Un-awesome with a Side of Stardom!

You know what’s not so awesome?

When you burn your sweet potato fries.

*sob*

Don’t worry, I ate them anyway. No sweet potato goes to waste in THIS house.

See after watching Rachael Ray make oven fries during my lunch hour on Thursday, I got the brilliant idea to do the same thing for dinner! And to eat them with a nice, cold green/blue smoothie!

Well Rachael said to turn the heat up to 500 degrees and let those suckers go for about 25 minutes.

I probably should have kept a closer eye on them.

And added dates to my smoothie.

What was the star of the meal? The peanuty-lime dipping sauce.

Ooooooh yeeeeeeah..

Peanut-Lime Sauce
1 tablespoon stone ground mustard
1 tablespoon apple juice
juice of 1 lime
1 tablespoon peanut flour

Whisk all ingredients together and dip away! If you don’t have peanut flour, you could probably just substitute peanut butter. I didn’t have any peanut butter so I used my peanut flour!

V-8′s Replacement

For years I have wanted my mom to teach me to make enchilada sauce. Unfortunately on the days we’ve planned to make enchiladas, I always seem to get there after the sauce is made! Darn cross-communications!

I took matters into my own hands last week.

I dug out the recipe my mom gave me, swung by the hispanic grocer down the street for the dried chilies I needed and got to work in the kitchen!

Following the recipe and verbal instructions I had committed to memory, I turned out my first batch of enchilada sauce. It was not nearly as difficult as I had always thought. Time consuming, but TOTALLY worth it.

I called my mom to brag about my new skill, practically hopping up and down with excitement!

Is it wrong to want to drink it? Because I do.

You’ll never go canned again.

Enchilada Sauce
7 dried guajillo chilies
1 dried ancho chili
Water
1 ½ tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove
1 tablespoon chickpea flour
1 teaspoon vinegar
1/2 teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon dried thyme
¼ teaspoon ground cumin
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder

Wash chilies thoroughly. Place in a large saucepan and cover generously with water (I used about 5 or so cups). Cover and bring to a boil. Remove from heat and let stand 45 minutes or until softened.

Drain chilies, reserving soaking liquid. Pull off stems, slit chilies open and rinse off seeds. Place chilies and 1-2 cups soaking liquid into a blender and puree. Turn into a sieve and rub through sieve into a bowl to eliminate bits of peel. Rinse blender with an additional 1 cup of soaking liquid and pour over remaining pulp in sieve.

Heat oil and garlic in a medium saucepan over low heat. When the oil is fragrant with garlic, remove the garlic clove. Stir in the flour until the mixture is smooth. Cook about 1 minute. Add pureed chile mixture and remaining ingredients, including the reserved garlic clove. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat and cook until slightly thickened. Before storing, remove garlic clove (I ate mine..)

I used the sauce to make enchiladas filled with black bean, baby portabellas, onion and cumin topped with savory almond butter.

My tortillas disintegrated a bit from moisture so I’m still working on getting that right. Hopefully there will be an enchilada post once I figure that out. Meanwhile, I sure don’t think Kyle’s minding eating the “mistakes”.

I don’t mind either.

Cajun Snickerdoodles

Last week I brushed up on my Cajun cooking. I made blackened snickerdoodles! So deliciously black, crunchy and chalky!

*sob*

Rookie mistake.. I used Pam non-stick cooking spray to coat the cookie sheet in leiu of butter. Bangs head against keyboard in shame.

Kyle, bless him, still ate them.

We attacked the cookies, picking them apart to unearth what was edible. Those parts were pretty tasty at least! And three whole cookies were saved from the same toasty fate as their siblings!

I’ll attempt these delicious treats again soon, this time not using honey and using BUTTER to coat the cookie sheet!

Whip it Gewd!

I’ve been waiting for three months. It finally happened today! Christina Aguilera’s new CD was released! I rushed out to buy it… see…

I love it! Totally worth the wait!

What’s the best way to listen to a new CD? Cranking it in the house while whipping up something yummy!

Now, I’ve been whipping up lots of calorie-laden treats lately, so I decided to switch it up and try some meringue cookies. I realized I’d never actually eaten one, let alone baked one. Up for the challenge, I altered a recipe to use honey instead of granulated sugar.

Now, some came out slightly burnt, some came out a bit sticky, (I need a grown-up oven that cooks evenly…) so they need a bit of work. Let me know if you’ve got any opinions! I was thinking next time I’d try using some more CoT or even make them with granulated sugar the way they’re supposed to be!

Trash Can Mistake Cookies

Want to know what can lift your spirits on a dreary Friday afternoon?

When your coworker gets a box of free cookies as big as your hand and SHARES them!

See? I wasn’t kidding! They were as big as my hand! And there were four stacks of six or seven cookies! There were dark chocolate with white chocolate and macadamia nuts, dark chocolate with mint, chocolate chip and butterscotch walnut.

They were so incredibly yummy! Crispy and buttery, yet so soft and chewy… mmm…

Of course this sent my baking senses a-tingling. I wanted to create a cookie to send to Kyle. Think how much I’ll save on postage when he moves up here! I dug into my recipe box and found an oatmeal cookie from one of my mom’s friends. I only have steel cut oats and, as I found out, they don’t work the same as rolled oats.

I’ll post the real recipe here in case anyone wants to make her delicious oatmeal cookies. But first, I’ll tell you my crazy story!

Not wanting to make too many cookies, I quartered the recipe. I substituted those steel cut oats for rolled, like I mentioned before. I used brown rice flour instead of an all purpose, peanuts and added in some chopped up dried chili mango.

When I went to roll the mixture into balls, they wouldn’t stick together. Here’s where I started to fret a bit. I added in an egg. Oh no, one egg with a quarter of a recipe… that’s a recipe for cooked eggs with some oats inside. So I added 1/4 cup of millet flour. For good measure I tossed in 1/8 cup of butterscotch chips.

I dropped four heaping tablespoons onto my cookie sheet and started the baking process, excited to see what was going to happen!

Well, they were a lot fluffier than I wanted them to be. Yep, that was the egg talking. So to the remaining batter I added 1/8 cup more chopped mango. At this point I’d already decided the cookies weren’t going to be what I wanted to mail out. I decided to mix it up a bit! I threw in 1/4 cup cocoa puffs, 1/4 cup raisin bran, 1 tablespoon fresh pineapple, and 1 tablespoon tahini.

Yep I know it’s weird, but they actually tasted pretty good! Unfortunately they still weren’t the right consistency. Maybe next time I might just trust the recipe… Tee hee!

Carole’s Oatmeal Cookies
2 cups oatmeal
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 sticks of butter or margarine (1 cup)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixer cream butter and sugar together. Add in baking soda and oatmeal. Stir in flour and nuts last. Roll dough into balls and place on cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Makes 3-4 dozen cookies.