The Summer of Cooking

As much as I enjoy cooking (and eating) good food, during the school year it's really not always an option. Tons of classes, homework and work time leave little room for cooking, not to mention I'm one person and can only eat one dish so many times before I get tired of it.

Enter summertime.

I've been fortunate enough to get to spend June at home in Maryland eating some good home cooking by my mom :)

With Dad's grill shenanigans thrown in..

And sometime from Sarah & her boyfriend, Sean.

And other times, I get in the baking mood and decide to make two kinds of granola bars & cookies all in one night. But at least there are plenty of people around to help eat them!

I tested out a recipe from my cousin, Erika for Peanut Butter Granola Bars. She had previously sent me a box of these during a really busy week at school. So tasty and much appreciated!

Peanut Butter Granola Bars

1 22-oz. box granola

1 cup nut pieces

3 cups crispy rice cereal or puffed brown rice

½ cup dried cherries or raisins

1 tsp. cinnamon, opt.

1 ½ cups peanut butter

1 to 1 ½ cups brown rice syrup

½ cup honey

In a large bowl mix dry ingredients. Mix together peanut butter, syrup and honey;

combine with dry ingredients. Press into greased 12 x 18” pan; put a piece of wax or

parchment paper over the bars and roll flat with a rolling pin. Refrigerate until firm.

Keeps best in the refrigerator. Yield: 2 dozen bars

I tried some Gingered Carrot Cake Cookies from BrownEyedBaker

Gingered Carrot Cake Cookies

Yield: 18 cookies

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Bake Time: 16 to 18 minutes

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon ground ginger
Pinch of grated nutmeg
¾ cup (1½ sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
2/3 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1 egg
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup shredded carrots (about 3, peeled and trimmed)
1 cup sweetened shredded coconut
1 cup raisins
½ cup coarsely chopped pecans

1. Position oven racks in the upper-middle and lower-middle positions and preheat the oven to 375 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, salt, ginger and nutmeg.

3. With a stand or hand mixer, beat the butter on medium speed until creamy and smooth. Add the sugars and beat until light and fluffy, about 2 minutes, then add the egg and beat for another minute. Reduce the mixer speed to low and beat in the vanilla. Continuing on low speed, add the flour mixture in 2 or 3 batches and beat only until they just disappear into the mix. The dough will be very thick, but don’t overbeat to incorporate the flour. Using a rubber spatula, mix in the carrots, coconut, raisins and pecans.

4. Spoon about three heaping tablespoonfuls of dough (or use a large cookie scoop, which is what I did) onto the prepared baking sheets at a time, leaving about an inch of space between them. Using your fingers, every so slightly flatted the tops of the cookies.

5. Bake for 16 to 18 minutes, rotating the sheets from top to bottom and front to back at the midway point. The cookies should be light brown and only just firm on top. Carefully transfer the cookies to racks to cool to room temperature. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

And some Cherry & Chocolate Peanut Butter Granola Bars from Healthy Food for Living. Although apparently I forgot to document those. Oops.

This past weekend we made our way up to New Jersey (after a long 7 hour drive due to flash floods and tons of traffic-- should have taken 4 hours) to spend some time with family and celebrate Father's Day!

Of course, there is the mandatory elevator shots in Eric's fancy Jersey City apartment complex (which by the way, I have decided that I'm going to move into the laundry room of the place if the rest of my life doesn't work out.)

On Saturday morning after breakfast I hopped on the train and headed into NYC to visit Jon for the day. Apparently my picture taking skills have gone down the drain because I failed to document any portion of it. But we spent a good long while wandering through Central Park, eating tasty pizza, and sitting on fire escapes.

Sunday was spent back in Jersey, after picking Eric up, with lots of outdoor patio time.

