Recipe of the Week

I think I spend a lot of time cooking. Well, baking really, but occasionally I'll make something using "real" food too. Needless to say, I spend a lot of time in the kitchen, as can be gleaned from the fact that my last three blog posts are all recipes of the week, and I've got two more ready to go! I've made some delicious desserts this week, but I decided to post a recipe you can actually eat for lunch first.

So here it is:

 Pizza Quesadillas!

Recipe of the Week

So it's been a while...

I imagine the "real" world is just as busy, but college has a tendency to creep into your life and suck out everything you once cared about. But only for a little while, so please don't become morbidly depressed by that analogy! Working on my senior show pretty much took over everything in my life for a while, and then working three jobs and doing everything else that classes, clubs, and social life demand takes away from the things I like to do in my free time. Namely making up new foods in Baldwin.

Oh Baldy...I'm going to miss that place. I have probably spent more hours there than anywhere else on campus. But for the last few times that I get to eat their glorious food, I might as well make the most of it.

This recipe is really a personal preference. Let's see how creative you can get! Basically it's pasta, with anything you can find to put in it. I have a friend who literally grabbed different sauces from the fridge, spices from the cabinet, and anything else she could find, threw them all together in a pan with some frozen perogies, and fried it up. It was good! The only downside is, she has absolutely no idea how to make it again.

But there is a fun sense of adventure to that style of cooking. No measuring cups, no sure-fire tested recipes, no idea how it is going to turn out. This is how mine turned out:

Pasta
Chicken
Tomatoes
Spinach
Pepperoni
Italian Seasoning
Pizza Seasoning

And then the sauces. Oh, the sauces. This can make or break a dish. There are so many options. You could go the pasta salad route and take something from the salad bar. There are 9 or 10 different dressings you can find over there. Or find buffalo sauce somewhere. If that's not available, there is always barbeque sauce on the grill line. Or go with the classic Alfredo. Or marinara. Or BOTH. Yeah! That sounds good. How about both? Who likes making decisions anyways?

So that's what I made. Pasta and sauce and stuff. Lots of stuff. Whatever stuff you want. And Parmesan Cheese on top. Because everything is better with cheese.

Recipe of the Week

I love pancakes. IHOP is, consequently, my favorite restaurant. There is a ridiculous amount of recipes you can make by just mixing whatever the heck you want into pancake batter. And then the toppings. Oh the toppings! This is why you go to IHOP. Pancakes stuffed and smothered with cinnamon, butter, and icing. And whipped cream. Mmm! Healthy.

But there is one choice on the IHOP breakfast menu that stands apart from all the goodness-filled pancakes. Chicken and Waffles. An odd but perfectly edible combination of food.

And since Baldwin is equipped with a waffle iron, in which you are not allowed to mix extra chocolate chips and delicious things, the next best choice is to cover your waffle in ranch and barbeque sauce!

So, make a waffle on the iron, and then locate the chicken. The type of chicken depends on the day (or if you're at home, what's in your fridge). One can always find chicken on the rotisserie line, but today they had chicken patties on the grill. This works best with fried chicken, because it lends to that unhealthy taste that college kids love. I cut the chicken patty into four strips to top my waffle, and drizzled barbeque sauce, ranch dressing, and syrup over the whole menagerie.

And you know what? It was good! Even the two other brave souls who tried some of it agreed, chicken and waffles is a combination that is worth trying. One of them approved of my new idea of nixing the barbeque and ranch and trying it with honey, so next time, I will have warm waffles covered with chicken and honey! Charlee always eats hers with tabasco sauce. With the different sauces you can try, there is no end to the combinations of chicken and waffles that you can make! Enjoy!

Recipe of the Week

Taste's like chicken!

But not really, because, everyone cooks with chicken, so I decided to be different. But this recipe would actually taste good with chicken. Actually, it would probably taste better with chicken. Then it would taste like chicken! But what I did make tastes like an Arby's roast beef sandwich. Probably because I made it with roast beef.

Arby's classic sauce is like barbeque sauce, so why not cook roast beef in barbeque sauce? But again, to be different, throw in some honey mustard dressing. Because the recipe of the week is not about being boring, but coming up with different things to eat every week!

So why not try some roast beef cooked up in barbeque sauce and honey mustard?

It did taste really good while it was still warm. I added some cheese on top so it would start to melt a little, and then some lettuce and tomatoes to be healthy.

Voila! I give you the homemade Arby's wrap. I guess since this isn't Arby's, we can call it the Baldwin wrap. Mmm...let's just say it's roast beef and sauce in a wrap. Try it with your own sauce blend and your own meat of choice! Just don't forget the melted cheese!

