Martha’s Perfect Macaroni and Cheese (Plus Bacon and a Third Cheese!)

By: Jackie

First and foremost, we got another award!!

We were awarded the Versatile Blogger Award by these three awesome bloggers:
- Dara of Gen Y Foodie - Dara has a great food blog that showcases healthy and delicious recipes along with informational links on important health topics!
- Kristina of Whipped Baking - Kristina features sweet treat recipes that are seriously mouth-watering but unbelievably guilt-free!
- Emily of Life on Food - Emily provides a variety of interesting posts, including book reviews, great savory and sweet recipes, and restaurant highlights! I noticed that Emily nominated us at the same time we were planning on nominating her blog, so we decided to keep her blog on the list!

The Versatile Blogger Award is “a great way to introduce different bloggers to each other and to promote quality blogs that awardees and their readers may not have discovered otherwise.”

There are a few guidelines for what to do once you receive the award:
1. Thank the person(s) who gave you this award.  
2. Include a link to their blog.
3. Select 15 blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly.
4. Nominate those 15 bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award.
5. Tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.  Check out my list below!
6. In the same post, include this set of rules.
7. Inform each nominated blogger of their nomination by posting a comment on each of their blogs.

Here are 15 amazing blogs I’d like to nominate for the Versatile Blogger Award! In no particular order…
First, here are wonderful blogs I follow regularly:
1) Just One Cookbook
2) My San Francisco Kitchen
3) The Corner Kitchen
4) Baker Becky
5) Pass the Sushi
6) Tiny Tiny Fork
7) Chocolate Broccoli
8) Life on Food
And here are some blogs I recently discovered!
9) Weeknite Meals
10) Cravings of a Lunatic
11) Malibu Kitchen
12) Me and My Sweets
13) Nish Whips Up A Dish
14) Authentic Suburban Gourmet
15) Dessert for Two

Now 7 things about us:
1. I’ve always had an interest in food, specifically eating, but actually making food is a relatively new interest and hobby for me. And it’s been a fun journey!
2. I recently completed a running program, the Ease into 5K app. Yay!
3. I love, love, love Disneyland.
4. Jon and I try to take at least one summer vacation a year. This year we may skip it to save for a bigger trip in 2013!!
5. Jon’s favorite sashimi is live sea urchin.
6. Jon has recently taken an interest in baking. (Wowza, we’ve reversed roles!)
7. Jon’s favorite Peet’s coffee bean is New Guinea Highlands made in a French press.

Now let’s talk about Martha’s Perfect Mac & Cheese!

Healthy Shepherd’s Pie with Sweet Mashed Potatoes

By: Jackie

Rain has finally come to the Bay Area! It has rained almost every day this week and it is the most rain we have seen all winter! When it is cold, wet, and gloomy outside, nothing is better than a warm comfort meal to heat up my body!

It may seem strange that I chose to make Shepherd’s Pie as my comfort meal, but I first became aware of Shepherd’s Pie from my (Chinese) family’s kitchen. I seriously had no idea it was a traditional Irish dish until we had a bite of our friend’s Shepherd’s Pie ordered in a local Irish pub. Nevertheless, I associate Shepherd’s Pie with my family’s kitchen, especially the way they prepare it, which is vastly different than the way I had it in the pub.

And with St. Patty’s Day just around the corner (tomorrow), I thought I’d post this recipe for those looking for a healthier, slightly spicy, and fiber-filled version to celebrate the holiday!

Double bonus: I also learned how to cook mashed potatoes - my second (successful) recipe from How to Boil Water!

Caribbean-Style Red Beans and Rice

By: Jackie

We apologize for the tardiness of this follow-up post. Jon and I were busy packing and preparing for a weekend stay in Madera, California (near-ish Yosemite National Park). Jon participated in the 26th Annual Madera County Stage Race and competed in three events over two days - a criterium, time trial, and road race. This was his first race of this year's cycling season and I thought he did well! Our weekend consisted of very early mornings, farmland, orchards, bees, cows, pasta dinners, new friends, and a long drive home!

Photo Credit: Kristen Milliron

Of course, I Diptic and Instagramed our weekend. (Right now I'm a little obsessed with iPhone apps - who else can't get enough of DrawSomething??)

Now... back to the food! To recap, last week I made my first real cooked meal, meaning not pasta with red sauce or scrambled eggs. I was proud to serve baked panko coconut shrimp, green beans with shallots, and Caribbean-style red beans and rice. In our previous post, I shared the recipes for the panko shrimp and green beans, but what I didn’t share was how stressed I was making all three dishes! At the same time! In the same kitchen!

