Christmas Traditions: Leia Cooks Dinner

It's that time of year again when I don my Slave Leia outfit for a very special holiday photoshoot! =D I just love coming up each year with a fabulous new concept that's more than just a pretty photo, but that really lends itself to a little Slave Leia Christmas Card story!

This year it's no different, and since myself and the muscle man are still settling into our new house, I really wanted to show off something I've never had before, a real dining room!! I'm so looking forward to cooking and baking this holiday season, so I thought I'd set the tone right and have a great Christmas dinner, complete with sexy hostess!! =)

 Because let's face it, the way to a man's heart is definitely through his stomach! And there's plenty of room at the table!













Even though we're not going all out and decorating much this year, we can still have a wonderfully festive holiday, especially with the smell of fresh baked Christmas cookies to follow up an amazing dinner!


Metal Bikini by the always amazing leiasmetalbikini.com, if you're thinking of one for your sexy Leia this holiday I'd highly recommend Jamin's! 

1st Anniversary

Monday my muscle man and I celebrated our first wedding anniversary. We had a great time together after a trying day at work we just figured simple and easy was the best way to celebrate!

I made a wonderful baked fish dish and scalloped potatoes =) Yes, I'm totally taking full advantage of finally having an oven after a year and a half of nothing, and we don't eat fresh fish at home very often despite the fact that both of us really like fish... I'm just too lazy to go grocery shopping, but since it was our anniversary I made a special trip.

We don't have a kitchen table yet, and the house is somewhat under construction (we're laying hardwood floors instead of the carpets that were there), so I thought our living room would make a fun and memorable backdrop for dinner photos. It's quite the memory at least, haha!! 

And of course, what anniversary would be complete without cake!! We were very well behaved at the wedding and didn't smash cake in each other's faces, but all bets were off for our anniversary!

 As for the cake? It tasted pretty good considering it's been frozen for a year!

Steak! N! Shake!

 SO excited that Steak 'N Shake's newest location is about 5 miles away from my house!! Before today, the closest one was 2 hours away, and I'm used to Orlando where there was always one around... I have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with steak n shake (let's face it, any obsession with a place that sells chilli cheese fries and 800 calorie milkshakes has to be unhealthy haha!), so now I can indulge it at any time, and I'm excited!

The grand opening was today, so you know I had to be there!! Hour long wait be damned, I was getting my steak n shake! We actually got a little sneak peek the other day, they were testing out the restaurant and we got to test the drive thru, but today we wanted to go in, sit down, and eat some awesome artery-clogging treats!

Plus today we got one of the specialty milkshakes, it had a ton of hot fudge and chocolatey goodness!!  (we're dessert before dinner kind of people, especially at a place where the dinners are so filling!)

When I said "unhealthy obsession", I really meant it!! One of my favorite things at steak n shake is their chilli cheese fries, or sometimes just cheese fries if I'm feeling a little healthier =P So I decided to just full out indulge my unhealthy desires and have that for my main course, while the muscle man chose a slightly healthier bacon cheese double burger! We seriously ate way too much, but the best thing about steak n shake is that it was totally easy on the wallet! We both ate for under $20, and that included tip! Granted, we did split a single milkshake, but that's because I knew I couldn't finish my fries and a whole shake all by myself haha!!

~I can feel my arteries clogging... but those fries were amazing!



And one last shot, because let's face it, one of the awesome things about steak 'n shake is the atmosphere and the open kitchen! It was absolutely packed, both in front and back of house, but the service was still amazing and quick =D Plus those cooks and servers just look so darn cute in their little aprons and bow ties!  Love it!

Cooking with Angela: Baking Assistant

I'm not one to make 'new years resolutions' per say, but I figure the first of the year is as good a time as any to get back into the swing of the blogging thing =) So with that said, here's what me and the muscle spent the last few hours of 2011 doing....

Baking!! Now normally, this wouldn't be all that special... Bur our oven has decided to go out on us, so for the past 6 months or so, I haven't been able to bake any sweets (or anything else for that matter...)
But since the stove-top still works, we aren't about to go and replace the thing, so we've just made the necessary adjustments to dinner plans that don't include tossing everything into a casserole and letting it sit in a hot box. Which is fine with me, I'm ok with making skillet dinners and grilling meats on the George Foreman, but not having baked desserts was really bumming me out! I love cakes and brownies, and don't get me started on home baked (not made, I'm too lazy for anything more than scooping out pre-made dough =P) chocolate chip cookies...

 

So needless to say, I was super excited when we  unwrapped this little counter-top cupcake oven this Christmas! You just fill up the little cups with batter...

And less than 10 minutes later you've got 8 perfect little mini-cupcakes! I was so excited I wound up eating several before I frosted them, I was craving some home baked (again, not home made, totally from the box here) cake!

