"Best 'Poup' Ever!!"

Well, it is finally fall break and I am in Missouri for a relaxing weekend with Kory and his family. It has been a wonderful weekend full of great food and fun times! I do have one complaint though, it is sooo COLD!!! So, I decided to make soup this week. ☺

When I told Kory’s sister I was going to make soup, she excitedly said “OH! You’re making poup!?” Being that she is a seventeen year old girl, I wondered why she called it ‘poup’. She explained to me that when she was little, she used to pronounce ‘soup,’ as ‘poup.’ I thought it was pretty cute and funny so I went along with it as I began to cook for the evening.

The recipe was the easiest one yet! I followed the Julia Child’s recipe for Leek and Potato soup, except instead of using leeks, I used onions. Here were the few things I used for it:

• 3 cups sliced leeks (or onions)
• 3 cups peeled and roughly chopped "baking" potatoes)
• 6 cups water) • 1-1/2 teaspoons salt) • 1/2 cup sour cream

I added butter, of course, to add a little more flavor and then a little pepper and a lot of cheese to make it a little more thick and yummy! I must say it was good! I was worried at one point because my soup just looked liked water and potatoes; but once I added a little flour and milk, along with the sour cream, it thickened and turned out well. Before I put the onions in the soup, I put them on the skillet with butter until they were soft. This little extra step made the onions blend great with the soup.

Might I add that I found what might be the greatest invention EVER…..an ONION CHOPPER!!! How wonderful to not have to spend nearly as long cutting all those stinkin onions! Onions really burn my eyes as is; so I usually have Kory cut the onions. But Kory’s mom had an onion chopper and thought I might have died and gone to heaven! (I know, life’s little pleasures..) I am asking for an onion chopper from Santa for Christmas for sure!!

I think this is the easiest recipe so far. Kory wants it to go on his ‘favorites’ list so that I will make it again. It didn’t take long at all and there was nothing confusing or hard about the recipe. So this is great meal for college students maybe for a sick friend, or a cold day!

When I was finally done making the potato and onion soup, I asked Kory’s sister if the soup was good. She replied, “best ‘poup’ ever!”…I took that as yes!

EAT MORE CHICKEN

May I just say how much I LOVE food!? The dish I made this past week I will have to brag on! It turned out great and it didn’t take all day either! I sautéed chicken in garlic, butter and herbs it was just simply wonderful. It was the first recipe in the book that I already knew (somewhat) how to cook. But I did decide to use extra butter when I cooked this time considering that it is the way Julia would have wanted it.

The only thing I became unsure about was the sauce. It seemed simple enough, but I had no idea how it was supposed to taste. I thought it tasted good so I guess that’s all that really mattersJ. I think this is a really good dish to make if you are serving a smaller group because the chicken you cook only a few at a time. For my veggies, I cooked mashed potatoes and French style green beans. I have to admit, the beans were nothing from the cook book.. they were from a can…. But they were still good! I think my mashed potatoes were pretty good. After I boiled them, I put them in the same skillet that I cooked the chicken in. I let them brown for just a few minutes, but the potatoes absorbed the butter and herb flavors from the skillet which made them exceptionally good! That wasn’t in the Julia’s book…. that was my own impromptu skills!

I’ve learned to take a dish, follow the recipe, but add some of my own ideas in as well. I decided after a while, that there’ s really not much you can go wrong with when you’re cooking in butter. Anything extra just adds more flavor; the question then becomes how healthy or ‘good’ are you trying to eat? So, considering that I’m not exactly trying to be healthy while doing this, I say the more flavor the better! After all, I think Julia would want it that way.

I have also noticed that cooking has been a good stress reliever for me as I have become more creative and relaxed. It also feels really good to see that others are enjoying the food so it’s not just for me and my enjoyment. If making other’s smile could be a hobby it would certainly be one of mine. I love seeing others laugh and enjoy themselves, especially if that person has had a bad day. So maybe cooking can be another good way of making people smile.

That seems like it might be a good hobby to have. :)

Dieter's Beware!

Wow! What a week! Where to start? I guess it can be summed up easily by saying: I felt funny on Tuesday, I was sick Wednesday and by Thursday, when I finally decided to go to the doctor, I found out that I had a virus… lovely. While I am feeling much better, Julia’s intense cooking regiment took the back burner this week while I focused on getting better, studying for tests, and cheering my frogs to a victory on Saturday! GO TCU! With the limited time, I decided to do an appetizer from the book; one that would take less time and that would be great for the Cowboy game watching party at my house tonight. So, I decided to make cheese biscuits! (I’m not even going to attempt the French name for it.)

This is a great recipe for college students for two reasons: it is incredibly easy to make, and it is incredibly bad for you as well! Instead of making my own dough (because there was no way that was going to happen today), I decided to buy the biscuits and follow the recipe from there. I would be lying if I said that it worked great the first time around; the first few were and epic fail!If you can tell in the pic, that is a brown, crispy, nasty, biscuit!



Using Crisco with butter clearly was not as good of an idea as just sticking to butter! At least the roommates got a good laugh out of it! But after the first fail, I got the hang of it and the rest turned out much better. I began experimenting and putting the cheese on the top of some, and putting it inside some of the other biscuits. They only took a few minutes each and they tasted great.

