s5 restaurant

it's restaurant week right now in my county (if you're in the hoco area check out all the participating restaurants at the tourist website here). everything looks amazing, but on a college budget, those prices are far out of my range, so instead, i get to play w/ M&D's money and cook us all a meal worthy of a restaurant :)

i've had kale hanging around in my freezer since i don't know when. i try to grab a handful and throw it into my smoothies in the morning, but sometimes i don't want to be green with envy. it's still hot (but thankfully the storms last night brought some relief, the mid-80s feel downright comfortable!) so actually cooking was not something i was interested in. so that brings us to kale pesto!

i grabbed the recipe from sprouted kitchen and also nabbed her idea for the salad. i didn't even blanch the kale. i just let it defrost in my fridge and then zapped it in the microwave for about 15 seconds. i'm just getting that lazy! i toasted my walnuts in the mini convection we have and toss and serve. yum! i may prefer kale pesto over basil pesto, but i'd have to try them side by side (maybe it's the toasted walnut thing).

i wasn't sure how D would like the kale pesto. in his own words, "i don't like sauces" so i needed to find something else for the meal. grabbed some smoked salmon from costco and toasted some sliced ciabatta to have little salmon bites. welcome to the family restaurant. happy eating!

snow days are the best

so there isn't really any snow accumulation, but i still got out of school, work, and teaching. sometimes false snow days are the best- if only to catch up on assignments and have a great excuse to bake!

who says you can't make box cake mix healthier?

at what point is a muffin a cupcake or a cupcake a muffin? in my mind it's just a line between "healthy" and not so healthy. then again, I've made muffins with chocolate chips so am I only calling it a muffin because I used oats? and there was also that time i made a cake with a can of soda just to see how it would turn out...but let's not go back to those days.

Carrot cake

(makes 24 "muffins" muffcakes)

1 box spice cake mix

3 eggs

1.5 c finely shredded carrots

3/4 c raisins, golden or regular

1/2 c chopped walnuts

1 c water

Oil spray (for muffin tin)

Line or spray two muffin tins. Preheat oven to 350 F. Mix all ingredients until combined. Scoop 1/4 c into each muffin tin and bake 15-20 minutes or until it presses back lightly when touched (or use the toothpick method).

*This would probably also taste great with toasted coconut added in. If you want it to be more cupcakey, I would suggest adding the oil recommended on the back of the cake mix box, but I like my cakes nice and fluffy and wanted to get my good fats from the walnuts instead of oil. if you want it to be more on the cupcake side, a cream cheese based frosting sprinkled with chopped walnuts would be absolutely delish! i also think putting in a small can of crushed pineapple in place of the water would make this really moist and tasty.

it's decided, they're now known as muffcakes. 

in case you needed some motivation or ideas for dinner- nothing like taking the random veggies from your fridge and making a stir fry. and the smell of onions sauteing is probably one of the best smells in cooking. don't you agree?

cookies for father's day, hit and misses

happy father's day to all the dads out there! i used to think M was where i got my sweet tooth from, but when i started baking cookies and watched D inhale 5 at a time, i realized i didn't stand a chance in those genes. so of course for father's day cookies were on the list of treats for him. there's pretty much only one major rule for baking desserts for my dad- something soft for his mouth so i chose two recipes hoping for the best. i woke up early yesterday to bake a super easy recipe before heading off to the beach w/ some friends (a bit of a guilty conscious in baking these since i was going off somewhere else, but he went golfing on his own anyway...)

 these come from picky palate- her fluffernutter cookies. somehow i only ended up w/ a 7 oz. jar of marshmallow fluff (this stuff is dangerousss) and then was guessing on the amount of peanut butter i had and they flattened out too much, i figured i had too much fluff so i added more peanut butter...

 but then i guess i added too much peanut butter and they became too buttery and crumbly in a sad way...so good thing i had another recipe!

it's getting hot outside so even though i got to bed around 2 am (i confess i didn't get to take a shower after coming back from the beach so i was slightly gross going to bed...) but anyway these are from eagle brand- coconut raisin treasure cookies. i wish condensed milk weren't so cloyingly sweet, but these cookies are still tasty and are nice and soft and you can definitely throw in whatever suits your dad's fancy. i used 1 cup of instant oats and increased the flour to 1 cup instead of using graham cracker crumbs. these are like oatmeal raisin cookies w/ more surprises (which i guess is the whole point of the "treasure" cookies name). i love how many add-ins there are, and the walnuts and raisins and coconut together are oh so delicious! now if only D would get back from golfing so i could stop staring (2nd confession, and sampling) all the cookies.

oh, and if anyone is in the md/de/va area and is heading to the eastern shore this summer sunshine crepes in bethany beach makes some delicious sweet crepes:)

baking extravaganza, aka, i need to go on a detox after this

wow, i crammed in as much baking for my last few days of break possible. so lets get right to it!

 these are called "food of the gods" but like pioneer woman, i feel the name is a bit odd. but they are drool worthy and melt in your mouth goodness (it helps that there are 3 sticks of butter in it...but don't let that stop you from trying this out). i wish i had more nuts in it, so i would recommend trying out pioneer woman's idea of adding chopped pecans. i've never used dates in my baking before but these were yummy. i wonder how dried figs would taste instead?

 the bars wrapped and boxed up for s2 and s3!

it was a tough decision trying to decide what to make for my birthday "cake" and the winner turned out to be a cookie rather than a cake. these are picky palate's s'mores stuffed chocolate chip cookies. these are delicious and so cute! i made my s'mores insert half the size of picky palate's, got lazy and only made 7 of them, but wish i had made all the dough into s'mores stuffed ones b/c the cookies actually tasted better with the s'more inside. but it was so cute! the stack of s'more with cookie dough on top and bottom reminded me of those weird sponge bob square pants candy shaped like burgers (which i haven't tried and am a little too freaked out to try...). and out of the oven the marshmallows just oozeddddd out of the cookie.

 oh, and did you notice, i finally got a silpat! love love love. although with waiting for the cookies to cool and such i still ended up using aluminum foil to bake the rest of the cookies so i wouldn't waste the heat of the oven. hopefully one day i'll have enough silpat to just bake away to my hearts content (how dangerous that day will be)

so in less than 2 hours i'll be 24. phew. this year is going by so fast. oh, i forgot to mention my family tried chick n' friends for my birthday (i was in the mood for super low key kind of birthday celebration). and yes, the vegetarian got fried chicken food for her birthday (but i had fried fish!) but i forgot to get a waffle! time for me to get some sleep now that spring break is ending, too bad i couldn't have another week of spring break. but it's probably better this way as i need to go on a bit of a fried food/baked goods detox.