recipes: fried eggs galore.

I happen to be kind of a lazy chef when I'm cooking for just myself. I also happen to love fried eggs, particularly when cooked in olive oil. Luckily for me, these two phenomena go hand-in-hand. This past weekend, alone at my parents' house while they were bringing my brother home from college, I had fried eggs for almost every meal. This gave me an opportunity to experiment with all of the different ways to eat aforementioned olive oil fried eggs:

1. Fried egg on bagel with salsa, spinach, and arugula.
2. Fried egg and adzuki bean burger on bagel with dijon mustard, spinach, and arugula.
3. Fried egg over brown rice with marinara, spinach, and cracked black pepper.
4. Fried egg on English muffin with avocado, tomato, and cilantro.

Fried egg on an English muffin with cilantro, avocado, and tomato

Version 3 was by far my favorite, although they all turned out quite good, considering I was pretty much winging it in the kitchen and throwing together truly random ingredients. It really was such a fun way to spend the weekend trying to figure out all of the ways to eat a fried egg, although I went for a couple of days sans eggs after the weekend was over...

Happy Memorial Day weekend! May it be filled with barbecues, friends, and maybe some fried eggs!

diy: popping over with love card.

So I made this card for my boyfriend awhile ago (ahem...Valentine's day), but thought it was too adorable not to share. It was simple enough to make - just running to the craft shop for the right colors of paper and  cutting them so that I could glue them together to get the popcorn shape. I do have some tips that I have learned after making many cards that make your life a lot easier, for any of you that want to make cards.

1. Make a practice card on printer paper if you're making a card for the first time - it will let you practice and give you something to trace with. 

2. Pencil is your friend! It helps you avoid spelling errors and let's you decide what "font" to use, so to speak. 

3. Buy multiples of the same shade/pattern of paper. That way if you screw up, you have backup, and if not, you just have an excuse to make more cards.

Happy card-making!

warrior dash.

A few weeks ago, I ran a great race with my mom called the Warrior Dash, which benefits St. Jude. Needless to say, I haven't done any race like this before. It was just a 5k, but a bit slower than most I run because there are thirteen obstacles over the race course, including a mud pit and climbing over cargo nets. While it was definitely the hardest 5k I've ever done, it was also the most fun, especially with my mom.

My mom and I, pre-race. 

I'm pretty sure this is the coolest I will ever look. 

recipes: marbled buttercream brownies.

Although gluten-free baking is now the norm for me, I still haven't mastered some of the notoriously finicky gluten-free recipes - brownies being one of them. I have yet to find the right mixture and baking time to get the same fudgy, dense texture that are in my regular brownies. Going to a potluck the other night, I wanted to bring brownies since they're always a crowd favorite, and I didn't want to subject others to my experiments in gluten-free baking, so I decided to just go the regular route with a twist. I found this recipe at BGSK and decided to make these for the potluck. My version turned out a little marbled on top because I didn't have time to let the buttercream completely cool before putting on the chocolate glaze, but it turned out to have a rather pretty marbled effect on the top. Whatever they looked like, they were a big hit, and I'm sure I will be making them again, gluten-free or not.

Pretty.

Yum. 

recipes: rosemary roasted red potato salad.

My mom and I share a love for many things, one of those being roasted red potatoes with olive oil and rosemary. I love the crispiness of the potatoes combined with the freshness of the rosemary. For mother's day this year I made my mom one of her old school favorites - BLTs with a couple of upgrades, but I thought this springtime picnic classic deserved another to go on the side, hence a version of our favorite potatoes in a salad version. Although it was very windy, cold, and unspringy here on mother's day this year, this potato salad will be one of my spring favorites for a very long time.

Rosemary Roasted Red Potato Salad
makes 4 servings


Ingredients:

6 small red potatoes
4-5 sprigs of rosemary
4 tablespoons of olive oil
1/4 cup of mayonnaise
1/4 cup of dijon mustard
1 1/2 teaspoons of sriracha
1 teaspoon kosher salt
1 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Slice potatoes into 1/2'' x 1'' pieces and place into bowl. Cover with olive oil and add in rosemary. Stir together until well coated. Place in oven and cook for 30 minutes or until golden brown and fork tender.
2. In a small bowl, mix together mayonnaise and mustard. Stir in sriracha. When well mixed add in salt and pepper.
3. Let potatoes cool and place in large bowl. Pour in mayonnaise/mustard mixture and stir until potatoes are well coated.

pardon the finals.

I am incredibly sorry how absent I have been the last few days. Finals week has left me feeling like this:

http://bit.ly/Lrm4Oj

This is one of the joys of grad school: working full time while still trying to do finals. I would not recommend it. In a few days I (and thus this blog) will be back to normal.

recipes: moral-laden pizza

Trying to cook for yourself comes with many lessons. Sometimes it's the cooking part, and sometimes it's what comes long before the cooking part, and even before the grocery shopping part. Since my boyfriend is visiting for the next couple of weeks, he decided to make dinner for me and my parents one night, with help from the sous chef: yours truly. We decided to just go to the store sans list because the ingredients for making pizza should be pretty simple, right? Not. The base for the sauce we bought was terrible, all of the eggs in the refrigerator were cracked, and oregano was nowhere to be found in the pantry. This supposedly "simple" dinner required six trips to three different grocery stores and much sighing and odd looks from cashiers that had seen me maybe four times in the span of two hours. While my parents and my boyfriend had regular versions of the pizza, I had great gluten-free pizza that was some of the best I have ever had post-Celiac diagnosis. While everyone loved the pizza my boyfriend made, I couldn't help but think that there was a lesson or two to be gained from aforementioned grocery store fiasco: 1) Make a list. 2) Make sure you actually have the ingredients you need, and that they have not gone bad. These may seem like obvious things, but I thought I would pass the message along. However, it was all worth it, because it resulted in a really, really good pizza for me.

Moral-Laden Pizza 
makes 2 servings


Ingredients: 
One package of Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Pizza Crust Mix (just follow the directions on the bag to make the dough)
4 slices fresh mozzarella
Small spoonful of pizza sauce (use whatever kind you like - I'm normally lazy and just go for some marinara)
Small handful basil
1/4 cup of pitted Greek olives
1/4 cup shredded Italian cheese mix

Directions: 
1. Prepare dough according to instructions on bag, and preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. After making the dough, spread out over a floured surface. I made a 10-inch crust, about 1/2 inch thick from this dough, but you can definitely make more if you spread the dough out more to make it thicker.
3. Bake just the dough for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden.
4. Take out the crust, and layer with sauce, shredded cheese, mozzarella slices, tomatoes, basil, and then olives. Bake for an additional 8 to 10 minutes, or until cheese is melted.

a confession.

I have realized this past week, more than ever that I have become a bag lady.The computer, folders, makeup, books and other miscellaneous but necessary items have combined to make one bag too large to hold all of them. This results in my having quite a large collection of totes to carry around everyday, so many that I actually need one entire seat on the bus just to hold them. I might be a bit nerdy, but that doesn't mean my bags have to be.

from http://www.seabags.com/tote-bags/claw-tote-gold.html

Here is where my obsession with Seabags comes in. They're a local company out of Portland, Maine that recycles sails and makes them into the cutest and durable totes. I now own a couple, including my favorite with a grey whale tail, and rely on them everyday to make me look a little less geeky on my way into the gallery space.