Leave of Absence

Well hello there.

Bad bad baker.  Bad!  I have been neglecting my blog something awful lately.

Really though, it's because I've been busy.  We're going on a belated honeymoon (better late than never, right?) to Costa Rica, so I'll be out of the cooking/baking loop for a couple of weeks (don't cry).  Hopefully I'll make up for it by taking some awesome (or mediocre, knowing me) photos of our vacation especially whatever delicious food we may encounter along the way.

This is going to be my first trip out of the country and I am so pumped about that.  I'm all in on this one.  Costa Rica is such a cool choice.  Here are some reasons:

• Volcano hot springs
• Rainforests
• Monkeys (yeah, I am so determined to see a monkey in the wild on this trip, you have no idea.  It's an obsession I really don't fully understand.)
• The obligatory beach lounging (they've got it all.)
• Ziplining through the cloud forest (yeah, that's a thing.  Google it.  Or here, I'll do it for you.)

Boom.

Anyway, I'll be trying to keep up with the blog while I'm gone, sharing pictures most likely of me making roughly the same ridiculous cheesy face with standing in front of various gorgeous natural scenery.

Now go eat something!

Pistachio Macarons

Does this count as obsessed?  I made them again.  I just can't stop thinking about different flavors that can be incorporated in these delicate little bite-sized treats.

This time I used pistachio flour and made pistachio swiss meringue buttercream.

I keep forgetting to show you just how bite-sized they are, but suffice it to say, they're like the size of a nickel.




These are meant to be eaten in one crazy delicious fancy little bite.  They're crackly on the outside and chewy on the inside.  They are not "crunchy moon pies", even though that's sort of exactly what they are...but for the time and effort expended to make them... let's call them macarons.  And let's do it with a really bad ridiculous French accent.  Thanks, love you.

Pink Lemonade Macarons

Happy Valentine's Day!

I hope you're all having a really good one.

I'm not one of those people who gets so super into the holiday, but I'm also not a crazed hater of it either.  It's a great excuse to bust out your red food coloring, and go nuts with the decorating, so it can't be all bad.  But I don't believe in doing something over the top romantic just because the greeting card companies want to boost their sales, either.

So we find a happy medium.  We bake delicious little treats, tell our friends and family we love them, slap on a dress and go out for a nice dinner.  Sure, maybe I bring in little treats all the time, maybe every single text to my parents ends in "I love you", maybe I still wore ugg boots and leggings under my dress, and maybe we went to the sushi place we always go to.

But that's ok.

Because these macarons are fancy.  Fancy enough that we could have worn sweatpants and drank beer on the couch watching the golf channel today and it would have all evened out.

Crepes

Yesterday was French cooking day.  Obviously it was my cheat day.

When I was in high school, we would periodically have "crepe parties" it lieu of the constant pizza parties.  My French teacher would bring her crepe maker...an electrical appliance similar to a skillet but convex rather than concave.  Can you picture it?

Like that.  Anyway, so for years I thought that crepes were so difficult to make that you needed these sorts of crazy contraptions. 

Little did I know how remarkably easy it is to make them the normal way too.  (But maybe just difficult enough that high school me couldn't' have handled it.)

One Pot Mac and Cheese

I'm ready for my weekend. 

So ready, I'm busting out the comfort food.  

The sad reality is, I actually have to work tomorrow.  So while for my dear sweet awesome husband, the revelry has begun...I still have 5am looming over my head like some sort of highly motivated morning-person of an executioner, grimly waiting for the inevitable earliness of tomorrow morning.

That may have been just a tad drama queen.  Not everyone is sympathetic toward my situation, especially when certain people know that I get Monday off as well.  But let's forget about that for now.

Let's talk about noodles and delicious cheeses.

Mango Curry Dip

I know I'm woefully overdue for the superbowl.  I know that.

But I made this nifty little dip for the superbowl party we attended.

A few unrelated things on that note.  No matter how much any of us may like or dislike the Patriots, we all have to agree that they deserved better than what we saw on Sunday.  Nobody should go out like that.  They're better than that.

Back to food.

This dip sounds weird.  It sounds crazy.  It's fine if you don't believe me.  If you think you're not a mango, curry, or cream cheese person.  Just wait until one of your super cool friends brings this over to your house and you find yourself consuming like half of it in 4 bites.  When your crackers snap under the sheer weight of the dip you're attempting to fit on them, that's when you'll know that I was oh so right.

Rice Krispie Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Oh my goodness I am so sorry about my super long extended absence.

Things have been nuts around here.  I baked some pork and it came out way ugly.  I baked a chocolate cake.  My camera died.  I ordered an Italian cookbook printed in Kansas City that my mom suggested.  I baked turkey meatloaf.  I gobbled it all up before I could take even one picture.  I took Cricket to the dog park a few times.

And then I baked these.  Rice Krispie oatmeal chocolate chip cookies.

I brought them in to work.  They are allegedly "slap your mama good", and I didn't even make that up.