Introducing: The Tollhouse

This year, Campus House (my college church) started an Intentional Housing ministry, where students intentionally grow relationships with their roomates, as well as their community.  Students invite neighbors over for dinner and have fun activities like game night or movie night.  The houses even gave themselves names, such as the Boathouse, the Porch, the Luce Flore (floor) and the Firehouse (they have a firepit).  My sister Jasmine and I love love love LOVE to BAKE! So naturally, with a littile help from the ladies at the Zone (another house), we were dubbed the Tollhouse (often brought to you by Nestle!)

In all the excitement of the schoolyear, I hadn't made my way back to 1CT til now.  Don't be overly excited, because I'm not BACK yet!  I'm awaiting graduation & I would like to finish my college career before making blogging an everyday hobby.  So look forward to some amazing recipes this Christmas! As always, I'm so excited to bring you a schoolyear worth of fun community-centered treats.  I will do my best to make them budget-friendly (and believe me, I'm on a budget like no tomorrow!) I will try to incorporate college-friendly recipes, involving recipes with limited ingredients (like Honey Cookies, these recipes are always fun!)

Coming up, we have Fall pies, new cookies and Winter treats galore!

Dark Chocolate Coconut Cookies

One word for you:

intense.

Reese's Chocolate Cookies

I felt the urge to crank out some cookies the other night. Although the weather here in Northeast Ohio has been "Heat-Advisory"-hot and we're urged NOT to use our ovens AND my A/C is on the fritz, I couldn't help myself. I love baking, LOVE it.
My mom has recently been experimenting with different flavors of Praline Candy (it's a Southern thing) and just so happens to have many different kinds of chips and assorted dessertsy flavorings in our pantry. So I went in there and snatched up some unloved Reese's peanut butter chips. On the back is a recipe for:

Pizza Puffs!

Our local shopping, Crocker Park, has this cute little pizza stand that sells the most delicious form of pizza -- the pizza puff! The stand is called Casa Vella and you can buy 2 puffs and a cup of sauce or a drink for $5. Not bad, but Jas and I decided to try this at home. Introducing our very own Pizza Puff:

With these simple ingredients, we created an awesome dinner!

4th of July: Simple Fun

Here's a truly simple dessert that'll make everyone stare down their plate, all the while they'll be excited to eat it: RAINBOW JELLO!!! HEEEEY!!!!

Family Barbeques

This summer's been so chill so far. We've been hitting up the beach (Powerplant & Huntington), visiting a cute little sailing town (Vermillion), trying out the town's various ice cream shoppes, and of course, Family Barbeques!!

Now our wonderful Simms & Nicholson families are scattered throughout the US, not to mention living in New Orleans. Being so far away, we haven't made it to the latest reunion. So this small family of 4 has been having little cookouts of our own. We have fun, bringing out the grill, charring some dogs and burgers, grilling mom some fish, making kabobs and jello! We things things the Simms way: simple and delicious.

Resurrection Weekend

Tonight I have a lot of exciting things to tell you! Firstly, between Good Friday and Resurrection Sunday my life has been chaos. But God is good. I pulled an all-nighter Thursday evening, skipped my drawing (and favorite) class, turned in a hot-air balloon made out of aluminum cans, baked 2 cakes with my sister, went to a game night with fellow church members, cleaned all day Saturday, enjoyed an amazing service at Campus House, lunch with a friend's parents and 2 good friends, had a wonderful long nap and joined my sorority sister for dinner! Whew! That was crazy, but let's rewind back to the food!
Jasmine & I wanted to make 2 box cakes for our potluck dinner/game night with fellow Campus Housers. Jas whipped up a delicious Butter Pecan Cake with Cream Cheese frosting. She covered her cute little cake with Easter sixlets and a yellow peep in the middle! It was adorable!

