I'm making a garden!

I decided a while ago that I should have a vegetable garden. I'm not entirely sure why; I suppose I felt like it would be nice to have something to take care of, especially if that something gives me food in return. Unfortunately, I know nothing about gardening. NOTHING. So I turned to the Internet, which I figured would be of some help at least, and it sort of told me how far apart to plant things and what pH the soil should be. Things like this are sort of helpful, but it doesn't help me know how many bell pepper plants I should grow if I want a steady supply of bell peppers.

I made a list of what I want to plant, and dug a square in my yard, and drew a graph so that I could figure out where to put everything. I want peppers, tomatoes, onions, green beans and zucchini. (I'm not sure if it's entirely good to plant zucchini just so I can have an excuse to make zucchini bread, but that's what I'm doing.) My plan has six tomato plants and nine pepper plants and a row (about 8 feet) of onions and another row (also about 8 feet) of green beans. Oh, and two zucchini mounds. I sort of feel like I might want to eliminate one of the zucchini mounds in favor of more onions, because I basically use them all the time and I don't really use a lot of zucchini but I don't know. AT ALL. This is confusing.

So I remade my garden-plot in GIMP (basically open-source photoshop) and you can see it above. Each square is a square foot. The red T's are tomato plants, and the green P's are peppers, and the green G's are green beans, and the big Z circles are the zucchini mounds. That makes a lot of sense to me. Oh, and the sun isn't really sitting in my back yard. That just indicates the rough direction of the sun (which I didn't take into account at first but Mike pointed out that I probably don't want my tomatoes blocking the light for everything else and I reversed the whole thing).

So, I'll probably have occasional updates about how my vegetables are doing. I'm nervous about it because I have no idea what I'm doing and I might end up with a really weird amount of vegetables, but I suppose all that is learning for next year. I'm also nervous because I watched this video about vegetables and it scared me. Do I have to sing to them?

So if you have any advice for having a vegetable garden and you feel like giving it to me, that would be awesome. And I'll have the lentil recipe up soon; my plans to see the cookbook got postponed so I still don't have the right name for the dish and therefore don't want to post it yet. Soon, though.

Palak Paneer

I'm going to be honest here--I'm addicted to Indian food. And not just any Indian food. As much as I love the Chicken Korma that I posted about before, whenever I go to an Indian restaurant, I always--ALWAYS--get the Palak Paneer. Sometimes they try to trick me out of it by naming it something different. I think it is occasionally Saag Paneer, but I'm not making any promises here. If you order Saag Paneer and it isn't this, don't blame me.

It never occurred to me that I could make Palak Paneer at home until I had it at my dad's house. After that, I assumed that there were all sorts of weird ingredients that I'd need and didn't bother trying for...probably two months. I was right about the weird ingredients--having a nearby Indian grocery store is a HUGE plus for making this, if for no other reason than "the spices are really cheap." (I recently discovered a way to make Paneer at home, thus bypassing the need for an Indian grocery store, and I'm determined to try it at some point. I just haven't had a chance yet.)

I found the recipe on Recipezaar. I bet you're surprised. I'd consider trying a few different recipes in order to find the one I liked most, but honestly, this one is just about perfect. I only make one small change--I use fat-free half and half instead of heavy cream--and it's amazing.

RECIPE: Palak Paneer

Ingredients:

2 6-oz bags baby spinach (oops, this is another change--I use 6-oz bags even though it says 5-oz because I can't find 5-oz bags anywhere.)

1 large onion

1/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp chopped garlic (oh this was also a lie, I always use more garlic. But not a ton more here.)

