Food | BulgingButtons

July 2, 2013
by BulgingButtons 2 Comments

Listen to Me!

Cover of Julie & Julia

Cover of "Mastering the Art of French Coo...

Cover via Amazon

The other night we watched Julie and Julia again. For about the fifty-third time. My sweetheart loves it, and I admit I do too. This time, though, I paid closer attention to the blogging aspect of the film. If you’re unfamiliar with it (shame on you) go get it right away and watch it. Amy Adams is adorable, and Meryl Streep makes a surprisingly wonderful Julia Child. The gist of the story is that New Yorker Julie Powell cooked and blogged her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Along the way, the film provides wonderful flashbacks to Julia’s experiences in Paris and beyond. From this cooking and blogging experiment, Julie got her own book deal and, obviously, a movie. Now I’m no Julie Powell, and I’m not looking for Amy Adams to play me (maybe Melissa McCarthy would consider it?), but I am intrigued by the whole blogging scene. I’m still trying to figure it out, and trying to find a place for bulgingbuttons in the very large and crowded world of the internet.

I’ve been reading a bunch of blogs, and man, am I impressed! They are fancy, fancy, fancy. They have calendars and polls and buttons and contests and linky parties (I’m still not sure what those are) and all sorts of exciting things. I’m not there yet. What I do have is a voice, a decent camera, and a desire to be heard. I will keep sharing what it going on in my head, with the idea that at some point someone will read it and find some worth in it. In the meantime, I will continue to write for myself. This is proving to be a great outlet for me and good practice for developing some discipline. If I can’t figure out discipline with eating and exercise, at least I can with writing. And by the way, if you do find something worthwhile, please comment, or share, or hit the like button, or something! I’d love to know that I’m not all alone out there.

June 30, 2013
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Eating my Veggies

The veggie portion of Chicken Cacciatore

I admit it, I have horrible eating habits. I love food, but not all food. Of course the food I love most is the food that is the worst for me and the foods I tend to steer clear of are the ones that are usually quite nutritious. Case in point, my two least favorite foods (as in a polite, “No thank you” every time I see them) are watermelon and cucumbers. I know many of you are groaning inwardly at this moment, or else your jaw has hit the ground. Not like watermelon? Is she crazy? Cucumbers? Who doesn’t like cucumbers? Well, I don’t. Sorry. But we’re not here to debate the merits of any particular fruit or vegetable, at least not right now. What we’re here to do is to celebrate the amazing dinner that my sweetheart and I made and devoured last night.

The man I love is incredible and multifaceted (he’s also the photographer who took that lovely banner photo). This wonderful man also loves to watch cooking shows and actually try out the recipes. Well, lucky for me he caught an episode of Lidia’s Italy. She was making Chicken Cacciatore and he was intrigued. Off to the store we went in search of all the right ingredients. A short while later we were home and cooking. I was his sous chef, chopping onions and slicing gorgeous orange and yellow and red peppers. Before long the kitchen was filled with the most heavenly aroma, and our Chicken Cacciatore was ready. We had ours with pasta and wine, and it was incredible. The best part about it? The vegetables! I’m not kidding. They were so good, and we actually used a little more than the recipe called for.

Now I know that this meal isn’t “diet” food, but it’s delicious wholesome food and it’s a whole lot better than a lot of the garbage I’ve eaten recently. Besides that, there was plenty left over for dinner tonight and even more for tomorrow. I love cooking once and eating three times! If you try out this recipe I would love to hear your feedback. Enjoy.

June 27, 2013
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Coming Clean

Chilled ganache and Cool Whip.

Oh my gosh. I lied to you already. That’s no way to start a relationship, but it happened. I signed off with every intention of hopping into the pool for a bit of exercise (and to cool off) but I ended up at the fridge instead.

Are you familiar with ganache? It is either pure heaven or pure evil, depending on your point of view. It’s the incredibly smooth delicious covering for a cake that isn’t a glaze and isn’t quite a frosting. It’s made of chocolate and cream, nothing else. The other day my sweetheart, who loves to bake, made a trial birthday cake for me. He decided to try ganache for the first time. The cake is gone, but there was some extra ganache that I made him save in the fridge (he would have thrown it out). Chilled ganache is similar to fudge. It’s even better with fat free cool whip. Don’t ask me how I know, just trust me.

Anyway, on my way to a spoonful of ganache, I remembered that I had to bring some brownies to a potluck lunch. Today. I hadn’t made them yet. I did some quick math and even quicker baking, and the swim went out the window. The good news is, the brownies were well received. I wonder how they would taste with ganache?