Cooking in Columbus: Apple-Stuffed Pork Loin et al.

Hello, Food Fans! It's been a while for many things, as they relate to this blog, chief among them being a meal post. Last night, Brianne and I ventured to a local Meijer and amidst a growing sense of hunger bought a slew of ingredients which will eventually find a place here. For dinner, and in under an hour and a half, we pulled together a meal which stuffed ourselves with ingredients costing in total no more than $15. On the menu: apple-stuffed pork loin with toasted white rice, seasoned kale with bacon, and angel food cake with strawberry-rhubarb compote.

Because It's Just Better with Bacon: Three Thanksgiving Side Dishes for 2013

Greetings, Foodies and Food Fans of the Blogosphere! Somehow the end of my first semester in graduate school has arrived and with it comes the rather hectic week of finals. That said, I need to take a quick break from all that to make a fun announcement (and finally get this post published). If you haven't seen via Facebook, LearningthroughFood has recently been catalogued on Very Good Recipes's website (linked here). Soon after, I signed on to join VGR webmaster Stéphane Gigandet (who recently launched http://openfoodfacts.org) and eleven other food bloggers from around the world as a judge for VGR's "Christmas Menu" recipe challenge which opened up earlier today! But before I get to that, I wanted to share with you my entries into VGR's "Thanksgiving Your Way" challenge (which you could join as well, until the 7th: http://verygoodrecipes.com/thanksgiving-challenge).

Coooki(e)ng!

Following the start of yesterday's Food and Culture Colloquium, my food ventures continued as I grocery shopped and began preparations for the first multi-course group dinner of the academic year coming from my house on Mulberry. An annual dinner meeting for our Paving the Way Ambassadors, this year's menu included: mixed greens with berries, toasted walnuts and crumbled goat cheese; baked vegetables; Italian herb chicken with long grain and wild rice; mint lemonade granita; and dark chocolate salted caramel bacon brownies.

Celebrating National Potato Day 2011 with a Potato Gratin

I don't know what is so different about this week, but it certainly hasn't been difficult finding dishes to make in celebration of national food holidays. Today of all days is the celebration of one of the easiest and most versatile starches to work with: National Potato Day. From the potato soup to potato puffs, poutine to potato salad, many easy dishes can be pulled together and under a very acceptable budget. To celebrate this year's day of the root crop I'm most familiar with, I made a potato gratin (also recognised as scalloped potatoes) with a Swiss cheese Mornay sauce (i.e., béchamel with shredded Swiss cheese). And I don't know about you, but it's tough to cook with potatoes and not have some sort of pork around; to that end, I also discovered my own way of making bacon bits... by twice frying them.

Textural Tastes in Bacon, Apple, and Brie

For the past week or two, I have been especially craving bacon (in actuality, when is this never the case?). And with an apple I still had sitting around from Bloomington, and leftover brie and puff pastry from last week's Paving the Way dinner, I finally got around to mixing all the textural tastes of bacon, apple, and brie in a tartlet form on two days ago.

Visit to Bloomington

One week ago today, I headed over to Bloomington, Indiana. Granted I'm a fan of the Midwest but I had a very specific reason for making the journey to this foodie-friendly city: Bloomington is where I foresee this potential food anthropologist's physical training ground for the intersection of food, research, and travel.

School Is Most Certainly in Session

Greetings, dear Reader! As you may have recognised, the start of the academic year has arrived and gone, bringing out the anxiety and excitement of a new year of possibilities, as well as the expected lack of time to take a break and cook. In the midst of these seemingly long time away from the blogosphere, it's surprising to realise that my last post was only three weeks ago (though I assure you I feel like I haven't sat down to write in at least a month). As can also be expected, the new year also brought about many food gatherings which resulted in me not necessarily needing to cook. To bring you all up to speed--because I have an even more exciting post in the works--I wanted to share some photos and short stories that have been filed away on my computer for far too long. ps/ The above photo is the salted caramel bacon brownie variation of the salted caramel brownie I made in late August.

