Chocolate Chai Mini Loaves, Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies, and Rice Krispie Treats

When Dr. Bob and I moved to the Metro Atlanta area last June, we rented an apartment sight unseen.

We were nervous to say the least.  Had we made the right decision?  Was it in a good area of town?  Was it safe?  Were we going to like our neighbors/complex staff?

Turns out it was a GREAT find!  We love where we live.  We love the area.  We love the staff at our complex.  We feel blessed that we lucked out!

A leasing agent by the name of Nicole was pivotal in making our transition a smooth and stress-free experience.  She was very friendly, helpful, and efficient.  We were so excited to get down here and finally meet her!

Fast forward about 9 months....Nicole has decided to move up in our complexes company and that means she is relocating to an Equity complex in Scottsdale, Arizona.  We are thrilled for her success but very sad to see her go!

She has been a big fan of our baking so when I stopped in to chat about her move she requested some baked goods as a farewell gift.  (I had already planned to make her some goodies, so it was good to get some guidance on her favorites.)

What am I making??

First, I am dying to have her try my absolute favorite/current "go-to" chocolate chip cookie recipe:  Sea Salt Chocolate Chip Cookies.

Next, she loves Rice Krispie treats so I am going to use the original recipe on the Rice Krispie website.

And finally, I have a new recipe that I have been dying to try, so here is the perfect opportunity.  I will be trying out Lisey's Chocolate Chai Mini Loaves.  I can't wait to taste test these suckers.

I think it is a nice mix and I know Nicole (and the rest of the staff) will really enjoy them.

What have you been baking lately??

P.S.  Stay tuned, I think there is going to be another blog entry coming up either today or tomorrow.  That's just plain unheard of around here these days!

Grampy Brownies

I'm NERVOUS!

Today is the day.

I have put it off long enough.

I am attempting my Grandfather's "world famous" brownie recipe for the FIRST time!

Have I mentioned I'm nervous?!

This is a big moment.

I need to relax and just do it.

I am not sure if I will end up sharing the recipe but I will share the end results.

Here are 2 ingredients though:

I didn't say it was a healthy recipe!  (It also includes 8...count them....8 eggs!  YIKES!)

I am going to follow the recipe exactly this first time around, then I will see if I can make them in a way so as to not clog any arteries.

Wish me luck!

An apple a day....

....tastes delicious!  :-)

Apple picking has been a long time fall tradition for me.  It was a little bittersweet this year though.  I have had a tradition with two of my very dear friends since we were in college where we would have an apple picking weekend in a place I deemed "Cow Town."  Really it is in Washington County, NY not too far from Lake George.

Here we are in 2003 at the orchard.

Please don't judge my TERRIBLE haircut!  
I was trying to grow it out after some horrific trims!

And here we are enjoying some yummy treats from our harvest.

Fast forward to 2009 where we are all married and keeping the tradition alive!

There were even 2 little ones joining in the festivities!

Man I miss those days!

I was absolutely going to make sure that the tradition lived on even if I couldn't be with my favorite apple pickers.  I guess this guy will have to do:  :-P

Apple picking farms aren't as common in GA as they are in NY so we had to drive an hour and a half to find the first one.  It was a bit more commercialized than I am used to, but it had what we were looking for and that's all that mattered!

So we brought our dozens of apples home, scrubbed them clean,

 and got to baking!

We ended up making:

2 apple crisps (not pictured):

Recipe comes straight off my old Hick's Apple Orchard picking bags:

Peel and slice 4 or 5 large apples into a baking dish.  Sprinkle with a crumb topping of 1/2 cup flour, 1/4 cup sugar, 1/4 cup butter, 1 tsp cinnamon.  Bake at 350 degrees for 1/2 hour. Serve warm with whipped cream.

Note: I often find that the amount of butter in this recipe is too much for the flour, sugar, and cinnamon amounts so I will often double the amounts of sugar, flour, and cinnamon...because really, the crisp is all about the topping!
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apple dumplings (too yummy to remember to take a picture and I highly recommend you giving this recipe a shot!),

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3-4 apple breads (it is a zucchini bread recipe but they give you the option of making it into an apple bread), 3-4 apple cranberry breads (follow the same directions as the apple bread and add some cranberries),

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apple sauce,

Recipe: (I will warn you, it's a typical Dr. Bob recipe...Megg you can start cringing now!)

