Been a long time..

I realize I havent posted in about a month, I've been a little lazy/busy.
so here's the recap:
This is our thanksgiving spread. I learned from last yr and started cooking the day before.


Christmas cookies!Ii personally love Christmas and can never wait, frankly Thanksgiving gets in the way of the Christmas season. Thanksgiving is ok and all, but I've never been a huge fan of the food and it just doesn't have that magic guality to it.
Anyways here are some ginger, sugar cookies (I admit my mom made thm, but i decorated them) The all white icing makes them a little classier than previous yrs...

And finally my sandwich from a couple days ago. I quickly sauteed some zucchini, peppers, and tomatoes. Then put them ion some bread with mozzarella and parmesean and grilled it up. It was a tad more effort than a normal grilled cheese and a very welcome change.

"Italian" Night

Cooking really is how I relax, so this week now that I'm home, I'm taking advantage of the time to cook.

For appetizer we had warm baguette, brie, and jam. I discovered the wonders of brie in Italy and my friend Lindsay showed me how amazing brie was with some jam (everyone must try!!). The sweet tartness works perfectly with the brie.


For dinner, we had sausage and tomato pasta. It was a wonderful family meal and a perfectly carb-y meal

Simlple "Good Stuff"

This was my breakfast last weekend (im falling behind in my posting), its nothing fancy but still good. Just made some refried beans to go with tortillas from our little stash



So I'm still trying to cook Indian food. I think I may have to give up soon. Although I have found ready made Indian sauces, that I have not messed up (at least not yet).

Last week some people came over for dinner so I thought this was a safe meal. I've made lentils before and those are always good so I thought naan would be a nice addition, I don't know how I messed up bread, but my naan didn't come out very naan like. It was just flat pieces of bread. (I dont think i treated the yeast properly) In the end, it was all good, bread and lentils made a wonderful meal.

Pumpkin Bread Monday

OK this is obviously not the pumpkin bread but it was my lunch and i thought it looked nice. It was salami, pesto, tomato, mozzarella sandwich (a staple at our house).


So for the main event...

We still had pumpkin puree left over from our pumpkin pancakes so I decided to make pumpkin bread. I also added "cinnamon swirl" layers which was a delicious idea if I do say so myself. The actual bread is more of a cake like texture, but it still works.

Strawberries: Nice Page

So this is really old but I just found the picture. oops

Well one night Kelley decided to make chocolate strawberries. I was at a portfolio info session so when I came home she told me she had arranged them nicely on a plate but ate one because she couldnt help herself. Well in my "studio brain" state I told her it was a nice page, instead of plate.

Not the best story ever told but they were pretty.

Halloween Brunch

We've (actually more Kelley) have wanted to make pumpkin pancakes for a long time. Halloween day brunch seemed to be the perfect excuse, so we invited people over and had some festive food!

We cooked up some pumpkin pancakes and mixed up some cinnamon sugar. My mom sent us some Halloween stencils so we all stenciled our pancakes with sugar and Sean made some whipped cream and the feast was complete. Well it was complete after making some of our espresso, then it was truly perfect.

Fall is here: Apple Pie

I went and visited my mom a couple weekends ago and we saw this stand on the side of the road and decided to check it. We found these massive green apples and I brought some back. So what do you do with a lot of apples? make apple pie of course.

So I really wasn't kidding, these apples were massive. All the apple bits n the bowl came from one apple
We didn't really have a recipe...
We put in the juice and zest of a lemon (which made the pie very lemony but in a good way), brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. Then for the topping we cut butter into flour, brown suagr, cinnamon, and a dash of salt.

The before shot:


And after:


Delicious

Fall has begun!

Meat and Potatoes

I'm not a big meat and potatoes kinda girl. Everyone gets excited about a good steak and mashed potatoes, not me. However this meat/starch combo I can totally do.
And technically this was last night...

So we roasted potatoes with olive oil, fresh rosemary, and salt in the oven and cooked some kielbasa on the stove. Nothing to it, but still a hardy meal (by my viewpoint at least).

Moe's Substitute

I think I always crave beans. Doesn't matter how they are cooked, but there really isn't anything else that I would be willing to eat multiple times a day (and I say this after I had tortillas and refried beans for lunch).

So last night I went to Andrea's house and we both wanted to order Moe's. Unfortunately, there was at least an hr wait for delivery and we were too lazy to go out into the cold.

Our solution was beans with nachos. We just toasted the chips and melted the cheese on a try in the oven. For the beans, we heated black beans with onions and tomatoes. Andrea added a bit of hot sauce, garlic powder, salt, and pepper. Basic but so good and easy to make

Hump Day Treat

I've been craving chocolate all day and have been waiting to try a new cookie idea, so the two collided today to make some hump day treats.

A couple of weeks ago I came up with an idea to soak craisins in some wine and put them in a chocolate cookie. Well at the store, I saw dried cherries and thought that was even better. I soaked maybe 2/3 of a cup of dried cherries and then added them to half of the chocolate cookie dough (if my idea turned out to be a fail, I still needed to satisfy my chocolate cravings so I had backupcookies).

The cookies are amazing. Perfect chocolaty cookies. The cherries were not that amazing in the cookie but I think it was more of a texture thing. In a denser cookie maybe even an oatmeal cookie I think they would be stellar.

