Fried

Fortunately, I'm not talking about my skin. But unfortunately, I am talking about my brain. I think this heat is getting to me--the heat index is solidly in the triple digits today, and since we're young and cheap and can handle the heat our house is a balmy eighty degrees. Normally I'd park it in front of a fan with an ice cold beverage on afternoons like this...but we've got company coming tonight. So I've been trudging through our sticky humid house all afternoon cleaning. And doing laundry (which, blessedly, is in the basement, so at least it's like ten degrees cooler when I get to go down there).

And it was with the laundry that things began to fall apart. Despite the fact that I did not want to be doing laundry, I figured that I would throw in a load of sheets to necessitate a few extra trips to the nice cool basement. Well, I got the sheets all good and clean, got the bed all put back together...and realized that I was missing a pillowcase. I retraced my steps, and no pillowcase was to be found. The only explanation I could come up with was that I had made the pillowcase into the bed--which, considering I pretty much made the bed in the dark and they are dark sheets, wouldn't be all that surprising (for the record--I was in the near-dark because I've got the curtains closed to keep the sunlight and heat out, and I didn't feel like turning on the lights and wasting electricity for the little bit of time it would take me to make the bed. Yes, I do feel guilty for only working part-time in the summer and being at the house using water and electricity while Darrell is at work).

Life lesson? Sometimes being lazy pays off. I was too dis-heartened by the thought of remaking the bed that I decided not to tackle the project just yet (or make Darrell do it when he got home). Imagine my surprise when the next load of laundry came out of the dryer and there was the pillowcase! I'm still not entirely sure if I left in the washer or dryer (and how I managed to miss it in either), but regardless, it wasn't tucked into the bed somewhere. And I was a happy camper.

But I'll be a happier camper in about an hour when I can crack into one of these:

Watch out Somersault--I've got my eye on you

Middle Age: A Romance

Don't worry, I'm not making the (bold) statement that I am of middle age and having some sort of crisis. It's actually just a book review.

I read this book a few weeks ago when we were at the beach. Truthfully, if it hadn't been for the fact that we were on vacation, I probably wouldn't have finished it. Plus the fact that it belonged to the house we were staying at, so I couldn't take it with me. It's not that it was all that terrible or anything, but it was just long. Like 450 pages long. Don't get me wrong, I've read plenty of longer books, but this book seriously lacked action. The initial excitement at the beginning is the death of middle age man, and the rest of the book follows five or six of his friends and how his death changes their lives. Because it's strictly narrative for the majority of the book, it has great character development and depth of details. However, the number of characters and amount of scene development can be conducive to getting lost if you aren't paying close attention.

Again, I will say that the book isn't terrible and at times I did rather enjoy it. It really did feel like I was a resident of the community these characters were from and that I was witnessing the reactions of these people to the man's death. But because of its complex character structure and sheer length, this book is definitely not for the faint of heart.

Grilled Veggies

I figured that it would be fitting to follow up my garden post with a post about what we plan to do with some of the produce that we're (hopefully!) going to be harvesting in the next few months. Even though we know that that squash/zucchini will probably take the longest to mature, we're super excited at the possibility of getting lots of it because we have found an amazing way to prepare it. And, as a bonus, it utilizes one of my kitchen gadgets that I raved about in my Wedding Registry post!

Ready for this? It super ridiculously easy.

Step one: Slice summer squash/zucchini using a mandoline

Step Two: Season to taste. Darrell always puts a little bit of olive oil on them to keep them moist, and so far we've tried them lightly salted and with a little bit of lemon pepper. Truthfully, the flavor these things have from the grill (and the veggie itself) is great, so they really don't need lots of seasoning.

Look how thin those slices are! I daresay it would be impossible to cut them like that with just a regular knife--or at least I know it would be for me!

Step Three: Grill! The grill master in our house like to cook on high, and he's been cooking them for about five minutes, then turning them and cooking them for about five minutes more. We then have a warming rack on our grill that he moves them to--stacked on top of each other to keep the flavors sealed in!

Step Four: Enjoy!

We've been eating brats like crazy around here lately because we went to this specialty meat store a few weeks ago and they have 33 different types of brats, so naturally we had to try a few. The brats pictured are Jamaican Jerk brats--and let me tell you, they certainly lived up to their name! I had a difficult time getting through the whole thing before my eyes would tear up.

