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Archives for June 2014

priority check

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38861_414646328950_4613303_nMy dad has taught me many lessons. In my opinion the most important was one about priorities.

When I was little we drove by the trailer park in our brown station wagon with the wood on the sides & I saw somebody had a new Trans Am in their driveway, (told you I was young).

“Dad, why don’t we have a nice car like that.”

“You have to pick which things you want. Do you want our nice hose with a pool or that car?”

I shut up, finished the conversation in my head and quietly chose the pool. No shocker there. I was under the driving age and was 1/2 fish growing up. I loved the water more than anything.

When I moved to California many years later we covered this lesson again on a phone call home.

“Rent is so expensive here in the bay area.” At which point I regaled him with shocking stories of just how expensive, expensive was.

“Well, you can have cheap rent you just have to live in some place more like Indiana.”

I laughed and chose California. I never forgot the lesson after that.

Priorities are a funny thing though. They have a sneaky way of changing on you. With a driver’s license that pool/car question might not have been as easy to answer. Well actually it would. I would still take the house and the pool. Which is exactly why we are moving to Indiana.

We have decided it is time for us to leave California and head to the land of affordable living.

When I left I swore up and down, left and right and every which way in between that I would never go back. So when I called and told my parents and they seemed rather surprised I was only slightly shocked.

We are really excited about the move and all the fun things that will come with it. This move is going to allow us so much more freedom. I will hopefully be able to work fewer hours. Which means more time with the amazing man in my life and time to figure out starting my own business. I don’t know what that looks like yet so stay tuned.

We are most looking forward to finally owning our own home and hopefully starting a family.

This could be my first Christmas with my parents in a decade. This will also be my first winter in over a decade. Please let it be nicer than last year. 16 years on the west coast has made me a bit of a weather wimp!

Have you left your childhood home? Will you ever go back?

cilantro chili lime shrimp

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Ever since we did our Whole 30 we have worked on sticking with it. We enjoy treats every once in a while because as they say it is “Whole 30 not Whole 365”. To keep up with eating well has meant coming up with an arsenal of recipes that are quick, easy and makes enough for leftovers. Having recipes that fit that criteria are the only thing that keeps me from cursing every time I have to get back into the kitchen.

This grilled shrimp recipe certainly fits the bill and will probably be my lifesaver for months to come. We cooked 2 pounds of shrimp. I believe these were 31-40 shrimp so 2 pounds gave us roughly 80 shrimp. We made these as part of a surf and turf dinner on the grill. Between a little steak and all our grilled veggies we had plenty of shrimp left over. We used our leftovers the next two days for breakfast in a scramble. I am thinking of making again this weekend so I can have some easy to grab protein for salads.

Have you done a Whole 30? What are your go to recipes to help make time in the kitchen shorter?

wit wisdom & food cilantro chili lime shrimp

 

Print
cilantro chili lime shrimp

Ingredients

  • 2 Tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 Tablespoons lime juice
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon chili powder
  • 1 teaspoon chopped cilantro
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
  • 2 pounds shrimp

Instructions

  1. Mix all ingredients together in a bowl or ziploc bag.
  2. Add shrimp and toss to coat
  3. Marinate in the fridge for 30 minutes to an hour
  4. Put shrimp on skewers
  5. Grill for 2-3 minutes per side
  6. If you don't have a grill you can put them under the broiler for 2-3 minutes per side
http://www.witwisdomandfood.com/2014/06/cilantro-chili-lime-shrimp.html

what happened to the food network?

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When I was in college food network was in its infancy and the term celebrity chef was a few years from being part of the daily lexicon. From years of watching the food network I learned a lot, branched out and tried new foods, and became more confident in the kitchen. Some place down the road a lot seems to have changed with celebrity chefs and food programing on television.

The chefs on the food network used to seem so passionate about teaching us about food. Every time I tuned in I felt like I had been personally invited to the kitchen to learn how to make their favorite dish. It was the next best thing to learning in the kitchen with my mom. Alton Brown taught me about the science of food, Bobby Flay taught me how to grill, Emeril taught me to try and enjoy my time in the kitchen and there were other chefs that left an impression on me. Even Rachel Ray, who had less prior cooking experience taught me how to make quick meals.

Now food programming across all channels and even HGTV seem to have succumbed to a sensationalist style that focuses on competition and is more about personality than substance and teaching.

