Updated Blog Address

Hey all,

We've decided to transfer our blog over to wordpress.com. We did this mainly because the blogs looked more professional, but you can find the new link: http://www.zachandgina.com, yes we splurged for the .com site, add it to your favorites!


Zach and Gina

Shop Class 101

Obviously, Zach and I LOVE to cook. Though we don't have a fancy kitchen, we find it mostly usable. What isn't working for us, however, is our lack of counter space. Since our dish drying rack takes up 1 out of 3 countertop spaces, it leaves us only about 4 square feet to spread out our computer (to refer to a recipe), cooking supplies, ingredients, appliances, and our glasses of wine. Drinking while making dinner is the best part! It hasn't been too much of an issue, but it would be nice to have more space. 

I have been looking for a long table to put underneath this window, but haven't been able to find anything long enough, and deep enough, or at countertop height. So...

I decided to build something! I haven't even taken so much of a shop class (2 semesters of home economics - at least I can sew!), but thought Zach and I could handle it. There is a website called http://ana-white.com/, and this blogger posts plans for building things out of wood. I found a plan for a table on here, and knew it would be perfect for that big space under the window. The plans for the table needed tweaking since we wanted it longer, and deeper, so we played around with the measurements, until we made a whole table to fit that space (when you take out the shelf the microwave is on). We also added a bottom shelf. I forget the height (but it's at countertop), but it is 2 feet deep and 5 feet long. See? That's a whole lotta square footage we were missing out on! 

Next, I went to Home Depot, and bought the (cheapest) lumber, a drill, screws, a sander, and sandpaper. For the lumber, we got 2x2s. Fun story about 2x2s. They aren't 2 inches by 2 inches. It's 1.5  by 1.5. That seems silly to me to call it a 2x2. They should just make actual 2x2s. I am gonna make a call to Home Depot... get that changed... Anyway, when I got home, Zach cut the 2x2s according to the plan with a hand saw. I think in all, he cut 18 pieces of wood. 

Next, we made the frame. On the left are the 2 tops (top and bottom shelf), and on the right is the side of the table. 

Then we put it all together! Don't be deceived by the pictures. This took a lot of time to accomplish. There was a lot of drilling, leveling, arguing, un-drilling, re-drilling, arguing, leveling, and more. I couldn't decide who wasn't level - the table, the floor, or our heads! By the end, the frame wasn't level in all the places, but I decided it didn't matter because I was excited for the next part of the project. Also, since we cut the 2x2s by hand, there wasn't any way to guarantee a 90 degree cut every time.

Outside the table went for installation of the plywood and sanding. I got the plywood cut at Home Depot, so it was pretty easy to screw the 2 pieces into place. Then we put wood filler into the drill holes.

Unfortunately, we don't have pictures of the sanding, staining, and more staining, and polyurethane-ing, and sanding, and polyurethane-ing, and sanding, and polyurethane-ing, and sanding, and a little more polyurethane-ing and sanding. This whole process took several days since we had to wait for our coats to dry, but it was so worth it.

And here it is!

It fills up that space perfectly, and gives us so much more counter space to work on! The shelf below is also wonderful so we can put our cookbooks on it, and baskets full of junk. The table is mostly level. You certainly cannot tell it's not level while using it, so it's just fine. Check out the cool paper towel rack we made out of scrap wood!

I am pretty impressed with ourselves that we managed to make this table. It took a lot of internet researching, calls to my dad (who knew stain and polyurethane could be so confusing?!), and re-doing things, but it was totally worth it. It's pretty great. Even though we are in this rental for another year, we hope to get a lot of use out of it. We haven't made a big meal yet (it's been in the house for 2 days now), but I know it's gonna be wonderful! Cool, huh?!

Mozzarella Cheese Bread

Mozzarella Cheese Bread

From time to time, Gina and I get to take the 1 hour drive to Orange County to housesit for my Uncle Rich and Aunt Ginny. They were out of town in Chicago and we were able to enjoy some beach time!

This week's blog post will be about one of the yummy treats that we made while we were out there. 

First, we bought some pizza dough from a local pizzeria. One large pizza worth was $4.00.

We rolled out the dough and formed it into a greased baking dish.

Then, we topped with mozzarella (part skim, of course), parmesan cheese, minced garlic, olive oil, and italian seasoning.

