Great Cookie Swap!

I am coming out of hiding for one thing and one thing only: cookies.

Specifically, the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap, which was so beautifully organized by Julie and Lindsay. Thank you both for all your hard work and for bringing so many extra calories much deliciousness into our lives!

First thing’s first: a resounding BRAVO to the three amazing bloggies who sent their delectable creations my way. Tiffany @ tiffanytastes, Kathleen @ thedailycrumb, and Heather @ runeatplayblog–you are fantastic!!

In order:

Snickerdoodles. One of my all-time favorites. How did you know?

Chocolate coconut chipsters. Almost like a cowboy cookie! I took these to a dinner party to avoid devouring the entire tin on my own. (They were a huge hit, by the way! Love the big flakes o’ coconut.)

Plus some other goodies. Thank you so much, Kathleen!

And last, but certainly not least, the most gorgeous PB-chocolate cookies I’ve ever seen. Look at that marbling! They taste(d) just as good as they look(ed).

_________

As for me, I *originally* made Angela’s GF (almost) vegan chocolate chip cookies–one of my go-tos. Somehow, though, I managed to botch the whole batch and they came out looking like this:

Too much butter maybe?

Regardless, it wasn’t pretty.

So then I turned to an entirely new-to-me recipe for these decadent blondies, courtesy Sarah at The Delicious Life. So simple, so easy, sooOoOo tasty.

That’s better.

I knew hoped that the additions of dark chocolate from TJ’s (one with caramel + black sea salt, the other with walnuts + toffee) and some shredded coconut would complement the caramelly goodness of blondie batter perfectly, and boy did they ever. These were dangerous.

Try them at your own risk. But actually…try them!

Here’s the recipe after I butchered it:

Yes, they were 1/2 whole wheat flour. Eat up, ladies!

Weekend Treats

Well, that’s one way to start Sunday off on the right foot.

I had particularly interesting experience at the bagel shop this morning. While waiting in line, I perused the endless variety of cream cheeses that make Ess-a-Bagel my personal heaven. Being the indecisive and high maintenance person that I am, I ultimately decided I’d ask for a half-and-half combo. Yes, I know it’s a pain in the butt, and yes, I know they’re busy enough, but I just couldn’t choose between apple cinnamon and cinnamon raisin walnut. I JUST COULDN’T. So, I gave my bagel guy a big smile and made my persnickety request in the sweetest voice my vocal chords could handle.

All seemed well, and I slowly made my way to the register. That’s when I saw it. That smiley face, greeting me by the cashier. Partially cute, mostly partially creepy–I quickly gave them my cash, chuckled, and high-tailed it outta there.

But then I got home and unwrapped my masterpiece. Haunting clown face or not, this bagel rocked.

The money shot: thick, bready, and dense with a perfect chewy crust and gobs and gobs of sweet cream cheese. Ohhhhhhhhhyesssssssssyesyes.

Next up on my list o’ treats: Angela’s GF chocolate chip cookies!

Technically, hers are GF and vegan, and while mine didn’t have eggs, I did use real butter.

Can’t say I regret it.

These cookies are absolutely incredible. The oat flour + almond flour combination is unbeatable, infusing the cookies with a deep nuttiness you just can’t get otherwise. Yes, they are thin but if properly undercooked, they are the perfect balance between chewy and crispy. The only adjustment I made (aside from the buttah) was using random bits of chocolate bars I’ve had lying around, including Trader Joe’s dark chocolate with caramel and sea salt, Equal Exchange dark chocolate with almonds, and Ghirardelli sea salt soiree.

Ummmmmmmmmm, best cookies I’ve ever made? Potentially.

Continuing with the chocolate theme…my breakfast from yesterday morning:

Banana whipped oats with PB&Co dark chocolate dreams, pan-seared banana, and coconut flakes. With a side of peppermint mocha-laced coffee.

I’m ashamed to say this made me yearn for Christmastime. Don’t worry, no Christmas music has been played and no decorations have been purchased…yet.