The majority of them did get frosted though, with this funfetti frosting that also came with the box cake mix (seriously, best "this goes with that other gift" gift idea ever! ) These little bites are so perfect for my muscle man and I, we snacked on them over the weekend, and they're so much more convenient than a having to get a fork and plate dirty like with a regular cake! So yay for little mini-muffin-cupcakes! (I guess these are technically 'muffins', because I didn't use those stupid little baking cups, because that's my least favorite part of a cupcake =P) I'm thinking this thing is going to be perfect for corn-muffins too, can't wait to try that out!

Cooking With Angela: Stop Motion

 I've been following Selfie Magic for a little while now, and she has a fabulous weekly self portrait photo challenge but until this week I've been busy and haven't given it a whirl... This week's challenge was just too fun to resist! I've taken an absurd amount of photos over the years, and I've always found it fun when I flip through the images to choose my favorites when editing that they look like a stop motion animation =P I decided rather than taking one photoshoot and turning it into a film I'd go a little more in depth and do several shoots! The first thing that came to mind would have been to do all of my photos from a whole year, but wow that would have taken forever to sift through the unusable photos (improperly exposed/composed, stupid faces, etc) So I chose instead to do each of my cooking photoshoots from last year's "Cooking With Angela" series from deviantArt! Each week I did a self-portrait shoot cooking a new recipe, and since most weeks I kept the camera on the tripod in the same position for the whole shoot I thought it lent itself well to stop-motion =D I wound up with over 800 individual frames, and it took me quite a while to figure out a good speed for the fluidity I wanted (most photos are 8 frames, the first one from each shoot is a little longer to avoid awkward transitions) And the video is still 4 minutes long!

I haven't done much video editing since college since I don't have a video camera, it was loads of fun to do some creating again! (my major in college was film management, and my college made sure we knew how to both manage and create radio, tv, and film) Not that my video is perfect, I wish I would have spent a little more time making the cuts better timed to the music, but after 6 hours sifting through pictures and then trying and retrying slide lengths I was just glad to have something!

All the final, edited photos that I did for the project are over at my deviantArt (here). It's really cool to look at the video, where all the photos are unretouched and uncropped, and see how I came to a final image on each one... I'm so glad for photoshop is all I can say! Also looking through the raw files, I realized how I've stopped taking as many photos each shoot...When I first started I was unsure as to if I had a good photo or not, so I took a ton! There are a lot of images that didn't even make the video from some of the first half of the year... but towards the end I had to use every frame I had just to have a decent length for that shoot! It was fun to go back and look at all the images though, and it was awesome that I got to include plenty of shots of my muscle man! =D

I'll definitely be linking up more often now, this was such a fun challenge!
 

Fat Tuesday...My Kind of Holiday!

 I'm very much a seasonal eater... And no, I don't mean I like Oranges in January and Apples in the fall... I mean I love sweets associated with holidays! So I was a little disappointed when I was wasn't sure if I would be able to get my Fat Tuesday fix of a King Cake, they only have them in expensive fancy bakeries here, and I was traveling anyway... For the uninitiated, King Cake is amazing!! It's like a cinnamon roll mixed with a donut with icing and sprinkles over the whole thing! My mom was super awesome though and picked me up one, so even though it was one day late, I still got my King Cake!

And when I heard about the Mardi Gras contest EyeingMemories is hosting, I knew I so had to take part! Here's my submission of my fabulous cake, it's no New Orleans original (my stupid brother wouldn't send me one from the crescent city even though he lives there, seriously?!) but it still tasted pretty good!

And with the taste of this cake still fresh in my mind, is it bad that now my taste buds have locked onto wanting some Cafe Du Monde beignets? I'm such a fat kid...

Photo Friday: Pork Chops

After completing my 52 weeks project over at deviantArt ( Cooking With Angela ) I miss having a new, fun recipe each week, as well as the whole cooking photos thing =) It was quite fun, and I tried out loads of new recipes throughout last year because of it. But this year I've totally slacked, so I thought I should ease back into it... Lucky for me there's these awesome spice packets that do most of the hard work for you!

I've used this packet before, and it's a little more involved than some of the other ones they have available, but totally worth it! I've been craving fruit lately, so the apples were a definite plus, and I had already put pork chops into my shopping cart, what luck =) I got a great spice rack for Christmas, so I seriously debated whether I should buy this or not, but the ease of the pre-measured packets totally called out to me, plus I'm not sure where my recipe cards and books are, they're still packed up from the move I think...

Like I said before, this recipe card is a little more involved... In addition to the spices included, it takes flour, salt and oil (as most those cards do) but also needs an onion, several apples, apple juice and brown sugar...

