Baking is hard when you're broke.

Fact of the day: life is expensive. If you haven't figured this out by now, you're either a very lucky person who gets all the jobs they can handle or you have rich parents. I have moderately well-off parents, but I'm kind of over asking for money, especially after I drained their funds when I went to England.
So, my grocery budget is shot for a while because I'm trying to pay rent and bills, and I owe my parents about that same amount for my computer. Bundled in with this is me not wanting to turn up the heat in the house because I am paying for 1/6 of it.
I'm baking more than usual because I can't really afford to buy new food. Unfortunately, the heat being on low means that yeast dough isn't really down with rising as fast as one might like.
My pita bread was supposed to double in about an hour, but an hour and a half later, it's still just a mostly cold lump of dough instead of a big puff of warm dough. It's even sitting on the stove.
However, I figured out the problem. I'd wrapped the bowl in a damp towel (instead of my usual dry towel plus plastic wrap because the instructions called for it; that's the last time I try to follow instructions like that) and tucked the ends under to keep in the moisture, then set it on the stove (warm because the oven is on with my housemate's strange experiment). The warm damp towel in the cold room had cooled almost instantly, and the ends of the towel under the bowl had insulated the dough from the warmth of the oven with incredible efficiency.
Next time I try to follow weird instructions about how to rise dough, remind me that saran wrap plus a dry towel works wonders and that other methods are probably less useful, especially given my propensity for screwing things up in little ways.
Update on the dough: it's doing great now that the damp towel is firmly pressed around the bottom of the bowl and keeping the oven heat focused into the bowl. My dough is all big and puffy.
You may be asking yourself, why is she making pita bread if she seems to think that she can't afford heat? That seems kind of fancy for someone who, by her own account, is about to become a vagrant who doesn't even own her computer.
Well, I don't quite have enough flour for regular bread for longer than one week and I'm unwilling to pull too much money from my savings account (really sick of debt), and I do have falafel mix and beans and all manner of pasta and plenty of sauce and some peanut butter and potatoes, so a small, easy-to-store bread as a vehicle for falafel and possibly bean soups is just what I want.
And I've been kind of taken with the idea of pita bread for a long time (it was the first thing I pinned on pintrest when I set up my account this summer) and happen to have all the ingredients AND something to put in it.
I used a recipe from a cookbook, but this is the one that I pinned: DIY pita bread. My recipe required more rising steps (the whole blob of dough rises until doubled, then you split it up, then you let the balls rest, then you roll them out, then you let them rise for 30-40 min), but I feel like this is an equally valid recipe. My recipe also doesn't call for a stand mixer, which I don't have anyway. It works okay, although they're a bit crunchy. Still delicious, though.

Fall Bounty

There's a co-op of farms near my university that J and I went to with her mom.
They're selling gobs of apples and also italian prunes.

Prunes as compared to a granny smith apple belonging to a housemate.

Also, huge "Flemish Princess" pears.

I'm going to bake with these because there's no way I could eat one in one day.

I have some big plans for my prunes and pears - slow cookers and ovens.

The same granny smith apple was used in all photos.

 I made applesauce from my housemate's slowly-going-off gravenstein apples and some other apples I scrounged from around my kitchen, which I'm not posting here for three reasons.


1. Applesauce recipes, aside from being ridiculously simple, are a dime a dozen on the internet and in cookbooks. I used a different housemate's crock pot, cut a bunch of apples into it, poured a little apple cider because it kept seeming too dry, sprinkled in a little cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg (to taste, but start very small), and sweetened with honey as I went along.

2. I did not use a recipe, and I didn't write down what I was doing.

3. I didn't take any pictures of the process.

 If you want a recipe, just type "crock pot applesauce" into your search engine of choice and pick one that has ingredients you have.




I suppose I have big plans for my apples, but I just got itty bitty ones so I can eat them raw the way I like. It's not as difficult as it sounds, but suffice to say that I have a complicated-to-explain-but-easy-to-do method for eating fresh apples that doesn't work well on normal American-sized apples. I have to buy the bags of tiny apples at the store for it to work. And I eat all my apples that way if I don't bake them, so it doesn't really as a big plan.

The red apple is one that I picked; the green one is the same one from earlier. I like tiny apples, okay?

Right now, I'm thinking about a carrot soup, prune butter (in the crock pot, no peeling required), pear bread, and olive oil bread (I just need a recipe for these last two).

Also, I'd like to elaborate on the prune/plum thing. I always thought prunes were just dried plums, which maybe they sometimes are. However, the prune fruit is similar but ultimately distinct from the plum fruit. Plums are big fat round juicy affairs, while prunes are skinny and comparatively dry. While I've never baked with plums, I can say that prunes are amazing in the oven. They're okay raw, but MAN are they good baked. I made a tart and it was pretty much a religious experience. They don't spread out via juices hardly at all, but that basically means that they keep all their goodness concentrated. I didn't even need to put in sugar or spices. In fact, had I done so, I'm sure they wouldn't have been as delicious.

Waffles. Just, waffles.