Annnnyway, the sliced banana gets a lovely roasted flavor from the pan-frying and the addition of coconut automatically makes me think Almond Joy. Aka one of my favorite candies, ever. Yeah, this might be my new go-to combo.

Orange Food

Are you ready for some orangeee foooood? (Sportscenter? ESPN Football? Anyone?)

Nevermind.

Soo I’ve been eating a lot of delicious grub. And not publishing it. I don’t have any good excuses except that it just felt forced…until now. Let’s get back to it!

Above you see my first attempt at making homemade polenta. Sounds a little daunting, no? Home-made po-len-ta? Too complicated, too much cooking time, too many syllables.

Ummm, that’s just plain wrong. I don’t know where I got such lofty and misguided ideas about polenta (aka corn grits), but the stuff is easy to make and doesn’t take very long at all to prepare!

While I stupidly didn’t document the cooking process, I can honestly tell you that it was easy-peasy. My Bob’s Red Mill package gave me a 3:1 ratio of water:polenta, so I decided to scale it down to a single person friendly portion. First, you’ll need to get 1 1/2 cups of water boiling in a pot with some sea salt, and semi-slowly add 1/2 cup of grits. Stir as it goes in. Then, for a truly autumnal dish, add your star ingredient to the mix: PUMPKIN.

A big dollop of Libby’s silky pumpkin puree will turn the mixture a deep golden color, while spices (pepper + smoked paprika), sweetness (maple syrup + a bit of honey), and a teeny bit more liquid (milk + some water) finish it off. Adjust these to your personal taste–and try not to burn off all your tastebuds while taste-testing. Burnt tastebuds = not ideal.

And just stir, stir, stir until it reaches the consistency you want! This took about 20-30 minutes for me.

When it was done, I poured it into a large serving dish to let it cool and set. This enabled me to cut it into cute little pie-shaped pieces later. (Cooling can take anywhere from 10-20 minutes, depending on the size/shape of your dish.)

But that was all fine and good because I had lots of chopping to do in the meantime. I was feeling more sweet than savory for dinner, so I opted to create a hearty plateful of roasted delicata squash + honeycrisp apple as (another) side dish. A dinner of sides? Why not.

For this, all I did was nuke my squash for a few minutes to soften the skin, scoop out its seedy innards, and slice it into itty bitty pieces (for quick roasting). For the apple, I just diced it while the squash was in the micro–skin on and all.

Tossed in a bit of EVOO, balsamic vinegar, honey, salt + pepper before going into the 400 degree oven for about 15 minutes. This came out tender, sweet, and tangy! It went so well with a light spinach salad and the creamy polenta (which I topped with a bit of grated asiago and truffle oil, obviously).

For dessert: more orangeness! (ish)

The rest of my apple + a few slices of banana sauteed with cinnamon in a bowl of crunchy cinnamon granola and almond milk. Simple, quick, and oh-so-satisfying.

BDD

 

Erm, that would be breakfast, dinner, and dessert.

Believe me, lunch isn’t worth the gritty iPhone pic. Today was tuna salad with mixed greens & balsamic, broiled tomatoes, and a cup of cottage cheese & froot.

But breakfast, dinner, and dessert?? Definitely photo-worthy.

Let’s start at the beginning: breakfast!

Pumpkiny oats with apple chunks, lots o’ cinnamon, and cottage cheese.

Love this combo!! Spicy-sweet pumpkin meets thick, creamy oats meets tart apple bits meets cool, milky cottage cheese.

I’m sorry, does that sound gross?

It’s not, I swear!

Moving right along to dinner…

Tex-Mex stuffed bell peppers! I’d never done this before tonight, but an impulse purchase of baby sweet peppers from TJ’s the other day got me thinking. All I did was boil the rice, mix it with chopped onion, chicken sausage, and refried beans. Then, I added a few several dashes of Frank’s hot sauce and a sprinkling of cheese to really bring it all together before stuffing the peppers and throwing them in the oven at 400 degrees for about 12 mins.

 

As you can see, there was plenty of stuffing left for having straight-up.

