yummy dinners

Seems like this blog is really turning into a cooking blog... I promise you it isn't. Timon has some great ideas for tech topics he wants to blog about.

Tonight for dinner we made sloppy joes and very delicious bread sticks (aka Salt and Pepper Grissini )

My parents own a bread machine, we only use it ever so often- the loaves often came out really yum the first day and then hard and dry quickly thereafter. The only other good use was when I was designing products out of bread for a competition, freshman year? Anyways-

I got both my recipes from Epicurious, one of my favorite iTouch apps. We cooked for 4 people, and sloppy joes was super easy, esp when I normally get home from work at 6:30. We bought some crusty french hoagie rolls from Tesco, (on promo!) for buns which were delicious! Bread alternatives here are great, but not like home. There's not really hot dog or hamburger buns- and they've got the rad sliced bread, but once you put condiments on they soak it up and get crushed to smithereens.

Our sloppy joes had ground hamburger, bell pepper green, mystery green pepper (wasn't spicy like I thought), yellow onion, garlic, tomato sauce, and garlic salt, chili powder, cinnamon, pepper, vinegar, white sugar, and a tad of starch.

Okay, cinnamon and sugar? Yes, I think everyone knows kristina and timon have HUGE sweet tooths, and kristina's favorite cereal IS Cinnamon Toast Crunch....so here's the explanation: The recipe called for ketchup, and I wondered- why can't I just make it? Isn't it just preserved tomato sauce?? So when on eHow for a recipe and added the ingredients into my sauce- including vinegar, cinnamon, and sugar! Sweet n Tangy! Maybe next time I'll try my hand at making ketchup. When I went to Germany, we would snack on currywurst on the train platforms- sausage with curry ketchup! so good :)

The grissini ("The what?": Timon) aka crunchy bread sticks were an inspiration from Ultimo restaurant in Bali. Located on the swag Oberoi street in the Seminyak area, this very affordable Italian restaurant was SO good, we ate there 3 days, two nights in a row. Upon being seated they bring you a basket of bread with long pencil thin bead sticks sticking out like the branches of a tree in the winter, and garlicy pesto butter to eat with it.

This recipe was a hit! It had fluff, crunch, spongey, bubbly texture. We substituted heavy cream for the buttermilk it called for, and accidentally added the egg white in, instead of brushing it ontop. It reminded me of buttermilk biscuits, and would prolly work pretty well. The dough was really soft and sticky when I was rolling it out. My baking pan is little, so the some the bread sticks became "J" and "c" shapes to fit. Would be fun to make cute shapes and serve in a soup! Maybe I will try that next time when I make chili...mmmmhmmm. The only disappointment with this recipe was that it was so small- only 10 or so little pencil bread sticks. Perfect for two people, but as an appetizer I'd have to double or triple the recipe, which I may do for our Easter brunch coming up this Sunday. Right now, we've signed up for salsa + chocolate dessert (left over from my birthday) so we'll see. I'm super behind on posts.