Hair cuts

Buttermilk and eating the whole refrigerator

I didn't know much about buttermilk in the past, when I saw it in the dairy case I assumed it was in line with heavy whipping cream or the yogurt you can't actually eat. You know, one of those ingredients you get for making one recipe and then you have this fattening cream leftovers in your refrigerator that you feel too guilty to eat, and just as guilty throwing out a week later. So, not so long ago I looked up buttermilk, and found this amusing explanation by Mr. Breakfast. Buttermilk is lower fat than milk, thick like yogurt, and great for making things soft and fluffy.

So back to this morning, Dan and I are going home for the holidays we are trying to clean out the freezer. We had trouble about 3 months ago when we were out of town and one of the circuit breakers popped and so our electricity was off for a least a couple of days. The refrigerator and freezer were full of spoiled food, it was a real mess. The freezer never fully recovered. We had the maintenance man look at the circuit breakers but he wasn't able to see any problem. So we are going to do our best to eat everything we can before we leave, just in case it happens again while we're gone.

For the frozen blueberries in the freezer, I made these this morning. The only changes I made was to substitute 1/2 cup canola oil for the butter, added 1 tsp of vanilla, and the blueberries are what really make it great, so I used closer to 2 cups instead of 1.5 cups. It made roughly 16 normal muffins (with big tops). This recipe is nice because it really is just a vehicle for blueberries, not overly sweet or too oily like store-bought blueberry muffins.

To go along with

what seems like a news blog turning into a food blog, I have further resigned to myself the fact that I'm scared to cook red meat. Also, the fact that red meat, can in fact, smell fear.

Friday night I tried to make this sirloin tips over pasta recipe, and it really was almost un-salvageable. Luckily, Dan is tall, and was very hungry after driving back from Buckeburg, because the smell (it was too much red wine or something) after two hours of me standing around it and giving it the occasional stir, was almost too much. It ended up being ok, but it looked like something they would serve at the cafeteria at work here, not really a compliment. Perhaps I used the wrong type of beef.

Tonight we are hopefully redeeming the Katherine & Daniel Kitchen's culinary standard - we bought everything to bake salmon, an easy favorite.

Other than that, we have been doing typical weekend stuff, with a few preparations for the holidays thrown into the mix. It's right around the corner already!