dorm room diy: des oeufs gastronomes

*title in French to be all fancy pants*

There are many ways to do microwave scrambled eggs. But I've come to realize, there's a barely acceptable, get-food-in-my-tummy-now way (which I, on my dorm room gourmet pedestal, will call the wrong way) and there's a delicious, deluxe, I-feel-like-a-fancy-pants-chef-person way (a.k.a. the right way).

Wrong way:

Right way:

(We might also note that, while still nothing special, my food photography skills have increased minimally.)

Assignment: The Incredible, Edible Microwave Egg Project

Every college student with a microwave, a coffee cup, and a Pinterest knows about the basic egg-in-a-cup. It's fast, easy, and actually tastes like what it's supposed to. But. This is the boring, unreliable method. We want to step this up a little because we're fancy. In making a couple dozen microwave eggs, I've figured out how to finesse the basics into something a little shnazzier.

Hint 1: use a bowl, not a mug.

Yeah, I know all the recipes say you can make it in a mug. But the thicker something is, the longer it takes to cook in the microwave, just based on how microwaves work. I use a fairly flat bottomed bowl and my eggs cook a lot faster than they ever did in the coffee mug. Plus, you can get fancy like I did and call it a frittata.

Hint 2: spice up your ingredient list.

Basic recipes (if you can call them those) call for an egg, some milk or water, and some salt. If you keep some simple spices on hand, like oregano and basil or cayenne or cumin, you can turn your egg from basic to awesome in about two dashes. Plus, you'll have spices on hand for all kinds of awesome cooking activities. And you know you want that.

Hint 3: shop the salad bar. 

Does your dining hall have a salad bar? Good. Go there and fill up a box with spinach, mushrooms, tomatoes, olives, shredded cheese whatever you like in your omelettes. Throw them on top of your eggs to really jazz up your eggs, while upping the healthiness too! Look at all those fresh veggies just sitting there smiling at you.

With all my acquired knowledge, I made some eggs today. And you know what? Instead of merely "interesting", they were delicious.

a suspiciously similar picture...wonder why?

Eggs Florentine Frittata*

1 egg
1-1/2 tbs cream cheese (I got mine at the dining hall convenience store)
1/8 tsp dried oregano
1/8 tsp dried basil
4-5 leaves baby spinach
4-5 cherry tomatoes
1 tbs sliced mushroom (very much estimated)

Whisk the egg and cream cheese together until fluffy and uniformly colored. Stir in the oregano and basil. On top, place the spinach, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Microzap for 1 minute and 15 seconds, then let cool before eating. Enjoy!

Grade: C for the regular way. A for the jazzed up way! 

Have you tried microwave eggs? Do you like/hate/eat them? Do you have any tricks to turn the ordinary into the fantastically yummy?

*Florentine just means with spinach. But it sounds super fancy, right?

dorm room diy: chocolate-pb-oatmeal-microwave goodness

I do this thing where I get a slight obsession with a blog and then I read all their posts. This summer it was the Dreamstress (which honestly made me sad about my life and its lack of gorgeous dresses). Since coming to school it's been Chocolate-Covered Katie. Oh my gosh, that girl is a vegetarian/vegan inspiration. Quite literally for this.

I read about her Reese's Peanut Butter Cup Baked Oatmeal and kinda fell in love. Except. There is not an oven in my dorm room. And I don't know if my stoneware bowl is oven safe. So I can't just make it all the time, if at all. Enter the mighty microwave!

Assignment: The Oven to Microwave Transformation Project

unfortunately, everything made with dark cocoa turns out looking like mud

This requires some heavy math. Bring out your Pythagorean theorems and rhombuses and fancy math terms. 

Actually, all it takes is some basic oatmeal know how. I'm going to call my recipe a little more inspired by than actually copying her recipe (because for one thing, I'm not going to go the processed fake sugar route), but she definitely gave me the idea! I made this for supper for the first time the other day and I kinda fell in love with the idea that something as nummy as all that could also stay fairly healthy for me. Under 300 calories, protein, fiber, it's pretty good for you. 

Microwave Chocolate Peanut Butter Oatmeal with instant oatmeal (adapted from Chocolate-Covered Katie's)

1-2 tbs peanut butter

1/2 cup instant oats*

1/2 cup milk

1 tbs dark cocoa ('cos why would you ever do normal?)

1 tsp vanilla extract

1-1/2 tsp brown sugar

dash of salt

Put the peanut butter in a microwave-safe bowl and zap on full power for 40 seconds, or until soft and gooey. This makes the peanut butter a lot easier to mix in. 