So, waffles.
Waffles are why I have a grudge against George Foreman. You know, of those Foreman grills that allegedly remove a lot of the fat from your meat and also make a decent sandwich? Yeah. Those things are everywhere. Half the appliances in thrift stores are Foreman grills.
Here's a link to a google image search of "foreman grill".
Those damn things look just like waffle makers. You see one in the cupboard of your new house, and you get all excited, and make grand plans for waffles every day because you would live on waffles if you could, and then your heart and dreams are crushed because it's a FREAKING FOREMAN GRILL. And there are five of them in your house and no waffle makers at all.
If I wasn't so busy making waffles and blogging and job hunting and self pitying, I would be consumed with a deep and abiding grudge against George Foreman and a desire to destroy his life. 
As it stands, it's a good thing we ended up getting a waffle maker. That guy could probably crush me.
To give you the lowdown on the situation: I would have eaten waffles exclusively for breakfast all last year had I had a meal plan that allowed me to eat cafeteria food every morning as well as dinner with friends on the same day. I like the light, crispy, eggy, just-salty-enough ones. If they have crispies from overflow, so much the better.
Allie Brosh of Hyperbole and a half sums up how I feels about waffles perfectly:

Picture by Allie Brosh

Sadly, the only waffle maker available to me for free over the past few years has a bad cord that smokes when it's plugged in. I think my parents should throw it away. However, S, A, and I decided that we could split the cost of a waffle maker, since the high-end ones that one finds in grocery stores like walmart and target don't go much over $30. $10 each isn't bad for something that we really, really want.
So, I present to you the as-yet-unnamed waffle maker that we got at walmart because the one at target was sold out:

Unnamed Waffle Maker!

It's so much bigger than those round ones...

 The stainless steel stuff on the top isn't the only thing that gives the waffle maker heft. Man, we need a name if I'm going to keep posting about it. Anyway, it has nice solid metal plates that apparently have nonstick, since we're not supposed to put oil on them. I had some sticking this morning, but it might have been the result of impatience.

Pancake mix, olive oil (although I assume any oil would do), and pumpkin puree.

Since a different box of pancake mix that isn't mine gave the same proportions for waffles as for pancakes, plus oil, I figured I could add in some pumpkin.

The mixing went well. Left some lumps in so that it wouldn't be all tough.

It's like the promise of waffle. The anticipation is awesome.

My housemate's fake butter (too cheap to use my own fake butter. This is the stuff that I made the lazy cinnamon rolls with.) and fake maple syrup. Thanks, Asia!

Waffles!

I was going to show you a picture of them all buttered and syruped, but then my camera died (see the beginning of this post for details and a dramatic reenactment of what went down).
After the fact, I'm not too sure that the addition of pumpkin added anything. Perhaps if I had made them from scratch, it would have been better. It mostly made the waffle take forever to cook. The inside was also a little gooey, which may have been impatience.
All in all, it was a breakfast success. We have some blueberry mix; maybe I'll have that this weekend.
My next breakfast post, however, will be on mushrooms on toast. Inspired by Emily, backed up by The Vegetarian Student Cookbook, which is a british publication that uses some hilarious british slang in a painfully obvious (and failed) effort to be "hip". Never in my four and a half months with british students did I hear anyone say "moreish".

An Introduction

This is going to be different from at least two of the blogging adventures I've had and/or am having. There will be no dates in the titles, no numbers. This isn't about making a statement or letting people know what I'm up to, it's about food.
Specifically, it's about being a broke-ass vegetarian student in the dry part of the pacific northwest. Living on-campus, it was easy, if unhealthy. Just get the cheese-smothered food from the vegetarian window in the cafeteria. Just ask for the mashed potatoes without the gravy. Get a grilled cheese, or maybe a bean burger if you feel like waiting ten minutes at the grill. Eat an unappetizing salad, possibly with rubbery, cold tofu chunks and never any garbanzo beans. Eat tomato and cheese subs. Have a scone and a mocha for breakfast every day or so.
Living off-campus without an exorbitant meal plan is freeing, although somewhat paralyzing at the same time. Lunch breaks are harder to plan, since you can't just pop over to the cafeteria or back to your room for a snack, since your hour-long break is so close to being done by the time you factor in your half-hour round trip. It's hard to cook for yourself when you're so used to having everything prepared.
Fortunately, I love cooking. I love knowing what I'm eating without going "Um, what's in this?" and seeing the terrified look of the student worker behind the counter who has no idea.
Of course, I fall into ruts. There has been a lot of tofu and couscous consumed. I'm not necessarily healthier than my more omnivorous counterparts, since my vegetable servings are lame to nonexistent.
I have high hopes that this blog might spur me to greater vegetable consumption. If nothing else, it's somewhere for me to write down what I eat.
A bit about me: I live with two friends right now, S and A; this number will expand to 5 when school starts up and will include L, K, and C. I'm about to be a senior in college; I plan on going straight back to school as soon as I graduate. My passion right now lies in disease research, but I haven't actually done any, so I guess we'll see. 
Regarding the title, I did say baker?
Yes. It's how I procrastinate. I also mentioned how I'm generally broke. While eggs and butter are not expensive, they run out fast when you bake a lot. I don't have a car, and the cheapest grocery is a very long walk. I hate shopping with a group, so I tend to only shop when I have to walk to the store, even if I end up calling someone to get me home because I accidentally packed something horribly wrong. I am rarely in possession of eggs and butter, which renders me practically vegan. I'm not, although I respect them a lot more and am intrigued by the health benefits, as someone who discovered she had a shitty cholesterol problem at the ripe old age of 18.
So, without further ado, I give you this food blog.