Green Chili, cheese, & olive chicken

I made green chili with cheese and olive chicken tonight.

I got the recipe from this great blog, For the Love of Cooking  loaded with delish recipes. I made one small change, I used fresh green chilies and roasted them on the grill instead of using canned ones. I get my chilies from the Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) which provides shared of fresh, locally grown fruits and vegetables. Being part of the CSA has been great for me, it forces me to not only cook, but cook using produce I may not normally buy. If you feel like joining the Tucson CSA, or just perusing the website for more info, click here, Tucson CSA.

The verdict: good! I would probably add more green chili and more cheese next time, but I think that is just because I love both of those ingredients. Definitely serve this with black beans or something. I will make this again. 

Happy eating. 

Alright, it’s cake pop time. Yes, I am rather aware that I’m behind on this new (to my kitchen) trend. And this will not be a tutorial (although I will include the link to the tutorial I used),  this is more like me experience with making these treats.

I used the tutorial on Cake Pops Recipe. I used a pretty basic one, but if you feel adventurous this site has tons of different flavors and styles of cake pops.

I have made these suckers (pun intended) twice. I had a par-tay, and made them for that, but also made them a month prior to the party to get a feel for how it would go.

I like the recipe, and I think I finally found out what makes these babies really pop (yes, another pun, which was again intended).  So, the tutorial says that you need to add about half a container of icing, I found I needed ¾ to 1 container of icing. I personally love cream cheese frosting so I used it the first time I made these. I (and others) found the pops to be good, but very rich. The next time I made them I used a buttercream frosting, which was exponentially better in mine and others opinions. The buttercream allowed the pops to have a lighter taste and texture which was very lovely.

I would suggest, like the tutorial, to keep the cake balls to about 1 inch in diameter, this size seemed to be great, one bite and not too big/heavy so that the cake balls fall off the candy stick.

Next, I definitely recommend chilling the cake balls in the refrigerator overnight to firm up. I never tried it without doing this, but I am also a rather anxious person who assumes that anything that can go wrong will go wrong, especially when it is remotely related to me being in the kitchen.

Another tip, do not forget to dip the sticks in melted chocolate before inserting the stick into the cake balls. I happened to forget on half the batch for the party and believe me, we have more than a handful of casualties.

I got my melting chocolate from Michaels (craft store). The regular and dark chocolate melted perfectly fine in the microwave, but the white chocolate did not. I tried to elt the white chocolate in the microwave (because it said on the package I could) but it burnt. So the next time we used a double boiler to melt it and this worked great. Sid note: With the double boiler I needed an assistant (my wonderful boyfriend) because the chocolate needed to be stirred often.

I put my cake pops in the refrigerator to cool and then I would put clear candy wrappers around the pops.

The first day or work, which includes making the cake and the balls takes about 2-3 hours (this includes baking and cooling time). The next and final day takes about 1-2 hours, depending on how many pops are made.

Good luck and enjoy!!

The Picture of Dorian Gray: Book Review

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray is a thought-provoking novel that vacillates between ambling, seemingly directionless conversation and a riveting narrative thread that eventually bubbles up to the surface with the intensity of a volcanic eruption. The Picture of Dorian Gray, though not much more than a century old, has already been deemed a “classic” by literature-lovers, and after reading the book, I can understand its status. Wilde’s command of the English language is almost unparalleled in recent literature. I heard about this book when I was 20, there was a local band who called themselves Dorian Gray. And, with my love of classic books, I decided it was time to snuggle up with the book. The gist of the plot is: Dorian Gray is a young man whose physical appearance is particularly handsome and innocent. A friend and aspiring artist paints a beautiful portrait of Dorian. Dorian makes a wish that he would always look like his youthful appearance in the portrait and the picture would age with time. The wish is realizes and Dorian remains the same – youthful and charming, while the portrait begins to transform itself into the image of his soul. When Dorian embraces a life of hedonism, he uses his good looks and charm to obtain whatever he desires in life. Over a period of twenty years, Dorian becomes a monster on the inside (which is reflected by the portrait of his soul) even as he remains youthful and innocent on the outside. Dorian’s hedonism is triggered by his first meeting with Lord Henry Wotton, who says to him that the only way to rid oneself of a temptation is to give in to it( because if we resist it our soul will grow sick with longing for forbidden desires). The book is like a snowball if you will, it starts out small and slow going, the deeper into the book you get, the bigger and faster the snowball gets. The beginning of the book is filled with curious ideas and sayings from the devious Lord Henry, but then the book goes onto vague descriptions of Dorian’s self indulging behaviors. Near the end I did not want to put the book down.
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