1 chopped tomato

3 tbsp plain yogurt (don't buy this at the Indian grocery store unless you use it a lot, they don't usually carry small containers)

1 tbsp ground coriander

1/2 tsp garam masala

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp salt

8 ounces Paneer cheese, cubed

1/4 cup fat-free half and half

Directions

0. Chop the onions (about 1/2-inch to 1-inch square) and tomato. Wash and shred the spinach.

1. Saute the onions, cinnamon, cardamom and ginger in vegetable oil until the onions are soft and translucent.

2. Add garlic and chopped tomatoes, reduce heat to low.

3. After about 3 minutes, stir in one tablespoon of yogurt at a time. (The recipe says the small-amount-at-a-time thing prevents curdling, so I wouldn't mess with it. I haven't tried pouring it in all at once but I don't want to take that risk.)

4. Add the rest of the spices (coriander, garam masala, paprika and salt). Mix well.

5. Fill the pan with spinach (you won't be able to put it all in at once unless you have a much bigger frying pan than I do, in which case tell me where you got it), stir and let cook until the spinach reduces. Keep doing this until you've added all the spinach and it's all sitting there looking weird and not leafy. Cover and simmer for about 30 minutes.

6. Scoop about half the spinach mixture into a blender and puree. (This is optional. I didn't do it the first time I made this, and I did the second. It actually does affect the taste, which surprised me, but they were both delicious. If you puree it, it'll be closer to what you'd get at a restaurant.) Return the pureed spinach mixture to the pan (use a rubber spatula to get the blender as clean as possible!) and stir.

7. Add the half and half, stir, and let reduce so it's not soupy. AT THE SAME TIME put the Paneer cubes into a seperate (small) frying pan with just a little bit of oil and let the sides brown. Yes, it's cheese, but it doesn't melt. (You can also buy pre-fried Paneer, but I'd feel weird doing that.)

8. When the Palak has reached your desired consistence, add the Paneer. And you have Palak Paneer. Serve over basmati rice with some nice warm naan. Yum!

The original recipe says to cook the spinach with a little bit of water before doing anything else. I like to cook it into the rest of the food. I guess this is up to you.

I was so surprised when I found out that this is how Palak Paneer starts.

This was shortly after all the spinach reduced, before much of the water simmered off. It's more what your dish will look like if you don't blend the spinach.

I've decided that next time I make this, I'm making my own Paneer. I'm determined. This might mean that you'll see a homemade Paneer post within the next few weeks, and it might mean I don't make this again for months because making cheese sounds complicated and scary (though the instructions are really quite simple). Regardless, when it happens, you'll know. (I think I'll also buy some paneer. Just in case it goes wrong.)

This is much more filling than one would expect--I mean, it's spinach, right?--but I always make a lentil side dish. I'll be posting that either Monday or Tuesday, hopefully, after I've checked the cookbook I got it from to remember what the actual Indian name for it is. I just think of it as "lentils."

You say...wait, what? with Tortilla Bake recipe

I've had these pictures saved up for a while now and keep forgetting to post them. Has everyone seen this new "Kumato" thing in their local grocery store? It's apparently the New Tomato. I'm not entirely sure what its virtues are supposed to be. It's darker and has green and brown combined with the red of a normal tomato.

I read somewhere a while back that the insides of tomatoes--the slimy seedy part--has zero nutritional value and adds nothing to the flavor of anything, so I've gotten into the habit of scraping it out of my tomatoes before I cook with them. Generally it works to just cut the tomato in half and use a spoon to get the gross part out, and it also makes for a much nicer-looking end product.

I think the best part of the Kumato is that, when chopped, it looks like a pile of congealed blood. I want to think of them as 'blood tomatoes' because blood oranges are oranges that look sort of like blood, so why shouldn't tomatoes get the same credit?

