A three hour tour!

♫The weather started getting rough,
The tiny ship was tossed,
If not for the courage of the fearless crew
The minnow would be lost, the minnow would be lost!♫


I know, I know! I'm sorry, it's in your head now as well. But Boyfriend and I are taking a three hour car ride to my sister's house in New Jersey for my eldest nephew's graduation from middle school. I remember changing that kid's diapers, now he has a smart phone and a deep voice! What happened?!


Anyway, since it's impossible to get Boyfriend to eat breakfast, I decided to make a bento we could nom on the way over to my sister's house.

Top bento: Boyfriend gets potatoes, tamagoyaki, a muffin and some strawberries (he doesn't like grapes, pffft)
Bottom bento: Granola bar, tamagoyaki, potatoes, grapes, strawberries and a muffin

My muffins came out differently this time. I didn't have any regular milk on hand, so I used almond milk. They came out much denser and richer (not a bad thing!) but I think next time I'll use 3/4c almond milk and 1/4c water.

I hope everyone has a great weekend!

Affording the movies

So some of you may know that I'm currently on medical leave from my job, which leaves me at home and usually very rarely able to afford to go out unless it's free.

My local movie theater has $5 Tuesdays, and I love going to the movies for so cheap. It's not buying the tickets that bothers me, it's the damn snacks! I love movie theater popcorn. It's like crack to me. I need it. But it's so darn expensive that I just can't justify buying it.

This Tuesday my friends and I did a double feature of Abe Lincoln: Vampire Hunter (ridiculous movie, wasn't supposed to be funny but it was hilarious) and Brave (touching, adorable, Pixar nailed the mother-daughter relationship). I needed food in that time!

It's a good thing that bag that a sewed for myself can easily pack all this stuff! I popped low-calorie popcorn at home and added sea salt, had a container of kiwi, grapes and strawberries and a small bag of low-calorie nuts. I ended up just eating one bag of the popcorn but both of the alternates. So delicious! I also snuck in a can of Pepsi and a bottled water. No one batted an eye. I'm a ninja!

It's been a weird week so I'm in a bit of a cooking rut. Sorry! Hopefully things will pick up again soon.

Take care!

Rainy, rainy day!

Well! It's been a bit whacky here in the Northeast. Today I woke up, thought about going to the pool because it was already hot, but knew it was going to rain. And boy, did it rain!

The rain made it's own pool at our complex!

Makeshift bird bath!

Where's all the seed? What's this nonsense?

Alright, enough with bird photos.

I had a bit of a whacky night in the kitchen, honestly! I decided to make these potato cakes earlier in the week since our potato supply needs to be used up. I had looked at a few different recipes, and came up with one that worked for me.
And, surprisingly, I was in the mood for a "meat and potatoes" meal. As many of you already know I rarely eat red meat so this came as a surprise! So I grabbed a can of green beans, the potatoes, and made myself a delicious meal!

Potato Cakes
4-6 baby red potatoes, mashed (Already cooked them with skins on, added 2tbsp butter, salt, pepper, paprika, garlic salt and almond milk, mashed em up and let them cool)
1/2 C Italian bread crumbs
1/2 C Chipotle panko bread crumbs
1/4 C chicken broth
2 tbsp chopped onions
Salt, pepper, garlic salt to taste
2tbsp oil for frying

Mix all the ingredients together and form them into patties. Fry them until golden brown and let them cool on a cooling rack placed over paper towels.
Also:
Add brown gravy to make them even more delicious!
Makes about 8-9 patties
When flipping them over, pat them lightly back into shape by poking them with your spatula.


---
Honestly, I was so sad when I made my first batch. I used WAY too much oil and they fell apart in the pan. So I decided, eh, whatever I'll just try it again. I loathe making such stupid kitchen mistakes. But sometimes, all you can do is throw it in the disposal, wipe your hands on your apron and go again.

And they came out DELICIOUS!

See the mini bell peppers at the top? ANOTHER kitchen mistake! I have an electric stove, and ended up heating up my cast iron griddle instead of the pot I needed for the gravy and figured hell, if it's already hot I might as well throw something on it.
Protip: I love the sound the seeds make as they pop inside the peppers! It makes me smile for some reason.

Anyway, boyfriend had to work tonight so I decided to throw together a bento for him!

He has: Carrot sticks, wheat thins, pepperoni, potato cakes, green beans, kiwi and strawberry.
These potato cakes are so delicious I might be going from referring him as Boyfriend to Husband. He'd marry me for these cakes. And now ladies, you too can make your man want to marry you with potatoes!

After all these kitchen mishaps and very silly wedding thoughts I wanted to treat myself. I've found that I'm in love with Pinkberry - but am poor on a budget, so I had to make do with what was at home!