The side salad with yogurt + salsa + hot sauce as my “dressing” provided the perfect topping material for the peppers.

Definitely doing this one again!

 

And last, but not least: dessert.

That would be toast slathered in dark chocolate peanut butter & pumpkin butter. If you’ve never heard of/seen pumpkin butter before, no, it is not pumpkin puree mixed with butter. It actually has ZERO butter in it. I’m pretty sure they just call it butter because it has the supple texture of butter…but really, it’s just pumpkin puree that’s been cooked down for hours and hours with sugar and spices. Deeeeelish.

Goodbye, GF!

Okay not really.

Well, sort of.

Let me explain. I started re-introducing gluten into my diet last week. While I love how I feel without it, I don’t love the constant hesitation and over-analyzing it causes when thinking about my next meal. Ultimately what I decided is this: I’ll avoid gluten (and overly processed wheat products, like boxed crackers/cookies/etc.) when I can and/or want to, and I’ll aim to reduce the amount of wheat in my diet on the whole. But if I’m craving pizza or pasta or a big slice of artisan bread…by golly, Immona have it!

And have it I did.

A whooolleee lot of it. Pics from the weekend:

1. Egg in a hole in a thick slice of artisan sourdough bread from Whole Foods. Amazing.

Run, baby, run!!!

 

 

2. Apple picking! We scored a decent bundle of fresh apples, but I have to say that my first foray into this storied New England tradition was a bit of a flop. The angsty teenage boy at the orchard told us right off the bat that there weren’t any apples left…

Lessons to be learned: a) don’t listen to angsty teenage boys (we walked out with almost a dozen and a half apples!), b) remember to stop and smell the apples crisp fall air, c) go earlier in the season. Wamp wamp.

Oh, and d) buy lots of apple cider donuts. These babies were yummy.

 

 

3. Pizza Friday. Rapidly becoming my favorite Friday evening ritual. This was made with multigrain pizza dough from Whole Foods, homemade 3 Ingredient Marinara, bell pepper, spicy turkey sausage, mushrooms and fresh grated asiago fresco. Amazing.

 

 

4. Pizza…Monday?

This time, with some nice green stuff on the side. Those would be Pam-sauteed sugar snap peas, broccoli, and–random, I know–some matchstick-diced apple. At the last minute, I realized the meal was pretty heavy on the savory-salty tastes, and I wanted some crisp sweetness to break it up. The result? Exactly what I’d hoped! A subtle yet significant note of sweet acidity to cut through the creamy cheese, hearty marinara, and spicy jalapeno chicken sausage.

It was too good not to make again.

 

Welcome back, gluten. Here’s hoping you don’t blow me up like a walrus.

Butternut Squash Mac & Cheeze

Tonight I did something special.

Tonight I made one of Angela’s fabulous recipes.

Tonight I did not make a random mess of roasted veggies and protein in a bowl.

(Well…sort of.)

Tonight I had a plan. A plan for mac ‘n cheese bursting with autumn flavor, thanks to the addition of butternut squash and pumpkin. I followed Angela’s recipe to a T except for the arrowroot powder (because, really?) which I subbed for a teeny bit of GF flour (coconut–it added a subtle sweetness that I loooooved) and a wee splash of apple cider vinegar in place of the Dijon.

When the sauce & pasta were done, I added some chicken jalapeño sausage (from TJ’s), mushrooms, broccoli and wilted baby spinach to the pot.

Okay so I never said it was pretty. Sometimes in life, the prettiest things are disappointing. And sometimes, the ugliest things are tasty.

These are facts.

 

This was so good I’m thinking I may have to make it again tomorrow. Really.

 

Oh and here are the stats on my massive serving. Not too shabby!

 

Make this. You won’t regret it.

Veggietales

Oooooof.

Tonight’s dinner featured a whole lotta one thing: veggies.

Onions, peppers, broccoli, mushrooms, (roasted) butternut squash. Trader Joe’s fat free refried beans. TJ’s spicy pico. Thank god for that piece of toast (slathered in paprika-spiked butter), dollop of plain Greek yogurt, and sprinkling of cheddar cheese on my plate or else I probably would’ve OD’d on roughage.