Add in (quickly now, 'cos that peanut butter will solidify back up!) the rest of the ingredients. Microzap on full power for 45 seconds, stir, then microzap for 45 seconds. Let cool or risk burning your tongue. Or don't wait and dive right in to all that piping hot ooey-gooey chocolate peanut butter goodness. But don't say I didn't tell you so.

*For old-fashioned oats: add an extra half cup of liquid (milk, water, almond milk, what have you) and microzap for 3 minutes, or until cooked to desired consistency. Let sit a minute and then dig into that chocolatey peanut buttery goodness. 

Grade: A+ all around! Amazing original recipe! Amazing yumminess! Amazing microwave!

Except...probably a regular A, because of my original transformation and its dried out edges. 

Extra credit ideas: Hmm, how do you make a chocolate-peanut butter oatmeal better? Katie frosted hers with a glorious-looking fudge frosting, but I'm of the opinion that though breakfast is allowed to get pretty darn sweet, there is a line that it crosses that takes it into the dessert camp and you can no longer justify it as a healthy meal. The ideas that come instantly to my mind are pieces of chocolate and/ or Reese's peanut butter cups. Or maybe melted Reese's on top (someone in the comments of Katie's post suggested that). Once again, dessert camp oatmeal. But! I also thought of sliced fresh strawberries. Wouldn't that be nummy? Or maybe skip a step and use chocolate peanut butter spread. Or Nutella for chocolate hazelnut oatmeal.

Or just be a cool kid and bake the thing. :)

What do you think? Do you have any blogger obsessions (food or otherwise) at the moment? Do you cringe at the idea of that much chocolate for breakfast?

dorm room diy: the one-minute chocolate cake of promise

It all started with that microwave brownie mix. It caught me. It made me buy things like cocoa powder and flour and sugar, even though I'm a college student with no business buying those things. Why? Because I know that I'm smart and capable enough to make brownies without a mix. And also because Pinterest has five million recipes (exact statistic, folks) for brownies/chocolate mug cake/chocolate dessert/chocolateyness in the microwave. So of course, the microwave chocolate thing of choice had to be my first class project.

Assignment: The Microwave-Chocolate-Goodness Project 

this is a horrible picture of a delicious mug cake

I chose Chocolate-Covered Katie's One Minute Chocolate Cake. It had the benefits of not requiring fancy things like egg yolks or yogurt or butter or chocolate chips. It also looked like it would fit in the mugs that I have (which are fairly normal sized coffee cups, as opposed to the larger coffee cups that hold I think about two cups). Why is this important? Because I saw a lot of Buzzfeed articles about failed pins with the exact recipe of my dreams (oh you silly chocolate peanut butter mug cake with peanut butter pie mousse) that showed the cake overflowing the cup, making an enormous mess. Point of fact: I don't like cleaning microwaves. Smaller recipe it was. And for good reason--it rose quite a bit while cooking.

I mixed it up with few substitutions: I used dark cocoa powder, 'cos it's what I bought and 2.5 tablespoons of oil (because it was in the middle). Both, I think, good calls. My bad call came when I decided to microzap my cake for an extra 15 seconds because it looked a little underdone at 45 seconds. Dorm Room DIY tip of the the week: things will keep cooking after you take them out of the microwave. And in the case of Katie's cake, there's no eggs, so you could eat it raw if you wanted.  No need to nuke the bejeezers out of it. It still came out fairly moist, but I imagine it would have been better at optimum cooking time. A few days later I stopped at roughly 50 seconds, and though it had a gooey top, it was better in my humble opinion (fighting the initialisms!)

Just for kicks, I dropped dollops of peanut butter on top (read: scooped peanut butter off spoon with various fingers and shook finger like crazy until the peanut butter fell off) so that it melted and made a kind of ooey gooey peanut butter frosting. Totally worth it, folks. Adds a little salty, peanut buttery kick to the cake.

Grade: B+ for my cooking, A for the recipe. 

I'm taking off a few points for my choice of extra time, but I think the extra credit move of the peanut butter frosting gives me a few back. But the recipe really reads well. Plus, it doesn't require separating eggs or something complicated like that, which I like.

ignore my horrible camera skills. focus on the luscious melted peanut butter

Extra credit ideas: Want to take this to the next level? Katie's recipe is fairly simple, but it's a great base for more complicated microwave cooking ventures. I'd love to see a chocolate raspberry cake, with a center of raspberry jam (maybe add it to the center at 30 seconds?) or a salted caramel version (I'm thinking poke a few caramels into the center and then sprinkle extra salt on top) or a double chocolate cake with some chocolate chips or chocolate chunks stirred in. Super nummy, right?

