Italtian Cheese Popcorn

This recipe is really easy.

You will need:

1 or 2 tbsp olive oil or vegetable oil
1/4 popping corn
oregano
basil
salt
garlic powder
onion powder
grated Parmesan cheese
(I just eyeball the spices so use your best judgement with those and remember, dried ingredients take less to flavor a dish than fresh and this will probably work best with dried so the flakes will be smaller).
2 tbsp melted butter.

1. Combine the spices and cheese in a large bowl and set aside.
2. In a large pot with a lid, add the oil and then popcorn. Heat over medium to medium high. Jiggle the pot every now and then to keep the kernels from burning. Stay and listen for them to pop and remove from heat once the popping slows to about 2-3 seconds between pops.
3. Put the popped corn in the spice bowl and toss while pouring melted butter over top of the tossing popcorn.

Easy Peasy and so good!

Yellow Walls and the Phantom Lawn Mower

You may recall from past posts that our kitchen walls were dirty white (except for the golden yellow "accent wall"). When we moved in the whole place was covered in chalky matte white paint that has aged, and unlike a fine wine got much much worse with time. As renters come and go I have a feeling their attitude was "it's just a college rental house" and did nothing to improve it and even did our house the disservice of not keeping it clean. After a year in this house, I've now painted the den, dining room, mud room, my room, and finally....the kitchen! The rule is that we can paint any room you like as long as it goes back to a neutral when we move out.

I'm not convinced that I wont have to buy paint to cover this once I move.

But I LOVE the color and who doesn't love a yellow kitchen anyway? It's brighter than I expected and duller in pictures than in reality, but you get the idea.
The color is called "Fresh Pineapple" by Glidden. I got two free quarts from their promotion giving everybody in America free paint. Picking the color online was a bit trickier since we don't have a Home Depot so I went here to look at the colors from online paint chips. Believe me when I tell you that the colors are not the same on screen and on wall.

Typically, I'm drawn to more soft color palettes but I have red and black and yellow in the kitchen already so this seems to fit. The paint gives the walls a fresh, clean brightness we haven't seen until now in our kitchen. I can't complain.

What do you think?

Couldn't resist taking a picture of the glass bottles on the window with the sun coming through. I just love the way that looks.


Now...for the Phantom Lawn Mower
While taking a nap today after class, I woke to the sound of a lawn mower. I got up to see who it was because it sounded like it was right outside of my window. In my sleepy stupor, I couldn't see anybody and decided that I must just have acute hearing while I'm asleep (which 22.5 years of sleeping through alarms, etc would certainly refute) so I went back to my napping.
When I got back up...the grass was cut. I couldn't believe my eyes. I have no idea who did it. After talking with Suzanne, Diane (two of my roommates) and Clifford (who has cut our grass before and planned to do so again) I am baffled! Thrilled, but baffled. So, phantom lawn mower, if you are out there, thank you thank thank you for cutting our super tall embarrassing grass! We really appreciate it!

Julie and Julia

I cannot wait until this movie comes out! Not only are Meryl Streep and Amy Adams both terrific actresses, but it is about food, blogging, and I can't miss this one!



Also, I love the design of this book the movie is based on...LOVE it! I wish I had been the one to do this cover. This book is about the life of Julie Powell and her endeavor to do something exciting. She looks up to Julia Childs, the famous chef, and cooks her way through Julia's over 500 recipes in one year. Julie blogs about her experiences and all the while we see the life of Julia Childs alongside as she goes to culinary school and becomes the woman we know her as today.


Amy Adams, as Julie Powell...she is so precious! She looks so soft and maternal but still chic.


Now, Julia.... Meryl Streep is such an awesome actress. She makes me believe that she is that character (which was unfortunate when she played Cruella Deville), but I really enjoy watching her films.
I feel Julia and I might get along if she's anything like what I've seen on the movie trailer so far. In one clip of a scene she is talking to a man over a meal trying to decide what she should do with her life. He asks her "what do you love to do?" and she replies laughing and says "eat!". I know the feeling. I love food, cooking it, eating it...it's just so fun and lovely and involves a great amount of creativity.