Aaaaaanyway. Mike bought a package of the Kumatoes just to eat and see what they were like. He said they didn't taste any different from a normal tomato--or at least, not different enough to justify the expense. But at some point the Stop & Shop we go to had them on the 'reduced produce' rack simply because they'd somehow gotten out of their packaging, so they were very inexpensive and I figured I'd experiment with them. I didn't end up doing anything exciting, but I used them instead of tomatoes the next time I needed tomatoes in something, and that was a wonderful tortilla bake that I found on (surprise) Recipezaar. It was quite delicious, and amazingly fast--I usually assume that I'll be spending at least an hour in the kitchen, but this didn't take long to throw together and the time in the oven doesn't require me paying any attention to it.*

RECIPE: Black Bean Tortilla Bake
(Adapted from Recipezaar)

Ingredients
3 cloves of garlic, finely minced (or Zoom'd)
1 small onion, diced
3 small Kumatoes (or tomatoes), diced
1/2 cup chopped green onion
1/2 tsp chili powder
2 tsp cumin powder
8 oz. salsa (the fresher kind in the plastic container is so much better than the kind in jars)
1 (16 oz) can black beans
3 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
12 small corn tortillas (you'll layer them in an 8 or 9 inch square--if you wanted, you could use large tortillas and cut them to size)
Shredded cheddar cheese (I use Cabot Seriously Sharp and I think it's just about as good as cheddar gets)--you'll probably want a lot
Sour Cream (optional)

Instructions
STEP ZERO--PREHEAT OVEN TO 350 DEGREES
1. Chop or mince everything that needs chopping (the garlic, onion, kumatoes/tomatoes, and green onion.)
2. Heat some olive oil (probably about 2 tbsp) in a pan (or use cooking spray or butter or whatever your preference is). Toss in the chopped ingredients (garlic, onion, ku/tomatoes, green onion), the chili powder and the cumin. Saute until onion is tender and begins to clear.
3. Add the salsa and allow to cook for 5 minutes. While this is cooking, chop the cilantro if you haven't yet.
4. Add the beans and cilantro. Stir.
5. Spray a square baking pan, 8 or 9 inches. Layer the pan in the following order: 4 tortillas to cover as much of the pan as possible. Half the bean mixture. A third of the cheese. 4 more tortillas. The rest of the bean mixture. Half the remaining cheese. Four more tortillas. The rest of the cheese. (Honestly? You can screw around with the layering if you want. If you want bean mixture underneath your top cheese layer, then use a third each time instead of half. This is just how I did it, and it came out nice.)
6. Bake at 350 degrees (did you preheat the oven? I bet you didn't) for 20 minutes, covered (with tinfoil). Remove tinfoil and bake another 10 minutes uncovered, until the cheese is bubbly and delicious-looking.
7. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly. Cut into 4 or 6 pieces (I recommend 4 if you're serving this alone and 6 if you have other food to go with it).
8. Try to a piece out of the pan in-tact. Fail. Top with a dollop of sour cream and a sprig of fresh cilantro to try to make it look pretty, because it fell apart when you pulled it out of the pan. (The rest of them should come out fine, but that first one is tough.) Enjoy!

I don't know exactly why I find onions in a pan with spices so pretty. Something about it is just refreshing. And it smells SO good, especially when one of the spices is cumin (which is quickly becoming a new favorite, though I'm not sure it'll ever beat out cinnamon).

This is just about when I started getting excited--everything looked so tasty in the pan!

We foolishly cut it into six pieces. After each eating one, we decided to split a third because we should have just cut it into four pieces to begin with. These were the ones left over after we'd finished devouring the others.

I think this would be delicious with shredded chicken mixed in somewhere, so if you've got leftover chicken, pull it into small pieces and add it to the pan with the salsa. Yum. (A grocery store rotisserie chicken is really easy to pull apart and get a 'shredded' consistency--just don't use a strongly flavored one unless it would go with Mexican-style food!)

As for the kumatoes, I really don't think they added any special flavor that normal vine tomatoes wouldn't have added. Perhaps they have some wonderful nutritive values that I'm not aware of, but for now I'll be sticking to the normal red tomatoes that we all know and love.


*Doesn't require. That doesn't mean I won't sit there in front of the oven with the oven light on and observe its progress. Yes, I actually do this, and yes, I enjoy it. Watching cheese melt is fun!

