Thanksgiving Hangover pt 2

so after thanksgiving i always seem to end up with one cup left of pumpkin. not a full can, not an empty can, but half of a can. i hate waisting food so here is what to do with that cup of pumpkin.
for these VEGAN PUMPKIN OATMEAL COOKIES you need

2 cups whole wheat flour
1 1/3 quick cook oats
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1 dash pumpkin pie spice
1 2/3 cups sugar
2/3 cup oil
2 tablespoon molasses
1 cup canned pumpkin
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup raisins
1 cup shredded coconut

preheat over to 35o degrees. in a bowl stir together the flour, oats, baking soda, salt and spices. put that bowl aside. in a separate bowl, mix together the sugar, oil, molasses, pumpkin, and vanilla. add the flour mixture to the wet mixture. then add the raisins and coconut. scoop tablespoons of dough onto a greased cookie sheet. using your palm, push down each ball of dough, flattening the cookies. bake for 17 minutes and enjoy!

Thanksgiving Leftovers, pt 1

so today i was making pies and pumpkin whoopie pies, and ended up with some extra crust, pie filling and cream cheese frosting. what to do, what to do, with all these leftovers. this is what to do:
- for extra pie crust and pie filling, make bite size pies! fill mini muffin pan cups with leftover pieces of crust dough. scoop in a bit of pie filling. bake with the big pies, but take out earlier. these mini pies are delicious and make a good pre-thanksgiving snack
- for just extra pie crust, make shortbread cookies! line the crust in a toaster oven pan. sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar. bake at 350 until the edges are golden brown. then enjoy.
- for extra cream cheese frosting, add some flair to thanksgiving morning breakfast. spread on waffles or pancakes instead of the usual whipped cream.
gobble gobble

Pumpkin Cookies.

these are absolutely delish. light, fluffy, and pumpkiny. a perfect way to celebrate Halloween/fall/pumpkin patches. you need:

2.666 sticks butter. (2 sticks, and then 2/3 of a stick. mixing it up today by using decimals)

2 cups light brown sugar

1 cup dark brown sugar

4 eggs

1 normal sized can of pumpkin (if you are unsure what that is, go into the can isle and look at all the cans. you want a can of pumpkin that size)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

4 cups whole wheat flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon of ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

1/2 cup golden raisins

cream room temp butter and the brown sugars. add the eggs, pumpkin, vanilla and mix. in a separate bowl, stir together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. slowly add the flour mixture to the pumpkin mixture. then stir in the walnuts and raisins. bake at 375' for 15 mins. enjoy!

Green tea, calm in a cup.

I'm currently over my head in college apps, AP classes, tests, quizzes, memorizing lines for the play, reading novels, debating, solving world hunger and saving the world. all these activities can lead to late night stress. however, i have found a way to calm that stress away that is not sticking my face into a gallon of ice cream. green tea, even the name brings calmness. it is filled with antioxidants and other big words that are good for you. i once read somewhere it can help you loose weight, and that five cups daily seems to be the magic number for weight loss. so next time you re up late studying, a cup of green tea with caffeine will awaken you and your soul. or if your winding down from a long and stressful day, a cup of decaf will bring peace to your mind and heart. my favorite brand of green tea is The Republic of Tea, but any type will do. find a brand that you particularly like, and start drinking it daily. simply heat water till it is almost boiling. then pour over the teabag into the mug. in minutes you will feel much better. i promise.

Pumpkin Spice

its fall. the leaves are changing. the air is cooler. the pumpkins are growing. and because the pumpkins are growing we all get to enjoy something magical, the pumpkin spice latte. i have been to many coffee shops and tried many varieties of pumpkin spice, and i have discovered Starbucks hands down does the best job applying the spice of a pumpkin to the greatness of a latte. this warm latte tantalizes the taste buds with feelings of fall. it smells like a freshly baked pumpkin pie and warms up your soul. even if you are still stuck in iced coffee mode and refuse to have a hot drink just yet, an iced pumpkin spice latte gives all the benefits of fall, with all the weather of summer. either way its delicious and pumpkin spice latte season is one to be celebrated and enjoyed.

A Broken Heart

my heart was recently broken. by one of my favorite things. i never thought peanut butter or cookie dough could let me down, but today they did. it started off as a routine trip to the supermarket. there i discovered a brand of peanut butter i have never tried, PB Loco. i had read about their peanut creations in Everyday with Rachael Ray and decided to give them a try. i selected peanut butter with chocolate chip cookie dough because that sounds amazing. i imagined it like cookie dough ice cream, but instead of vanilla there would be peanut butter sprinkled with big globs of chocolate chip cookie dough. my soul was crushed when i opened up that jar. i discovered something more like the people in the peanutubutter factory dumped peanuts and cookie dough into a blender. the chocolate had taken over every inch of the butter, and i could find no globs of cookie dough to pick out. it was a sad day. and now i have this jar i do not want to eat. sad sad.

It's Cookie Time!

This year, i missed my opportunity to buy a box of girl scout cookies. which is actually quite sad because they are delish and i used to be a girl scout so i like to support the girls. however i was wondering the ice cream isle and i stumbled upon something glorious. Girl Scouts Thin Mint Cookie Ice Cream. Usually i would never by Edy's ice cream because its not the best quality. however, i made an exception for the thin mints. imagine fluffy chocolate ice cream with thin mint cookie crumbles. the perfect blend of chocolaty-ness and minty-ness. if i had not missed my opportunity to buy girl scout cookies, i would have made girl scout cookie chip-witches with the ice cream. so i am encouraging you to do that. go girl scouts!

