Zucchini Bread - made with zucchini from MY GARDEN OMG

First of all, I picked a big banana pepper today and chopped it up for Dennis to put on his sandwich for lunch tomorrow. Go me.

Before that though, I grabbed that purple pepper and sliced it in half. I wasn't sure when it would be ready so I just picked one to test it out. I stuck my tongue out and barely touched the pepper and YOWZA it was hot. I have heard that the smaller peppers are hotter, but it must've slipped my mind momentarily. I'm not sure what to do with it!! I guess I can make salsa but it would be like... one of those things where people would have to sign a waiver before they eat it.

Anyways, I decided on a whim that I was going to make zucchini bread. Dennis' mom gave us some last year and I had never tried it before. I was apprehensive, but it turned out to be delicious. I found a recipe and whipped up a batch. It is in the oven right now.

Pictured: zucchini & the dissected purple pepper

The recipe I found called for 2 cups of grated zucchini but I didn't think I had enough. Mine was 7.5 inches but it only made 1 cup grated, so I halved the entire recipe.

Then I mixed all the other shiz up.

Ingredients

1 3/4 c all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp baking powder

2 eggs

1 c white sugar
1/2 c vegetable oil

1 c grated zucchini 

So whisk together the first 5 ingredients - all the dry ingredients but the sugar. Preheat the oven to 350.

In a separate large bowl, beat the eggs, then slowly add in the sugar, then the oil. Slowly add the flour and zucchini, alternating between them. PS. This tastes INCREDIBLE. The original recipe calls for walnuts and raisins, but I am allergic to walnuts and I don't like adding raisins to my bakery items, except for oatmeal cookies and that's only for my dad!!

Grease a 4x8 pan and pour the mixture in. Bake for 65 minutes.

Batter at 0 minutes in the oven...

Batter at 65 minutes in the oven!

I just realized that I was supposed to add vanilla extract, but I missed that part of the directions because it was combined with the walnuts & raisins. The batter was so delicious and the amount of vanilla extract was so small (1/4 tsp) that I don't think it is going to matter. If you want to add the vanilla extract, just add it to the batter last, right before you put it in the oven.

Update: I wanted the recipe to look greener this time, so I used a lot more zucchini, probably 1 and 3/4 cups, while leaving the rest of the recipe the same... except the mixture looked a little too runny when it was ready to go in so I added some extra flour and sugar. I probably added about a cup of flour and 1/2 cup of sugar. Next time I make it, which should be soon (my garden is blowin up, I tell you!), I'll try to get some more exact measurements. Also, I baked it for 80 minutes at 350.

Here's the recipe I used from Allrecipes.com.

Nummy Mozzarella Sticks

This recipe is actually kind of hard. It is easy to get the ingredients set up, but then it all goes straight to hell from there. Seriously though, you should still try it.

Ingredients

12 sticks of string cheese or 12 pieces of mozzarella cut into 4 x 1/2 inch sticks

1 1/2 cups breadcrumbs
4 tsp Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp salt
pepper to taste
4 eggs
1 cup all-purpose flour

The first time I tried this recipe, I used fresh mozzarella. Mmm. Have you ever tried it? It is so effin good. Those Italians really know what they're doing. I ate a decent amount of it while I was making the cheese sticks. I couldn't help it!

Usually fresh mozzarella comes in sealed plastic packaging and it is about the size of a baseball. I was going to grab one of those, but then I saw one that looked elongated so that it looked great for my cheese sticks!!

 

Like this.

So I got it. It actually turned out to be really annoying to cut up cause it had some pre-made cuts that made it fall apart really easily. It wasn't too TOO difficult, but I just made a second batch and I used individually packaged cheese sticks. The first step is to "dredge" the mozzarella sticks aka. drag them through all of the ingredients, beginning with the flour. I thought that the flour wouldn't stick as well to the cheese sticks, but I was wrong. I couldn't really tell a difference.

Ok so for this first part, the dredging, I used pie plates and cake pans. I set up my little workstation like an assembly line and it worked pretty well. The first pan is just straight flour. The 2nd is the eggs, slightly beaten. The third pan is the breadcrumbs, Italian seasoning, salt, and pepper mixed together. So do all of that.

 Voila.

Remember at the beginning when I said this recipe was hard and it went straight to hell? It was somewhere around this eggy portion.

 

Right about....meow.