Got any ideas for chocolate goodness of your own? Found/made a recipe to die for? Think that this is a load of hooey and chocolate baking should stay in the oven? I'd love to hear about it (though I politely beg to differ about the hooey; we can have a class discussion if you'd like)

dorm room diy: the syllabus

Call me crazy, but a month into the semester after enrolling in 18 hours and setting up the groundwork for a busy extracurricular schedule, I decided to pick up another class, just for the heck of it. I call it Dorm Room DIY. It's entirely self-taught, with my dorm as my classroom, and the Internet is my textbook (I'm looking at you, Pinterest). In other words, I will not be getting credit for this class, and the university doesn't acknowledge its existence. 'Cos it may or may not be entirely a challenge I'm setting out for myself.

Frankly, I'm tired of spending endless amounts of time on the Internet, much of which I spend on either Pinterest, looking at crafts and recipes, or sewing/knitting/cooking/crafting blogs. I daydream about the day when I have disposable income to spend on fabric and whole wheat flour and wood. But that's not nearly as much as actually doing.

last year's dorm room experiment: the famed nutella brownies

Objectives: learning how to use what's available to me in my suite ('cos I'm a big girl now and I get a suite) as my creative playground. I mean, more than just moving all the furniture in the common room to one side so I can use it as a dance studio (the perks of being a dance major!). Also, recording what works and what doesn't and in what ways things can be improved, if only for me.

Assignments: I'll try to complete a project (craft, sewing/knitting, or food) every two weeks, with the possibility of extra credit assignments in the middle. Barring unforeseen circumstances (and finals), I want this schedule to keep my creative juices flowing in way that the world of academia, even my artsier academia, doesn't ask me too.

Class Materials: Pinterest is going to be my text, 'cos you know, textbooks are just too boring. My crafts and inspirations will likely come from my pinboards, but sometimes I might just get a whim and do something that I haven't pinned. (gasp! creativity! 'cos that's what this is all about. :)

In the more sew-y/craft-y area, I'll be sticking to handsewing, because this college student does not have access to a sewing machine. Much as I may wish I did.

one of my first projects will be making one of these puppies (source)

In the kitchen corner of the common room, I'll be focusing on three appliances: refrigerator, microwave, and kettle/hot pot because those are actually present in my common room. I might get adventurous and borrow a toaster oven that I may have seen somewhere (shh, don't tell the RA!). But mainly, I want to stick to things you can legally make in college.

I'd love to have you join in with me--we can definitely make this a group project! Also, if you have any ideas for assignments I should try I'd love to hear them.

diy college: better overnight oatmeal

Once again, I have crossed the line from the Pinterest imaginary kitchen to the real, fridge-and-microwave dorm kitchen. I made Refrigerator No-Cook Oatmeal as a test project about a week ago, excited at the idea of having a homemade (chocolate-filled) breakfast ready for me when I woke up, as opposed to being forced to spend extra time in the morning making the breakfast. (Hey, I'm a college student, cut me some slack!)

I got extra excited because I found all this in Paws n Go:

Mainly, the excitement came from that oatmeal--Paws n Go never has oatmeal. So I bought some and got ready for the most exciting breakfast ever. I used this recipe for no-cook oatmeal as my starter. And this is what resulted. 

Yummy, but the texture was very soupy. Very soupy. Like applesauce, only with oats and dark chocolate chunks and raspberries. I don't know if it was the substitution of oats or what, but I'm much more of a gloppy oatmeal person (even if that sounds gross), so I tweaked the recipe a little. This is what worked for me, to give me a thicker, more substantial oatmeal.

I've tried it both with and without that extra teaspoon of honey, and it really is good either way. It's just good all around. I've also tried this with raspberries and blueberries (and currently have one with strawberries chilling in my fridge). If you use a larger fruit, you'll want to chop it into fairly small pieces--that way you get them well-distributed!

The blueberries wanted a close up. :)

Chocolate and Fruit Overnight Oatmeal

1/3 c quick oats
1/4 c plain or vanilla Greek yogurt
2 tbs skim milk
1 tsp honey (optional)
2 squares of Hershey's Special Dark Chocolate
a healthy sprinkling of fruit (of whatever variety and as much as your fruit tooth--can that be a thing?--would like!)

