The non-baker gets creative

So occasionally the non-baker lacks ingredients to make, well, much of anything. So in these instances, she has to summon up her creativity, take what she's got and change it slightly so that she finds it palatable.

Last night she figured that she would finally use up the can of butternut squash soup that had been sitting around for a while in her pantry. But, she generally finds canned soups too salty and flavorless. So, she added some orange juice, some white wine, a dash of pomegranate champagne vinegar, and some cinnamon and....voila! Delicious soup. Of course, being the non-baker, she doesn't have much use for measuring cups in these situations and so, like when the baker bakes for fun, there's not much of a recipe for recreating the thing.

And tonight, same thing. She decided to make some whole wheat couscous. And then she figured that she'd add on some of the tomato-basil tomato sauce that was sitting in the fridge. But her body wanted more protein and so she took a can of cooked black beans and added those. Then, she noticed some taco seasoning sitting around and figured that she might as well make chili. So she added some chicken seasoning, a whole bunch of ground black pepper, and some paprika, and instant vegetarian chili.

Blizzard creativity

So the Baker and the non-baker dealt with some......interesting weather this week. And, as a result, the non-baker didn't leave her house for something on the order of 48 hours. Since the non-baker never remembers to go grocery shopping, it was time for a bunch of creative cooking.

The non-baker managed to convince one of her roommates that a blizzard was the perfect weather in which to try out a recipe for scallion pancakes that she had made over the summer. She mostly used this recipe. Well, sort of. First they mixed up the dough, doubling the recipe, and using 5-ish cups of flour and 2 cups of water and kneading it into dough and coating it with a little bit of oil. Then they let it sit for 30 minutes.

And this is where she started to change the recipe. She didn't have scallions sitting around, and so used onions instead. Then they took pieces of dough and, as per her roommates instruction, put some onions in the center and then flattened the dough into a pancake shape. They then heated up a pan, put a little bit of oil in the bottom of it and cooked the pancakes, a few minutes on each side until they were a bit brown on each side.

Rather than a traditional dipping sauce, they mixed up a bit of soy sauce with white vinegar.

But they ended up with a fair amount of leftover dough, since they had made so much to start with. So, the next day, the non-baker used more of the dough, this time making plain flatbreads, since they had used up all the chopped onions the day before.

But even that didn't use up all of the dough. So, the next day, the non-baker decided to use some of the dough to make a dessert. As usual, the non-baker wanted to find a way to include chocolate and peanut butter, which shouldn't be a surprise, given her penchant for peanut butter and chocolate nutella. The non-baker decided to make chocolate peanut butter potstickers. She made little potstickers, put 2-3 chocolate chips in them, and a small bit of peanut butter.

Then she warmed up a pan, put a little oil on it and browned the bottom up the potstickers. Then she added a quarter cup of water to the pan and covered it, letting the water dissolve. And voila! Delicious dessert potstickers.