If you try a seasoning combination on these that works really well you'll have to let us know what it is--we tend to stick with something we know is good rather than try a bunch of different possibilities that might not be as good, so I don't know how creative we'll get about trying other seasonings since we like the ones we've done so much already!

They're still alive!

So, it's been almost three months, and we have a pretty solid garden going! Nothing has started to produce any sort of mini-vegetable yet, but we're waiting super anxiously for that to happen! In the meantime, I thought I'd go ahead and introduce you to the not-so-little guys that are taking over our garden.

Up first, we have the green beans!

We had an initial scare with these guys when only two of our four seeds sprouted. But, after a quick decision to plant four more seeds, we're now up to six green bean plants because all four of the second planting seeds sprouted!

Up next we have spinach!

If I remember correctly, we have three of these plants left. All six of our seeds sprouted, but somehow we lost a few. The three that are growing look good and healthy--although Darrell and I realized that we don't have a clue as to when to harvest spinach since it's just the leaves, so we might end up treating it like our herbs and just picking off a handful of leaves once the plant has enough to sustain itself without them. We'll figure it out through trial and error!

Finishing off the first row is broccoli!

These guys have gotten pretty darn big. And we've got two of them. Definitely looking forward to a solid broccoli crop.

We also have lots of pepper plants!

Six seedlings got transplanted into our garden, and only one of them didn't survive the transplant. Comparatively, these plants are not showing as much growth as the other ones, but we've had a really mild summer so far, and we think that is definitely affecting our peppers. Hopefully we'll see some major gains this week as highs are supposed to be near ninety all week. All five plants are bell peppers because we cook with those all the time--and given the opportunity I would definitely snack on a red pepper raw!

Next up are our tomatoes!

Like the peppers, one of the tomato plants didn't survive the transplant, so we only have three tomato plants. But I'm pretty sure that will be more than enough tomatoes for the two of us. We did finally get cages to put on them, and just in the nick of time because some of the stalks already seem to be pretty weighted down!

Lastly, we have the space-hogs of our garden, the zucchini/squash plants!

You know that information they give you on the back of seed packets telling you how much space to allow for each plant? Turns out that's pretty accurate information. We have six squash plants (two zucchini, two summer squash, and two winter squash), and I'm pretty sure that given the opportunity they'd take over the entire garden plot. My farm-raised mom said that it shouldn't hurt our crop much if we have to trim back the vines so they don't kill our other plants, so we'll see.

We do currently have one mystery plant growing. When we put seeds into our indoor container, two of the sections contained green onion seeds. We only had luck with one of them sprouting, so before moving the plants outside we added some green onion seeds to the other section, as well as a few around it in the plot since supposedly green onion don't take up that much space. Well, it seems that none of the other seeds sprouted, but the seedling that had started growing inside? It's out of control.

Furthermore, every website that I've looked at online does not have any pictures even closely resembling that plant in their green onion (or any other onion) seedling section. But--it's growing directly out of the container that was started indoors, so unless a foreign seed got into the seed packet, it has to be green onion. Right? My mom reassured me that it isn't a weed, so we've decided to just let it grow a little bit more and see what happens. If you have any insight I'd be glad to hear it!

And, to wrap things up, here's our full garden in all it's glory!

I'm already starting to dream about next year and the possibility of doubling the size of our plot so we can plant some melons and sweet corn, but I suppose we'll see how things go this year first!

Chicken Enchiladas

I love Mexican food. Majorly. If I ever get a food craving, it's always for something Mexican. Even something as basic as tacos. I could eat them everyday of the week. So naturally, we worked our way through a few enchilada recipes, figured out what we liked, and threw something together in our own recipe. Which we love. And make all the time--although I'd totally make it more often if Darrell were on board with that.

Chicken Enchiladas

1 lb chopped, cooked chicken (season to taste)
1 10.75 oz can condensed cream of chicken soup
2 cups shredded cheese (divided)
1 red pepper, diced
1 16 oz jar salsa
8 tortillas

Combine chicken, cream of chicken soup, 1 cup of the cheese, and red pepper. Stir until well blended. Spoon mixture into tortillas. Roll up and place seam side down in a 9 x 13 baking dish. Top with salsa and remaining cheese. Cover with foil. Bake at 350* for 30-35 minutes.