Finely chop the chocolate. Mix together the oats, yogurt, milk, and honey (if using) in a Ziploc-esque container or Mason jar until well-blended. Add in the chocolate, and mix until well-distributed. Top with your fruit of choice.

diy college: grilled everything-in-the-fridge

Pro tip: parchment paper is a decent makeshift lightbox

I've realized something: I am the epitome of an opportunistic cook. It's not in my fridge and I can't get it at Paws n Go? Nope. Just nope. Even when I go real grocery shopping, I usually forget to look through recipes enough to make a real grocery list. I tried last time and all I did was cruise my cooking pinboard, get overwhelmed with deliciousness (and the sugar content..sheesh!), and wind up writing down "tortillas, milk, and toothpaste". 

But when you can make stuff like this, why try?

Honestly, a recipe for this would be somewhat self-explanatory. What I did was use the flatbread I'd bought the night before at the dining hall, some tuna salad (made according to this recipe), some guacamole (made with an avocado from, yes, Paws n Go), and a few slices of tomato.

What I did to make this extra special is iron it.

Nope, that's not my laundry, that's a sandwich!

I used some parchment paper that we randomly had in our room (because we're cool like that and don't have normal stuff like aluminum foil; nope, we have parchment paper) and set the iron at halfway between wool and cotton, as per the Interwebs' suggestion. The result was pretty nice, compared to the refrigerator cold or soft, kinda soggy microwaved sandwich alternatives. I wasn't very patient, but this wasn't a grilled cheese, so there was no cheese to melt. But the bread got crispy warm, while the tuna and avocado stayed cool (as per my desires) so I consider it a win.

Lesson learned: gourmet dorm room sandwiches are made more delicious with the newest kitchen appliance--an iron. 

What kind of random sandwiches are floating your boat? Is there a super convenient fridge option that you gravitate towards? Shoot me ideas to try in my dorm kitchen!

diy college: tuna-hummus salad or making good on the pins

I'm like most pinners: I pin things that I think look fun to make or pretty or yummy. But realistically, I'm a college student with little free time, no sewing machine, and a microwave and mini-fridge at my disposal. Not exactly a gourmet kitchen.

But this week I accomplished a pin, this one to be specific. Not all those recipes. But one, a tuna-hummus salad. I got a little extra creative, but it's mainly the same thing. The best part? Everything for this recipe was available at my college's convenience store-of-sorts, Paws n Go, it didn't require actual cooking, and it was really quick.

Actually, the best part was that it was delicious. Amazingly, wonderfully delicious.

The hummus was some roasted garlic that I found in Paws n Go, to go with the cans of tuna which they kindly sell to meal points broke college students. My roommate bought marinated kalamata olives about a week ago, also from Paws n Go (I know, we're spoiled little children! :), so I chopped a few of those up and threw those in. And the tomatoes in Paws n Go's produce section were calling for a tuna salad home.

Tuna-Hummus Salad

1 5-oz can of tuna
2 generous tbs hummus (I strongly suggest to your creaminess of tuna salad tastes!)
3 olives
2 slices tomato

Mix together tuna and hummus. Set aside. Chop the olives and tomato into bite-sized chunks, for distribution purposes. Mix the olives and tomato into the tuna-hummus mixture, until the tomatoes and olives are well-distributed.

college food: nutella brownies

Can you really improve on the ease and tastiness of microwave brownies?

Yes, yes you can.

This, my friends is a Nutella brownie, made using that magical invention in my dorm room, the microwave. My roommates and I finally got some vanilla yogurt, so we were able to try the brownies out the way that they were intended. And then, because warm brownies aren't enough for us, we added dollops of Nutella that started out sitting pretty on top of the brownie mix but settled to the bottom while they were being nuked.

And oh my gosh, this was amazing. Warm, brownie, Nutella-y goodness. The only thing that would have made this even better is if it had been single serving so I could have eaten all of it in its most fudgey, immediately out of the microwave goodness.

Microwave Nutella Brownies

serves 4-6, all dependent on how much brownie each person wants

4 tbs microwave brownie mix
8 tbs vanilla yogurt
3 tbs Nutella


Combine the brownie mix and yogurt in a microwave safe bowl. Stir until well-mixed. Drop spoonfuls of Nutella on top until you're happy with all the amount of chocolate hazelnut goodness.

Microwave on high for 2 minutes. As a sidenote, if you wait for the to cool, like any smart cook will tell you, you can actually cut them. Or just use a spoon. Enjoy!

college food: microwave egg burrito...