Tomorrow morning early we're headed off to Wisconsin for Grandma's 80th (belated) birthday celebration. But first a pit stop in Chicago tomorrow night to see Remy (one of my roommates from RIT this past year). After Wisconsin I have a few days at home to pack up -- and steal more of Sarah's clothes ;) -- before headed back up to Rochester for the rest of the summer.

adventures

Life has been rather eventful lately (both good and bad). So much so that this blog post has been postponed a few days.

Last Thursday Rochester, like much of the rest of the country, got slammed with snow and wintery weather. It wasn't so much deep snow drifts but the ice that was created on top of the snow. Walking to class on Thursday proved to be quite the challenge... involving not one but two times when I totally wiped out. Luckily the first time no one was around to experience my awkward tumble as it was 7:30 in the morning. The second however was in a more populated space in the middle of the day. I felt a little better when I found out that I was not the only person this happened to. Both times were not particularly bad falls although my leg is still sore days later, but they did make me feel a little nervous for my tour Thursday afternoon! Which ended up going just fine and I didn't fall once walking backwards.. go figure! It was kind of fun to give a tour in the snow, it adds a level of excitement and I got to take some back routes to avoid the outdoors. Hopefully my tour group wasn't too cold!

Life event number two... Thursday after classes I was hanging around working on homework or something of the sort when all of a sudden the fire alarm goes off. Now ordinarily, not a problem. However, as mentioned above, it was snowing bucketloads and also about 25 degrees out so I was slightly less than excited to be standing outside. I had the sense to first put on sweatpants, a winter coat and grab a blanket before heading outdoors. Public Safety came after some time to figure out the problem (no actual fire or anything as far as I know). After about 45 minutes of cold we were allowed back in except the catch was the fire alarm had not yet been disabled so we stuffed a bunch of hats and sweatshirts on to mask the noise. Ironically when it finally turned off an hour and a half later I didn't even realize it because I had become so accustom to the obnoxious noise.

Moving on, Friday morning my roommate and I decided it would be a good idea to go out to lunch and do some Christmas shopping because we had some extra time on our hands. Ashley wanted to stop by Tim Horton's for a quick cup of coffee. That quickly turned into an hour and a half cup of coffee when we realized that she had left the keys in the ignition and the car was locked. Not to worry, my handy internet searching phone found us a locksmith and we were soon on our way.

Last night was the only RIT hockey game in the WHOLE month of December. I've been rather hockey deprived lately and I've had to resort to watching tons of NHL games. Anyway, after a long winning streak, the Tigers lost to Niagara. Our shots on goal were nearly double but their goalie was on all night and their shots looked a little stronger. Definitely a good game, just wished the Tigers could have pulled out another win! Now we'll have to wait until January for another game.

And the final event was our christmas party today! Last night after the hockey game we got back and immediately set to work decorating our entire apartment with those old school paper chains and snowflakes! It looked very festive along with all of our holiday lights and live christmas tree. This morning we woke up and got to work baking lots and lots of cookies! Chocolate chip, cranberry white chocolate, peanut butter with hershey kisses, and puppy chow. A bunch of people came over for dinner and a movie. We had spaghetti (minus the syrup) all inspired by Buddy the Elf, which was of course the movie choice of tonight.










All in all, a pretty decent weekend. The nice thing about these three weeks is that while there is still work to do, there is a good amount of time for hanging out before we all leave for the holidays. The good thing about blogging is that no matter how unfortunate the situation, the first thing I think about is what a good post it would make :)

couscous with curry

Dinner tonight was couscous with curry, onions, and raisins. Tastyyyy

cooking

Apparently lately I've been in a cooking mood. Don't worry these did not all occur on the same night. First picture is pasta salad with avocados and tomatoes. Second is a pasta with peanut/honey/soy sauce/dressing, broccoli and those green bean things. And last but not least are the chocolate chip cookies that Sarah and I made last night! 

I've been searching around in the pantry, so we'll see what I come up with tonight. It's more of a fend for yourself-see what is in the pantry already kind of dinner so it could get quite interesting =)