janetha created one of the most comprehensive guides to getting started on Pinterest that I’ve ever seen.

Want to use Pinterest to market your business?  Bit Rebels has some suggestions.

Foodies to Follow on Pinterest:

• Halley from Blunder Construction
• Kelly from Brownies and Zucchini
• Kevin from Closet Cooking
• Endless Simmer
• Epicurious
• Food 52
• Food Network
• Food Republic
• Morgan from Life After Bagels
• Holly from The Healthy Everythingtarian
• Jessica from How Sweet Eats
• The Kitchn
• Paula Deen
• Sarah from Peas and Thank You
• Real Simple
• Ree Drummond, the Pioneer Woman
• Julie from Savvy Eats
• Serious Eats
• Whole Foods

If I didn’t include a link to your Pinterest boards, please share it in the comments below.  And of course, you can follow me!

Pork shoulder was on sale at the supermarket, which was nice, but the smallest one was 6 pounds.  Not the end of the world; I’d bought big roasts, cut them in half and frozen half before.  No such luck this time, the roast I’d bought was still bone in.  After a brief freak out that 6 pounds of meat was too much for my slow cooker to handle and that the seasoning packet wasn’t enough, I found solace in the Crock-Pot website and decided simply to double the additional ingredients (ketchup and brown sugar) listed on the seasoning packet.

On my way to Bible study Monday night, it occurred to me that I hadn’t really planned anything for Valentine’s Day, which is totally unlike me.  Sure, there was that huge piece of meat Brian and I had just wrestled with, but I had no sides planned, no card bought and the table wasn’t cleared off to eat at.  At least I’d decided I was going to make pudding for dessert and I could pray that Brian was serious when he’d said he wasn’t really doing anything for me.

Tuesday afternoon we arrived home to a delicious smelling pork shoulder in the Crock-Pot.  At least that had worked out.  I then proceeded to roast beets that I mistook for rutabagas.  I’m still not sure how that happened, but since I’m still iffy on beets, it was not a good choice.

Even the pudding gave me a brief scare, taking longer to thicken than it was supposed to.  Luckily my last minute substitution of 1 cup 1% milk and 1 cup half-and-half instead of the whole milk I neglected to buy worked out fine.  I’d never made pudding from scratch before, but it was pretty simple and I’d certainly do it again.

All that to say, I wasn’t happy.  This wasn’t the gorgeous, perfect Valentine’s Day meal I’d envisioned (or run out of time to envision).  Luckily, I have the best husband in the world and he was pretty content with the huge meat sandwich in front of him.  We enjoyed an episode of NCIS while we ate, followed by playing games and a few episodes of How I Met Your Mother. 

I still have plans to cook up a romantic dinner on a weekend evening in the near future, but overall the night was a pretty good one in the end.

The cookie swap idea was originally born out of the fact that in December 2010, I attended 2 cookie swaps and had a great time.  I love having an excuse to bake.  But  this year, just a week or so before Christmas, I realized that I hadn’t been invited to any.  Granted, that changed the following day, but by then I’d already posted on Facebook asking some of my local friends if they’d like to attend a swap after the holidays.  The idea was born and I had to go through with it.

In addition to giving my friends and I an opportunity to hang out and relax, the cookie swap also allowed me the chance to use my dishes, show off my tea collection and put my Laurel Thatcher Ulrich quote napkins to good use.

Around 7:00 last Friday night, 8 of my closest local friends from school, church and blogging came over bearing delicious cookies.  We watched excitedly as my once ample dining room table filled up. 

I had a really great time playing hostess and watching other people enjoy themselves.  Several of my friends commented that February is a much less stressful time to have a cookie swap and I feel like the weekend before Valentine’s Day was especially nice.  Maybe I’ll make my post-holiday cookie swap an annual event?

If I do, there are a few things I want to remember:

• Not everyone is going to take home their allotted amount of cookies.  Whatever’s leftover is going to belong to the host.  In some ways, this is awesome, but we have a lot of cookies in our freezer as a result.
• Having guests bring their recipes with them them is an awesome idea, especially if not all the invitees know each other.
• People are going to understand if you don’t have everything in the world available, but it’s easy to make sure you have some things, like ice cubes.

