Trading Places

Today something odd happened. We didn’t plan for it to happen, but it just happened. NB and I swapped spots in the kitchen. In our normal roles, NB handles all of the cooking and I handle all of the baking. I always say one of the best things I ever did was teaching NB to cook. He is a seriously amazing chef and he enjoys being creative in the kitchen, which baking doesn’t allow with it’s strict measuring and rules. However, I love baking! I enjoy taking something that looks like nothing and watching it turn into something magical and delicious.

So, how did we end up switching roles? I’m still not really sure. It probably had something to do with having salmon for dinner. For some reason, I always end up cooking the salmon. Probably because it’s so easy, you just throw some seasoning on add heat and you look like a culinary pro. Today the seasoning of choice was Penzeys Spices’ “Chesapeake Bay” Seasoning (get it here) which was an impulse buy the last time I was in Penzeys, we now live near the Chesapeake, so I figured it was worth a shot. And it does not disappoint on salmon! I was really skeptical of it on salmon since the mid-Atlantic region isn’t known for it’s salmon but it was very good. We may never go back. I also was inspired to make Greek potatoes after having some at a local Greek restaurant and it seemed like something we could do ourselves. So I sent NB to the store to buy a mix of fingerling potatoes, chopped them up, slapped some olive oil and salt/pepper and Penzeys’ Greek seasoning (get it here) on them and popped them in the oven with the salmon.  The verdict? It ended up being a very decadent meal as well as quick and easy! We will be doing that again!

When NB got back from the store he proudly announced he was going to make carrot cake tonight. While that seems random it’s really not. He had recently purchased a 20 pound bag of carrots at Costco. No, that’s not a typo...that is 20 pounds of carrots. We love Costco! I’ve been known to say it’s “my happy place” with all sincerity and we have slowly been buying more and more food in bulk there. We eat carrots every day so buying 20 pounds isn’t as crazy as it sounds, but, admittedly, two people trying to use 20 pounds of carrots before they go bad is pretty crazy. And NB hates food waste. Last time he bought the jumbo bag of carrots (yes! This has happened before. And we didn’t waste as many carrots as you think we did) he kept asking me to make carrot cake but I never really had the motivation to (mostly not wanting to deal with making frosting, I really don’t like making frosting for some reason, and actually frosting anything is worse). So, this time he decided that he would just do it himself! The verdict? It. Was. Amazing. I’m talking “this is what I want my birthday cake to be” delicious. You can get the recipe here, and pro tip: you can safely half the frosting recipe.  And as an added bonus he ended up using eight carrots from our impossibly large bag. Not too shabby!

So, we both took a few risks in the kitchen today trying things we had never tried before. It was fun to experiment together and with both of us being successful is just the icing on the cake! (Just don’t ask me to ice the cake)