Just Another Day of Cooking

Today in the village of Granville--and in much of the Midwest, it seemed--the weather was near perfect and incredibly motivating. With road trip/fall type music playing, I took a brisk walk back and forth to church. On my return journey, food found its way to the foreground of my mind (it didn't hurt it was also lunch time) and I conceived the notion of cooking some carbonara. When I got back, I turned on the tv, set it to the Food Network, and pulled up my last go at this simple dish. This time around I used lemon-lime soda instead of white wine and somehow came up with my best attempt to date.

Stuffed Thin Crust Cheese and Bacon Pan Pizza

About two weeks ago, I made my own pizza dough and had yet to use up the remaining half of it. And with bacon, cheese, and a slew of other ingredients that aren't necessarily the healthiest, I set out to make a stuffed thin crust cheese and bacon pan pizza... just because.

Today's Sunday Brunch Dish: White Wine Bacon Orzo with Green Beans and Mushrooms

Of the many things that signify breakfast, if not at the very least brunch, bacon is perhaps the most recognisable. And cognisant of the leftovers still in my fridge from Wednesday's six course extravaganza, I needed to make something that combined these together. With the help of some white wine and a handful of orzo, I came up with a great brunch dish for two (or one... if you're either really hungry or think it's as good as I think it is).

Oh, and I had thought I was being very original with this particular dish, but it turns out I'm not the only one who thinks bacon and pasta go well together. :)

This Morning's Midnight Meal: Two-Story Chocolate Chip Pancakes with Nutella, Warm Chocolate Minute Milk, and Crispy Bacon

Yesterday afternoon, I finally received my re-ordered pots and pans that my sister had bought for my Christmas gift; subsequently, I began planning for a Super Bowl feast as the first meal with the cookware. Despite all that planning (which may or may not actually happen), notes of hunger as I watched "ICA: Battle Clams" were taken as a sign that the cookware needed to be broken in sooner rather than later. Just an hour beforehand I randomly thought about pancakes and how I could make those from scratch, without boxed pancake mix. And so, dear reader, I present to you my midnight meal, which included a successful batch of what I'm calling "2-story chocolate chip pancakes."

Cold Weather Cooking and Comfort Food

After finishing up my last blog post, imagine my surprise when I got a message a few hours later from the college saying campus was closed. Well, that meant two things for me: more time to catch up on sleep and an early afternoon of cooking ahead. After making the gnocchi a few days ago, I had to think of something I could make to use up more of my stored mini redskin potatoes. Being able to finish up the remaining chicken stock sitting in my fridge since the pupusa night would also be a plus. Thankfully, two recipes took up much of the potatoes and got the stock out of the fridge. Let's take a trip to Québec for some poutine and return back to the Midwest for some bacon cheddar potato soup.

Béchamel, Attempt 2 (Successful); Meringue, Attempt 1 (Not so much)

It's a bit difficult to spend time plating and taking photos while having hungry guests, so this was all tastier than this photo leads you to believe...

This evening, I set out to master my béchamel/Mornay sauce and came across an astounding revelation. Okay, it wasn't exactly astounding, but I was certainly geeked about it: the proportional ratio for this sauce is 1:1, 1:1, 1:1. For the roux, for every tablespoon of butter you melt, incorporate a tablespoon of flour. And for every tablespoon, you need an equivalent cup. For every cup of milk you mix into the roux, add a cup of cheese off the heat. Also add a pinch of sea salt and a pinch of ground black pepper, to taste, off the heat as well. You can finish the sauce off with a touch of nutmeg or for the recipe below, paprika. So, all of that said, two of the guys in the res hall I live in joined me for tonight's culinary tasting lab, or rather "dinner." Tonight's menu included empanadas, mac 'n cheese (with béchamel and bacon, and a side of broccoli), and nectarine blueberry meringue pie. In addition to my overjoy when it came to this whole ratio deal, I should also note that the majority of this meal was Food Network chef guided and inspired.