A Few Little Things

- No real word yet on the computer. No diagnostic issues, but now they're running hard drive tests and that's where they think the real problem is.
- We found out that Rex placed 5th out of nine male beginning climbers, and I placed 3rd out of five female beginning climbers in the competition last weekend! I am so proud of him, some of those guys were way good.
- You know how I talked about going through phases? Right now I'm in a black bean phase. Really.
- There are a ton of really cool routes set up at the gym right now, including a lot of really fun beginner routes. So if any of your Lubbock-ites are looking for something fun to do this weekend, head to our favorite place to get a great workout!

(via)

Happy Monday!

Munchie Mondays

The best part of a bag of popcorn, now in its own little bag! Delish!

Oven-Baked Parmesan Herb Fries

YUM. Literally, that's it.


Oven-Baked Parmesan Herb Fries

1 pound of russet potatoes
3 tablespoons of olive oil
1/3 teaspoon of oregano
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of rosemary
1/3 teaspoon of basil
1/2 teaspoon of Old Bay seasoning
1/3 teaspoon of thyme
1/2 teaspoon of garlic powder
3 tablespoons of grated parmesan cheese


Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Rinse and slice potatoes into fries. Mix up spices, cheese, and olive oil in a bowl until incorporated. Put potatoes and seasoning mixture in a gallon-sized ziploc bag. Seal the bag and shake until the fries are evenly covered in the seasoning mixture. (At first I thought this sounded like unnecessary extra work, but it really works a lot better than trying to spread the mixture over the fries on your own.) Once coated, dump the fries out onto a foil-lined, greased cookie sheet. Add extra spices or oil if you wish! Bake the fries in the oven for 30-40 minutes, or until crispy. It'll vary for different ovens!


These are delicious and much healthier (or, less terrible at least) than "fried" fries. Hope you enjoy!

A Quick Break

...from the Smart, Pretty, & Awkward posts to give you guys a recipe that my sweet roommate and I tried a couple weekends ago. Of course we found it on Pinterest, and then adapted a little bit to fit our personal qualifications.

Bourbon Pumpkin Pie Milkshake

(I know, I know...a recipe for a milkshake? Milk + ice cream + shake, right? But you know, if you're going to add some liquor...that calls for a recipe. Am I right or am I right?)

2 cups vanilla ice cream
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup cream
2 tablespoons vanilla extract
2/3 cup pureed pumpkin
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1/3 ground graham cracker crumbs
2-3 ounces of bourbon

Put all ingredients in a blender and blend together well. Makes about 4 servings (depending on serving size!).


Complicated, right? But for real. They are de-lish. Except they are pretty sweet, so it can be a little heavy! Just a fair warning! ...oh, and there's a couple shots of bourbon in there too. Be wary of that.

Happy fall! 

Pumpkin Spice & Cinnamon

Last night at 9:00 PM, I thought it'd be a good idea to make cupcakes. This should come as a surprise to no one. I made a huge mess of the kitchen and ended up spending almost as much time cleaning as I spent on cooking. But guys...they were DE-LISH-US. Like, really. Not to toot my own horn or anything...but TOOT. The cupcake-y part was a really nice, almost bread-like texture, and the icing was just sweet enough to be icing, but cream cheese-y too. Here's the recipe (I think...I'm so bad at just throwing stuff into a bowl without measuring...oops!)

Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Cinnamon Cream Cheese Icing

2 cups flour
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp salt
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 cup Crisco
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
3/4 cup milk
(a little less than) 1 cup pumpkin puree

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Mix together flour, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. Set aside. In a separate bowl, mix together Crisco, white sugar, and brown sugar until fully incorporated. Add in eggs, one at a time, mixing throughly. Stir in milk and pumpkin. Once fully mixed, add in flour mixture a little at a time, until just mixed. Fill each cupcake tin 2/3 of the way full. Cook until light golden brown, about 20 minutes in my oven. Let cool before icing.


Cinnamon Cream Cheese Icing

1 (8 oz) package of cream cheese
1/4 cup of Crisco
(about) 2 1/2 cups of powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp ground cinnamon

Mix together cream cheese and Crisco until smooth. Add in powdered sugar a little at a time, mixing until incorporated. You may need a little less or a little more powdered sugar, it just depends! Then add cinnamon and vanilla and mix until throughly blended. Ice cupcakes and enjoy!!


Hope you're all enjoying fall! Clearly I am! Next, I will have a recipe for Pumpkin Pie Bourbon Milkshakes...get ready for that folks.

Have a good weekend all! We'll be in Dallas, spending the weekend with an assortment of my best friends, my family, Rex's family, and The Avett Brothers!! Cannot wait!

My New Favorite Superfood!

That's right, walnuts! I've pretty much been integrating my new favorite tree nut into everything. My favorite? A sort of "snack mix" made of grapes, sliced apple, feta (my other favorite), and walnuts. And they're really good for you, with lots of Vitamin E and Omega-3 fatty acids, and they're good for your heart. Which means that when you mix them in with ice cream, you're eating healthy! Right, right? 

My favorite meal to mix walnuts in with is salad. And my favorite favorite salad recipe (invented by myself, adapted slightly from a salad that Zio's restaurant serves) is listed below! Hope you enjoy!