Don't you just want to eat that up? Seriously. Plus it makes a ton (at least when it's just Darrell and I eating), so there is always plenty for leftovers. Which I also love. Because it makes great leftovers. Have I convinced you yet to try this recipe? Because I could keep going if I needed to :-)

Crazy Weekend

Ever have one of those weekends that starts out perfectly normal with just one or two things going on and then things seem to blow up into craziness? That was our weekend. Going in to it, we planned on attending a wedding Friday night, going to a Shrine event for a few hours Saturday, and watching my brother play baseball on Sunday. Take that and throw in an arena football game (complete with security/police encounter), a family dinner, and golfing in a thunderstorm and you have our weekend. Intrigued? Stay tuned.

Some photo highlights from the wedding--there's not much else to say--it was beautiful, everyone was happy, typical typical typical:

You know the reception is going to be a good time when the bride shows up in kicks like this

Softball teammates, past and present

Having a good ol' time!

Don't we clean up nice?

Saturday morning/early afternoon, Darrell and I headed up to Dell Rapids for their Quarry Days, which is basically just a reason for a small town to throw a party and have a good time (tons of small towns in the area have similar events). Well, as a part of the Quarry Days, they had a cardboard boat race. Even though Darrell didn't march with his Shrine Unit in the parade (he doesn't have a uniform--nor is he able to play a fife), they nominated him to be the Admiral of their boat.

The reason why Darrell was Admiral of the boat--he's easily the smallest one of the bunch

The proud admiral -- the costume was not his idea, but the other guys decided he looked like a gay George Washington

Some of the competitors in their preliminary heat

More competitors and cool boat designs

Darrell (on the far right) in the championship heat -- he blew the competition out of the water!

A proud and victorious salute to his men after winning!

So up to this point, the weekend was going pretty normal. Darrell and I spent the afternoon recovering from the wedding and race with a long nap in preparation for going to an arena football game. The Sioux Falls team was playing in the first round of the playoffs, and their game was against a team from Omaha, who happens to be a major rival. Well, the tickets my parents have happen to be right next to the section where the opposing fans sit. When we got there, some of the fans were in our seats, as well as any seats around them that were empty. My dad asked the people in our seats to move, and after a few minutes decided to talk to the security guards about having all of them move. You see, Omaha's team name is "Omaha Beef", and every fan there had these obnoxious loud cowbells. Which they were doing their best to hit as close to our ears as possible. Needless to say, the fans were not thrilled about having to move. I don't think I've ever seen that many women flip off my dad before in my life.

Long story short, throughout the progression of the game, the fans saw fit to be rude to us at any time possible. Every time my dad or Darrell walked past them, one fan in particular called them "a$$hole". Finally, in about the fourth quarter, Darrell came back to our seats and told me "if he says that to me one more time, I'm just going to turn around and tell him 'Sir, there are kids around, please watch your language'". Well, Darrell himself never walked by, but when we left (a few minutes before the end of the game), he said it to both of us. I happened to be closer to him, so I turned back and made the comment. He looks me square in the eye and says "F*#@ you". Darrell heard this and was instantly between us, then instantly getting pushed to the ground by this guy. By this time, my dad was trying to get involved and was being held back by some Sioux Falls fans, while the security guards were doing their best to keep the Omaha guy off Darrell. We all made it out of there fine and without any injuries, although it took Darrell quite a bit of time to calm down. When it comes to fight or flight, Darrell is fight 100% of the way. He will always fight intelligently--he would have never thrown a punch at the Omaha guy--but he is always fight. Kind of endearing, but sometimes, kind of intimidating.

Anyway, after that incident, the weekend played out pretty normally. Darrell went golfing while I went to my brother's baseball game (sometime I swear I'll get a picture of him on here, but Darrell's camera doesn't like uploading to my computer, and that's always the one we use at his games), and although my brother got all of his baseball game in before the storm, Darrell's golf had to end a little bit early. But I'll definitely take that over him getting struck by lightening--which it's doing pretty ridiculously right now. Plus the rolling thunder that is rattling our wine bottles. Crazy crazy.