See how there are little random bits of flour throughout the plate? I'd think the pieces were entirely coated in the egg and then I'd turn it once and the egg would just like.... evaporate! Yea that sounds right. Eggs are known to evaporate at will. So yea, I had to keep turning and turning the pieces in the egg and then there were still bare spots. So I had to rub some egg on there with my fingers. It got messy.

After the egg, dredge the cheese in the breadcrumb mixture. Easy. Then once you have done this with all of your pieces, repeat the whole process. UGH!!! This measure is to make sure that the cheese is entirely coated, because otherwise the cheese could seep out while you are frying them and you end up with an empty shell and some cheese floating around in the fryer. And that would be a waste of all of your hard work!!

My near-finished product. Prettay prettay prettay good.

Now sadly, you must put your cheese sticks in the freezer for at least 2 hours. I know. It'll be ok.

After 2+ hours, you may cook your cheese sticks. We have a deep fryer, so we used that on 350. If you don't have one, you can cook them in a large pot with Canola oil. The instructions for that are on the original website here. They also have a buttermilk dip that goes with the cheese sticks, but I made it and it didn't taste that great. Then again I substituted about half of the fresh ingredients with crappy seasoning so that might have... everything to do with it.

Sorry there are no post-fryer pics. They just didn't last long enough. We dipped them in marinara and it was heavenly. Bellissimo!

Also, in case I haven't sold you yet, maybe a review from Senior Food Critic Meredith "BigJugs" DeViney will do it - "Delicous [sic] yes melty." Well you heard it straight from the Hawk's mouth! Now go out and get you some!!

Update: I was able to take a picture with Dennis' phone of my awesome 2nd batch. I cut the mozzarella sticks in half before I dredged them. Here they are on a plate with some marinara sauce. Mmm...

High Class Mac & Cheese

Or as Dennis calls it, "Mac & Chee." Saves so much time.

I got this recipe from a website called FoodGawker. I don't know anything about it, except that judging from the name and the part of the site I was at, that it has a lot to do with looking at pictures of food. Or judging food by how good it looks in those pictures. Either way, I saw this page that was the "Most Favorited All-Time" of FoodGawker's picture/recipes. The pictures are fantastic! They make mine look like dog food. Delicious dog food!

I call this high class mac & cheese because it uses cheese other than Velveeta. Not that there's anything wrong with Velveeta, but I am a cheese connoisseur (I wish) so I love getting "nice" cheeses when I can afford it. This recipe calls for some specific cheese that I don't even know how to get, so I made some substitutions. It's cheese, for cryin out loud! It all tastes great and gets melty when you heat it up so I say if it tastes good, I can substitute it.

Ingredients
8 oz penne pasta (half a box)
2 cups of cheese sauce (see recipe below)
1 oz cheddar, grated
1 oz Havarti, grated
1/2 tsp chili powder

The way this recipe is set up was kind of confusing to me. I had to scroll back and forth which I despise (!) but never fear, I am going to try to fix this issue. Maybe. I'm just going to try to write it the way I wish it was written. Don't get your hopes up too high though.

First, cook your pasta. Get a pot of water boiling and pour half of the box into the pot. Stir it a little, set the timer for 9 minutes, then start your cheese sauce. Here is where I interject that now would be a fine time to preheat your oven to 350!

Ingredients for Cheese Sauce
1/4 c butter
1/3 c flour
3 c milk
14 oz cheddar, grated
1 oz gorgonzola, grated
1/2 tsp salt
1/8 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp chili powder

Melt the butter on medium heat in a large saucepan. And I do mean large - you will be adding all of your ingredients to this pan. In hindsight, a pot might be better. Once the butter is melted, slowly add the flour and stir for 2 minutes. This mixture is called a roux aka a thickener for sauces.

Add the milk one cup at a time, stirring constantly until it is thick, about 10 minutes. The mixture is now called a béchamel sauce, which is a white sauce used in many Italian dishes. You didn't know you would be learning today, did you!?

 

Béchamel!

Remove from heat and stir in the cheeses, salt, garlic powder, and chili powder until it is all nice and melted together. Set aside.

 

Cheese sauce. Nomnomnom.

Now hopefully this process did not take longer than 9 minutes. Otherwise, your pasta will have overcooked! This is why you set the timer. Well, I dunno about you but this is why I set the timer, anyway. So you should drain your pasta and rinse it with cold water. Then mix 2 cups of the cheese sauce in a medium bowl with the pasta.

 

You wish you could multitask this well.