Strawberry Walnut Salad
1 cup of romaine lettuce
2 cups of spinach leaves
1 1/2 cups of sliced strawberries
1 cup of chopped walnuts
Lots and lots of feta (...I just kind of pile it on)
2 tablespoons of olive oil

You can add dressing if you like, I've made it with strawberry vinaigrette and a white wine dressing as well, both are delicious!!


Hope you're all having a good week! Happy Hump Day!

The Londoner

My friends, have you ever visited a new place (city, house, restaurant, etc...) and just instantly felt at home? Comfortable and cozy, like you were supposed to be there? Even in a small way?

This was one of those places for me. 

Yes, it's a pub, judge me later. They serve Nutella & Banana French Toast, the world's best french fries, and lots of European beers on tap. And one of my best friends in the whole wide world is a waitress there. And it's in Uptown Dallas, which is beautiful and picturesque and cozy. 

I mentioned it in an older post, but this was a different location (Allen vs Uptown) and had a different feel to it and was much more my style. 

Basically, if you're ever in the Dallas area, you need to eat there! 

Iced Coffee

Ever since I saw this post on this enviable woman's blog, I've been consumed with the idea of making my own iced coffee. Emphasis on "my own". I do not like iced coffee the same way I like normal coffee. Normal coffee has to be black, with half a tablespoon of sugar, and piping hot. Iced coffee has to be very strong, but with a lot of half-and-half.

This is how I made mine:

1) I brewed the coffee about twice as strong as I normally would, one heaping tablespoon of grounds for every cup of water. The coffee was a little strong, so I added a little bit of water later on. This part is kind of trial and error and really depends on how strong you like your coffee!

2) I poured the coffee into a pitcher and stuck it in the freezer. I wanted it to cool off quick, and I didn't have a lot of time.

3) After about 20 minutes (the coffee was still pretty warm), I poured the coffee over a LOT of ice. Don't scrimp on the ice! The coffee will probably melt a good portion of the ice, and you want your iced coffee to be cold!

4) To sweeten it up, I added a good portion of milk, some half and half, and a little bit of sugar. I also warmed up a tablespoon of caramel topping and stirred it in. All in all, my concoction was about 70% coffee, 20% milk, 10% half and half. You can mix it however you like!

I was really happy with the results! It turned out tastier than I expected. I was kind of getting ready for a trial and error thing. I really want to try out the cold-brewed coffee next time. Happy coffee-making!

P.S. - If you've been living under a rock and haven't been obsessively following her blog, you at least need to check out these cinnamon rolls. They are divine. Isn't she just precious, too?

Tonight's Menu

Grilled Alaskan cod, homemade fried onion rings, grilled corn, an appetizer of frog legs (Haha! I've never cooked frog legs before! This should be interesting!) and Snicker's ice cream for dessert.


:)




Sorry for my absence from the blogging world as of late. It's not that I don't love it, because I do, but life (AKA school) has been getting in the way of a lot of things I love lately. Just ask Murphy, my dear crafting buddy Kate, and my high school BFF that I haven't seen in two months....


Sorry guys! I'll be back soon, hopefully with something really good to make up for it.

Today's Menu

For the lunch special, we have a pecan-crusted rainbow trout, cooked to perfection by our world-class chef. For your sides, we have fresh, lightly-salted green beans, and buttery mashed potatoes.


And tonight, for dinner, we'll be serving a grilled provolone and pesto sandwich, with a side salad and not-quite-as-fresh green beans. Finally, a slice of Butterfinger cake and vanilla ice cream for dessert. 




...it's little things like this that make everything so much better.

#3: French press coffee

#3: French press coffee

My favorite! Especially on a chilly day like today after taking Murphy for a walk. And when you have six hours of class ahead of you!

Vappy Halentine's Day!

Weren't expecting that, were ya? Well folks, it's that time of February again, and at the Winchester house, we celebrated in style (a day early) with perhaps the largest baking-related undertaking of my career thus far.

What's that you say? It's just a plan old 4-layer cake with vanilla buttercream? But wait...

Surprise! Kind of an angular heart, but a heart nonetheless, so I'm happy with my first attempt at a cake-inside-a-cake. If you're just a little bit crazy and interested in trying it out yourself, you can find the tutorial I used HERE. She's a professional baker, so I'm not too upset that mine is the ugly stepsister version of her cake. A couple tips if you do attempt it:

1) Follow her (for the life of me I can't find her name anywhere on her blog) version of the red velvet cake. Or if you have your own recipe you want to use, just find a way to make it more dense. (A general rule: subtract a little of a liquid ingredient, like eggs, and add a little butter or baking powder.) 

2) FREEZE THE CAKES! At least for an hour, stick the white cakes into the freezer before cutting. This makes carving them a million times easier and less crumbly. 

3) For the top part of the heart, carve the same V shape as the bottom half, and then make the "island" in the center with white cake crumbs and icing. It'll stay in place, especially once you pack the red velvet around it, and it was just way too intricate for me to try and carve around the center of the heart. Also, be sure to round out the top of the heart! Otherwise you'll get the angular look that mine had.

Anyway, the cake was exhausting, but worthwhile! I hope you all had a nice day, and spent it with people you love, be it romantic or plutonic. 

10.27.2010

Before.

After.

10.22.2010

At Rex's apartment. I'm currently working on (what I'm hoping will be) a watercolor of this photo. Taken by Rex, again. Maybe I should take my own

 photos for my blog. Hmm.

One of my own. Kitchen mess from a couple nights ago.