Hats off to all you chefs out there who are able to cook multiple foods at once without burning, under or overcooking anything. And extra kudos to the food bloggers who are able to take photos of it all! I was dashing around my kitchen like I was in Kitchen Stadium with only 2 minutes left on the clock (and hardly any pictures to show for it)!

What made this meal slightly more complicated was cooking the rice - stove top style! This method is a bit more work than what I’m used to - I’ve mastered plugging the rice cooker in and pushing the lever down to “Cook.” However, this time when the rice was done on the stove, I felt much more accomplished than when the rice cooker lever pops up to “Warm.” This feeling of accomplishment may wear off quickly if I start to cook rice regularly…

Baked Panko Coconut Shrimp & Green Beans with Shallots

By: Jackie

This weekend I came to a realization that sparked two great ideas.

I realized I need to learn how to cook.

Admittedly, I’ve never had an interest in cooking. Baking, love it. Cooking, not so much. But, I can’t live off of baked goods, salads, and scrambled eggs for the rest of my life. I’m starting to get tired of the monotony of my diet, and while eating baked goods all day and night sounds heavenly, I would get more curves in all the wrong places.

Introducing Idea #1. Inspired by the movie, Julie and Julia (2009), and many other food bloggers who have “cook-through blogs,” I have decided to dust off the pages of my one and only cookbook, How to Boil Water (2006). I bought this cookbook over five years ago in hopes of breaking out of my take-out, prepared foods rut. (Didn't happen.) This book is geared towards beginning cooks and includes basic recipes in all areas (breakfast, sandwiches, soups, desserts, main courses, etc.) and food knowledge, like how to prepare a cup of coffee, make rice on the stove top, and what to look for when picking vegetables and fruits. My goal is to cook every recipe one-by-one, and then of course, blog about it. Unlike other cook-through food bloggers, I will not be expanding upon my cooking repertoire, but simply learning culinary basics. I’m talking about real basic stuff that most of you probably already know. Once the book is cooked through, hopefully this will lead to new recipe ideas and maybe even a fondness for cooking? Don’t worry, Baking - you will always be first in my heart.

The first recipe I chose for our "How to Boil Water" series was Green Beans with Shallots. This was a basic recipe and preparation that we paired with baked panko coconut shrimp, which is the perfect segue into ….

Idea #2. While learning how to cook basic dishes, I also want to learn how to cook family recipes so I can recreate comfort food in my own kitchen. Hence, the birth of the second series in this cooking blog, "My Family’s Kitchen," which will feature recipes from my parents, grandparents, and Jon’s family as well.

To start off this series, Jon and I made Baked Panko Coconut Shrimp, one of my family recipes. We had some leftover panko breadcrumbs from the week prior, and I remembered that my family makes delicious panko coconut shrimp as a main course for dinner. I immediately asked them to scan the recipe page and email it to me! Thanks, technology!

Homemade Soft Pretzels

By: Jackie

Well, Sweet and Salty SF finally got a proper header! Ta-da!

A few weeks ago, Jon and I brainstormed a boatload of header ideas that would grace the top of our little blog and accurately capture our essence - an image that conveyed our collection of sweet and salty recipes while showcasing our passion for food and collaborative blogging from our base in San Francisco. Oh man, the pressure. Seems silly that we would be thinking so critically about this tiny detail, but we are both Virgos and we I can’t help it.

So, we finally decided on a sketch that we both thought would work. We made a plan, and we made it happen. Unfortunately, our great sketch on paper wasn’t so great in real life. It seemed a little too “Sesame Street” for lack of a better vocabulary. Major bummer.

Here was our best try:

In trying to look on the brighter side, our trash is this blog’s treasure. In the process of making this header, I made some KILLER soft pretzels that have the same great chewy texture as bagels. Seriously, my family still refers to these pretzels as "the time I made those really good bagels." After the first batch of good ole salty pretzels shaped into alphabet letters, my brother requested cheesy pretzels and I couldn't neglect my sweet side and made cinnamon sugar pretzels. 

As a baker-in-training, I have had minimal experience in baking goods, and absolutely zero experience working with yeast, “kneading” dough in a mixer (thank goodness for that mixer!), portioning, rolling, and boiling dough. Alton Brown/Food Network said this recipe was for the “intermediate” chef… and I am certainly not that, but somehow.. someway.. the pretzels came out decent. Even, dare I say it, really good!