This delicious and nutritious and fiber-licious combo came together in a pot simply sprayed with Pam and doused in salt/pepper/smoked paprika. The whole thing probably took about 20 mins, thanks to at least 15 mins of roasting time for the squash (after a 30 second nuke on high to soften it up first). The beans also got a quick hit in the microwave before serving.

It should come as no surprise that I was craving something more carby for second dinner dessert.

Since I passed on the pancakes this morning, I decided to finally go for it and break into the Bob’s GF mix. I added some punkin, flax, milk, water, stevia and cinnamon before dropping them onto my hot skillet for a minute or so on either side. I got 2 hefty cakes out of 1/3 cup mix, 1 heaping tbsp ground flax, 2 tbsp pumpkin purée, lots o’ cinnamon, a few drops stevia & 1/4 cup almond milk. At this point I just kept adding splashes of water until I had the consistency I wanted.

Topped with nut butta, blueberry jam, and maple syrup. Ohhhh pancakes, why have I neglected you for so long???

This is happening again very, very soon. Thick and dense but fluffy and perfectly satisfying. GF ain’t so bad after all!

Iwantiwantiwant. Happy almost hump day everyone!

Long Weekend Lull

Home again home again, jiggity jog.

Holy cowww does it feel good to be back. And to realize that there are only four days of work left this week. And to collapse on my couch with a healthy amount of dark chocolate and milk while watching the new Housewives episode. And to ignore the very sad reality that I have no groceries in my apartment for tomorrow.

Looks like I may finally get to put my GF pancake mix to use in the morning! (Anyone ever used Bob’s before…?)

Anywho. In lieu of a dinner “recipe” or poorly lit photograph of my Tupperware breakfast, I’ll give you a few snapshots from this weekend.

First: a run in NYC. Amazing weather. 80 degrees in October? In New England? Yesplease.

(Blue on blue workout gear–classic.)

Next: dinner at Bleecker Street Pizza, named best pizza in NYC by Food Network. We got the Nonna Maria with a deal from Gilt City, which ruled. (Both the fresh mozz pie and the deal. Best pizza in New Yawk? Mmm maybe, maybe not.)

Unfortunately I didn’t take any pics at Maialino, the fantastic restaurant at the equally-fantastic Gramercy Park Hotel, where we ate dinner last night. Just trust me when I say it was pretty incredible. Highlights included the fig & ricotta crostini, the fried artichoke appetizer, the bucatini all’amatriciana (a savory bacon-infused tomato sauce…uh huh), and the warm plum upside down cake with vanilla mascarpone cream. I think I want vanilla mascarpone cream on everything I eat from now on. Pancakes (!!), oatmeal, baby carrots. Everything.

Oh and spotting Danny Meyer himself at the table next to us (!!!!!!) wasn’t too bad either. Again, you’ll have to trust me on this.

What I DID take a picture of was this yummy lunch the Boy and I made. Sautéed chicken over salad with balsamic pesto dressing, a farmers market fresh Mutsu/Crispin apple, and sliced heirloom tomato. Light yet filling!

Now I’m off to bed with visions of (pumpkin-laced) meal ideas dancing in my head.

…and of this gorgeous view. Night!

3 Ingredient Marinara

I know. It sounds impossible, right?

Or boring. Or tasteless. Or just plain lame.

But I swear! This marinara sauce is the real deal. It’s super flavorful. Light yet buttery, savory yet fresh, full of unadulterated tomato goodness.

Canned whole (peeled) tomatoes.

Butter.

Onion.

It’s as simple as that! Really really. Pour your tomatoes (I used San Marzanos) into a pot with some buttah and an onion and let simmer away. If using the whole 28 oz. can, you’ll want about 5 tbsp of butter and a whole medium onion, chopped in half and plopped into the pot. Yup, plopped. Science people.

