A little teaser for you: sometime soon I will make a treat that intimidates me a little, AND get into the beautiful madness that is different local names for foods, using what I will have made as a starting point 
Last week I made a super delicious beef and spinach lasagna. It was my first time making lasagna from scratch and I was happy with how it turned out. Would make again!
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Today I was lazy so I fell back to a college favorite.
Poorly made hash browns covered in brown sugar baked beans. It sounds and looks terrible but it has a good sweet and salty combo going on.
It is the pinnacle of “I didn’t go shopping but I need to eat” meals.
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Y’all are goddamn killing it with food these last few days. I’m very jealous.
I’m making Pizzas tomorrow though!
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In the spirit of not only sharing our successes, here’s a (Rheinland style, savory) pancake with bacon bits that got real messy.
Not only did I make the batter slightly too thick, I also noticed right after putting it into the hot pan that my only spatula was in the currently running dishwasher!
It still tasted good, so not all was lost 
PS: this is not the thing I was teasing
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Today I made a batch of these:
They’re made from a sweet leavened dough, deep fried and usually filled with some kind of preserve. If you’re from an English-speaking country the closest comparison is probably donuts, except ours don’t have holes in them.
Most bakeries have them year-round but their main seasons are New Year’s Eve and Karneval, the few days just before Lent where many people dress up in silly costumes, tell terrible jokes and play even worse music. But I digress.
The name is where things get interesting. Where I grew up (the Ruhrgebiet) they’re known as Berliner Ballen or just Berliner. Other regions have different names, like Pfannkuchen (most of east Germany, including Berlin), Krapfen (south Germany and Austria) or Puffel (this one came up when I researched, apparently it;s in use in the Aachen region; this surprised me, because I’ve been living there for 13 years now and have never heard that name!)
The wild thing to me is that both Krapfen and Pfannkuchen are also names of food in my home region! The former is pretty similar to a Berliner, but usually contains raisins or something similar, and no preserves. They’re also pretty popular in the Netherlands, where they’re called oliebollen. Here’s an image that I found:
Pfannkuchen, on the other hand, are completely different. They’re not made with any yeast, are not sweet, are not deep fried and pretty flat. Here’s one with sausage (I might have shared this image before)
So there you have it. A pastry named after a city is known by a different name in that city, which is the name of a very different kind of food elsewhere, which is also pretty different from the version of that food in other countries. It may be confusing, but I think it’s a fun kind 
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It has been awhile since I had a big cooking project, I moved earlier this month. In Peyton Manning’s honor and to “celebrate” (I guess) this horrible season for the Broncos, here’s Chicken Parm:
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Looking at this thread is a bad thing to do when trying to avoid making oneself hungry
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Made beouf borgu-difficult to spell French name- Beef Burgundy to break the fast for Yom Kippur.
This is mostly the Julia Childs version. Except pearl onions either went extinct since the Seventies or I need a better supermarket cause I can’t find them anywhere. So I used shallots instead.
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This is a belgian beef and onion stew called “stoofvlees” or “carbonnade flamande”. What makes it special is that it’s made with Belgian beer! Despite having lived near the Belgian border for over a decade I had to learn of its existence from Duolingo of all places 
I paired it with fries made in the Belgian style (deep fry at 150C for 5 minutes, take out and let cool off completely, then deep fry again at 180C+ for a minute).
When I make this again (and I will) I’ll try adding some red currants, maybe some other spices and herbs. The basic recipe was already good but these could really make it great!
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I’m extremely an amateur when it comes to baking stuff (this may be like my 2nd or 3rd time ever baking something), but I decided to try my hand at some homemade biscuits. While they’re not winning any awards in the looks department, they taste great, and I’m very proud of myself 
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My mom surprised me last week by asking for a cannoli cake. This is the end result. Looks great. It was more a pound cake but tasted great too.
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Pretty standard, no-frills goulash. Super delicious, though!
I also tried my hand at a cookie recipe, but something didn’t turn out quite right. They took much longer to bake than the recipe said (like 40 minutes instead of 15) and they’re extremely crumbly. Taste is fine, though
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I got discouraged after my previous batch of kimchi went moldy, so I haven’t tried again until now. The most recent batch came out fine. I’m pretty sure I know what I messed up last time. I somehow mixed up the brining step with the initial soaking step, so I brined the cabbage in a bowl of water, which completely ruined the salinity. I’ve done it right like a dozen times before that, so I have no idea why my brain told me do it that way.
Anyway, I did the brine properly this time, and it came out right:
I literally ran out of fish sauce while making the paste, on top of not being able to get saeujeot anywhere near here, so it’s missing a bit of that fishy kick, but it was still pretty good.
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Wooow that looks amazing 
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Goulash is an incredibly underrated dish. One of my favorite meals growing up!
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