Rice Cooker Repair

I'm about to tell you a sad, tragic story. So don't say I didn't warn you. A few weeks ago I came home from work on a Sunday night, and I was tired, having gotten very little sleep the previous night due to my youthful partying, something I am no longer quite accustomed to. I decided upon finally getting home from work, I'd put some rice in my rice cooker and take a nap while it cooked. I awoke to a pool of water with rice in it. My rice cooker was broken. It no longer even turned on! (To which you may say, how did you not notice that when you turned it on, and the answer is that the previous time I had used it the light didn't turn on then either, but it had still worked, so it all seemed normal I guess). 

So I decided the most reasonable thing to do was to see if I could fix it, and according to the internet, this is a common problem with rice cookers and an easy enough fix. You see theres's a fuse inside which burns out it if gets too hot. So I ordered some new ones of approximately the same temperature rating and set about taking the old one out and putting the new on in. 

So one side is connected to the power cord, and had I been more prepared I would've gotten a new little cinch fastener, but I ended up just kind of wrapping them around each other and taping it. 

 The old one is on the right and the new on the left, this is after I switched which one the little fastener that you use to screw it in place was on.

Here's that wrapping around each other I was talking about before. All in all after I was done it did indeed work again. So this was a much cheaper option than getting a new one. And makes me feel good that I didn't send this one off to the landfill, when it basically was fine, just needed a tiny new part. Yay fixing things! See you next Tuesday!

Tortilla Chips

Lilly and I had a stack of corn tortillas that were very near the end of their life. We were also out of tortilla chips. So I decided the time had come to try making our own tortilla chips. Step 1: make a small stack of tortillas and cut them in quarters (or 6ths if you prefer).

Step 2: arranged on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet.

Step 3: drizzle with oil and salt.

 Step 4: bake at 350*F until crisp, flipping them over half way through (at about 6
 minutes)

Step 5: enjoy!

See you next Tuesday!

Strawberry Scones

Strawberry scones are something I've been making for many a summer now. It's just the perfect summer breakfast sweet. In the past I've always used a very basic recipe like this one. But for this batch I used this one, since we were running low on milk, and also it called for grating frozen butter (which I'm sure you could do in any scone recipe) and that sounded like a good idea. 

I made a double batch and didn't have quite enough sour cream, so I used a mixture of the items shown above. Trust me, the scones did not suffer from this choice! pictured below is my laziness when it comes to mixing ingredients  This recipe can pretty much be made in a food processor or hand mixed. Since I don't have a food processor, I opted for using my stand mixer very carefully, and scraping it down a lot. While not optimal, it all turned out fine. 

Yum, yum strawberries!

 I bake them on parchment paper, and just cut them and seperated them a little bit. Once cooked they will have reunited, but are easy to cut apart. These are one of my favorite things to bake and everyone seems to like them quite a bit. A word of caution, I freeze whatever I don't think will get eaten within about two days, because the strawberries go bad pretty quick once they'r in this form. So gobble them up quick, quick, or freeze some for later! See you next Tuesday!

Lazy 'Chicken' Parm

Sometimes I just want a good hearty meal, but I don't want to spend a lot of time or exert a lot of energy to make it. If you're the same, then this is the meal for you, if you have left over pasta then it'll take 5 minutes to make, if you don't have left over pasta, then it'll take the length of time it takes to make the pasta. 

First step is to get out a frozen fake chicken patty (now, I know what you're thinking, fake chicken? no thank you. But seriously, as a meat eater I will tell you that I'd prefer a fake chicken patty over a real one any day. I mean, chicken patties are hardly real meat anyways, right?) and microwave it for slightly less than the full cooking time. I put mine in for 90 seconds. Then pull it out of the microwave and put some pasta under it.

Put some tomato sauce on top of it. Top it all off with some cheese, I used mozzarella and parmesan here, usually I use shredded cheese, but I happened to have a hunk of mozzarella, so extra yum. 

Back into the microwave it goes, for about 1 - 2 minutes. That's it. Done. Enjoy! See you next Tuesday!

Tofu and Potato Coconut Curry

The other day I got some tofu at Trader Joe's (which BTW, a 19 oz block of organic tofu was like $1.70, remind me why I even eat meat again? Although to be fair its not like I ever really cook meat), with the intention of making either a curry or stir fry. Then the other Saturday I was hanging around the apartment and decided to try out this recipe, except I doubled it, using potatoes instead of double the tofu. So I started to blot the tofu (one thing I had learned in the past and remembered is a trick to cooking tofu is to get it as dry as possible before cooking it. Which is funny since it's always packaged in liquid, but anyways...). 

At this point I realized that we were actually out of coconut milk. eek. So I hopped on my bike and found a convenience store that actually sold it. I returned to my apartment and cut up some potatoes and started boiling them in addition to starting to cook the tofu. 

Now I have yet to figure out why stuff sticks to the bottom of this pan even though it's coated in a layer of oil. I just don't get it. But after cooking the tofu and taking it out and scraping up as much as I could that stuck, I added some more oil, and the spices and garlic. Now, since I was doubling it I looked at the amount of garlic and said, whoa 12 big cloves is gonna be a lot for anyone but me. So I only put in 8. I regret that for two reasons. One, I was actually the only one that ended up eating any of this. And two, it came out a little bland, so I think it needed that extra garlic. 

Onions! 

Mix it all up!

After it's boiled down a little. MMmmm. 

Now like I said earlier, it came out a little bland. It also came out a little greasy. I added a little salt and that definitely helped on the flavor front. I'm not sure what I'd do to help the fact that it came out a little greasy, but to be honest, I'd make it again, it came out pretty good :) ...See you next Tuesday!