Rental House Improvements and Potato Latkes

I had some left over mashed potatoes and I was out of groceries Sunday morning so I made some latkes, one of my favorite breakfast treats! Traditionally they are made with shredded potatoes rather than leftover mashed potatoes, but I don't like leftovers in general and this still works.

I used:
about 3-4 cups of cold mashed potatoes
1 large beaten egg
1 tsp salt
2 tbsp butter

What to do:
Heat a skillet over medium heat and added some butter to the pan to coat it. Add the potato mixture to the pan as you would if you were making pancakes and cook until golden brown (about 2 min on each side) flip, flatten with a spatula and place on a paper towel lined plate to get any excess butter off and keep them from getting greasy and soggy.

I like these served with ketchup like Waffle House hash browns, but they are traditionally served with sour cream or apple sauce and are delicious that was also!

I realize that my house is no "dime piece" as Sara Jane would say, but slowly, slowly, I am trying to make it feel like a home. It's a cheap rental house I share with three other girls and although I am only going to be here another year (two total) I want it to feel as warm and inviting and pretty as possible in the time that I have here. Some may think it's a waste of money because it's only a college house, but I think making people feel at home in a clean homey environment is worth the small costs here and there and it provides me with a sense of accomplishment and enjoyment as well. I also only purchase things for this house that I'm sure I will use for years to come if they are any investment at all. Anyway...

A few days ago Clifford came over and helped me finish painting the mud room that Suzanne, Mary E, and I started a few weeks before. I'm ashamed to admit that it took so long to finish up and that the room was in shambles in the meantime. We painted it Olympic's "Chilled Mint" for a soothing, cool neutral tone. If I owned this house, the laundry list of things to paint and improve would be gigantic, but I am restraining myself from spending all of my money here. This room (and the rest in the house for that matter) looked like what one would expect from a college rental house: dirty, used to be white, but now more of a sponge painted effect with dirty hand prints, and most disgusting of all....smashed bug marks. I'm fairly certain I gagged when I first saw that! A fresh coat of clean paint does WONDERS for a room! I feel like it's a new house compared to the one we moved into a year ago.
This may not qualify as a house improvement project itself, but I just wanted to show off my most recent acquisitions of home decor! This is called a "knob stopper" and we sell them at work. I think it is so cute and it reminds me of the 1880's farmhouse I grew up in in Shawnee, GA with crystal knobs on every door and it is for sale now here, perhaps I should buy it back?


Here's another fun find from work that I picked up. It's a cookbook stand with iron chains with an iron ball hanging from each one to hold the pages down and keep the cookbook open to whichever page you are viewing. It's nice for cooking and also for the times when you just want to display something pretty...for instance, this vintage Better Homes and Gardens cookbook which used to be Mama Bertha's (my great grandmother who was famous for everything domestic, lovely, gentle, hospitable, and kind) and I treasure it for its sentimental value and because it is also beautiful and delightfully old fashioned.



Another feature of this house that is somewhat flawed is our converting of a living room off of the kitchen into a fourth bedroom. It works well except that there is no closet in that room (Suzanne lives in this room and has to use a hanging rod as an external closet) and there is a little window cut out from the kitchen into her bedroom. To make it into another bedroom, she put up a board to cover that window and had to do some shifting of doors in the kitchen to close it off. Above is a picture of the board...not the prettiest but an effective solution. Also, it is used from some extra storage and I thought it would be much nicer (and more private for Suzanne!) if if were covered up somehow. So....
Mary E, not knowing she was giving me an idea to remedy this, mentioned that you could use cloth napkins of handkerchiefs as a no-sew curtain for small awkward windows. I got to thinking how perfect that would be to use as a sliding curtain so we could get to the storage but cover it up and add privacy and more pretty color to the kitchen. I went to Walmart, bought some ring clips and a set of red cloth napkins, slid the rings onto an ugly rod (but it works for my purposes now) that I already had laying around the house and ta-da! Instantly covered and better! I'd like for the teal on that board to not show, but we will be painting the kitchen a pale lemony yellow as soon as my free paint from glidden.com comes in, so maybe I'll give that a good coat too so it will tie in rather than looking like an accident.

