Whole Wheat Lemon Buttermilk Pancakes

If only all resolutions were this tasty…whole wheat flour and wheat bran accented with lemon. Enough said…

Hearty Homemade Granola

Unlike previous year’s resolutions, I decided to get started right away on my Culinary Resolutions for 2009. To the right, you will now see the “Ask Shaw Girl” box inviting readers to send in their cooking questions/dilemmas/cries for help. Hopefully there will actually be enough questions to make “Ask Shaw Girl” a monthly segment. If not, I guess I could get the kitties to offer up their queries (“Why do you make all of these things from scratch and then feed me from that bag you haul out? Where’s our homemade liver treats???”). I’ve also ordered Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything” (Amazon says I’ll have it on January 16th!!!!!) and plan on cooking my way through it in a (hopefully) weekly posting I’ll lovingly refer to as Bittman Thursdays. And most importantly, I’ve slowly started cooking more with whole grains…which brings me to the lovely granola of which this post is about…

Culinary Resolutions for 2009

Cookography put out a call to fellow food bloggers for their Culinary Resolutions for 2009. Me being a band wagon jumper, I sat down and contemplated what I would like to accomplish in 2009 (culinary wise that is…we won’t get into my hippie notion of “finding my center”). So without further ado, I present to you Shaw Girl’s Culinary Resolutions for 2009:

1. Use more whole grains in my baking/cooking. Remember Andrea Beaman from Top Chef? Well she has a book filled with healthy recipes and tips on eating seasonally called The Whole Truth: Eating and Recipe Guide. I bought it a few years back and actually followed it religiously for a while. But then I fell off the wagon…and into a vat of lovely bacon. I’ve not been the same since. I can attest to the difference it makes incorporating more whole grains into one’s diet and I really need to get back to that.
2. Prepare better for the lean produce months of Winter. During the Spring and Summer I was awash in fresh fruits, veggies and herbs. But unlike the very smart squirrel outside my window, I didn’t store any of it for the Winter’s endless time of tubers. So this Spring and Summer, I will plan ahead and freeze berries for the Winter, make and freeze various pestos and study up on other ways to freeze the bounties of Spring and Summer.
3. Better organize my kitchen. At one point I had a very organized kitchen…then I moved into a basement apartment. My lack of space should have made me more organized, but it’s done the exact opposite. Well no more! This year I vow to organize my seemingly endless amounts of kitchen gadgets and supplies to make me a more efficient cook/baker.
4. Try to use more natural light when photographing my creations. I admit that I cook and bake whenever the mood strikes me, not in accordance to natural light availability. Because of this, I am often frustrated with the glossy look to my photos. Custom white balance and a dSLR can only do so much when fighting the tungsten present in most flourescent light. My best photographs are ones in which I shot in natural light. With that in mind, I am going to try to shoot more during the few snippets of good light available to me…in my basement apartment.
5. Start a new blog series. I answer questions all the time about cooking and baking but never think about addressing them on my blog. I have been meaning to open up my blog to questions from readers with various culinary conundrums but I’ve also been meaning to clear off the top shelf in my closet. Sure I’m good for laughs and food porn, but I would also love to help share my love of cooking with others. With that in mind, if you have any culinary questions, email me at adventuresinshaw@gmail.com and I will be more than happy to address them (or at least attempt to address them..or ask more experienced people to guest blog and answer them for you).
6. FINALLY get a copy of Mark Bittman’s “How to Cook Everything”. I have frequently used recipes from this cookbook but don’t actually own it. So for 2009, I’m going to get a copy and cook something from it once a month. Even more daring? I will try to select recipes I’ve never made before or (wait for it) even eaten! This is daring and a little risky but I am going to give it a go!

So there…I’ve put them in the public domain for all to see in hopes that I will actually follow them. I’ve already started using more whole grains (will be sharing a fantastic recipe for granola this week) and I’m reading up on properly freezing pestos and sauces. That’s progress, right?

For more culinary resolutions, check out Pete Bakes, The Bitten Word or Joy the Baker!

In Search of DC’s Best Burger….

