closing the good journal: good yummy times

I should explain myself.

As fun as the world of food blogging was, it's time to hang up my online apron for the pure pleasures of donning a real one at home. Fear not that I'm no longer in the kitchen. While blogging has been sporadic at best in 2011, cooking has remained my joy, my stress relief, and my source of inspiration. I'm simply not writing about it any more. Life is entirely too full and too beautiful to stop and chronicle it every night.

This was a blast though. I had many posts that became quite popular. With the exception of ones boosted by Real Simple's food Twitter, here are my top three:

coming to you from the world's smallest kitchen

the evolution of eating well

bacon: i'm in love with a butcher

Good yummy times. And they don't stop here. I'll continue to show off good eats on Twitter. You can follow me @LifefromApt7.

Thanks for reading. Cheers!

what's good: indian-style home-fries

I was inspired to use my Indian spices after an evening of cooking spicy appetizers with my friend and culinary genius, Mark.

I grabbed my Flavor Bible to check some good flavor combinations.



I had turmeric, garlic salt, cumin and black cracked pepper. That would do.

I peeled, shopped and shocked my potatoes (boiled for 10 minutes, iced for 10 minutes). I heated some allspice and sunflower oil (it's the closest I had to canola) and combined some flour with my spices. Tossed the potatoes in the flour and fried them in the pan.



They fried easily and quickly, turning a curry yellow. Crunchy on the outside, warm and soft on the inside and spicy all around.



~jennifer.

Pots and Pans!

You know you're a food nerd when pots and pans get you excited.

After three weeks of surviving with one skillet and a one-quart saucepan purchased with a Williams and Sonoma gift card, I have inherited my old roommate's cookware.



It's almost too big for my tiny stove top.



Praise da' Lawd.

Let the real cooking begin.

~jennifer.

A Thai Breakfast

More of my one-skillet wonders.

Potatoes cooked in coconut oil, chopped peppers, some garlic salt and pepper. When it was done, I cleaned out the pan and made a quick side of scrambled eggs.



~jennifer.

the "make due" style of cooking

So yes, I've moved into a new place. And, while I love it intensely, I realized within a few days of being here that I went from a culinary Wonderland to the ghetto. What I mean by that is... my kitchen in the old place was fully stocked. Fully.

Every kind of pot and pan. Graters. Peelers. Waffle irons. Crock pots. Full sized oven. At one point, we even had a bread maker.



Now... um. I have the opposite of that.

I arrived at my new place with a few dishes, one skillet, a colander, and a corkscrew. I didn't even have a microwave.

My cooking style for these first few weeks has been "make due." I pulled together whatever I could to make a meal. This was my first quasi-masterpiece.

I sauteed the one clove of garlic I had, two old, crispy bay leaves, and a handful of chopped onions in olive olive. When the onions softened, I added some pork sausage, tomatoes, dried basil, oregano, kosher salt and pepper, put a lid on it and let it all simmer for 15 minutes. My old tried and true tomato sauce.

But I had no noodles. Well, I had flour, eggs and water, but no counter space to roll it out on.

Solution? I find some old lasagna sheets, break them apart and put the pieces in the sauce. It cooked for another 10 minutes until the pasta was al dente.



The next day at work, people asked me what I was eating for lunch. I said, "ingenuity".

~jennifer.

coming to you from the world's smallest kitchen

I've been absent, but with a good excuse. I moved from a large townhouse in the suburbs to a tiny apartment in the city. It's great except for...

I have the world's smallest kitchen. Perhaps not in a Guinness World Record kind of way, but it's small. Probably smaller than yours.



Yeah, it's that small. I do like the glass cabinet though.



Also, meet the world's smallest gas oven.



Somehow I managed to fit a baker's rack in here, because I literally have no counter space. How will I roll out my pasta dough?



Sometimes I have to get inventive with where I put things...



Hmmmm... Help?

~jennifer.

a natural hair journey... in pictures

I don't talk much about my hair, because frankly, I don't like to. I cut all my hair off a year ago precisely because I didn't want my hair to be a big deal any more. However, today is the anniversary of my big chop, so I'm getting a little reflective...

Here I was before. Shoulder-length, relaxed hair, which I've sported since I was 12 years old.



Isn't she lovely?