BakeAwayGirl

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