When Lunch Goes Wrong

This week has been a bit crazy at work. It's been one of those crazy weeks where you don't even have time to eat. This Friday was especially busy. I had back-to-back meetings from 1 - 5, so I needed to grab a quick lunch so I could prep for all my meetings. I found a deli down the street from my office. It was a Greek deli, run by a bunch of Koreans. Typical for D.C. I suppose.... I ordered an Italian sub with sweet peppers - the kind you can only find on the East Coast! I paid for my sandwich and headed back to the office. When I got there, I unwrapped my sandwich only to find this:


Is this what Koreans who run a Greek deli call an Italian sub?! This is not an Italian sub. This is a Polish sausage. Polish sausage is not proper lunch-at-the-office food. Polish sausage belong at the ballpark. At picnics. County Fairs. It does not belong in my cube.

So now I'm sitting in my cube, on a rainy November day, starring down a Polish sausage. I'm at the office, so there is no ketchup. No mustard. It's just all wrong. I had no choice but to eat what I could of it. It left me day dreaming of ball parks, the Rockies, my last baseball game watching the Nationals take out the Phillies. But it just wasn't the same because I wasn't at the park on a sunny afternoon. I was in my cube on a rainy November day.

So next time you go to a Greek deli run by Koreans, make sure they know they difference between an Italian sub and Polish sausage!

Hawaiian Wedding Cake

This recipe is called Hawaiian Wedding cake (a.k.a. When recipes don't work out!) I spotted this recipe in the Family Circle magazine we got free from our hotel in Ohio. It sounded absolutely delicious! It combines some of my favorite flavors… coconut, pineapple, and walnuts and wraps it up in a delightful looking cake. Sounds wonderful! So, despite my lack of love for baking, I thought I'd try it out. However, I had some serious problems making this one...

For starters, I thought there was a lot of sugar in the recipe, but since I'm not a baker, I made a very deliberate decision to follow the recipe exactly. Second, after the cake started baking, it looked like the batter was actually CARAMELIZING. Not good for cakes. I noticed later I had accidentally used pineapple IN HEAVY SYRUP. Maybe that was my problem? I'm not sure I even knew that pineapple could come in different syrup/water.

After I took the cakes out, they hadn't risen much, and the bottom of the round cake I had made, actually had a heavy layer of what looked like caramel soaking the bottom. We won't even begin to describe the texture...

This whole experience reminds me of the time I made homemade brownies in college. They puffed up about 4 inches over the top, spilled over and burned. Turns out the flour I had borrowed from a roommate was "self rising" and it already had the baking soda in it. After that, I started buying brownie mixes.

There is one redeeming feature to this cake... the homemade cream cheese frosting. It was pretty good - it almost made one of those cupcakes edible. Now I need to find something to go with it... good thing I keep plenty of cake mixes on hand.

Hawaiian Wedding Cake

2 c. Flour
2 c. Sugar
2 tsp. Baking Soda
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 can (20 oz.) crushed pineapple with juice, undrained
1 c. Shredded Coconut
1 c. walnuts, coarsely chopped

Cream Cheese Frosting

1 stick unsalted butter
4 oz. cream cheese
2 c. powdered sugar
1 tsp. vanilla

Heat oven to 325. In a large bowl, mix all ingredients together with a wooden spoon until just combined. Spoon the mixture into a prepared pan and bake for 35-40 minutes.

In a separate bowl, beat butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add sugar and vanilla until smooth. Top cooled cake.

Ratatouille

This weekend Dave and I headed to the movie Ratatouille (Rat-a-too-ee). I had to convince Dave to see it, but in the end I think he laughed harder than anyone in the theater. It's a great movie - fabulous food, great story, wonderful skyline views of Paris - what more can you ask for?

In case you weren't aware, Ratatouille isn't just a clever name - it's actually a famous French dish. 'Peasant' food to be exact. Though I've never had this dish in France, I have had something very similar in a small town in Turkey of all places. It's a wonderful dish that tastes like home. (You'll understand that even more if you've seen the movie)

Here's a recipe for the famed dish...

Olive oil

1 onion

1 clove garlic

1 eggplant

1 green bell pepper

2 zucchini

6 medium tomatoes, ripe (juicy) and peeled

salt and pepper to taste

Herbes de Provence to taste

Directions

Put a large casserole on the stove on medium heat. Chop the onions and garlic. When the casserole is hot, add enough olive oil to just cover the bottom. Add the onions and garlic and brown.

Chop the green pepper, zucchini and egg plant. Add to the casserole, stirring from time to time. Peel the tomatoes. Dice them or cut them into quarters, add to the casserole.

Five minutes later, check to see if the tomatoes have made enough juice to almost cover the vegetables. If not, add water as needed.

Add salt, pepper and Herbes de Provence to taste. Cover and simmer on low heat for 45 minutes to 1 hour.