Summer endeavors.

Remember my chicken salad post?  Well, ever since then I've been documenting the food I've been making this summer, whether it's dinner or baked goods or snacks.  I've been wanting to post them up on this blog, but I was in the middle of working on my previous post and got stuck so many times that I haven't had the chance.

So, here's what I've made so far.  Most of these I made for the first time.

Chocolate bundt cake

First time making this!  It came out looking a lot better than I thought it would, but it also turned out really dense.  Pam and my dad apparently did not find that appealing and did not eat it.  My mom and I thought it was okay, but between the two of us (Sam doesn't really eat baked goods/desserts too much...or just stuff I make) we couldn't eat it all and since it had sour cream in the batter and I didn't refrigerate it, it grew some mold and we ended up throwing half of it out.  Fail.

Thai chicken with peanut sauce

My first attempt at Thai cuisine!  I was really in the mood to try making a peanut sauce, and my mom has this really good Thai cookbook that has simple but yummy recipes.  I loved the way they told me to make the chicken!  It was so simple - boil water, take the water off the heat, and dump the chicken in the water and leave it covered for a few minutes.  Then voila, super moist chicken.  I made the red peppers and onions without a recipe (hooray for me attempting to improvise/approximate!) and added a little cayenne pepper for some kick.

Red bean ice cream

This was made upon request (or demand, depending on your perspective :P) by my sister Pam.  My dad got me this ice cream maker during my sophomore year of high school, when I wanted to give my JROTC (Junior Reserved Officers Training Corps) speech on the history and development of ice cream.  I wanted to give my audience actual tastes of homemade ice cream, and I asked my dad (half jokingly) if I could get one.  It still shocks me that he actually got it for me.  I'm blessed to have such a generous dad.

Using this ice cream maker is super easy.  You have to freeze the bowl at least overnight, and then follow the instructions for whatever the ice cream batter (?) is.  The actual time for making the ice cream in the machine is like 20-25 minutes.  Most of the recipes have pretty similar instructions, just different ingredients.  My dad also got me a few ice cream books, including Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream Book and The Ultimate Ice Cream Book, but I love that the Ultimate one has all the more unique recipes, including ones like Red Bean ice cream and Avocado ice cream.  

Lemonade

I love lemonade.  My mom started making this particular homemade lemonade last summer when she found a recipe from Paula Deen on the Food Network.  Always makes me think of the first line in Jon McLaughlin's song, Beautiful Disaster because I really do love my momma's lemonade.

Earl grey tea cookies, corn & black bean salad, pumpkin bread (with cream cheese filling)

Tea parties are awesome.  They can be formal or informal, you don't have to eat heavy foods, and you can enjoy tasty drinks and lights snacks with good company.  And it gives me an excuse to host people and catch up with friends all at the same time.  I invited some ladies from my church over to my house because I hadn't talked to them in so long and sadly, church just doesn't provide the environment or right space to do that.  We had our first one during our winter break and it was so successful that I just had to hold another one :]

So I know that Mindy, one of the girls who came over, has a really bad allergic reaction to nuts - the taste and the smell.  And whenever I bake for the masses, I have to be aware that I shouldn't bake goods with nuts in them.  This can get to be quite difficult, especially for treats that go well with tea, as many recipes call for some form of nuts...or at least would taste better with them.  But I found this recipe for earl grey tea cookies and I absolutely loved baking (and eating!) them.  It was funny because when I was looking through our enormous stock of various teas, I thought it was ridiculous that we could have a bajillion types of teas and not one of them was earl grey.  Apparently my mom had a secret stash under the microwave.  Shh...don't tell her I told you!  The tea cookies were almost like shortbread cookies, except a little more moist and had a really interesting light taste with the tea leaves.  And they were so easy to make.  I have to make them again.  My family didn't get to try any of them because they were all gone by the time the ladies left.

The corn & black bean salad has always been a favorite in the Chan house ever since my mom introduced it.  It's super easy (just mixing some ingredients together), and it can pass as a topper to a plain lettuce salad, can exist as a salad by itself, or can be used as a salsa-like dip and tastes great with tortilla chips.  That's how we ate it at the tea party.  I figured we needed something cool and refreshing for our mouths besides baked goods on that glacier-melting kind of day.

Tangy pork loin (made in a slow cooker/crock pot)

Ooh, I was particularly excited about this one.  I made this today.  I've been wanting to try and make something in a crock pot/slow cooker because I love the concept of it:  you chop up/prepare some raw food, throw them in a pot, turn it on, and leave it alone until the end of the day when it's time to eat!  I'm totally a morning person so I can see myself making dinner in the morning when I'm most functional and less lazy as opposed to the idea of coming home from a long day and having to cook.  With my first time doing this, I was able to prepare the food in the morning after my driving lesson, throw the ingredients into the pot, go over to Libby's house for a few hours in her nice cool basement on this sticky hot day, and then come back home where dinner was served.  Well, not quite.  I made rice and thickened the gravy and let the roast cool and had to cut it and everything (it's more difficult than it looks), but it was pretty much done.  

I've made some other dinners like pasta and such, too, so this isn't entirely everything I've made.  These are just the ones I think should get special attention.  But I'm having fun cooking and documenting my endeavors. Can't you tell?

So...are you hungry yet?