Now before I go showing off my cooking pictures, I have to point out that my new kitchen has something I've never used before... A gas stovetop... *shudder* Gas stovetops have always scared me, because oh I dunno, gas powered fire?! I'm rather accident prone, and I figure it I'm just one pot-holder away from a total flaming girl scenario, but I'm not about to complain about my rent-free house just because it has efficient and chef-preferred gas appliances lol... So I've been getting used to the whole gas thing, and in 2 months I've yet to burn anything down! (except everything I've put in the oven, but today we're talking stovetops!)

So I'm even more proud of myself for not burning dinner, and for getting back to cooking fabulous dinners for my muscle man and myself =)

 First the 'chops get sprinkled with flour mixed with the spices, then browned, but not cooked quite through just yet...

Next the onion gets chopped and cooked, then same with the apples... Thankfully I've got an apple slicer, do they make those for onions? If so, I NEED one... I'm tired of crying chopping onions!

After the apples had softened a bit, time to add in the apple juice, brown sugar, and the rest of the flour/spice mix, and the pork chops on top so everything could stew and cook a few more minutes... Into delicious perfection!

I made some easy microwave mashed potatoes to go with my pork chops, what can I say the muscle man loves them and I'm so all about an easy side dish!

Cooking With Angela: The Dumplings That Weren't

Christmas is approaching, which means there will be tons of food around, and I'm also in the process of moving, so this week I decided to clear out the pantry and fridge and see what I could come up with without having to go grocery shopping. I decided on Chicken and Dumplings, and had found what seemed to be a fairly easy recipe... Boil Chicken, save stock, add dumplings... I think somewhere along there I cut a few too many corners or something, or maybe it just wasn't a good recipe lol! 

I was able to salvage the chicken part of the recipe, it called for a whole chicken to be boiled for hours, and I didn't have that kind of time or that kind of bird =P

Cooking With Angela: Cookies!

I walked outside this morning to go run errands to find this lovely little winter scene on my car...Which can only mean one thing: time for holiday baking!!

 

 Christmas Cookies!! I had to go get my own cutters, I've never really had the determination to make any spiffy cut out cookies for myself, I always just make plain jane round ones, but this year I wanted pretty ones!!

 Little know fact: I'm actually a certified food-handling manager, so I know proper sanitary procedures for cooking in a restaurant environment and can supposedly teach that to others... And this is so not legal in Alabama, any food contact requires gloves =P Plus I generally hate having my hands all messy, but for cookies I made sacrifices, I wanted yummy cookies and cute pictures of the process, and it's not like my apartment kitchen is a restaurant, so I don't have food handling gloves laying around anywhere lol!

 I also don't have a fully equipped kitchen, and I forgot to get a rolling pin while I was out getting cookie cutters, so my new cutting mats provided an excellent substitute lol! Just place one on top of the other, dough in between, and press, moving outward to flatten the dough...

 Aww my muscle man was so sweet when he got home from work he helped me ice the cookies! They turned out quite pretty!

And they taste amazing too!

My kitchen was a complete mess afterward, but the cookies were so worth it! By sheer dumb luck I put down this awesome vinyl fabric I had stored away, it made for a super easy clean up... relatively speaking, of course...There was flour everywhere, and sprinkles too =P

365 Extras: Chicken Marsala

In my quest to learn to cook this year, I've taken a photo each week of myself cooking... But because that project is all about the portrait, I never take actual cooking shots, even though I often think about it... I usually decide it's not worth the effort haha! But I've decided to start doing some of that because it's fun and gives another perspective to what I'm doing =) So I took another stab at making Chicken Marsala last night, which I made before straight from a recipe in a cookbook, this time around I used one of these little spice packets that has most of what you need for the recipe as well as instructions! They're fabulous! Still takes some cooking skills though, but it's so much simpler than having to measure loads of spices out =P

 

Every time I make a pan-cooked chicken dish I wind up burning the chicken trying to get it to cook through, so this time I would cut the chicken breasts into thin fillets before coating them so they wouldn't burn, then into the flour and spice mixture! 

It didn't hurt that the recipe also called for me to basically deep fry the chicken in butter and olive oil... I think it  said to use like 2 or 3 tablespoons of each! So between that and the thin cuts of chicken, I managed not to burn the chicken, so then it was on to the marsala sauce! I could eat sauteed mushrooms by themselves if you told me to, so any recipe that has a sauce with mushrooms, I'm so there! Lately I've been buying these chopped 'baby bella' mushrooms, they're bigger than normal white mushrooms and have a little more substance, especially when you cook them down...

As for the finished dish, I wasn't all that happy with the spice mix and sauce... It was ok, but not great... I expect a little more from a dish I really didn't have that much room for error on =P Granted, the sauce was totally my fault, I just used regular wine instead of Marsala lol! The chicken I blame on the recipe though, can't quite put my finger on it, but it just wasn't fantastic... but totally edible, and that's what matters hehe!