Goin' Greek and the Less than Triumphant Return of Pound Cake

Yum! 

            Tonight’s my last night at home as I will return to school tomorrow to work some extra shifts before the semester starts. Using the extra filo dough from Christmas, I decided to make the dish Spanakopita, which is basically a Greek spinach and cheese pie. I paired it with a fruit salad, using Moosewood’s guidelines, and my sister made a white bean salad. Additionally, I was meant to make some bread since I now know how to use our bread machine, but I forgot. 

            The spanakopita was completely delicious. The filo gets crispy and flakey, while the spinach and cheese get all melted and gooey. The spinach is wilted with onions, herbs, and garlic, and then you mix in feta and cottage cheese (that's 2/11!). Using olive oil, you layer the filo dough sheets and spread out the spinach mixture in the middle. Filo dough, also spelled fillo or phyllo, is paper thin and extremely fragile. It’s used in all kinds of strudels to create a delicate crust.

            For the fruit salad, I followed the recommendations under a special heading called “Dead-of-winter fruit salad”. It was less of a fruit salad and more of a mixed fruit bowl because all I used were apples, pineapple, and strawberries. I thought we had bananas at home, but apparently not. Moosewood’s fruit salad “recipe” is basically a list of instructions on how to cut up various types of fruits. So I didn’t really have to use most of it.

I didn't want to use (clean) the
coffee machine so I invented a new system.
Yes, that is a sink strainer...

            The pound cake was a bit of a fail. I decided to make the mocha-swirl variation because it looked the most delicious. Yet again I made the mistake of overfilling the pan, which led to burned edges and an undercooked center. I thought I had left it in long enough for the middle to be mostly set, but that was not the case. My sisters and I were able to eat about 2.5 slices off the end, but then middle poured out in a fountain of lava-like batter. But those two and a half slices were really good. The whole cake is coffee flavored, but there were swirls of chocolate all around. It was absolutely delectable. But the moral of the story is to just buy a bigger cake pan instead of cramming all the batter possible into one tiny tin. 

             It's now been about 2 months of this project and I'm still slightly behind schedule. The first two weeks of January will probably be pretty busy cooking days because none of the dining halls will be open and I won't have anything else to do. But once the semester gets going, it may take me a few days to get into the swing of my new schedule. I think I should be able to catch up, though.