A Cooking Update

It's been way to long since my last post, again.  I have so much to catch up on. 

For starters, I made so very many new recipes in the last couple of weeks.  Some of them were great and some of them were iffy.  My new favorite recipe, however, is this recipe which is for cookies that are healthy, with no sugar (except what's in the chocolate chips) and no flour.  I know you're probably skeptical, but they are totally delicious and feel like a total treat.  Here's a picture of the dough below:

I also made spinach and chickpeas Jamie Oliver style.  I think I used too much vegetable broth powder, so it tasted a little to salty and vegetable brothy.  I also had about a quarter of the spinach called for in the recipe.  I think that the sauteed spinach in combination with the sauteed onions (which were sliced rather than diced) was just altogether too much sliminess for me as well.  I am typically a fan of both spinach and onions, but the slime factor here was more than I could handle.  But here is a really nice (if I do say so myself) picture of the end product:

I also made the first bread I've made in years, and the first entirely whole wheat bread I've ever made.  I used this recipe, substituting agave nectar for the honey.  I found the end product to be quite heavy and very dry.  I'm not sure why, either.  I was hoping for something a little chewy and crusty, and found neither of those in this recipe.  I don't think that it was due to the agave nectar substitution, but I don't honestly know enough about the science of baking to know that for sure.    I've also learned that there are surprisingly few recipes for whole wheat bread that call for only whole wheat flour.  Some of the recipes call for the addition of wheat gluten if you're only using whole wheat flour, and most just call for some white flour or bread flour.  This is clearly something I'm going to have to investigate/learn more about if I'm going to be making more bread anytime soon.  I will say, however, that the dough was delicious.  I also learned that if you eat a lot of bread dough, it does some strange things in your stomach and you wind up having burps that feel carbonated.  Here are a couple of pictures of the end product.  You can see how the loaf of bread just collapsed at some point in the process.

Finally, I also tried a recipe for Double Coconut Chicken.  I simultaneously cooked brown rice with some shredded, unsweetened coconut and then served the whole thing over the rice along with some steamed broccoli.  I think this would have been much better had I salted and peppered the food as directed in the recipe.  I also didn't brown the chicken as well as I would have liked.  As it was, it turned out a little bland.  The recipe was pretty easy to execute, though.  And here are the results of that endeavor:

It even looks a little bland, doesn't it?  I also question the quality of my saffron.  I purchased it some time ago for a ridiculously small amount of money at World Market.  I think it's worth another shot, although I might go an entirely different route next time and use some Thai seasonings instead.

So there's your cooking update.  If you have recipes you love, I would love for you to share them.  I'm always looking for new recipes to try.  Especially recipes that real live people cook in their real life kitchens with reasonable ingredients.  I've recently been checking cookbooks out of the library in droves as well, so if you have any cookbook recommendations, I'm all ears.  I recently purchased Urban Pantry: Tips & Recipes for a Thrifty, Sustainable & Seasonable Kitchen after checking it out of the library and loving it.  You might want to check it out as well.