Is Pretty Important?

I've never made a bundt cake before in my life. I don't even own a bundt pan. However, whenever I see a recipe for a bundt cake, they look so pretty and delicious that I get sad about not owning a bundt pan. When I saw a recipe for Orange Chocolate Chunk Bundt Cake on eat me, delicious, I complained to Mike about my lack of a bundt pan, and he said that he had one--problem solved! So when it was his mom's birthday, we thought it would be a good time to try out this recipe. The picture looked so pretty, with ganache dripping down the side, and it just seemed like the perfect idea. We got some oranges and chocolate chips and made sure we had everything we needed.

I haven't zested anything for years. Last time I did, it was to make key lime pie (which I really want to do again, perhaps when it feels more like summer) and I don't think I've ever zested oranges. We got huge oranges, though, and ended up with enough zest after only two of them.

We now have a basic progression of cake. First the batter goes into the pan (making the batter wasn't all that interesting).

Then the pan goes into the oven. And then it comes out of the oven, and sits and cools for a long time so that it doesn't fall apart.

And then the cake falls apart anyway when we try to remove it from the pan.

I don't get it. Mike buttered and floured the pan, which he's usually very good at, and he even thought he did so in excess this time. And, with a normal cake, you can sorta stick a knife around the edges and a spatula of some sort under it and get it out and piece it together so it looks slightly reasonable, and it'll look okay anyway because you're frosting the thing. But with all the curves and weird edges in a bundt pan, we had to pry slowly and basically ended up crumbling half of what was stuck in the pan. And, let's be honest, I'm female and it's my boyfriend's mom's birthday and I suggest making a cake and it falls apart and I flip out. I'm not entirely sure how much Mike noticed that I was flipping out, because he managed to keep his cool and attempt to piece the cake together correctly (it was like one of those weird 3D puzzles but missing some pieces). There was a little ring of 'not done' on the bottom of the cake, and I'd say maybe that's why it fell apart, but that's not the part that fell apart at all. And we could have kept it in the oven longer to fix that, but perhaps it fell apart because the rest of it was overdone and really we should have looked at the positioning in the oven before we started, but you'd think that it having been on the top rack would mean the top (well, bottom) would be the part that came out overdone, right? And I probably stopped making any sense a while ago but the point is I'm really, really glad the recipe for the ganache made way more than originally pictured and we were able to cover the whole thing and it still tasted delicious. And looked, if nothing else, acceptable.

I don't go for pretty when I bake. It's not really the point. It's wonderful when it happens, but I'm usually in a rush and don't have time to care if the pie crust cracks when I put it on top of everything else, so I just hope it cracks in an artistic way instead of a messy, ugly way. And I guess it's the same with cakes--if I can get the thing to stick together, isn't it enough that it tastes good? I mean, if I were at a bakery and wanted a cake and there was one that looked really pretty and another one that had sorta fallen apart or they'd screwed up the food coloring in the frosting or something, well, the second one would probably be discounted and still taste exactly the same, so I'd get that. What do you think? Is pretty important when it comes to food?

And, besides, when you're making a cake that tastes like a Terry's Chocolate Orange, shouldn't it be okay for it to look like someone whacked it?

(Click here to go to the recipe. The only thing I changed was to leave the instant coffee granules out of the ganache and put in some almond extract. And next time I embark on this adventure [and it tasted good enough that there will be a next time] I'll substitute almond extract for the vanilla in the cake, too.)

Bloglovin'

Just a quick update to let you know that you can now follow my blog (and probably any other blogs you read) on Bloglovin. It's probably unnecessary for those of you who use GoogleReader, but if you don't, it'll show any blog updates that you follow whenever you sign in.

Follow my blog with bloglovin

New recipe coming soon, I promise!

garlic... ZOOM!

I have the best gadget ever.

