Eggs in Clouds

Well it's safe to say that my senioritis is in full blast. Having no class on Thursday is amazing, but being able to lay in bed until noon without a single worry other than if I missed the re-runs of How I Met Your Mother is dangerous…and a little sad.

So after taking the liberty to sleep in late I decided to get in the kitchen. I always try to finish off my food before the parents come in so that I don't have food go to waste when I get a whole new batch of groceries.

My kale was the first to go, so I went with kale chips.

Kale Chips
Preheat oven to 350 degrees
Toss the cleaned kale in some olive oil.
Sprinkle with the seasonings of choice
(I went with garlic powder, paprika and s&p)
Bake for 15 minutes or until crispy

Next up was something I had just seen on Pinterest the night before and was eager to try it out. Let's call it "Eggs in Clouds".

Eggs in Clouds
2 eggs
Grated Parmesan cheese
S&P

Preheat oven to 450 degrees
Start off with separating the egg yolks from the whites, but save the yolks…or yoke in this case!
Beat the egg whites until they make stiff peaks. Now let me tell you, don't flatter yourself and think that you can do this by hand. I didn't think it would be that hard, but after a few minutes and a long burn in my arm I called it quits and switched over to the electric mixer.

Fold the cheese into the egg whites. Spoon the egg whites onto a greased baking sheet and make a mound in the middle. Bake for three minutes.

Plop that left over yoke in the middle of the mound and sprinkle with salt and pepp. Place it back in the oven for 2-3 minutes or until the yoke is done to your fancy.

The egg whites get this bread like texture and was salty and yummy with the parmesan cheese.
It was safe to say this lunch was a winner in my books, tasty and healthy!

Don't worry I counteracted all of my healthy with a butt-load of choco chips, rice krispies, and froyo.

I'm okay with it, it's Halloween  :)

The good things

I'm copycatting Erin's "Weekend Update" with more words than pictures... I forgot to take pictures of two yummy meals this weekend and was bummed out after I realized it with a cleaned plate sitting in front of me. I am still getting use to this whole blogging thing. And let's be honest, I love to talk.

Regardless of the missing pictures, this week was full of good times with friends, family and of course food. The boy was in town for work so he was ready to have some of his old cravings and I didn't hesitate to tag along.

Our first stop was Formosa. 

My Eel roll

Jon's Vegas Rolls

I have to admit, I did end up getting one of those Vegas roll on Jon's plate. I definitely had eater's remorse. 

The next day I met up with Jon, his coworker Brice and some of our friends while they got some boots. Now if you have ever seen Beerfest, these are the boots straight out of the movie.

 I had a few good laughs when people got splashed in the face by "the bubble". 

Like usual, time flew by and it was time for Jon and Brice headed back to Chicago the next day. Luckily  my parents were just getting in a few hours after the guys left. My mom was in need of fulfilling Short's burger craving, which you can't blame her. Once you've had one of these bad boys you can't really resist. So I met up with my rents to grab some Shorts for lunch. Although my tastebuds were watering for the Dundee (a burger with cheese, bacon and a fried egg...amazing), I knew that wasn't the greatest idea for a pre-game meal so I went with the chicken sandwich with peppers and onions. I do have to say it did not disappoint and I didn't hesitate to eat up all of my fries too. 

After the game I met up with the rents and g-rents at another favorite Iowa City joint, BackPocket Brewery. Its a little micro-brew with brick stone oven pizzas. Small fact about me, I could eat pizza for every meal and have finished multiple pizzas on my own...not personal size. But I have to admit I am quite the pizza snob and these pizzas live up to the criticism. They are on the smaller side so we got two to share. We decided to go with the Produce Pie, which is just a bunch of vegg on some gooey mozzarella and the Tatonka, a buffalo chicken pizza with bleu cheese and a little celery for crunch. Let me tell you, I am beyond upset that I forgot to take a picture of these bad boys because they are just so damn good.

Sunday morning the rents came over to make a some breakfast before they had to head back to the great state of Texas.

We looked for turkey sausage at the grocery store with no luck, so my mom decided to go with chorizo. My ma cooked some eggs sunny side up (my favorite) and layered it onto of the chorizo which was on a piece of ezeikel bread. It was so good, I love chorizo and love even more the smell that lingers when you cook chorizo. yumm.

I didn't have much action in the kitchen this week, however I am totally okay with letting other people do the work and just having to devour the food. I would love to try a new little place daily but I don't think my waistline or my wallet would enjoy that as much as I would. 

That's it for the good things this week! 

Pumpkin time

Even though I am trying to be better in the kitchen as a cook, I have to say my skills thrive when it comes to baking. This is probably because when I cook I have to follow recipes to a tee and that's pretty much all baking is! The problem is I am obsessed with sweets, I coined the term "I can put down the sweets" because well, I can do exactly that. So when I found out the boyfriend and his coworker were coming to town I jumped on the opportunity to bake a bunch of goodies.

Here is my setup for my baking filled morning. My absolute dream in life is to have a setup like Giada and have all those little containers filled with everything that a baker could ever desire. Ahh a girl can dream!! 

