Edible Adventures

"One of the very nicest things about life is the way we must regularly stop whatever it is we are doing and devote our attention to eating." - Luciano Pavarotti, My Own Story
     If you know me, you know that I am someone who loves to eat. I love food. I love the taste. I love the smell. I love everything about it. But, as life gets busier, I find myself taking less time to eat, and even less time to prepare that which I eat. I keep eating the same things over and over again. My menu has become stagnant. I needed to liven things up a bit. 
     I have decided to try making something new as often as I can. This has led me to create  Kristina's Edible Adventures. Hopefully, I will try and make something new once a week. In all honesty, this will probably be another one of my hair-brained schemes that I keep up with for, like, a month. Then I will get too busy and forget about it, or I will come up with the next crazy concept. For now, I am going to try. So here is a little info about my first few attempts to shake things up, the edible edition!


Coffee Ice Cream

     I got a fabulous new ice cream maker attachment for my Kitchenaid mixer. (Thanks Jeff and KD!) I got an awesome recipe off of Ice Cream Recipes.com. I had a little trouble in the beginning, as the base liquid got really lumpy while I was heating it. It was kinda gross actually, so I attempted to strain some of the nasty lumps out. I put the remaining base liquid into the mixer, and several minutes later --- homemade Coffee Ice Cream. 
     It was pretty tasty, but the texture was a bit off. Probably due to my straining some of the lumps out, or overheating the initial mixture. Whatever, dude. It was totally tasty!  Now that I think of it, I might have a little taste left in the freezer....


Chocolate Cream Pie

     March 14. Pi Day. It's supposed to be about math, but all it made me think of was chocolate pie. I love chocolate pie. It could possibly be my favorite dessert. I have consumed a lot of chocolate pie in my short life-span, but never once have I had a homemade chocolate pie. Time got away from me, but finally I decided to give it a try. I found a highly rated recipe on Allrecipes.com. Aaron and I decided to make two, and to be generous and share our pies. That, and we did not want to make a homemade crust, so we bought a frozen, packaged crust --- and it came with two, so we made two pies.  

     The pie was very easy to make. Or course, it was way more time consuming than driving down to the local Nation's and picking up a pre-made pie, but it wasn't so bad. We made the pie, let it set in the fridge overnight. The next day we whipped up some homemade whipping cream (nothing but the best for us!) and tried it out. It was very tasty. The texture was a bit weird; I am used to a light, frothy chocolate cream. This was a little more thick, more like a mousse. The texture didn't stop me from not sharing my pie, and eating it all by myself. Yum.


Chicken Marsala 

     Here we had an uber-delicious dessert ready, and no dinner. So I up and decided to make Chicken Marsala for dinner. I went to my trusty website, and found a well-received Marsala recipe. We did not have a 'chicken hammer' (aka meat tenderizer) so I used a regular hardware hammer to thin out the chicken. That must have been pretty fun to watch. We did not have any butter, as the recipe called for, so I just fried the chicken up in a little EVOO (I threw the lingo in there for all you Rachel Ray fans.) As the chicken and 'shrooms (I love 'shrooms!) simmered, I ended up doubling the marsala and sherry for a little extra sauce to go on our pasta. All in all, it was quite a delicious meal.