Here's to hoping this week goes a little bit more normal--and no encounters with law enforcement of any kind!

Beach Week 2011

So as I mentioned on Monday, Darrell and I spent all of last week on Topsail Island, NC with his family. It's an annual trip, and one we always look forward to. Not only is it one of the few times a year that we get to see Darrell's family, but it's also an incredibly fun, relaxing week. I could rave about the week for paragraph after paragraph...but I'll save you the agony of reading that at let the pictures do the talking!

Let the relaxing begin!

Darrell's favorite way to spend his time at the beach--doesn't matter if the fish are biting or not!

Touring the Battleship North Carolina--another item off our 101 in 1001 list!

I can't imagine actually being able to understand what all the knobs and dials do and mean

I'm going to interrupt pictures for just a minute to say that during the course of the week, we watched quite a bit a TV. Usually this would be a treat for us because we don't have cable at home, so we (okay, I) have occasionally gotten sucked into TV show marathons on TLC or HGTV. But this year, we spent our TV time on something much different:

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse: probably ten hours
Old School Transformers Shows: probably fifteen hours
Cars: at least 10 viewings
Walle: four or five viewings
Finding Nemo: two or three viewings
Mastermind: seven or eight viewings

And you know what?

For this kid, it was totally worth it. Meet our nephew and godson, John Carlton. Is he not the cutest kid ever?

The reason they make special diapers for swimming--normal diapers get massively waterlogged and saggy

Playing in the waves with Uncle Darrell--sorry for the poor quality, salt spray had gotten onto the lens

The only running you'll ever see me do on the beach

Burying Grandmom's feet

Fishing with Grandad

Jumping over the waves with some help from Mom and Dad

Off the Jolly Roger Pier--the house we stay at is along that stretch of beach you see in the background

Cuddling with Aunt Jess on the last day

I couldn't resist this parting shot--even though we get plenty of relaxation at the beach, Darrell always wears himself out by getting up to fish every morning at six. He'll always take a nap in the afternoon--and it just so happened that this afternoon we were at the airport!

Happy Birthday! (A Day Late)

Congrats on making it another full year--your first "full" birthday year as a husband!

Here's to hoping that you're wishing for many more good ones--and not wishing me away!

We won't say how many candles are actually supposed to be on that cake....  Love you!

Crazy Times

Okay, so I promise to do a full beach recap soon (not that you care terribly, but I just can't wait to brag about the cutest nephew ever), but I would be remiss if I neglected to mention the night we had last night.

The forecasters had been calling for rain all day, and there was a good chance that some of the storms would be severe. Not really a big deal, I actually quite like thunderstorms, so when the storm started around ten Darrell and I stayed up for a little bit to watch it. We even got to watch our street turn into a river from the volume of water that fell in a super short period of time. Kinda cool in theory, but not cool when you realize that all that water has to go somewhere, and usually it's either into people's basements (thankfully not ours; having a split-level has been awesome for that), or downriver to communities that are already battling massive flooding issues. After confirming that we weren't at much of a risk for any tornadoes, we headed to bed. Ten minutes later, we lost power. Again, not a huge deal. We both use our cell phones for alarms, we don't have anything "crucial" that was plugged in, and since the whole neighborhood was out we figured the crews would be working on it and we'd have power back up in no time. So, we settled in to go to sleep (in, I might add, the quietest house ever). Half an hour later, Darrell gets an auto-text from his office. Because he's a supervisor, he's instantly alerted anytime that a weather warning goes out for the county where he works (which, unfortunately, is not the county we live in, but they're super close). The text? Code black. Awesome. Granted, the area where the Code Black was coming from was probably a good twenty miles north of us, so we probably weren't in any direct tornado risk, but still. It was enough to rattle our nerves--and since the power was still out we couldn't turn the radio or computer on or anything to see what our risk was (I do have a laptop, but the battery lasts for 6.2 minutes before crapping out when it's not plugged in. The thing is ancient). Since we have all of our un-needed furniture in storage in our unfinished basement, including a twin bed mattress set, we decided to be overly cautious and pull the mattress under the stairs and sleep there, at least for awhile. Thankfully, about an hour later, I heard the power come back on, so I decided to flip on my computer and see where the storm was at. I really wish that I had had the foresight to take a picture, because when I pulled up the radar, it was solid red and yellow, with green to fill in all the gaps. Thankfully, the bulk of the storm had moved past us, and our only remaining threat was for flash flooding, which we certainly weren't going to worry about at midnight, especially since the power was back on and our sump pump would run if it needed to. So I roused Darrell and back into bed we went--thankfully to stay.