Stories/Tips:

Completely at a loss for what to do on Tuesday?  Check out the Easy Valentine’s Day Ideas section on Real Simple.

Food Republic has suggestions for what to eat and drink on Valentine’s Day, no matter what your relationship status is.  Though I certainly don’t agree with some of their suggestions…  The site also has a list of terrible date ideas, in case you’re really looking for a way to mess things up.

Zagat conducted a Valentine’s Day survey this year and the results are pretty interesting.  Brian and I are not planning to spend $147 on eating out and $88 on gifts, at least as far as I know.

Gifts:

At the very least, you should be giving your significant other a card. Mashable has a collection of geeky ones, if that’s your thing.

Generally speaking, gift guides are pretty hit or miss, but I love almost every item on Food Republic’s collection of “Valentine’s Day Gifts for Your Food Freak”.

Food related gifts for the 5 senses, from Chow.  I think it would be really cute to give a gift that included something for every sense some day…maybe I’ll start working on that one…

Want to help the planet while you make someone’s day?  Check out Huffington Post’s suggestions for “green” gifts.

I’m not usually into cutesy cooking tools, but some of these heart shaped kitchen accessories mentioned on The Kitchn are hard to resist.

Still need more ideas?  Mashable has 12 Pinterest boards to inspire you and Apartment Therapy reminds us that Pinterest can be “the clueless boyfriend’s Valentine’s Day lifesaver”

Want to make your present look awesome?  The Kitchn has some links to adorable DIY packaging ideas.

Recipes:

Chow has a collection of classic Valentine’s Day dishes, including crab cakes, fondue, lobster and filet mignon.  Similarly, there are 10 romantic dinners for 2 on Cooking Light.

Sweet-and-Spicy Chocolate Mousse (Chicago Tribune)

How to make Heart Shaped Pizza and Pepperoni (Slice)

15 Vegan Recipes for Valentine’s Day (Huffington Post)

A Health Lover’s Menu for Valentine’s Day – Double Celery Soup, Porcini-Crusted Beef Tenderloin Steaks, Chard with Raisins and Chocolate Mocha Swirl Cheesecake (Huffington Post)

Finally, what’s Valentine’s Day without chocolate?  Cooking Light has compiled their 16 best chocolate recipes and Real Simple has their 25 best romantic desserts (orange soufflé?  raspberry smores?  yes, please!)

image via Flikr

This purchase is especially interesting in light of the fact that eggs are part of our CSA share.  As a result, I very very seldom ever buy eggs at the grocery store.  So when I arrived home from the store last weekend I found myself in possession of the 3 dozen eggs I’d just purchased, plus 8 we had from our last CSA pick up.  That’s a lot of eggs.

I did cook with my class; that used 1 dozen eggs.  What else to do with eggs?  Make a quiche, of course!

Even though I had a bunch of quiche recipes in Evernote, I decided I wanted to make Quiche Lorraine.  Through the power of Google, I discovered this basic recipe from Betty Crocker.   I only used 4 slices of bacon and added 4 diced button mushrooms instead.  Somehow my measurements were still a bit off and I ended up with more filling than could fit in the quiche, but I baked it separately and everything worked out.  One of my favorite things about this recipe is that it calls for shortening in the crust instead of butter, which makes it much easier to blend all of the crust ingredients together.

The resulting quiche came out surprisingly well.  I did cook it for about 15 minutes longer than the recipe suggested, which seems to be a common theme in the comments.  It tasted really excellent, lasted us 3 meals and came out of the pan astoundingly well.  This quiche recipe is definitely going to go into the regular rotation.

Of course, the quiche only uses 4 eggs.  I boiled 6 today, but there’s still 18 eggs hanging out in our fridge.  Suggestions?

In general, I’m fairly anti-fake meat.  I don’t mind the occasional tofu or tempeh, and I like making my own veggie/bean burgers, but I try to avoid premade veggie burgers, chick’n or animal-free sausages.  But this recipe doesn’t contain anything particularly strange; the only ingredient I didn’t have in my pantry already was vital wheat gluten. 

