“Makes Easy Your Cooking Chore”

I’ve already discussed my difficulties in cutting. This goes for food, too.

In the 8th grade, they let those of us who were in the gifted program use a paper cutter for science projects. Why they figured smart kids were somehow better equipped to use a paper cutter, I’m not  sure. At any rate, a kid did cut off the tip off his finger, and he was so calm that all he said was “Mrs. Naz, I cut off the tip of my finger. I’d better go to the hospital.”

I thought about this last night as I was cutting potatoes with my new mandolin, and I felt a sharp pain in my thumb, and then saw a sliver of skin. Fortunately, it wasn’t more than just a little cut, because mandolins are only designed to make small cuts! That said, I love my new toy.

I opted for a more minimalist Asian version rather than the fancier European mandolin. Despite all the recent bad press regarding Japanese engineering (hey, that’s one good thing about having a 13 year old Camry!), I love this. And check out the box.

Full of great (bad) translations, as in the title. “Pickled radishes also ok.”

I probably spent too much money on it, and I was going to send it back in favor of buying myself a new dress. But I wanted a pizza with potato slivers, and I was busy, and I just wanted really thin slivers so, so bad, and it said that it would make potato chips….

Wow! The slices were so thin, so easy, and so crispy looking (before they’d even been fried), that I discovered that actually, raw potatoes taste disgusting.

After I doused them with olive oil and pepper, and then baked them for 20 minutes at 375 though, delicious! (I added salt after I baked them. Should have added it before. Oh well.)

I ended up using half of them to top my pizza, and I ate the other half. Hey, fiber, right?

The pizza was also a thing of glory. I made the crust myself with my outstanding new bread-maker. I kind of played around with the recipe, and still had a superior crust. It was something like:

1.5 cups of water

2 tbsp olive oil

2 tsp sugar (though I bet honey would have been better)

2 tsp salt

3 cups of white flour

1.5 cups white whole wheat flour

2 tsp yeast, put in a small indentation

(And put ingredients in in that order)

Excellent. The only thing I didn’t make for my pizza was the tomato sauce – I used the muir organic kind. I didn’t have mozzarella, so I grated gruyere (better, saltier than mozzarella, so use less). On top of that, in addition to the potatoes, I sprinkled ground beef that I’d sauteed with thyme. Excellent. Like a hamburger and potato chip pizza. The other good thing: I did most of the work on Sunday, and have still been reaping the benefits.

Another thing I made last week: Streusel cupcakes for Audrey’s birthday brunch. I thought that they were great, but when I did a bit of googling, I discovered that not only does a Martha and Me blog exist, but also, this person attempted streusel cupcakes with unsatisfactory results. What I think she did wrong: she used a cuisinart for the topping. A crumb caking topping should be rough, and the butter should be in big enough chunks to really saturate the cupcakes.

But that’s just my opinion.

Tags: cupcake, kitchen tool, muffin, pizza