I didn't have time for my cake, so I baked it, put it in the fridge and kept it for Sunday dinner. For my cake, I decided to bake a Hummingbird Cake! If you read Southern Living magazine (I don't, found it online), you might have stumbled upon it! I used a box for a shortcut, and that's helpful for students to cook with! It's also a healthier version, since I used less frosting. Here's my version of the recipe:

2 Easy Dinners

This one's so simple and pretty delicious! Of course, we stumbled upon this by accident, considering we were trying to make something out of almost nothing!

Saturday's Easy Dinner is......Spinach Tomato Pasta!

My sister loves pasta and I love to cook. We decided to make up a recipe that SOUNDED good but we had no idea how it would taste. We cooked a pot of penne rigate and added crushed tomatoes & canned spinach. Easy enough, but making it taste good took skill.....random skill.

Oatmeal at Sunrise

Upon reading my email, SparkPeople sent me an article about getting fiber in the morning with oatmeal! I thought "I already eat oatmeal...sometimes. I have packets of Quaker raisin n' spice!" but they had something better in mind. Ready for this?

Crock-pot oatmeal


Weird? I know, right? That's what I said!

I read the article, tips and the recipe. Sounded good, so I got out of bed and thought I'd give it a try! Here's my spin on it. Here we go:

1 cup Old-Fashioned Quaker Oats
2 cups 1% milk
1 cup finely chopped apples
1/2 cup Craisins dried cranberries
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 TSP butter or spread
1 tsp sugar (I ran out of brown sugar)
dash of salt
dash of nutmeg


Crock-pot it up. Stir well & cook for 'undetermined amount of time'

This part scared me. After reading the reviews (like I usually DON'T DO til LATER!) many people said theirs burnt after cooking 8-9 hours, like the recipe called for. Some cooked in only 90 minutes! 90 MINUTES?!!? I need sleep, man!

I put them on at midnight & checked at 1am to see how they were so far. They looked no different, so I decided to get some sleep.

8 hours later....

It came out strange. I didn't like, nor did I eat it. haha.....right.

I was a bit cranky that I had to keep checking on it all night. And I forgot the simplest thing about the meal choice:

I like my oatmeal soupy. Which I know is gross to most of you. But thick, soggy oatmeal doesn't do it for me. And it didn't have much flavor, despite me adding a bazillion extra things. Oh well, in the words of Jim Carrey in The Grinch Stole Christmas "BUT THAT'S WHAT THESE TESTS ARE FOOOR!"

Until next time!

Jess ♥

Sunday Dinners: Chef Tyffanie

I'm going to start posting about Sunday dinners that my friends and I put on. Tyffanie cooked up some soul food, with some help from the eaters. We had an awesome time dancing to Lecrae and frying chicken! I made the filling for Apple Pie and our friend Gijey came for some gluten-free treats!

Here's the awesomeness that went down:

Baked Mac n Cheese
Fried Chicken
Greens
Apple Pie




After hours in the kitchen, several trips to get more milk and things, and a ton of dancing, we finished! Food was awesome! Not much more to add! Pictures say it all! :D

Jess ♥

Favorite Food

Whenever I think back to the simple times, I think about how a tiny town could have all of its necessities when the whole town pitched in. Cute little shops and each town had a baker, a shoemaker, a butcher, some farmers probably, a blacksmith, a seamstress, and even a candlestick maker! I've always wanted to be the baker. My version of corporate America retirement would be to open a bakeshop & give cookies away to kids! I want to be that cute grandma that spoils the kids & makes pies for busy people!

One thing I've always wanted to do is bake bread. It's like the simplest, most basic food need for a simple family, and it's one of my FAVORITE foods! It's a HUGE culinary step for me. I tried banana bread last semester and it was delicious!

Here's the recipe from SimplyRecipes.com:

Banana Bread Recipe

Prep time: 5 minutes
Cook time: 1 hour

Ingredients

3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

Method

No need for a mixer for this recipe. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C). With a wooden spoon, mix butter into the mashed bananas in a large mixing bowl. Mix in the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the mixture and mix in. Add the flour last, mix. Pour mixture into a buttered 4x8 inch loaf pan. Bake for 1 hour. Cool on a rack. Remove from pan and slice to serve.