Chop apples, put them in a pot with a little water on the bottom, add sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg (and cranberries if desired; use whole berry canned sauce).  Cook until softened enough to mash.  Taste and adjust spices.

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apple chips.  They totally didn't work out for me which is sad because I was excited to give them a try.  I think I cut them too thin because everyone else that has tried the recipe has had great success.  I will have to give them another go next year.

Pre-baking disaster

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And 5-6 bags of apple slices all seasoned up and frozen ready for a fresh apple pie or crisp on those dark, dreary days of February.

Directions:
Cut apples into desired size as you would for a pie or crisp.  Measure them out to fit in your baking dish.  Put in freezer bag.  Add a hearty "splash" of lemon juice (helps apples not to brown in freezing process), cinnamon and sugar.  Mix so that all slices are covered.  Pop in freezer.

We specifically made some breads for the freezer so that we could enjoy them in the months to come, so we wrapped them in paper towels and put them in freezer bags.  We will eventually take them out of the freezer, let them thaw on the counter and then enjoy as we would had they just come out of the oven.  Yum!

So that was our apple adventure for 2011.  All this apple talk is making me crave some apple bread.  It might have to happen soon!

What are you favorite apple recipes??

Freezer Cooking ~ Part 2

Hey Kids,

Sorry Part 2 is a bit delayed. I was going to write it up yesterday but spent most of my day fighting with our cable company. They have been nothing but hassle since we moved down here. It been frustrating. But I think we are set (for the time being) so I am glad that is out of the way. So due to all of that, I figured I should hold off on writing this up until I was in a better space! :-)

Before I get into all the yummy deliciousness that took place, I will mention that I was asked to make a little something extra for my book club taking place Sunday evening. So Bob was kind enough to whip up a delicious pot of Baked Potato Soup. It never disappoints!

Alright, Sunday consisted of enchiladas, orange chicken, apple crisp, apple dumplings, the 2nd pizza of the weekend, and some buffalo baked chicken. I don't have pictures of all dishes, but I will have recipes/descriptions:

1. Enchiladas - BAM! The sauce came from, you got it, Emeril Lagasse via the Food Network and can be found here. And the recipe/how to put it all together came from Recipe Girl and can be found here. Broken record warning - obviously we used ground turkey rather than ground beef, but you can use whichever you choose. This recipe is easy and delicious.

And here is the end result:

YUM-O!

*Side note - we made a double batch of the sauce because we like it "saucy" in "The Bob's" household. We used all the sauce we wanted and froze the rest for next time.

After all the enchilada's cooled, we put some brown rice (that we steamed in our Rice Cooker) in the bottom of our storage containers and then placed 2 enchiladas on top of the rice. These were then placed in the freezer.

We used small soft tortilla which allowed us to make 14 enchiladas = 7 frozen meals.

2. Orange Chicken - This recipe came from "The Everything Healthy Slow Cooker Cookbook" (which if you are looking for some great crock pot recipes, this is the book for you!)

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons dark soy sauce

2 tablespoons spiced ginger preserves

1/2 cup freshly squeezed orange juice

1 large orange, sliced into 1/8 inch - thick slices

3 boneless, skinless chicken breasts (about 3/4 pound)

Instructions:

1. Whisk together the soy sauce, preserves, and juice in a small bowl.

2. Arrange the orange slices along the bottom of a 4-quart slow cooker. Top with the chicken breasts. Pour the sauce over the chicken. Cook for 3 hours on low or until the chicken is thoroughly cooked.

Per Serving

Calories: 170| Fat: 2.5g| Sodium: 560mg| Carbs: 10g| Fiber: 1g| Protein: 26g

Okay so thoughts on this recipe - I will admit I was not a fan of this recipe. Try as we might, we were unable to find the spiced ginger preserves. We used sweet orange preserves which ended up making it too sweet/orange-y. Dr. Bob thought it was too orange-y as well and wished he had added some more soy sauce and a little chili or sesame oil to round out the flavors.