BEWARE! I say 2 cups! The whole mixture is 4 cups. Why the recipe says to make 2x the amount needed, I don't know. But I made the mistake of pouring it all into the bowl. This is what I was talking about with the recipe being confusing. I didn't want anyone else to make that mistake and have to fish 2 cups of cheese sauce out without getting any penne. It was really hard, man!

Ok so now you butter your 8x8 Pyrex pan and pour your mixture into it. Sprinkle the rest of the shredded cheese and chili sauce on top and pop it in the oven for 20-30 minutes. I picked 30 and it was awesome.

Pre-oven.

 

Post-oven. What a difference 30 minutes makes! (at 350)

Thanks to Joe at My Cooking Quest for the recipe. Here is the original link. Don't forget to lift your pinky when you eat it.

My Very First Banana Bread

So I went grocery shopping this past week and bananas were on my list. I should have seen a red flag when there were hardly any bananas left, but I picked some that looked pretty good to me and moved on. When I got home and tried to put them up on the banana hook, one just fell right off. Oops. Then another one had already broken open. Then Dennis just said to hell with them and that he doesn't want to eat them, so I decided to make banana bread.

I have never made banana bread before, but I have made pumpkin bread a lot so I thought I could handle it. The ingredients were quite simple, as was the recipe.

Ingredients
3 or 4 ripe bananas, smashed
1/3 cup melted butter
1 cup sugar (can easily reduce to 3/4 cup)
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon baking soda
pinch of salt
1 1/2 cups of all-purpose flour

The recipe says that you don't even need a mixer for this & that you can just use a spoon, but that sounds like more work. So I used my hand mixer.

First preheat the oven to 350. Then mix the bananas and butter together, then add the sugar, egg, and vanilla. Once they are all mixed together well, add the baking soda and salt, and lastly the flour. OMG wasn't that easy?

Pour the mixture into a buttered 4x8 loaf pan and put it in the oven for 70 minutes. I just tried a little piece and it tastes great. The recipe is hard to screw up though, so that is not saying a lot about my cooking. Seriously though, I am a great cook and this bread is going to feed Dennis for a week. Also, I can't find my camera right now you'll have to settle for this terrible picture I took with my computer:

And yes there is a piece missing. So what?! Leave me alone!!

The original recipe from SimplyRecipes.com.

Holiday Sugar Cookies!! with Icing!!

YAY! I love sugar cookies. I mean really good sugar cookies with icing and sprinkles and nonpareils! Some sprinkles are called nonpareils, btw. So I love sugar cookies, and it's the holiday season and the Christmas season, so naturally I thought I needed to make some. Also, my mom gave me some cute cookie cutters last year so I just had to use them!

Seriously, how precious are these?

Ok back to what's really important... the cookies. I found a recipe for soft sugar cookies because I just hate hard crunchy cookies. Sugar cookies are usually pretty thin so it can be easy for them to be crunchy. This recipe is right on the money. 24 hours later, the cookies are still soft and chewy.

Ingredients

3 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

+1 cup all-purpose flour for rolling the dough

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup butter, softened

1 1/2 cups white sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

Combine the flour, baking powder, & salt in a bowl. Easy. In a separate large bowl, combine the butter and sugar with a mixer until it is all creamy or something. The recipe said light and fluffy... sorry but my understanding of butter and sugar does not lend itself to being light and fluffy. So make it creamy! Add the eggs one at a time, then the vanilla extract, and then add the flour mixture slowly. Mix well. Or else.

Oh and preheat the oven to 400. Unless you want to go by the recipe, in which case you will need to chill the dough for 2 hours. What these lame-os don't realize is that there is this great invention, the freezer, which did the job for me in about 15 minutes. Haha, suckers.

This next part requires some finesse. I hope you have a rolling pin. You'll need a clean flat surface to roll the dough out. Sprinkle a handful of flour on the surface and drop 1/4 of your dough on it. Knead the dough and sprinkle some more flour over your dough until it's no longer sticky. Roll out the dough until it is only 1/4 inch thick. If the dough sticks to your rolling pin, sprinkle some flour on and rub it in like you are waxing a car.

Once you have rolled out your dough, start cookie cutting! Try to utilize as much of your dough as you can by putting the shapes close together. Make sure you press down with your whole palm so they cut all the way through.