It's called a Garlic Zoom. I originally got one for my dad for Christmas. I didn't really mean to; I was in the kitchen store looking for something and I heard someone say "What's a Garlic Zoom?" and it was like one of those cartoons where Garfield hears Jon take lasagne* out of the oven and is immediately standing next to him. I was immediately looking over this random stranger's shoulder to find out what they were talking about, just because the name was awesome. (The word 'zoom' excites me way too much if you take into consideration that I'm technically an adult.) They were probably pretty freaked out, but that's how it went. I bought it purely because of the novelty--it seemed like a funny thing to get someone who loves garlic (and I get my love of garlic from my dad).

So basically this thing is a ball with wheels that you put garlic inside and it minces it for you. Probably not all that useful if you don't use a lot of garlic, prefer crushed garlic, or like your garlic chopped in larger chunks instead of finely minced; but I use at least three cloves per meal and want it thoroughly integrated into my food.

So, okay, you lift the little door on the top up and put in a few cloves of garlic, then close it.

Wheel it around for a little while. It seems to stick at first--the blades need some pushing to get into the garlic (they are awfully small)--but once you push a bit you just wheel the thing around for literally about 10 seconds.

And then you have finely minced garlic! Now, I feel bad, because the one I bought for my dad in the store was a normal GarlicZoom, but when I went to buy my own online I discovered the GarlicZoomXL. So the normal one can probably fit two or three cloves of garlic max, but the XL could probably fit around 6 if I really tried.

The reviews on the websites I found made me a little reluctant to buy the thing--some people loved it, some said it was really useless and they lost as much garlic as they got. I find that I only lose as much garlic as would get stuck to the knife (or cutting board) to the point that I don't bother trying to scrape it off. (The bottom of the GarlicZoom has little ridges for the blades to go through. It seems to expedite the garlic-cutting process, but it can be pretty hard to get the tiny pieces out of there afterwards.) Someone else said that it was stupid that you could only roll it one way since the blades were one-sided. The blades are definitely two-sided, so that person's clearly just an idiot. People said it didn't roll at all, but I think they were just unwilling to put the tiny amount of effort that it takes to push the thing through the garlic at first.

So, if you love garlic, go buy a GarlicZoom, and if you REALLY love garlic, buy a GarlicZoomXL. If you buy it from Williams-Sonoma (which I didn't because someone else had cheaper shipping) it comes with a little spatula that would probably be really helpful in getting the tiny amount of garlic that gets stuck out (if I'd known that the XL didn't automatically come with one of those, I would have paid the extra 20 cents for shipping). If you have kids, you can make them chop your garlic for you without worrying that they'll cut their fingers off. (Also, Williams-Sonoma claims it's exclusive, but since I got one in a store and the other from Kitchen Kapers I sincerely doubt their claim.)

*Did you know that all pastas end in "e" in Italian? (The -a ending is feminine singular, but nobody ever eats just one noodle, so they use the plural which is -e.) So basically we've screwed it up horribly. It's actually paste, but in our efforts to keep kindergarteners from from eating Elmer's Glue, we nixed the 'e' and replaced it with an 'a.' (Note: the ones that end in 'i' are okay. They are masculine. Sorry for any confusion.)

Chicken Korma In a...storm-a?

Sorry about the title. But everyone's heard of Chicken Curry In a Hurry, right? So, when I made Chicken Korma and there was a blizzard, since it, like curry, is Indian food, my brain started rhyming things until I came up with...well, that. (The blizzard was last week. The town next to me was reported to have 15 inches of snow. I think we only got a foot, but still, a foot of snow at the end of February is quite a lot.)