The official verdict this morning was that we got around two inches of rain last night--and the bulk of it fell in a thirty-minute time period. And to make the water situation worse, we have another 80% chance of severe storms again today, with the possibility of another two inches of rain. Kinda the last thing some people in this area need--but the stuff people in Arizona are praying desperately for. Let's hope Mother Nature gets her stuff figured out soon.

Vacation!

Nope, I'm not leaving for one--I actually just got back from one! That's part of the reason why last week was food week; I was able to type up all the posts before I left and schedule them to post while I was gone. You know, so all you faithful readers had something to look at :-) 

And now I don't have to miss a beat, because since I'm caught up with all of those recipes I can dive right into talking about our vacation! Every year Darrell's family rents a house on Topsail Island in NC and his whole family--including grandparents, aunts/uncles, and cousins on his dad's side--meet up for a week of wonderfulness. I've been going for three or four years now and just love it. I don't have all the pictures uploaded yet (and I've got a crazy amount of stuff to do around the house), so I'll just give a quick review for today.

The Good:
Spending time with family. Crazy good food. Fantastic weather. Super wonderful amounts of relaxation.

The Bad:
Flying into Greensboro, NC and learning that the air conditioner is broken in the car that we have to drive to the beach (four hours each way!). My ears were ringing and my hair was a knotted mess from driving with the windows down--but at least we made it there!

The Ugly:
A massive patch of red that appeared on my upper leg on Wednesday. Turns out Darrell missed a spot when spraying on my sunscreen. Needless to say I plan to stick to lotion sunscreen instead of the spray stuff from now on so I can better control the coverage--my poor Midwestern skin can't handle the NC sun!

I do have one funny airport story that I have to share quick. We had some weather delays on the way back, so we got somewhat familiar with the people on our flight out of Greensboro into Charlotte. Well, once we finally made it to Charlotte, Darrell and I ran into some people from our flight at the restaurant we were eating at for dinner. They were flying home to Connecticut from a national track meet, and assumed we were doing the same. I was initially flattered because the mother thought I was a runner and had competed in the meet--until I made the realization that it was a high school meet, so she thereby assumed I was a high school student. Not cool. She also assumed that Darrell and I were siblings (and sadly, that I was the older of the two), but then when she saw my ring she realized we were actually engaged. Umm, wrong again. You should have seen the look on her face when we told her that we've been married for a year. Apparently (according to her) Darrell looked "quite youthful" in his baseball cap. The mother and her daughter then became fascinated with the fact that we were from South Dakota--the daughter exclaimed that she had never met someone from "that far out West" and asked if I had "like, grown up on a farm or something". The mother, who knew absolutely nothing about South Dakota, was determined to remember the capitol of Iowa when she learned that we had met at a school there (which she eventually did remember, after incorrectly guessing Boise and a few other wrong cities). The daughter just assumed that the school we had met at was the University of Iowa (because why would Iowa have any other schools?), which prompted her to go into a dialogue about how they had tried to recruit her for track. Needless to say they certainly provided some dinner entertainment, although by the end of it Darrell was starting to get annoyed by the incessant comments about how "young" we looked. And I can't say that I blame him.

Anyway, once I get a chance to go through some of our photos (Darrell managed to take well over 200!) I'll post a few more from our wonderful vacation--for now it's off to do laundry and clean all of the lingering salt smell out of our clothes!

Smoothies!

So I don't technically have a recipe with this post, but since I'm talking about fruit and smoothies I figure I can still include it during this week. And if you don't agree, the psssh on you.

A few weeks ago our grocery store got in it's first massive crop of strawberries, and they (very kindly) sold them a dirt cheap prices. I knew that Darrell and I would never eat through four pounds of strawberries before they went bad (at least not without making ourselves sick), so we did what any savvy shopper would do--bought them anyway and froze what we didn't eat!

