BakeAwayGirl

Jeff's work has an awesome tradition of taking turns to provide Friday lunches.  Everybody who wants to participate signs up with a small group for a couple of Fridays during the year so that every Friday, one small group is providing lunch for everyone.  He really enjoys it and frequently comes home to brag about the delicious food he had that week.  Our recipe this week comes directly from his Friday food. Last June, Jeff came home raving about a fantastic soup he had at work that Friday, and he wanted me to make it.  I have a thing about "winter food" and "summer food," so I didn't make it over the summer.  But with the nice cool weather lately, I suggested we try it this week.  We had the ground beef, but we were low on all the canned veggies this recipe calls for, so I hit the grocery store. Now, I like mine very savory, so I went a little heavy on the spices.  The original recipe called for one packet of taco seasoning, but I used an equivilent of

So it's been a long time!  My Pinterest-ing this year has mostly been wedding related and staring at all the delicious food on Pinterest certainly doesn't mesh with that.  But today, Jeff suggested I browse for dinner options, and the one I stumbled on required ingredients we always keep on hand, such as chicken, rice, black beans, and chicken broth.  However, the original author states (and I agree) that you can make this with whatever veggies you have on hand.  So feel free to take a little creative license with this! The burrito bowl originally requires chicken, but we both said it would be easy to make it with ground beef.  If you do, brown the ground beef in a separate pan, drain it, then add it to the sauteed onions.  It was quite delicious with chicken, and probably would be good without any meat, though you'd need to add many more veggies.  I also added some seasoning to the raw chicken, then a little more to the uncooked rice, and then about 3 tablespoons to th

I had my cousins over for an annual party, and needed some appetizer ideas.  Of course I was browsing Pinterest, and I had stored away a little beauty of Buffalo Chicken Pinwheels.  As if the name weren't enough to convince me it was delicious, the author's admission that it was her, more than her husband, that enjoyed going to the dive bar food places really sold me.  Jeff loves burgers and wraps and all that, but hands down, I am the driving force for beer and wings.  Judge all you'd like, but man oh man, nothing tastes better. So I pulled my ingredients together and read the directions.  The only issue is that it only made a handful of pinwheels, and that just was not going to cut it.  I decided to use the ingredients in a different way and make a pizza instead of rolling the dough. It's the same general concept, but more flatbread and less dough pinwheels.  We found it almost a little too sweet, with the mozzarella and green onions.  I haven't made it aga

I know, it sounds heavenly, doesn't it?  Pesto grilled cheese... is there any part of that that sounds bad?  Nope.  This recipe is actually a rediscovered one for me.  I tried it for the first time before Jeff moved out here, in my first couple of weeks in the apartment.  I always pesto on hand, mozzarella is never difficult to get, and (here's my mistake) I used whatever bread I had around.  I was all excited for the deliciousness that I expected, and I was disappointed by the mediocrity that followed. I forgot about the recipe, but somehow it came up this past fall, and Jeff thought it sounded fantastic.  I acknowledged that the bread I used wasn't great and I was a little skimpy on the pesto, so we decided to try again with our favorite bread from the best bakery.  It was a success! Now we make it with some regularity and have tried on a couple different breads (like roasted garlic bread), but the key thing is the bread has to be pretty hearty.  No basic loaf bread f

There's two go-tos for me when cooking, Mexican and Italian.  Both are easy to do meatless, and, while we're not vegetarians, I like to try to do some meatless meals.  With Mexican, we use a lot of black beans, and in Italian, we load up on carbs.  Screw Atkins, I'm a carbaholic. Anyway, what could be better than mixing my two favorite types of food together?  The answer is nothing, nothing is better. I've never made enchiladas, but Jeff wanted me to try, so months ago, he bought me some enchilada sauce, "just to have on hand, in case."  Uh huh.  But then I stumbled on this recipe on pinterest, which included taco meat, beans, cheese, and enchilada sauce.  Can't go wrong!  I filed it away for another day. Well as we hit the stores before the Polar Vortex Round 2, I found jumbo shells on sale, and immediately knew what we would have for dinner.  It was a little time consuming, just because it's cooking a few different things and then putting them

Guest blogger:  Chef-Wannabe Jeff! Blueberry Pie Syrup For Christmas, Molly's parents got me a Sodastream machine, something I have always wanted. I had made several of the sample pack flavors when I decided it was time for me to start tinkering. I looked through our supplies and noticed the frozen Michigan blueberries from the summer. So far, we had only used them in pancakes so I decided that needed to change. While this syrup would be great on pancakes, ice cream, or in cocktails, I wanted to make a soda. I used the Sodastream to carbonate a liter of water and then added what would be a serving of concentrate (about 50 ml) of the blueberry syrup. It proved to be not enough so I added a second serving and that gave it a good strong flavor. 1 cup water 1 cup white sugar 2 tsp vanilla extract 1/2 cup frozen blueberries Combine all ingredients in a small/medium sauce pan. After that, it was a simple matter of keeping the temperature at a even simmer and