Yield: Makes one loaf.



Since bread is one of my favorite foods, you'll be seeing it again. I would like to try something new. So look forward to Apple Bread, Cinnamon Pecan Bread, Cheese Bread pretty much anything that can be a muffin I'll find a way to loaf it! :D


Until we meet again,

Jess ♥

Whoops

Forgive me. As school became overwhelmingly stressful, I got away from blogging my baking adventures. In my absense, I successfully baked banana bread, whole wheat pizza and sweet potato pie! I plan to make these again, so I can write about them! :)

For the sake of memory, I'll talk about the pie! My family loves sweet potato pie (many Black families do). I've noticed it's a cultural thing too. My Black friends say their families eat sweet potato pie while my White friends say pumpkin pie's the way to go. My parents have slowly let my sister and I protrude into the kitchen during the holidays to make small things, here and there. This time for Christmas, we tackled dessert! Jasmine made her delicious Chocolate Mint Cake while I decided on Sweet Potato Pie.

Since Grandmother Mary (who we call Maw Maw) is the best cook I've ever known, we decided to call her up and ask what she puts in her pie, while I scoured the internet for a good recipe. I usually find myself on and sometimes google brings me to the Food Network or even Cooks.com! Maw Maw said she'd have my cousin text us the recipe (never happened, she probably forgot, bless her heart). So my mom, being one who wants to get in and out of the grocery store and refuses to wait for my indecisiveness, picked a recipe she liked from some chef whose name I can't recall lol.

Regardless, on Dec 23rd, I set forth to make my pie! I spent most of the time mashing the potatoes myself, and I had fun adding sugar and everything. When it comes to recipes that need sugar, I like to improvise. I know brown or granulated sugar belongs in pie but I added nutmeg and cinnamon to my pie. [I'll post the recipe soon].

While I finished mashing the potatoes and mixing, I baked the pie crusts beforehand. My mom said "Sure you can make the pie but you must make the crust crispy" or something like that. So I gave it an eggwash and prebaked it.

An hour later, I had a delicious pie!



It was pretty good! I was more excited that I did it. My parents liked it more than I thought they would (genuinely, they've had some good pie!) Now I know what you're saying, parents usually say they like it, even when they don't. My parents don't lol. They'll tell you if they don't like it, which is a good thing. You'll never get anywhere with only positive feedback.

You can also tell if people like your food, depending on how fast it goes. My dad is by NO means a picky person, he'll eat the whole thing whether you got it from Paula Deen or the gas station lol. Mom, on the other hand, will tell me straight up whats good and bad about it! I couldn't convince Jasmine to even try it (she's super picky with everything).

Up next, I plan on making Mam Papaul's Original King Cake (it's Mardi Gras season and a lot of my northern friends don't have a clue!) I'm super excited about this one! From now on, my photography will be more professional and I plan to give it a new layout soon! Until next time, keep cooking friends!

Jess ♥

Don't Judge a Book by the First Recipe

Sometimes the most interesting recipes can come from the most unlikely of books. One day in 2008, I ordered [insert textbook or something, can't remember] from Amazon and shipping was $5. I could get free shipping if I added $5 to my order. So I thought, "hm, I can pay for this $20 item and pay $5 shipping or I can add another item and pay the same w/ no shipping! Let's do it!" So I scoured the website for another 30 minutes searching for a 5-dollar something. I came upon Totally Muffins Cookbook by Helen Siegel & Karen Gillingham. I figured it couldn't hurt. So I bought it.

Two years later...

Here I am, never having tried a single recipe. I looked around my kitchen one summer Friday afternoon. I had everything I needed. I just needed to give it a try. My parents were about an hour west of campus, driving my sister in for freshman orientation. I had to work in an hour and a half. I decided to surprise them with some buttermilk blueberry muffins.

An hour later...