I cut the recipe down to 1/4 of the original (taken from Iowa Girl Eats, one of my first and most favoritest bloggers!) so I used about 1 tbsp of the good stuff and 1/4 of a decent-sized onion. In the end I think it simmered for about half an hour; all I did was stir and break up the tomatoes every few mins while getting everything else ready.

And no, you won’t miss the herbs. Not the oregano, not the parsley, not the garlic. This is coming from an herb fiend. I promise you. This is simplicity at its best.

Including…another GF pasta! This time I went with some brown rice spirals. They were delish.

Side note: so far the only difference I’ve noticed in cooking GF vs. regular pasta is that you’re actually supposed to rinse the GF in cold water after cooking to keep it from getting gummy. This is, of course, a major no-no for your usual spaghetti as rinsing would strip normal noodles of all their starchy pasta water glory.

Back to dinner. In addition to the marinara, I cooked up one turkey sausage link with garlic and mushrooms while also roasting broccoli (shocking!) and some sweet potato. To speed up the cooking process for the tuber, I nuked it first for about 2 mins. This way, it had already started baking by the time it entered the oven–ensuring creamy insides and crispy outsides. Awesome.

In the end, dins came together in about 45 minutes.

And dessert, in about 3.

Cottage cheese + Libby’s pumpkin (sweetened with stevia and cinnamon) + chopped apple. Ohmygodsogood.

TGI(A)F!!!

To wake up early or not to wake up early?

That is the question.

Since starting my new job, I’ve been struggling with finding a morning routine I like. In the past I’ve woken up and had a leisurely breakfast with the NYT xword puzzle…or DVR’d episodes of Say Yes to the Dress.

What, you don’t love SYTTD? I find it uplifting.

Anywayyy since now I’m expected to be at school + ready for action by 7:30, I no longer have that luxury. So far I’ve been bringing my bfast into the classroom and scarfing my food while reading blogs lesson planning in about 15 mins. Exhibit A:

Mmmm Tupperware. Not exactly my idea of a relaxing or soothing (or appetizing-looking?) way to start the day.

The problem is that if I eat much earlier than 7, I’m hungry by 10:30 and want to chomp my kids’ heads off (more than I already do) before lunch finalllyyyyyy arrives at noon. Halp!

So this morning I tested a new plan. I woke up at 5:30 and ever-so-slowly relished my delicious pumpkin oats over the new Rachel Zoe episode. They were awesome. The oats and RZ. Unfortunately I didn’t snap a pic of the food…sowwy.

As expected, I was starving by 10:30 so I grabbed another naner from the cafeteria and gobbled it down in .2 seconds. Worked pretty well! Just a little more sugar than I wanted in my system so early in the day.

Lunch rolled around, then classclassclassRECESSclassartclubhome. Went for a quickie run after polishing off the last nugget of a Ginger snap Larabar (loved it!) and made dinner. Another mishmash leftover remix. This time:

Last night’s sausage/butternut squash/caramelized onion/mushroom ragout combined with sauteed tomatoes, corn, more onions and shrooms. Add in an egg (protein!) and roasted broccoli and more butt. squash (ha) andddd you’re done!

Purdy, ain’t she?

Don’t answer that.

Followed by this beaut:

That would be a slice of Life Is Good’s GF brown rice bread slathered in a cinnamony pumpkin/stevia/almond milk mixture and toasted for a few minutos. Alongside a honeycrisp apple sprinkled with–surprise!–more cinnamon. Fall on a plate.

THIS WAS AWESOME. Super doughy, slightly sweet and subtly spicay. A lot like real pumpkin bread without all that baking fuss.

P.S. I miss gluten about zero percent. I feel so much better: less irritable, less tired, less lethargic, and yes, less bloated. No, I haven’t cut it out completely (especially on weekends seeing that it’s physically impossible for me to resist an Essabagel) but I like avoiding it as much as I can whenever I can. During the week my meals are not only completely GF, but absolutely dericious. That’s a victory in my book.

Anddddd now I’m zonked and need to shower (ew) and go.to.bed. Night!