Oops

In that last post I meant to talk a little more about the things I've cooked lately and forgot. It got rather long anyway, so here goes in a new post:

The key to fantastic scones: cold butter. I know, it sucks to cut it in when it's cold if you're doing it by hand (which I was), but it's so so worth it. Also half and half is fantastic in it.

Peanut butter brownies/peanut butter things in general: Avoid peanut butter with sugar added (Skippy's etc). I try to do this when I buy peanut butter in general, but I really really suggest it when cooking something with peanut butter because generally recipes call for sugar, and that much sugar overpowers the peanut butter and makes it too sweet and not peanut buttery enough--I think.

Scrambles: I love eggs. I generally make mine fried/over easy on toast with blackberry or marionberry jam on sourdough toast (ideally). I like them in eggs-in-a-hole, and I like scrambled eggs. The key to fabulous scrambled eggs: salt and pepper, a little bit of milk-- just a splash, some grated cheese, and the two most important things to fluffy eggs: whisk the eggs briskly before cooking them and lightly scrape the eggs when they're in the pan. Let them solidify slightly and then move them over with a spatula (I have this awesome wooden one that looks like a long triangle. It's perfect). Think of it like folding in egg whites. You fold the eggs over on themselves until they're cooked which keeps them light and fluffy.
*wash out the pan you used with cold water--works way better than hot for some mysterious reason
-also, just as of today I have gotten into scrambles. I'll order them at restaurants (Jam on Hawthorne and the Cricket Cafe on Belmont have fantastic scrambles and pretty much fantastic everything, actually), but I just don't ever think of making them at home. My housemate makes them a lot but she likes peppers and I don't (bell peppers, that is), so I steer clear when she makes them. However, today I went wild in the kitchen and made myself one with ham (I ripped up some leftover lunch meat into little bits), 2 eggs, salt and pepper, a little mozzarella, some feta crumbled in, and whisked it together. I had previously semi-caramelized onions (they were semi caramelized because I think the onions were a little old, oops haha) that I threw in too, and once the eggs were in the pan starting to cook, I tossed in some chopped tomato. I love tomatoes. Especially on pizza, but that's not so important at the moment. Anyway, I cooked all that up and had a fantastic, delicious, rather fancy brunch.

Potatoes: I should probably mention that I'm not a huge fan of hash browns. I'm not sure what it is about them. I like latkas so maybe I'm just missing apple sauce or yogurt or something when I get hash browns at breakfast. Also they're usually way too greasy for me. I do like home fries however (which I thought were the same as hash browns until I got to college), and those are what I made today. We've had some potatoes lying around for a while that I think were once going to be baked and then we had a spell of deathly hot, over 100 degree weather so hot foods were out. Anyway, they were going to go bad soon so I figured I'd cook them. *Note: you make home fries out of already cooked potatoes (generally. I suppose you don't have to, but it's much much easier to cook them first). My dad used to use leftover potatoes from baked potatoes and make home fries with them which is why I know this.
-I cooked my potatoes in my huge microwave for 10 min.
-Stab them a few times, stick them on a microwaveable plate, but a damp paper towel over them (not sure how necessary this is, though), and you've got potatoes.
-Let them cool and then chop them up.
-Meanwhile cook some onions in olive oil until they start to look cooked and add garlic
-Add potatoes and let them cook on one side for a bit til they get brownish or goldish and them stir them up/flip them over.
-Do this til they look done and golden and crispy and delicious all over
-If you have a cast iron pan, which is seriously hope you do, if not, get one, cook the potatoes in that so that once they're done you can grate some cheddar on top and stick them under the broiler until the cheese is melty and bubbling. I love cast iron pans.

Last thing: I used chocolate mint instead of regular mint for my lemon-mint granitas and it worked fabulously. The flavor was stronger than it would have been with regular mint, even though I used less of the chocolate mint, but it didn't taste too chocolately and, all in all, was as refreshing as it ever could be. YUM.