We will most likely not make this recipe again -- Can't be perfect all the time right?! ;-)

3. Apple crisp - I am actually going to be a tease here and not give you the recipe yet because I intend to do a post full of apple recipes (soon, I promise). I will say that it was delish and my book club members that tried it, quite enjoyed it.

*Random side note - one book club gal actually skipped over it because she thought someone put beef (yes I said beef) on top of the apples and she doesn't eat meat. First of all gross, and second of all - who would do that?! Oh well!

4. Apple dumplings - Tease againq. Stay tuned!

5. Pizza - I was informed that because we were not going out to watch the Lions (Dr. Bob's team) play, he needed some football food so he kindly requested "delicious pizza." How could I turn him down?? If you missed it on Friday, you can find the recipe here.

6. Baked Buffalo Chicken - We were looking for some other football munchy food so we cut up some chicken, pan fried/simmered it in the buffalo sauce. We dipped it in some ranch. Yum!

I would ultimately like to get chicken *on* the pizza but we always seem to cook the chicken after the pizza goes in the oven. We will get there eventually.

That sums up our afternoon of cooking this past Sunday. Quite productive. We actually could not freeze everything we made over this weekend because our 2 freezers became over filled. So we made sure to plan our meals accordingly this week.

Question:

Have you tried any of the recipes we have posted? If so, which ones?

If you haven't but want to try one - which one(s)?

Melt in your mouth min muffins

Today's amazingly yummy treat comes to us via Little House on the Prairie Living. Dr. Bob found the recipe and proceeded to do what he does best when it comes to baking, "Baby, you should try making this recipe!"

But it sounded too good not to try.

You can find the recipe here. The recipe makes 24 mini muffins.

The only things I added were:

1.) 2 tablespoons of flax seeds to make it a smidge healthier

See the flax seeds....
And 2.) cinnamon to the topping because just the sugar wasn't enough for me. I am definitely a cinnamon and sugar type of gal.Don't they look delicious?!

I actually made something along these lines for the day my nephew was born (to have something for people to munch on while visiting) and while that recipe was good - this one was a lot better and quicker! I will absolutely use this one again.

Like I said, it is beyond simple and quick. I think it took me 45 minutes from pulling out the ingredients to being completely cleaned up.

Little bits of heaven!

Give the recipe a try and let me know what you think!

Blueberry fun - Part 1

Mmmmm, don't they look delicious?!

A couple of new friends and I decided to go blueberry picking last week. It was a lot of fun...however we seemed to have picked the HOTTEST day ever to pick blueberries! Good grief, the sweat was dripping off us.
Luckily we got a good amount of berries in a short amount of time. I couldn't wait to get home and try some yummy new recipes.

Now, I am not going to lie, I am not a huge fan of blueberries on their own. But I am all about including them with other fruits or baking them into awesome baked goods/desserts.

Hence why we are here today:

I found this recipe for blueberry muffins on Allrecipes.com. It made only 6 muffins so I followed the commenters advice under the recipe and doubled it. I also made a few changes again per the commenters advice. Here they are:

Ingredients

• 1/2 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup whole wheat flour
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg - I used less nutmeg
• 1 egg
• 1/3 cup milk
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil - I used 1/4 cup of oil
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup fresh blueberries
• *I added 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon
• *I also added 2 tablespoons of flax seed (always good to get some extra Omega 3's and dietary fiber!)

This ended up making 12 large muffins and 12 mini muffins.

Now I also have to warn you about how long to bake these bad boys! The recipe calls for 25-27 minutes at 375 degrees. I planned to check on the little guys after 20 minutes and this is what they looked like:

YIKES were they crispy! I know we are still getting used to cooking in a new oven and this sucker gets pretty hot, pretty quickly...but make sure to keep an eye on the little guys. I think they would have been fine at 15 minutes.

We can't always perfect the recipe the first time around now can we?? ;-)

The regular size muffins came out really pretty great.

And pretty tasty.

The other blueberry recipe I found was this Blueberry Loaf Cake on Allrecipes.com as well. This one came out phenomenally!

