Paninis!

This is a direct quote from my mother: "I wish you could just retire and take care of us." Sound like a satisfied panini eater? I'd say so.

I grilled eggplant and zucchini on our panini grill because I am afraid of grills ever since the fireball incident of 2006.

Fresh mozzarella, pesto, egg plant, zucchini pre-pressing:


Unfortunately a panini is not very interesting looking once it is pressed, also the pictures I took were really blurry. Use your imagination here, it was exquisite.

Ice Cream Brownies

Ice cream....INSIDE brownies!!?!??

I wish I could say I came up with this ingenious idea, but it was my new favorite blogger at Picky Palate that came up with it.

I got some double fudge brownie ice cream and discovered some Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in the cabinet (it was like Christmas morning I tell you!!) to add to the mix.


Of course once they were all baked I made an brownie sundae because that's just what you do when there are brownies and ice cream in the house.

(That oozy yellowish stuff is caramel)
I really need to work on my food photography.

Aj wanted to share his sundae as well, walnuts and bananas.

We have already eaten half of the pan so yes they are that good.

Corn Chowder

I'm on vacation this week, yay! It just so happens this is the ugliest week of the summer, boo! It does also mean that I have plenty of time to cook things, yay! Wow what a roller coaster this post has been already!

Since it was an icy cold day on Tuesday, and I was ordered to use the corn on the cob that has been sitting in the produce drawer for ages, I figured it was a corn chowder kind of day. I used resident Food Network hottie, Tyler Florence's recipe as a guide. This time I threw in some chopped broccoli and some baco's.


Nothing like warming up on a cold August evening with a bowl of chowder. P.S. I am still bitter about this vacation.

Sweet and Spicy Peanut Butter Chicken

I own a magical peanut butter cookbook made by Peanut Butter and Co. and in this magical cookbook I found this delightful little recipe for sweet and spicy peanut butter chicken.

Peanut butter, honey, hot sauce, red pepper flakes. Pour it over chicken and pop it in the oven. It's not the prettiest thing I've ever made, but it was quite tasty. I ate it on top of some rice.

Pretzelssssss

So we made pretzels and then we put things inside them and then we cooked them and it was amaaaaazing.

First we made the pretzel dough:


Then the filled pretzels go for a little dip in hot water and baking soda.


Here is one tray of stuffed misshapen pretzels, we did what we could.


We filled the pretzels with pizza sauce, cheese, and pepperoni.


And then there was still more dough and there were peanut butter chips and there was more rhubarb icing and McCormick makes cinnamon sugar grinders and we ate dessert pretzels and it was gloriousssss!

(I knew you wanted to see more rhubarb ooze)

I am still dreaming of these wonders.

Happy Birthday Teddy!

Cookie dough.

Cheesecake.

Cookie dough.

There is nothing else to say really. Here is an inside view:

No Oven Required

I received a silicone Mickey Mouse pancake mold and could not wait until a Saturday or Sunday morning to use it and that is why these cookies existed.

They are chocolate peanut butter oatmeal no bake cookies. You mix the ingredients in a pot on the stove for a minute and plop em on a tray to harden. It was quite a magically simple experience and the results were just as tasty.

Here they are all wet and shiny:

Here they are all hardened up:


The recipe can be found here.

Birthday Part 2

In addition to giving my man some balls (ooooo snap what now?) I made some Skittles vodka.

This was just as simple as the cake balls: put skittles in bottle, pour in vodka, done.

They haven't been tasted yet, so I can't brag about their deliciousness, but how cute are these labels!

Happy Birthday Chris!

Red velvet cake balls. Amazing? Yes. Easy? Very.

Step 1: Bake a cake.

Step 2: Crumble cake and mix it with a jar of frosting.



Step 3: Make mixture into little balls. (I thought they looked like meatballs at this point)



Step 5: Cover in chocolate.


Yeaaa I was pretty pleased with them, maybe someday you could be so lucky to receive some cake balls on your birthday.