My workstation

Ok! So now you need to grease up some cookie sheets. I put a dab of butter in the pan and then rub it around with a paper towel. There should be a thin layer of butter coating the pan. To get the cookies up, I find it is best to get a spatula under each cookie and lift it without disturbing the other cookies. Pull away any dough that sticks to the cookie, then grab the cookie and put it on the cookie sheet. I tried to arrange them extremely closely together to get as many as possible on a single sheet.

Put the cookie sheet into the oven for 6 minutes. It's so fast! Use this time to whip up some icing.

 
Ingredients

1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar

3 tablespoons butter, softened

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

1 tablespoon milk

food color (optional)
sprinkles (optional)

Mix the first 4 ingredients together. I'm sure it can be done by hand, but why would you? Psh. Once you have a big bowl of white icing, you can separate it into smaller bowls and make different colors.

The first batch of icing I made was a little funky looking. It looked like it was trying to separate on me, so my instinct was to throw some more powdered sugar in there. It worked.

The rest is all up to you. Some people have nifty little guns and whatnot to apply the icing, but poor little old me just used the bottom of a spoon. I find it easiest to hold the cookie in one hand and apply with the other, rather than trying to ice the cookie while it is laying on a flat surface. Also, make sure you put any sprinkles on before the icing has time to dry. If you are lucky, your cookies will look like mine because my cookies are da bomb.

This is the spot where the photo of my cookies should appear. This photo is supposed to make you froth at the mouth because it looks so delectable. Well my macbook decided to suck and deny me my pictures. I will figure out this error and put up a picture of the finished product.

Happy baking!

Cookie recipe & icing recipe - both from AllRecipes.com.

Scrambled Eggs with Sausage Biscuits & Gravy

An easy one, and a two-parter. What did you do to deserve this? You can thank Mere. Normally I probably wouldn't have put this recipe online, but one of her friends demanded that I put the breakfast up and that Mere's picture appear on the blog. So, feast your eyes on Mere.

Anywho, scrambled eggs. Not hard to make, but I do have my own way of doing it. It might be the same as everyone else's way but who knows.

Ingredients

2 eggs

1/4 cup milk

shredded/sliced cheddar

salt & pepper to taste

5-6 drops of Tabasco (optional)

This is all guesswork (for 1 serving) except for the eggs, because I usually just eyeball the amounts. If you have the patience to shred your cheddar cheese, good for you. If you are like me, I cut a few slices and break them into small pieces then toss them in. I mix up the eggs with a fork, using it like a whisk. Toss a pad or 2 of butter into a pan, use the fork to coat the pan with the butter, then pour the mixture into the pan.

Try to resist the urge to mess with the eggs too much. Just let them be for a few minutes, then try to flip the entire mixture over if you can. The key is minimal contact! If you make these eggs well, you won't need any condiments. I love em.

Now for the Sausage Biscuits & Gravy, a favorite for Dennis. He introduced me to them and they are so simple yet utterly delicious. All you really need is a pound of breakfast sausage, some flour & milk, and a package of biscuits (unless of course you want to make your own from scratch).

First, put the biscuits in the oven and while you're waiting for them to bake, you can prepare the sausage & gravy. Just cook the sausage however you normally would - break it up in the pan and stir it occasionally. Once the sausage is done and you have a decent amount of grease in the pan, add 2-3 tbsp of flour and pour milk in until it covers the bottom of the pan (try 1 cup and work your way up from there if you are uncertain). Stir the mixture around until a gravy starts to form.. it shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

And that's it! Dennis likes to spread his biscuits around the plate and smother them with the sausage gravy, whereas I like separating my food into quadrants (as evidenced from the picture above). Happy breakfasting!

Pumpkin Bread

I discovered pumpkin bread when an old friend brought some over years ago. From the moment I tasted it, I was hooked. I never thought I would find a recipe to match the glorious pumpkin bread that I had tasted oh so many years ago, but after some experimenting with recipes I found one that has been a success. I make this bread during the holidays for friends and family. I have also used the batter to make pumpkin muffins and pumpkin cake (both of which are great with cream cheese icing, btw, but that's for another post).

Ingredients

1 15 oz can pumpkin puree

4 eggs

1 cup vegetable oil

2/3 cup water

3 cups white sugar

3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp pumpkin spice

Mix the puree, eggs, oil, water, and sugar together in a large bowl until blended.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, & pumpkin spice.

Slowly add the dry mixture to the wet mixture until blended completely. Pour into whichever container you are using. I have a new Pyrex pan that I usually use for this recipe, but if I am using an older pan I will use Pam, vegetable oil, or butter to line the inside then rub it down with a paper towel before I pour the mixture.