I was (foolishly) concerned that it would be a somewhat tedious process to freeze and preserve strawberries, but it was actually super easy. The only tedious part was cutting all of the tops off! Once we had that done, we just set them (cut side down) on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and stuck them in the freezer. By the next morning they were frozen enough that we could put them into a bag without needing to worry about them sticking together. And now we have perfectly delicious frozen strawberries at our disposal!

As the title of this post alludes to, we use these strawberries primarily for smoothies. What we love most about using frozen fruit is that we don't have to add ice to the blender to make the drink chilled; the fruit already serves that purpose. We've even taken to freezing bananas because those are another key component in our smoothies. And like I said, we don't ever follow a precise recipe, but our basic process is pretty much the same--we combine fruit, a yogurt, and some type a fruit juice, then blend, and we're good to go! Super good, super healthy, super quick!

Spiced Tilapia with Roasted Pepper-Tomatillo Sauce

How's that for another mouthful? Like we did with the Mongolian Beef recipe, Darrell and I have shortened the name of this one--we call it our Pepper Tomatillo Tilapia--but I think the full name of this one is super fun and an apt description of the recipe.

And yes, it might make it seem a little intimidating--and perhaps rightfully so. I honestly don't even know what compelled me to cut this out of a magazine years and years ago; never before had I heard of or cooked with tomatillos, so there was no possible way that I could predict what it would taste like. The only thing I can think of is that it must have had a really enticing picture. Or because it included a beer-pairing suggestion with with recipe (which, for the record, is a wheat beer with a tart lemon quality). But, whatever the reason, I'm glad I clipped it, because we love this recipe. It is a little time consuming because you have to wait for the pepper to roast, but it's so worth it. I have seen jarred roasted red peppers in the store recently; I imagine that using those would expedite the process but I'm not sure how they would affect the taste.

Which, by the way, the taste is fantastic. I absolutely love the sauce and need to find other ways to use it--although I always end up putting tons of it on my fish so there is never any leftover!

Spiced Tilapia with Roasted Pepper-Tomatillo Sauce
(not a clue where it came from!)

Sauce
1 large red bell pepper
2 tsp canola oil
1 cup finely chopped tomatillo
1/4 tsp salt
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tbsp chopped fresh cilantro
1 tsp rice vinegar
1 tsp honey

Fish
2 tbsp flour
2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1/4 tsp ground cumin
4 6-oz tilapia fillets (we usually just do two and puts lots of sauce on them)
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp canola oil

For the sauce, begin by preheating the broiler. Cut the bell pepper in half lengthwise and discard seeds and membranes. Place the pepper halves, skin sides up, on a foil lined baking sheet and flatten with hand if necessary. Broil 15 minutes or until blackened.

Place in a ziploc bag and let it stand for at least ten minutes. Remove from the bag and peel off the skin. Cut into chunks. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add the tomatillo to the pan, cook six minutes or until tender. Add salt and garlic; cook one minute.

Transfer to a blender or food processor with all sauce ingredients. Blend until smooth (if possible, remove the center piece of lid and cover with a paper towel so some heat can escape if necessary). Wipe pan with a paper towel (you'll use it again for the fish).

For the fish, combine the flour through cumin in a shallow dish and mix well. Sprinkle fish with salt and pepper, then dredge in the flour mixture. Heat oil over medium high heat and cook fish two minutes or until lightly browned. Carefully turn and cook four minutes more. Serve with sauce.

This is another great two-person prep recipe. I'm usually in charge of peeling the peppers once they've cooled, and while I'm doing that Darrell takes care of getting the tomatillos cooked. Once those are done, I work on getting the rest of the sauce ingredients put together and blended while Darrell cooks the fish. But again, even if just one person is doing all the work, it really isn't that time-consuming. I have learned (thanks to my dear husband) that recipes are easier to work through if you have all the ingredients prepped beforehand--and with this particular recipe, it's really easy to get the tomatillos cut, the flour mixture for the fish, and the remaining sauce ingredients put together all while the red peppers are roasting. Then it's just a handful of steps to completion and you've got a tasty meal on the table!



Peanut Butter Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies

You didn't think I'd go a whole "food" week without posting at least one sweet, did you? Truthfully, I would have if it hadn't been for the fact that we had some cream that we had to get rid of before it went bad. I just haven't had the energy to do any baking lately after all the work we've been doing around the house--plus we have great neighbors who bring us chocolate cake with peanut butter frosting!

