Birthday Cake

Gina's Famous Pineapple Upside-Down Cake (first time!)
Recipe: follow the directions on the box. But be smart and buy two cans of pineapple, not one. As you can see here for yourself, Gina had to learn this the hard way.

What a delicious granola bar

Perfect for this time of year, when nobody has time to sit down and eat breakfast.Preheat oven to 250.

Combine 7 cups of dry granola ingredients in a large bowl. Of that 7 cups, about half should be rolled oats. The rest can be what you want: dried fruit, chocolate pieces, nuts, seeds, wheat germ, trail mix, coconut, whatever you like. A spoonful of cocoa powder is good in there too.

Warm one can of low-fat sweetened condensed milk in the microwave for 30-60 seconds, until it is thin enough to stir easily. You can add a giant spoonful of peanut butter too.

Add the condensed milk mixture to the granola and stir well.

Grease a 9 x 13 baking dish and press the mixture down firmly with a spatula. Bake for 45 minutes. Let it cool completely before you cut it up. Have a great day!

Easiest Bread

Maybe it's wierd that we post so much about bread. But this new recipe that Gina found is so easy! You cook the bread in a dutch oven.
Almost No-Knead Bread from Cook's Illustrated

3 cups (15 oz) unbleached all-purpose flour

1/4 teaspoon instant yeast

1 1/2 teaspoons table salt

generous 3/4 cup (7 oz) water, room temperature

generous 1/4 cup (3 oz) mild flavored lager *we used Yuengling! or you can use fake beer!

1 tablespoon white vinegar

1. Whisk flour, yeast, and salt together. Add water, beer, and vinegar. Stir with a rubber spatula until a shaggy dough forms. Cover bowl with plastic wrap and let sit at room temperature for 8-18 hours. *or 20... Gina forgot about it while she was out shopping

2. Lay a sheet of parchment paper in a 10 inch skillet and spray the paper with cooking spray. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface 10-15 times *that's like 30 seconds yall, this is so easy! Shape into a ball and place it on the parchment in the skillet. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise for 2 hours. It will rise into a nice shape because of the shape of the skillet underneath.

3. About 30 minutes before baking move your oven rack to the very bottom, place your cast iron dutch oven pot and lid in there to preheat, and heat the oven to 500. Flour the top of the dough and make one slice in the top.

4. When the oven is ready, pick up the dough using the parchment paper and lower it in to your hot dutch oven. Put the lid on the pot (let excess parchment hang over the pot edge) and lower the oven temperature to 425. Bake for 30 minutes.

5. Remove the lid from the pot and continue baking for 20-30 minutes. Then remove from oven, lifting the bread out by the edges of the parchment paper, and let it cool on a wire rack for 2 hours.

Hummus

Do y'all like hummus? We do!

We wanted to share our recipe with you. Here's what you need:

• 1 can chick peas (aka garbanzo beans), 1/2 of the water drained and set aside
• juice of 1 lemon
• half a clove of garlic... trust us, you don't want any more than that
• 2-3 spoonfuls of tahini
• 2 spoonfuls of olive oil
• salt and pepper

Put everything in the blender and mix it up! If it's too thick, add some of the water from the can of chickpeas. You can also add some roasted red pepper.

We had to figure out this tahini business. It's expensive and hard to find (we located it near the peanut butter in the store) and it but you only use a few spoonfuls at a time so it lasts for months and months.

Enjoy your healthy snack.

What's for breakfast

Wow guys, you should try eating couscous for breakfast. The recipe is a little wierd, especially the part where you steep a tea bag in the simmering fruit...
And you have to get past the idea of eating dinner food in the morning. But it's delicious! We've had it a couple of times now.

For his breakfast, Winnie ate an olive pillow.

Strawberry eating

It's going to be strawberries at every meal this week. The other day we made strawberry shortcake with fresh whipped cream.
And this morning, we had a big puffy baked pancake. Thomas called it Croc-off-loff. Best breakfast ever! You all should try it. It was like Freya's once in a lifetime breakfast, but quick and easy. We used salted butter in the pan which made it taste even better.

Topped with strawberries, powdered sugar, and lemon.

Thomas put a little more sugar on his...

Would you eat this?

Gina made a disgusting breakfast this morning: Cornmeal Mush. Thomas ate it though, because he is nice.

Call for Recipes

Okay, some of you may be thinking, "enough with all the crock pot business," but Gina is just getting on board with this whole cooking method. This morning she dumped some chicken and 2 cans of soup into the machine, and when she came home in the afternoon, it had turned into this. Astounding!

So, we'd like to request some recipes of yours to try out in our shiny new machine. Do you have any favorites? Just post a recipe or two on your blog and leave us a comment with a link when you do.

Thanks and have a lovely dinner.

We love avocados!

Yum, avocado and feta pizza. We eat it here when we're in Charlottesville and re-created it at home. To make it, brush a thin-crust pizza shell with olive oil and top with tomato, avocado, feta, and some pepper jack cheese. Bake at 450 for 7-10 minutes and enjoy.