I love Indian food. It's delicious. At some point, I realized I could make Indian food all by myself and not have to go out for dinner. When I first went to do so and walked into an Indian grocery store and discovered how cheap everything was, all I could think was, Why do I not do this ALL THE TIME?! Seriously--you're probably used to buying spices in a normal grocery store. Don't. Usually, an average-sized bottle of average-quality spices (and I'm thinking powder spices here, not dried herbs) is around 2 ounces and 6 dollars. At the Indian grocery, the containers are 7 ounces and under 3 dollars and they're much better quality. And it's not like they only have really weird things like asafetida. They carry pretty much anything. So, next time you need spices, check an Indian grocery store first. (I understand that most 'ethnic' grocers are like this, but I don't have experience with the other ones, especially the ones that sell spices. It's probably worth checking out anyway.)

My favorite Indian food is Palak Paneer. I get it every time I go out to eat. (Okay, I'm exaggerating a little, sometimes I go to a restaurant that is not Indian food.) I promise next time I make that I'll post it, because it's really cool. But one day I was out with someone and they didn't know what to get and I saw 'almonds' in one of the descriptions and told them to get that because it was delicious. I hadn't ever eaten it before, but if it involves almonds it's bound to be tasty. I was right, of course, and once I realized that I could cook Indian food I started prowling the internet for a good recipe. Most of them didn't use almonds; they used walnuts or something and that just felt wrong to me. Finally Mike said, "Why don't you google 'chicken korma almond recipe?'" and there were a lot of them, so I picked one and made it and it was amazing. So I made it again later and took pictures so I could post it here.

CHICKEN KORMA RECIPE

Adapted from Indobase

Ingredients:

-4 boneless chicken breasts (you could probably use dark meat if you want, but get 4 breasts worth of meat)

-1 large onion (I used yellow)

-4 cardamom pods (you could probably get away with using up to 6, but I wouldn't go higher than that)

-4 whole cloves

-3 cloves of garlic (this is one situation where I didn't vastly increase the amount--just used large cloves. There's plenty of flavor without extra garlic.)

-a piece of fresh ginger about 1 inch long

-a handful of flaked almonds

-1/2 tsp turmeric powder

-1 tsp ground coriander

-1 tbsp ground cumin

-1 tsp garam masala

-1 tsp mild chili powder

-1/4 tsp ground allspice

-1-2 tbsp tomato paste

-1 cup chicken broth

-1 cup coconut milk

-vegetable oil for the pan (if you want to be really authentic, use ghee)

Instructions:

1. Prepare everything--it'll be way easier later if you do all this now. Cube the chicken (you want cubes around 1 inch, but they don't have to be perfect.) Dice the onion (here I try for squares a little under an inch, it doesn't need to be finely diced.) Dice or crush the garlic. Peel and grate the ginger. Mix together the turmeric, coriander, cumin, garam masala, chili powder, and allspice in a small bowl (you add them all at once; I find it's much easier to just pour one bowl of spices in than to frantically measure each one. Also, please note that spice amounts are approximate. Play with them as you like). Lastly, grind the almonds. It's easiest to do this in a small food processor (I have a mini one that is perfect for this sort of thing, a larger one might not work as well.) A mortar and pestle works too but takes FOREVER. You might not want all of them ground--some people prefer some flakes remaining. The coarseness and amount of flakes is up to you. Keep the ground almonds (and flaked almonds) in a bowl for later.

2. Crush the cardamom pods. Throw them, the onion and the cloves into a large frying pan (or wok) with some oil. Cook until the onion softens a little.

3. Add the chicken, garlic and ginger. Stir-fry for a few minutes, then dump your bowl of spices in (see? wasn't that handy?). Stir together and allow to cook for a little while so the flavor of the spices can permeate the chicken.

4. Add the almonds, tomato paste, chicken broth and coconut milk. (The original recipe calls for tomato puree, and a smaller amount, but I found that this came out better. Unfortunately, it's a bit harder to mix in because it's so thick.) Stir everything together and simmer for a while, until it's reduced to a thickness you like. It should be thick and creamy.

5. Serve over rice (again, if you're going for authentic, use basmati, but white will do) with some naan if you have it. Enjoy!