The Greatest Nut Butter Since Crunchy

I love peanut butter. I sit around and think about it a lot. i put it in everything, from cookies to stir fry. i am that girl who eats it out of the jar with a spoon. this peanut butter happens to be my favorite. Cinnamon Raisin Swirl from Peanut Butter & Co. is the definition of food-gasim. each spoonful is filled with loving raisins and flavorful cinnamon. this peanut butter often finds itself on toast, celery, apples, bananas, or just on a spoon. the flavor balance is just perfect, and the raisin to peanut butter ratio is exact. I have been known to buy 3 jars of this stuff at a time. another great peanut butter by the guys at Peanut Butter & Co. is dark chocolate dreams. i do love dark chocolate, and i do love peanut butter, but somehow the combo of both spread onto bread just is not what im looking for. i would rather have my pb and fluff. however, this dark chocolate dreams peanut butter does AMAZING things to cookies. at this point in my life, i cannot set the over on 'Bake' without stirring in a spoonful of dark chocolate dreams into the batter. i must go now, there is a jar in the kitchen calling my name.

homemade peanut butter cups

i love peanut butter. i love chocolate. i really love peanut butter cups. so i made some. its so simple and involves only 2 ingredients, chocolate and peanut butter!
so first, you need chocolate. today i did a combo of baker's chocolate and this coffee flavored milk chocolate. really you can use any combo and any type of chocolate you want. to prepare the chocolate, microwave it in 30 second intervals, stirring between each one, until the chocolate is the consistency of chocolate sauce. then you either need a mini muffin pan or mini cupcake tins. (those paper things that hold the cupcake in). i would recommend the cupcake tins over the pan because even if the pan is covered in nonstick spray, its still hard to get the chocolate cups out when they are done. now when the chocolate is melted, do a thin layer in the bottom of the cupcake tin. then scoop on some peanut butter and another layer of chocolate on top. the amount of each is really up to you. i like more peanut butter than chocolate, but some like it the other way around. when the tin is filled with chocolaty peanut butter goodness, freeze until the chocolate hardens (about 10 mins) and enjoy. this recipe can be used with other things too. for example, instead of peanut butter, try almond butter, coconut, whole nuts, other types of candy, popcorn, or really anything else you can think of. delish.

Good-For-You Chocolate Chip Cookies.

love me some chocolate chip cookies. love not being fat. here is a happy medium. you need.
1 3/4 cup whole wheat flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 dashes cinnamon
1 dash ginger
1 dash nutmeg
1 1/4 cup light brown sugar
1 teaspoon maple syrup
1 stick butter
2 ripe bananas
2 egg whites (crack 2 eggs above a bowl and only let the not yolk part of the egg into the bowl. this can be a challenge if you have never done it before, but i have faith in you)
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 1/2 cups quick cook oats
1 cup wheat bran
1/4 cup water
3 hand fulls nuts
chocolate chips. (a note about this. i happened to be out of chocolate chips, but i had those 60 calorie sticks of Hershey's special dark chocolate. so i stepped on those with a boot when they were in their wrapper to crush them into chunk size and added them to the batter like that. but you can also just use regular chocolate chips. and add however many you want)

preheat over to 375'. In a bowl, mix the flour, baking soda and spices. set that bowl as side. mix together the sugars, maple syrup and butter. (i usually microwave the butter for 30 seconds on a plate before adding to mix. wana keep that stuff nice and soft). when that is all nicely mixed, add the bananas, egg whites and vanilla extract and mix. when that is all blended to a beautiful consistency, add the oats, wheat bran, water, nuts, chocolate chips and mix. scoop about a tablespoon or so amount of dough onto a greased cookie sheet. bake for 10- 12 mins. until they look done.

Roasted Fennel

i love roasted vegetables. they are delish. fennel is also delish. it packs a lot of licorice-ish flavor into a healthy vegetable. once you know how to roast one vegetable, you can pretty much roast them all. first, preheat the oven to 350'. slice the fennel and arrange on a baking sheet. drizzle some balsamic vinegar on the fennel and sprinkle with crazy janes pepper. place in oven for about 45 mins to an hour. (depends on how thick the fennel slices are). once the fennel is done, you can toss it over a bed of lettuce to make a salad, add it as a side dish to some chicken or just eat it plain. its delish. enjoy!

Tomato Sauce

recently i made whole wheat pasta, and it was so delish i had to make tomato sauce to go with it. so i came up with this. you need:
EVOO (to drizzle)
1/2 onion, minced
2 cloves of garlic
21 oz can crushed tomatoes
2 celery stalks
basil leaves
balsamic vinaigrette
brown sugar
take a medium soup pot, and drizzle EVOO along the bottom at high heat. add the minced onion and grate the garlic cloves into the pot. let cook on high heat for 4 mins, occasionally stirring so the onions do not burn on the bottom. then reduce the heat, and add the can of crushed tomatoes. if you do not reduce the heat, tomato will pop up at you and burn your arms. let the canned tomatoes simmer and chop the celery stalks into small chunks and add to the pot along with a handful of ripped up basil leaves. add a tablespoon of brown sugar and stir. let the sauce simmer for 15 mins and then stir into pasta. enjoy!