It is time to dig up the EZ Bake and start cooking by lightbulb again. My daughter loves the miniscule cakes and tiny cookies.
You can find recipes for the EZ Bake on the web. I mean, you can actually cook from scratch by a lightbulb. We've made cheese quesadillas and pizza, as well as Pink Velvet Cake and other desserts with real flour and butter, not mix from a bag.
I'm fascinated with alternate ways to cook food. My husband and I once went to aKorean restaurant. One dish was served in a hat stone bowl; the food continued to cook in the bowl as he ate. He said it was one of his best meals ever.
I found one recipe for Bidimbap, which is stone pot food, courtesy of the Food Network. You can see it here.
Of course, you can always cook a hotdog or make toast by a lamp, but there are cool ways of alternate cooking. There are fire pits for clambakes and huge iron pits for roast pig.
I want to try them all.
I love food blogs. I subscribe to most of them by email, so when I come down in the morning and pop open the lap top, BLAM! There are recipes for mojito cupcakes, and chicken fajitas, and Irish Cream Milkshakes right there.
The best food blogs are fun by entertaining people who serve up a bit of chat (what my Irish mother would have called "Grand Crack") along with the goodies. Here are some of my favorites:
1. Confessions of a Cookbook Queen - Last year I made my daughter Butterbeer Cupcakes, right from this site (complete with little Harry Potter brooms. Are you impressed?) But there are tons more yummies, including these mile-high Chocolate Cookie and Cream cupcakes. They're a good contender for this year's birthday. Kristan, the site's author and cook, makes me chuckle every morning and if I don't have a post from her I'm sad.
2. Another cool baker's blog is Brown Eyed Baker. She did the Mojito cupcakes up there.
3. Cabin Goddess - Sure, it's cool that I made Butterbeer cupcakes and all, but I am not baking in a dry cabin in the Alaskan tundra. Kriss, who runs Cabin Goddess, does exactly that, and she achieves a high level of fun and humor and deliciousness at the same time. Who else would feature a Zombie dessert? And obviously, anyone with the first four letters K-R-I-S in their name has to be a great cook; must be some sort of foodie law. Plues, the Cabin Goddess also dishes book reviews and chats about the Manbeast and the Hairy Eyeball. What's not to like?
4. chocolate & carrots - For the healthy cooks out there, and for organic expectant mothers, this site is like a digital Moveable Feast for all senses. Caroline, the blogger-cook, has designed a deceptively simple site loaded with deliciousness. I'll never be pregnant again, but I do want to make this Cauliflower Pizza.
5. I just started following eat real, and all because of these vanilla waffles with lemon cream. Sandy has a nice, long archive of delicious recipes. Some are exotic, but she includes loads of basics along with them.
6. That's What We Said - This isn't strictly a food blog, since they dish about Real Housewives, Whatta Man, and the Batchelorette. I can deal, though, since they have Friday cocktails and weekly meal plans.
There are many, many more food blogs out blogs out there, but I'm picky - I want a fun column as well as cool recipes to try. These blogs serve all that and more.