For the game, I put them all on a platter with three dipping sauces: marinara, ranch, and garlic butter and everyone seemed to really enjoy them during the game. I was happy to find some of the recipes in Julia’s cookbook aren’t as difficult or time consuming as I thought they would be. Again, I used the web, and this website narrowed down some of the confusing details to make it a lot quicker. Overall, another good success!

I’ve learned that it was really important to continue cooking even when the first batch failed. It might have been a waste of a few biscuits but it gave my roommates and me a great laugh. It feels like life is that way sometimes too. Even when things don’t go as planned, if you persevere past the upset, you might find something unexpected along the way. It was nice today to have failed at first; laughing with my roommates in our last year of college was sweet memory I will never forget.

'Boeuf Bourguignon' or Beef Stew!!

Good grief, Julia! I know I said in my last post that Julia had an attention to detail but that was a COMPLETE UNDERSTATEMENT! Today I spent the day cooking… the whole day cooking! I decided to begin my cooking journey with the famous French Beef Bourguignon, or Beef stew for those of us less eclectic in the food genre. I started this morning at 10 am by making a list of all the things I would need; I soon realized I didn’t know what a few of the item were. For instance, a bacon rind is something that sounds familiar, but nothing I have ever attempted to buy. After looking it up on this wonderful thing we call the internet, I figured out the bacon rind was simply the outer covering of bacon before it is sliced. After trying to make a list, I figured maybe I should take the book with me so I don’t get confused.

I then went to Central Market with my Julia Child’s cookbook in hand, trying to find all the things I needed. I have to say, buying most of the ingredients wasn’t too bad after I had some help; but the bacon rind was a problem. I asked the man at the meat department if I could get 6oz of bacon with the rind..(sounded easy enough)…the man laughed at me and said they did not have bacon with the rind. So I simply decided that I would have to cook my dish without that stinkin’ piece of rind! While the man in the meat department was a little harsh, the man in the wine section was wonderful! I told him I needed wine for cooking and he showed the exact wine that they used for this recipe. It’s called “Pinot Noir,” synonymous with a classic Burgundian red wine. (And yes, Mom, I did just read that off the label. Just in case you thought I started sounding like I knew what I was talking about.)

Once I got home, I began cooking. I was very hesitant at first; looking at the recipe over and over again to make sure I was doing everything correctly. After cooking for a while and taste testing everything for seasoning, I realized it tasted really good! So I began to relax a little and just enjoy myself in the kitchen. Once the stew was finished cooking in the oven, I served it to my roommates and took some to my family. According to them….and myself.. it tasted wonderful! Mission success! I was really happy to be able to enjoy the fruits of my labor and see that others liked it too. But I am now exhausted after about seven hours in the kitchen. Maybe next week I will try to find something that doesn’t take quite as long!

So here’s what I learned today from cooking, be confident. In whatever you’re doing. Even if it’s not perfect, take pride in achievements and strive to do something new that pushes you past your comfort zone. And live a life that is full of enthusiasm.. and good food. ;)

One last thing, this one website: http://www.rouxbe.com/recipes/2688-beef-bourguignon-boeuf-bourguignon/text was WONDERFUL in helping me! It has good videos to watch if you need help and it was incredibly beneficial! (No offense, Julia. I’m a visual person).

“Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in a basement. Other people get tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music.” –Julia Child

Greetings! My name is Julie Richter and I am a college student at Texas Christian University. This past month I was inspired by a recent film, “Julie and Julia,” to figure out if cooking would be a fun hobby for me. To be really honest, I LOVE FOOD, but cooking I only love when it is either really easy to make, or exceptionally wonderful to my taste buds. I bought the Julia Child cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” to see if any of the recipes looked like something I could do. I very quickly realized that Julia had incredible attention to detail; details that I never had thought of or heard of before. But once I began reading a few of the recipes, I was soon determined to try out some of her famous dishes.

So, in short, I have decided to cook one dish a week from Julia’s recipe book and blog about my accomplishments, failures, frustrations, joy and confusion. My hope is to find recipes in Julia’s book that I think would be easy enough for a college student to master. Considering that most of the meals that I cook consist of “break and bake” or “under 15 minutes to cook,” I know that it will stretch me beyond what I normally have been able to do in the kitchen. I would say that I am a fairly average college student when it comes to cooking, but my hope is to find some dishes that I enjoy making and that, of course, taste wonderful.

It seems that many of the people that I deem with having wisdom in my life are also incredible cooks. Whether there is any actual correlation there I’m not sure; but I do think it says something about a person when they are comfortable and impressive in a kitchen. For college students, I think it could be a great change of pace to be able to impress friends or family by creating a meal. In our culture, food can bring a community of people together for a common purpose and an enjoyable time. Think about it, whenever there is a great event going on, what is one of the central focuses, FOOD!

So this is for you college students who might want to impress someone: whether it is a boyfriend/girlfriend, friends, or family, learning to cook a wonderful meal might be a great way to do so. This is also for the entertainment of those who will probably get a good laugh out of reading me trying to cook something that I have no idea about! But I embark on this adventure with courage, enthusiasm and hope that I will come out of this with some great food and a sense of accomplishment.
“no fear, Julia” - (Julie and Julia, 2009)