Potato Leek Soup

This list of ingredients is so simple it's ridiculous. Potatoes, leeks, veggie stock, salt and pepper. Totally ridiculous right? I had to control myself not to add anything more. I wanted some snazzy seasonings or another vegetable or some cream... something. But I am seriously glad I was able to reign in my impulses because this was perfect just the way it was written.

The most difficult part of making this soup is the prep work; peeling potatoes and cleaning those damn dirty leeks.

I served it up with some seriously indulgent Texas toast.

My only mistake was trusting the "6 to 8 servings" on the recipe, clearly the cookbook has never met my family. 

Carintas

I've been meaning to use the slow cooker I received for Christmas for ages now and I finally had the foresight to do some ahead of time meal planning that is needed when slow cooking.

Check it out, it's got a glass lid so I can watch my food for the 8 hours it cooks for!

Carnitas. Just say it to yourself. Carneeeeetaaaas. I love saying almost as much as I love eating it.

I used this recipe for carnitas as a guide, but I made a truck load of changes.  1. I used a pork loin 2. I used tomato sauce and diced tomatoes 3. I was too short to notice the orange juice in the fridge so I omitted it. 4. I took the easy way out and just used some minced garlic we have in a jar 5. No cayenne, those chipotles are enough spice for me.

Feast your eyes on my kickass taco:

I hope you can all acknowledge how much my food photography has improved from the start of this blog.

Happy Fat Tuesday!

Fat Tuesday should occur on the calendar more often, once a year just doesn't cut it.  But then again in the world of KTC everyday of the year is pretty much fat Tuesday.

And how was Fat Tuesday celebrated at my house?  With funnel cake! Topped with ice cream! Say whaaaaatttt?! Yea you read that right kids, it's like thunder dome in here!

No real recipe here. I used a mix I got for Christmas, fried it up, and topped it with a big ol' scoop of ice cream (peanut butter cup to be exact).

And now to begin my Lent fasting......AHAHAHAHAHAHAH chaaariiiiiight.

Pizza Braid

I came across this idea during one of my pinterest binges.  The aesthetic qualities of the pizza braid looked amazing and I had to have it.

First you have your mommy stretch out the dough because its a tough job and I haven't gotten the hang of it yet.

Then you place all the toppings along the center and cut strips on both ends.  At this point you start whining to your boyfriend who you are talking on the phone with.  You complain that it's too hard and want to give up, but don't because it's actually working out just fine.

I filled mine with tomato sauce, broccoli rabe, mozzarella, and fontina cheese. I put some Lawry's garlic salt and Italian seasonings on the top.

I only wish we had 2 pizza doughs because I could have eaten this whole thing myself!

Valentine's Day

When I set out in search of a treat to make for Valentine's Day I had to come to terms with the fact that nothing would be more awesome than last year's treat (here). Buuuuuuuut cake filled peanut butter cups are nothing to frown about, am I right?

The recipe is from Vanilla Sugar and can be found here.

First you line some muffin cups with melted chocolate. Well actually first you bake an entire cake, mix it with frosting refrigerate it. Then make a peanut butter filling and refrigerate it. And then you line the cupcake liners with chocolate.

Next into the cups go a ball of cake and frosting topped with the peanut butter filling.

Check out that presentation!

The glorious inside of a cake filled peanut butter cup. Yes, I needed to make it an "x-large" photo.

And now just to show you how freaking awesome my boyfriend is......

He made me peanut butter cups too! AND dark chocolate covered potato chips! AAAAAAAAAAAAHhhhhhhhhhh seriously, you wish were as amazing as we are.

Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Super Bowl Snack

Sorry I'm a bit late posting my Super Bowl snacks.  They weren't the best things I ever made so I've been weary about sharing them with the world.

Lets get the complete failure out of the way first.  The concept was good: mozzarella sticks in and egg roll wrapper.

Here they are all wrapped up ready to hop into the oven. Looks promising enough right?

Annnnnnnnnnnnnnnd here they are fresh outta the oven, a complete failure. Unfortunately the mozzarella really needs to be frozen and I failed to remember that little detail. These were still pretty tasty, but since the exploded and melted all over the place the egg roll wrappers were a bit under done.

And apparently I made a major blogging mistake by not taking prep shots or inside shots of these babies.  I made mini-corn dogs and these were not a total failure. I just used corn muffin mix and made them in mini muffin tins.

 Super-cute and very tasty and also really easy to do.

What a mess, who the hell do I think I am even showing these to you?

I promise an more wondrous Valentine's Day post in a few days. Seriously, it's going to be great and you're faith in my cooking skills will be restored I assure you!

Guinness Birthday Cake

Yea you read that correctly. Guinness. Birthday. Cake. Chocolate too, with chocolate morsels inside!

I found this oh so simple recipe courtesy of Nigella Lawson (I never met her, but I love her).  I omitted the icing and added chocolate chips because everything is better with chocolate chips. Plus the birthday boy is a serious chip-aholic.

Just a light dusting of powdered sugar is all this beauty needed.

Beware: cake without frosting is trouble because it too easily becomes a hand food.

After making this I thought perhaps I should stop being so damn lazy using cake mixes because this was pretty easy and pretty freaking delicious. Hmmmmm.....KTC not taking short cuts? using accurate measurements? I'm not so sure it would work.

Gnocchi Soup

I'm just going to say straight up that I really outdid myself with this one. This soup was awesome. That being said this gnocchi soup recipe is an Olive Garden copycat recipe that can be found here.  Spoiler alert: although it's an Olive Garden recipe, it does not have Asiago cheese in it.

Changes I made: omitted the chicken, used whole milk, cooked the gnocchi in the soup, and chopped my carrots.

Here's the seasoning line-up.  Still peeing my pants over the fact that I have nutmeg on hand and I must say it  was really delicious in this soup.

This is the mirepoix. Yea that's right I used the term mirepoix. This is a classy blog now so go google that term so you can keep up.

Look at her boiling away!

I apologize, I wish soups were more attractive to photograph.

Ok, I won't gush any more about how good this was; make it for yourself and discover the magic.