Total disaster. I had no time to wait for them, because my parents arrived sooner than I thought. I took them out and they look half decent (completely blue bread with giant black berries protruding out of them). I grabbed one as their Uhaul pulled up in front of my rental house. It wasn't bad. Wasn't good but wasn't terrible. I realize at that moment that they needed to drop me off at work and the Uhaul had some of my furniture in it!! Oops, fail moment.

As we discussed an execution plan for moving my furniture & getting me to work on time I kept eating. I had finished the muffintop and reached the bottom half. It was compeltely dough, hot sticky dough. I gave up hope at my dinner and threw it in the grass for the wildlife to eat. I thought "that recipe book is terrible!! Never again!!"

[I won't burn your retinas with a terrifying picture of these muffins!]


[By the way my dad had put my entire room together (desk, bed, dresser, nightstand). Yeah my parents are that awesome. I did have to wait a month to receive these things from home. Living on an air mattress & out of suitcases isn't so bad.]

August rolls around and my friends return to campus for classes. One Friday night I decided to give the book another try. I decided to go simple with the pecan cinnamon muffins this time, minus the pecans (didn't have any). I'm not sure if this changed my muffins but I didn't have time to finish them before leaving to hang out with friends. So I threw the wet ingredients (including sugar) in a bowl, mixed it and put it in the fridge. Three hours later, I return and start mixing in the dry ingredients (flour, baking soda). I baked them and by then there were like 10 people in my livingroom, including my roomate. No one would wait for them to cool off. They were pretty good!! I was like "wow, this book ain't so bad".


[They devoured them before I could get a better picture.]

This past Thursday, I gave another recipe a try, banana muffins. No walnuts (didn't have any) and I really just needed to get rid of some bananas. I added 3 bananas like the book said and looked up a crumble top recipe (brown sugar, cinnamon, & flour; crumble cold butter on it too). Everyone asked "what kind is it again?" lol So note to self (and all of you), add more than 3 bananas!!





[I know they look the same as the cinnamon muffins but they're different! I swear!!]

So far so good with this little book. For an introduction in muffin making I've had a lot of fun! It's simple, nothing complicated or tricky. If you stumble upon some tiny muffin-shaped-or-odd-shaped book that costs 5 bucks, it may be worth a shot! And if nothing else, your friends will eat it! Til next time, keep cooking!

Jess

An Ameteur's Magic Trick

Tuesday Night, I joined some friends at their house for dinner at the Porch Lighthouse (I'll explain later). College guys are hilarious when it comes to cooking. Although some know their way around the kitchen (it's true) my friends do not. Out of these four guys, two of them have just moved out of the dorms. The two that have just moved out are tonight's head chefs.

I didn't think anything of it on my way to their place. It wasn't until I arrived and walked into their kitchen that I realized this would be an adventurous night. Luke D, Luke B, Lucas D and James invited me to dinner. Luke D is our guest chef (guest on my blog that is). He put nine giant chicken breasts into a large casserole dish and dowsed them in lemon juice. He then poured pepper and all-purpose seasoning all over them and threw it in the oven.





As for the side, he and James cut up cucumber, tomato and green pepper into a large skillet and set it on high. I asked what they were making and they had no idea. I first suggested they just eat it cold, like a salad. They decided to be adventurous and cook the veggies. I suggested to at LEAST put the tomatoes in last so they don't turn to mush and evaporate. However, they were determined to show me that they could survive cooking on their own. The only suggestion they would take from me was to add seasoning, such as italian dressing (and somebody threw in more all-purpose seasoning).





It was probably the scariest thing I'd ever seen by the time it was done. The tomatoes (as I warned them before) were completely gone, turned into a clear red boiling liquid! It's magic!




Although I eat normal amounts of food, guys have way larger stomachs. So we threw some baked beans on a pot at the last minute.



Now for presentation! They like to sit outside on their homemade dinner table, on the porch. (My friends call themselves the Porch Guys, because they sit on the porch yelling at people all day, including Wes who was absent this evening.) We sat down for a lovely dinner on a lovely evening, while people watched us eat as they passed by. The peppers and cucumbers, however, soaked up the flavor from the tomatoes and seasonings. The chicken, baked for 30 minutes, soaked up the lemon juice.