Ground Almonds

This smells so good. All the spice smells fill your kitchen. The dish is worth it just for this.

Reducing--almost done! Yay!

On a plate, mixed with rice, ready to be devoured. So glad there are always leftovers :)

I love this recipe as it is (well, as I've adapted it). My mom thinks it should have more vegetables in it. I think peas would be a good addition--they're pretty common in indian food, and you could toss a small bag of frozen peas in when you add the liquids. The original recipe at Indobase calls for whipping cream instead of coconut milk, but I think this is much more flavorful and possibly healthier (I don't really know the caloric content of coconut milk). But if you want to use cream instead, I'm sure it would be delicious.

Naan is really easy to make but takes forever, so I recommend buying some frozen at the Indian grocery while you're there. It usually only needs to be tossed into the oven for a minute or two to heat up. Other grocery stores sometimes have it, but you have to know where to look and I don't. Except at Trader Joe's, where it's in the bread section. (Hmmm, I have a jar of Trader Joe's Korma sauce. I should see how that is sometime when I don't have time to actually cook.)

This is a recipe you should definitely try out. The ingredients list is sorta long, but you pretty much just toss everything into a pan and cook it. It's low-maintenance. And amazing. I'm gonna go study for my midterm now and wish I had Indian food for dinner.

Goldfish Rant

So, because I've made this a blog about FOOD and not simply COOKING, I can post things like this when I want to. And I do "disproportionately annoyed at stupid things" much better than I do cooking.

I like goldfish. I hadn't had them in a long time, but Mike bought some because they were on sale and he wanted to try the "S'mores Adventures" kind (the only adventure involved was an adventure in disappointment) and he got some normal ones for me. (On a side note, 'normal' goldfish are cheddar. One day someone offered me goldfish and gave me the 'original' flavor that tastes like oyster crackers. I don't even know why these exist. They're terrible. Everyone should know by now to just get the cheddar ones.) Anyway, I ate the goldfish and remembered that not only do I like goldfish, but I'm COMPLETELY ADDICTED to them. So I went to get another bag, but instead of getting the baby goldfish like he'd bought, I went for what I thought were just normal goldfish.

WHAT. IS THAT. I had no idea. I was confused and upset. Among my beautiful little sea of delicious fishies are these...circles? At first I could only think that they were jellyfish, or pufferfish, or some other sort of round sea creature. Mike told me they were basketballs, and I told him to stop being silly, I'm eating GOLDFISH, there aren't going to be BASKETBALLS in them. And then I looked at the package.

Seriously? SERIOUSLY? I don't look closely enough at my goldfish to make sure that the bag is JUST FISH, because they're called GOLDFISH. I assume that they will be fish. I don't think it should be necessary for me to look at the bag and make sure that the little picture in the corner doesn't have any weird shapes in it. Especially basketball shapes. I don't want to eat basketballs. It shouldn't be necessary for me to look at the package and make sure that I'm not buying basketball crackers. They are called GoldFISH and I expect them to stick to their name.

Also, I learned that I eat goldfish wrong. Well. I'm not really sure it's wrong, per se, but it's definitely weird. Instead of putting them in my mouth, I put them near my mouth and stick my tongue out, and it sticks to a goldfish, and I pull it into my mouth and eat it. Sometimes I get two. But I don't do the 'throw a handful of crackers into your mouth' thing. It's sort of like how a cat eats, so if you're curious, go watch a cat eat some dry food and that's what I look like when I eat goldfish.

Okay, that's the end of my rant. I sent in my last essay for my half-semester class today, so I only have four classes for the rest of the semester and that means FREE TIME! It also means the end of my "monday night paper panic" that I've grown used to. (I had a paper due every Monday at 10, so I'd get home from school around 3 and have to write a paper before House.) Anyway, this means that there will hopefully be more cooking and more blogging for the rest of the semester. Hooray!