Darrell raved sooo much about the sweets I made for our one year anniversary that I thought I'd try something similiar, and when I saw that these guys had some cream in them I was sold! They were super easy to make, although my one complaint would be the ratio of the cookie softness to the filling softness. The cookies were just a little on the chewy side, so when I bit into one the filling started to come out at the sides. But, it tastes just as good when licked off my fingers, so I can't complain too much!

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies
(found here--and yes, her picture is a million times better than mine)

Cookies3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg, at room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup quick-cooking oats

Filling3 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted
3 tablespoons heavy cream

Preheat oven to 350 F.  Line two baking sheets with parchment.

In a small bowl, whisk together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt.  In a large bowl, beat the butter, peanut butter and both sugars on medium speed until light and fluffy, about 3-4 minutes.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl, then add the egg and vanilla.  Beat to incorporate.  With the mixer on low speed, add the dry ingredients, mixing just until combined.  Finally, add the oats and beat briefly to distribute evenly.

Use a small cookie scoop to portion the dough onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches between them.  Bake for 10-12 minutes, or until the cookies are golden and puffed, and the edges are set. Transfer baking sheet to a wire rack and let the cookies cool on the sheet for 5 minutes then transfer then to the wire rack to cool completely.  Repeat to bake all dough.

To make the filling: Combine the butter, peanut butter and confectioners' sugar and beat on medium speed until smooth.  Add the heavy cream and beat until fluffy.  Match the cookies in pairs by size. Spread the frosting onto the flat side of one of the cookies and press together (if you are more patient than me you could put the frosting into a bag and pipe it onto the cookie. I just wanted to get them done so I could eat one--not take an award-winning picture of them).

Chipotle Pork Tacos with Pineapple Salsa

You know you're in for a good recipe when the title itself is a mouthful :)  And it may seem like a strange mouthful, but it's totally fantastic. It's another recipe that we've been making forever (are you noticing a trend with that? Usually the only main course recipes I've brave enough to cook on my own are ones we've been doing forever so that I know exactly what I'm doing and how it's supposed to turn out), and every time we make it we always comment that we need to make it more often. It's just such an unusual combinations of tastes and flavors and textures, yet it all seems to work in perfect harmony together. But before I distract you with my ridiculous explanations, let's get to the recipe.

Chipolte Pork Tacos with Pineapple Salsa
(another old recipe that I have no idea where it came from)

Salsa
2 cups minced pineapple (usually we use fresh, but we've made it with canned and it tastes fine)
1 cup minced apple
1/4 cup minced shallots
2 tbsp chopped cilantro (or parsley or spinach, depending on your preferences)
1 tbsp fresh lime juice
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/4 tsp salt

Combine all ingredients, stirring until well blended. Chill until ready to use.

Tacos
1 tbsp canola oil
1 cup thinly sliced yellow onion
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 1/2 lbs pork tenderloin, cut lengthwise and thinly sliced (we've been known to use thinly sliced chops on occasion because we're more likely to have that on hand)
1/2 cup chicken broth
1 tbsp cider vinegar
1 tsp dried oregano
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
12 cherry tomatoes, quartered
2 chipoltle chiles, canned in abodo sauce (this was way too spicy for us the first time we made it, plus we had most of the can leftover, so lately we've just been substituting a couple dashes of cayenne pepper)
Tortillas

Heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Cook onion for two minutes or until tender. Add garlic, cook thirty seconds. Add pork and cook until it loses its pink color. Stir in broth through chiles. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer ten minutes. Uncover and simmer until liquid is nearly evaporated. Serve on tortillas with salsa.

We also love this recipe because not only is it delicious, but it's a great two-person prep meal. I know that probably sounds strange to have that be a good quality, but Darrell and I like to cook together, but on most recipes he's doing the cooking and I'm doing the getting in the way. It doesn't take a ton of time for just one person to do, but with two people it goes super quickly because one person can be throwing the salsa together while the other is doing the pork filling (and yes--I always do the salsa because I don't like handling raw meat and onions if I don't have to. I think I have the world's most understanding and patient husband). Anyway, I know that it might sound a little unusual, but it really is a fantastic recipe!