From the left: Luke B, Lucas D, James, Luke D (our guest chef)



Luke's advertising for Big K Grape.



(As you can see, I'm new to this whole blog thing. I'll be in some of the pictures next time.)


As crazy as it sounds, they did a pretty good job, even though they were just winging it! And as strange as it sounds, it was an awesome evening of community and college-grade fine dining.


DISCLAIMER: I know my pictures for this entry were horrendous lol. Work with me here. I know how to add nice accents in the background & put the protein (chicken) into the foreground. I'll get it right next time, but imagine trying to take pictures for a blog while one guy's holding raw chicken & two others are wrestling in the kitchen!! It's gonna be a great schoolyear!

Opening Night

The journey's begun. Learning to cook is a major challenge. For some, it's a challenge for the wallet too. As a college student, I'm learning to budget and bargain, scramble and save! At one point, we Boilermakers are spoiled with dining court food. (Our dining halls have won awards, but I'd hate to know what terrible is! I'm not knocking Purdue dining, but no matter how you slice it, it's DORM FOOD!!!)

So we move out of the dorms into our own apartments with our very own kitchens. At this point, many of us had been living off of our parents and the university's choice of diet. But now here is our chance to fend for ourselves (and lose the freshmen 15 or 40 for some). For some of us, it's a matter of what frozen plastic plate to stick in the microwave. Some the rest of us, it's a whole new journey beyond classes and studying.

After living on my own for 4 years (two in the dorms and two in an apartment), I can say that I have successfully learned to make edible food. It's not always beautiful, but with a few dollars in my pocket I can get the job done.

This blog is about making the most of cooking in college life! I will tell you now that my specialty is baking! But I'm going to show you some recipes that have gotten me through my penny-saving days. I have one more year of college to go (that's right, doing a victory lap) and I'm here to show you some awesome things that I've learned!!

Let's start with spices!!

When I first moved into my apartment, I didn't have a jar of spice to my name. Nearly everything off this list was compiled by my three roomates and I've since copied them after moving out! Here's a good list to start off with:

Cinnamon (for breakfast and dessert)
Salt & Pepper
Poultry or Italian seasoning (Chicken's so cheap, throw something on it & you're set)
Cumin (the secret to taco seasoning)


This list is sort of scattered and out there, but think about it. If your first month in your new apartment you KNOW you're only buying oatmeal, cereal, ramen, and pizza you don't need anything else!

Now, if you hope to impress your friends and entertain your family you'll need a longer list. This may take time to collect but it'll be worth it! In order, starting with what I use the most:

Tony Chachere's Creole Seasoning (I am born in New Orleans, you see)
Onion Powder
Garlic Powder
Basil
Chili Powder
Garlic Salt
Cayenne Pepper
Oregano
Paprika
Parseley

In case you're wondering "that's it?!!?" there are a million other useful spices and things:

Bay Leaves
White Pepper
Lemon Pepper
Ground Ginger
Minced Garlic
Minced Onion
Chopped Onion

And here are some miscellaneous things that I've found myself running out to get or wishing I already had:

Vegetable Oil
Olive Oil
Tomato Paste
Corn Starch (to thicken any sauces you screw up like I have)
Bread Crumbs


Depending on what type of cuisine you eat (Southern foods, East & West Coasts, French, Italian, Asian, Mexican, and so many more) depends on what kind of spices you need. I use my spices to make pasta, veggies, tacos, pizza, casseroles, and a lot of random things! As you begin to try new things, you'll find yourself buying new spices to enhance the dish! Such as Yellow Curry! I hope to dive into Thai food this year! I'll let you know how that goes!

Hope this was a helpful post. My next posts will be way more interesting. Look forward to saving money, cheap snacks, cheap dinners, and my trials and errors in cooking and baking in college!!

Have a blessed one!