Heres where i got the cookie recipe:
http://www.lifesambrosia.com/2010/08/chocolate-cookies-with-peanut-butter-cream-cheese-frosting-recipe.html

Corn Fritters and Brown Sugar Butternut Squash

So I had two recipes I wanted to try. They didn't really go together, but really when has that stopped me.

I have never cooked butternut squash and realized a veg peeler would have been wonderful to have. Instead I had to grate the poor squash for a long time and finally got rid of all the peel (took a great deal of effort). I covered the squash in butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, pinch of salt, and orange juice then cooked it in the over. Tasty but needed some more spices (next time).

The corn fritters were really good, I would make them again. Its a mixture of cheese, onions, flour, an egg, paprika, red pepper flakes, salt, and pepper. Unfortunately they broke apart a little but still yummy especially with tomatoes on top :)

It was an odd combination in the end but a good dinner in the end.

Mexican Cous Cous

So its been a while since I've posted. Basically I was lazy and Kelley was uber busy so there weren't very many legit meals being made. I actually made this a couple nights ago but was too lazy to post it, but im trying to get back into the blog!

I did try to make Indian food again a while ago, unfortunately it failed miserably. Kelley ate it but with good reason we decided to toss the leftovers. I've decided to spare you all and not post/take a pic.

Anyways... this is my Mexican cous cous. We had practically no food in the apt so I just dumped stuff in the pot. I wanted to make Mexican rice, but we had no rice so cou cous came to the rescue. In the end it was black beans, corn, onions, tomatoes, cous cous, bit of lime, and some cheese. I liked it, simple to make but fulfilling, but I'll then again anything with black beans is good to me.

Sunday night treat: cupcakes

Coconut rum cupcakes, that's all you really need to know.

I recently reacquired a cupcake "pan" that makes star cupcakes and a friend sent me a link to what looks like the best cupcakes I've ever seen. Perfect time for us (and by us I mean Kelley) to make some tasty cupcakes. They turned out perfect. More like yellow cake with hint of rum than a full on rum cake, but that's what made them so good. I say they would be perfect for Christmas morning.

Here's the link to the cupcakes:
http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2YACg2/mingmakescupcakes.yolasite.com/

Midnight cookie craving

So Kelley and I were hanging out late last night with some friends when we all decided it was the perfect time for cookies. Unfortunately our friends house was not stocked with cookie supplies so we came back to our place for some baking.
The cookies were amazing! Chewy and chocolaty and right in every way. Needless to say, we devoured them.

Kelley's Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe

2 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup softened butter
1/2 cup shortening
1/2 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
1 egg
12 oz chocolate chips

Combine flour, baking soda, salt. Combine butter, shortening, sugars and vanillas. Beat in egg. Gradually add flour mixture. Bake 375 degrees 8-10 min

enjoy!

Yummy but not sexy

So Kelley made the tastiest, most satisfying sandwich I've had in a while. She cut up and browned two sausages and sauteed them with tomatoes, onions, and peppers and put it all on a toasted baguette. Perfection
Although delicious, it was a tad massive and kinda messy; trying to look sexy while eating this would be impossible. Sadly, we concluded this is not a date food. This was only reinforced when a sausage bit may have rolled into my lap. oops

We've been craving quesadillas for a long time and finally bought the flour tortillas so the magic could happen.

We put a layer of refried beans and some quesillo between the tortillas. Quesillo is a cheese that I know because in El Salvador we use it to make pupusas (tortillas with cheese inside). The package label says its mexican, and I respectfully disagree. Anyways its a mildish cheese thats great with beans. Then we just made a pico de gallo (chopped up tomatoes, onions, and added salt, pepper, lime juice, and cilantro). If you haven't noticed already I'm a big fan of pico de gallo and salsa in general.
And here's the finished product, easy and quick and totally yummy!

Cobbler Pie

Who really needs to be productive on a Thursday night? A relaxing pie and movie night is a much better idea. So Kelley and I went over to Andrea's house to make some pie.
She had some cherries that she wanted to make into pie, however our supply of pie making ingredients were very minimal. We did have frozen pie crust (thats was surprisingly flaky and yummy) but no dough for a top. There wasn't even any flour so we ended up making a crumble out of butter, a package of instant apple cinnamon oatmeal and some sugar (my measurements are a little vague because I usually just dump and mix things together until I feel they're right). Then we cooked the cherries with some more sugar on the stove and thickened them up with some more oatmeal. In the end after combining it all together and baking for 20 min, we had a delicious pie/cobbler hybrid that totally hit the spot.

Mexian done right

This is a more traditional take on Mexican and I totally see this taco salad becoming a go to meal. All we did is brown up some meet, make a simple corn/tomato salsa and toasted up some tortillas (we always have corn tortillas in the fridge). Simple and delicious although maybe not as innovative as the last experiment.

Mexican and Indian don't mix

So for most people the fact that mexican and indian food don't mix would seem pretty obvious. Unfortunately for Kelley I am not one of those people.
So I saw this recipe for "tandoori" chicken and it had a coleslaw-ish thing that was basically pico de gallo but apples instead of cilantro. I've never had apples and tomatoes but I didn't plan on trying it. My brilliant idea was just to make pico de gallo instead. Sadly, my indian chicken and salsa wasn't the best combo.