The only change I made was to up the amount of blueberries from 1 cup to 1 and 1/2 cups.
So those were my blueberry concoctions from last week. Dr. Bob had free range over the rest of the blueberries and trust me - he put them to good use.

He is going to be posting a Blueberry fun - Part 2 soon so stay tuned!

Reader Question:

What is your favorite blueberry recipe to make??

Strawberries, strawberries every where....

Well hello again, so nice to see you visiting our page and checking out all of our yummy delicious recipes! I am pretty excited about this one. It is all things strawberries! And strawberries happens to be one of my FAVORITE fruits ever!!

Can you believe that I have never been strawberry picking as an adult?! The unbelievable horror right?! I am about 90% sure we used to go as kids all the time but I just never get around to it during strawberry season! UGH! I definitely thought this year was going to be my year....I had every intention....I planned for it all year...but alas it didn't happy yet again. :-( We had a few things going on this June (when strawberries are in season in New York). I don't know why it would get in the way or anything. What was that little thing that got in the way and kept me from doing what will one day become one of my favorite things to do each spring/summer???

Oh that's right, we decided to move 1100 miles away from home! So we were busy tossing unnecessary items, cleaning, organizing, packing, eating through our fridge so we didn't have to toss out tons of good food! It really put a damper on our time in the kitchen and that made us pretty sad. I think that is why our storage freezer is currently filled to the brim and we haven't even been here a month yet! (Plus it took us almost 2 weeks to find a pan to sit under our freezer to protect the rug in case it decides to suddenly defrost and get water everywhere!)

Okay enough jibber-jabber....let's get to the point of today's post: what to do with yummy, delicious strawberries!

Remember this picture of all our delicious purchases from the huge farmers market?

See all those strawberries?? Well something needed to be done with all of them because I love them and all but I wouldn't be able to sit there and eat all of them one by one. I think I would turn into a strawberry at that point!

So I started off by prepping them. Stems and bad sections were cut off and then they took a bath to get rid of any dirt or other things I don't want to think about.

I knew I wanted to try a recipe from The Frugal Girl called freezer jam. She made a bunch at the height of strawberry picking season and it sounded delicious! You can find the recipe here. It is great and she leads you through step by step. Here is the finished product of my freezer jam:

Doesn't it look delicious?? I bought some bagels the other day (rare occurrence in this household) but have been loving the toasted bagels with freezer jam as a topper. Today I took it to a new level and put peanut butter on first and then jam.....YUM!

Next I used a recipe that the Doctor found in our "Better Homes and Gardens - New Cook Book" called "Fresh Strawberry Pie." Luckily I was able to find the recipe online so I don't have to type it all out!

First they have you make a Baked Pastry Shell which you can find the recipe here. It is a basic recipe where you follow the ingredients to make the dough but then make sure to look for the extra instructions for the Baked Pastry Shell. Pretty simple recipe.

Then you get into the heart of the matter and make the strawberry filling which you can find the recipe here. I definitely thought it was going to be a lot harder than it was but it totally wasn't hard at all. The best idea I had was to blend the strawberries for the glaze in my knock off "magic bullet" since I don't have a food processor. Super easy!

When the pie is all put together, you pop it in the fridge to cool for about an hour or two and Tah Dah:

A beautiful strawberry pie! And make sure to serve with some great tasting whipped cream!

Even after making the freezer jam and the strawberry pie (which, put together, accounted for at least 14 cups of fresh berries) I still had a bunch of strawberries left over!

So I packaged them up in 1/2 cup servings, threw them into snack bags, and tossed them in the freezer for future breakfast shakes!That's right....14 snack bags full of fresh and delicious strawberries!

Have I mentioned that I love strawberries??

Have you also noticed a trend here? Dr. Bob usually posts about the savory while I take care of the sweets?! That's how we roll in this household.

Well thanks for spending some time with me talking all about strawberries. Stay tuned for next time. I went on an adventure on Wednesday which may lead to my next post. Want a hint? Here you go:

Have a great day everyone and try to stay cool in this terribly hot weather!

Reader Questions:

Do you like strawberries?

What kinds of treats do you make with fresh fruit?