This recipe makes a very large amount of batter and I usually have to divy it up among 2 different pans. I baked a batch of pumpkin bread while writing this post and it took 70 and 77 minutes (one pan was slightly larger than the other). If you are making this as a gift during the holidays, this recipe would be good, but if it is just to snack on around the house, you may be better off halving the recipe.

Here's my bread fresh out of the oven! As you can see it rises quite a bit while baking - I filled each of these pans up to about an inch below the edge. I cut the piece out of the middle of the smaller loaf because the toothpick came out clean but I didn't entirely trust it. Don't worry the bread was fine and it tasted great. :)

Here's the original link from AllRecipes.com. My version has a few minor changes.

Fluffy Pancakes

When I first found this recipe for fluffy pancakes, I was a little turned off by the vinegar in the ingredients list but it got so many rave reviews that I decided to give it a try.

Ingredients

3/4 cup milk

2 tablespoons white vinegar

1 cup all-purpose flour

2 tablespoons white sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 egg

2 tablespoons butter, melted

Mix the milk & vinegar together. You will be adding the dry ingredients to this mixture, so make sure to use a large bowl. The directions say to let the milk & vinegar mixture "sour" which sounds gross, but stick out the recipe to the end!! It will be worth it.

Mix the flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, & salt together in a separate bowl.

Add the egg & butter to the "soured" milk & whisk. Then add the flour mixture & whisk until it is smooth.

At this point, I like to pour one pancake to get a feeling for the consistency. Sometimes if it is too thick, it will just pour into a blob and it won't spread out into a circle. I use a whisk or a spoon like I'm spreading sauce on a pizza to flatten the pancake into a circle. Then I add a little milk to the mixture to thin it out. Now that I think of it, maybe I should just adjust the milk from the beginning! I will try this and update the recipe if it works out.

Anywho, this recipe usually makes 8-10 medium-sized pancakes.. medium meaning a little smaller than a CD. I usually make a bunch of plain Jane circles, then one or two fun ones.. like so..

This pancake was for me...

And this one was for Dennis!

We have an electric skillet that I can make 3-4 pancakes on at a time, but when I use a pan it definitely takes longer and the pancakes tend to cool off a little by the time I'm done with the batter. I just pop them back on the pan or skillet for around 30 seconds on each side and they're good as new.

We usually don't finish all of the pancakes, so once they have cooled down enough I put the leftovers into a Ziplock bag and toss them in the fridge. They heat up great in the microwave!

I have tried a few different recipes for pancakes, and so far this one is the best. Here's the original link at AllRecipes.com.

Chicken Teriyaki, Yellow Rice, & Cheesy Broccoli

This meal was made back in March after Dennis & I first started dating. We were so proud we sent pictures to his mom, which is the only reason I have such an old meal documented.

It was really simple to make. I think the hardest part is probably timing everything.

The chicken (from what I remember, this was March 2008!) is just a chicken breast, basted with Ken's Steak House Teriyaki sauce. We have some KSH Honey Teriyaki sauce in the fridge right now, so I'm not sure whether we used that or plain teriyaki sauce, but I'm sure either one works.

The rice is also easy enough - yellow rice called "Vigo." We are partial to Success Rice, the boil-in-a-bag kind, so making rice the regular way is annoying now because it always seems to stick to the bottom of the pot. Someday I will find a way to fix this, but not today! The yellow rice packet suggests adding a chicken bullion cube to the boiling water for flavor, which we do, and it makes it very flavorful indeed.

The cheesy broccoli comes from Dennis' mom's recipe. I usually throw some broccoli in a pot with a half-inch of water, put the lid on, and then just check on it occasionally. When it starts to look really bright green, I take a little piece out and taste it. When it has the right consistency, I take it out. I should probably start timing this process, but that would take out the spontaneity factor!!

The cheesy sauce is made of Velveeta, butter, flour, & milk.

1 tbsp melted butter

1 tbsp flour

1 cup milk

Mix ingredients, warm in a pot on the stove, and then add the cheese. I asked Dennis, "How much cheese?" & he said, "As much as it takes..." So basically, to your own taste. Just stir continuously & add slices of cheese slowly until it reaches the consistency that you like.

Voila! Again, the timing can be difficult but it helps if you have an extra pair of hands in the kitchen. I have to thank Dennis for this one as it was his idea & we have had it many times since.