Per the pizzeria owner's instructions, we set the oven to as hot as it could go (500 degrees, F) and baked for ~10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, we weren't able to get the nice browned crust that the guy at the pizzeria told us to look for. We put it in for ~5 more minutes. The cheese browned up a lot more, but at least the crust was done. It was pretty darn good. My Aunt Ginny introduced us to the simplest sangria recipe the other day.  Simply mix wine (whatever kind, however much you want) and Fresca soda for a refreshing, tasty drink (see below).

And of course, the two made a perfect pair out by the pool.

Here is a closeup of the yummy cheese sticks.

Nutritional Analysis

We'd like to do a cost analysis and nutritional analysis.We will look at the calories first. We used part-skim mozzarrella (~350 calories for the whole meal). The dough we estimated as ~1000 calories (from various websites). This worked out to about 700 calories for half the cheese bread (we were hungry!), which really isn't too bad: all things considered. It's fewer than ordering out, and still very tasty! 

Cost Analysis

So we bought the pizza dough for $4.00. The mozzarella was ~$5.00 for the package (we used half), so about $2.50. We used Italian seasoning (~$0.08 worth), jarred minced garlic (~$0.10 worth), and parmesan cheese (~$0.50 worth). Total, $8.18: which we estimated about 4 servings: or about $2.04 per serving.

See Gina enjoying the company (even though she's allergic!). Sebastian was so cute.

Here's a picture of Gina and I enjoying the beach in Laguna Niguel later that weekend.

Swirlicious Cheesecake Cupcakes

I get a lot of ideas of foods to try from pinterest.com, mostly because I am surfing it often. This makes me bound to run across tons of delicious food items. Raspberry Swirl Cheesecake Cupcakes is one of these amazing finds. It originated from a blog named Annie's Eats. I nearly died after looking at the pictures, so I went straight to the grocery store to pick up the ingredients. 

I should have taken more pictures, but it was just so darn hot in the kitchen that I wanted to make them as soon as I could (sorry to our family and friends in Texas, I know it's hotter there!).

I grinded up graham crackers, and mixed that up with some butter to create the graham cracker crust, and layered that in the cupcake pans. They had to bake for about 5 minutes in the oven at 325 degrees, but you can definitely smell when they are done. 

The filling was pretty darn easy, too. Zach mixed up some cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, salt, and eggs. After the cheese filling goodness was done, we made the raspberry swirliciousness. In the food processor went raspberries, and sugar, then we strained it to get the seeds out. I imagine it doesn't matter if you leave the seeds in, but I thought it looked prettier without them. 

On top of the cupcakes goes a few dots of the raspberry stuff, and we swirled it around to get that tie-dyed effect. This part was pretty fun!

Zach accidentally made hearts! So cute.

So, I have never made cheesecake before, and I am guessing timing is everything when it goes into the oven? Because I had some issues. Zach put the first 2 trays of the cupcakes in the oven, and we cooked them for 22 minutes, as the recipe suggested. I don't know what we were thinking, because our oven runs hot so we always take things out early. But we didn't, and the cheesecake cupcakes got a little charred on the edges. Which was fine. But then as they cooled, they sunk in the middle! We taste-tested them, and they tasted a tiny, tiny bit charred, but still delicious. With the third pan, we set the time to 18 minutes, and they came out perfectly!

You can see the difference in the two batches in the picture below. The cupcake on the left in the white paper is perfectly done, and the two on the right, not so much. I don't know that this was a cooking failure, but there was definitely a lesson learned here! 

Luckily, Zach was having a meeting the next day with his Thermoelectrics group, so he brought them with him. I guess people liked them (even the funny looking ones) because Zach only came home with a few leftover! Maybe they just ate them to be nice? Haha, no, but seriously, they are sooo good and rich and amazing. Cheesecake is such a dense dessert, and the cupcake size is just the right amount. 

Here's the breakdown of the cost and calories. 

Cost

I am not as fancy as Zach with my cost analysis, so here it is dumbed down. My bill at the store was $20 (already had vanilla on hand, though, and only used a third of the graham crackers I bought). We got 36 cupcakes out of the ingredients, and that comes to about... hold on let me get a calculator... 56 cents per cupcake. Not too shabby, I guess? I don't know, but dude, it was totally worth it!

Calories

I plugged all of the calories into a calorie counter, and it came out to 187 calories per cupcake. This is a pretty great number considering all the cream cheese packed into each cupcake! 

Yes, now it's your turn, go make these! They're so good!