Couldn't help including more red from the kitchen towel and the new oven (which we've had almost 6 months now), but I can't explain how thankful I am for it! It saves us so much money compared to our ancient one we had before.

Happy Fourth of July!

This fourth of July my friends Suzanne, Tracey, Mary E, Ben, Tyler, Katie, Jared, Clifford, and I went swimming Ben's house. His family was very generous to let us all come over and swim at their house (and eat their boiled peanuts)! The picture above is of Mary E and Ben at Clifford's house where we went for a cookout after we swam and cleaned up before the fireworks that evening.



Clifford and Brent (who joined us for the cooking out) grilling like men for all of us. The food was DELICIOUS !



For dessert, Suzanne and I made a flag cake with a white sheet cake layered with strawberries and with blueberries as the stars (there were more like 60 "stars" as Tracey informed us).



We went to our church lawn to watch the fireworks that were shot from the park a little down the road from the church. They were very pretty considering our small town.


(Pictured above left to right: Clifford, Suzanne, and Tracey)
To finish off our weekend, I made a rosemary roasted chicken, mashed potatoes, rolls, and butter beans for Sunday lunch after church. Sadly, the chicken was a little overcooked because church went a little long this week and so the over just kept 'acookin'. We had left over cake and some decaf coffee to finish it off. This was a very nice weekend!

Blueberry Pancakes

Blueberry Pancakes

Ingredients

• 3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 stick butter or margarine, melted and cooled
• Approximately 1 cup whole milk (I used buttermilk instead)
  
• 1 cup fresh or thawed and drained frozen blueberries (about 8 per pancake)
• Vegetable oil or butter, for cooking
• Serving suggestion: maple syrup and additional butter

Directions

In a large bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar. In a medium bowl, lightly beat the eggs then whisk them into the flour mixture. Combine the butter and 1 cup of milk in the medium bowl then gradually whisk this mixture into the batter. The batter should be slightly thicker than heavy cream. It the batter is too thick, add a little more milk.

Heat a seasoned griddle or a large heavy-bottomed skillet over medium heat. If the pan is not well seasoned, add a little oil to prevent the pancakes from sticking. Spoon or pour about 3 tablespoons of batter onto the griddle to form a pancake. Repeat forming only as many pancakes as can fit on the griddle with 1-inch or so of space around each. Drop 7 or 8 blueberries on each pancake. Cook until bubbles form on the pancake surfaces then flip and continue cooking until the second sides are golden, about 3 minutes longer. (Recipe from Rachel Ray's $40 a Day in Portland, OR)

Blueberry Reduction

Ingredients
1/2 c. white Zinfandel
1/4 c. sugar
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
3/4 c. fresh blueberries (smashed or blended with a little juice)

Directions
Bring wine and vinegar to a boil. Add sugar and turn heat down so that the sugar melts down. Add smashed or blended blueberries and stir and simmer.

I made these this morning and would have taken more pictures along the way but I was pressed for time. I topped mine with a little butter so that it would melt on top while the pancakes were piping hot and then poured the blueberry reduction sauce over the top of it. These are DELISH and taste even better with a cup of french press coffee and a glass of cold orange juice.

Yummy Food, Tex Mex Omelet

Here are the ingredients you will need: turkey bacon, Mrs. Dash chipotle seasoning, eggs, cheddar cheese, milk, jalapeno, black pepper, tomatoes, and corn (if I had black beans I think I would add them too...oh, and diced green onion!).

First, cook the bacon and chop it into little strips. Then, dice the jalapeno (I use only half and cut out the seeds), add the seasonings, crack the eggs, pour in a slash of milk, and all of the other veggies. Scramble them really well, being careful not to whip the eggs too much and mix the vegetables in really well.


I pour the omelet mixture into the pan that I just cooked the turkey bacon in so that it is already "buttered" aka "greased" and cook it, flip it, cook the other side.

Flip it onto your plate and top with a good handful of cheddar cheese and a dollop of sour cream. I sliced a kiwi to go along side it to cool off the spice and had a nice glass of Simply Orange Juice. It was very delicious! You should try this recipe. You can switch out any of the ingredients or add more. Let me know what you think!