So it's been a while...

I've gone to restaurants galore in the past months and am embarrassed to say that I haven't been writing about them. And we all know how it goes, after a few missed posts it just gets too difficult to catch up on all of them. So let's just forget about those wonderful restaurants I visited (like Blue Star Cafe, Blue Dahlia, Taverna, Asti Trattoria, and many many more...).

As of late I've been cooking a lot at home, saving money as it were. Plus my new apartment has a wonderful kitchen and roommates to eat my food so, heck, we all cook. It's a house full of lots of eating and joy.

I made cheesecake the other day, a recipe off of allrecipes.com

It was an extremely simple and easy recipe to follow. I used full fat sour cream but 1/3 fat cream cheese. I had made cheesecake once before and have learned that probably the most important thing to do with cheesecake is to have all the ingredients at room temperature (eggs, milk included). This is difficult because when we say "hey, I want cheesecake" it's not the kind of thing that you can just whip up quickly, like, for example, brownies. No no, cheesecake takes patience. It takes waiting for the ingredients to come to room temperature, it takes baking, slowly, sitting in the oven with it switched off (another very important step!!!) and finally, although I did try the cheesecake out of the oven, it was just all wrong, you must wait for it to refrigerate! It makes all the difference with the flavor and the texture especially!

I'm not the biggest cheesecake fan but I have to say that this recipe turned out deliciously. It makes a big cheesecake, be forewarned. Yum! Must eat last (unfrozen) piece later. Yes, my friends, I freeze batches of everything I make. Someone like me who could eat an entire pan of brownies must take that precaution! Plus it leaves more for later when you want a quick dessert. I baked the cheesecake in muffin pans for two reasons, firstly, and mainly, I don't have a spring form pan (blasphemy!) and secondly because it's more figure-friendly - in the long run custom of "i'll just straighten out this slice... and here... and here". It made 24 mini cheesecakes and I still had plenty of filling left over which I just poured into a random pan and baked :P

Sigh... anyway. The point is to say that I will try to update this as I actually do go out to eat and cook dinners. If only I had pictures of our recent wine and cheese party... oh wait, I do!

















Random dinner I made some weeks ago - rainbow trout, my favorite, with lemon and butter and dill. Broccoli in balsamic vinaigrette. Zucchini au gratin in the oven.