Raspberry sorbet with kiwi chunks, chocolate chips and whipped cream! YUM!

I hope your evening wasn't rained out and that delicious food came from your kitchen!
Take care!

Breakfast is the best time of the day

It's no secret: I love breakfast. Any meal that I can sit around in my pajamas and cook is a great meal to me. There are so many different great breakfast recipes  out there that there's a plethora to choose from - it's almost overwhelming!

But the other day I was sitting around in my PJs watching TV when I saw Melissa d'Arabian make a Dutch Baby and it looked delicious.I figured it's an easy enough recipe that I couldn't really mess it up, even if I was half awake.

So to cut the story short, it's over 100 degrees outside and where am I? In the kitchen. Oy vey.

The Dutch Baby was easy as heck to make, and I followed the recipe to the T. Then I added some caramelized bananas on top and it was heaven on a plate.

Caramelizing bananas are easy by the way:
1. Let 1 tbsp of unsalted butter melt in a pan
2. Slice bananas lengthwise then across
3. Cover them in brown sugar. I didn't go bananas overboard on the sugar because I didn't want it to taste like sugar and butter. I like bananas.
4. Place them in the pan and let them brown. Patience is a virtue with this. If you've ever had to caramelize onions you know it can take a while. Just let them groove. It'll all work out in the end.
5. Take them out and put them on a plate and top everything with them. I mean everything. French toast, ice cream (make a little breakfast sundae? Yes please!)

So that was my breakfast/lunch, and it was incredibly easy and done within 45 minutes. That gave me plenty of time to wake up a little bit and plan for my day while breakfast baked/sizzled away.

If you live in the northeast, what are your plans to beat the heat? I plan to be at the pool most of the day under a very protective layer of sunscreen. I'm painfully Irish so it's SPF 5000 for me.


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Cinnamon Apple Oaty Bake

I'll be the first to say it: I'm not a baker. I'd much rather be throwing random ingredients into a pan and figure it out as I go along. There's just so much planning and thinking with baking.

But then I thought, well why can't I just throw together what I have? It wasn't baking itself that was holding back my creativity, is was my own mental block with baking!

And so I decided that I wanted to have something oaty with cinnamon. And why not apples? And crap, I bought this soy flour and can't find the recipe I wanted to use, so I'll just throw that in there too! And a little bit later, with some common sense guidelines to ingredients, I came out with my Cinnamon Apple Oaty Bake.

And oh my goodness is this delicious.

My favourite way that I've discovered I like this is warm with some of your preference of jelly. I had some pomegrante raspberry jam that I put over the top. Oh em gee!

Cinnamon Apple Oaty Bake
Ingredients:
1/2 Apple, peeled & sliced (I used fuji, but granny smith would hold up well)
2/3 cup old fashioned oats
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp sugar
1 tbsp water
1 tbsp soy flour
2/3 cup milk (fat free)
2 tbsp & 2 tsp vegetable oil
1/4 tsp salt

Makes 4 muffin cups

1. Preheat your oven to 290 degrees F.
2. Put four muffin wrappers in your muffin tin
3. Combine all the ingredients in a medium sized bowl.
4. Disperse "batter" between four cups evenly.
5. Bake at 290F for 25 minutes, until browned on top
6. Let cool and eat or serve warm with jelly!


I hope you can experiment with this and come up with fun varients. Enjoy!

Strawberry Festival

Over the weekend I had the fun opportunity to go to the Strawberry Festival they hold here in my town. They had 150 crafters, including: jam makers, jewelry makers, wood cutters and stone masons! It was really awesome and I had a great time.

I picked up some strawberry jam that goes amazingly on my Cinnamon Oat Bake that I'll be posting later this week. I love good food!

I leave you with some photos from the day, mostly involving animals!

My first "couple" bento...

...and it's kind of a work on progress, like all relationships! (*Sips tea and nods wisely*) LOL!
I've never worked with molding rice before, so it didn't work out perfectly. But that's okay, because it's a learning experience for me.

Boyfriend will be home later tonight, and I'd like to eat dinner with him!

From top left: grapes with a "flower pot", strawberry, Cinnamon Oat Apple Bake (will post that in a later post), stuffed pepper, kiwi butterflies, asparagus, onion dip, crackers, hard boiled egg, cucumber, and rice bunnies on "carrot grass." Look, I tried.

Mine was similar - grapes, strawberry, Cinnamon Apple Oat Bake, stuffed pepper, kiwi butterflies, asparagus, crackers and pepperoni, hard boiled egg, cucumber and rice bunnies on Ninjin Shirishiri (Borrowed from soul soup soap)

All in all it was fun to put together. Now that my stomach is pretty much fixed I anticipate this being a great dinner tonight!