Wafels and Pies

I've been wanting to try Wafels & Dinges for the longest time - not only does it have a cool name, is sold out of a food truck, it has also been said to be quite delicious. My friend promised me he would take me one day via Twitter (source of all things true), and the Waffletruck concurred it was a good idea. I had been waiting for that day...which finally came last Monday!

Speaking of things good and delicious, at the last place that I worked, I saw a sign for Pie Face opening soon. It's an Australian chain which I had read about earlier because there was a day that they were giving out free pies...but alas they were too far away from where I worked :( BUT THEY STILL HAVE NOT OPENED THERE!!! I did run into one while walking down through Times Square one night (**cringes at thought of crowds in Times Square**), but we did not have time to wait on line that night [insert another sad face here]. 

Last Monday though, the universe decided to give me an evening of epic food adventuring, and not only did we make it to the Wafel truck, we also had time to pick up some pies from Pie Face on the way home.

I decided to go with the classic "Throwdown" at the Wafels & Dinges truck with spekuloos (like peanut butter and Nutella had a baby with extra spices) and whipped cream. I am actually getting hungry just writing about it right now...

The Wafel "Throwdown"

Then at Pie Face (do you hear the angels singing right now?), I decided to go with the Minced Beef & Tomato pie...STACKED!!! What does it mean to get your pie stacked you ask? It means that the pie of your choice is topped with mashed potatoes, gravy & mashed peas. How could I not get my pie stacked?!?! And the woman was so excited that I chose to do so too...she did a sort of "I get to make a stacked pie" dance. I'm all for dancing, so it was all good. I almost started dancing down the streets myself, but had to stop lest I spilled or mussed up my pie at all.

The wait was worth it for all of the above. I can't wait until the next time I come across the wafel truck or the next time I drag someone to Pie Face with me :)

Pie Face!!!!!

Eating Devouring my pie on the train - classy as always

Anita Raid Your Kitchen

I have recently, and by recently I mean last night, come up with an idea for a new YouTube series. "Anita Raid Your Kitchen." Get it? Anita...I need to...ok, I'm over it (but not really)...

Apparently I love to take over my friends kitchens and figure out how to make something based on what they have - it's like an adventure! It's not my kitchen, so I don't know what is there that I can use. Come to think of it...kind of sounds like how the show "Chopped" works - except I don't make things half as amazing as what they do on the show. Then again, I'm not a professionally trained chef...I just like to eat a lot.

So last night just hanging out at my friend's house for girl's night in and the natives started getting restless...so we started investigating the fridge and freezer...when I saw the pesto sauce and frozen shrimp and vegetables, I got kind of excited and asked if I could take over. Luckily, my friends are rather laid back about this sort of thing and said they enjoy being cooked for? I suppose that is why the restaurant business is still booming. 

Alex, whom I have done this to earlier last year and featured in a Carbonara post was present as well and fully supportive of my kitchen nazi-ness and took my criticism well when I got a little bit aggressive about the frozen bacon.

Here's how it went down:

Found: Frozen Shrimp, Frozen Bacon, Frozen Peas, Frozen Corn, Frozen Broccoli, Whole Wheat Pasta, Pesto

I gave her the task of cutting off slices of the very frozen bacon...check out those guns!!!

Getting a bit territorial/aggressive about the bacon

Sautee-ing everything together - look at how colorful it is!

Dinner, is served.

Banana Crepe Cake X 2

When I see bananas getting overly ripe, I used to make banana bread. Now, I'm kind of obsessed with crepe cakes ever since seeing Smitten Kitchen's post on banana crepe cake w/ butterscotch walnut topping.  I have made it once before following her directions exactly and it came out pretty well, but the filling was a little heavy and too cream cheese-y for my taste. So I started looking into seeing if I could find an alternative using something closer to what Lady M Bakery uses.

And here is why I love Smitten Kitchen - she had that too! "Gateau de crepe" was her post. Please note the use of the brulee torch, which cemented even more my desire to own a brulee kit (will be one of the first things on my wedding registry when that day comes...many many years from now). 

I ended up making the banana crepe cakes twice this week. Actually the first time was Monday morning (I had off from work - Happy Rosh Hashanah!!!), and I had been debating between the crepe cake versus banana bread due to time restraints because my cousins were visiting and leaving later that morning and I wanted to make them an awesome breakfast after the Pesto Potato Pizza & Skillet Lasagna Dinner the night before. 

But then I could only find 2 bananas, which wasn't enough for the banana bread (I was going to make banana bread ice cream sandwiches w/ pistachio ice cream), so I guess my decision was made for me. Then the filling called for 6 egg yolks, so I used the rest of the egg whites plus 2 more eggs to scramble together with the leftover peppers and cucumbers from dinner the night before. 