Both of these baked goodies are pumpkin based, so if you are not a loyal pumpkin lover like me then just go away now....and please never come back. I'm kidding, but seriously, how can you not absolutely loveeee pumpkin?!

Let's start off with the banana bread, I decided to make the loaf into muffins just so it was easier to share and I don't mind the opportunity to be able to taste test one...or two. 

The concoction is a mix of my sister, Erin's skinny banana bread recipe and another website's recipe I found for pumpkin banana bread. Greek yogurt is an easy substitute for oil and/or butter. I also realized halfway through my mixing that I accidentally doubled up the pumpkin but that was okay with me. And a constant habit of mine across the board with baking is always adding a little more vanilla extract than called for, but thats a minor crime that never hurts anybody.   

Pumpkin Banana Bread/Muffins 

1 cup sugar (but I substituted for baking Splenda)

2 eggs

2 ripe bananas, mashed 

1/2 cup Greek yogurt

1/2 cup pumpkin purée

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda and baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Preheat oven at 350 degrees

Beat the sugar and eggs

Add in bananas through vanilla 

In another bowl combine the dry ingredients (flour through cinnamon)

Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet one!

Grease loaf pan or muffin pan and pop in the oven!

Loaf bake for about 50-55 minutes

Muffins bake for about 20-25 minutes

After those were finished off, I started the pumpkin cookies. Now these are a little less healthy due to the butt-load of chocolate chips...but once again, Im okay with it. 

Now the recipes for these two are very similar so thats why I added a lot of those little pieces of heaven and also added oats to give the cookies a different texture.

Don't worry, I taste tested the dough and it did not disappoint, so I popped those in the oven. Well after batch one finished off I put batch two in the oven and I couldn't help but try myself a gooey warm chocolatey cookie....so good. I may or may not have continued to eat three total to sum up my nutritious lunch of pumpkin baked goods, I just couldn't say no. Could you?

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies

1 cup canned pumpkin purée

1/2 cup Sugar (Splenda)

1/4 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup oil (Greek yogurt)

1 egg

1 tablespoon vanilla

2 cups flour

1 cup oats

2 teaspoon baking powder

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg 

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon baking soda

2 (ish) cups chocolate chip 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Mix pumpkin purée through vanilla

Combine flour through baking soda

Slowly add dry ingredients to the wet ones and then mix in the chocolate chips, or any chip of choice. 

Grease baking sheet

Plop a spoonful size of cookie ( they don't really spread so don't worry about them being too close together)

Bake for about 9 minutes 

By the looks of this, you could probably say that I went a little bit over board with the baking. After all of my taste tests I boxed up most of it for the boy and co. and bagged up the rest for the team since I knew keeping them around were way too dangerous for my waistline. It seemed like the team liked them too so it was another win-win for me! 

Until next time. 

And it begins...

I have been struggling to find the ambition to make quality dinners ever since I've had to change from making for two down to one. But since I developed this gem today, I thought I needed to make a blog worthy meal to kick it off.

I've been hearing about and wanting to make spaghetti squash for a while, so after brainstorming a few different ways I decided to give it a go. I of course got cooking details from my Ma and even made her stay on the phone with me while I cut the squash in half and prepared it for the oven to make sure I was doing it correctly. After a small recap on what I was gonna make I was ready. 

Chicken and Spinach Spaghetti Squash

Preheat oven to 375

Cut squash length wise and scoop out seeds...but don't trash them!! 

(Scroll down to see what I did with those guys)

Put an inch of water in a baking dish and put the squash open side down

Cook for 40-50 min, or until tender. 

Carefully flip the squash over and fork the squash to make an edible boat. 

Now the fun part! This boat can be filled with practically whatever is the craving of the night. I was already prepping chicken breasts for the week, so I went with that and some sautéed spinach. I tossed it all in the boat and topped it with Parmesan cheese and put it under the broiler just to melt. Touches of salt, pepper, garlic powder and EVOO and it was done!

Now I don't know about y'all but a meal wouldn't be finished without a little taste of sweet. Just grab those squash seeds out of all the gunk and treat them like pumpkin seeds. 

 Give them a quick rinse and toss in a bowl. Melt a little butter to coat and season with cinnamon, nutmeg, and sugar. Lay out on a greased sheet and put in the oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees.

All of it was a winner to my taste buds and I got the picture approval from the everyone on the board [Erin, Lyndsy, Ma, and Jon], and thats all that really matters to me!  

DISCLAIMER

 I am not here to pretend that people really care about what I eat, make and crave. I am not an experienced foodie and am constantly needing to call my sisters and ma to ask how something should be done. I am no where near insinuating that I am a stranger to the kitchen, although I have to admit most of my kitchen navigating is to scavenge up something yummy to fit my craving of the moment. However, I am one of those girls that could and does Instagram ever good looking meal that's in front of her. I am told all I ever tweet about is food. And I am always known to be the girl that can out eat almost any guy. So I decided I should put my food noise on a platform that is more open to all the other foodies of the world. 

Bon Appétit.