Assembly of these sausages was incredibly simple.  Basically you mash a cup of beans, add the rest of the ingredients and stir to combine.  Isa recommends combining the ingredients in using the order listed, but once I added the vital wheat gluten (ingredient # 5), the mixture became sticky, thick and hard to stir (kind of like meat!)  I’m no expert, but it seems to me that you could blend all the spices together, stir them into the liquids and add the vital wheat gluten last in order to have a more even mixture.  After the mixture is made, you divide it into 4 parts and wrap each part in a square of foil, “like a tootsie roll”.

The steaming made me a bit nervous.  The most steaming I’d ever done is a handful of vegetables for a few minutes.  I wasn’t sure my pot wouldn’t run out of water during the 40 minute steaming time.  Also, apparently my steamer basket is sort of on its last legs.  But there was plenty of water still in the pot when time was up.

This recipe is extremely simple variation on seitan (which I’ve only had once, about a year ago).  I think it would be really neat to adjust the flavorings.  Perhaps create breakfast sausage?   The only downside was that the recipe used almost the entire 10 ounce box of vital wheat gluten which, at $4.39 was still much cheaper than pork sausage, but is slightly more cost prohibitive than a can of beans.  I suspect I may be able to find vital wheat gluten for less than my local co-op sells it for; I’ll be keeping my eyes open.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that, just as the recipe had promised, the steaming shaped the sausages into tubes that actually did look like sausage.  The flavor was pretty close to a regular sausage, although the texture was different enough from meat to make it clear that it wasn’t.  Still, they were pretty delicious and I’ll probably make them again in the future.  And then we served the sausage with eggs…which I only realized was a contradiction as I cooked them.  But that’s just the way things work around here.

My recent focus on whole grains has made me extra aware of them around the web:

Chow has a list of 25 tasty ways to eat more whole grains.

General Mills has a Whole Grain Nation website that they’re using to promote their whole grain products.  It’s certainly an interesting marketing move, though I hope it doesn’t make consumers think that Lucky Charms are nutritious.

Although those same lines, Huffington Post pointed out that “made with whole grains” is a phrase that means nothing on food labels, just like “natural”.

I still haven’t done much with quinoa, but this recipe for Quinoa Tabbouleh Salad on Closet Cooking sounds pretty tasty.  Similarly, Serious Eats has a Farro and Roasted Pepper Salad.

This guide to old world whole grains from The Wall Street Journal is really interesting.  I’ve had to look up several of the grains on the Whole Grain Council’s calendar, but  this list includes freekeh, which I’ve never heard of at all.(via The Kitchn)

Evan lists whole grains as one of his top 3 healthy foods for college cooking on Wannabe Chef.

Over on Zester Daily, Maria Speck encourages readers to serve and eat whole grains because they’re delicious, not because they’re “healthy”. 

According to my receipt, I saved 43% on groceries today.  Granted, I spent more than usual in order to do so, but the supermarket was running really excellent sales.  Also, it’s generally a bad choice to go food shopping on the Saturday afternoon before the Super Bowl.

When I went to our local food co-op to buy the vital wheat gluten to make vegan sausages the other day, I had to ask where it was.  Not because it was hard to find, but because every time I go I fail at finding something obvious.  Last time I was at the store I  it was hazelnuts.  (More about that vegan sausage on Monday!)

I need to come up with a good meal for Valentine’s Day.  Or at least a good dessert.  For a night when I have a meeting after school and work the next morning.  Suggestions?

Recently the amount of loose tea we’ve been purchasing and using has increased and I’m not sure what I’m going to do without my tea infusers.  I purchased a package of tea filters, largely for my upcoming cookie swap, but I feel like they’re sort of wasteful and wouldn’t last us very long (like, a month or so).

I emailed the company that manufactured them and they responded with the item numbers of 2 different, but similar, items that are still available on Amazon, but I haven’t been able to find anything close.  So I expanded my search even further.

Here are the current options in the running:

Tovolo Tea Infuser, $12.95 on Amazon

Jokari 229477 Total Tea Infuser, $11.14 on Amazon

Bodum Tastea Stainless Steel Tea Egg Infuser with Silicone Sleeve, $17.05 on Amazon

Rösle 95158 Tea Strainer, Fine Mesh, $18.95 on Amazon

Kitchen Supply Stainless Steel Mesh Tea Ball Infuser , $6.95 on Amazon

Suggestions?  I need an infuser that’s mesh or has really fine holes because some of our loose tea is tiny.