Afterwards, I did end up finding another banana in the fridge, so I blended together batter to make later during the week. Helped that I had leftover filling anyway. This happened around midnight tuesday night - very therapeutic I might add. Helps to have the batter all ready and I found the rhythm of just flipping crepes to be very calming after a long day.

Egg whites & Milk w/ Vanilla (I didn't have any vanilla beans on hand)

Custard on the stovetop

Filling/Custard coming together

Crepes on the pan

Melted chocolate to cover some coffee beans

The leaning tower of crepe cake

A lot less prep is needed when everything is already made

Some beautious crepes =)

Whole crepe cake

View of the layers

Potato Pesto Pizza & Tzatziki Sauce

Last night, in celebration of some cousins visiting and just because I selfishly wanted to try some new recipes, as below. The driving recipe being the Potato Pesto Pizza for which I saw in an email from Tablespoon a  week or so ago. And since I was making the main course for dinner, I might as well plan the whole thing - 'tis the only logical thing to do.

A few weeks ago, I had finally started compiling a Google Document of sites and recipes that I wanted to try. This was definitely something I should have done a long time ago but for some reason never bothered to start...oh well, better late than never! Looking through what I had already added to the list, I figured a Tzatziki Sauce from FoodRepublic would be easy enough to throw together with some raw veggies as I already had enough carbs with the pizza. Then I really wanted to try making Lasagna cupcakes, but had to accept the fact that it just wouldn't be time efficient nor did I have access to wonton wrappers for the shells and didn't have time to experiment with using lasagna noodles instead...but since I had said lasagna noodles and ground beef and tomatoes, I figured I'd make some skillet lasagna instead. Sadly, this was actually the thought process that I had going back and forth in my head for hours during work and even as I was running around the supermarket on my way home.

Was a bit panicked when I first got home, thinking everyone else was surely as hungry as I was and rushing around the kitchen like a chicken without its head. Finally I settled down a bit and figured I would calm down a bit after finishing at least one thing - Tzatziki Sauce it was!

Dicing Cucumbers

Beautiful Peppers

Greek Yogurt mixed w/ the cucumbers, chopped dill, olive oil & lemon juice

Plated Veggies

Next I rolled out the dough (the last of the dough pre-made from my last pizza adventures), and baked it in the oven while I prepared the toppings. Sad to say, I had used a pesto mix b/c I didn't have time to try to chip up fresh basil and pine nuts, but for the purposes of this pizza, I think there was enough going on to let that one slide...During this time I also started on cooking the lasagna noodles. For once, probably because I was in such a rush and I've made it before, I didn't document any of the lasagna process! Tres sad, I know. Hopefully the potato pesto pizza will make up for it in all its glory - 

Slicing Red Potatoes

Peeled Onions

Sliced Onions - some for pizza, some for the lasagna

Crust w/ Layer of Pesto

Layer of Mozzarella 

All toppings added

Out of the oven =)

Pizza A$$ Annie

Last weekend my sister had some friends over for a relaxing weekend with some kayaking and good eats. I decided to crash the party, because that is what I do, and demolished their leftovers when I got home Friday night and commandeered Saturday activities :)

In my defense, at least my takeover was not hostile, and in fact, was rather delicious. Saturday day started with taking some of the leftover salad, tomatoes and baked potatoes and tossing them all together with some scrambled eggs. Sometimes it's great to just wing it with what you have on hand (especially if you actually have great ingredients to pick from).

Saturday day started with me picking up some drinks and snacks for kayaking because the swagger wagon was being used, and I was the only one home who could drive my car (manual, woot!). I originally went to pick up some Mike's Lemonade for them, but then this box of "Twisted Teas" caught my eye...and when I saw that they had it in a Lemonade Iced Tea flavor, well, how could I NOT get it?! And then the Skinny Popcorn was also on sale, so of course I had to get that too. My kryptonite - Arnold Palmers and Popcorn. So while they kayaked, this was what I did.

Twisted dude!

A hornet flew into my first drink...upsetting to say the least, but made for a cool shot

As "summer" as it gets

For lunch/dinner, I had extra pizza dough from making a mashed potato pizza a few weeks ago (no post on that one yet, just the original). I had also been talking to a coworker earlier that week about using beer in cooking - her example was that beer on roasted chicken evaporated all the fat, but still kept the chicken meat really tender. I didn't exactly have a chicken to work with here, but I found a bag of meatballs in the freezer and a Bud Light in the fridge and figured, hey, this could work. 

So I sauteed together the meat with garlic, chopped red onions leftover from the night before and diced tomatoes from our garden. Then tossed in the beer and let the whole thing simmer. After an afternoon of kayaking, there was quite a bit of stolen bites before the crust was ready. 