It all started when the Boy and I aimlessly wandered into Trio on 17th Street in DC. I wasn’t really expecting much from the joint…it was just a compromise decision because we were both very hungry. I usually don’t eat a lot of red meat (or any meat for that matter…especially if you take a look at my new recipe index), but that night I really, really wanted a burger. I ordered the bacon cheeseburger (because everything tastes better with bacon…and uhmm we all know my unholy love for cheese), thinking I could at least get a burger better than McDonald’s at a local joint. What was placed before me, however, was ohhhhh soooo much more.

Mini Key Lime Cheesecakes

I have the attention span of a five year old…after they have devoured all of their Halloween candy. It’s sad really because there are times when said short attention span gets the better of me. Just recently, while driving, I got distracted by my Blackberry and missed a turn. And by distracted, I mean I was busy taking a picture of me driving in my mother’s Miata…so I could post it on Facebook (disclaimer: I was at a stop light, so it wasn’t like I was barreling down the streets of Georgia with one hand on the wheel and the other on my Blackberry trying to strike a pose).

My attention span only gets shorter when a nifty new gadget or piece of gear is in my general vicinity (and by general vicinity I mean within a ten mile radius because I can sniff out new techie things like a police dog sniffing out cocaine at an airport in Miami circa 1983). So it really shouldn’t come as a surprise that when I set out to make these mini key lime cheesecakes for our New Year’s Eve celebration, my new baby kept distracting me. Sure, this is the same camera model I had earlier in the year. But I just now got around to replacing the one that had to be sent back due to a defective flash. And this time I actually read the owner’s manual from cover to cover…and discovered you can control the camera from your LAPTOP!!! I don’t need no stinkin’ camera remote, I have my Macbook! Wait, where was I going with this post????

Dinner and a Movie

I must first apologize for the less than stellar quality of the photos in this post. The idea for it came well after cooking was underway and truth be told, I was freakin’ hungry. While this may seem to be an ordinary steak dinner, it is not. It is sooo much more and was sooo much tastier because someone else cooked it for me.

Pajama Party Menu…Or Things To Stuff in My Face as the Ball Drops

As I mentioned previously, instead of dealing with crowded restaurants or bars or annoying drunk people at parties (not that I ever enjoy dealing with annoying drunk people), I am staying in on New Year’s Eve for a grown up pajama party. The Boy is in charge of movies and I am in charge of food, so I’ve been pouring over cookbooks and food blogs trying to find fun and creative but simple foods to nosh on. I am also working on a signature cocktail that we will both love to ring in 2009. So far I’ve come up with these ideas:

• A mini rift on these lovely Philly Steve’steak sandwiches over at Cooking with Anne. To make them more portable, I was considering making them sliders using homemade buns and Monterey Jack cheese.
• Since I love, love, love onion rings, I couldn’t pass up putting these drool worthy onion strings on the menu (note to self, make sure to have PLENTY of breath mints on hand for that midnight kiss)
• This lovely spinach artichoke dip with (wait for it) homemade Wheat Thins (thanks again Pete Bakes!)
• Mini key lime cheesecake tarts OR mini apple pie tarts

Considering it’s just the two of us, I think that is plenty to bring in the New Year! Believe it or not, most of these things can be done ahead of time (both the wheat thins and buns for the sliders for instance) and the Boy proved to be fairly adept in the kitchen this weekend (more on that later), so I’m set! Now I just need to come up with a kick ass cocktail…any suggestions?

Banana Coconut Pecan Bread

There it was Christmas Eve and I was standing in my Mother’s kitchen mulling over what to do for Christmas morning breakfast. My mom really isn’t a baker, so ingredients were limited. But she just so happened to have some bananas, some pecans (from her CSA!!!) and some coconut all lying around. There was also buttermilk I had bought for the Red Velvet Cupcakes I was going to make for Christmas the next day. So I decided to whip together a banana bread with some coconut and pecans thrown in…now all I had to do was orient myself with Mom’s kitchen.

Carmelized Onion, Spinach and Mushroom Pizza with Garlic White Sauce

I really should be baking…

I really, really should be baking…

Damnit, why are you making a pizza? Did you not hear me? You should be BAKING!!!!

Why do I even bother fighting my foodie urges?

Beignets

There are probably a list of things I shouldn’t be allowed to do without adult supervision:

• Play with matches
• Go to the grocery store (I inevitably buy way more than originally intended)
• Okay, anything involving fire

After making these beignets, we should probably add deep frying to this list.