The other day the lines were too long in the cafeteria, so I had an egg burrito the other day at one of the many cafes on campus. And it turned out to be a refrigerator-cold, flavorless, gelatinous lump of egg with a tiny smear of cheese somewhere hidden in the burrito.

So I set about trying to improve upon the basic idea: a cheese and egg burrito. And because I recently found out that eggs can be scrambled and cooked in the microwave, I wanted to test the idea out as my first review of how microwaves do everything.

Verdict?

This is halfway through my burrito. I made it with the Trader Joe's Mexican shredded cheese blend that my roommate and I bought to make eggs and chorizo...which we haven't yet. We had cherry tomatoes in the fridge too, so some of those mysteriously found themselves in my burrito in place of salsa.

My opinion on microwave scrambled eggs? They were...interesting. I made two eggs in the microwave according to these instructions. 30-45 seconds per egg in a microwaveable container--it should have been easy. But the eggs wouldn't set completely. Not after a minute and a half. Not after two minutes. At three minutes, almost all of the egg was set, so I crossed my fingers and hoped that I would be fine. I think it was because I microzapped them in my coffee mug, so maybe the egg was too dense to be cooked properly?

The resulting burrito was pretty yummy, despite a little bit of gooeyness, which I told myself was the cheese melted by the heat of the eggs. Because you know what's one of the good things about making eggs in the microwave? They're actually warm when you eat them. Take that, cafe.

college food: microwaves are amazing...

I didn't really intend to have a microwave in college. Fridge, yes, microwave, no.

And then my roommate got one and there's no going back.

This is my in-room kitchen. It's gotten even bigger since this picture.

The sheer volume of things you can make in the microwave is impressive. There's the easy things, like microwaveable mac n' cheese that was intended to be made in the microwave. And then there's tons of other foods that can easily be made in the microwave. Sure, there's a definite trade-off in taste. But when it gets to the point where you never have to leave your dorm room where you can resist the unhealthy temptations in the cafeteria using your microwave food, you start accepting the idea of microzapped pasta and eggs and everything.

Obviously microwaves can be used to make yummy brownies. But you can also use it to make eggs. Or pasta. Or baked apples. Or a multitude of other things (including Potatoes Lyonnaise and fudge apparently).

So I'm planning to try out a wide variety of somewhat classy microwave recipes and report back here on my blog. Like traveling the world in an RV but only eating at fast food joints?

With trusty, never-fail Pinterest as my guide, there's no way this could possibly go wrong. Until something explodes in the microwave and I have to clean it up.

college food: microwave brownies

Normal college students eat ramen or Easy Mac. Not my roommates and me. Three weeks into our first semester of college, we figured out how to make delicious, near-gourmet brownies in our microwave. They were extremely delicious--much more delicious than you would expect from the microwave.

A horrible picture of the best brownies ever made in a microwave

They were the brownie babies of some mix my roommate's mother sent her and the trail mix we had around the room.

Me with the delicious brownies

Easy Microwave Brownies

1/2 cup brownie mix (we used Trader Joe's Reduced Guilt, but I know that you can use other varieties)
1/2 cup applesauce
1/8 cup trail mix or to taste (we used Target's Chocolate Cranberry Crunch, but mainly the walnuts, so feel free to use just nuts or whatever trail mix you like best)

Combine the brownie mix and the applesauce in a microwave safe bowl. Stir until well-mixed. Add the trail mix--if using nuts, break them up well.

Microwave on high for 2 minutes. Let them cool...or pop them out of the bowl as fast as you can. There's no judgement here. Enjoy!

diy luggage creativity

According to my mother, my sister, and Little Town on the Prairie, one of the biggest purchases before college is luggage. And a computer and sheets and a ridiculous amount of food to have in your dorm room at any given time. So when I got my boring, black luggage, I had one obvious task: this needed to be decorated so I could spot it from the sea of boring, black luggage.

My artistic ability falls right about at stick people, so I decided to write quotes all over my bag. Easy, and a great way to personalize things that lack originality.

My books of choice

This is an easy job. Grab a stack of your favorite books or movies or internet videos (though those can't quite be grabbed), and pick your favorite quotes. Then just write them on your luggage with a black or silver sharpie (black for things like red and green bags, silver for things like black and navy blue bags).

You could do this on luggage like I did, or on a notebook, a mug, or even a piece of paper for a kind of quirky poster. Basically, a blank surface that needs more creativity.  I'm even thinking about doing this on the very basic grey curtain in my dorm.