And now for the explanation for the blog title. One of the girls who came over, Annie, had been requesting a shout out in one of my posts, and I was like, sure, when I post about this I'll give you a shout out. THEN, after I had rolled out my crust and brushed it with olive oil, I had it on a stool because I was running out of counter top space. At some point. I turn around and see Little Miss Annie proceed to sit ON MY PIZZA CRUST!!! I let out a scream and yelled "YOU'RE SITTING ON THE PIZZA!!!!!" And she immediately jumps up, startled. Luckily, not much harm done, I had turned around and yelled in time. She just got a little bit of olive oil on her shorts, that's all. From that point on, I decided to refer to her as Pizza Ass Annie. And Annie, there you have it - a whole post dedicated to your butt.

She gained back a few extra points when she helped me put together the Spinach salad with slices of carrot, tomatoes and white wine vinegar with lemon. 

What was exciting for me was that this was one of the few times that I actually had enough people and not too much food that we finished everything! As much as I love leftovers reheated to scalding hot temperatures the day after, sometimes it's nice to not have to worry about packing food up after a meal and throwing everything in the dishwasher instead.

Meatballs & beer.

The crust going into the oven post butt-sitting and with red pepper flakes added

Slightly baked crust with toppings added

Spinach Salad - we can be healthy too!

Final product: baked & melty goodness = meatball pizza

A Productive Saturday - Muffins & Pie Cookies

I've been looking up and printing many recipes lately, but I haven't actually had a chance to try them all! Turns out, it takes less time and effort to research them than it is to see them through...hrm...

As it turns out, I finally had a whole Saturday yesterday where I didn't have to work nor did I have any prior obligations. So what did that mean for me? A trip to Costco and Bed Bath & Beyond and some quality time in the kitchen!

A new mini muffin tin later, it was time to get this baking-fest started! First, I started with cappuccino muffins - I was drawn to the recipe because I happened to have all the ingredients and the topping showed promise for a delicious top of the muffin to give it some texture and help keep it from tasting too dry (I have been having this issue with muffins). 

Dry ingredients

Mixing in the chocolate chips

Crumble topping

All ready to go into the oven!

Overflow batter made it into regular sized muffin tins

Le petite muffins!

Next, I tried this apple w/ oatmeal topping recipe. I was really trying to do things right this time, so I was careful to measure everything out, and the only things I substituted were flour (I always used half white and half wheat), butter (half butter and half applesauce), and for the apple muffin recipe that called for 3 eggs, I substituted one for ground flax seed (who knew!).

Regular eggs pre-flax seed

Flax seed egg substitute

Whisking the Eggs w/ Flax Seed sub

Apples chopped & ready to go

Walnuts chopped & ready to go

Mixing the toppings

Batter ready for the mix-ins

Apple chunks mixed into batter

Toppings on and ready to go!

Sneak peek in the oven...I couldn't wait to see how they were doing...

Overflowing muffins are the best type of muffins =)

Overflow of batter ended up in regular muffin tins

And finally, last but not least, a recipe that I've been dying to try for months now, apple pie cookies from smitten kitchen! I made the dough for the crust after the first two muffins, and then took a break to cut up some watermelon (I needed space in the fridge) and get some quality time on a kayak - trying to take in the last few days of summer (it's been going by so quickly!). Then resumed assembly of the cookies when I got back. 

Clearing out space in the fridge, aka, cutting up watermelon

Prepping for the Apple Pie Cookies

Sliced & Diced

Cutting in the butter (can't find my food processor, so had to do it by hand)

Liking the green and yellow =)

For coating the apples

pre-seasoned apples (recipe calls to coat them one at a time...but that definitely didn't happen)

The rather laborious job of stamping out pie crusts - the larger

Before & After Baking

I am obviously biased toward the apple pie cookies...they got their own instagram compilation

Results: 

- The Cappuccino muffins were a little heavy for my taste. If I make them again, I will definitely be reducing the amount of sugar and need to figure out what else to do to make them lighter and more fluffy. Also will add more coffee flavor next time (can't really taste that much of it)

- Apple muffins - I loved! I think because there was a pretty even ratio of apple chunks to batter, kept it from being too dense. Plus the oatmeal/sugar topping gave it a nice texture.

- Apple Mini Pies - so worth the wait! I struggled a bit with the assembly, and I wonder if the whole wheat flour made it softer and less easy to work with? The dough didn't seem to be chilled enough though it had been sitting in the fridge for almost 2 hours (usually recipes call only for 1). I also didn't cut the apple pieces the same way that she called for, so I had to work around jagged edges instead of apple discs. Even for the dough I had to use makeshift cookie cutters! One ended up being tupperware...

Summary of the day

All in a day's work