plastic containers

are you as tired as i am of looking at this:

i cant take it anymore. so i did something about it. i went out and bought a big box of pint size ball jars. you know, the kind for canning. my idea is thus....it looks way prettier in the fridge than gross plastic containers. they also wont stain when filled w tomatoey things. also, what kid doesnt like to drink a big lemonade out of a mason jar? its totally awesome and reminiscent of my youth. furthermore, you can use them as a cocktail shaker. insert ingredients for cocktail. put lid on. shake. amazing. and pretty much everything can fit in them. besides meat. and i always plastic wrap meat, i never put it in tupperware. takes up too much room. so im feeling totally inspired by this and i put some leftovers in the jars and took a picture of what they look like in the fridge.

that's spaghetti squash, caramelized onions, pesto, and a lentil and kale salad i made yesterday.

i have to make myself do this

i dont know why i cant make myself sit here and type. i can stand up and cook all day long, i can take a million pictures of the things i want to blog about, but when it comes to sitting here and typing about it, i cant.

so im making myself.

for the last month, i've been making this recipe:

the almost no-knead baguette

its amazingly delicious. all you do is mix flour, water, yeast, and a little salt. you knead it for a coupla minutes and then stick it in the fridge. the great thing about it, is that its A LOT of dough. and it keeps for up to seven days. so what i've been doing with it is leaving it in the fridge and taking out just a little at a time. this means i have fresh, homemade baguettes every day. and my house always smells like bread. its pretty amazing.

i think the key to making it taste like an actual fresh baguette is the water that you apply to the dough after its risen. it gives the crust that chewy, brown quality that i crave w fresh cheese. so i went to target and bought a one dollar sprayer...and voila! it works. i just make sure i spray the dough before i put it in the oven, and maybe once or twice during baking.

also, if you'll notice, it calls for instant yeast. the hardest thing about baking fresh bread, is making sure your yeast activates. people seem to be unable to do this. i know i was, before i read The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. gone are the days of trying to make yeast activate. you use instant yeast. i searched all over chicago for instant yeast. couldnt find it. well guess what? that's because its actually called "bread machine yeast." its amazing. if you've been afraid to make bread in the past, fear not! this will revolutionize the way you bake bread. or pizza dough. anything.

speaking of pizza dough...i bought johnny a cuisinart brick oven for christmas. the idea was that he loved our old toaster oven because he loved to make these insanely delicious crostinis, and he's fond of the expression, "take it to the next level" so i figured, w proper baking stones, he could revolutionize our pizza eating experiences. well. we tried. i bought trader joes pizza dough. we failed. it sucked. the dough was seriously over kneaded, which causes the dough to become super hard to work with. we ended up w little blobs of dough that were burnt on the outside and raw dough in the middle. yuck.

we gave up. i used the oven to bake bread, and he still makes his crostinis. other than that. it just sits there. so this week i used rose levy beranbaum's recipe for pizza dough. it was amazing. and super simple. its just like the bread recipe i listed above, in that its just yeast, flour, water, the only difference is the tiny amount of sugar in this recipe. its very malleable and easy to shape. great for people like me, who have a hard time w pizza shaping. as she promised, it was light and airy, but completely crispy. i topped mine w black mission figs, prosciutto, and caramelized onions. of course. ;) johnny and ruby went the way of homemade pizza sauce, mozzarella, and pepperoni. try it. its fantastic.