Sauteed Chicken with bell peppers and onions on fettucine

The thing about buying groceries is that you buy something for one recipe and then have to figure out how to use up the rest of it.  For example, I bought heavy whipping cream to make mac and cheese here and here and then made curried cream sauce and fettucine alfredo with it.  And after all of that, I still had a lot left over.  I started adding it to my tea and hot chocolate (which is especially good in hot chocolate) and made fettucine again, but I only had cheddar cheese in the fridge.  Thus, "fancy" mac and cheese (which is what this really turned out to be) which is basically cream sauce with cheddar stirred in instead of fresh parmesan.  And to top it all off, a chicken breast, cubed and sauteed with red bell pepper and onion.

I need to learn some more versatile recipes (and preferably ones where I'm not looking at atherosclerosis in my early 30s).  Goodbye heavy cream, I knew thee well.

I'm going to die because of this recipe.

Oh cheesy deliciousness.  Remember when I first made this recipe?  Well here it is reiterated with cubes of baked chicken, 1 box of shell pasta, and 3 kinds of cheese.  Yes, that's right, three different kinds of cheese.  Mostly owing to the fact that I had two lumps of other cheese to be used up and then I went and bought a big block of (radioactive orange) medium cheddar.  There's also some aged sharp white cheddar and mozzarella in here.  The mozzarella is deliciously stringy and gooey in here.  And, the sour cream I used this time had little bits of chives in it.  I don't know if it really makes a difference, but it was pretty :)

If it's possible, this recipe keeps getting better and better every time I make it. 

Chicken with Fettucine Alfredo

Ooh la la.  Sounds so fancy.  This poor dish was so full of kitchen mishaps though.  I melted a freakin' spatula.  Yup, there's plastic stuck to the side rim of my frying pan.  I'm having horrible flashbacks of that time I accidentally charred some chocolate chips in the microwave.  Eww.

But in any case, it was still pretty good despite my setbacks.  The chicken was so charred because I didn't realize that it was still frozen on the inside.  At least the cream sauce was super easy, just cream on low heat, butter, and some extra sharp white cheddar grated in at the last minute.

Roses that won't die.

Aww, N is so sweet.  He made these for me for Valentine's Day :)  And I didn't even have to look up the pattern for him.

Incidentally, I must have taken this picture when we had this huge pine tree outside of our kitchen window.  The HOA cut it down recently to renovate the concrete steps outside of the house, so now I can always see straight into the Chinese family's house across the walkway from us.  Now, I creep around my house at night in the dark so they won't be able to see me through the window, haha.

Sugar Wizards

 Warning, this is a super photo heavy post.  Load at your own risk ;)

I went to this cake show/exhibition about a month ago by the San Diego Cake Club.  I wasn't expecting a whole lot from it, but it was seriously amazing.  I had to restrain myself from taking a gazillion pictures of each cake.  Although, I did find it difficult to get just these few because it's difficult to take pictures of tall cakes with a 50 mm lens without being jostled too much by people or people walking in front of you.

 This London themed cake was actually the first cool one that caught my eye.  It looks professional, but these were amateur cake makers!

Close up of the detail on the guards, aren't they adorable?

I loved all the pretty flowers on this one.  Plus those teeny tiny cardinals!

I always used to read Peanuts in the Sunday comics growing up.  I think this particular cake is so good because the characters all look very true to the original illustrations.  Imitating people in cake can be very hit and miss in my opinion.  I definitely saw some cakes where the sculpted people just did not look very good.

Look how cute Snoopy is on top of this cake :)

This might have been my favorite cake.  

 The icing for the water actually makes it look like water!

Release the Kraken!

 Look at all the detail work!  I think the entry form for the Basilica said that the cake decorator put on each brick one by one.  That's incredible...and tedious.

I can't get over how detailed everything was.  This looks like a little fairy house and the spires on the roof were waffle sugar cones!

 

This one was the most classic wedding-cake-esque.  I just love the pretty piping detail on the leaves.

This bird/dragon thing was one of the winners of the cake show (it was some kind of competition).  It was so tall, it must have been at least 6 feet!

I think this one might have also been a winner, it's themed Princess and the frog :)

A Yoda cake!  This one was also something like 3-4 feet tall.  Amazing!

I always said, if I failed at a science career, I would be a cake decorator :)

More Book Alterations - Hunger Games

Well, it seems that these sorts of altered art pieces always catch my eye.

Although I cringe at the thought of dog-earring the pages and breaking the spines (of paperbacks) of my own books, I still think this is really neat.  I'm so impressed by the depth of the image, it's not just flat; it's actually 3d.



The artist made the mocking jay logo just by folding back the pages of the first book of the series.



Click the pictures to see the rest of the set!

P.S. I think it's official, I've jumped on the Hunger Games bandwagon! 

Shots

I'm not much of a drinker, and this concoction doesn't make that any different.

But! I do appreciate the mixing of specific densities of liquids to create this cool effect.

via Boing Boing

Chicken in Curried Cream Sauce

I made this curried cream sauce based on previous cooking adventures with N, but it didn't come out quite right.  It's really a very easy recipe if I could just get the timing down. 
This is what I did:
Cut up chicken thigh into cubes.
Fry up diced onions in some olive oil.
Cook chicken with onions until done.
Add heavy cream to pan and turn heat down to low.
Add a generous helping of curry powder until it's a really deep yellow/gold.
Let cream thicken over heat while you wait for brown rice to finish cooking.

I think I didn't let the cream thicken long enough/I had too much cream to begin with because as you can see there's way more sauce than necessary in there.  It ended up tasting too creamy and not enough like curry.  It was still pretty tasty though, I'll have to try this again but with a lighter hand with the cream.

Happy Birthday M!

Ta da!  Isn't it a cute panda? I sent this to my friend in Berkeley for her birthday (even though I'm about a month late, oops!)  At first, when I was making the individual pieces to assemble, I though the head was going to be astronomically large and would never attach properly to the body.  But I was wrong, and it's very kawaii :)  Can you tell that's a shoot of bamboo in its hand? I had to sort of wing it and hope for the best.

Free pattern at Ravelry.