Gina's best chicken

Most of you probably already cook chicken this way, but Gina just learned and has to share! You need a crock pot (good luck finding one as pretty as this one, though...).Take a 4-5 pound chicken and rinse it out and throw away the bag of guts. Pat it dry and sprinkle it with salt, pepper, and paprika. Chop an onion and put it in the crock pot. Then stuff the chicken in (ours is a tight fit) and pour in a 1/2 can of chicken broth. Cover and cook on high for a few hours. Halfway through, flip the chicken over so the white meat is facing down, in all the juice.
That's our little guy waiting to be dinner. He's ready when he starts to fall apart. Yum!

Things around the house

Most of our seeds have sprouted and they are so cute. Our little broccoli plants wish they were outside in the sun.
These tulips have been cheerfully adorning our table.

Our newest healthy idea: berry breakfast bars. We got this recipe from You've Got Supper this week and they're delicious!

You've Got Supper

We love to cook and try new recipes, but we both dread sitting down and writing up a shopping list. This website is great! Each week you get an email with some easy recipes. We just click on the ones we plan to cook, then print out the recipes. The best part is that you can also print out a shopping list for your selected recipes which is organized by store aisle. Last week's Kickin' Chicken was especially good, and we also loved the pasta we had on Valentine's Day. It is free, so sign up and give it a try. Thanks Katrina!

Mmm....

Spanakopita! Gina made this recipe for lunch today. She used spinach instead of swiss chard because what the heck is swiss chard?
Thomas, there will be lots left over for you.

UPDATE: Gina didn't actually taste this spanakopita until later. Unfortunately, it turned out sort of gross. It looked and smelled great, but the spinach inside was really squishy and juicy. Yuk! Anyone out there have a better recipe?

Peace and Love

For your information, this is the amount of snow it takes to close everything down in Greensboro. Gina's music appreciation students will be thrilled because they had a test scheduled for this morning.
With the whole morning freed up Gina decided to try cooking granola for breakfast. Like a big hippie! We didn't have maple syrup so she used a combination of molasses and Hungry Jack, which gave it a wierd taste. It was good though. We feel healthy.

Toblerone Cake

Thomas found a good deal and bought 24 bars of Toblerone. To use some of it up, we baked this Toblerone cake, which was delicious. The warm gooshy chunks of chocolate inside the cake were the best part.

Thomas: A Culinary Genius

After running seven miles at the park this morning, Thomas went to Food Lion where he procured some very nutritious items at a great discount. This cake mix was just $1.

He also couldn't pass up a deal on 45 pouches of sour gummy worms.

With those ingredients he created these glorious cupcakes. Henceforth these shall be known as "Thomas' famous Halloween cupcakes."

Amazing Microwave Cake

THREE MINUTE CHOCOLATE MUG CAKE

1 Coffee Mug
4 tablespoons flour (plain flour, not self-rising)
4 tablespoons sugar
2 tablespoons baking cocoa
1 egg
3 tablespoons milk
3 tablespoons oil
3 tablespoons chocolate chips (optional), some nuts (optional)
Small splash of vanilla

Add dry ingredients to mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips (if using) and vanilla, and mix again. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for 3 minutes on high. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed! Allow to cool a little, and tip out onto a plate if desired. EAT! (this can serve 2 if you want to share!)

This is pretty awesome. Thanks Pu for sending the recipe our way.

It's Harvest Time

We got our first frost warning here, so Gina went out and chopped down all the basil plants to make her famous pesto. She doesn't use a recipe, she just puts basil in the food processor with a handful of pine nuts, a few cloves of garlic, and some olive oil. No vampires will be visiting this house.
Frozen and ready to be mixed with tomatoes for pasta sauce this winter.

Gina's Famous Apple Pie

Filling: 11 small apples, 2/3 cup sugar, 2T flour, lemon, cinnamon, nutmeg
Topping: 1 stick butter, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 cup flour
Bottom crust: Pillsbury refrigerated one
1. Preheat oven to 450 and set out the butter to soften.
2. Peel and slice your apples. Place them in a large bowl with sugar, 2 tablespoons flour, juice of half a lemon, and some cinnamon and nutmeg. Stir them up and let them rest while you prepare the topping.
3. For topping, squish together the butter and brown sugar with a fork until creamy. Add 1 cup flour. Slice up the flour and butter mixture with 2 knives until it forms crumbly pieces.
4. Put pie crust into pie pan and press it down with your fingers against the bottom and sides. Pour off all the juice from the apples, then add apples to pie pan and sprinkle the topping on.
5. Bake at 450 for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 and bake about 30-45 minutes longer. If you're using a glass pie pan, lift it up in the air to see if the crust is cooked on the bottom.
6. Yum yum.

Bread: take 2

Gina was determined to make edible bread. She found a new recipe and measured her ingredients with a kitchen scale.
Her "Rustic Italian Bread" before:
And after. It took forever to make this bread. Gina had to leave midway through to play at a wedding, so Thomas baked it.
Delicious! It turned out exactly right.