Because of those early chefs I believed that all chefs cared about what people ate. I believed they wouldn’t endorse products they wouldn’t themselves use. When I see Rocco DiSpirito and Carla Hall endorsing Kraft Recipe starters.

Screen-shot-2013-08-13-at-2.57.10-PM

Duff’s face on a boxed cake mix, icing and ice cream it makes me come unglued. The box claims it is bakery quality. Nothing about the ingredients in that cake are bakery quality. 14772620_201310260914

 

I feel strongly that people should learn to eat well and take care of themselves and that should involve the smallest amount of process food you can muster. When the chefs that put themselves out there as people who know good food start talking about how easy Kraft recipe starters it makes teaching people about real food even harder.

If they decide to endorse products I wish they had higher standards. They don’t all have to be Jaime Oliver and champion the cause of people eating better, but it would be nice if they didn’t perpetuate a problem they were at one point actually helping to solve. Getting people who are afraid of the kitchen into the kitchen is the first step to a healthier life and they were good at that once.

Do you think that celebrity chefs have a responsibility to their fans? Should they be helping to educate people on eating properly?

homemade cake vs box cake showdown

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wit wisdom & food homemade vs box cake

Do you use box cake mixes instead of making cakes from scratch? Have you tried one of the many pinterest hacks to make a box cake mix taste more like homemade? I was surprised to see that someone took the time to figure out how to make a box cake taste more like scratch. Why wouldn’t you just make the cake from scratch and skip the box all together?

It got me to thinking what the benefit would be to making a box mix over a scratch cake. It certainly could be that a box cake is faster. Is the time you save worth the quality of cake you get though? It must not be if someone went through the time of figuring out how to make their box cake taste more like scratch. So what is the difference in time? How do the taste of the two cakes differ and would anyone notice?

Here is what I found out from making my own basic yellow cake and a Betty Crocker yellow cake mix and why I think you should just bake your cake from scratch. Just like in the above photo homemade cupcake is on the left and box cake is on the right.

Homemade vs Box ingredients

The box has many ingredients you wouldn’t want in your cake including some I can’t pronounce. The cake from scratch has only the ingredients pictured above. Just what you would want in it and I can, not only pronounce them I can tell you where they came from. Don’t even get me started on the icing ingredients!

wit wisdom & food homemade vs box cake

Homemade vs Box time

The start time was opening the box and the first ingredient measured on the scratch cake. The end time was after I filled both cupcake trays. No surprise the box cake took less time. I did go the extra step and sifted my flour when I made the scratch cake.

how long does it take to make cake from scratch

Homemade vs Box rise

In an effort to get accurate results, I used an ice cream scoop to make sure they had the same amount of batter.The had about the similar height above the cupcake liner. The homemade cupcake seemed to fill out the entire liner better than the box cake.

wit wisdom and food homemade vs box cake

Homemade vs Box color/texture

The homemade cake has a light color that is consistent over every cupcake. It is soft and smooth to the touch. The box cake has some spots that browned more than others. The box cake texture was one of the things I like the least about the box cake. It was sticky. It had a tacky feel like paint that isn’t quite dry yet.

wit wisdom and food homemade vs box cake

Homemade vs Box crumb

Even with my macro lens it is hard to show the difference in the photo. The biggest difference was the homemade cupcake was fluffier and lighter.

wit wisdom and food homemade vs box cake

Homemade vs box taste

It is a shame you couldn’t have stopped by and tasted them both. Take my word for it the scratch cake was much better. It just melted in your mouth. The box cake was good but left and odd coating in my mouth.

wit wisdom and food homemade vs box cake

All the cupcakes went to work. The homemade was the bigger winner. The icing on the homemade version was a seafoam icing. It is a boiled icing made with only 6 ingredients; egg whites, sugar, water, light corn syrup, cream of tartar and vanilla. Using brown sugar instead of white is what makes it a seafoam icing and gives it a caramel flavoring. Boiled icing has a sort of marshmallow consistency that makes it one of my favorites.

The differences weren’t drastic in the finished products but for me and mine the extra minutes are worth it. I think the homemade cake tasted so much lighter and delicious compared to the box cake. Plus I like knowing exactly what is going into my cake. and it feels like more of a labor of love to make it from scratch. Bonus is that when you tell someone you made it from scratch they will inexplicably be awed.

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