Recipe of the Week

It's almost finals week. That time when college students live off of 2 hours of sleep, coffee (with lots of sugar), and pop tarts, and are lucky if they don't hurt somebody in the process of getting all their final papers written and art projects printed.

And I almost forgot the recipe of the week!

But you can breath easily again, because I did remember and I did get inspiration for a very satisfying dish this week. The dish is more satisfying than the picture, because Charleeee was laughing at me for photographing my food, and Caleb wanted to try some (it's that good!) so I didn't have time to get a good picture. But like I said, the food is good, and that's all that matters.

Rushing out the door to make it to Baldwin before they closed, I asked my roommate for an idea. She told me she had just seen something today that I should try: Macaroni and cheese grilled cheese. I wasn't quite sure how to go about that, but that led to another suggestion. Charlee (my inside man) told me how our other friend had been trying to make something like Hamburger Helper. And that is what led to this:

I grabbed meat and the liquidy cheese stuff off the taco bar, along with some extra shredded cheese and tomatoes. I cooked the stuff together in a frying pan, and then added some pasta. All this was good, but it needed something more...what to do, what to do? Well, ask the rotisserie chef what spices to put in, since there was a whole stack of spices at the pasta bar staring me right in the face. His suggestion was good: Italian seasoning. You can't really go wrong with Italian seasoning and pasta.

So that's it: Noodles, taco meat, tomatoes, lots of cheese, and Italian seasoning, and more cheese on top. Because cheese is good.

Recipe of the Week

Behold the Incredible Edible Egg!!!

This is no cottage cheese filled omelet, this is pure delicious flavor wrapped in an egg. And then wrapped in a wrap. Which broke and spilled some on the plate, thus the disorganized scene above. But who cares what it looks like as long as it tastes delicious! For I must warn you, while it is cooking, the above concoction does look a little...mmm...unappetizing. But I assure you, it is delicious.

Start out like any old omelet, cooking your toppings a little in the frying pan. I chose black olives and pepperoni, because I personally love black olives and will put them in anything, and because the pepperoni adds a nice spicy kick to this flavor packed dish. Does that sound a little cliche`? I'm sorry, but this stuff is seriously flavorful! Because...wait for it...we're not just going to cook cheese into the eggs this time (and it's just classic cheddar, not cottage cheese), but we're also going to add something with lots of flavor. It is also what accounts for the weird, slightly disturbing texture of the eggs. But ignore that. Are you still waiting for it?

It's salsa!

Yes, cook salsa right into the eggs. So after the toppings (or fillings, really) have cooked for a minute or two, add the salsa and let that cover them and disperse it's flavor everywhere. Then add some cheese.

And after that has melted a little and covered everything, throw in some eggs and let them bring the whole menagerie together. It's super yummy because the eggs are just bursting with flavor (too cheesy? That's ok, they are cheesy) and the consistency is somewhat moist. Sometimes plain scrambled eggs are just dull and dry, but these are NOT! Clearly I am quite taken by this recipe. I do believe it is one of the most delicious things I have ever eaten in Baldwin. That and the apple cobbler they sometimes have.

Recipe of the Week

 Pizza is a staple of many college students. At least, I live off of pizza. But you know, sometimes you just get bored of eating the same thing. So let me introduce you to something that is not the same. It's not pizza, but it is. Well, it's like the same ingredients of pizza but not in the form of pizza. Which is like the isotopes of carbolic molecules we talked about in chemistry class which are made up of all the same molecules, but in a different order, so are they really the same??? Oh the philosophical conundrums it brings up.

To ponder a question like that, your brain needs some good food. So why not meander on over to Baldwin (or your kitchen) and grill up a pizza sandwich?

Mine consists of pepperoni gathered from the pasta bar and black olives swiped off the salad bar. These toppings are stuffed between four slices of the Swiss cheese on the deli bar and grilled on the panini maker.

Also, to make it even better, you can get a bowl of sauce from the pasta station to dip your sandwich in. I just went with the basic marinara, but I suppose if you wanted the alfredo, that would be pretty delicious too!

On the topic of pizza, Charlee whipped up some cinnamon dessert pizza today, and we had the brilliant idea that said pizza would taste great in a bowl of ice cream. I was hoping for some French vanilla ice cream, which of course they did not have available today. However, cinnamon stick pizza dipped in melted snickerdoodle ice cream is absolutely delicious. Charlee may make fun of me for taking pictures of all my food, but see, that just gives the sandwich the time it needs to cool off a little and the ice cream just the right amount of time to melt over the dessert. It's a very well thought-out process, I assure you.